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52
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THE VALLEY OF MARTAIR
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WE went up through groves to an open space, where we heard voices, and a light was seen glimmering from out a bamboo dwelling. It was the planters' retreat; and in their absence, several girls were keeping house, assisted by an old native, who, wrapped up in tappa, lay in the corner, smoking.
A hasty meal was prepared, and after it we essayed a nap; but, alas! a plague, little anticipated, prevented. Unknown in Tahiti, the mosquitoes here fairly eddied round us. But more of them anon.
We were up betimes, and strolled out to view the country. We were in the valley of Martair; shut in, on both sides, by lofty hills. Here and there were steep cliffs, gay with flowering shrubs, or hung with pendulous vines, swinging blossoms in the air. Of considerable width at the sea, the vale contracts as it runs inland; terminating, at the distance of several miles, in a range of the most grotesque elevations, which seem embattled with turrets and towers, grown over with verdure, and waving with trees. The valley itself is a wilderness of woodland; with links of streams flashing through, and narrow pathways fairly tunnelled through masses of foliage.
All alone, in this wild place, was the abode of the planters; the only one back from the beach--their sole neighbours, the few fishermen and their families, dwelling in a small grove of cocoa-nut trees whose roots were washed by the sea.
The cleared tract which they occupied comprised some thirty acres, level as a prairie, part of which was under cultivation; the whole being fenced in by a stout palisade of trunks and boughs of trees staked firmly in the ground. This was necessary as a defence against the wild cattle and hogs overrunning the island.
Thus far, Tombez potatoes were the principal crop raised; a ready sale for them being obtained among the shipping touching at Papeetee. There was a small patch of the taro, or Indian turnip, also; another of yams; and in one corner, a thrifty growth of the sugar-cane, just ripening.
On the side of the inclosure next the sea was the house; newly built of bamboos, in the native style. The furniture consisted of a couple of sea-chests, an old box, a few cooking utensils, and agricultural tools; together with three fowling-pieces, hanging from a rafter; and two enormous hammocks swinging in opposite corners, and composed of dried bullocks' hides, stretched out with poles.
The whole plantation was shut in by a dense forest; and, close by the house, a dwarfed "Aoa," or species of banian-tree, had purposely been left twisting over the palisade, in the most grotesque manner, and thus made a pleasant shade. The branches of this curious tree afforded low perches, upon which the natives frequently squatted, after the fashion of their race, and smoked and gossiped by the hour.
We had a good breakfast of fish--speared by the natives, before sunrise, on the reef--pudding of Indian turnip, fried bananas, and roasted bread-fruit.
During the repast, our new friends were quite sociable and communicative. It seems that, like nearly all uneducated foreigners, residing in Polynesia, they had, some time previous, deserted from a ship; and, having heard a good deal about the money to be made by raising supplies for whaling-vessels, they determined upon embarking in the business. Strolling about, with this intention, they, at last, came to Martair; and, thinking the soil would suit, set themselves to work. They began by finding out the owner of the particular spot coveted, and then making a "tayo" of him.
He turned out to be Tonoi, the chief of the fishermen: who, one day, when exhilarated with brandy, tore his meagre tappa from his loins, and gave me to know that he was allied by blood with Pomaree herself; and that his mother came from the illustrious race of pontiffs, who, in old times, swayed their bamboo crosier over all the pagans of Imeeo. A regal, and right reverend lineage! But, at the time I speak of, the dusky noble was in decayed circumstances, and, therefore, by no means unwilling to alienate a few useless acres. As an equivalent, he received from the strangers two or three rheumatic old muskets, several red woollen shirts, and a promise to be provided for in his old age: he was always to find a home with the planters.
Desirous of living on the cosy footing of a father-in-law, he frankly offered his two daughters for wives; but as such, they were politely declined; the adventurers, though not averse to courting, being unwilling to entangle themselves in a matrimonial alliance, however splendid in point of family.
Tonoi's men, the fishermen of the grove, were a sad set. Secluded, in a great measure, from the ministrations of the missionaries, they gave themselves up to all manner of lazy wickedness. Strolling among the trees of a morning, you came upon them napping on the shady side of a canoe hauled up among the bushes; lying on a tree smoking; or, more frequently still, gambling with pebbles; though, a little tobacco excepted, what they gambled for at their outlandish games, it would be hard to tell. Other idle diversions they had also, in which they seemed to take great delight. As for fishing, it employed but a small part of their time. Upon the whole, they were a merry, indigent, godless race.
Tonoi, the old sinner, leaning against the fallen trunk of a cocoa-nut tree, invariably squandered his mornings at pebbles; a gray-headed rook of a native regularly plucking him of every other stick of tobacco obtained from his friends, the planters. Toward afternoon, he strolled back to their abode; where he tarried till the next morning, smoking and snoozing, and, at times, prating about the hapless fortunes of the House of Tonoi. But like any other easy-going old dotard, he seemed for the most part perfectly content with cheerful board and lodging.
On the whole, the valley of Martair was the quietest place imaginable. Could the mosquitoes be induced to emigrate, one might spend the month of August there quite pleasantly. But this was not the case with the luckless Long Ghost and myself; as will presently be seen.
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{
"id": "4045"
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53
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FARMING IN POLYNESIA
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THE planters were both whole-souled fellows; but, in other respects, as unlike as possible.
One was a tall, robust Yankee, hern in the backwoods of Maine, sallow, and with a long face;--the other was a short little Cockney, who had first clapped his eyes on the Monument.
The voice of Zeke, the Yankee, had a twang like a cracked viol; and Shorty (as his comrade called him), clipped the aspirate from every word beginning with one. The latter, though not the tallest man in the world, was a good-looking young fellow of twenty-five. His cheeks were dyed with the fine Saxon red, burned deeper from his roving life: his blue eye opened well, and a profusion of fair hair curled over a well-shaped head.
But Zeke was no beauty. A strong, ugly man, he was well adapted for manual labour; and that was all. His eyes were made to see with, and not for ogling. Compared with the Cockney, he was grave, and rather taciturn; but there was a deal of good old humour bottled up in him, after all. For the rest, he was frank, good-hearted, shrewd, and resolute; and like Shorty, quite illiterate.
Though a curious conjunction, the pair got along together famously. But, as no two men were ever united in any enterprise without one getting the upper hand of the other, so in most matters Zeke had his own way. Shorty, too, had imbibed from him a spirit of invincible industry; and Heaven only knows what ideas of making a fortune on their plantation.
We were much concerned at this; for the prospect of their setting us, in their own persons, an example of downright hard labour, was anything but agreeable. But it was now too late to repent what we had done.
The first day--thank fortune--we did nothing. Having treated us as guests thus far, they no doubt thought it would be wanting in delicacy to set us to work before the compliments of the occasion were well over. The next morning, however, they both looked business-like, and we were put to.
"Wall, b'ys" (boys), said Zeke, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, after breakfast--"we must get at it. Shorty, give Peter there (the doctor), the big hoe, and Paul the other, and let's be off." Going to a corner, Shorty brought forth three of the implements; and distributing them impartially, trudged on after his partner, who took the lead with something in the shape of an axe.
For a moment left alone in the house, we looked at each other, quaking. We were each equipped with a great, clumsy piece of a tree, armed at one end with a heavy, flat mass of iron.
The cutlery part--especially adapted to a primitive soil--was an importation from Sydney; the handles must have been of domestic manufacture. "Hoes"--so called--we had heard of, and seen; but they were harmless in comparison with the tools in our hands.
"What's to be done with them?" inquired I of Peter.
"Lift them up and down," he replied; "or put them in motion some way or other. Paul, we are in a scrape--but hark! they are calling;" and shouldering the hoes, off we marched.'
Our destination was the farther side of the plantation, where the ground, cleared in part, had not yet been broken up; but they were now setting about it. Upon halting, I asked why a plough was not used; some of the young wild steers might be caught and trained for draught.
Zeke replied that, for such a purpose, no cattle, to his knowledge, had ever been used in any part of Polynesia. As for the soil of Martair, so obstructed was it with roots, crossing and recrossing each other at all points, that no kind of a plough could be used to advantage. The heavy Sydney hoes were the only thing for such land.
Our work was now before us; but, previous to commencing operations, I endeavoured to engage the Yankee in a little further friendly chat concerning the nature of virgin soils in general, and that of the valley of Martair in particular. So masterly a stratagem made Long Ghost brighten up; and he stood by ready to join in. But what our friend had to say about agriculture all referred to the particular part of his plantation upon which we stood; and having communicated enough on this head to enable us to set to work to the best advantage, he fell to, himself; and Shorty, who had been looking on, followed suit.
The surface, here and there, presented closely amputated branches of what had once been a dense thicket. They seemed purposely left projecting, as if to furnish a handle whereby to drag out the roots beneath. After loosening the hard soil, by dint of much thumping and pounding, the Yankee jerked one of the roots this way and that, twisting it round and round, and then tugging at it horizontally.
"Come! lend us a hand!" he cried, at last; and running up, we all four strained away in concert. The tough obstacle convulsed the surface with throes and spasms; but stuck fast, notwithstanding.
"Dumn it!" cried Zeke, "we'll have to get a rope; run to the house, Shorty, and fetch one."
The end of this being attached, we took plenty of room, and strained away once more.
"Give us a song, Shorty," said the doctor; who was rather sociable, on a short acquaintance. Where the work to be accomplished is any way difficult, this mode of enlivening toil is quite efficacious among sailors. So willing to make everything as cheerful as possible, Shorty struck up, "Were you ever in Dumbarton?" a marvellously inspiring, but somewhat indecorous windlass chorus.
At last, the Yankee cast a damper on his enthusiasm by exclaiming, in a pet, "Oh! dumn your singing! keep quiet, and pull away!" This we now did, in the most uninteresting silence; until, with a jerk that made every elbow hum, the root dragged out; and most inelegantly, we all landed upon the ground. The doctor, quite exhausted, stayed there; and, deluded into believing that, after so doughty a performance, we would be allowed a cessation of toil, took off his hat, and fanned himself.
"Rayther a hard customer, that, Peter," observed the Yankee, going up to him: "but it's no use for any on 'em to hang back; for I'm dumned if they hain't got to come out, whether or no. Hurrah! let's get at it agin!"
"Mercy!" ejaculated the doctor, rising slowly, and turning round. "He'll be the death of us!"
Falling to with our hoes again, we worked singly, or together, as occasion required, until "Nooning Time" came.
The period, so called by the planters, embraced about three hours in the middle of the day; during which it was so excessively hot, in this still, brooding valley, shut out from the Trades, and only open toward the leeward side of the island, that labour in the sun was out of the question. To use a hyperbolical phrase of Shorty's, "It was 'ot enough to melt the nose h'off a brass monkey."
Returning to the house, Shorty, assisted by old Tonoi, cooked the dinner; and, after we had all partaken thereof, both the Cockney and Zeke threw themselves into one of the hammocks, inviting us to occupy the other. Thinking it no bad idea, we did so; and, after skirmishing with the mosquitoes, managed to fall into a doze. As for the planters, more accustomed to "Nooning," they, at once, presented a nuptial back to each other; and were soon snoring away at a great rate. Tonoi snoozed on a mat, in one corner.
At last, we were roused by Zeke's crying out, "Up b'ys; up! rise, and shine; time to get at it agin!"
Looking at the doctor, I perceived, very plainly, that he had decided upon something.
In a languid voice, he told Zeke that he was not very well: indeed, that he had not been himself for some time past; though a little rest, no doubt, would recruit him. The Yankee thinking, from this, that our valuable services might be lost to him altogether, were he too hard upon us at the outset, at once begged us both to consult our own feelings, and not exert ourselves for the present, unless we felt like it. Then--without recognizing the fact that my comrade claimed to be actually unwell--he simply suggested that, since he was so tired, he had better, perhaps, swing in his hammock for the rest of the day. If agreeable, however, I myself might accompany him upon a little bullock-hunting excursion in the neighbouring hills. In this proposition, I gladly acquiesced; though Peter, who was a great sportsman, put on a long face. The muskets and ammunition were forthwith got from overhead; and, everything being then ready, Zeke cried out, "Tonoi! come; aramai! (get up) we want you for pilot. Shorty, my lad, look arter things, you know; and if you likes, why, there's them roots in the field yonder."
Having thus arranged his domestic affairs to please himself, though little to Shorty's satisfaction, I thought, he slung his powder-horn over his shoulder, and we started. Tonoi was, at once, sent on in advance; and leaving the plantation, he struck into a path which led toward the mountains.
After hurrying through the thickets for some time, we came out into the sunlight, in an open glade, just under the shadow of the hills. Here, Zeke pointed aloft to a beetling crag far distant, where a bullock, with horns thrown back, stood like a statue.
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{
"id": "4045"
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54
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SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WILD CATTLE IN POLYNESIA
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BEFORE we proceed further, a word or two concerning these wild cattle, and the way they came on the island.
Some fifty years ago, Vancouver left several bullocks, sheep and goats, at various places in the Society group. He instructed the natives to look after the animals carefully; and by no means to slaughter any until a considerable stock had accumulated.
The sheep must have died off: for I never saw a solitary fleece in any part of Polynesia. The pair left were an ill-assorted couple, perhaps; separated in disgust, and died without issue.
As for the goats, occasionally you come across a black, misanthropic ram, nibbling the scant herbage of some height inaccessible to man, in preference to the sweet grasses of the valley below. The goats are not very numerous.
The bullocks, coming of a prolific ancestry, are a hearty set, racing over the island of Imeeo in considerable numbers, though in Tahiti but few of them are seen. At the former place, the original pair must have scampered off to the interior since it is now so thickly populated by their wild progeny. The herds are the private property of Queen Pomaree; from whom the planters had obtained permission to shoot for their own use as many as they pleased.
The natives stand in great awe of these cattle; and for this reason are excessively timid in crossing the island, preferring rather to sail round to an opposite village in their canoes.
Tonoi abounded in bullock stories; most of which, by the bye, had a spice of the marvellous. The following is one of these.
Once upon a time, he was going over the hills with a brother--now no more--when a great bull came bellowing out of a wood, and both took to their heels. The old chief sprang into a tree; his companion, flying in an opposite direction, was pursued, and, in the very act of reaching up to a bough, trampled underfoot. The unhappy man was then gored--tossed in the air--and finally run away with on the bull's horns. More dead than alive, Tonoi waited till all was over, and then made the best of his way home. The neighbours, armed with two or three muskets, at once started to recover, if possible, his unfortunate brother's remains. At nightfall, they returned without discovering any trace of him; but the next morning, Tonoi himself caught a glimpse of the bullock, marching across the mountain's brow, with a long dark object borne aloft on his horns.
Having referred to Vancouver's attempts to colonize the islands with useful quadrupeds, we may as well say something concerning his success upon Hawaii, one of the largest islands in the whole Polynesian Archipelago; and which gives the native name to the well-known cluster named by Cook in honour of Lord Sandwich.
Hawaii is some one hundred leagues in circuit, and covers an area of over four thousand miles. Until within a few years past, its interior was almost unknown, even to the inhabitants themselves, who, for ages, had been prevented from wandering thither by certain strange superstitions. Pelee, the terrific goddess of the volcanoes Mount Eoa and Mount Kea, was supposed to guard all the passes to the extensive valleys lying round their base. There are legends of her having chased with streams of fire several impious adventurers. Near Hilo, a jet-black cliff is shown, with the vitreous torrent apparently pouring over into the sea: just as it cooled after one of these supernatural eruptions.
To these inland valleys, and the adjoining hillsides, which are clothed in the most luxuriant vegetation, Vancouver's bullocks soon wandered; and unmolested for a long period, multiplied in vast herds.
Some twelve or fifteen years ago, the natives lost sight of their superstitions, and learning the value of the hides in commerce, began hunting the creatures that wore them; but being very fearful and awkward in a business so novel, their success was small; and it was not until the arrival of a party of Spanish hunters, men regularly trained to their calling upon the plains of California, that the work of slaughter was fairly begun.
The Spaniards were showy fellows, tricked out in gay blankets, leggings worked with porcupine quills, and jingling spurs. Mounted upon trained Indian mares, these heroes pursued their prey up to the very base of the burning mountains; making the profoundest solitudes ring with their shouts, and flinging the lasso under the very nose of the vixen goddess Pelee. Hilo, a village upon the coast, was their place of resort; and thither flocked roving whites from all the islands of the group. As pupils of the dashing Spaniards, many of these dissipated fellows, quaffing too freely of the stirrup-cup, and riding headlong after the herds, when they reeled in the saddle, were unhorsed and killed.
This was about the year 1835, when the present king, Tammahamaha III., was a lad. With royal impudence laying claim to the sole property of the cattle, he was delighted with the idea of receiving one of every two silver dollars paid down for their hides; so, with no thought for the future, the work of extermination went madly on. In three years' time, eighteen thousand bullocks were slain, almost entirely upon the single island of Hawaii.
The herds being thus nearly destroyed, the sagacious young prince imposed a rigorous "taboo" upon the few surviving cattle, which was to remain in force for ten years. During this period--not yet expired--all hunting is forbidden, unless directly authorized by the king.
The massacre of the cattle extended to the hapless goats. In one year, three thousand of their skins were sold to the merchants of Honolulu, fetching a quartila, or a shilling sterling apiece.
After this digression, it is time to run on after Tonoi and the Yankee.
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{
"id": "4045"
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55
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A HUNTING RAMBLE WITH ZEKE
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AT THE foot of the mountain, a steep path went up among rocks and clefts mantled with verdure. Here and there were green gulfs, down which it made one giddy to peep. At last we gained an overhanging, wooded shelf of land which crowned the heights; and along this, the path, well shaded, ran like a gallery.
In every direction the scenery was enchanting. There was a low, rustling breeze; and below, in the vale, the leaves were quivering; the sea lay, blue and serene, in the distance; and inland the surface swelled up, ridge after ridge, and peak upon peak, all bathed in the Indian haze of the Tropics, and dreamy to look upon. Still valleys, leagues away, reposed in the deep shadows of the mountains; and here and there, waterfalls lifted up their voices in the solitude. High above all, and central, the "Marling-spike" lifted its finger. Upon the hillsides, small groups of bullocks were seen; some quietly browsing; others slowly winding into the valleys.
We went on, directing our course for a slope of these hills, a mile or two further, where the nearest bullocks were seen.
We were cautious in keeping to the windward of them; their sense of smell and hearing being, like those of all wild creatures, exceedingly acute.
As there was no knowing that we might not surprise some other kind of game in the coverts through which we were passing, we crept along warily.
The wild hogs of the island are uncommonly fierce; and as they often attack the natives, I could not help following Tonoi's example of once in a while peeping in under the foliage. Frequent retrospective glances also served to assure me that our retreat was not cut off.
As we rounded a clump of bushes, a noise behind them, like the crackling of dry branches, broke the stillness. In an instant, Tonoi's hand was on a bough, ready for a spring, and Zeke's finger touched the trigger of his piece. Again the stillness was broken; and thinking it high time to get ready, I brought my musket to my shoulder.
"Look sharp!" cried the Yankee; and dropping on one knee, he brushed the twigs aside. Presently, off went his piece; and with a wild snort, a black, bristling boar--his cherry red lip curled up by two glittering tusks--dashed, unharmed, across the path, and crashed through the opposite thicket. I saluted him with a charge as he disappeared; but not the slightest notice was taken of the civility.
By this time, Tonoi, the illustrious descendant of the Bishops of Imeeo, was twenty feet from the ground. "Aramai! come down, you old fool!" cried the Yankee; "the pesky critter's on t'other side of the island afore this."
"I rayther guess," he continued, as we began reloading, "that we've spoiled sport by firing at that 'ere tarnal hog. Them bullocks heard the racket, and are flinging their tails about now on the keen jump. Quick, Paul, and let's climb that rock yonder, and see if so be there's any in sight."
But none were to be seen, except at such a distance that they looked like ants.
As evening was now at hand, my companion proposed our returning home forthwith; and then, after a sound night's rest, starting in the morning upon a good day's hunt with the whole force of the plantation.
Following another pass in descending into the valley, we passed through some nobly wooded land on the face of the mountain.
One variety of tree particularly attracted my attention. The dark mossy stem, over seventy feet high, was perfectly branchless for many feet above the ground, when it shot out in broad boughs laden with lustrous leaves of the deepest green. And all round the lower part of the trunk, thin, slab-like buttresses of bark, perfectly smooth, and radiating from a common centre, projected along the ground for at least two yards. From below, these natural props tapered upward until gradually blended with the trunk itself. There were signs of the wild cattle having sheltered themselves behind them. Zeke called this the canoe tree; as in old times it supplied the navies of the Kings of Tahiti. For canoe building, the woods is still used. Being extremely dense, and impervious to worms, it is very durable.
Emerging from the forest, when half-way down the hillside, we came upon an open space, covered with ferns and grass, over which a few lonely trees were casting long shadows in the setting sun. Here, a piece of ground some hundred feet square, covered with weeds and brambles, and sounding hollow to the tread, was inclosed by a ruinous wall of stones. Tonoi said it was an almost forgotten burial-place, of great antiquity, where no one had been interred since the islanders had been Christians. Sealed up in dry, deep vaults, many a dead heathen was lying here.
Curious to prove the old man's statement, I was anxious to get a peep at the catacombs; but hermetically overgrown with vegetation as they were, no aperture was visible.
Before gaining the level of the valley, we passed by the site of a village, near a watercourse, long since deserted. There was nothing but stone walls, and rude dismantled foundations of houses, constructed of the same material. Large trees and brushwood were growing rankly among them.
I asked Tonoi how long it was since anyone had lived here. "Me, tammaree (boy)--plenty kannaker (men) Martair," he replied. "Now, only poor pehe kannaka (fishermen) left--me born here."
Going down the valley, vegetation of every kind presented a different aspect from that of the high land.
Chief among the trees of the plain on this island is the "Ati," large and lofty, with a massive trunk, and broad, laurel-shaped leaves. The wood is splendid. In Tahiti, I was shown a narrow, polished plank fit to make a cabinet for a king. Taken from the heart of the tree, it was of a deep, rich scarlet, traced with yellow veins, and in some places clouded with hazel.
In the same grove with the regal "AH" you may see the beautiful flowering "Hotoo"; its pyramid of shining leaves diversified with numberless small, white blossoms.
Planted with trees as the valley is almost throughout its entire length, I was astonished to observe so very few which were useful to the natives: not one in a hundred was a cocoa-nut or bread-fruit tree.
But here Tonoi again enlightened me. In the sanguinary religious hostilities which ensued upon the conversion of Christianity of the first Pomaree, a war-party from Tahiti destroyed (by "girdling" the bark) entire groves of these invaluable trees. For some time afterwards they stood stark and leafless in the sun; sad monuments of the fate which befell the inhabitants of the valley.
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{
"id": "4045"
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56
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MOSQUITOES
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THE NIGHT following the hunting trip, Long Ghost and myself, after a valiant defence, had to fly the house on account of the mosquitoes.
And here I cannot avoid relating a story, rife among the natives, concerning the manner in which these insects were introduced upon the island.
Some years previous, a whaling captain, touching at an adjoining bay, got into difficulty with its inhabitants, and at last carried his complaint before one of the native tribunals; but receiving no satisfaction, and deeming himself aggrieved, he resolved upon taking signal revenge. One night, he towed a rotten old water-cask ashore, and left it in a neglected Taro patch where the ground was warm and moist. Hence the mosquitoes.
I tried my best to learn the name of this man; and hereby do what I can to hand it down to posterity. It was Coleman--Nathan Cole-man. The ship belonged to Nantucket.
When tormented by the mosquitoes, I found much relief in coupling the word "Coleman" with another of one syllable, and pronouncing them together energetically.
The doctor suggested a walk to the beach, where there was a long, low shed tumbling to pieces, but open lengthwise to a current of air which he thought might keep off the mosquitoes. So thither we went.
The ruin partially sheltered a relic of times gone by, which, a few days after, we examined with much curiosity. It was an old war-canoe, crumbling to dust. Being supported by the same rude blocks upon which, apparently, it had years before been hollowed out, in all probability it had never been afloat.
Outside, it seemed originally stained of a green colour, which, here and there, was now changed into a dingy purple. The prow terminated in a high, blunt beak; both sides were covered with carving; and upon the stern, was something which Long Ghost maintained to be the arms of the royal House of Pomaree. The device had an heraldic look, certainly--being two sharks with the talons of hawks clawing a knot left projecting from the wood.
The canoe was at least forty feet long, about two wide, and four deep. The upper part--consisting of narrow planks laced together with cords of sinnate--had in many places fallen off, and lay decaying upon the ground. Still, there were ample accommodations left for sleeping; and in we sprang--the doctor into the bow, and I into the stern. I soon fell asleep; but waking suddenly, cramped in every joint from my constrained posture, I thought, for an instant, that I must have been prematurely screwed down in my coffin.
Presenting my compliments to Long Ghost, I asked how it fared with him.
"Bad enough," he replied, as he tossed about in the outlandish rubbish lying in the bottom of our couch. "Pah! how these old mats smell!"
As he continued talking in this exciting strain for some time, I at last made no reply, having resumed certain mathematical reveries to induce repose. But finding the multiplication table of no avail, I summoned up a grayish image of chaos in a sort of sliding fluidity, and was just falling into a nap on the strength of it, when I heard a solitary and distinct buzz. The hour of my calamity was at hand. One blended hum, the creature darted into the canoe like a small swordfish; and I out of it.
Upon getting into the open air, to my surprise, there was Long Ghost, fanning himself wildly with an old paddle. He had just made a noiseless escape from a swarm which had attacked his own end of the canoe.
It was now proposed to try the water; so a small fishing canoe, hauled up near by, was quickly launched; and paddling a good distance off, we dropped overboard the native contrivance for an anchor--a heavy stone, attached to a cable of braided bark. At this part of the island the encircling reef was close to the shore, leaving the water within smooth, and extremely shallow.
It was a blessed thought! We knew nothing till sunrise, when the motion of our aquatic cot awakened us. I looked up, and beheld Zeke wading toward the shore, and towing us after him by the bark cable. Pointing to the reef, he told us we had had a narrow escape.
It was true enough; the water-sprites had rolled our stone out of its noose, and we had floated away.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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57
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THE SECOND HUNT IN THE MOUNTAINS
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FAIR dawned, over the hills of Martair, the jocund morning of our hunt.
Everything had been prepared for it overnight; and, when we arrived at the house, a good breakfast was spread by Shorty: and old Tonoi was bustling about like an innkeeper. Several of his men, also, were in attendance to accompany us with calabashes of food; and, in case we met with any success, to officiate as bearers of burdens on our return.
Apprised, the evening previous, of the meditated sport, the doctor had announced his willingness to take part therein.
Now, subsequent events made us regard this expedition as a shrewd device of the Yankee's. Once get us off on a pleasure trip, and with what face could we afterward refuse to work? Beside, he enjoyed all the credit of giving us a holiday. Nor did he omit assuring us that, work or play, our wages were all the while running on.
A dilapidated old musket of Tonoi's was borrowed for the doctor. It was exceedingly short and heavy, with a clumsy lock, which required a strong finger to pull the trigger. On trying the piece by firing at a mark, Long Ghost was satisfied that it could not fail of doing execution: the charge went one way, and he the other.
Upon this, he endeavoured to negotiate an exchange of muskets with Shorty; but the Cockney was proof against his blandishments; at last, he intrusted his weapon to one of the natives to carry for him.
Marshalling our forces, we started for the head of the valley; near which a path ascended to a range of high land, said to be a favourite resort of the cattle.
Shortly after gaining the heights, a small herd, some way off, was perceived entering a wood. We hurried on; and, dividing our party, went in after them at four different points; each white man followed by several natives.
I soon found myself in a dense covert; and, after looking round, was just emerging into a clear space, when I heard a report, and a bullet knocked the bark from a tree near by. The same instant there was a trampling and crashing; and five bullocks, nearly abreast, broke into View across the opening, and plunged right toward the spot where myself and three of the islanders were standing.
They were small, black, vicious-looking creatures; with short, sharp horns, red nostrils, and eyes like coals of fire. On they came--their dark woolly heads hanging down.
By this time my island backers were roosting among the trees. Glancing round, for an instant, to discover a retreat in case of emergency, I raised my piece, when a voice cried out, from the wood, "Right between the 'orns, Paul! right between the 'orns!" Down went my barrel in range with a small white tuft on the forehead of the headmost one; and, letting him have it, I darted to one side. As I turned again, the five bullocks shot by like a blast, making the air eddy in their wake.
The Yankee now burst into view, and saluted them in flank. Whereupon, the fierce little bull with the tufted forehead flirted his long tail over his buttocks; kicked out with his hind feet, and shot forward a full length. It was nothing but a graze; and, in an instant, they were out of sight, the thicket into which they broke rocking overhead, and marking their progress.
The action over, the heavy artillery came up, in the person of the Long Doctor with the blunderbuss.
"Where are they?" he cried, out of breath.
"A mile or two h'off, by this time," replied the Cockney. "Lord, Paul I you ought to've sent an 'ailstone into that little black 'un."
While excusing my want of skill, as well as I could, Zeke, rushing forward, suddenly exclaimed, "Creation! what are you 'bout there, Peter?"
Peter, incensed at our ill luck, and ignorantly imputing it to the cowardice of our native auxiliaries, was bringing his piece to bear upon his trembling squire--the musket-carrier--now descending a tree.
Pulling trigger, the bullet went high over his head; and, hopping to the ground, bellowing like a calf, the fellow ran away as fast as his heels could carry him. The rest followed us, after this, with fear and trembling.
After forming our line of march anew, we went on for several hours without catching a glimpse of the game; the reports of the muskets having been heard at a great distance. At last, we mounted a craggy height, to obtain a wide view of the country. Prom this place, we beheld three cattle quietly browsing in a green opening of a wood below; the trees shutting them in all round.
A general re-examination of the muskets now took place, followed by a hasty lunch from the calabashes: we then started. As we descended the mountainside the cattle were in plain sight until we entered the forest, when we lost sight of them for a moment; but only to see them again, as we crept close up to the spot where they grazed.
They were a bull, a cow, and a calf. The cow was lying down in the shade, by the edge of the wood; the calf, sprawling out before her in the grass, licking her lips; while old Taurus himself stood close by, casting a paternal glance at this domestic little scene, and conjugally elevating his nose in the air.
"Now then," said Zeke, in a whisper, "let's take the poor creeturs while they are huddled together. Crawl along, b'ys; crawl along. Fire together, mind; and not till I say the word."
We crept up to the very edge of the open ground, and knelt behind a clump of bushes; resting our levelled barrels among the branches. The slight rustling was heard. Taurus turned round, dropped his head to the ground, and sent forth a low, sullen bellow; then snuffed the air. The cow rose on her foreknees, pitched forward alannedly, and stood upon her legs; while the calf, with ears pricked, got right underneath her. All three were now grouped, and in an instant would be off.
"I take the bull," cried our leader; "fire!"
The calf fell like a clod; its dam uttered a cry, and thrust her head into the thicket; but she turned, and came moaning up to the lifeless calf, going round and round it, snuffing fiercely with her bleeding nostrils. A crashing in the wood, and a loud roar, announced the flying bull.
Soon, another shot was fired, and the cow fell. Leaving some of the natives to look after the dead cattle, the rest of us hurried on after the bull; his dreadful bellowing guiding us to the spot where he lay. Wounded in the shoulder, in his fright and agony he had bounded into the wood; but when we came up to him, he had sunk to the earth in a green hollow, thrusting his black muzzle into a pool of his own blood, and tossing it over his hide in clots.
The Yankee brought his piece to a rest; and, the next instant, the wild brute sprang into the air, and with his forelegs crouching under him, fell dead.
Our island friends were now in high spirits; all courage and alacrity. Old Tonoi thought nothing of taking poor Taurus himself by the horns, and peering into his glazed eyes.
Our ship knives were at once in request; and, skinning the cattle, we hung them high up by cords of bark from the boughs of a tree. Withdrawing into a covert, we there waited for the wild hogs; which, according to Zeke, would soon make their appearance, lured by the smell of blood. Presently we heard them coming, in two or three different directions; and, in a moment, they were tearing the offal to pieces.
As only one shot at these creatures could be relied on, we intended firing simultaneously; but, somehow or other, the doctor's piece went off by itself, and one of the hogs dropped. The others then breaking into the thicket, the rest of us sprang after them; resolved to have another shot at all hazards.
The Cockney darted among some bushes; and, a few moments after, we heard the report of his musket, followed by a quick cry. On running up, we saw our comrade doing battle with a young devil of a boar, as black as night, whose snout had been partly torn away. Firing when the game was in full career, and coming directly toward him, Shorty had been assailed by the enraged brute; it was now crunching the breech of the musket, with which he had tried to club it; Shorty holding fast to the barrel, and fingering his waist for a knife. Being in advance of the others, I clapped my gun to the boar's head, and so put an end to the contest.
Evening now coming on, we set to work loading our carriers. The cattle were so small that a stout native could walk off with an entire quarter; brushing through thickets, and descending rocks without an apparent effort; though, to tell the truth, no white man present could have done the thing with any ease. As for the wild hogs, none of the islanders could be induced to carry Shorty's; some invincible superstition being connected with its black colour. We were, therefore, obliged to leave it. The other, a spotted one, being slung by green thongs to a pole, was marched off with by two young natives.
With our bearers of burdens ahead, we then commenced our return down the valley. Half-way home, darkness overtook us in the woods; and torches became necessary. We stopped, and made them of dry palm branches; and then, sending two lads on in advance for the purpose of gathering fuel to feed the flambeaux, we continued our journey.
It was a wild sight. The torches, waved aloft, flashed through the forest; and, where the ground admitted, the islanders went along on a brisk trot, notwithstanding they bent forward under their loads. Their naked backs were stained with blood; and occasionally, running by each other, they raised wild cries which startled the hillsides.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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58
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THE HUNTING-FEAST; AND A VISIT TO AFREHITOO
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TWO BULLOCKS and a boar! No bad trophies of our day's sport. So by torchlight we marched into the plantation, the wild hog rocking from its pole, and the doctor singing an old hunting-song--Tally-ho! the chorus of which swelled high above the yells of the natives.
We resolved to make a night of it. Kindling a great fire just outside the dwelling, and hanging one of the heifer's quarters from a limb of the banian-tree, everyone was at liberty to cut and broil for himself. Baskets of roasted bread-fruit, and plenty of taro pudding; bunches of bananas, and young cocoa-nuts, had also been provided by the natives against our return.
The fire burned bravely, keeping off the mosquitoes, and making every man's face glow like a beaker of Port. The meat had the true wild-game flavour, not at all impaired by our famous appetites, and a couple of flasks of white brandy, which Zeke, producing from his secret store, circulated freely.
There was no end to my long comrade's spirits. After telling his stories, and singing his songs, he sprang to his feet, clasped a young damsel of the grove round the waist, and waltzed over the grass with her. But there's no telling all the pranks he played that night. The natives, who delight in a wag, emphatically pronounced him "maitai."
It was long after midnight ere we broke up; but when the rest had retired, Zeke, with the true thrift of a Yankee, salted down what was left of the meat.
The next day was Sunday; and at my request, Shorty accompanied me to Afrehitoo--a neighbouring bay, and the seat of a mission, almost directly opposite Papeetee. In Afrehitoo is a large church and school-house, both quite dilapidated; and planted amid shrubbery on a fine knoll, stands a very tasteful cottage, commanding a view across the channel. In passing, I caught sight of a graceful calico skirt disappearing from the piazza through a doorway. The place was the residence of the missionary.
A trim little sail-boat was dancing out at her moorings, a few yards from the beach.
Straggling over the low lands in the vicinity were several native huts--untidy enough--but much better every way than most of those in Tahiti.
We attended service at the church, where we found but a small congregation; and after what I had seen in Papeetee, nothing very interesting took place. But the audience had a curious, fidgety look, which I knew not how to account for until we ascertained that a sermon with the eighth commandment for a text was being preached.
It seemed that there lived an Englishman in the district, who, like our friends, the planters, was cultivating Tombez potatoes for the Papeetee market.
In spite of all his precautions, the natives were in the habit of making nocturnal forays into his inclosure, and carrying off the potatoes. One night he fired a fowling-piece, charged with pepper and salt, at several shadows which he discovered stealing across his premises. They fled. But it was like seasoning anything else; the knaves stole again with a greater relish than ever; and the very next night, he caught a party in the act of roasting a basketful of potatoes under his own cooking-shed. At last, he stated his grievances to the missionary; who, for the benefit of his congregation, preached the sermon we heard.
Now, there were no thieves in Martair; but then, the people of the valley were bribed to be honest. It was a regular business transaction between them and the planters. In consideration of so many potatoes "to them in hand, duly paid," they were to abstain from all depredations upon the plantation. Another security against roguery was the permanent residence upon the premises of their chief, Tonoi.
On our return to Martair in the afternoon, we found the doctor and Zeke making themselves comfortable. The latter was reclining on the ground, pipe in mouth, watching the doctor, who, sitting like a Turk, before a large iron kettle, was slicing potatoes and Indian turnip, and now and then shattering splinters from a bone; all of which, by turns, were thrown into the pot. He was making what he called "Bullock broth."
In gastronomic affairs, my friend was something of an artist; and by way of improving his knowledge, did nothing the rest of the day but practise in what might be called Experimental Cookery: broiling and grilling, and deviling slices of meat, and subjecting them to all sorts of igneous operations. It was the first fresh beef that either of us had tasted in more than a year.
"Oh, ye'll pick up arter a while, Peter," observed Zeke toward night, as Long Ghost was turning a great rib over the coals--"what d'ye think, Paul?"
"He'll get along, I dare say," replied I; "he only wants to get those cheeks of his tanned." To tell the truth, I was not a little pleased to see the doctor's reputation as an invalid fading away so fast; especially as, on the strength of his being one, he had promised to have such easy times of it, and very likely, too, at my expense.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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59
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THE MURPHIES
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DOZING in our canoe the next morning about daybreak, we were awakened by Zeke's hailing us loudly from the beach.
Upon paddling up, he told us that a canoe had arrived overnight, from Papeetee, with an order from a ship lying there for a supply of his potatoes; and as they must be on board the vessel by noon, he wanted us to assist in bringing them down to his sail-boat.
My long comrade was one of those who, from always thrusting forth the wrong foot foremost when they rise, or committing some other indiscretion of the limbs, are more or less crabbed or sullen before breakfast. It was in vain, therefore, that the Yankee deplored the urgency of the case which obliged him to call us up thus early:--the doctor only looked the more glum, and said nothing in reply.
At last, by way of getting up a little enthusiasm for the occasion, the Yankee exclaimed quite spiritedly, "What d'ye say, then, b'ys, shall we get at it?"
"Yes, in the devil's name!" replied the doctor, like a snapping turtle; and we moved on to the house. Notwithstanding his ungracious answer, he probably thought that, after the gastronomic performance of the day previous, it would hardly do to hang back. At the house, we found Shorty ready with the hoes; and we at once repaired to the farther side of the inclosure, where the potatoes had yet to be taken out of the ground.
The rich, tawny soil seemed specially adapted to the crop; the great yellow murphies rolling out of the hills like eggs from a nest.
My comrade really surprised me by the zeal with which he applied himself to his hoe. For my own part, exhilarated by the cool breath of the morning, I worked away like a good fellow. As for Zeke and the Cockney, they seemed mightily pleased at this evidence of our willingness to exert ourselves.
It was not long ere all the potatoes were turned out; and then came the worst of it: they were to be lugged down to the beach, a distance of at least a quarter of a mile. And there being no such thing as a barrow, or cart, on the island, there was nothing for it but spinal-marrows and broad shoulders. Well knowing that this part of the business would be anything but agreeable, Zeke did his best to put as encouraging a face upon it as possible; and giving us no time to indulge in desponding thoughts, gleefully directed our attention to a pile of rude baskets--made of stout stalks--which had been provided for the occasion. So, without more ado, we helped ourselves from the heap: and soon we were all four staggering along under our loads.
The first trip down, we arrived at the beach together: Zeke's enthusiastic cries proving irresistible. A trip or two more, however, and my shoulders began to grate in their sockets; while the doctor's tall figure acquired an obvious stoop. Presently, we both threw down our baskets, protesting we could stand it no longer. But our employers, bent, as it Were, upon getting the work out of us by a silent appeal to our moral sense, toiled away without pretending to notice us. It was as much as to say, "There, men, we've been boarding and lodging ye for the last three days; and yesterday ye did nothing earthly but eat; so stand by now, and look at us working, if ye dare." Thus driven to it, then, we resumed our employment. Yet, in spite of all we could do, we lagged behind Zeke and Shorty, who, breathing hard, and perspiring at every pore, toiled away without pause or cessation. I almost wickedly wished that they would load themselves down with one potato too many.
Gasping as I was with my own hamper, I could not, for the life of me, help laughing at Long Ghost. There he went:--his long neck thrust forward, his arms twisted behind him to form a shelf for his basket to rest on; and his stilts of legs every once in a while giving way under him, as if his knee-joints slipped either way.
"There! I carry no more!" he exclaimed all at once, flinging his potatoes into the boat, where the Yankee was just then stowing them away.
"Oh, then," said Zeke, quite briskly, "I guess you and Paul had better try the 'barrel-machine'--come along, I'll fix ye out in no time"; and, so saying, he waded ashore, and hurried back to the house, bidding us follow.
Wondering what upon earth the "barrel-machine" could be, and rather suspicious of it, we limped after. On arriving at the house, we found him getting ready a sort of sedan-chair. It was nothing more than an old barrel suspended by a rope from the middle of a stout oar. Quite an ingenious contrivance of the Yankee's; and his proposed arrangement with regard to mine and the doctor's shoulders was equally so.
"There now!" said he, when everything was ready, "there's no back-breaking about this; you can stand right up under it, you see: jist try it once"; and he politely rested the blade of the oar on my comrade's right shoulder, and the other end on mine, leaving the barrel between us.
"Jist the thing!" he added, standing off admiringly, while we remained in this interesting attitude.
There was no help for us; with broken hearts and backs we trudged back to the field; the doctor all the while saying masses.
Upon starting with the loaded barrel, for a few paces we got along pretty well, and were constrained to think the idea not a bad one. But we did not long think so. In less than five minutes we came to a dead halt, the springing and buckling of the clumsy oar being almost unendurable.
"Let's shift ends," cried the doctor, who did not relish the blade of the stick, which was cutting into the blade of his shoulder.
At last, by stages short and frequent, we managed to shamble down the beach, where we again dumped our cargo, in something of a pet.
"Why not make the natives help?" asked Long Ghost, rubbing his shoulder.
"Natives be dumned!" said the Yankee, "twenty on 'em ain't worth one white man. They never was meant to work any, them chaps; and they knows it, too, for dumned little work any on 'em ever does."
But, notwithstanding this abuse, Zeke was at last obliged to press a few of the bipeds into service. "Aramai!" (come here) he shouted to several, who, reclining on a bank, had hitherto been critical observers of our proceedings; and, among other things, had been particularly amused by the performance with the sedan-chair.
After making these fellows load their baskets together, the Yankee filled his own, and then drove them before him down to the beach. Probably he had seen the herds of panniered mules driven in this way by mounted Indians along the great Callao to Lima. The boat at last loaded, the Yankee, taking with him a couple of natives, at once hoisted sail, and stood across the channel for Papeetee.
The next morning at breakfast, old Tonoi ran in, and told us that the voyagers were returning. We hurried down to the beach, and saw the boat gliding toward us, with a dozing islander at the helm, and Zeke standing up in the bows, jingling a small bag of silver, the proceeds of his cargo.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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60
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WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF US IN MARTAIR
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SEVERAL quiet days now passed away, during which we just worked sufficiently to sharpen our appetites; the planters leniently exempting us from any severe toil.
Their desire to retain us became more and more evident; which was not to be wondered at; for, beside esteeming us from the beginning a couple of civil, good-natured fellows, who would soon become quite at-home with them, they were not slow in perceiving that we were far different from the common run of rovers; and that our society was both entertaining and instructive to a couple of solitary, illiterate men like themselves.
In a literary point of view, indeed, they soon regarded us with emotions of envy and wonder; and the doctor was considered nothing short of a prodigy. The Cockney found out that he (the doctor) could read a book upside down, without even so much as spelling the big words beforehand; and the Yankee, in the twinkling of an eye, received from him the sum total of several arithmetical items, stated aloud, with the view of testing the extent of his mathematical lore.
Then, frequently, in discoursing upon men and things, my long comrade employed such imposing phrases that, upon one occasion, they actually remained uncovered while he talked.
In short, their favourable opinion of Long Ghost in particular rose higher and higher every day; and they began to indulge in all manner of dreams concerning the advantages to be derived from employing so learned a labourer. Among other projects revealed was that of building a small craft of some forty tons for the purpose of trading among the neighbouring islands. With a native crew, we would then take turns cruising over the tranquil Pacific; touching here and there, as caprice suggested, and collecting romantic articles of commerce;--beach-de-mer, the pearl-oyster, arrow-root, ambergris, sandal-wood, cocoa-nut oil, and edible birdnests.
This South Sea yachting was delightful to think of; and straightway, the doctor announced his willingness to navigate the future schooner clear of all shoals and reefs whatsoever. His impudence was audacious. He enlarged upon the science of navigation; treated us to a dissertation on Mercator's Sailing and the Azimuth compass; and went into an inexplicable explanation of the Lord only knows what plan of his for infallibly settling the longitude.
Whenever my comrade thus gave the reins to his fine fancy, it was a treat to listen, and therefore I never interfered; but, with the planters, sat in mute admiration before him. This apparent self-abasement on my part must have been considered as truly indicative of our respective merits; for, to my no small concern, I quickly perceived that, in the estimate formed of us, Long Ghost began to be rated far above myself. For aught I knew, indeed, he might have privately thrown out a hint concerning the difference in our respective stations aboard the Julia; or else the planters must have considered him some illustrious individual, for certain inscrutable reasons, going incog. With this idea of him, his undisguised disinclination for work became venial; and entertaining such views of extending their business, they counted more upon his ultimate value to them as a man of science than as a mere ditcher.
Nor did the humorous doctor forbear to foster an opinion every way so advantageous to himself; at times, for the sake of the joke, assuming airs of superiority over myself, which, though laughable enough, were sometimes annoying.
To tell the plain truth, things at last came to such a pass that I told him, up and down, that I had no notion to put up with his pretensions; if he were going to play the gentleman, I was going to follow suit; and then there would quickly be an explosion.
At this he laughed heartily; and after some mirthful chat, we resolved upon leaving the valley as soon as we could do so with a proper regard to politeness.
At supper, therefore, the same evening, the doctor hinted at our intention.
Though much surprised, and vexed, Zeke moved not a muscle. "Peter," said he at last--very gravely--and after mature deliberation, "would you like to do the cooking? It's easy work; and you needn't do anything else. Paul's heartier; he can work in the field when it suits him; and before long, we'll have ye at something more agreeable:--won't we, Shorty?"
Shorty assented.
Doubtless, the proposed arrangement was a snug one; especially the sinecure for the doctor; but I by no means relished the functions allotted to myself--they were too indefinite. Nothing final, however, was agreed upon;--our intention to leave was revealed, and that was enough for the present. But, as we said nothing further about going, the Yankee must have concluded that we might yet be induced to remain. He redoubled his endeavours to make us contented.
It was during this state of affairs that, one morning, before breakfast, we were set to weeding in a potato-patch; and the planters being engaged at the house, we were left to ourselves.
Now, though the pulling of weeds was considered by our employers an easy occupation (for which reason they had assigned it to us), and although as a garden recreation it may be pleasant enough, for those who like it--still, long persisted in, the business becomes excessively irksome.
Nevertheless, we toiled away for some time, until the doctor, who, from his height, was obliged to stoop at a very acute angle, suddenly sprang upright; and with one hand propping his spinal column, exclaimed, "Oh, that one's joints were but provided with holes to drop a little oil through!"
Vain as the aspiration was for this proposed improvement upon our species, I cordially responded thereto; for every vertebra in my spine was articulating in sympathy.
Presently, the sun rose over the mountains, inducing that deadly morning languor so fatal to early exertion in a warm climate. We could stand it no longer; but, shouldering our hoes, moved on to the house, resolved to impose no more upon the good-nature of the planters by continuing one moment longer in an occupation so extremely uncongenial.
We freely told them so. Zeke was exceedingly hurt, and said everything he could think of to alter our determination; but, finding all unavailing, he very hospitably urged us not to be in any hurry about leaving; for we might stay with him as guests until we had time to decide upon our future movements.
We thanked him sincerely; but replied that, the following morning, we must turn our backs upon the hills of Martair.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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61
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PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY
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DURING the remainder of the day we loitered about, talking over our plans.
The doctor was all eagerness to visit Tamai, a solitary inland village, standing upon the banks of a considerable lake of the same name, and embosomed among groves. From Afrehitoo you went to this place by a lonely pathway leading through the wildest scenery in the world. Much, too, we had heard concerning the lake itself, which abounded in such delicious fish that, in former times, angling parties occasionally came over to it from Papeetee.
Upon its banks, moreover, grew the finest fruit of the islands, and in their greatest perfection. The "Ve," or Brazilian plum, here attained the size of an orange; and the gorgeous "Arheea," or red apple of Tahiti, blushed with deeper dyes than in any of the seaward valleys.
Beside all this, in Tamai dwelt the most beautiful and unsophisticated women in the entire Society group. In short, the village was so remote from the coast, and had been so much less affected by recent changes than other places that, in most things, Tahitian life was here seen as formerly existing in the days of young Otoo, the boy-king, in Cook's time.
After obtaining from the planters all the information which was needed, we decided upon penetrating to the village; and after a temporary sojourn there, to strike the beach again, and journey round to Taloo, a harbour on the opposite side of the island.
We at once put ourselves in travelling trim. Just previous to leaving Tahiti, having found my wardrobe reduced to two suits (frock and trousers, both much the worse for wear), I had quilted them together for mutual preservation (after a fashion peculiar to sailors); engrafting a red frock upon a blue one, and producing thereby a choice variety in the way of clothing. This was the extent of my wardrobe. Nor was the doctor by any means better off. His improvidence had at last driven him to don the nautical garb; but by this time his frock--a light cotton one--had almost given out, and he had nothing to replace it. Shorty very generously offered him one which was a little less ragged; but the alms were proudly refused; Long Ghost preferring to assume the ancient costume of Tahiti--the "Roora."
This garment, once worn as a festival dress, is now seldom met with; but Captain Bob had often shown us one which he kept as an heirloom. It was a cloak, or mantle, of yellow tappa, precisely similar to the "poncho" worn by the South-American Spaniards. The head being slipped through a slit in the middle, the robe hangs about the person in ample drapery. Tonoi obtained sufficient coarse brown tappa to make a short mantle of this description; and in five minutes the doctor was equipped. Zeke, eyeing his toga critically, reminded its proprietor that there were many streams to ford, and precipices to scale, between Martair and Tamai; and if he travelled in petticoats, he had better hold them up.
Besides other deficiencies, we were utterly shoeless. In the free and easy Pacific, sailors seldom wear shoes; mine had been tossed overboard the day we met the Trades; and except in one or two tramps ashore, I had never worn any since. In Martair, they would have been desirable: but none were to be had. For the expedition we meditated, however, they were indispensable. Zeke, being the owner of a pair of huge, dilapidated boots, hanging from a rafter like saddlebags, the doctor succeeded in exchanging for them a case-knife, the last valuable article in his possession. For myself, I made sandals from a bullock's hide, such as are worn by the Indians in California. They are made in a minute; the sole, rudely fashioned to the foot, being confined across the instep by three straps of leather.
Our headgear deserves a passing word. My comrade's was a brave old Panama hat, made of grass, almost as fine as threads of silk; and so elastic that, upon rolling it up, it sprang into perfect shape again. Set off by the jaunty slouch of this Spanish sombrero, Doctor Long Ghost, in this and his Eoora, looked like a mendicant grandee.
Nor was my own appearance in an Eastern turban less distinguished. The way I came to wear it was this. My hat having been knocked overboard a few days before reaching Papeetee, I was obliged to mount an abominable wad of parti-coloured worsted--what sailors call a Scotch cap. Everyone knows the elasticity of knit wool; and this Caledonian head-dress crowned my temples so effectually that the confined atmosphere engendered was prejudicial to my curls. In vain I tried to ventilate the cap: every gash made seemed to heal whole in no time. Then such a continual chafing as it kept up in a hot sun.
Seeing my dislike to the thing, Kooloo, my worthy friend, prevailed upon me to bestow it upon him. I did so; hinting that a good boiling might restore the original brilliancy of the colours.
It was then that I mounted the turban. Taking a new Regatta frock of the doctor's, which was of a gay calico, and winding it round my head in folds, I allowed the sleeves to droop behind--thus forming a good defence against the sun, though in a shower it was best off. The pendent sleeves adding much to the effect, the doctor called me the Bashaw with Two Tails.
Thus arrayed, we were ready for Tamai; in whose green saloons we counted upon creating no small sensation.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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62
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TAMAI
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LONG before sunrise the next morning my sandals were laced on, and the doctor had vaulted into Zeke's boots.
Expecting to see us again before we went to Taloo, the planters wished us a pleasant journey; and, on parting, very generously presented us with a pound or two of what sailors call "plug" tobacco; telling us to cut it up into small change; the Virginian weed being the principal circulating medium on the island.
Tamai, we were told, was not more than three or four leagues distant; so making allowances for a wild road, a few hours to rest at noon, and our determination to take the journey leisurely, we counted upon reaching the shores of the lake some time in the flush of the evening.
For several hours we went on slowly through wood and ravine, and over hill and precipice, seeing nothing but occasional herds of wild cattle, and often resting; until we found ourselves, about noon, in the very heart of the island.
It was a green, cool hollow among the mountains, into which we at last descended with a bound. The place was gushing with a hundred springs, and shaded over with great solemn trees, on whose mossy boles the moisture stood in beads. Strange to say, no traces of the bullocks ever having been here were revealed. Nor was there a sound to be heard, nor a bird to be seen, nor any breath of wind stirring the leaves. The utter solitude and silence were oppressive; and after peering about under the shades, and seeing nothing but ranks of dark, motionless trunks, we hurried across the hollow, and ascended a steep mountain opposite.
Midway up, we rested where the earth had gathered about the roots of three palms, and thus formed a pleasant lounge, from which we looked down upon the hollow, now one dark green tuft of woodland at our feet. Here we brought forth a small calabash of "poee" a parting present from Tonoi. After eating heartily, we obtained fire by two sticks, and throwing ourselves back, puffed forth our fatigue in wreaths of smoke. At last we fell asleep; nor did we waken till the sun had sunk so low that its rays darted in upon us under the foliage.
Starting up, we then continued our journey; and as we gained the mountain top--there, to our surprise, lay the lake and village of Tamai. We had thought it a good league off. Where we stood, the yellow sunset was still lingering; but over the valley below long shadows were stealing--the rippling green lake reflecting the houses and trees just as they stood along its banks. Several small canoes, moored here and there to posts in the water, were dancing upon the waves; and one solitary fisherman was paddling over to a grassy point. In front of the houses, groups of natives were seen; some thrown at full length upon the ground, and others indolently leaning against the bamboos.
With whoop and halloo, we ran down the hills, the villagers soon hurrying forth to see who were coming. As we drew near, they gathered round, all curiosity to know what brought the "karhowrees" into their quiet country. The doctor contriving to make them understand the purely social object of our visit, they gave us a true Tahitian welcome; pointing into their dwellings, and saying they were ours as long as we chose to remain.
We were struck by the appearance of these people, both men and women; so much more healthful than the inhabitants of the bays. As for the young girls, they were more retiring and modest, more tidy in their dress, and far fresher and more beautiful than the damsels of the coast. A thousand pities, thought I, that they should bury their charms in this nook of a valley.
That night we abode in the house of Rartoo, a hospitable old chief. It was right on the shore of the lake; and at supper we looked out through a rustling screen of foliage upon the surface of the starlit water.
The next day we rambled about, and found a happy little community, comparatively free from many deplorable evils to which the rest of their countrymen are subject. Their time, too, was more occupied. To my surprise, the manufacture of tappa was going on in several buildings. European calicoes were seldom seen, and not many articles of foreign origin of any description.
The people of Tamai were nominally Christians; but being so remote from ecclesiastical jurisdiction, their religion sat lightly upon them. We had been told, even, that many heathenish games and dances still secretly lingered in their valley.
Now the prospect of seeing an old-fashioned "hevar," or Tahitian reel, was one of the inducements which brought us here; and so, finding Rartoo rather liberal in his religious ideas, we disclosed our desire. At first he demurred; and shrugging his shoulders like a Frenchman, declared it could not be brought about--was a dangerous matter to attempt, and might bring all concerned into trouble. But we overcame all this, convinced him that the thing could be done, and a "hevar," a genuine pagan fandango, was arranged for that very night.
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{
"id": "4045"
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63
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A DANCE IN THE VALLEY
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THERE were some ill-natured people--tell-tales--it seemed, in Tamai; and hence there was a deal of mystery about getting up the dance.
An hour or two before midnight, Rartoo entered the house, and, throwing robes of tappa over us, bade us follow at a distance behind him; and, until out of the village, hood our faces. Keenly alive to the adventure, we obeyed. At last, after taking a wide circuit, we came out upon the farthest shore of the lake. It was a wide, dewy, space; lighted up by a full moon, and carpeted with a minute species of fern growing closely together. It swept right down to the water, showing the village opposite, glistening among the groves.
Near the trees, on one side of the clear space, was a ruinous pile of stones many rods in extent; upon which had formerly stood a temple of Oro. At present, there was nothing but a rude hut, planted on the lowermost terrace. It seemed to have been used as a "tappa herree," or house for making the native cloth.
Here we saw lights gleaming from between the bamboos, and casting long, rod-like shadows upon the ground without. Voices also were heard. We went up, and had a peep at the dancers who were getting ready for the ballet. They were some twenty in number;-waited upon by hideous old crones, who might have been duennas. Long Ghost proposed to send the latter packing; but Rartoo said it would never do, and so they were permitted to remain.
We tried to effect an entrance at the door, which was fastened; but, after a noisy discussion with one of the old witches within, our guide became fidgety, and, at last, told us to desist, or we would spoil all. He then led us off to a distance to await the performance; as the girls, he said, did not wish to be recognized. He, furthermore, made us promise to remain where we were until all was over, and the dancers had retired.
We waited impatiently; and, at last, they came forth. They were arrayed in short tunics of white tappa; with garlands of flowers on their heads. Following them were the duennas, who remained clustering about the house, while the girls advanced a few paces; and, in an instant, two of them, taller than their companions, were standing, side by side, in the middle of a ring formed by the clasped hands of the rest. This movement was made in perfect silence.
Presently the two girls join hands overhead; and, crying out, "Ahloo! ahloo!" wave them to and fro. Upon which the ring begins to circle slowly; the dancers moving sideways, with their arms a little drooping. Soon they quicken their pace; and, at last, fly round and round: bosoms heaving, hair streaming, flowers dropping, and every sparkling eye circling in what seemed a line of light.
Meanwhile, the pair within are passing and repassing each other incessantly. Inclining sideways, so that their long hair falls far over, they glide this way and that; one foot continually in the air, and their fingers thrown forth, and twirling in the moonbeams.
"Ahloo! ahloo!" again cry the dance queens; and coming together in the middle of the ring, they once more lift up the arch, and stand motionless.
"Ahloo! ahloo!" Every link of the circle is broken; and the girls, deeply breathing, stand perfectly still. They pant hard and fast a moment or two; and then, just as the deep flush is dying away from their faces, slowly recede, all round; thus enlarging the ring.
Again the two leaders wave their hands, when the rest pause; and now, far apart, stand in the still moonlight like a circle of fairies. Presently, raising a strange chant, they softly sway themselves, gradually quickening the movement, until, at length, for a few passionate moments, with throbbing bosoms and glowing cheeks, they abandon themselves to all the spirit of the dance, apparently lost to everything around. But soon subsiding again into the same languid measure as before, they become motionless; and then, reeling forward on all sides, their eyes swimming in their heads, join in one wild chorus, and sink into each other's arms.
Such is the Lory-Lory, I think they call it; the dance of the backsliding girls of Tamai.
While it was going on, we had as much as we could do to keep the doctor from rushing forward and seizing a partner.
They would give us no more "hevars" that night; and Rartoo fairly dragged us away to a canoe, hauled up on the lake shore; when we reluctantly embarked, and paddling over to the village, arrived there in time for a good nap before sunrise.
The next day, the doctor went about trying to hunt up the overnight dancers. He thought to detect them by their late rising; but never was man more mistaken; for, on first sallying out, the whole village was asleep, waking up in concert about an hour after. But, in the course of the day, he came across several whom he at once charged with taking part in the "hevar." There were some prim-looking fellows standing by (visiting elders from Afrehitoo, perhaps), and the girls looked embarrassed; but parried the charge most skilfully.
Though soft as doves, in general, the ladies of Tamai are, nevertheless, flavoured with a slight tincture of what we queerly enough call the "devil"; and they showed it on the present occasion. For when the doctor pressed one rather hard, she all at once turned round upon him, and, giving him a box on the ear, told him to "hanree perrar!" (be off with himself.)
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{
"id": "4045"
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64
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MYSTERIOUS
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THERE was a little old man of a most hideous aspect living in Tamai, who, in a coarse mantle of tappa, went about the village, dancing, and singing, and making faces. He followed us about wherever we went; and, when unobserved by others, plucked at our garments, making frightful signs for us to go along with him somewhere, and see something.
It was in vain that we tried to get rid of him. Kicks and cuffs, even, were at last resorted to; but, though he howled like one possessed, he would not go away, but still haunted us. At last, we conjured the natives to rid us of him; but they only laughed; so we were forced to endure the dispensation as well as we could.
On the fourth night of our visit, returning home late from paying a few calls through the village, we turned a dark corner of trees, and came full upon our goblin friend: as usual, chattering, and motioning with his hands. The doctor, venting a curse, hurried forward; but, from some impulse or other, I stood my ground, resolved to find out what this unaccountable object wanted of us. Seeing me pause, he crept close up to me, peered into my face, and then retreated, beckoning me to follow; which I did.
In a few moments the village was behind us; and with my guide in advance, I found myself in the shadow of the heights overlooking the farther side of the valley. Here my guide paused until I came up with him; when, side by side, and without speaking, we ascended the hill.
Presently, we came to a wretched hut, barely distinguishable in the shade cast by the neighbouring trees. Pushing aside a rude sliding door, held together with thongs, the goblin signed me to enter. Within, it looked dark as pitch; so I gave him to understand that he must strike a light, and go in before me. Without replying, he disappeared in the darkness; and, after groping about, I heard two sticks rubbing together, and directly saw a spark. A native taper was then lighted, and I stooped, and entered.
It was a mere kennel. Foul old mats, and broken cocoa-nut shells, and calabashes were strewn about the floor of earth; and overhead I caught glimpses of the stars through chinks in the roof. Here and there the thatch had fallen through, and hung down in wisps.
I now told him to set about what he was going to do, or produce whatever he had to show without delay. Looking round fearfully, as if dreading a surprise, he commenced turning over and over the rubbish in one corner. At last, he clutched a calabash, stained black, and with the neck broken off; on one side of it was a large hole. Something seemed to be stuffed away in the vessel; and after a deal of poking at the aperture, a musty old pair of sailor trousers was drawn forth; and, holding them up eagerly, he inquired how many pieces of tobacco I would give for them.
Without replying, I hurried away; the old man chasing me, and shouting as I ran, until I gained the village. Here I dodged him, and made my way home, resolved never to disclose so inglorious an adventure.
To no purpose, the next morning, my comrade besought me to enlighten him; I preserved a mysterious silence.
The occurrence served me a good turn, however, so long as we abode in Tamai; for the old clothesman never afterwards troubled me; but forever haunted the doctor, who, in vain, supplicated Heaven to be delivered from him.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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65
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THE HEGIRA, OR FLIGHT
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"I SAY, doctor," cried I, a few days after my adventure with the goblin, as, in the absence of our host, we were one morning lounging upon the matting in his dwelling, smoking our reed pipes, "Tamai's a thriving place; why not settle down?"
"Faith!" said he, "not a bad idea, Paul. But do you fancy they'll let us stay, though?"
"Why, certainly; they would be overjoyed to have a couple of Karhowrees for townsmen."
"Gad! you're right, my pleasant fellow. Ha! ha! I'll put up a banana-leaf as a physician from London--deliver lectures on Polynesian antiquities--teach English in five lessons, of one hour each--establish power-looms for the manufacture of tappa--lay out a public park in the middle of the village, and found a festival in honour of Captain Cook!"
"But, surely, not without stopping to take breath," observed I.
The doctor's projects, to be sure, were of a rather visionary cast; but we seriously thought, nevertheless, of prolonging our stay in the valley for an indefinite period; and, with this understanding, we were turning over various plans for spending our time pleasantly, when several women came running into the house, and hurriedly besought us to heree! heree! (make our escape), crying out something about the Mickonarees.
Thinking that we were about to be taken up under the act for the suppression of vagrancy, we flew out of the house, sprang into a canoe before the door, and paddled with might and main over to the opposite side of the lake.
Approaching Rartoo's dwelling was a great crowd, among which we perceived several natives, who, from their partly European dress, we were certain did not reside in Tamai.
Plunging into the groves, we thanked our stars that we had thus narrowly escaped being apprehended as runaway seamen, and marched off to the beach. This, at least, was what we thought we had escaped.
Having fled the village, we could not think of prowling about its vicinity, and then returning; in doing so we might be risking our liberty again. We therefore determined upon journeying back to Martair; and setting our faces thitherward, we reached the planters' house about nightfall. They gave us a cordial reception, and a hearty supper; and we sat up talking until a late hour.
We now prepared to go round to Taloo, a place from which we were not far off when at Tamai; but wishing to see as much of the island as we could, we preferred returning to Martair, and then going round by way of the beach.
Taloo, the only frequented harbour of Imeeo, lies on the western side of the island, almost directly over against Martair. Upon one shore of the bay stands the village of Partoowye, a missionary station. In its vicinity is an extensive sugar plantation--the best in the South Seas, perhaps--worked by a person from Sydney.
The patrimonial property of the husband of Pomaree, and every way a delightful retreat, Partoowye was one of the occasional residences of the court. But at the time I write of it was permanently fixed there, the queen having fled thither from Tahiti.
Partoowye, they told us, was by no means the place Papeetee was. Ships seldom touched, and very few foreigners were living ashore. A solitary whaler, however, was reported to be lying in the harbour, wooding and watering, and to be in want of men.
All things considered, I could not help looking upon Taloo as offering "a splendid opening" for us adventurers. To say nothing of the facilities presented for going to sea in the whaler, or hiring ourselves out as day labourers in the sugar plantation, there were hopes to be entertained of being promoted to some office of high trust and emolument about the person of her majesty, the queen.
Nor was this expectation altogether Quixotic. In the train of many Polynesian princes roving whites are frequently found: gentleman pensioners of state, basking in the tropical sunshine of the court, and leading the pleasantest lives in the world. Upon islands little visited by foreigners the first seaman that settles down is generally domesticated in the family of the head chief or king; where he frequently discharges the functions of various offices, elsewhere filled by as many different individuals. As historiographer, for instance, he gives the natives some account of distant countries; as commissioner of the arts and sciences, he instructs them in the use of the jack-knife, and the best way of shaping bits of iron hoop into spear-heads; and as interpreter to his majesty, he facilitates intercourse with strangers; besides instructing the people generally in the uses of the most common English phrases, civil and profane; but oftener the latter.
These men generally marry well; often--like Hardy of Hannamanoo--into the Wood royal.
Sometimes they officiate as personal attendant, or First Lord in Waiting, to the king. At Amboi, one of the Tonga Islands, a vagabond Welshman bends his knee as cupbearer to his cannibal majesty. He mixes his morning cup of "arva," and, with profound genuflections, presents it in a cocoa-nut bowl, richly carved. Upon another island of the same group, where it is customary to bestow no small pains in dressing the hair--frizzing it out by a curious process into an enormous Pope's head--an old man-of-war's-man fills the post of barber to the king. And as his majesty is not very neat, his mop is exceedingly populous; so that, when Jack is not engaged in dressing the head intrusted to his charge, he busies himself in gently titillating it--a sort of skewer being actually worn about in the patient's hair for that special purpose.
Even upon the Sandwich Islands a low rabble of foreigners is kept about the person of Tammahammaha for the purpose of ministering to his ease or enjoyment.
Billy Loon, a jolly little negro, tricked out in a soiled blue jacket, studded all over with rusty bell buttons, and garnished with shabby gold lace, is the royal drummer and pounder of the tambourine. Joe, a wooden-legged Portuguese who lost his leg by a whale, is violinist; and Mordecai, as he is called, a villainous-looking scamp, going about with his cups and balls in a side pocket, diverts the court with his jugglery. These idle rascals receive no fixed salary, being altogether dependent upon the casual bounty of their master. Now and then they run up a score at the Dance Houses in Honolulu, where the illustrious Tammahammaha III afterwards calls and settles the bill.
A few years since an auctioneer to his majesty came near being added to the retinue of state. It seems that he was the first man who had practised his vocation in the Sandwich Islands; and delighted with the sport of bidding upon his wares, the king was one of his best customers. At last he besought the man to leave all and follow him, and he should be handsomely provided for at court. But the auctioneer refused; and so the ivory hammer lost the chance of being borne before him on a velvet cushion when the next king went to be crowned.
But it was not as strolling players, nor as footmen out of employ, that the doctor and myself looked forward to our approaching introduction to the court of the Queen of Tahiti. On the contrary, as before hinted, we expected to swell the appropriations of bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts on the Civil List by filling some honourable office in her gift.
We were told that, to resist the usurpation of the French, the queen was rallying about her person all the foreigners she could. Her partiality for the English and Americans was well known; and this was an additional ground for our anticipating a favourable reception. Zeke had informed us, moreover, that by the queen's counsellors at Partoowye, a war of aggression against the invaders of Papeetee had been seriously thought of. Should this prove true, a surgeon's commission for the doctor, and a lieutenancy for myself, were certainly counted upon in our sanguine expectations.
Such, then, were our views, and such our hopes in projecting a trip to Taloo. But in our most lofty aspirations we by no means lost sight of any minor matters which might help us to promotion. The doctor had informed me that he excelled in playing the fiddle. I now suggested that, as soon as we arrived at Partoowye, we should endeavour to borrow a violin for him; or if this could not be done, that he should manufacture some kind of a substitute, and, thus equipped, apply for an audience of the queen. Her well-known passion for music would at once secure his admittance; and so, under the most favourable auspices, bring about our introduction to her notice.
"And who knows," said my waggish comrade, throwing his head back and performing an imaginary air by briskly drawing one arm across the other, "who knows that I may not fiddle myself into her majesty's good graces so as to became a sort of Rizzio to the Tahitian princess."
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{
"id": "4045"
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66
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HOW WE WERE TO GET TO TALOO
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THE inglorious circumstances of our somewhat premature departure from Tamai filled the sagacious doctor, and myself, with sundry misgivings for the future.
Under Zeke's protection, we were secure from all impertinent interference in our concerns on the part of the natives. But as friendless wanderers over the island, we ran the risk of being apprehended as runaways, and, as such, sent back to Tahiti. The truth is that the rewards constantly offered for the apprehension of deserters from ships induce some of the natives to eye all strangers suspiciously.
A passport was therefore desirable; but such a thing had never been heard of in Imeeo. At last, Long Ghost suggested that, as the Yankee was well known and much respected all over the island, we should endeavour to obtain from him some sort of paper, not only certifying to our having been in his employ, but also to our not being highwaymen, kidnappers, nor yet runaway seamen. Even written in English, a paper like this would answer every purpose; for the unlettered natives, standing in great awe of the document, would not dare to molest us until acquainted with its purport. Then, if it came to the worst, we might repair to the nearest missionary, and have the passport explained.
Upon informing Zeke of these matters, he seemed highly flattered with the opinion we entertained of his reputation abroad; and he agreed to oblige us. The doctor at once offered to furnish him with a draught of the paper; but he refused, saying he would write it himself. With a rooster's quill, therefore, a bit of soiled paper, and a stout heart, he set to work. Evidently he was not accustomed to composition; for his literary throes were so violent that the doctor suggested that some sort of a Caesarian operation might be necessary.
The precious paper was at last finished; and a great curiosity it was. We were much diverted with his reasons for not dating it.
"In this here dummed eliminate," he observed, "a feller can't keep the run of the months, nohow; cause there's no seasons; no summer and winter, to go by. One's etarnally thinkin' it's always July, it's so pesky hot."
A passport provided, we cast about for some means of getting to Taloo.
The island of Imeeo is very nearly surrounded by a regular breakwater of coral extending within a mile or less of the shore. The smooth canal within furnishes the best means of communication with the different settlements; all of which, with the exception of Tamai, are right upon the water. And so indolent are the Imeeose that they think nothing of going twenty or thirty miles round the island in a canoe in order to reach a place not a quarter of that distance by land. But as hinted before, the fear of the bullocks has something to do with this.
The idea of journeying in a canoe struck our fancy quite pleasantly; and we at once set about chartering one, if possible. But none could we obtain. For not only did we have nothing to pay for hiring one, but we could not expect to have it loaned; inasmuch as the good-natured owner would, in all probability, have to walk along the beach as we paddled in order to bring back his property when we had no further use for it.
At last, it was decided to commence our journey on foot; trusting that we would soon fall in with a canoe going our way, in which we might take passage.
The planters said we would find no beaten path: all we had to do was to follow the beach; and however inviting it might look inland, on no account must we stray from it. In short, the longest way round was the nearest way to Taloo. At intervals, there were little hamlets along the shore, besides lonely fishermen's huts here and there, where we could get plenty to eat without pay; so there was no necessity to lay in any store.
Intending to be off before sunrise the next morning, so as to have the benefit of the coolest part of the day, we bade our kind hosts farewell overnight; and then, repairing to the beach, we launched our floating pallet, and slept away merrily till dawn.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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67
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THE JOURNEY ROUND THE BEACH
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IT was on the fourth day of the first month of the Hegira, or flight from Tamai (we now reckoned our time thus), that, rising bright and early, we were up and away out of the valley of Hartair before the fishermen even were stirring.
It was the earliest dawn. The morning only showed itself along the lower edge of a bank of purple clouds pierced by the misty peaks of Tahiti. The tropical day seemed too languid to rise. Sometimes, starting fitfully, it decked the clouds with faint edgings of pink and gray, which, fading away, left all dim again. Anon, it threw out thin, pale rays, growing lighter and lighter, until at last, the golden morning sprang out of the East with a bound--darting its bright beams hither and thither, higher and higher, and sending them, broadcast, over the face of the heavens.
All balmy from the groves of Tahiti came an indolent air, cooled by its transit over the waters; and grateful underfoot was the damp and slightly yielding beach, from which the waves seemed just retired.
The doctor was in famous spirits; removing his Koora, he went splashing into the sea; and, after swimming a few yards, waded ashore, hopping, skipping, and jumping along the beach; but very careful to cut all his capers in the direction of our journey.
Say what they will of the glowing independence one feels in the saddle, give me the first morning flush of your cheery pedestrian!
Thus exhilarated, we went on, as light-hearted and care-free as we could wish.
And here I cannot refrain from lauding the very superior inducements which most intertropical countries afford, not only to mere rovers like ourselves, but to penniless people generally. In these genial regions one's wants are naturally diminished; and those which remain are easily gratified; fuel, house-shelter, and, if you please, clothing, may be entirely dispensed with.
How different our hard northern latitudes! Alas! the lot of a "poor devil," twenty degrees north of the tropic of Cancer, is indeed pitiable.
At last, the beach contracted to hardly a yard's width, and the dense thicket almost dipped into the sea. In place of the smooth sand, too, we had sharp fragments of broken coral, which made travelling exceedingly unpleasant. "Lord! my foot!" roared the doctor, fetching it up for inspection, with a galvanic fling of the limb. A sharp splinter had thrust itself into the flesh through a hole in his boot. My sandals were worse yet; their soles taking a sort of fossil impression of everything trod upon.
Turning round a bold sweep of the beach, we came upon a piece of fine, open ground, with a fisherman's dwelling in the distance, crowning a knoll which rolled off into the water.
The hut proved to be a low, rude erection, very recently thrown up; for the bamboos were still green as grass, and the thatching fresh and fragrant as meadow hay. It was open upon three sides; so that, upon drawing near, the domestic arrangements within were in plain sight. No one was stirring; and nothing was to be seen but a clumsy old chest of native workmanship, a few calabashes, and bundles of tappa hanging against a post; and a heap of something, we knew not what, in a dark corner. Upon close inspection, the doctor discovered it to be a loving old couple, locked in each other's arms, and rolled together in a tappa mantle.
"Halloa! Darby!" he cried, shaking the one with a beard. But Darby heeded him not; though Joan, a wrinkled old body, started up in affright, and yelled aloud. Neither of us attempting to gag her, she presently became quiet; and, after staring hard and asking some unintelligible questions, she proceeded to rouse her still slumbering mate.
What ailed him we could not tell; but there was no waking him. Equally in vain were all his dear spouse's cuffs, pinches, and other endearments; he lay like a log, face up, snoring away like a cavalry trumpeter.
"Here, my good woman," said Long Ghost, "just let me try"; and, taking the patient right by his nose, he so lifted him bodily into a sitting position, and held him there until his eyes opened. When this event came to pass, Darby looked round like one stupefied; and then, springing to his feet, backed away into a corner, from which place we became the objects of his earnest and respectful attention.
"Permit me, my dear Darby, to introduce to you my esteemed friend and comrade, Paul," said the doctor, gallanting me up with all the grimace and flourish imaginable. Upon this, Darby began to recover his faculties, and surprised us not a little by talking a few words of English. So far as could be understood, they were expressive of his having been aware that there were two "karhowrees" in the neighbourhood; that he was glad to see us, and would have something for us to eat in no time.
How he came by his English was explained to us before we left. Some time previous, he had been a denizen of Papeetee, where the native language is broidered over with the most classic sailor phrases. He seemed to be quite proud of his residence there; and alluded to it in the same significant way in which a provincial informs you that in his time he has resided in the capital. The old fellow was disposed to be garrulous; but being sharp-set, we told him to get breakfast; after which we would hear his anecdotes. While employed among the calabashes, the strange, antiquated fondness between these old semi-savages was really amusing. I made no doubt that they were saying to each other, "yes, my love"--"no, my life," just in the same way that some young couples do, at home.
They gave us a hearty meal; and while we were discussing its merits, they assured us, over and over again, that they expected nothing in return for their attentions; more: we were at liberty to stay as long as we pleased; and as long as we did stay, their house and everything they had was no longer theirs, but ours; still more: they themselves were our slaves--the old lady, to a degree that was altogether superfluous. This, now, is Tahitian hospitality! Self-immolation upon one's own hearthstone for the benefit of the guest.
The Polynesians carry their hospitality to an amazing extent. Let a native of Waiurar, the westernmost part of Tahiti, make his appearance as a traveller at Partoowye, the most easterly village of Imeeo; though a perfect stranger, the inhabitants on all sides accost him at their doorways, inviting him to enter, and make himself at home. But the traveller passes on, examining every house attentively; until, at last, he pauses before one which suits him, and then exclaiming, "ah, eda maitai" (this one will do, I think), he steps in, and makes himself perfectly at ease; flinging himself upon the mats, and very probably calling for a nice young cocoa-nut, and a piece of toasted breadfruit, sliced thin, and done brown.
Curious to relate, however, should a stranger carrying it thus bravely be afterwards discovered to be without a house of his own, why, he may thenceforth go a-begging for his lodgings. The "karhowrees," or white men, are exceptions to this rule. Thus it is precisely as in civilized countries, where those who have houses and lands are incessantly bored to death with invitations to come and live in other people's houses; while many a poor gentleman who inks the seams of his coat, and to whom the like invitation would be really acceptable, may go and sue for it. But to the credit of the ancient Tahitians, it should here be observed that this blemish upon their hospitality is only of recent origin, and was wholly unknown in old times. So told me, Captain Bob.
In Polynesia it is esteemed "a great hit" if a man succeed in marrying into a family to which the best part of the community is related (Heaven knows it is otherwise with us). The reason is that, when he goes a-travelling, the greater number of houses are the more completely at his service.
Receiving a paternal benediction from old Darby and Joan, we continued our journey; resolved to stop at the very next place of attraction which offered.
Nor did we long stroll for it. A fine walk along a beach of shells, and we came to a spot where, trees here and there, the land was all meadow, sloping away to the water, which stirred a sedgy growth of reeds bordering its margin. Close by was a little cove, walled in with coral, where a fleet of canoes was dancing up and down. A few paces distant, on a natural terrace overlooking the sea, were several native dwellings, newly thatched, and peeping into view out of the foliage like summer-houses.
As we drew near, forth came a burst of voices, and, presently, three gay girls, overflowing with life, health, and youth, and full of spirits and mischief. One was arrayed in a flaunting robe of calico; and her long black hair was braided behind in two immense tresses, joined together at the ends, and wreathed with the green tendrils of a vine. From her self-possessed and forward air, I fancied she might be some young lady from Papeetee on a visit to her country relations. Her companions wore mere slips of cotton cloth; their hair was dishevelled; and though very pretty, they betrayed the reserve and embarrassment characteristic of the provinces.
The little gipsy first mentioned ran up to me with great cordiality; and, giving the Tahitian salutation, opened upon me such a fire of questions that there was no understanding, much less answering them. But our hearty welcome to Loohooloo, as she called the hamlet, was made plain enough. Meanwhile, Doctor Long Ghost gallantly presented an arm to each of the other young ladies; which, at first, they knew not what to make of; but at last, taking it for some kind of joke, accepted the civility.
The names of these three damsels were at once made known by themselves: and being so exceedingly romantic, I cannot forbear particularizing them. Upon my comrade's arms, then, were hanging Night and Morning, in the persons of Farnowar, or the Day-Born, and Earnoopoo, or the Night-Born. She with the tresses was very appropriately styled Marhar-Rarrar, the Wakeful, or Bright-Eyed.
By this time, the houses were emptied of the rest of their inmates--a few old men and women, and several strapping young fellows rubbing their eyes and yawning. All crowded round, putting questions as to whence we came. Upon being informed of our acquaintance with Zeke, they were delighted; and one of them recognized the boots worn by the doctor. "Keekee (Zeke) maitai," they cried, "nuee nuee hanna hanna portarto"--(makes plenty of potatoes).
There was now a little friendly altercation as to who should have the honour of entertaining the strangers. At last, a tall old gentleman, by name Marharvai, with a bald head and white beard, took us each by the hand, and led us into his dwelling. Once inside, Marharvai, pointing about with his staff, was so obsequious in assuring us that his house was ours that Long Ghost suggested he might as well hand over the deed.
It was drawing near noon; so after a light lunch of roasted breadfruit, a few whiffs of a pipe, and some lively chatting, our host admonished the company to lie down, and take the everlasting siesta. We complied; and had a social nap all round.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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68
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A DINNER-PARTY IN IMEEO
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IT WAS just in the middle of the merry, mellow afternoon that they ushered us to dinner, underneath a green shelter of palm boughs; open all round, and so low at the eaves that we stooped to enter.
Within, the ground was strewn over with aromatic ferns--called "nahee"--freshly gathered; which, stirred underfoot, diffused the sweetest odour. On one side was a row of yellow mats, inwrought with fibres of bark stained a bright red. Here, seated after the fashion of the Turk, we looked out, over a verdant bank, upon the mild, blue, endless Pacific. So far round had we skirted the island that the view of Tahiti was now intercepted.
Upon the ferns before us were laid several layers of broad, thick "pooroo" leaves; lapping over, one upon the other. And upon these were placed, side by side, newly-plucked banana leaves, at least two yards in length, and very wide; the stalks were withdrawn so as to make them lie flat. This green cloth was set out and garnished in the manner following:-- First, a number of "pooroo" leaves, by way of plates, were ranged along on one side; and by each was a rustic nut-bowl, half-filled with sea-water, and a Tahitian roll, or small bread-fruit, roasted brown. An immense flat calabash, placed in the centre, was heaped up with numberless small packages of moist, steaming leaves: in each was a small fish, baked in the earth, and done to a turn. This pyramid of a dish was flanked on either side by an ornamental calabash. One was brimming with the golden-hued "poee," or pudding, made from the red plantain of the mountains: the other was stacked up with cakes of the Indian turnip, previously macerated in a mortar, kneaded with the milk of the cocoa-nut, and then baked. In the spaces between the three dishes were piled young cocoa-nuts, stripped of their husks. Their eyes had been opened and enlarged; so that each was a ready-charged goblet.
There was a sort of side-cloth in one corner, upon which, in bright, buff jackets, lay the fattest of bananas; "avees," red-ripe: guavas with the shadows of their crimson pulp flushing through a transparent skin, and almost coming and going there like blushes; oranges, tinged, here and there, berry-brown; and great, jolly melons, which rolled about in very portliness. Such a heap! All ruddy, ripe, and round--bursting with the good cheer of the tropical soil from which they sprang!
"A land of orchards!" cried the doctor, in a rapture; and he snatched a morsel from a sort of fruit of which gentlemen of the sanguine temperament are remarkably fond; namely, the ripe cherry lips of Misa Day-Born, who stood looking on.
Marharvai allotted seats to his guests; and the meal began. Thinking that his hospitality needed some acknowledgment, I rose, and pledged him in the vegetable wine of the cocoa-nut; merely repeating the ordinary salutation, "Yar onor boyoee." Sensible that some compliment, after the fashion of white men, was paid him, with a smile, and a courteous flourish of the hand, he bade me be seated. No people, however refined, are more easy and graceful in their manners than the Imeeose.
The doctor, sitting next our host, now came under his special protection. Laying before his guest one of the packages of fish, Marharvai opened it; and commended its contents to his particular regards. But my comrade was one of those who, on convivial occasions, can always take care of themselves. He ate an indefinite number of "Pee-hee Lee Lees" (small fish), his own and next neighbour's bread-fruit; and helped himself, to right and left, with all the ease of an accomplished diner-out.
"Paul," said he, at last, "you don't seem to be getting along; why don't you try the pepper sauce?" and, by way of example, he steeped a morsel of food into his nutful of sea-water. On following suit, I found it quite piquant, though rather bitter; but, on the whole, a capital substitute for salt. The Imeeose invariably use sea-water in this way, deeming it quite a treat; and considering that their country is surrounded by an ocean of catsup, the luxury cannot be deemed an expensive one.
The fish were delicious; the manner of cooking them in the ground preserving all the juices, and rendering them exceedingly sweet and tender. The plantain pudding was almost cloying; the cakes of Indian turnip, quite palatable; and the roasted bread-fruit, crisp as toast.
During the meal, a native lad walked round and round the party, carrying a long staff of bamboo. This he occasionally tapped upon the cloth, before each guest; when a white clotted substance dropped forth, with a savour not unlike that of a curd. This proved to be "Lownee," an excellent relish, prepared from the grated meat of ripe cocoa-nuts, moistened with cocoa-nut milk and salt water, and kept perfectly tight until a little past the saccharine stage of fermentation.
Throughout the repast there was much lively chatting among the islanders, in which their conversational powers quite exceeded ours. The young ladies, too, showed themselves very expert in the use of their tongues, and contributed much to the gaiety which prevailed.
Nor did these lively nymphs suffer the meal to languish; for upon the doctor's throwing himself back, with an air of much satisfaction, they sprang to their feet, and pelted him with oranges and guavas. This, at last, put an end to the entertainment.
By a hundred whimsical oddities, my long friend became a great favourite with these people; and they bestowed upon him a long, comical title, expressive of his lank figure and Koora combined. The latter, by the bye, never failed to excite the remark of everybody we encountered.
The giving of nicknames is quite a passion with the people of Tahiti and Imeeo. No one with any peculiarity, whether of person or temper, is exempt; not even strangers.
A pompous captain of a man-of-war, visiting Tahiti for the second time, discovered that, among the natives, he went by the dignified title of "Atee Poee"--literally, Poee Head, or Pudding Head. Nor is the highest rank among themselves any protection. The first husband of the present queen was commonly known in the court circles as "Pot Belly." He carried the greater part of his person before him, to be sure; and so did the gentlemanly George IV. --but what a title for a king consort!
Even "Pomaree" itself, the royal patronymic, was, originally, a mere nickname; and literally signifies, one talking through his nose. The first monarch of that name, being on a war party, and sleeping overnight among the mountains, awoke one morning with a cold in his head; and some wag of a courtier had no more manners than to vulgarize him thus.
How different from the volatile Polynesian in this, as in all other respects, is our grave and decorous North American Indian. While the former bestows a name in accordance with some humorous or ignoble trait, the latter seizes upon what is deemed the most exalted or warlike: and hence, among the red tribes, we have the truly patrician appellations of "White Eagles," "Young Oaks," "Fiery Eyes," and "Bended Bows."
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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69
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THE COCOA-PALM
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WHILE the doctor and the natives were taking a digestive nap after dinner, I strolled forth to have a peep at the country which could produce so generous a meal.
To my surprise, a fine strip of land in the vicinity of the hamlet, and protected seaward by a grove of cocoa-nut and bread-fruit trees, was under high cultivation. Sweet potatoes, Indian turnips, and yams were growing; also melons, a few pine-apples, and other fruits. Still more pleasing was the sight of young bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees set out with great care, as if, for once, the improvident Polynesian had thought of his posterity. But this was the only instance of native thrift which ever came under my observation. For, in all my rambles over Tahiti and Imeeo, nothing so much struck me as the comparative scarcity of these trees in many places where they ought to abound. Entire valleys, like Martair, of inexhaustible fertility are abandoned to all the rankness of untamed vegetation. Alluvial flats bordering the sea, and watered by streams from the mountains, are over-grown with a wild, scrub guava-bush, introduced by foreigners, and which spreads with such fatal rapidity that the natives, standing still while it grows, anticipate its covering the entire island. Even tracts of clear land, which, with so little pains, might be made to wave with orchards, lie wholly neglected.
When I considered their unequalled soil and climate, thus unaccountably slighted, I often turned in amazement upon the natives about Papeetee; some of whom all but starve in their gardens run to waste. Upon other islands which I have visited, of similar fertility, and wholly unreclaimed from their first-discovered condition, no spectacle of this sort was presented.
The high estimation in which many of their fruit-trees are held by the Tahitians and Imeeose--their beauty in the landscape--their manifold uses, and the facility with which they are propagated, are considerations which render the remissness alluded to still more unaccountable. The cocoa-palm is as an example; a tree by far the most important production of Nature in the Tropics. To the Polynesians it is emphatically the Tree of Life; transcending even the bread-fruit in the multifarious uses to which it is applied.
Its very aspect is imposing. Asserting its supremacy by an erect and lofty bearing, it may be said to compare with other trees as man with inferior creatures.
The blessings it confers are incalculable. Tear after year, the islander reposes beneath its shade, both eating and drinking of its fruit; he thatches his hut with its boughs, and weaves them into baskets to carry his food; he cools himself with a fan platted from the young leaflets, and shields his head from the sun by a bonnet of the leaves; sometimes he clothes himself with the cloth-like substance which wraps round the base of the stalks, whose elastic rods, strung with filberts, are used as a taper; the larger nuts, thinned and polished, furnish him with a beautiful goblet: the smaller ones, with bowls for his pipes; the dry husks kindle his fires; their fibres are twisted into fishing-lines and cords for his canoes; he heals his wounds with a balsam compounded from the juice of the nut; and with the oil extracted from its meat embalms the bodies of the dead.
The noble trunk itself is far from being valueless. Sawn into posts, it upholds the islander's dwelling; converted into charcoal, it cooks his food; and supported on blocks of stone, rails in his lands. He impels his canoe through the water with a paddle of the wood, and goes to battle with clubs and spears of the same hard material.
In pagan Tahiti a cocoa-nut branch was the symbol of regal authority. Laid upon the sacrifice in the temple, it made the offering sacred; and with it the priests chastised and put to flight the evil spirits which assailed them. The supreme majesty of Oro, the great god of their mythology, was declared in the cocoa-nut log from which his image was rudely carved. Upon one of the Tonga Islands, there stands a living tree revered itself as a deity. Even upon the Sandwich Islands, the cocoa-palm retains all its ancient reputation; the people there having thought of adopting it as the national emblem.
The cocoa-nut is planted as follows: Selecting a suitable place, you drop into the ground a fully ripe nut, and leave it. In a few days, a thin, lance-like shoot forces itself through a minute hole in the shell, pierces the husk, and soon unfolds three pale-green leaves in the air; while originating, in the same soft white sponge which now completely fills the nut, a pair of fibrous roots, pushing away the stoppers which close two holes in an opposite direction, penetrate the shell, and strike vertically into the ground. A day or two more, and the shell and husk, which, in the last and germinating stage of the nut, are so hard that a knife will scarcely make any impression, spontaneously burst by some force within; and, henceforth, the hardy young plant thrives apace; and needing no culture, pruning, or attention of any sort, rapidly advances to maturity. In four or five years it bears; in twice as many more, it begins to lift its head among the groves, where, waxing strong, it flourishes for near a century.
Thus, as some voyager has said, the man who but drops one of these nuts into the ground may be said to confer a greater and more certain benefit upon himself and posterity than many a life's toil in less genial climes.
The fruitfulness of the tree is remarkable. As long as it lives it bears, and without intermission. Two hundred nuts, besides innumerable white blossoms of others, may be seen upon it at one time; and though a whole year is required to bring any one of them to the germinating point, no two, perhaps, are at one time in precisely the same stage of growth.
The tree delights in a maritime situation. In its greatest perfection, it is perhaps found right on the seashore, where its roots are actually washed. But such instances are only met with upon islands where the swell of the sea is prevented from breaking on the beach by an encircling reef. No saline flavour is perceptible in the nut produced in such a place. Although it bears in any soil, whether upland or bottom, it does not flourish vigorously inland; and I have frequently observed that, when met with far up the valley, its tall stem inclines seaward, as if pining after a more genial region.
It is a curious fact that if you deprive the cocoa-nut tree of the verdant tuft at its head, it dies at once; and if allowed to stand thus, the trunk, which, when alive, is encased in so hard a bark as to be almost impervious to a bullet, moulders away, and, in an incredibly short period, becomes dust. This is, perhaps, partly owing to the peculiar constitution of the trunk, a mere cylinder of minute hollow reeds, closely packed, and very hard; but, when exposed at top, peculiarly fitted to convey moisture and decay through the entire stem.
The finest orchard of cocoa-palms I know, and the only plantation of them I ever saw at the islands, is one that stands right upon the southern shore of Papeetee Bay. They were set out by the first Pomaree, almost half a century ago; and the soil being especially adapted to their growth, the noble trees now form a magnificent grove, nearly a mile in extent. No other plant, scarcely a bush, is to be seen within its precincts. The Broom Road passes through its entire length.
At noonday, this grove is one of the most beautiful, serene, witching places that ever was seen. High overhead are ranges of green rustling arches; through which the sun's rays come down to you in sparkles. You seem to be wandering through illimitable halls of pillars; everywhere you catch glimpses of stately aisles, intersecting each other at all points. A strange silence, too, reigns far and near; the air flushed with the mellow stillness of a sunset.
But after the long morning calms, the sea-breeze comes in; and creeping over the tops of these thousand trees, they nod their plumes. Soon the breeze freshens; and you hear the branches brushing against each other; and the flexible trunks begin to sway. Toward evening the whole grove is rocking to and fro; and the traveller on the Broom Road is startled by the frequent falling of the nuts, snapped from their brittle stems. They come flying through the air, ringing like jugglers' balls; and often bound along the ground for many rods.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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70
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LIFE AT LOOHOOLOO
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FINDING the society at Loohooloo very pleasant, the young ladies, in particular, being extremely sociable; and, moreover, in love with the famous good cheer of old Marharvai, we acquiesced in an invitation of his to tarry a few days longer. We might then, he said, join a small canoe party which was going to a place a league or two distant. So averse to all exertion are these people that they really thought the prospect of thus getting rid of a few miles' walking would prevail with us, even if there were no other inducement.
The people of the hamlet, as we soon discovered, formed a snug little community of cousins; of which our host seemed the head. Marharvai, in truth, was a petty chief who owned the neighbouring lands. And as the wealthy, in most cases, rejoice in a numerous kindred, the family footing upon which everybody visited him was, perhaps, ascribable to the fact of his being the lord of the manor. Like Captain Bob, he was, in some things, a gentleman of the old school--a stickler for the customs of a past and pagan age.
Nowhere else, except in Tamai, did we find the manners of the natives less vitiated by recent changes. The old-fashioned Tahitian dinner they gave us on the day of our arrival was a fair sample of their general mode of living.
Our time passed delightfully. The doctor went his way, and I mine. With a pleasant companion, he was forever strolling inland, ostensibly to collect botanical specimens; while I, for the most part, kept near the sea; sometimes taking the girls on an aquatic excursion in a canoe.
Often we went fishing; not dozing over stupid hooks and lines, but leaping right into the water, and chasing our prey over the coral rocks, spear in hand.
Spearing fish is glorious sport. The Imeeose, all round the island, catch them in no other way. The smooth shallows between the reef and the shore, and, at low water, the reef itself, being admirably adapted to this mode of capturing them. At almost any time of the day--save ever the sacred hour of noon--you may see the fish-hunters pursuing their sport; with loud halloos, brandishing their spears, and splashing through the water in all directions. Sometimes a solitary native is seen, far out upon a lonely shallow, wading slowly along, with eye intent and poised spear.
But the best sport of all is going out upon the great reef itself by torch-light. The natives follow this recreation with as much spirit as a gentleman of England does the chase; and take full as much delight in it.
The torch is nothing more than a bunch of dry reeds, bound firmly together: the spear, a long, light pole, with an iron head, on one side barbed.
I shall never forget the night that old Marharvai and the rest of us, paddling off to the reef, leaped at midnight upon the coral ledges with waving torches and spears. We were more than a mile from the land; the sullen ocean, thundering upon the outside of the rocks, dashed the spray in our faces, almost extinguishing the flambeaux; and, far as the eye could reach, the darkness of sky and water was streaked with a long, misty line of foam, marking the course of the coral barrier. The wild fishermen, flourishing their weapons, and yelling like so many demons to scare their prey, sprang from ledge to ledge, and sometimes darted their spears in the very midst of the breakers.
But fish-spearing was not the only sport we had at Loohooloo. Right on the beach was a mighty old cocoa-nut tree, the roots of which had been underwashed by the waves so that the trunk inclined far over its base. From the tuft of the tree a stout cord of bark depended, the end of which swept the water several yards from the shore. This was a Tahitian swing. A native lad seizes hold of the cord, and, after swinging to and fro quite leisurely, all at once sends himself fifty or sixty feet from the water, rushing through the air like a rocket. I doubt whether any of our rope-dancers would attempt the feat. For my own part, I had neither head nor heart for it; so, after sending a lad aloft with an additional cord, by way of security, I constructed a large basket of green boughs, in which I and some particular friends of mine used to swing over sea and land by the hour.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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71
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WE START FOR TALOO
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BRIGHT was the morning, and brighter still the smiles of the young ladies who accompanied us, when we sprang into a sort of family canoe--wide and roomy--and bade adieu to the hospitable Marharvai and his tenantry. As we paddled away, they stood upon the beach, waving their hands, and crying out, "aroha! aroha!" (farewell! farewell!) as long as we were within hearing.
Very sad at parting with them, we endeavoured, nevertheless, to console ourselves in the society of our fellow-passengers. Among these were two old ladies; but as they said nothing to us, we will say nothing about them; nor anything about the old men who managed the canoe. But of the three mischievous, dark-eyed young witches who lounged in the stern of that comfortable old island gondola, I have a great deal to say.
In the first place, one of them was Marhar-Rarrar, the Bright-Eyed; and, in the second place, neither she nor the romps, her companions, ever dreamed of taking the voyage until the doctor and myself announced our intention; their going along was nothing more than a madcap frolic; in short, they were a parcel of wicked hoydens, bent on mischief, who laughed in your face when you looked sentimental, and only tolerated your company when making merry at your expense.
Something or other about us was perpetually awaking their mirth. Attributing this to his own remarkable figure, the doctor increased their enjoyment by assuming the part of a Merry Andrew. Yet his cap and bells never jingled but to some tune; and while playing the Tom-fool, I more than suspected that he was trying to play the rake. At home, it is deemed auspicious to go a-wooing in epaulets; but among the Polynesians, your best dress in courting is motley.
A fresh breeze springing up, we set our sail of matting, and glided along as tranquilly as if floating upon an inland stream; the white reef on one hand, and the green shore on the other.
Soon, as we turned a headland, we encountered another canoe, paddling with might and main in an opposite direction; the strangers shouting to each other, and a tall fellow in the bow dancing up and down like a crazy man. They shot by us like an arrow, though our fellow-voyagers shouted again and again for them to cease paddling.
According to the natives, this was a kind of royal mail-canoe, carrying a message from the queen to her friends in a distant part of the island.
Passing several shady bowers which looked quite inviting, we proposed touching, and diversifying the monotony of a sea-voyage by a stroll ashore. So, forcing our canoe among the bushes, behind a decayed palm lying partly in the water, we left the old folks to take a nap in the shade, and gallanted the others among the trees, which were here trellised with vines and creeping shrubs.
In the early part of the afternoon, we drew near the place to which the party were going. It was a solitary house inhabited by four or five old women, who, when we entered, were gathered in a circle about the mats, eating poee from a cracked calabash. They seemed delighted at seeing our companions, but rather drew up when introduced to ourselves. Eyeing us distrustfully, they whispered to know who we were. The answers they received were not satisfactory; for they treated us with marked coolness and reserve, and seemed desirous of breaking off our acquaintance with the girls. Unwilling, therefore, to stay where our company was disagreeable, we resolved to depart without even eating a meal.
Informed of this, Marhar-Rarrar and her companions evinced the most lively concern; and equally unmindful of their former spirits, and the remonstrances of the old ladies, broke forth into sobs and lamentations which were not to be withstood. We agreed, therefore, to tarry until they left for home; which would be at the "Aheharar," or Falling of the Sun; in other words, at sunset.
When the hour arrived, after much leave-taking, we saw them safely embarked. As the canoe turned a bluff, they seized the paddles from the hands of the old men, and waved them silently in the air. This was meant for a touching farewell, as the paddle is only waved thus when the parties separating never more expect to meet.
We now continued our journey; and, following the beach, soon came to a level and lofty overhanging bank, which, planted here and there with trees, took a broad sweep round a considerable part of the island.
A fine pathway skirted the edge of the bank; and often we paused to admire the scenery. The evening was still and fair, even for so heavenly a climate; and all round, as far as the eye could reach, was the blending blue sky and ocean.
As we went on, the reef-belt still accompanied us; turning as we turned, and thundering its distant bass upon the ear, like the unbroken roar of a cataract. Dashing forever against their coral rampart, the breakers looked, in the distance, like a line of rearing white chargers, reined in, tossing their white manes, and bridling with foam.
These great natural breakwaters are admirably designed for the protection of the land. Nearly all the Society Islands are defended by them. Were the vast swells of the Pacific to break against the soft alluvial bottoms which in many places border the sea, the soil would soon be washed away, and the natives be thus deprived of their most productive lands. As it is, the banks of no rivulet are firmer.
But the coral barriers answer another purpose. They form all the harbours of this group, including the twenty-four round about the shores of Tahiti. Curiously enough, the openings in the reefs, by which alone vessels enter to their anchorage, are invariably opposite the mouths of running streams: an advantage fully appreciated by the mariner who touches for the purpose of watering his ship.
It is said that the fresh water of the land, mixing with the salts held in solution by the sea, so acts upon the latter as to resist the formation of the coral; and hence the breaks. Here and there, these openings are sentinelled, as it were, by little fairy islets, green as emerald, and waving with palms. Strangely and beautifully diversifying the long line of breakers, no objects can strike the fancy more vividly. Pomaree II., with a taste in watering-places truly Tahitian, selected one of them as a royal retreat. We passed it on our journey.
Omitting several further adventures which befell us after leaving the party from Loohooloo, we must now hurry on to relate what happened just before reaching the place of our destination.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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72
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A DEALER IN THE CONTRABAND
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IT MUST have been at least the tenth day, reckoning from the Hegira, that we found ourselves the guests of Varvy, an old hermit of an islander who kept house by himself perhaps a couple of leagues from Taloo.
A stone's-cast from the beach there was a fantastic rock, moss-grown and deep in a dell. It was insulated by a shallow brook, which, dividing its waters, flowed on both sides until united below. Twisting its roots round the rock, a gnarled "Aoa" spread itself overhead in a wilderness of foliage; the elastic branch-roots depending from the larger boughs insinuating themselves into every cleft, thus forming supports to the parent stem. In some places these pendulous branches, half-grown, had not yet reached the rock; swinging their loose fibrous ends in the air like whiplashes.
Varvy's hut, a mere coop of bamboos, was perched upon a level part of the rock, the ridge-pole resting at one end in a crotch of the "Aoa," and the other propped by a forked bough planted in a fissure.
Notwithstanding our cries as we drew near, the first hint the old hermit received of our approach was the doctor's stepping up and touching his shoulder, as he was kneeling over on a stone cleaning fish in the brook. He leaped up, and stared at us. But with a variety of uncouth gestures, he soon made us welcome; informing us, by the same means, that he was both deaf and dumb; he then motioned us into his dwelling.
Going in, we threw ourselves upon an old mat, and peered round. The soiled bamboos and calabashes looked so uninviting that the doctor was for pushing on to Taloo that night, notwithstanding it was near sunset. But at length we concluded to stay where we were.
After a good deal of bustling outside under a decrepit shed, the old man made his appearance with our supper. In one hand he held a flickering taper, and in the other, a huge, flat calabash, scantily filled with viands. His eyes were dancing in his head, and he looked from the calabash to us, and from us to the calabash, as much as to say, "Ah, my lads, what do ye think of this, eh? Pretty good cheer, eh?" But the fish and Indian turnip being none of the best, we made but a sorry meal. While discussing it, the old man tried hard to make himself understood by signs; most of which were so excessively ludicrous that we made no doubt he was perpetrating a series of pantomimic jokes.
The remnants of the feast removed, our host left us for a moment, returning with a calabash of portly dimensions and furnished with a long, hooked neck, the mouth of which was stopped with a wooden plug. It was covered with particles of earth, and looked as if just taken from some place underground.
With sundry winks and horrible giggles peculiar to the dumb, the vegetable demijohn was now tapped; the old fellow looking round cautiously, and pointing at it; as much as to intimate that it contained something which was "taboo," or forbidden.
Aware that intoxicating liquors were strictly prohibited to the natives, we now watched our entertainer with much interest. Charging a cocoa-nut shell, he tossed it off, and then filling up again, presented the goblet to me. Disliking the smell, I made faces at it; upon which he became highly excited; so much so that a miracle was wrought upon the spot. Snatching the cup from my hands, he shouted out, "Ah, karhowree sabbee lee-lee ena arva tee maitai!" in other words, what a blockhead of a white man! this is the real stuff!
We could not have been more startled had a frog leaped from his mouth. For an instant, he looked confused enough himself; and then placing a finger mysteriously upon his mouth, he contrived to make us understand that at times he was subject to a suspension of the powers of speech.
Deeming the phenomenon a remarkable one, every way, the doctor desired him to open his mouth so that he might have a look down. But he refused.
This occurrence made us rather suspicious of our host; nor could we afterward account for his conduct, except by supposing that his feigning dumbness might in some way or other assist him in the nefarious pursuits in which it afterwards turned out that he was engaged. This conclusion, however, was not altogether satisfactory.
To oblige him, we at last took a sip of his "arva tee," and found it very crude, and strong as Lucifer. Curious to know whence it was obtained, we questioned him; when, lighting up with pleasure, he seized the taper, and led us outside the hut, bidding us follow.
After going some distance through the woods, we came to a dismantled old shed of boughs, apparently abandoned to decay. Underneath, nothing was to be seen but heaps of decaying leaves and an immense, clumsy jar, wide-mouthed, and by some means, rudely hollowed out from a ponderous stone.
Here, for a while, we were left to ourselves; the old man placing the light in the jar, and then disappearing. He returned, carrying a long, large bamboo, and a crotched stick. Throwing these down, he poked under a pile of rubbish, and brought out a rough block of wood, pierced through and through with a hole, which was immediately clapped on the top of the jar. Then planting the crotched stick upright about two yards distant, and making it sustain one end of the bamboo, he inserted the other end of the latter into the hole in the block: concluding these arrangements by placing an old calabash under the farther end of the bamboo.
Coming up to us now with a sly, significant look, and pointing admiringly at his apparatus, he exclaimed, "Ah, karhowree, ena hannahanna arva tee!" as much as to say, "This, you see, is the way it's done."
His contrivance was nothing less than a native still, where he manufactured his island "poteen." The disarray in which we found it was probably intentional, as a security against detection. Before we left the shed, the old fellow toppled the whole concern over, and dragged it away piecemeal.
His disclosing his secret to us thus was characteristic of the "Tootai Owrees," or contemners of the missionaries among the natives; who, presuming that all foreigners are opposed to the ascendancy of the missionaries, take pleasure in making them confidants, whenever the enactments of their rulers are secretly set at nought.
The substance from which the liquor is produced is called "Tee," which is a large, fibrous root, something like yam, but smaller. In its green state, it is exceedingly acrid; but boiled or baked, has the sweetness of the sugar-cane. After being subjected to the fire, macerated and reduced to a certain stage of fermentation, the "Tee" is stirred up with water, and is then ready for distillation.
On returning to the hut, pipes were introduced; and, after a while, Long Ghost, who, at first, had relished the "Arva Tee" as little as myself, to my surprise, began to wax sociable over it, with Varvy; and, before long, absolutely got mellow, the old toper keeping him company.
It was a curious sight. Everyone knows that, so long as the occasion lasts, there is no stronger bond of sympathy and good feeling among men than getting tipsy together. And how earnestly, nay, movingly, a brace of worthies, thus employed, will endeavour to shed light upon, and elucidate their mystical ideas!
Fancy Varvy and the doctor, then, lovingly tippling, and brimming over with a desire to become better acquainted; the doctor politely bent upon carrying on the conversation in the language of his host, and the old hermit persisting in trying to talk English. The result was that, between the two, they made such a fricassee of vowels and consonants that it was enough to turn one's brain.
The next morning, on waking, I heard a voice from the tombs. It was the doctor solemnly pronouncing himself a dead man. He was sitting up, with both hands clasped over his forehead, and his pale face a thousand times paler than ever.
"That infernal stuff has murdered me!" he cried. "Heavens! my head's all wheels and springs, like the automaton chess-player! What's to be done, Paul? I'm poisoned."
But, after drinking a herbal draught concocted by our host, and eating a light meal, at noon, he felt much better; so much so that he declared himself ready to continue our journey.
When we came to start, the Yankee's boots were missing; and, after a diligent search, were not to be found. Enraged beyond measure, their proprietor said that Varvy must have stolen them; but, considering his hospitality, I thought this extremely improbable; though to whom else to impute the theft I knew not. The doctor maintained, however, that one who was capable of drugging an innocent traveller with "Arva Tee" was capable of anything.
But it was in vain that he stormed, and Varvy and I searched; the boots were gone.
Were it not for this mysterious occurrence, and Varvy's detestable liquors, I would here recommend all travellers going round by the beach to Partoowye to stop at the Rock, and patronize the old gentleman--the more especially as he entertains gratis.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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73
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OUR RECEPTION IN PARTOOWYE
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UPON starting, at last, I flung away my sandals--by this time quite worn out--with the view of keeping company with the doctor, now forced to go barefooted. Recovering his spirits in good time, he protested that boots were a bore after all, and going without them decidedly manly.
This was said, be it observed, while strolling along over a soft carpet of grass; a little moist, even at midday, from the shade of the wood through which we were passing.
Emerging from this we entered upon a blank, sandy tract, upon which the sun's rays fairly flashed; making the loose gravel under foot well nigh as hot as the floor of an oven. Such yelling and leaping as there was in getting over this ground would be hard to surpass. We could not have crossed at all--until toward sunset--had it not been for a few small, wiry bushes growing here and there, into which we every now and then thrust our feet to cool. There was no little judgment necessary in selecting your bush; for if not chosen judiciously, the chances were that, on springing forward again, and finding the next bush so far off that an intermediate cooling was indispensable, you would have to run hack to your old place again.
Safely passing the Sahara, or Fiery Desert, we soothed our half-blistered feet by a pleasant walk through a meadow of long grass, which soon brought us in sight of a few straggling houses, sheltered by a grove on the outskirts of the village of Partoowye.
My comrade was for entering the first one we came to; but, on drawing near, they had so much of an air of pretension, at least for native dwellings, that I hesitated; thinking they might be the residences of the higher chiefs, from whom no very extravagant welcome was to be anticipated.
While standing irresolute, a voice from the nearest house hailed us: "Aramai! aramai, karhowree!" (Come in! come in, strangers!)
We at once entered, and were warmly greeted. The master of the house was an aristocratic-looking islander, dressed in loose linen drawers, a fine white shirt, and a sash of red silk tied about the waist, after the fashion of the Spaniards in Chili. He came up to us with a free, frank air, and, striking his chest with his hand, introduced himself as Ereemear Po-Po; or, to render the Christian name back again into English--Jeremiah Po-Po.
These curious combinations of names among the people of the Society Islands originate in the following way. When a native is baptized, his patronymic often gives offence to the missionaries, and they insist upon changing to something else whatever is objectionable therein. So, when Jeremiah came to the font, and gave his name as Narmo-Nana Po-Po (something equivalent to The-Darer-of-Devils-by-Night), the reverend gentleman officiating told him that such a heathenish appellation would never do, and a substitute must be had; at least for the devil part of it. Some highly respectable Christian appellations were then submitted, from which the candidate for admission into the church was at liberty to choose. There was Adamo (Adam), Nooar (Noah), Daveedar (David), Earcobar (James), Eorna (John), Patoora (Peter), Ereemear (Jeremiah), etc. And thus did he come to be named Jeremiah Po-Po; or, Jeremiah-in-the-Dark--which he certainly was, I fancy, as to the ridiculousness of his new cognomen.
We gave our names in return; upon which he bade us be seated; and, sitting down himself, asked us a great many questions, in mixed English and Tahitian. After giving some directions to an old man to prepare food, our host's wife, a large, benevolent-looking woman, upwards of forty, also sat down by us. In our soiled and travel-stained appearance, the good lady seemed to find abundant matter for commiseration; and all the while kept looking at us piteously, and making mournful exclamations.
But Jeremiah and his spouse were not the only inmates of the mansion.
In one corner, upon a large native couch, elevated upon posts, reclined a nymph; who, half-veiled in her own long hair, had yet to make her toilet for the day. She was the daughter of Po-Po; and a very beautiful little daughter she was; not more than fourteen; with the most delightful shape--like a bud just blown; and large hazel eyes. They called her Loo; a name rather pretty and genteel, and therefore quite appropriate; for a more genteel and lady-like little damsel there was not in all Imeeo.
She was a cold and haughty young beauty though, this same little Loo, and never deigned to notice us; further than now and then to let her eyes float over our persons, with an expression of indolent indifference. With the tears of the Loohooloo girls hardly dry from their sobbing upon our shoulders, this contemptuous treatment stung us not a little.
When we first entered, Po-Po was raking smooth the carpet of dried ferns which had that morning been newly laid; and now that our meal was ready, it was spread on a banana leaf, right upon this fragrant floor. Here we lounged at our ease, eating baked pig and breadfruit off earthen plates, and using, for the first time in many a long month, real knives and forks.
These, as well as other symptoms of refinement, somewhat abated our surprise at the reserve of the little Loo; her parents, doubtless, were magnates in Partoowye, and she herself was an heiress.
After being informed of our stay in the vale of Martair, they were very curious to know on what errand we came to Taloo. We merely hinted that the ship lying in the harbour was the reason of our coming.
Arfretee, Po-Po's wife, was a right motherly body. The meal over, she recommended a nap; and upon our waking much refreshed, she led us to the doorway, and pointed down among the trees; through which we saw the gleam of water. Taking the hint, we repaired thither; and finding a deep shaded pool, bathed, and returned to the house. Our hostess now sat down by us; and after looking with great interest at the doctor's cloak, felt of my own soiled and tattered garments for the hundredth time, and exclaimed plaintively--"Ah nuee nuee olee manee! olee manee!" (Alas! they are very, very old! very old!)
When Arfretee, good soul, thus addressed us, she thought she was talking very respectable English. The word "nuee" is so familiar to foreigners throughout Polynesia, and is so often used by them in their intercourse with the natives, that the latter suppose it to be common to all mankind. "Olee manee" is the native pronunciation of "old man," which, by Society Islanders talking Saxon, is applied indiscriminately to all aged things and persons whatsoever.
Going to a chest filled with various European articles, she took out two suits of new sailor frocks and trousers; and presenting them with a gracious smile, pushed us behind a calico screen, and left us. Without any fastidious scruples, we donned the garments; and what with the meal, the nap, and the bath, we now came forth like a couple of bridegrooms.
Evening drawing on, lamps were lighted. They were very simple; the half of a green melon, about one third full of cocoa-nut oil, and a wick of twisted tappa floating on the surface. As a night lamp, this contrivance cannot be excelled; a soft dreamy light being shed through the transparent rind.
As the evening advanced, other members of the household, whom as yet we had not seen, began to drop in. There was a slender young dandy in a gay striped shirt, and whole fathoms of bright figured calico tucked about his waist, and falling to the ground. He wore a new straw hat also with three distinct ribbons tied about the crown; one black, one green, and one pink. Shoes or stockings, however, he had none.
There were a couple of delicate, olive-cheeked little girls--twins--with mild eyes and beautiful hair, who ran about the house, half-naked, like a couple of gazelles. They had a brother, somewhat younger--a fine dark boy, with an eye like a woman's. All these were the children of Po-Po, begotten in lawful wedlock.
Then there were two or three queer-looking old ladies, who wore shabby mantles of soiled sheeting, which fitted so badly, and withal had such a second-hand look that I at once put their wearers down as domestic paupers--poor relations, supported by the bounty of My Lady Arfretee. They were sad, meek old bodies; said little and ate less; and either kept their eyes on the ground, or lifted them up deferentially. The semi-civilization of the island must have had something to do with making them what they were.
I had almost forgotten Monee, the grinning old man who prepared our meal. His head was a shining, bald globe. He had a round little paunch, and legs like a cat. He was Po-Po's factotum--cook, butler, and climber of the bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees; and, added to all else, a mighty favourite with his mistress; with whom he would sit smoking and gossiping by the hour.
Often you saw the indefatigable Monee working away at a great rate; then dropping his employment all at once--never mind what--run off to a little distance, and after rolling himself away in a corner and taking a nap, jump up again, and fall to with fresh vigour.
From a certain something in the behaviour of Po-Po and his household, I was led to believe that he was a pillar of the church; though, from what I had seen in Tahiti, I could hardly reconcile such a supposition with his frank, cordial, unembarrassed air. But I was not wrong in my conjecture: Po-Po turned out to be a sort of elder, or deacon; he was also accounted a man of wealth, and was nearly related to a high chief.
Before retiring, the entire household gathered upon the floor; and in their midst, he read aloud a chapter from a Tahitian Bible. Then kneeling with the rest of us, he offered up a prayer. Upon its conclusion, all separated without speaking. These devotions took place regularly, every night and morning. Grace too was invariably said, by this family, both before and after eating.
After becoming familiarized with the almost utter destitution of anything like practical piety upon these islands, what I observed in. our host's house astonished me much. But whatever others might have been, Po-Po was, in truth, a Christian: the only one, Arfretee excepted, whom I personally knew to be such, among all the natives of Polynesia.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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74
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RETIRING FOR THE NIGHT--THE DOCTOR GROWS DEVOUT
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THEY put us to bed very pleasantly.
Lying across the foot of Po-Po's nuptial couch was a smaller one made of Koar-wood; a thin, strong cord, twisted from the fibres of the husk of the cocoa-nut, and woven into an exceedingly light sort of network, forming its elastic body. Spread upon this was a single, fine mat, with a roll of dried ferns for a pillow, and a strip of white tappa for a sheet. This couch was mine. The doctor was provided for in another corner.
Loo reposed alone on a little settee with a taper burning by her side; the dandy, her brother, swinging overhead in a sailor's hammock The two gazelles frisked upon a mat near by; and the indigent relations borrowed a scant corner of the old butler's pallet, who snored away by the open door. After all had retired, Po-Po placed the illuminated melon in the middle of the apartment; and so, we all slumbered till morning.
Upon awaking, the sun was streaming brightly through the open bamboos, but no one was stirring. After surveying the fine attitudes into which forgetfulness had thrown at least one of the sleepers, my attention was called off to the general aspect of the dwelling, which was quite significant of the superior circumstances of our host.
The house itself was built in the simple, but tasteful native style. It was a long, regular oval, some fifty feet in length, with low sides of cane-work, and a roof thatched with palmetto-leaves. The ridgepole was, perhaps, twenty feet from the ground. There was no foundation whatever; the bare earth being merely covered with ferns; a kind of carpeting which serves very well, if frequently renewed; otherwise, it becomes dusty, and the haunt of vermin, as in the huts of the poorer natives.
Besides the couches, the furniture consisted of three or four sailor chests; in which were stored the fine wearing-apparel of the household--the ruffled linen shirts of Po-Po, the calico dresses of his wife and children, and divers odds and ends of European articles--strings of beads, ribbons, Dutch looking-glasses, knives, coarse prints, bunches of keys, bits of crockery, and metal buttons. One of these chests--used as a bandbox by Arfretee--contained several of the native hats (coal-scuttles), all of the same pattern, but trimmed with variously-coloured ribbons. Of nothing was our good hostess more proud than of these hats, and her dresses. On Sundays, she went abroad a dozen times; and every time, like Queen Elizabeth, in a different robe.
Po-Po, for some reason or other, always gave us our meals before the rest of the family were served; and the doctor, who was very discerning in such matters, declared that we fared much better than they. Certain it was that, had Ereemear's guests travelled with purses, portmanteau, and letters of introduction to the queen, they could not have been better cared for.
The day after our arrival, Monee, the old butler, brought us in for dinner a small pig, baked in the ground. All savoury, it lay in a wooden trencher, surrounded by roasted hemispheres of the breadfruit. A large calabash, filled with taro pudding, or poee, followed; and the young dandy, overcoming his customary languor, threw down our cocoa-nuts from an adjoining tree.
When all was ready, and the household looking on, Long Ghost, devoutly clasping his hands over the fated pig, implored a blessing. Hereupon, everybody present looked exceedingly pleased; Po-Po coming up and addressing the doctor with much warmth; and Arfretee, regarding him with almost maternal affection, exclaimed delightedly, "Ah! mickonaree tata matai!" in other words, "What a pious young man!"
It was just after this meal that she brought me a roll of grass sinnate (of the kind which sailors sew into the frame of their tarpaulins), and then, handing me needle and thread, bade me begin at once, and make myself the hat which I so much needed. An accomplished hand at the business, I finished it that day--merely stitching the braid together; and Arfretee, by way of rewarding my industry, with her own olive hands ornamented the crown with a band of flame-coloured ribbon; the two long ends of which streaming behind, sailor-fashion, still preserved for me the Eastern title bestowed by Long Ghost.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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75
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A RAMBLE THROUGH THE SETTLEMENT
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THE following morning, making our toilets carefully, we donned our sombreros, and sallied out on a tour. Without meaning to reveal our designs upon the court, our principal object was, to learn what chances there were for white men to obtain employment under the queen. On this head, it is true, we had questioned Po-Po; but his answers had been very discouraging; so we determined to obtain further information elsewhere.
But, first, to give some little description of the village.
The settlement of Partoowye is nothing more than some eighty houses, scattered here and there, in the midst of an immense grove, where the trees have been thinned out and the underbrush cleared away. Through the grove flows a stream; and the principal avenue crosses it, over an elastic bridge of cocoa-nut trunks, laid together side by side. The avenue is broad, and serpentine; well shaded from one end to the other, and as pretty a place for a morning promenade as any lounger could wish. The houses, constructed without the slightest regard to the road, peep into view from among the trees on either side: some looking you right in the face as you pass, and others, without any manners, turning their backs. Occasionally you observe a rural retreat, inclosed by a picket of bamboos, or with a solitary pane of glass massively framed in the broadside of the dwelling, or with a rude, strange-looking door, swinging upon dislocated wooden hinges. Otherwise, the dwellings are built in the original style of the natives; and never mind how mean and filthy some of them may appear within, they all look picturesque enough without.
As we sauntered along the people we met saluted us pleasantly, and invited us into their houses; and in this way we made a good many brief morning calls. But the hour could not have been the fashionable one in Partoowye, since the ladies were invariably in dishabille. But they always gave us a cordial reception, and were particularly polite to the doctor; caressing him, and amorously hanging about his neck; wonderfully taken up, in short, with a gay handkerchief he wore there. Arfretee had that morning bestowed it upon the pious youth.
With some exceptions, the general appearance of the natives of Partoowye was far better than that of the inhabitants of Papeetee: a circumstance only to be imputed to their restricted intercourse with foreigners.
Strolling on, we turned a sweep of the road, when the doctor gave a start; and no wonder. Right before us, in the grove, was a block of houses: regular square frames, boarded over, furnished with windows and doorways, and two stories high. We ran up and found them fast going to decay: very dingy, and here and there covered with moss; no sashes, no doors; and on one side, the entire block had settled down nearly a foot. On going into the basement we looked clean up through the unbearded timbers to the roof; where rays of light, glimmering through many a chink, illuminated the cobwebs which swung all round.
The whole interior was dark and close. Burrowing among some old mats in one corner, like a parcel of gipsies in a ruin, were a few vagabond natives. They had their dwelling here.
Curious to know who on earth could have been thus trying to improve the value of real estate in Partoowye, we made inquiries; and learned that some years previous the block had been thrown up by a veritable Yankee (one might have known that), a house-carpenter by trade, and a bold, enterprising fellow by nature.
Put ashore from his ship, sick, he first went to work and got well; then sallied out with chisel and plane, and made himself generally useful. A sober, steady man, it seems, he at last obtained the confidence of several chiefs, and soon filled them with all sorts of ideas concerning the alarming want of public spirit in the people of Imeeo. More especially did he dwell upon the humiliating fact of their living in paltry huts of bamboo, when magnificent palaces of boards might so easily be mortised together.
In the end, these representations so far prevailed with one old chief that the carpenter was engaged to build a batch of these wonderful palaces. Provided with plenty of men, he at once set to work: built a saw-mill among the mountains, felled trees, and sent over to Papeetee for nails.
Presto! the castle rose; but alas, the roof was hardly on, when the Yankee's patron, having speculated beyond his means, broke all to pieces, and was absolutely unable to pay one "plug" of tobacco in the pound. His failure involved the carpenter, who sailed away from his creditors in the very next ship that touched at the harbour.
The natives despised the rickety palace of boards; and often lounged by, wagging their heads, and jeering.
We were told that the queen's residence was at the extreme end of the village; so, without waiting for the doctor to procure a fiddle, we suddenly resolved upon going thither at once, and learning whether any privy counsellorships were vacant.
Now, although there was a good deal of my waggish comrade's nonsense about what has been said concerning our expectations of court preferment, we, nevertheless, really thought that something to our advantage might turn up in that quarter.
On approaching the palace grounds, we found them rather peculiar. A broad pier of hewn coral rocks was built right out into the water; and upon this, and extending into a grove adjoining, were some eight or ten very large native houses, constructed in the handsomest style and inclosed together by a low picket of bamboos, which embraced a considerable area.
Throughout the Society Islands, the residences of the chiefs are mostly found in the immediate vicinity of the sea; a site which gives them the full benefit of a cooling breeze; nor are they so liable to the annoyance of insects; besides enjoying, when they please, the fine shade afforded by the neighbouring groves, always most luxuriant near the water.
Lounging about the grounds were some sixty or eighty handsomely-dressed natives, men and women; some reclining on the shady side of the houses, others under the trees, and a small group conversing close by the railing facing us.
We went up to the latter; and giving the usual salutation, were on the point of vaulting over the bamboos, when they turned upon us angrily, and said we could not enter. We stated our earnest desire to see the queen; hinting that we were bearers of important dispatches. But it was to no purpose; and not a little vexed, we were obliged to return to Po-Po's without effecting anything.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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76
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AN ISLAND JILT--WE VISIT THE SHIP
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UPON arriving home we fully laid open to Po-Po our motives in visiting Taloo, and begged his friendly advice. In his broken English he cheerfully gave us all the information we needed.
It was true, he said, that the queen entertained some idea of making a stand against the French; and it was currently reported also that several chiefs from Borabora, Huwyenee, Raiatair, and Tahar, the leeward islands of the group, were at that very time taking counsel with her as to the expediency of organizing a general movement throughout the entire cluster, with a view of anticipating any further encroachments on the part of the invaders. Should warlike measures be actually decided upon, it was quite certain that Pomaree would be glad to enlist all the foreigners she could; but as to her making officers of either the doctor or me, that was out of the question; because, already, a number of Europeans, well known to her, had volunteered as such. Concerning our getting immediate access to the queen, Po-Po told us it was rather doubtful; she living at that time very retired, in poor health, and spirits, and averse to receiving calls. Previous to her misfortunes, however, no one, however humble, was denied admittance to her presence; sailors, even, attended her levees.
Not at all disheartened by these things, we concluded to kill time in Partoowye until some event turned up more favourable to our projects. So that very day we sallied out on an excursion to the ship which, lying land-locked far up the bay, yet remained to be visited.
Passing on our route a long, low shed, a voice hailed us--"White men ahoy!" Turning round, who should we see but a rosy-cheeked Englishman (you could tell his country at a glance), up to his knees in shavings, and planing away at a bench. He turned out to be a runaway ship's carpenter, recently from Tahiti, and now doing a profitable business in Imeeo, by fitting up the dwellings of opulent chiefs with cupboards and other conveniences, and once in a while trying his hand at a lady's work-box. He had been in the settlement but a few months, and already possessed houses and lands.
But though blessed with prosperity and high health, there was one thing wanting--a wife. And when he came to speak of the matter, his countenance fell, and he leaned dejectedly upon his plane.
"It's too bad!" he sighed, "to wait three long years; and all the while, dear little Lullee living in the same house with that infernal chief from Tahar!"
Our curiosity was piqued; the poor carpenter, then, had been falling in love with some island coquette, who was going to jilt him.
But such was not the case. There was a law prohibiting, under a heavy penalty, the marriage of a native with a foreigner, unless the latter, after being three years a resident on the island, was willing to affirm his settled intention of remaining for life.
William was therefore in a sad way. He told us that he might have married the girl half-a-dozen times, had it not been for this odious law: but, latterly, she had become less loving and more giddy, particularly with the strangers from Tahar. Desperately smitten, and desirous of securing her at all hazards, he had proposed to the damsel's friends a nice little arrangement, introductory to marriage; but they would not hear of it; besides, if the pair were discovered living together upon such a footing, they would be liable to a degrading punishment:--sent to work making stone walls and opening roads for the queen.
Doctor Long Ghost was all sympathy. "Bill, my good fellow," said he, tremulously, "let me go and talk to her." But Bill, declining the offer, would not even inform us where his charmer lived.
Leaving the disconsolate Willie planing a plank of New Zealand pine (an importation from the Bay of Islands), and thinking the while of Lullee, we went on our way. How his suit prospered in the end we never learned.
Going from Po-Po's house toward the anchorage of the harbour of Taloo, you catch no glimpse of the water until, coming out from deep groves, you all at once find yourself upon the beach. A bay, considered by many voyagers the most beautiful in the South Seas, then lies before you. You stand upon one side of what seems a deep green river, flowing through mountain passes to the sea. Right opposite a majestic promontory divides the inlet from another, called after its discoverer, Captain Cook. The face of this promontory toward Taloo is one verdant wall; and at its base the waters lie still and fathomless. On the left hand, you just catch a peep of the widening mouth of the bay, the break in the reef by which ships enter, and, beyond, the sea. To the right, the inlet, sweeping boldly round the promontory, runs far away into the land; where, save in one direction, the hills close in on every side, knee-deep in verdure and shooting aloft in grotesque peaks. The open space lies at the head of the bay; in the distance it extends into a broad hazy plain lying at the foot of an amphitheatre of hills. Here is the large sugar plantation previously alluded to. Beyond the first range of hills, you descry the sharp pinnacles of the interior; and among these, the same silent Marling-spike which we so often admired from the other side of the island.
All alone in the harbour lay the good ship Leviathan. We jumped into the canoe, and paddled off to her. Though early in the afternoon, everything was quiet; but upon mounting the side we found four or five sailors lounging about the forecastle, under an awning. They gave us no very cordial reception; and though otherwise quite hearty in appearance, seemed to assume a look of ill-humour on purpose to honour our arrival. There was much eagerness to learn whether we wanted to "ship"; and by the unpleasant accounts they gave of the vessel, they seemed desirous to prevent such a thing if possible.
We asked where the rest of the ship's company were; a gruff old fellow made answer, "One boat's crew of 'em is gone to Davy Jones's locker:--went off after a whale, last cruise, and never come back agin. All the starboard watch ran away last night, and the skipper's ashore kitching 'em."
"And it's shipping yer after, my jewels, is it?" cried a curly-pated little Belfast sailor, coming up to us, "thin arrah! my livelies, jist be after sailing ashore in a jiffy:--the divil of a skipper will carry yees both to sea, whether or no. Be off wid ye thin, darlints, and steer clear of the likes of this ballyhoo of blazes as long as ye live. They murther us here every day, and starve us into the bargain. Here, Dick, lad, har! the poor divil's canow alongside; and paddle away wid yees for dear life."
But we loitered awhile, listening to more inducements to ship; and at last concluded to stay to supper. My sheath-knife never cut into better sea-beef than that which we found lying in the kid in the forecastle. The bread, too, was hard, dry, and brittle as glass; and there was plenty of both.
While we were below, the mate of the vessel called out for someone to come on deck. I liked his voice. Hearing it was as good as a look at his face. It betokened a true sailor, and no taskmaster.
The appearance of the Leviathan herself was quite pleasing. Like all large, comfortable old whalers, she had a sort of motherly look:--broad in the beam, flush decks, and four chubby boats hanging at the breast. Her sails were furled loosely upon the yards, as if they had been worn long, and fitted easy; her shrouds swung negligently slack; and as for the "running rigging," it never worked hard as it does in some of your "dandy ships," jamming in the sheaves of blocks, like Chinese slippers, too small to be useful: on the contrary, the ropes ran glibly through, as if they had many a time travelled the same road, and were used to it.
When evening came, we dropped into our canoe, and paddled ashore; fully convinced that the good ship never deserved the name which they gave her.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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77
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A PARTY OF ROVERS--LITTLE LOO AND THE DOCTOR
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WHILE IN Partoowye, we fell in with a band of six veteran rovers, prowling about the village and harbour, who had just come overland from another part of the island.
A few weeks previous, they had been paid off, at Papeetee, from a whaling vessel, on board of which they had, six months before, shipped for a single cruise; that is to say, to be discharged at the next port. Their cruise was a famous one; and each man stepped upon the beach at Tahiti jingling his dollars in a sock.
Weary at last of the shore, and having some money left, they clubbed, and purchased a sail-boat; proposing a visit to a certain uninhabited island, concerning which they had heard strange and golden stories. Of course, they never could think of going to sea without a medicine-chest filled with flasks of spirits, and a small cask of the same in the hold in case the chest should give out.
Away they sailed; hoisted a flag of their own, and gave three times three, as they staggered out of the bay of Papeetee with a strong breeze, and under all the "muslin" they could carry.
Evening coming on, and feeling in high spirits and no ways disposed to sleep, they concluded to make a night of it; which they did; all hands getting tipsy, and the two masts going over the side about midnight, to the tune of "Sailing down, sailing down, On the coast of Barbaree."
Fortunately, one worthy could stand by holding on to the tiller; and the rest managed to crawl about, and hack away the lanyards of the rigging, so as to break clear from the fallen spars. While thus employed, two sailors got tranquilly over the side, and went plumb to the bottom, under the erroneous impression that they were stepping upon an imaginary wharf to get at their work better.
After this, it blew quite a gale; and the commodore, at the helm, instinctively kept the boat before the wind; and by so doing, ran over for the opposite island of Imeeo. Crossing the channel, by almost a miracle they went straight through an opening in the reef, and shot upon a ledge of coral, where the waters were tolerably smooth. Here they lay until morning, when the natives came off to them in their canoes. By the help of the islanders, the schooner was hove over on her beam-ends; when, finding the bottom knocked to pieces, the adventurers sold the boat for a trifle to the chief of the district, and went ashore, rolling before them their precious cask of spirits. Its contents soon evaporated, and they came to Partoowye.
The day after encountering these fellows, we were strolling among the groves in the neighbourhood, when we came across several parties of natives armed with clumsy muskets, rusty cutlasses, and outlandish clubs. They were beating the bushes, shouting aloud, and apparently trying to scare somebody. They were in pursuit of the strangers, who, having in a single night set at nought all the laws of the place, had thought best to decamp.
In the daytime, Po-Po's house was as pleasant a lounge as one could wish. So, after strolling about, and seeing all there was to be seen, we spent the greater part of our mornings there; breakfasting late, and dining about two hours after noon. Sometimes we lounged on the floor of ferns, smoking, and telling stories; of which the doctor had as many as a half-pay captain in the army. Sometimes we chatted, as well as we could, with the natives; and, one day--joy to us! --Po-Po brought in three volumes of Smollett's novels, which had been found in the chest of a sailor, who some time previous had died on the island.
Amelia! --Peregrine! --you hero of rogues, Count Fathom! --what a debt do we owe you!
I know not whether it was the reading of these romances, or the want of some sentimental pastime, which led the doctor, about this period, to lay siege to the heart of the little Loo.
Now, as I have said before, the daughter of Po-Po was most cruelly reserved, and never deigned to notice us. Frequently I addressed her with a long face and an air of the profoundest and most distant respect--but in vain; she wouldn't even turn up her pretty olive nose. Ah! it's quite plain, thought I; she knows very well what graceless dogs sailors are, and won't have anything to do with us.
But thus thought not my comrade. Bent he was upon firing the cold glitter of Loo's passionless eyes.
He opened the campaign with admirable tact: making cautious approaches, and content, for three days, with ogling the nymph for about five minutes after every meal. On the fourth day, he asked her a question; on the fifth, she dropped a nut of ointment, and he picked it up and gave it to her; on the sixth, he went over and sat down within three yards of the couch where she lay; and, on the memorable morn of the seventh, he proceeded to open his batteries in form.
The damsel was reclining on the ferns; one hand supporting her cheek, and the other listlessly turning over the leaves of a Tahitian Bible. The doctor approached.
Now the chief disadvantage under which he laboured was his almost complete ignorance of the love vocabulary of the island. But French counts, they say, make love delightfully in broken English; and what hindered the doctor from doing the same in dulcet Tahitian. So at it he went.
"Ah!" said he, smiling bewitchingly, "oee mickonaree; oee ready Biblee?"
No answer; not even a look.
"Ah I matai! very goody ready Biblee mickonaree."
Loo, without stirring, began reading, in a low tone, to herself.
"Mickonaree Biblee ready goody maitai," once more observed the doctor, ingeniously transposing his words for the third time.
But all to no purpose; Loo gave no sign.
He paused, despairingly; but it would never do to give up; so he threw himself at full length beside her, and audaciously commenced turning over the leaves.
Loo gave a start, just one little start, barely perceptible, and then, fumbling something in her hand, lay perfectly motionless; the doctor rather frightened at his own temerity, and knowing not what to do next. At last, he placed one arm cautiously about her waist; almost in the same instant he bounded to his feet, with a cry; the little witch had pierced him with a thorn. But there she lay, just as quietly as ever, turning over the leaves, and reading to herself.
My long friend raised the siege incontinently, and made a disorderly retreat to the place where I reclined, looking on.
I am pretty sure that Loo must have related this occurrence to her father, who came in shortly afterward; for he looked queerly at the doctor. But he said nothing; and, in ten minutes, was quite as affable as ever. As for Loo, there was not the slightest change in her; and the doctor, of course, for ever afterwards held his peace.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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78
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MRS. BELL
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ONE DAY, taking a pensive afternoon stroll along one of the many bridle-paths which wind among the shady groves in the neighbourhood of Taloo, I was startled by a sunny apparition. It was that of a beautiful young Englishwoman, charmingly dressed, and mounted upon a spirited little white pony. Switching a green branch, she came cantering toward me.
I looked round to see whether I could possibly be in Polynesia. There were the palm-trees; but how to account for the lady?
Stepping to one side as the apparition drew near, I made a polite obeisance. It gave me a bold, rosy look; and then, with a gay air, patted its palfrey, crying out, "Fly away, Willie!" and galloped among the trees.
I would have followed; but Willie's heels were making such a pattering among the dry leaves that pursuit would have been useless.
So I went straight home to Po-Po's, and related my adventure to the doctor.
The next day, our inquiries resulted in finding out that the stranger had been on the island about two years; that she came from Sydney; and was the wife of Mr. Bell (happy dog!) , the proprietor of the sugar plantation to which I have previously referred.
To the sugar plantation we went, the same day.
The country round about was very beautiful: a level basin of verdure, surrounded by sloping hillsides. The sugar-cane--of which there was about one hundred acres, in various stages of cultivation--looked thrifty. A considerable tract of land, however, which seemed to have been formerly tilled, was now abandoned.
The place where they extracted the saccharine matter was under an immense shed of bamboos. Here we saw several clumsy pieces of machinery for breaking the cane; also great kettles for boiling the sugar. But, at present, nothing was going on. Two or three natives were lounging in one of the kettles, smoking; the other was occupied by three sailors from the Leviathan, playing cards.
While we were conversing with these worthies, a stranger approached. He was a sun-burnt, romantic-looking European, dressed in a loose suit of nankeen; his fine throat and chest were exposed, and he sported a Guayaquil hat with a brim like a Chinese umbrella. This was Mr. Bell. He was very civil; showed us the grounds, and, taking us into a sort of arbour, to our surprise, offered to treat us to some wine. People often do the like; but Mr. Bell did more: he produced the bottle. It was spicy sherry; and we drank out of the halves of fresh citron melons. Delectable goblets!
The wine was a purchase from, the French in Tahiti.
Now all this was extremely polite in Mr. Bell; still, we came to see Mrs. Bell. But she proved to be a phantom, indeed; having left the same morning for Papeetee, on a visit to one of the missionaries' wives there.
I went home, much chagrined.
To be frank, my curiosity had been wonderfully piqued concerning the lady. In the first place, she was the most beautiful white woman I ever saw in Polynesia. But this is saying nothing. She had such eyes, such moss-roses in her cheeks, such a divine air in the saddle, that, to my dying day, I shall never forget Mrs. Bell.
The sugar-planter himself was young, robust, and handsome. So, merrily may the little Bells increase, and multiply, and make music in the Land of Imeeo.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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79
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TALOO CHAPEL--HOLDING COURT IN POLYNESIA
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IN Partoowye is to be seen one of the best-constructed and handsomest chapels in the South Seas. Like the buildings of the palace, it stands upon an artificial pier, presenting a semicircular sweep to the bay. The chapel is built of hewn blocks of coral; a substance which, although extremely friable, is said to harden by exposure to the atmosphere. To a stranger, these blocks look extremely curious. Their surface is covered with strange fossil-like impressions, the seal of which must have been set before the flood. Very nearly white when hewn from the reefs, the coral darkens with age; so that several churches in Polynesia now look almost as sooty and venerable as famed St. Paul's.
In shape, the chapel is an octagon, with galleries all round. It will seat, perhaps, four hundred people. Everything within is stained a tawny red; and there being but few windows, or rather embrasures, the dusky benches and galleries, and the tall spectre of a pulpit look anything but cheerful.
On Sundays we always went to worship here. Going in the family suite of Po-Po, we, of course, maintained a most decorous exterior; and hence, by all the elderly people of the village, were doubtless regarded as pattern young men.
Po-Po's seat was in a snug corner; and it being particularly snug, in the immediate vicinity of one of the Palm pillars supporting the gallery, I invariably leaned against it: Po-Po and his lady on one side, the doctor and the dandy on the other, and the children and poor relations seated behind.
As for Loo, instead of sitting (as she ought to have done) by her good father and mother, she must needs run up into the gallery, and sit with a parcel of giddy creatures of her own age; who, all through the sermon, did nothing but look down on the congregation; pointing out, and giggling at the queer-looking old ladies in dowdy bonnets and scant tunics. But Loo, herself, was never guilty of these improprieties.
Occasionally during the week they have afternoon service in the chapel, when the natives themselves have something to say; although their auditors are but few. An introductory prayer being offered by the missionary, and a hymn sung, communicants rise in their places, and exhort in pure Tahitian, and with wonderful tone and gesture. And among them all, Deacon Po-Po, though he talked most, was the one whom you would have liked best to hear. Much would I have given to have understood some of his impassioned bursts; when he tossed his arms overhead, stamped, scowled, and glared, till he looked like the very Angel of Vengeance.
"Deluded man!" sighed the doctor, on one of these occasions, "I fear he takes the fanatical view of the subject." One thing was certain: when Po-Po spoke, all listened; a great deal more than could be said for the rest; for under the discipline of two or three I could mention, some of the audience napped; others fidgeted; a few yawned; and one irritable old gentleman, in a nightcap of cocoa-nut leaves, used to clutch his long staff in a state of excessive nervousness, and stride out of the church, making all the noise he could, to emphasize his disgust.
Right adjoining the chapel is an immense, rickety building, with windows and shutters, and a half-decayed board flooring laid upon trunks of palm-trees. They called it a school-house; but as such we never saw it occupied. It was often used as a court-room, however; and here we attended several trials; among others, that of a decayed naval officer, and a young girl of fourteen; the latter charged with having been very naughty on a particular occasion set forth in the pleadings; and the former with having aided and abetted her in her naughtiness, and with other misdemeanours.
The foreigner was a tall, military-looking fellow, with a dark cheek and black whiskers. According to his own account, he had lost a colonial armed brig on the coast of New Zealand; and since then, had been leading the life of a man about town among the islands of the Pacific.
The doctor wanted to know why he did not go home and report the loss of his brig; but Captain Crash, as they called him, had some incomprehensible reasons for not doing so, about which he could talk by the hour, and no one be any the wiser. Probably he was a discreet man, and thought it best to waive an interview with the lords of the admiralty.
For some time past, this extremely suspicious character had been carrying on the illicit trade in French wines and brandies, smuggled over from the men-of-war lately touching at Tahiti. In a grove near the anchorage he had a rustic shanty and arbour, where, in quiet times, when no ships were in Taloo, a stray native once in a while got boozy, and staggered home, catching at the cocoa-nut trees as he went. The captain himself lounged under a tree during the warm afternoons, pipe in mouth; thinking, perhaps, over old times, and occasionally feeling his shoulders for his lost epaulets.
But, sail ho! a ship is descried coming into the bay. Soon she drops her anchor in its waters; and the next day Captain Crash entertains the sailors in his grove. And rare times they have of it:--drinking and quarrelling together as sociably as you please.
Upon one of these occasions, the crew of the Leviathan made so prodigious a tumult that the natives, indignant at the insult offered their laws, plucked up a heart, and made a dash at the rioters, one hundred strong. The sailors fought like tigers; but were at last overcome, and carried before a native tribunal; which, after a mighty clamour, dismissed everybody but Captain Crash, who was asserted to be the author of the disorders.
Upon this charge, then, he had been placed in confinement against the coming on of the assizes; the judge being expected to lounge along in the course of the afternoon. While waiting his Honour's arrival, numerous additional offences were preferred against the culprit (mostly by the old women); among others was the bit of a slip in which he stood implicated along with the young lady. Thus, in Polynesia as elsewhere;--charge a man with one misdemeanour, and all his peccadilloes are raked up and assorted before him.
Going to the school-house for the purpose of witnessing the trial, the din of it assailed our ears a long way off; and upon entering the building, we were almost stunned. About five hundred natives were present; each apparently having something to say and determined to say it. His Honour--a handsome, benevolent-looking old man--sat cross-legged on a little platform, seemingly resigned, with all Christian submission, to the uproar. He was an hereditary chief in this quarter of the island, and judge for life in the district of Partoowye.
There were several cases coming on; but the captain and girl were first tried together. They were mixing freely with the crowd; and as it afterwards turned out that everyone--no matter who--had a right to address the court, for aught we knew they might have been arguing their own case. At what precise moment the trial began it would be hard to say. There was no swearing of witnesses, and no regular jury. Now and then somebody leaped up and shouted out something which might have been evidence; the rest, meanwhile, keeping up an incessant jabbering. Presently the old judge himself began to get excited; and springing to his feet, ran in among the crowd, wagging his tongue as hard as anybody.
The tumult lasted about twenty minutes; and toward the end of it, Captain Crash might have been seen, tranquilly regarding, from his Honour's platform, the judicial uproar, in which his fate was about being decided.
The result of all this was that both he and the girl were found guilty. The latter was adjudged to make six mats for the queen; and the former, in consideration of his manifold offences, being deemed incorrigible, was sentenced to eternal banishment from the island. Both these decrees seemed to originate in the general hubbub. His Honour, however, appeared to have considerable authority, and it was quite plain that the decision received his approval.
The above penalties were by no means indiscriminately inflicted. The missionaries have prepared a sort of penal tariff to facilitate judicial proceedings. It costs so many days' labour on the Broom Road to indulge in the pleasures of the calabash; so many fathoms of stone wall to steal a musket; and so on to the end of the catalogue. The judge being provided with a book in which all these matters are cunningly arranged, the thing is vastly convenient. For instance: a crime is proved,--say bigamy; turn to letter B--and there you have it. Bigamy:--forty days on the Broom Road, and twenty mats for the queen. Read the passage aloud, and sentence is pronounced.
After taking part in the first trial, the other delinquents present were put upon their own; in which, also, the convicted culprits seemed to have quite as much to say as the rest. A rather strange proceeding; but strictly in accordance with the glorious English principle, that every man should be tried by his peers. They were all found guilty.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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80
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QUEEN POMAREE
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IT is well to learn something about people before being introduced to them, and so we will here give some account of Pomaree and her family.
Every reader of Cook's Voyages must remember "Otto," who, in that navigator's time, was king of the larger peninsula of Tahiti. Subsequently, assisted by the muskets of the Bounty's men, he extended his rule over the entire island. This Otto, before his death, had his name changed into Pomaree, which has ever since been the royal patronymic.
He was succeeded by his son, Pomaree II., the most famous prince in the annals of Tahiti. Though a sad debauchee and drunkard, and even charged with unnatural crimes, he was a great friend of the missionaries, and one of their very first proselytes. During the religious wars into which he was hurried by his zeal for the new faith, he was defeated and expelled from the island. After a short exile he returned from Imeeo, with an army of eight hundred warriors, and in the battle of Narii routed the rebellious pagans with great slaughter, and reestablished himself upon the throne. Thus, by force of arms, was Christianity finally triumphant in Tahiti.
Pomaree II., dying in 1821, was succeeded by his infant son, under the title of Pomaree III. This young prince survived his father but six years; and the government then descended to his elder sister, Aimata, the present queen, who is commonly called Pomaree Vahinee I., or the first female Pomaree. Her majesty must be now upwards of thirty years of age. She has been twice married. Her first husband was a son of the old King of Tahar, an island about one hundred miles from Tahiti. This proving an unhappy alliance, the pair were soon afterwards divorced. The present husband of the queen is a chief of Imeeo.
The reputation of Pomaree is not what it ought to be. She, and also her mother, were, for a long time, excommunicated members of the Church; and the former, I believe, still is. Among other things, her conjugal fidelity is far from being unquestioned. Indeed, it was upon this ground chiefly that she was excluded from the communion of the Church.
Previous to her misfortunes she spent the greater portion of her time sailing about from one island to another, attended by a licentious court; and wherever she went all manner of games and festivities celebrated her arrival.
She was always given to display. For several years the maintenance of a regiment of household troops drew largely upon the royal exchequer. They were trouserless fellows, in a uniform of calico shirts and pasteboard hats; armed with muskets of all shapes and calibres, and commanded by a great noisy chief, strutting it in a coat of fiery red. These heroes escorted their mistress whenever she went abroad.
Some time ago, the queen received from her English sister, Victoria, a very showy, though uneasy, head-dress--a crown; probably made to order at some tinman's in London. Having no idea of reserving so pretty a bauble for coronation days, which come so seldom, her majesty sported it whenever she appeared in public; and, to show her familiarity with European customs, politely touched it to all foreigners of distinction--whaling captains, and the like--whom she happened to meet in her evening walk on the Broom Road.
The arrival and departure of royalty were always announced at the palace by the court artilleryman--a fat old gentleman who, in a prodigious hurry and perspiration, discharged minute fowling-pieces as fast as he could load and fire the same.
The Tahitian princess leads her husband a hard life. Poor fellow! he not only caught a queen, but a Tartar, when he married her. The style by which he is addressed is rather significant--"Pomaree-Tanee" (Pomaree's man). All things considered, as appropriate a title for a king-consort as could be hit upon.
If ever there were a henpecked husband, that man is the prince. One day, his carasposa giving audience to a deputation from the captains of the vessels lying in Papeetee, he ventured to make a suggestion which was very displeasing to her. She turned round and, boxing his ears, told him to go over to his beggarly island of Imeeo if he wanted to give himself airs.
Cuffed and contemned, poor Tanee flies to the bottle, or rather to the calabash, for solace. Like his wife and mistress, he drinks more than he ought.
Six or seven years ago, when an American man-of-war was lying at Papeetee, the town was thrown into the greatest commotion by a conjugal assault and battery made upon the sacred person of Pomaree by her intoxicated Tanee.
Captain Bob once told me the story. And by way of throwing more spirit into the description, as well as to make up for his oral deficiencies, the old man went through the accompanying action: myself being proxy for the Queen of Tahiti.
It seems that, on a Sunday morning, being dismissed contemptuously from the royal presence, Tanee was accosted by certain good fellows, friends and boon companions, who condoled with him on his misfortunes--railed against the queen, and finally dragged him away to an illicit vendor of spirits, in whose house the party got gloriously mellow. In this state, Pomaree Vahinee I. was the topic upon which all dilated--"A vixen of a queen," probably suggested one. "It's infamous," said another; "and I'd have satisfaction," cried a third. "And so I will!" --Tanee must have hiccoughed; for off he went; and ascertaining that his royal half was out riding, he mounted his horse and galloped after her.
Near the outskirts of the town, a cavalcade of women came cantering toward him, in the centre of which was the object of his fury. Smiting his beast right and left, he dashed in among them, completely overturning one of the party, leaving her on the field, and dispersing everybody else except Pomaree. Backing her horse dexterously, the incensed queen heaped upon him every scandalous epithet she could think of; until at last the enraged Tanee leaped out of his saddle, caught Pomaree by her dress, and dragging her to the earth struck her repeatedly in the face, holding on meanwhile by the hair of her head. He was proceeding to strangle her on the spot, when the cries of the frightened attendants brought a crowd of natives to the rescue, who bore the nearly insensible queen away.
But his frantic rage was not yet sated. He ran to the palace; and before it could be prevented, demolished a valuable supply of crockery, a recent present from abroad. In the act of perpetrating some other atrocity, he was seized from behind, and carried off with rolling eyes and foaming at the mouth.
This is a fair example of a Tahitian in a passion. Though the mildest of mortals in general, and hard to be roused, when once fairly up, he is possessed with a thousand devils.
The day following, Tanee was privately paddled over to Imeeo in a canoe; where, after remaining in banishment for a couple of weeks, he was allowed to return, and once more give in his domestic adhesion.
Though Pomaree Vahinee I. be something of a Jezebel in private life, in her public rule she is said to have been quite lenient and forbearing. This was her true policy; for an hereditary hostility to her family had always lurked in the hearts of many powerful chiefs, the descendants of the old Kings of Taiarboo, dethroned by her grandfather Otoo. Chief among these, and in fact the leader of his party, was Poofai; a bold, able man, who made no secret of his enmity to the missionaries, and the government which they controlled. But while events were occurring calculated to favour the hopes of the disaffected and turbulent, the arrival of the French gave a most unexpected turn to affairs.
During my sojourn in Tahiti, a report was rife--which I knew to originate with what is generally called the "missionary party"--that Poofai and some other chiefs of note had actually agreed, for a stipulated bribe, to acquiesce in the appropriation of their country. But subsequent events have rebutted the calumny. Several of these very men have recently died in battle against the French.
Under the sovereignty of the Pomarees, the great chiefs of Tahiti were something like the barons of King John. Holding feudal sway over their patrimonial valleys, and on account of their descent, warmly beloved by the people, they frequently cut off the royal revenues by refusing to pay the customary tribute due from them as vassals.
The truth is, that with the ascendancy of the missionaries, the regal office in Tahiti lost much of its dignity and influence. In the days of Paganism, it was supported by all the power of a numerous priesthood, and was solemnly connected with the entire superstitious idolatry of the land. The monarch claimed to be a sort of bye-blow of Tararroa, the Saturn of the Polynesian mythology, and cousin-german to inferior deities. His person was thrice holy; if he entered an ordinary dwelling, never mind for how short a time, it was demolished when he left; no common mortal being thought worthy to inhabit it afterward.
"I'm a greater man than King George," said the incorrigible young Otoo to the first missionaries; "he rides on a horse, and I on a man." Such was the case. He travelled post through his dominions on the shoulders of his subjects; and relays of mortal beings were provided in all the valleys.
But alas! how times have changed; how transient human greatness. Some years since, Pomaree Vahinee I., the granddaughter of the proud Otoo, went into the laundry business; publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging to the officers of ships touching in her harbours.
It is a significant fact, and one worthy of record, that while the influence of the English missionaries at Tahiti has tended to so great a diminution of the regal dignity there, that of the American missionaries at the Sandwich Islands has been purposely exerted to bring about a contrary result.
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{
"id": "4045"
}
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81
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WE VISIT THE COURT
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IT WAS about the middle of the second month of the Hegira, and therefore some five weeks after our arrival in Partoowye, that we at last obtained admittance to the residence of the queen.
It happened thus. There was a Marquesan in the train of Pomaree who officiated as nurse to her children. According to the Tahitian custom, the royal youngsters are carried about until it requires no small degree of strength to stand up under them. But Marbonna was just the man for this--large and muscular, well made as a statue, and with an arm like a degenerate Tahitian's thigh.
Embarking at his native island as a sailor on board of a French whaler, he afterward ran away from the ship at Tahiti; where, being seen and admired by Pomaree, he had been prevailed upon to enlist in her service.
Often, when visiting the grounds, we saw him walking about in the shade, carrying two handsome boys, who encircled his neck with their arms. Marbonna's face, tattooed as it was in the ornate style of his tribe, was as good as a picture-book to these young Pomarees. They delighted to trace with their fingers the outlines of the strange shapes there delineated.
The first time my eyes lighted upon the Marquesan, I knew his country in a moment; and hailing him in his own language, he turned round, surprised that a person so speaking should be a stranger. He proved to be a native of Tior, a glen of Nukuheva. I had visited the place more than once; and so, on the island of Imeeo, we met like old friends.
In my frequent conversations with him over the bamboo picket, I found this islander a philosopher of nature--a wild heathen, moralizing upon the vices and follies of the Christian court of Tahiti--a savage, scorning the degeneracy of the people among whom fortune had thrown him.
I was amazed at the national feelings of the man. No European, when abroad, could speak of his country with more pride than Marbonna. He assured me, again and again, that so soon as he had obtained sufficient money to purchase twenty muskets, and as many bags of powder, he was going to return to a place with which Imeeo was not worthy to be compared.
It was Marbonna who, after one or two unsuccessful attempts, at last brought about our admission into the queen's grounds. Through a considerable crowd he conducted us along the pier to where an old man was sitting, to whom he introduced us as a couple of "karhowrees" of his acquaintance, anxious to see the sights of the palace. The venerable chamberlain stared at us, and shook his head: the doctor, thinking he wanted a fee, placed a plug of tobacco in his hand. This was ingratiating, and we were permitted to pass on. Upon the point of entering one of the houses, Marbonna's name was shouted in half-a-dozen different directions, and he was obliged to withdraw.
Thus left at the very threshold to shift for ourselves, my companion's assurance stood us in good stead. He stalked right in, and I followed. The place was full of women, who, instead of exhibiting the surprise we expected, accosted us as cordially as if we had called to take our Souchong with them by express invitation. In the first place, nothing would do but we must each devour a calabash of "poee," and several roasted bananas. Pipes were then lighted, and a brisk conversation ensued.
These ladies of the court, if not very polished, were surprisingly free and easy in their manners; quite as much so as King Charles's beauties. There was one of them--an arch little miss, who could converse with us pretty fluently--to whom we strove to make ourselves particularly agreeable, with the view of engaging her services as cicerone.
As such, she turned out to be everything we could desire. No one disputing her will, every place was entered without ceremony, curtains brushed aside, mats lifted, and each nook and corner explored. Whether the little damsel carried her mistress' signet, that everything opened to her thus, I know not; but Marbonna himself, the bearer of infants, could not have been half so serviceable.
Among other houses which we visited, was one of large size and fine exterior; the special residence of a European--formerly the mate of a merchant vessel,--who had done himself the honour of marrying into the Pomaree family. The lady he wedded being a near kinswoman of the queen, he became a permanent member of her majesty's household. This adventurer rose late, dressed theatrically in calico and trinkets, assumed a dictatorial tone in conversation, and was evidently upon excellent terms with himself.
We found him reclining on a mat, smoking a reed-pipe of tobacco, in the midst of an admiring circle of chiefs and ladies. He must have noticed our approach; but instead of rising and offering civilities, he went on talking and smoking, without even condescending to look at us.
"His Highness feels his 'poee,'" carelessly observed the doctor. The rest of the company gave us the ordinary salutation, our guide announcing us beforehand.
In answer to our earnest requests to see the queen, we were now conducted to an edifice, by far the most spacious, in the inclosure. It was at least one hundred and fifty feet in length, very wide, with low eaves, and an exceedingly steep roof of pandannas leaves. There were neither doors nor windows--nothing along the sides but the slight posts supporting the rafters. Between these posts, curtains of fine matting and tappa were rustling, all round; some of them were festooned, or partly withdrawn, so as to admit light and air, and afford a glimpse now and then of what was going on within.
Pushing aside one of the screens, we entered. The apartment was one immense hall; the long and lofty ridge-pole fluttering with fringed matting and tassels, full forty feet from the ground. Lounges of mats, piled one upon another, extended on either side: while here and there were slight screens, forming as many recesses, where groups of natives--all females--were reclining at their evening meal.
As we advanced, these various parties ceased their buzzing, and in explanation of our appearance among them, listened to a few cabalistic words from our guide.
The whole scene was a strange one; but what most excited our surprise was the incongruous assemblage of the most costly objects from all quarters of the globe. Cheek by jowl, they lay beside the rudest native articles, without the slightest attempt at order. Superb writing-desks of rosewood, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl; decanters and goblets of cut glass; embossed volumes of plates; gilded candelabra; sets of globes and mathematical instruments; the finest porcelain; richly-mounted sabres and fowling-pieces; laced hats and sumptuous garments of all sorts, with numerous other matters of European manufacture, were strewn about among greasy calabashes half-filled with "poee," rolls of old tappa and matting, paddles and fish-spears, and the ordinary furniture of a Tahitian dwelling.
All the articles first mentioned were, doubtless, presents from foreign powers. They were more or less injured: the fowling-pieces and swords were rusted; the finest woods were scratched; and a folio volume of Hogarth lay open, with a cocoa-nut shell of some musty preparation capsized among the miscellaneous furniture of the Rake's apartment, where that inconsiderate young gentleman is being measured for a coat.
While we were amusing ourselves in this museum of curiosities, our conductor plucked us by the sleeve, and whispered, "Pomaree! Pomaree! armai kow kow."
"She is coming to sup, then," said the doctor, staring in the direction indicated. "What say you, Paul, suppose we step up?" Just then a curtain near by lifted, and from a private building a few yards distant the queen entered, unattended.
She wore a loose gown of blue silk, with two rich shawls, one red and the other yellow, tied about her neck. Her royal majesty was barefooted.
She was about the ordinary size, rather matronly; her features not very handsome; her mouth, voluptuous; but there was a care-worn expression in her face, probably attributable to her late misfortunes. From her appearance, one would judge her about forty; but she is not so old.
As the queen approached one of the recesses, her attendants hurried up, escorted her in, and smoothed the mats on which she at last reclined. Two girls soon appeared, carrying their mistress' repast; and then, surrounded by cut-glass and porcelain, and jars of sweetmeats and confections, Pomaree Vahinee I., the titular Queen of Tahiti, ate fish and "poee" out of her native calabashes, disdaining either knife or spoon.
"Come on," whispered Long Ghost, "let's have an audience at once;" and he was on the point of introducing himself, when our guide, quite alarmed, held him back and implored silence. The other natives also interfered, and, as he was pressing forward, raised such an outcry that Pomaree lifted her eyes and saw us for the first.
She seemed surprised and offended, and, issuing an order in a commanding tone to several of her women, waved us out of the house. Summary as the dismissal was, court etiquette, no doubt, required our compliance. We withdrew; making a profound inclination as we disappeared behind the tappa arras.
We departed the ground without seeing Marbonna; and previous to vaulting over the picket, feed our pretty guide after a fashion of our own. Looking round a few moments after, we saw the damsel escorted back by two men, who seemed to have been sent after her. I trust she received nothing more than a reprimand.
The next day Po-Po informed us that strict orders had been issued to admit no strangers within the palace precincts.
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{
"id": "4045"
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82
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WHICH ENDS THE BOOK
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DISAPPOINTED in going to court, we determined upon going to sea. It would never do, longer to trespass on Po-Po's hospitality; and then, weary somewhat of life in Imeeo, like all sailors ashore, I at last pined for the billows.
Now, if her crew were to be credited, the Leviathan was not the craft to our mind. But I had seen the captain, and liked him. He was an uncommonly tall, robust, fine-looking man, in the prime of life. There was a deep crimson spot in the middle of each sunburnt cheek, doubtless the effect of his sea-potations. He was a Vineyarder, or native of the island of Martha's Vineyard (adjoining Nantucket), and--I would have sworn it--a sailor, and no tyrant.
Previous to this, we had rather avoided the Leviathan's men, when they came ashore; but now, we purposely threw ourselves in their way, in order to learn more of the vessel.
We became acquainted with the third mate, a Prussian, and an old merchant-seaman--a right jolly fellow, with a face like a ruby. We took him to Po-Po's, and gave him a dinner of baked pig and breadfruit; with pipes and tobacco for dessert. The account he gave us of the ship agreed with my own surmises. A cosier old craft never floated; and the captain was the finest man in the world. There was plenty to eat, too; and, at sea, nothing to do but sit on the windlass and sail. The only bad trait about the vessel was this: she had been launched under some baleful star; and so was a luckless ship in the fishery. She dropped her boats into the brine often enough, and they frequently got fast to the whales; but lance and harpoon almost invariably "drew" when darted by the men of the Leviathan. But what of that? We would have all the sport of chasing the monsters, with none of the detestable work which follows their capture. So, hurrah for the coast of Japan! Thither the ship was bound.
A word now about the hard stories we heard the first time we visited the ship. They were nothing but idle fictions, got up by the sailors for the purpose of frightening us away, so as to oblige the captain, who was in want of more hands, to lie the longer in a pleasant harbour.
The next time the Vineyarder came ashore, we flung ourselves in his path. When informed of our desire to sail with him, he wanted to know our history; and, above all, what countrymen we were. We said that we had left a whaler in Tahiti, some time previous; and, since then, had been--in the most praiseworthy manner--employed upon a plantation. As for our country, sailors belong to no nation in particular; we were, on this occasion, both Yankees. Upon this he looked decidedly incredulous; and freely told us that he verily believed we were both from Sydney.
Be it known here that American sea captains, in the Pacific, are mortally afraid of these Sydney gentry; who, to tell the truth, wherever known, are in excessively bad odour. Is there a mutiny on board a ship in the South Seas, ten to one a Sydney man is the ringleader. Ashore, these fellows are equally riotous.
It was on this account that we were anxious to conceal the fact of our having belonged to the Julia, though it annoyed me much, thus to deny the dashing little craft. For the same reason, also, the doctor fibbed about his birthplace.
Unfortunately, one part of our raiment--Arfretee's blue frocks--we deemed a sort of collateral evidence against us. For, curiously enough, an American sailor is generally distinguished by his red frock; and an English tar by his blue one: thus reversing the national colours. The circumstance was pointed out by the captain; and we quickly explained the anomaly. But, in vain: he seemed inveterately prejudiced against us; and, in particular, eyed the doctor most distrustfully.
By way of propping the tatter's pretensions, I was throwing out a hint concerning Kentucky, as a land of tall men, when our Vine-yarder turned away abruptly, and desired to hear nothing more. It was evident that he took Long Ghost for an exceedingly problematical character.
Perceiving this, I resolved to see what a private interview would do. So, one afternoon, I found the captain smoking a pipe in the dwelling of a portly old native--one Mai-Mai--who, for a reasonable compensation, did the honours of Partoowye to illustrious strangers.
His guest had just risen from a sumptuous meal of baked pig and taro pudding; and the remnants of the repast were still visible. Two reeking bottles, also, with their necks wrenched off, lay upon the mat. All this was encouraging; for, after a good dinner, one feels affluent and amiable, and peculiarly open to conviction. So, at all events, I found the noble Vineyarder.
I began by saying that I called for the purpose of setting him right touching certain opinions of his concerning the place of my nativity:--I was an American--thank heaven! --and wanted to convince him of the fact.
After looking me in the eye for some time, and, by so doing, revealing an obvious unsteadiness in his own visual organs, he begged me to reach forth my arm. I did so; wondering what upon earth that useful member had to do with the matter in hand.
He placed his fingers upon my wrist; and holding them there for a moment, sprang to his feet, and, with much enthusiasm, pronounced me a Yankee, every beat of my pulse!
"Here, Mai-Mai!" he cried, "another bottle!" And, when it came, with one stroke of a knife, he summarily beheaded it, and commanded me to drain it to the bottom. He then told me that if I would come on board his vessel the following morning, I would find the ship's articles on the cabin transom.
This was getting along famously. But what was to become of the doctor?
I forthwith made an adroit allusion to my long friend. But it was worse than useless. The Vineyarder swore he would have nothing to do with him--he (my long friend) was a "bird" from Sydney, and nothing would make him (the man of little faith) believe otherwise.
I could not help loving the free-hearted captain; but indignant at this most unaccountable prejudice against my comrade, I abruptly took leave.
Upon informing the doctor of the result of the interview, he was greatly amused; and laughingly declared that the Vineyarder must be a penetrating fellow. He then insisted upon my going to sea in the ship, since he well knew how anxious I was to leave. As for himself, on second thoughts, he was no sailor; and although "lands--' men" very often compose part of a whaler's crew, he did not quite relish the idea of occupying a position so humble. In short, he had made up his mind to tarry awhile in Imeeo.
I turned the matter over: and at last decided upon quitting the island. The impulse urging me to sea once more, and the prospect of eventually reaching home, were too much to be resisted; especially as the Leviathan, so comfortable a craft, was now bound on her last whaling cruise, and, in little more than a year's time, would be going round Cape Horn.
I did not, however, covenant to remain in the vessel for the residue of the voyage; which would have been needlessly binding myself. I merely stipulated for the coming cruise, leaving my subsequent movements unrestrained; for there was no knowing that I might not change my mind, and prefer journeying home by short and easy stages.
The next day I paddled off to the ship, signed and sealed, and stepped ashore with my "advance"--fifteen Spanish dollars--tasseling the ends of my neck-handkerchief.
I forced half of the silver on Long Ghost; and having little use for the remainder, would have given it to Po-Po as some small return for his kindness; but, although he well knew the value of the coin, not a dollar would he accept.
In three days' time the Prussian came to Po-Po's, and told us that the captain, having made good the number of his crew by shipping several islanders, had determined upon sailing with the land breeze at dawn the following morning. These tidings were received in the afternoon. The doctor immediately disappeared, returning soon after with a couple of flasks of wine concealed in the folds of his frock. Through the agency of the Marquesan, he had purchased them from an understrapper of the court.
I prevailed upon Po-Po to drink a parting shell; and even little Loo, actually looking conscious that one of her hopeless admirers was about leaving Partoowye for ever, sipped a few drops from a folded leaf. As for the warm-hearted Arfretee, her grief was unbounded. She even besought me to spend my last night under her own palm-thatch; and then, in the morning, she would herself paddle me off to the ship.
But this I would not consent to; and so, as something to remember her by, she presented me with a roll of fine matting, and another of tappa. These gifts placed in my hammock, I afterward found very agreeable in the warm latitudes to which we were bound; nor did they fail to awaken most grateful remembrances.
About nightfall, we broke away from this generous-hearted household, and hurried down to the water.
It was a mad, merry night among the sailors; they had on tap a small cask of wine, procured in the same way as the doctor's flasks.
An hour or two after midnight, everything was noiseless; but when the first streak of the dawn showed itself over the mountains, a sharp voice hailed the forecastle, and ordered the ship unmoored.
The anchors came up cheerily; the sails were soon set; and with the early breath of the tropical morning, fresh and fragrant from the hillsides, we slowly glided down the bay, and were swept through the opening in the reef. Presently we "hove to," and the canoes came alongside to take off the islanders who had accompanied us thus far. As he stepped over the side, I shook the doctor long and heartily by the hand. I have never seen or heard of him since.
Crowding all sail, we braced the yards square; and, the breeze freshening, bowled straight away from the land. Once more the sailor's cradle rocked under me, and I found myself rolling in my gait.
By noon, the island had gone down in the horizon; and all before us was the wide Pacific.
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{
"id": "4045"
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1
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UNDER THE CHERRY TREE
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Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as 1825, there stood, in what is now the beautiful little city of Vincennes on the Wabash, the decaying remnant of an old and curiously gnarled cherry tree, known as the Roussillon tree, le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon, as the French inhabitants called it, which as long as it lived bore fruit remarkable for richness of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth of color. The exact spot where this noble old seedling from la belle France flourished, declined, and died cannot be certainly pointed out; for in the rapid and happy growth of Vincennes many land-marks once notable, among them le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon, have been destroyed and the spots where they stood, once familiar to every eye in old Vincennes, are now lost in the pleasant confusion of the new town.
The security of certain land titles may have largely depended upon the disappearance of old, fixed objects here and there. Early records were loosely kept, indeed, scarcely kept at all; many were destroyed by designing land speculators, while those most carefully preserved often failed to give even a shadowy trace of the actual boundaries of the estates held thereby; so that the position of a house or tree not infrequently settled an important question of property rights left open by a primitive deed. At all events the Roussillon cherry tree disappeared long ago, nobody living knows how, and with it also vanished, quite as mysteriously, all traces of the once important Roussillon estate. Not a record of the name even can be found, it is said, in church or county books.
The old, twisted, gum-embossed cherry tree survived every other distinguishing feature of what was once the most picturesque and romantic place in Vincennes. Just north of it stood, in the early French days, a low, rambling cabin surrounded by rude verandas overgrown with grapevines. This was the Roussillon place, the most pretentious home in all the Wabash country. Its owner was Gaspard Roussillon, a successful trader with the Indians. He was rich, for the time and the place, influential to a degree, a man of some education, who had brought with him to the wilderness a bundle of books and a taste for reading.
From faded letters and dimly remembered talk of those who once clung fondly to the legends and traditions of old Vincennes, it is drawn that the Roussillon cherry tree stood not very far away from the present site of the Catholic church, on a slight swell of ground overlooking a wide marshy flat and the silver current of the Wabash. If the tree grew there, then there too stood the Roussillon house with its cosy log rooms, its clay-daubed chimneys and its grapevine-mantled verandas, while some distance away and nearer the river the rude fort with its huddled officers' quarters seemed to fling out over the wild landscape, through its squinting and lopsided port-holes, a gaze of stubborn defiance.
Not far off was the little log church, where one good Father Beret, or as named by the Indians, who all loved him, Father Blackrobe, performed the services of his sacred calling; and scattered all around were the cabins of traders, soldiers and woodsmen forming a queer little town, the like of which cannot now be seen anywhere on the earth.
It is not known just when Vincennes was first founded; but most historians make the probable date very early in the eighteenth century, somewhere between 1710 and 1730. In 1810 the Roussillon cherry tree was thought by a distinguished botanical letter-writer to be at least fifty years old, which would make the date of its planting about 1760. Certainly as shown by the time-stained family records upon which this story of ours is based, it was a flourishing and wide-topped tree in early summer of 1778, its branches loaded to drooping with luscious fruit. So low did the dark red clusters hang at one point that a tall young girl standing on the ground easily reached the best ones and made her lips purple with their juice while she ate them.
That was long ago, measured by what has come to pass on the gentle swell of rich country from which Vincennes overlooks the Wabash. The new town flourishes notably and its appearance marks the latest limit of progress. Electric cars in its streets, electric lights in its beautiful homes, the roar of railway trains coming and going in all directions, bicycles whirling hither and thither, the most fashionable styles of equipages, from brougham to pony-phaeton, make the days of flint-lock guns and buckskin trousers seem ages down the past; and yet we are looking back over but a little more than a hundred and twenty years to see Alice Roussillon standing under the cherry tree and holding high a tempting cluster of fruit, while a very short, hump-backed youth looks up with longing eyes and vainly reaches for it. The tableau is not merely rustic, it is primitive. "Jump!" the girl is saying in French, "jump, Jean; jump high!"
Yes, that was very long ago, in the days when women lightly braved what the strongest men would shrink from now.
Alice Roussillon was tall, lithe, strongly knit, with an almost perfect figure, judging by what the master sculptors carved for the form of Venus, and her face was comely and winning, if not absolutely beautiful; but the time and the place were vigorously indicated by her dress, which was of coarse stuff and simply designed. Plainly she was a child of the American wilderness, a daughter of old Vincennes on the Wabash in the time that tried men's souls.
"Jump, Jean!" she cried, her face laughing with a show of cheek-dimples, an arching of finely sketched brows and the twinkling of large blue-gray eyes.
"Jump high and get them!"
While she waved her sun-browned hand holding the cherries aloft, the breeze blowing fresh from the southwest tossed her hair so that some loose strands shone like rimpled flames. The sturdy little hunchback did leap with surprising activity; but the treacherous brown hand went higher, so high that the combined altitude of his jump and the reach of his unnaturally long arms was overcome. Again and again he sprang vainly into the air comically, like a long-legged, squat-bodied frog.
"And you brag of your agility and strength, Jean," she laughingly remarked; "but you can't take cherries when they are offered to you. What a clumsy bungler you are."
"I can climb and get some," he said with a hideously happy grin, and immediately embraced the bole of the tree, up which he began scrambling almost as fast as a squirrel.
When he had mounted high enough to be extending a hand for a hold on a crotch, Alice grasped his leg near the foot and pulled him down, despite his clinging and struggling, until his hands clawed in the soft earth at the tree's root, while she held his captive leg almost vertically erect.
It was a show of great strength; but Alice looked quite unconscious of it, laughing merrily, the dimples deepening in her plump cheeks, her forearm, now bared to the elbow, gleaming white and shapely while its muscles rippled on account of the jerking and kicking of Jean.
All the time she was holding the cherries high in her other hand, shaking them by the twig to which their slender stems attached them, and saying in a sweetly tantalizing tone: "What makes you climb downward after cherries. Jean? What a foolish fellow you are, indeed, trying to grabble cherries out of the ground, as you do potatoes! I'm sure I didn't suppose that you knew so little as that."
Her French was colloquial, but quite good, showing here and there what we often notice in the speech of those who have been educated in isolated places far from that babel of polite energies which we call the world; something that may be described as a bookish cast appearing oddly in the midst of phrasing distinctly rustic and local,--a peculiarity not easy to transfer from one language to another.
Jean the hunchback was a muscular little deformity and a wonder of good nature. His head looked unnaturally large, nestling grotesquely between the points of his lifted and distorted shoulders, like a shaggy black animal in the fork of a broken tree. He was bellicose in his amiable way and never knew just when to acknowledge defeat. How long he might have kept up the hopeless struggle with the girl's invincible grip would be hard to guess. His release was caused by the approach of a third person, who wore the robe of a Catholic priest and the countenance of a man who had lived and suffered a long time without much loss of physical strength and endurance.
This was Pere Beret, grizzly, short, compact, his face deeply lined, his mouth decidedly aslant on account of some lost teeth, and his eyes set deep under gray, shaggy brows. Looking at him when his features were in repose a first impression might not have been favorable; but seeing him smile or hearing him speak changed everything. His voice was sweetness itself and his smile won you on the instant. Something like a pervading sorrow always seemed to be close behind his eyes and under his speech; yet he was a genial, sometimes almost jolly, man, very prone to join in the lighter amusements of his people.
"Children, children, my children," he called out as he approached along a little pathway leading up from the direction of the church, "what are you doing now? Bah there, Alice, will you pull Jean's leg off?"
At first they did not hear him, they were so nearly deafened by their own vocal discords.
"Why are you standing on your head with your feet so high in air, Jean?" he added. "It's not a polite attitude in the presence of a young lady. Are you a pig, that you poke your nose in the dirt?"
Alice now turned her bright head and gave Pere Beret a look of frank welcome, which at the same time shot a beam of willful self-assertion.
"My daughter, are you trying to help Jean up the tree feet foremost?" the priest added, standing where he had halted just outside of the straggling yard fence.
He had his hands on his hips and was quietly chuckling at the scene before him, as one who, although old, sympathized with the natural and harmless sportiveness of young people and would as lief as not join in a prank or two.
"You see what I'm doing, Father Beret," said Alice, "I am preventing a great damage to you. You will maybe lose a good many cherry pies and dumplings if I let Jean go. He was climbing the tree to pilfer the fruit; so I pulled him down, you understand."
"Ta, ta!" exclaimed the good man, shaking his gray head; "we must reason with the child. Let go his leg, daughter, I will vouch for him; eh, Jean?"
Alice released the hunchback, then laughed gayly and tossed the cluster of cherries into his hand, whereupon he began munching them voraciously and talking at the same time.
"I knew I could get them," he boasted; "and see, I have them now." He hopped around, looking like a species of ill-formed monkey.
Pere Beret came and leaned on the low fence close to Alice. She was almost as tall as he.
"The sun scorches to-day," he said, beginning to mop his furrowed face with a red-flowered cotton handkerchief; "and from the look of the sky yonder," pointing southward, "it is going to bring on a storm. How is Madame Roussillon to-day?"
"She is complaining as she usually does when she feels extremely well," said Alice; "that's why I had to take her place at the oven and bake pies. I got hot and came out to catch a bit of this breeze. Oh, but you needn't smile and look greedy, Pere Beret, the pies are not for your teeth!"
"My daughter, I am not a glutton, I hope; I had meat not two hours since--some broiled young squirrels with cress, sent me by Rene de Ronville. He never forgets his old father."
"Oh, I never forget you either, mon pere; I thought of you to-day every time I spread a crust and filled it with cherries; and when I took out a pie all brown and hot, the red juice bubbling out of it so good smelling and tempting, do you know what I said to myself?"
"How could I know, my child?"
"Well, I thought this: 'Not a single bite of that pie does Father Beret get.'"
"Why so, daughter?"
"Because you said it was bad of me to read novels and told Mother Roussillon to hide them from me. I've had any amount of trouble about it."
"Ta, ta! read the good books that I gave you. They will soon kill the taste for these silly romances."
"I tried," said Alice; "I tried very hard, and it's no use; your books are dull and stupidly heavy. What do I care about something that a queer lot of saints did hundreds of years ago in times of plague and famine? Saints must have been poky people, and it is poky people who care to read about them, I think. I like reading about brave, heroic men and beautiful women, and war and love."
Pere Beret looked away with a curious expression in his face, his eyes half closed.
"And I'll tell you now, Father Beret," Alice went on after a pause, "no more claret and pies do you get until I can have my own sort of books back again to read as I please." She stamped her moccasin-shod foot with decided energy.
The good priest broke into a hearty laugh, and taking off his cap of grass-straw mechanically scratched his bald head. He looked at the tall, strong girl before him for a moment or two, and it would have been hard for the best physiognomist to decide just how much of approval and how much of disapproval that look really signified.
Although, as Father Beret had said, the sun's heat was violent, causing that gentle soul to pass his bundled handkerchief with a wiping circular motion over his bald and bedewed pate, the wind was momently freshening, while up from behind the trees on the horizon beyond the river, a cloud was rising blue-black, tumbled, and grim against the sky.
"Well," said the priest, evidently trying hard to exchange his laugh for a look of regretful resignation, "you will have your own way, my child, and--" "Then you will have pies galore and no end of claret!" she interrupted, at the same time stepping to the withe-tied and peg-latched gate of the yard and opening it. "Come in, you dear, good Father, before the rain shall begin, and sit with me on the gallery" (the creole word for veranda) "till the storm is over."
Father Beret seemed not loath to enter, albeit he offered a weak protest against delaying some task he had in hand. Alice reached forth and pulled him in, then reclosed the queer little gate and pegged it. She caressingly passed her arm through his and looked into his weather-stained old face with childlike affection.
There was not a photographer's camera to be had in those days; but what if a tourist with one in hand could have been there to take a snapshot at the priest and the maiden as they walked arm in arm to that squat little veranda! The picture to-day would be worth its weight in a first-water diamond. It would include the cabin, the cherry-tree, a glimpse of the raw, wild background and a sharp portrait-group of Pere Beret, Alice, and Jean the hunchback. To compare it with a photograph of the same spot now would give a perfect impression of the historic atmosphere, color and conditions which cannot be set in words. But we must not belittle the power of verbal description. What if a thoroughly trained newspaper reporter had been given the freedom of old Vincennes on the Wabash during the first week of June, 1778, and we now had his printed story! What a supplement to the photographer's pictures! Well, we have neither photographs nor graphic report; yet there they are before us, the gowned and straw-capped priest, the fresh-faced, coarsely-clad and vigorous girl, the grotesque little hunchback, all just as real as life itself. Each of us can see them, even with closed eyes. Led by that wonderful guide, Imagination, we step back a century and more to look over a scene at once strangely attractive and unspeakably forlorn.
What was it that drew people away from the old countries, from the cities, the villages and the vineyards of beautiful France, for example, to dwell in the wilderness, amid wild beasts and wilder savage Indians, with a rude cabin for a home and the exposures and hardships of pioneer life for their daily experience?
Men like Gaspard Roussillon are of a distinct stamp. Take him as he was. Born in France, on the banks of the Rhone near Avignon, he came as a youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of adventure this way and that, until at last he found himself, with a wife, at Post Vincennes, that lonely picket of religion and trade, which was to become the center of civilizing energy for the great Northwestern Territory. M. Roussillon had no children of his own; so his kind heart opened freely to two fatherless and motherless waifs. These were Alice, now called Alice Roussillon, and the hunchback, Jean. The former was twelve years old, when he adopted her, a child of Protestant parents, while Jean had been taken, when a mere babe, after his parents had been killed and scalped by Indians. Madame Roussillon, a professed invalid, whose appetite never failed and whose motherly kindness expressed itself most often through strains of monotonous falsetto scolding, was a woman of little education and no refinement; while her husband clung tenaciously to his love of books, especially to the romances most in vogue when he took leave of France.
M. Roussillon had been, in a way, Alice's teacher, though not greatly inclined to abet Father Beret in his kindly efforts to make a Catholic of the girl, and most treacherously disposed toward the good priest in the matter of his well-meant attempts to prevent her from reading and re-reading the aforesaid romances. But for many weeks past Gaspard Roussillon had been absent from home, looking after his trading schemes with the Indians; and Pere Beret acting on the suggestion of the proverb about the absent cat and the playing mouse, had formed an alliance offensive and defensive with Madame Roussillon, in which it was strictly stipulated that all novels and romances were to be forcibly taken and securely hidden away from Mademoiselle Alice; which, to the best of Madame Roussillon's ability, had accordingly been done.
Now, while the wind strengthened and the softly booming summer shower came on apace, the heavy cloud lifting as it advanced and showing under it the dark gray sheet of the rain, Pere Beret and Alice sat under the clapboard roof behind the vines of the veranda and discussed, what was generally uppermost in the priest's mind upon such occasions, the good of Alice's immortal soul,--a subject not absorbingly interesting to her at any time.
It was a standing grief to the good old priest, this strange perversity of the girl in the matter of religious duty, as he saw it. True she had a faithful guardian in Gaspard Roussillon; but, much as he had done to aid the church's work in general, for he was always vigorous and liberal, he could not be looked upon as a very good Catholic; and of course his influence was not effective in the right direction. But then Pere Beret saw no reason why, in due time and with patient work, aided by Madame Roussillon and notwithstanding Gaspard's treachery, he might not safely lead Alice, whom he loved as a dear child, into the arms of the Holy Church, to serve which faithfully, at all hazards and in all places, was his highest aim.
"Ah, my child," he was saying, "you are a sweet, good girl, after all, much better than you make yourself out to be. Your duty will control you; you do it nobly at last, my child."
"True enough, Father Beret, true enough!" she responded, laughing, "your perception is most excellent, which I will prove to you immediately."
She rose while speaking and went into the house.
"I'll return in a minute or two," she called back from a region which Pere Beret well knew was that of the pantry; "don't get impatient and go away!"
Pere Beret laughed softly at the preposterous suggestion that he would even dream of going out in the rain, which was now roaring heavily on the loose board roof, and miss a cut of cherry pie--a cherry pie of Alice's making! And the Roussillon claret, too, was always excellent. "Ah, child," he thought, "your old Father is not going away."
She presently returned, bearing on a wooden tray a ruby-stained pie and a short, stout bottle flanked by two glasses.
"Of course I'm better than I sometimes appear to be," she said, almost humbly, but with mischief still in her voice and eyes, "and I shall get to be very good when I have grown old. The sweetness of my present nature is in this pie."
She set the tray on a three-legged stool which she pushed close to him.
"There now," she said, "let the rain come, you'll be happy, rain or shine, while the pie and wine last, I'll be bound."
Pere Beret fell to eating right heartily, meantime handing Jean a liberal piece of the luscious pie.
"It is good, my daughter, very good, indeed," the priest remarked with his mouth full. "Madame Roussillon has not neglected your culinary education." Alice filled a glass for him. It was Bordeaux and very fragrant. The bouquet reminded him of his sunny boyhood in France, of his journey up to Paris and of his careless, joy-brimmed youth in the gay city. How far away, how misty, yet how thrillingly sweet it all was! He sat with half closed eyes awhile, sipping and dreaming.
The rain lasted nearly two hours; but the sun was out again when Pere Beret took leave of his young friend. They had been having another good-natured quarrel over the novels, and Madame Roussillon had come out on the veranda to join in.
"I've hidden every book of them," said Madame, a stout and swarthy woman whose pearl-white teeth were her only mark of beauty. Her voice indicated great stubbornness.
"Good, good, you have done your very duty, Madame," said Pere Beret, with immense approval in his charming voice.
"But, Father, you said awhile ago that I should have my own way about this," Alice spoke up with spirit; "and on the strength of that remark of yours I gave you the pie and wine. You've eaten my pie and swigged the wine, and now--" Pere Beret put on his straw cap, adjusting it carefully over the shining dome out of which had come so many thoughts of wisdom, kindness and human sympathy. This done, he gently laid a hand on Alice's bright crown of hair and said: "Bless you, my child. I will pray to the Prince of Peace for you as long as I live, and I will never cease to beg the Holy Virgin to intercede for you and lead you to the Holy Church."
He turned and went away; but when he was no farther than the gate, Alice called out: "O Father Beret, I forgot to show you something!"
She ran forth to him and added in a low tone: "You know that Madame Roussillon has hidden all the novels from me."
She was fumbling to get something out of the loose front of her dress.
"Well, just take a glance at this, will you?" and she showed him a little leather bound volume, much cracked along the hinges of the back.
It was Manon Lescaut, that dreadful romance by the famous Abbe Prevost.
Pere Beret frowned and went his way shaking his head; but before he reached his little hut near the church he was laughing in spite of himself.
"She's not so bad, not so bad," he thought aloud, "it's only her young, independent spirit taking the bit for a wild run. In her sweet soul she is as good as she is pure."
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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2
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A LETTER FROM AFAR
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Although Father Beret was for many years a missionary on the Wabash, most of the time at Vincennes, the fact that no mention of him can be found in the records is not stranger than many other things connected with the old town's history. He was, like nearly all the men of his calling in that day, a self-effacing and modest hero, apparently quite unaware that he deserved attention. He and Father Gibault, whose name is so beautifully and nobly connected with the stirring achievements of Colonel George Rogers Clark, were close friends and often companions. Probably Father Gibault himself, whose fame will never fade, would have been to-day as obscure as Father Beret, but for the opportunity given him by Clark to fix his name in the list of heroic patriots who assisted in winning the great Northwest from the English.
Vincennes, even in the earliest days of its history, somehow kept up communication and, considering the circumstances, close relations with New Orleans. It was much nearer Detroit; but the Louisiana colony stood next to France in the imagination and longing of priests, voyageurs, coureurs de bois and reckless adventurers who had Latin blood in their veins. Father Beret first came to Vincennes from New Orleans, the voyage up the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash, in a pirogue, lasting through a whole summer and far into the autumn. Since his arrival the post had experienced many vicissitudes, and at the time in which our story opens the British government claimed right of dominion over the great territory drained by the Wabash, and, indeed, over a large, indefinitely outlined part of the North American continent lying above Mexico; a claim just then being vigorously questioned, flintlock in hand, by the Anglo-American colonies.
Of course the handful of French people at Vincennes, so far away from every center of information, and wholly occupied with their trading, trapping and missionary work, were late finding out that war existed between England and her colonies. Nor did it really matter much with them, one way or another. They felt secure in their lonely situation, and so went on selling their trinkets, weapons, domestic implements, blankets and intoxicating liquors to the Indians, whom they held bound to them with a power never possessed by any other white dwellers in the wilderness. Father Beret was probably subordinate to Father Gibault. At all events the latter appears to have had nominal charge of Vincennes, and it can scarcely be doubted that he left Father Beret on the Wabash, while he went to live and labor for a time at Kaskaskia beyond the plains of Illinois.
It is a curious fact that religion and the power of rum and brandy worked together successfully for a long time in giving the French posts almost absolute influence over the wild and savage men by whom they were always surrounded. The good priests deprecated the traffic in liquors and tried hard to control it, but soldiers of fortune and reckless traders were in the majority, their interests taking precedence of all spiritual demands and carrying everything along. What could the brave missionaries do but make the very best of a perilous situation?
In those days wine was drunk by almost everybody, its use at table and as an article of incidental refreshment and social pleasure being practically universal; wherefore the steps of reform in the matter of intemperance were but rudimentary and in all places beset by well-nigh insurmountable difficulties. In fact the exigencies of frontier life demanded, perhaps, the very stimulus which, when over indulged in, caused so much evil. Malaria loaded the air, and the most efficacious drugs now at command were then undiscovered or could not be had. Intoxicants were the only popular specific. Men drank to prevent contracting ague, drank again, between rigors, to cure it, and yet again to brace themselves during convalescence.
But if the effect of rum as a beverage had strong allurement for the white man, it made an absolute slave of the Indian, who never hesitated for a moment to undertake any task, no matter how hard, bear any privation, even the most terrible, or brave any danger, although it might demand reckless desperation, if in in the end a well filled bottle or jug appeared as his reward.
Of course the traders did not overlook such a source of power. Alcoholic liquor became their implement of almost magical work in controlling the lives, labors, and resources of the Indians. The priests with their captivating story of the Cross had a large influence in softening savage natures and averting many an awful danger; but when everything else failed, rum always came to the rescue of a threatened French post.
We need not wonder, then, when we are told that Father Beret made no sign of distress or disapproval upon being informed of the arrival of a boat loaded with rum, brandy or gin. It was Rene de Ronville who brought the news, the same Rene already mentioned as having given the priest a plate of squirrels. He was sitting on the doorsill of Father Beret's hut, when the old man reached it after his visit at the Roussillon home, and held in his hand a letter which he appeared proud to deliver.
"A batteau and seven men, with a cargo of liquor, came during the rain," he said, rising and taking off his curious cap, which, made of an animal's skin, had a tail jauntily dangling from its crown-tip; "and here is a letter for you, Father. The batteau is from New Orleans. Eight men started with it; but one went ashore to hunt and was killed by an Indian."
Father Beret took the letter without apparent interest and said: "Thank you, my son, sit down again; the door-log is not wetter than the stools inside; I will sit by you."
The wind had driven a flood of rain into the cabin through the open door, and water twinkled in puddles here and there on the floor's puncheons. They sat down side by side, Father Beret fingering the letter in an absent-minded way.
"There'll be a jolly time of it to-night," Rene de Ronville remarked, "a roaring time."
"Why do you say that, my son?" the priest demanded.
"The wine and the liquor," was the reply; "much drinking will be done. The men have all been dry here for some time, you know, and are as thirsty as sand. They are making ready to enjoy themselves down at the river house."
"Ah, the poor souls!" sighed Father Beret, speaking as one whose thoughts were wandering far away.
"Why don't you read your letter, Father?" Rene added.
The priest started, turned the soiled square of paper over in his hand, then thrust it inside his robe.
"It can wait," he said. Then, changing his voice; "the squirrels you gave me were excellent, my son. It was good of you to think of me," he added, laying his hand on Rene's arm.
"Oh, I'm glad if I have pleased you, Father Beret, for you are so kind to me always, and to everybody. When I killed the squirrels I said to myself: 'These are young, juicy and tender, Father Beret must have these,' so I brought them along."
The young man rose to go; for he was somehow impressed that Father Beret must wish opportunity to read his letter, and would prefer to be left alone with it. But the priest pulled him down again.
"Stay a while," he said, "I have not had a talk with you for some time."
Rene looked a trifle uneasy.
"You will not drink any to-night, my son," Father Beret added. "You must not; do you hear?"
The young man's eyes and mouth at once began to have a sullen expression; evidently he was not pleased and felt rebellious; but it was hard for him to resist Father Beret, whom he loved, as did every soul in the post. The priest's voice was sweet and gentle, yet positive to a degree. Rene did not say a word.
"Promise me that you will not taste liquor this night," Father Beret went on, grasping the young man's arm more firmly; "promise me, my son, promise me."
Still Rene was silent. The men did not look at each other, but gazed away across the country beyond the Wabash to where a glory from the western sun flamed on the upper rim of a great cloud fragment creeping along the horizon. Warm as the day had been, a delicious coolness now began to temper the air; for the wind had shifted into the northwest. A meadowlark sang dreamingly in the wild grass of the low lands hard by, over which two or three prairie hawks hovered with wings that beat rapidly.
"Eh bien, I must go," said Rene presently, getting to his feet nimbly and evading Father Beret's hand which would have held him.
"Not to the river house, my son?" said the priest appealingly.
"No, not there; I have another letter; one for M'sieu' Roussillon; it came by the boat too. I go to give it to Madame Roussillon."
Rene de Ronville was a dark, weather-stained young fellow, neither tall nor short, wearing buckskin moccasins, trousers and tunic. His eyes were dark brown, keen, quick-moving, set well under heavy brows. A razor had probably never touched his face, and his thin, curly beard crinkled over his strongly turned cheeks and chin, while his moustaches sprang out quite fiercely above his full-lipped, almost sensual mouth. He looked wiry and active, a man not to be lightly reckoned with in a trial of bodily strength and will power.
Father Beret's face and voice changed on the instant. He laughed dryly and said, with a sly gleam in his eyes: "You could spend the evening pleasantly with Madame Roussillon and Jean. Jean, you know, is a very amusing fellow."
Rene brought forth the letter of which he had spoken and held it up before Father Beret's face.
"Maybe you think I haven't any letter for M'sieu' Roussillon," he blurted; "and maybe you are quite certain that I am not going to the house to take the letter."
"Monsieur Roussillon is absent, you know," Father Beret suggested. "But cherry pies are just as good while he's gone as when he's at home, and I happen to know that there are some particularly delicious ones in the pantry of Madame Roussillon. Mademoiselle Alice gave me a juicy sample; but then I dare say you do not care to have your pie served by her hand. It would interfere with your appetite; eh, my son?"
Rene turned short about wagging his head and laughing, and so with his back to the priest he strode away along the wet path leading to the Roussillon place.
Father Beret gazed after him, his face relaxing to a serious expression in which a trace of sadness and gloom spread like an elusive twilight. He took out his letter, but did not glance at it, simply holding it tightly gripped in his sinewy right hand. Then his old eyes stared vacantly, as eyes do when their sight is cast back many, many years into the past. The missive was from beyond the sea--he knew the handwriting--a waft of the flowers of Avignon seemed to rise out of it, as if by the pressure of his grasp.
A stoop-shouldered, burly man went by, leading a pair of goats, a kid following. He was making haste excitedly, keeping the goats at a lively trot.
"Bon jour, Pere Beret," he flung out breezily, and walked rapidly on.
"Ah, ah; his mind is busy with the newly arrived cargo," thought the old priest, returning the salutation; "his throat aches for the liquor,--the poor man."
Then he read again the letter's superscription and made a faltering move, as if to break the seal. His hands trembled violently, his face looked gray and drawn.
"Come on, you brutes," cried the receding man, jerking the thongs of skin by which he led the goats.
Father Beret rose and turned into his damp little hut, where the light was dim on the crucifix hanging opposite the door against the clay-daubed wall. It was a bare, unsightly, clammy room; a rude bed on one side, a shelf for table and two or three wooden stools constituting the furniture, while the uneven puncheons of the floor wabbled and clattered under the priest's feet.
An unopened letter is always a mysterious thing. We who receive three or four mails every day, scan each little paper square with a speculative eye. Most of us know what sweet uncertainty hangs on the opening of envelopes whose contents may be almost anything except something important, and what a vague yet delicious thrill comes with the snip of the paper knife; but if we be in a foreign land and long years absent from home, then is a letter subtly powerful to move us, even more before it is opened than after it is read.
It had been many years since a letter from home had come to Father Beret. The last, before the one now in his hand, had made him ill of nostalgia, fairly shaking his iron determination never to quit for a moment his life work as a missionary. Ever since that day he had found it harder to meet the many and stern demands of a most difficult and exacting duty. Now the mere touch of the paper in his hand gave him a sense of returning weakness, dissatisfaction, and longing. The home of his boyhood, the rushing of the Rhone, a seat in a shady nook of the garden, Madeline, his sister, prattling beside him, and his mother singing somewhere about the house--it all came back and went over him and through him, making his heart sink strangely, while another voice, the sweetest ever heard--but she was ineffable and her memory a forbidden fragrance.
Father Beret tottered across the forlorn little room and knelt before the crucifix holding his clasped hands high, the letter pressed between them. His lips moved in prayer, but made no sound; his whole frame shook violently.
It would be unpardonable desecration to enter the chamber of Father Beret's soul and look upon his sacred and secret trouble; nor must we even speculate as to its particulars. The good old man writhed and wrestled before the cross for a long time, until at last he seemed to receive the calmness and strength he prayed for so fervently; then he rose, tore the letter into pieces so small that not a word remained whole, and squeezed them so firmly together that they were compressed into a tiny, solid ball, which he let fall through a crack between the floor puncheons. After waiting twenty years for that letter, hungry as his heart was, he did not even open it when at last it arrived. He would never know what message it bore. The link between him and the old sweet days was broken forever. Now with God's help he could do his work to the end.
He went and stood in his doorway, leaning against the side. Was it a mere coincidence that the meadowlark flew up just then from its grass-tuft, and came to the roof's comb overhead, where it lit with a light yet audible stroke of its feet and began fluting its tender, lonesome-sounding strain? If Father Beret heard it he gave no sign of recognition; very likely he was thinking about the cargo of liquor and how he could best counteract its baleful influence. He looked toward the "river house," as the inhabitants had named a large shanty, which stood on a bluff of the Wabash not far from where the road-bridge at present crosses, and saw men gathering there.
Meantime Rene de Ronville had delivered Madame Roussillon's letter with due promptness. Of course such a service demanded pie and claret. What still better pleased him, Alice chose to be more amiable than was usually her custom when he called. They sat together in the main room of the house where M. Roussillon kept his books, his curiosities of Indian manufacture collected here and there, and his surplus firearms, swords, pistols, and knives, ranged not unpleasingly around the walls.
Of course, along with the letter, Rene bore the news, so interesting to himself, of the boat's tempting cargo just discharged at the river house. Alice understood her friend's danger--felt it in the intense enthusiasm of his voice and manner. She had once seen the men carousing on a similar occasion when she was but a child, and the impression then made still remained in her memory. Instinctively she resolved to hold Rene by one means or another away from the river house if possible. So she managed to keep him occupied eating pie, sipping watered claret and chatting until night came on and Madame Roussillon brought in a lamp. Then he hurriedly snatched his cap from the floor beside him and got up to go.
"Come and look at my handiwork," Alice quickly said; "my shelf of pies, I mean." She led him to the pantry, where a dozen or more of the cherry pates were ranged in order. "I made every one of them this morning and baked them; had them all out of the oven before the rain came up. Don't you think me a wonder of cleverness and industry? Father Beret was polite enough to flatter me; but you--you just eat what you want and say nothing! You are not polite, Monsieur Rene de Ronville."
"I've been showing you what I thought of your goodies," said Rene; "eating's better than talking, you know; so I'll just take one more," and he helped himself. "Isn't that compliment enough?"
"A few such would make me another hot day's work," she replied, laughing. "Pretty talk would be cheaper and more satisfactory in the long run. Even the flour in these pates I ground with my own hand in an Indian mortar. That was hard work too."
By this time Rene had forgotten the river house and the liquor. With softening eyes he gazed at Alice's rounded cheeks and sheeny hair over which the light from the curious earthen lamp she bore in her hand flickered most effectively. He loved her madly; but his fear of her was more powerful than his love. She gave him no opportunity to speak what he felt, having ever ready a quick, bright change of mood and manner when she saw him plucking up courage to address her in a sentimental way. Their relations had long been somewhat familiar, which was but natural, considering their youth and the circumstances of their daily life; but Alice somehow had kept a certain distance open between them, so that very warm friendship could not suddenly resolve itself into a troublesome passion on Rene's part.
We need not attempt to analyze a young girl's feeling and motives in such a case; what she does and what she thinks are mysteries even to her own understanding. The influence most potent in shaping the rudimentary character of Alice Tarleton (called Roussillon) had been only such as a lonely frontier post could generate. Her associations with men and women had, with few exceptions, been unprofitable in an educational way, while her reading in M. Roussillon's little library could not have given her any practical knowledge of manners and life.
She was fond of Rene de Ronville, and it would have been quite in accordance with the law of ordinary human forces, indeed almost the inevitable thing, for her to love and marry him in the fullness of time; but her imagination was outgrowing her surroundings. Books had given her a world of romance wherein she moved at will, meeting a class of people far different from those who actually shared her experiences. Her day-dreams and her night-dreams partook much more of what she had read and imagined than of what she had seen and heard in the raw little world around her.
Her affection for Rene was interfered with by her large admiration for the heroic, masterful and magnetic knights who charged through the romances of the Roussillon collection. For although Rene was unquestionably brave and more than passably handsome, he had no armor, no war-horse, no shining lance and embossed shield--the difference, indeed, was great.
Those who love to contend against the fatal drift of our age toward over-education could find in Alice Tarleton, foster daughter of Gaspard Roussillon, a primitive example, an elementary case in point. What could her book education do but set up stumbling blocks in the path of happiness? She was learning to prefer the ideal to the real. Her soul was developing itself as best it could for the enjoyment of conditions and things absolutely foreign to the possibilities of her lot in life.
Perhaps it was the light and heat of imagination, shining out through Alice's face, which gave her beauty such a fascinating power. Rene saw it and felt its electrical stroke send a sweet shiver through his heart, while he stood before her.
"You are very beautiful to-night Alice," he presently said, with a suddenness which took even her alertness by surprise. A flush rose to his dark face and immediately gave way to a grayish pallor. His heart came near stopping on the instant, he was so shocked by his own daring; but he laid a hand on her hair, stroking it softly.
Just a moment she was at a loss, looking a trifle embarrassed, then with a merry laugh she stepped aside and said: "That sounds better, Monsieur Rene de Ronville much better; you will be as polite as Father Beret after a little more training."
She slipped past him while speaking and made her way back again to the main room, whence she called to him: "Come here, I've something to show you."
He obeyed, a sheepish trace on his countenance betraying his self-consciousness.
When he came near Alice she was taking from its buckhorn hook on the wall a rapier, one of a beautiful pair hanging side by side.
"Papa Roussillon gave me these," she said with great animation. "He bought them of an Indian who had kept them a long time; where he came across them he would not tell; but look how beautiful! Did you ever see anything so fine?"
Guard and hilt were of silver; the blade, although somewhat corroded, still showed the fine wavy lines of Damascus steel and traces of delicate engraving, while in the end of the hilt was set a large oval turquoise.
"A very queer present to give a girl," said Rene; "what can you do with them?"
A captivating flash of playfulness came into her face and she sprang backward, giving the sword a semicircular turn with her wrist. The blade sent forth a keen hiss as it cut the air close, very close to Rene's nose. He jerked his head and flung up his hand.
She laughed merrily, standing beautifully poised before him, the rapier's point slightly elevated. Her short skirt left her feet and ankles free to show their graceful proportions and the perfect pose in which they held her supple body.
"You see what I can do with the colechemarde, eh, Monsieur Rene de Ronville!" she exclaimed, giving him a smile which fairly blinded him. "Notice how very near to your neck I can thrust and yet not touch it. Now!"
She darted the keen point under his chin and drew it away so quickly that the stroke was like a glint of sunlight.
"What do you think of that as a nice and accurate piece of skill?"
She again resumed her pose, the right foot advanced, the left arm well back, her lissome, finely developed body leaning slightly forward.
Rene's hands were up before his face in a defensive position, palms outward.
Just then a chorus of men's voices sounded in the distance. The river house was beginning its carousal with a song. Alice let fall her sword's point and listened.
Rene looked about for his cap.
"I must be going," he said.
Another and louder swish of the rapier made him pirouette and dodge again with great energy.
"Don't," he cried, "that's dangerous; you'll put out my eyes; I never saw such a girl!"
She laughed at him and kept on whipping the air dangerously near his eyes, until she had driven him backward as far as he could squeeze himself into a comer of the room.
Madame Roussillon came to the door from the kitchen and stood looking in and laughing, with her hands on her hips. By this time the rapier was making a criss-cross pattern of flashing lines close to the young man's head while Alice, in the enjoyment of her exercise, seemed to concentrate all the glowing rays of her beauty in her face, her eyes dancing merrily.
"Quit, now, Alice," he begged, half in fun and half in abject fear; "please quit--I surrender!"
She thrust to the wall on either side of him, then springing lightly backward a pace, stood at guard. Her thick yellow hair had fallen over her neck and shoulders in a loose wavy mass, out of which her face beamed with a bewitching effect upon her captive.
Rene, glad enough to have a cessation of his peril, stood laughing dryly; but the singing down at the river house was swelling louder and he made another movement to go.
"You surrendered, you remember," cried Alice, renewing the sword-play; "sit down on the chair there and make yourself comfortable. You are not going down yonder to-night; you are going to stay here and talk with me and Mother Roussillon; we are lonesome and you are good company."
A shot rang out keen and clear; there was a sudden tumult that broke up the distant singing; and presently more firing at varying intervals cut the night air from the direction of the river.
Jean, the hunchback, came in to say that there was a row of some sort; he had seen men running across the common as if in pursuit of a fugitive; but the moonlight was so dim that he could not be sure what it all meant.
Rene picked up his cap and bolted out of the house.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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3
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THE RAPE OF THE DEMIJOHN
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The row down at the river house was more noise than fight, so far as results seemed to indicate. It was all about a small dame jeanne of fine brandy, which an Indian by the name of Long-Hair had seized and run off with at the height of the carousal. He must have been soberer than his pursuers, or naturally fleeter; for not one of them could catch him, or even keep long in sight of him. Some pistols were emptied while the race was on, and two or three of the men swore roundly to having seen Long-Hair jump sidewise and stagger, as if one of the shots had taken effect. But, although the moon was shining, he someway disappeared, they could not understand just how, far down beside the river below the fort and the church.
It was not a very uncommon thing for an Indian to steal what he wanted, and in most cases light punishment followed conviction; but it was felt to be a capital offense for an Indian or anybody else to rape a demijohn of fine brandy, especially one sent as a present, by a friend in New Orleans, to Lieutenant Governor Abbott, who had until recently been the commandant of the post. Every man at the river house recognized and resented the enormity of Long-Hair's crime and each was, for the moment, ready to be his judge and his executioner. He had broken at once every rule of frontier etiquette and every bond of sympathy. Nor was Long-Hair ignorant of the danger involved in his daring enterprise. He had beforehand carefully and stolidly weighed all the conditions, and true to his Indian nature, had concluded that a little wicker covered bottle of brandy was well worth the risk of his life. So he had put himself in condition for a great race by slipping out and getting rid of his weapons and all surplus weight of clothes.
This incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to a sudden end; but nothing further came of it that night, and no record of it would be found in these pages, but for the fact that Long-Hair afterwards became an important character in the stirring historical drama which had old Vincennes for its center of energy.
Rene de Ronville probably felt himself in bad luck when he arrived at the river house just too late to share in the liquor or to join in chasing the bold thief. He listened with interest, however, to the story of Long-Hair's capture of the commandant's demijohn and could not refrain from saying that if he had been present there would have been a quite different result.
"I would have shot him before he got to that door," he said, drawing his heavy flint-lock pistol and going through the motions of one aiming quickly and firing. Indeed, so vigorously in earnest was he with the pantomime, that he actually did fire, unintentionally of course,--the ball burying itself in the door-jamb.
He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than they who witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced and grizzled old sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said in queer French, with a curious accent caught from long use of backwoods English: "Listen how the boy brags! Ye might think, to hear Rene talk, that he actually amounted to a big pile."
This personage was known to every soul in Vincennes as Oncle Jazon, and when Oncle Jazon spoke the whole town felt bound to listen.
"An' how well he shoots, too," he added with an intolerable wink; "aimed at the door and hit the post. Certainly Long-Hair would have been in great danger! O yes, he'd 'ave killed Long-Hair at the first shot, wouldn't he though!"
Oncle Jazon had the air of a large man, but the stature of a small one; in fact he was shriveled bodily to a degree which suggested comparison with a sun-dried wisp of hickory bark; and when he chuckled, as he was now doing, his mouth puckered itself until it looked like a scar on his face. From cap to moccasins he had every mark significant of a desperate character; and yet there was about him something that instantly commanded the confidence of rough men,--the look of self-sufficiency and superior capability always to be found in connection with immense will power. His sixty years of exposure, hardship, and danger seemed to have but toughened his physique and strengthened his vitality. Out of his small hazel eyes gleamed a light as keen as ice.
"All right, Oncle Jazon," said Rene laughing and blowing the smoke out of his pistol; "'twas you all the same who let Long-Hair trot off with the Governor's brandy, not I. If you could have hit even a door-post it might have been better."
Oncle Jazon took off his cap and looked down into it in a way he had when about to say something final.
"Ventrebleu! I did not shoot at Long-Hair at all," he said, speaking slowly, "because the scoundrel was unarmed. He didn't have on even a knife, and he was havin' enough to do dodgin' the bullets that the rest of 'em were plumpin' at 'im without any compliments from me to bother 'im more."
"Well," Rene replied, turning away with a laugh, "if I'd been scalped by the Indians, as you have, I don't think there would be any particular reason why I should wait for an Indian thief to go and arm himself before I accepted him as a target."
Oncle Jazon lifted a hand involuntarily and rubbed his scalpless crown; then he chuckled with a grotesque grimace as if the recollection of having his head skinned were the funniest thing imaginable.
"When you've killed as many of 'em as Oncle Jazon has," remarked a bystander to Rene, "you'll not be so hungry for blood, maybe."
"Especially after ye've took fifty-nine scalps to pay for yer one," added Oncle Jazon, replacing his cap over the hairless area of his crown.
The men who had been chasing Long-Hair, presently came straggling back with their stories--each had a distinct one--of how the fugitive escaped. They were wild looking fellows, most of them somewhat intoxicated, all profusely liberal with their stock of picturesque profanity. They represented the roughest element of the well-nigh lawless post.
"I'm positive that he's wounded," said one. "Jacques and I shot at him together, so that our pistols sounded just as if only one had been fired--bang! that way--and he leaped sideways for all the world like a bird with a broken leg. I thought he'd fall; but ve! he ran faster'n ever, and all at once he was gone; just disappeared."
"Well, to-morrow we'll get him," said another. "You and I and Jacques, we'll take up his trail, the thief, and follow him till we find him. He can't get off so easy."
"I don't know so well about that," said another; "it's Long-Hair, you must remember, and Long-Hair is no common buck that just anybody can find asleep. You know what Long-Hair is. Nobody's ever got even with 'im yet. That's so, ain't it? Just ask Oncle Jazon, if you don't believe it!"
The next morning Long-Hair was tracked to the edge. He had been wounded, but whether seriously or not could only be conjectured. A sprinkle of blood, here and there quite a dash of it, reddened the grass and clumps of weeds he had run through, and ended close to the water into which it looked as if he had plunged with a view to baffling pursuit. Indeed pursuit was baffled. No further trace could be found, by which to follow the cunning fugitive. Some of the men consoled themselves by saying, without believing, that Long-Hair was probably lying drowned at the bottom of the river.
"Pas du tout," observed Oncle Jazon, his short pipe askew far over in the corner of his mouth, "not a bit of it is that Indian drowned. He's jes' as live as a fat cat this minute, and as drunk as the devil. He'll get some o' yer scalps yet after he's guzzled all that brandy and slep' a week."
It finally transpired that Oncle Jazon was partly right and partly wrong. Long-Hair was alive, even as a fat cat, perhaps; but not drunk, for in trying to swim with the rotund little dame jeanne under his arm he lost hold of it and it went to the bottom of the Wabash, where it may be lying at this moment patiently waiting for some one to fish it out of its bed deep in the sand and mud, and break the ancient wax from its neck!
Rene de Ronville, after the chase of Long-Hair had been given over, went to tell Father Beret what had happened, and finding the priest's hut empty turned into the path leading to the Roussillon place, which was at the head of a narrow street laid out in a direction at right angles to the river's course. He passed two or three diminutive cabins, all as much alike as bee-hives. Each had its squat veranda and thatched or clapboarded roof held in place by weight-poles ranged in roughly parallel rows, and each had the face of the wall under its veranda neatly daubed with a grayish stucco made of mud and lime. You may see such houses today in some remote parts of the creole country of Louisiana.
As Rene passed along he spoke with a gay French freedom to the dames and lasses who chanced to be visible. His air would be regarded as violently brigandish in our day; we might even go so far as to think his whole appearance comical. His jaunty cap with a tail that wagged as he walked, his short trousers and leggins of buckskin, and his loose shirt-like tunic, drawn in at the waist with a broad belt, gave his strong figure just the dash of wildness suited to the armament with which it was weighted. A heavy gun lay in the hollow of his shoulder under which hung an otter-skin bullet-pouch with its clear powder-horn and white bone charger. In his belt were two huge flint-lock pistols and a long case-knife.
"Bon jour, Ma'm'selle Adrienne," he cheerily called, waving his free hand in greeting to a small, dark lass standing on the step of a veranda and indolently swinging a broom. "Comment allez-vous auj ourd'hui?"
"J'm'porte tres bien, merci, Mo'sieu Rene," was the quick response; "et vous?"
"Oh, I'm as lively as a cricket."
"Going a hunting?"
"No, just up here a little way--just on business--up to Mo'sieu Roussillon's for a moment."
"Yes," the girl responded in a tone indicative of something very like spleen, "yes, undoubtedly, Mo'sieu de Ronville; your business there seems quite pressing of late. I have noticed your industrious application to that business."
"Ta-ta, little one," he wheedled, lowering his voice; "you mustn't go to making bug-bears out of nothing."
"Bug-bears!" she retorted, "you go on about your business and I'll attend to mine," and she flirted into the house.
Rene laughed under his breath, standing a moment as if expecting her to come out again; but she did not, and he resumed his walk singing softly-- "Elle a les joues vermeilles, vermeilles, Ma belle, ma belle petite."
But ten to one he was not thinking of Madamoiselle Adrienne Bourcier. His mind, however, must have been absorbingly occupied; for in the straight, open way he met Father Beret and did not see him until he came near bumping against the old man, who stepped aside with astonishing agility and said-- "Dieu vous benisse, mon fils; but what is your great hurry--where can you be going in such happy haste?" Rene did not stop to parley with the priest. He flung some phrase of pleasant greeting back over his shoulder as he trudged on, his heart beginning a tattoo against his ribs when the Roussillon place came in sight, and he took hold of his mustache to pull it, as some men must do in moments of nervousness and bashfulness. If sounds ever have color, the humming in his ears was of a rosy hue; if thoughts ever exhale fragrance, his brain overflowed with the sweets of violet and heliotrope.
He had in mind what he was going to say when Alice and he should be alone together. It was a pretty speech, he thought; indeed a very thrilling little speech, by the way it stirred his own nerve-centers as he conned it over.
Madame Roussillon met him at the door in not a very good humor.
"Is Mademoiselle Alice here?" he ventured to demand.
"Alice? no, she's not here; she's never here just when I want her most. V'la le picbois et la grive--see the woodpecker and the robin--eating the cherries, eating every one of them, and that girl running off somewhere instead of staying here and picking them," she railed in answer to the young man's polite inquiry. "I haven't seen her these four hours, neither her nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They're up to some mischief, I'll be bound!"
Madame Roussillon puffed audibly between phrases; but she suddenly became very mild when relieved of her tirade.
"Mais entrez," she added in a pleasant tone, "come in and tell me the news."
Rene's disappointment rushed into his face, but he managed to laugh it aside.
"Father Beret has just been telling me," said Madame Roussillon, "that our friend Long-Hair made some trouble last night. How about it?"
Rene told her what he knew and added that Long-Hair would probably never be seen again.
"He was shot, no doubt of it," he went on, "and is now being nibbled by fish and turtles. We tracked him by his blood to where he jumped into the Wabash. He never came out."
Strangely enough it happened that, at the very time of this chat between Madame Roussillon and Rene Alice was bandaging Long-Hair's wounded leg with strips of her apron. It was under some willows which overhung the bank of a narrow and shallow lagoon or slough, which in those days extended a mile or two back into the country on the farther side of the river. Alice and Jean went over in a pirogue to see if the water lilies, haunting a pond there, were yet beginning to bloom. They landed at a convenient spot some distance up the little lagoon, made the boat fast by dragging its prow high ashore, and were on the point of setting out across a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when a deep grunt, not unlike that of a self-satisfied pig, attracted them to the willows, where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, weltering in some black mud.
His hiding-place was cunningly chosen, save that the mire troubled him, letting him down by slow degrees, and threatening to engulf him bodily; and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a figure not to be forgotten.
"They've been hunting him everywhere," he said in a half whisper to Alice, clutching the skirt of her dress. "It's Long-Hair, the Indian who stole the brandy; I know him."
Alice recoiled a pace or two.
"Let's go back and tell 'em," Jean added, still whispering, "they want to kill him; Oncle Jazon said so. Come on!"
He gave her dress a jerk; but she did not move any farther back; she was looking at the blood oozing from a wound in the Indian's leg.
"He is shot, he is hurt, Jean, we must help him," she presently said, recovering her self-control, yet still pale. "We must get him out of that bad place."
Jean caught Alice's merciful spirit with sympathetic readiness, and showed immediate willingness to aid her.
It was a difficult thing to do; but there was a will and of course a way. They had knives with which they cut willows to make a standing place on the mud. While they were doing this they spoke friendly words to Long-Hair, who understood French a little, and at last they got hold of his arms, tugged, rested, tugged again, and finally managed to help him to a dry place, still under the willows, where he could lie more at ease. Jean carried water in his cap with which they washed the wound and the stolid savage face. Then Alice tore up her cotton apron, in which she had hoped to bear home a load of lilies, and with the strips bound the wound very neatly. It took a long time, during which the Indian remained silent and apparently quite indifferent.
Long-Hair was a man of superior physique, tall, straight, with the muscles of a Vulcan; and while he lay stretched on the ground half clad and motionless, he would have been a grand model for an heroic figure in bronze. Yet from every lineament there came a strange repelling influence, like that from a snake. Alice felt almost unbearable disgust while doing her merciful task; but she bravely persevered until it was finished.
It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun would be setting before they could reach home.
"We must hurry back, Jean," Alice said, turning to depart. "It will be all we can do to reach the other side in daylight. I'm thinking that they'll be out hunting for us too, if we don't move right lively. Come."
She gave the Indian another glance when she had taken but a step. He grunted and held up something in his hand--something that shone with a dull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which she had always worn in her bosom. She sprang and snatched it from his palm.
"Thank you," she exclaimed, smiling gratefully. "I am so glad you found it."
The chain by which the locket had hung was broken, doubtless by some movement while dragging Long-Hair out of the mud, and the lid had sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when she was a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet baby face, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff of golden hair. The neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richly delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave somehow a suggestion of patrician daintiness.
Long-Hair looked keenly into Alice's eyes, when she stooped to take the locket from his hand, but said nothing.
She and Jean now hurried away, and, so vigorously did they paddle the pirogue, that the sky was yet red in the west when they reached home and duly received their expected scolding from Madame Roussillon.
Alice sealed Jean's lips as to their adventure; for she had made up her mind to save Long-Hair if possible, and she felt sure that the only way to do it would be to trust no one but Father Beret.
It turned out that Long-Hair's wound was neither a broken bone nor a cut artery. The flesh of his leg, midway between the hip and the knee, was pierced; the bullet had bored a neat hole clean through. Father Beret took the case in hand, and with no little surgical skill proceeded to set the big Indian upon his feet again. The affair had to be cleverly managed. Food, medicines and clothing were surreptitiously borne across the river; a bed of grass was kept fresh under Long-Hair's back; his wound was regularly dressed; and finally his weapons--a tomahawk, a knife, a strong bow and a quiver of arrows--which he had hidden on the night of his bold theft, were brought to him.
"Now go and sin no more," said good Father Beret; but he well knew that his words were mere puffs of articulate wind in the ear of the grim and silent savage, who limped away with an air of stately dignity into the wilderness.
A load fell from Alice's mind when Father Beret informed her of Long-Hair's recovery and departure. Day and night the dread lest some of the men should find out his hiding-place and kill him had depressed and worried her. And now, when it was all over, there still hovered like an elusive shadow in her consciousness a vague haunting impression of the incident's immense significance as an influence in her life. To feel that she had saved a man from death was a new sensation of itself; but the man and the circumstances were picturesque; they invited imagination; they furnished an atmosphere of romance dear to all young and healthy natures, and somehow stirred her soul with a strange appeal.
Long-Hair's imperturbable calmness, his stolid, immobile countenance, the mysterious reptilian gleam of his shifty black eyes, and the soulless expression always lurking in them, kept a fascinating hold on the girl's memory. They blended curiously with the impressions left by the romances she had read in M. Roussillon's mildewed books.
Long-Hair was not a young man; but it would have been impossible to guess near his age. His form and face simply showed long experience and immeasurable vigor. Alice remembered with a shuddering sensation the look he gave her when she took the locket from his hand. It was of but a second's duration, yet it seemed to search every nook of her being with its subtle power.
Romancers have made much of their Indian heroes, picturing them as models of manly beauty and nobility; but all fiction must be taken with liberal pinches of salt. The plain truth is that dark savages of the pure blood often do possess the magnetism of perfect physical development and unfathomable mental strangeness; but real beauty they never have. Their innate repulsiveness is so great that, like the snake's charm, it may fascinate; yet an indescribable, haunting disgust goes with it. And, after all, if Alice had been asked to tell just how she felt toward the Indian she had labored so hard to save, she would promptly have said: "I loathe him as I do a toad!"
Nor would Father Beret, put to the same test, have made a substantially different confession. His work, to do which his life went as fuel to fire, was training the souls of Indians for the reception of divine grace; but experience had not changed his first impression of savage character. When he traveled in the wilderness he carried the Word and the Cross; but he was also armed with a gun and two good pistols, not to mention a dangerous knife. The rumor prevailed that Father Beret could drive a nail at sixty yards with his rifle, and at twenty snuff a candle with either one of his pistols.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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4
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THE FIRST MAYOR OF VINCENNES
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Governor Abbott probably never so much as heard of the dame jeanne of French brandy sent to him by his creole friend in New Orleans. He had been gone from Vincennes several months when the batteau arrived, having been recalled to Detroit by the British authorities; and he never returned. Meantime the little post with its quaint cabins and its dilapidated block-house, called Fort Sackville, lay sunning drowsily by the river in a blissful state of helplessness from the military point of view. There was no garrison; the two or three pieces of artillery, abandoned and exposed, gathered rust and cobwebs, while the pickets of the stockade, decaying and loosened in the ground by winter freezes and summer rains, leaned in all directions, a picture of decay and inefficiency.
The inhabitants of the town, numbering about six hundred, lived very much as pleased them, without any regular municipal government, each family its own tribe, each man a law unto himself; yet for mutual protection, they all kept in touch and had certain common rights which were religiously respected and defended faithfully. A large pasturing ground was fenced in where the goats and little black cows of the villagers browsed as one herd, while the patches of wheat, corn and vegetables were not inclosed at all. A few of the thriftier and more important citizens, however, had separate estates of some magnitude, surrounding their residences, kept up with care and, if the time and place be taken into account, with considerable show of taste.
Monsieur Gaspard Roussillon was looked upon as the aristocrat par excellence of Vincennes, notwithstanding the fact that his name bore no suggestion of noble or titled ancestry. He was rich and in a measure educated; moreover the successful man's patent of leadership, a commanding figure and a suave manner, came always to his assistance when a crisis presented itself. He traded shrewdly, much to his own profit, but invariably with the excellent result that the man, white or Indian, with whom he did business felt himself especially favored in the transaction. By the exercise of firmness, prudence, vast assumption, florid eloquence and a kindly liberality he had greatly endeared himself to the people; so that in the absence of a military commander he came naturally to be regarded as the chief of the town, Mo'sieu' le maire.
He returned from his extended trading expedition about the middle of July, bringing, as was his invariable rule, a gift for Alice. This time it was a small, thin disc of white flint, with a hole in the center through which a beaded cord of sinew was looped. The edge of the disc was beautifully notched and the whole surface polished so that it shone like glass, while the beads, made of very small segments of porcupine quills, were variously dyed, making a curiously gaudy show of bright colors.
"There now, ma cherie, is something worth fifty times its weight in gold," said M. Roussillon when he presented the necklace to his foster daughter with pardonable self-satisfaction. "It is a sacred charm-string given me by an old heathen who would sell his soul for a pint of cheap rum. He solemnly informed me that whoever wore it could not by any possibility be killed by an enemy."
Alice kissed M. Roussillon.
"It's so curious and beautiful," she said, holding it up and drawing the variegated string through her fingers. Then, with her mischievous laugh, she added; "and I'm glad it is so powerful against one's enemy; I'll wear it whenever I go where Adrienne Bourcier is, see if I don't!"
"Is she your enemy? What's up between you and la petite Adrienne, eh?" M. Roussillon lightly demanded. "You were always the best of good friends, I thought. What's happened?"
"Oh, we are good friends," said Alice, quickly, "very good friends, indeed; I was but chaffing."
"Good friends, but enemies; that's how it is with women. Who's the young man that's caused the coolness? I could guess, maybe!" He laughed and winked knowingly. "May I be so bold as to name him at a venture?"
"Yes, if you'll be sure to mention Monsieur Rene de Ronville," she gayly answered. "Who but he could work Adrienne up into a perfect green mist of jealousy?"
"He would need an accomplice, I should imagine; a young lady of some beauty and a good deal of heartlessness."
"Like whom, for example?" and she tossed her bright head. "Not me, I am sure."
"Poh! like every pretty maiden in the whole world, ma petite coquette; they're all alike as peas, cruel as blue jays and as sweet as apple-blossoms." He stroked her hair clumsily with his large hand, as a heavy and roughly fond man is apt to do, adding in an almost serious tone: "But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope."
Alice was putting her head through the string of beads and letting the translucent white disc fall into her bosom.
"It's time to change the subject," she said; "tell me what you have seen while away. I wish I could go far off and see things. Have you been to Detroit, Quebec, Montreal?"
"Yes, I've been to all, a long, hard journey, but reasonably profitable. You shall have a goodly dot when you get married, my child."
"And did you attend any parties and balls?" she inquired quickly, ignoring his concluding remark. "Tell me about them. How do the fine ladies dress, and do they wear their hair high with great big combs? Do they have long skirts and--" "Hold up, you double-tongued chatterbox!" he interrupted; "I can't answer forty questions at once. Yes, I danced till my legs ached with women old and girls young; but how could I remember how they were dressed and what their style of coiffure was? I know that silk rustled and there was a perfume of eau de Cologne and mignonette and my heart expanded and blazed while I whirled like a top with a sweet lady in my arms."
"Yes, you must have cut a ravishing figure!" interpolated Madame Roussillon with emphatic disapproval, her eyes snapping. "A bull in a lace shop. How delighted the ladies must have been!"
"Never saw such blushing faces and burning glances--such fluttering breasts, such--" "Big braggart," Madame Roussillon broke in contemptuously, "it's a piastre to a sou that you stood gawping in through a window while gentlemen and ladies did the dancing. I can imagine how you looked--I can!" and with this she took her prodigious bulk at a waddling gait out of the room. "I remember how you danced even when you were not clumsy as a pig on ice!" she shrieked back over her shoulder.
"Parbleu! true enough, my dear," he called after her, "I should think you could--you mind how we used trip it together. You were the prettiest dancer them all, and the young fellows all went to the swords about you!"
"But tell me more," Alice insisted; "I want to know about what you saw in the great towns--in the fine houses--how the ladies looked, how they acted--what they said--the dresses they wore--how--" "Ciel! you will split my ears, child; can't you fill my pipe and bring it to me with a coal on it? Then I'll try to tell you what I can," he cried, assuming a humorously resigned air. "Perhaps if I smoke I can remember everything."
Alice gladly ran to do what he asked. Meantime Jean was out on the gallery blowing a flute that M. Roussillon had brought him from Quebec.
The pipe well filled and lighted apparently did have the effect to steady and encourage M. Roussillon's memory; or if not his memory, then his imagination, which was of that fervid and liberal sort common to natives of the Midi, and which has been exquisitely depicted by the late Alphonse Daudet in Tartarin and Bompard. He leaned far back in a strong chair, with his massive legs stretched at full length, and gazed at the roof-poles while he talked.
He sympathized fully, in his crude way, with Alice's lively curiosity, and his affection for her made him anxious to appease her longing after news from the great outside world. If the sheer truth must come out, however, he knew precious little about that world, especially the polite part of it in which thrived those femininities so dear to the heart of an isolated and imaginative girl. Still, as he, too, lived in Arcadia, there was no great effort involved when he undertook to blow a dreamer's flute.
In the first place he had not been in Quebec or Montreal during his absence from home. Most of the time he had spent disposing of pelts and furs at Detroit and in extending his trading relations with other posts; but what mattered a trifling want of facts when his meridional fancy once began to warm up? A smattering of social knowledge gained at first hand in his youthful days in France while he was a student whose parents fondly expected him to conquer the world, came to his aid, and besides he had saturated himself all his life with poetry and romance. Scudery, Scarron, Prevost, Madame La Fayette and Calprenede were the chief sources of his information touching the life and manners, morals and gayeties of people who, as he supposed, stirred the surface of that resplendent and far-off ocean called society. Nothing suited him better than to smoke a pipe and talk about what he had seen and done; and the less he had really seen and done the more he had to tell.
His broad, almost over-virile, kindly and contented face beamed with the warmth of wholly imaginary recollections while he recounted with minute circumstantiality to the delighted Alice his gallant adventures in the crowded and brilliant ball-rooms of the French-Canadian towns. The rolling burr of his bass voice, deep and resonant, gave force to the improvised descriptions.
Madame Roussillon heard the heavy booming and presently came softly back into the door from the kitchen to listen. She leaned against the facing in an attitude of ponderous attention, a hand, on her bulging hip. She could not suppress her unbounded admiration of her liege lord's manly physique, and jealous to fierceness as she was of his experiences so eloquently and picturesquely related, her woman's nature took fire with enjoyment of the scenes described.
This is the mission of the poet and the romancer--to sponge out of existence, for a time, the stiff, refractory, and unlovely realities and give in their place a scene of ideal mobility and charm. The two women reveled in Gaspard Roussillon's revelations. They saw the brilliant companies, the luxurious surroundings, heard the rustle of brocade and the fine flutter of laces, the hum of sweet voices, breathed in the wafts of costly perfumeries, looked on while the dancers whirled and flickered in the confusion of lights; and over all and through all poured and vibrated such ravishing music as only the southern imagination could have conjured up out of nothing.
Alice was absolutely charmed. She sat on a low wooden stool and gazed into Gaspard Roussillon's face with dilating eyes in which burned that rich and radiant something we call a passionate soul. She drank in his flamboyant stream of words with a thirst which nothing but experience could ever quench. He felt her silent applause and the admiring involuntary absorption that possessed his wife; the consciousness of his elementary magnetism augmented the flow of his fine descriptions, and he went on and on, until the arrival of Father Beret put an end to it all.
The priest, hearing of M. Roussillon's return, had come to inquire about some friends living at Detroit. He took luncheon with the family, enjoying the downright refreshing collation of broiled birds, onions, meal-cakes and claret, ending with a dish of blackberries and cream.
M. Roussillon seized the first opportunity to resume his successful romancing, and presently in the midst of the meal began to tell Father Beret about what he had seen in Quebec.
"By the way," he said, with expansive casualness in his voice, "I called upon your old-time friend and co-adjutor, Father Sebastien, while up there. A noble old man. He sent you a thousand good messages. Was mightily delighted when I told him how happy and hale you have always been here. Ah, you should have seen his dear old eyes full of loving tears. He would walk a hundred miles to see you, he said, but never expected to in this world. Blessings, blessings upon dear Father Beret, was what he murmured in my ear when we were parting. He says that he will never leave Quebec until he goes to his home above--ah!"
The way in which M. Roussillon closed his little speech, his large eyes upturned, his huge hands clasped in front of him, was very effective.
"I am under many obligations, my son," said Father Beret, "for what you tell me. It was good of you to remember my dear old friend and go to him for his loving messages to me. I am very, very thankful. Help me to another drop of wine, please."
Now the extraordinary feature of the situation was that Father Beret had known positively for nearly five years that Father Sebastien was dead and buried.
"Ah, yes," M. Roussillon continued, pouring the claret with one hand and making a pious gesture with the other; "the dear old man loves you and prays for you; his voice quavers whenever he speaks of you."
"Doubtless he made his old joke to you about the birth-mark on my shoulder," said Father Beret after a moment of apparently thoughtful silence. "He may have said something about it in a playful way, eh?"
"True, true, why yes, he surely mentioned the same," assented M. Roussillon, his face assuming an expression of confused memory; "it was something sly and humorous, I mind; but it just escapes my recollection. A right jolly old boy is Father Sebastien; indeed very amusing at times."
"At times, yes," said Father Beret, who had no birth-mark on his shoulder, and had never had one there, or on any other part of his person.
"How strange!" Alice remarked, "I, too, have a mark on my shoulder--a pink spot, just like a small, five-petaled flower. We must be of kin to each other, Father Beret."
The priest laughed.
"If our marks are alike, that would be some evidence of kinship," he said.
"But what shape is yours, Father?"
"I've never seen it," he responded.
"Never seen it! Why?"
"Well, it's absolutely invisible," and he chuckled heartily, meantime glancing shrewdly at M. Roussillon out of the tail of his eye.
"It's on the back part of his shoulder," quickly spoke up M. Roussillon, "and you know priests never use looking-glasses. The mark is quite invisible therefore, so far as Father Beret is concerned!"
"You never told me of your birth-mark before, my daughter," said Father Beret, turning to Alice with sudden interest. "It may some day be good fortune to you."
"Why so, Father?"
"If your family name is really Tarleton, as you suppose from the inscription on your locket, the birth-mark, being of such singular shape, would probably identify you. It is said that these marks run regularly in families. With the miniature and the distinguishing birth-mark you have enough to make a strong case should you once find the right Tarleton family."
"You talk as they write in novels," said Alice. "I've read about just such things in them. Wouldn't it be grand if I should turn out to be some great personage in disguise!"
The mention of novels reminded Father Beret of that terrible book, Manon Lescaut, which he last saw in Alice's possession, and he could not refrain from mentioning it in a voice that shuddered.
"Rest easy, Father Beret," said Alice; "that is one novel I have found wholly distasteful to me. I tried to read it, but could not do it, I flung it aside in utter disgust. You and mother Roussillon are welcome to hide it deep as a well, for all I care. I don't enjoy reading about low, vile people and hopeless unfortunates; I like sweet and lovely heroines and strong, high-souled, brave heroes."
"Read about the blessed saints, then, my daughter; you will find in them the true heroes and heroines of this world," said Father Beret.
M. Roussillon changed the subject, for he always somehow dreaded to have the good priest fall into the strain of argument he was about to begin. A stray sheep, no matter how refractory, feels a touch of longing when it hears the shepherd's voice. M. Roussillon was a Catholic, but a straying one, who avoided the confessional and often forgot mass. Still, with all his reckless independence, and with all his outward show of large and breezy self-sufficiency, he was not altogether free from the hold that the church had laid upon him in childhood and youth. Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done a great deal for the little church of St. Xavier and the mission it represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued his own course; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents. This promise he had kept with stubborn persistence and he meant to keep it as long as he lived. Perhaps the very fact that his innermost conscience smote him with vague yet telling blows at times for this departure from the strict religion of his fathers, may have intensified his resistance of the influence constantly exerted upon Alice by Father Beret and Madame Roussillon, to bring her gently but surely to the church. Perverseness is a force to be reckoned with in all original characters.
A few weeks had passed after M. Roussillon's return, when that big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all the inhabitants of Vincennes. It was certainly a democratic function that he contemplated, and motley to a most picturesque extent.
Rene de Ronville called upon Alice a day or two previous to the occasion and duly engaged her as his partenaire; but she insisted upon having the engagement guarded in her behalf by a condition so obviously fanciful that he accepted it without argument.
"If my wandering knight should arrive during the dance, you promise to stand aside and give place to him," she stipulated. "You promise that? You see I'm expecting him all the time. I dreamed last night that he came on a great bay horse and, stooping, whirled me up behind the saddle, and away we went!"
There was a childish, half bantering air in her look; but her voice sounded earnest and serious, notwithstanding its delicious timbre of suppressed playfulness.
"You promise me?" she insisted.
"Oh, I promise to slink away into a corner and chew my thumb, the moment he comes," Rene eagerly assented. "Of course I'm taking a great risk, I know; for lords and barons and knights are very apt to appear Suddenly in a place like this."
"You may banter and make light if you want to," she said, pouting admirably. "I don't care. All the same the laugh will jump to the other corner of your mouth, see if it doesn't. They say that what a person dreams about and wishes for and waits for and believes in, will come true sooner or later."
"If that's so," said Rene, "you and I will get married; for I've dreamed it every night of the year, wished for it, waited for it and believed in it, and--" It was a madly sudden rush. He made it on an impulse quite irresistible, as hypnotized persons are said to do in response to the suggestion of the hypnotist, and his heart was choking his throat before he could end his speech. Alice interrupted him with a hearty burst of laughter.
"A very pretty twist you give to my words, I must declare," she said; "but not new by any means. Little Adrienne Bourcier could tell you that. She says that you have vowed to her over and over that you dream about her, and wish for her, and wait for her, precisely as you have just said to me."
Rene's brown face flushed to the temples, partly with anger, partly with the shock of mingled surprise and fear. He was guilty, and the guilt showed in his eyes and paralyzed his tongue, so that he sat there before Alice with his under jaw sagging ludicrously.
"Don't you rather think, Monsieur Rene de Ronville," she presently added in a calmly advisory tone, "that you had better quit trying to say such foolish things to me, and just be my very good friend? If you don't, I do, which comes to the same thing. What's more, I won't be your partenaire at the dance unless you promise me on your word of honor that you will dance two dances with Adrienne to every one that you have with me. Do you promise?"
He dared not oppose her outwardly, although in his heart resistance amounted to furious revolt and riot.
"I promise anything you ask me to," he said resignedly, almost sullenly; "anything for you."
"Well, I ask nothing whatever on my own account," Alice quickly replied; "but I do tell you firmly that you shall not maltreat little Adrienne Bourcier and remain a friend of mine. She loves you, Rene de Ronville, and you have told her that you love her. If you are a man worthy of respect you will not desert her. Don't you think I am right?"
Like a singed and crippled moth vainly trying to rise once again to the alluring yet deadly flame, Rene de Ronville essayed to break out of his embarrassment and resume equal footing with the girl so suddenly become his commanding superior; but the effort disclosed to him as well as to her that he had fallen to rise no more. In his abject defeat he accepted the terms dictated by Alice and was glad when she adroitly changed her manner and tone in going on to discuss the approaching dance.
"Now let me make one request of you," he demanded after a while. "It's a small favor; may I ask it?"
"Yes, but I don't grant it in advance."
"I want you to wear, for my sake, the buff gown which they say was your grandmother's."
"No, I won't wear it."
"But why, Alice?"
"None of the other girls have anything like such a dress; it would not be right for me to put it on and make them all feel that I had taken the advantage of them, just because I could; that's why."
"But then none of them is beautiful and educated like you," he said; "you'll outshine them anyway."
"Save your compliments for poor pretty little Adrienne," she firmly responded, "I positively do not wish to hear them. I have agreed to be your partenaire at this dance of Papa Roussillon's, but it is understood between us that Adrienne is your sweet-heart. I am not, and I'm not going to be, either. So for your sake and Adrienne's, as well as out of consideration for the rest of the girls who have no fine dresses, I am not going to wear the buff brocade gown that belonged to Papa Roussillon's mother long ago. I shall dress just as the rest do."
It is safe to say that Rene de Ronville went home with a troublesome bee in his bonnet. He was not a bad-hearted fellow. Many a right good young man, before him and since, has loved an Adrienne and been dazzled by an Alice. A violet is sweet, but a rose is the garden's queen. The poor youthful frontiersman ought to have been stronger; but he was not, and what have we to say?
As for Alice, since having a confidential talk with Adrienne Bourcier recently, she had come to realize what M. Roussillon meant when he said; "But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope." She saw through the situation with a quick understanding of what Adrienne might suffer should Rene prove permanently fickle. The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young girl's existence under fair circumstances, she grasped intuitively the gist of it all.
The dance did not come off; it had to be postponed indefinitely on account of a grave change in the political relations of the little post. A day or two before the time set for that function a rumor ran through the town that something of importance was about to happen. Father Gibault, at the head of a small party, had arrived from Kaskaskia, far away on the Mississippi, with the news that France and the American Colonies had made common cause against the English in the great war of which the people of Vincennes neither knew the cause nor cared a straw about the outcome.
It was Oncle Jazon who came to the Roussillon place to tell M. Roussillon that he was wanted at the river house. Alice met him at the door.
"Come in, Oncle Jazon," she cheerily said, "you are getting to be a stranger at our house lately. Come in; what news do you bring? Take off your cap and rest your hair, Oncle Jazon."
The scalpless old fighter chuckled raucously and bowed to the best of his ability. He not only took off his queer cap, but looked into it with a startled gaze, as if he expected something infinitely dangerous to jump out and seize his nose.
"A thousand thanks, Ma'm'selle," he presently said, "will ye please tell Mo'sieu' Roussillon that I would wish to see 'im?"
"Yes, Oncle Jazon; but first be seated, and let me offer you just a drop of eau de vie; some that Papa Roussillon brought back with him from Quebec. He says it's old and fine."
She poured him a full glass, then setting the bottle on a little stand, went to find M. Roussillon. While she was absent Oncle Jazon improved his opportunity to the fullest extent. At least three additional glasses of the brandy went the way of the first. He grinned atrociously and smacked his corrugated lips; but when Gaspard Roussillon came in, the old man was sitting at some distance from the bottle and glass gazing indifferently out across the veranda. He told his story curtly. Father Gibault, he said, had sent him to ask M. Roussillon to come to the river house, as he had news of great importance to communicate.
"Ah, well, Oncle Jazon, we'll have a nip of brandy together before we go," said the host.
"Why, yes, jes' one agin' the broilin' weather," assented Oncle Jazon; "I don't mind jes' one."
"A very rich friend of mine in Quebec gave me this brandy, Oncle Jazon," said M. Roussillon, pouring the liquor with a grand flourish; "and I thought of you as soon as I got it. Now, says I to myself, if any man knows good brandy when he tastes it, it's Oncle Jazon, and I'll give him a good chance at this bottle just the first of all my friends."
"It surely is delicious," said Oncle Jazon, "very delicious." He spoke French with a curious accent, having spent long years with English-speaking frontiersmen in the Carolinas and Kentucky, so that their lingo had become his own.
As they walked side by side down the way to the river house they looked like typical extremes of rough, sun-burned and weather-tanned manhood; Oncle Jazon a wizened, diminutive scrap, wrinkled and odd in every respect; Gaspard Roussillon towering six feet two, wide shouldered, massive, lumbering, muscular, a giant with long curling hair and a superb beard. They did not know that they were going down to help dedicate the great Northwest to freedom.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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5
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FATHER GIBAULT
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Great movements in the affairs of men are like tides of the seas which reach and affect the remotest and quietest nooks and inlets, imparting a thrill and a swell of the general motion. Father Gibault brought the wave of the American Revolution to Vincennes. He was a simple missionary; but he was, besides, a man of great worldly knowledge and personal force. Colonel George Rogers Clark made Father Gibault's acquaintance at Kaskaskia, when the fort and its garrison surrendered to his command, and, quickly discerning the fine qualities of the priest's character, sent him to the post on the Wabash to win over its people to the cause of freedom and independence. Nor was the task assumed a hard one, as Father Gibault probably well knew before he undertook it.
A few of the leading men of Vincennes, presided over by Gaspard Roussillon, held a consultation at the river house, and it was agreed that a mass meeting should be called bringing all of the inhabitants together in the church for the purpose of considering the course to be taken under the circumstances made known by Father Gibault. Oncle Jazon constituted himself an executive committee of one to stir up a noise for the occasion.
It was a great day for Vincennes. The volatile temperament of the French frontiersmen bubbled over with enthusiasm at the first hint of something new, and revolutionary in which they might be expected to take part. Without knowing in the least what it was that Father Gibault and Oncle Jazon wanted of them, they were all in favor of it at a venture.
Rene de Ronville, being an active and intelligent young man, was sent about through the town to let everybody know of the meeting. In passing he stepped into the cabin of Father Beret, who was sitting on the loose puncheon floor, with his back turned toward the entrance and so absorbed in trying to put together a great number of small paper fragments that he did not hear or look up.
"Are you not going to the meeting, Father?" Rene bluntly demanded. In the hurry that was on him he did not remember to be formally polite, as was his habit.
The old priest looked up with a startled face. At the same time he swept the fragments of paper together and clutched them hard in his right hand. "Yes, yes, my son--yes I am going, but the time has not yet come for it, has it?" he stammered. "Is it late?"
He sprang to his feet and appeared confused, as if caught in doing something very improper.
Rene wondered at this unusual behavior, but merely said: "I beg pardon, Father Beret, I did not mean to disturb you," and went his way.
Father Beret stood for some minutes as if dazed, then squeezed the paper fragments into a tight ball, just as they were when he took them from under the floor some time before Rene came in, and put it in his pocket. A little later he was kneeling, as we have seen him once before, in silent yet fervent prayer, his clasped hands lifted toward the crucifix on the wall.
"Jesus, give me strength to hold on and do my work," he murmured beseechingly, "and oh, free thy poor servant from bitter temptation."
Father Gibault had come prepared to use his eloquence upon the excitable Creoles, and with considerable cunning he addressed a motley audience at the church, telling them that an American force had taken Kaskaskia and would henceforth hold it; that France had joined hands with the Americans against the British, and that it was the duty of all Frenchmen to help uphold the cause of freedom and independence.
"I come," said he, "directly from Colonel George Rogers Clark, a noble and brave officer of the American army, who told me the news that I have brought to you. He sent me here to say to you that if you will give allegiance to his government you shall be protected against all enemies and have the full freedom of citizens. I think you should do this without a moment's hesitation, as I and my people at Kaskaskia have already done. But perhaps you would like to have a word from your distinguished fellow-citizen, Monsieur Gaspard Roussillon. Speak to your friends, my son, they will be glad to take counsel of your wisdom."
There was a stir and a craning of necks. M. Roussillon presently appeared near the little chancel, his great form towering majestically. He bowed and waved his hand with the air of one who accepts distinction as a matter of course; then he took his big silver watch and looked at it. He was the only man in Vincennes who owned a watch, and so the incident was impressive. Father Gibault looked pleased, and already a murmur of applause went through the audience. M. Roussillon stroked the bulging crystal of the time-piece with a circular motion of his thumb and bowed again, clearing his throat resonantly, his face growing purplish above his beard.
"Good friends," he said, "what France does all high-class Frenchmen applaud." He paused for a shout of approbation, and was not disappointed. "The other name for France is glory," he added, "and all true Frenchmen love both names. I am a true Frenchman!" and he struck his breast a resounding blow with the hand that still held the watch. A huge horn button on his buckskin jerkin came in contact with the crystal, and there was a smash, followed by a scattered tinkling of glass fragments.
All Vincennes stood breathless, contemplating the irreparable accident. M. Roussillon had lost the effect of a great period in his speech, but he was quick. Lifting the watch to his ear, he listened a moment with superb dignity, then slowly elevating his head and spreading his free hand over his heart he said: "The faithful time-piece still tells off the seconds, and the loyal heart of its owner still throbs with patriotism."
Oncle Jazon, who stood in front of the speaker, swung his shapeless cap as high as he could and yelled like a savage. Then the crowd went wild for a time.
"Vive la France! A bas l' Angleterre!" Everybody shouted at the top of his voice.
"What France does we all do," continued M. Roussillon, when the noise subsided. "France has clasped hands with George Washington and his brave compatriots; so do we."
"Vive Zhorzh Vasinton!" shrieked Oncle Jazon in a piercing treble, tiptoeing and shaking his cap recklessly under M. Roussillon's nose.
The orator winced and jerked his head back, but nobody saw it, save perhaps Father Gibault, who laughed heartily.
Great sayings come suddenly, unannounced and unexpected. They have the mysterious force of prophetic accident combined with happy economy of phrasing. The southern blood in M. Roussillon's veins was effervescing upon his brain; his tongue had caught the fine freedom and abandon of inspired oratory. He towered and glowed; words fell melodiously from his lips; his gestures were compelling, his visage magnetic. In conclusion he said: "Frenchmen, America is the garden-spot of the world and will one day rule it, as did Rome of old. Where freedom makes her home, there is the centre of power!"
It was in a little log church on the verge of a hummock overlooking a marshy wild meadow. Westward for two thousand miles stretched the unbroken prairies, woods, mountains, deserts reaching to the Pacific; southward for a thousand miles rolled the green billows of the wilderness to the warm Gulf shore; northward to the pole and eastward to the thin fringe of settlements beyond the mountains, all was houseless solitude.
If the reader should go to Vincennes to-day and walk southward along Second Street to its intersection with Church Street, the spot then under foot would be probably very near where M. Roussillon stood while uttering his great sentence. Mind you, the present writer does not pretend to know the exact site of old Saint Xavier church. If it could be fixed beyond doubt the spot should have an imperishable monument of Indiana stone.
When M, Roussillon ceased speaking the audience again exhausted its vocal resources; and then Father Gibault called upon each man to come forward and solemnly pledge his loyalty to the American cause. Not one of them hesitated.
Meantime a woman was doing her part in the transformation of Post Vincennes from a French-English picket to a full-fledged American fort and town. Madame Godere, finding out what was about to happen, fell to work making a flag in imitation of that under which George Washington was fighting. Alice chanced to be in the Godere home at the time and joined enthusiastically in the sewing. It was an exciting task. Their fingers trembled while they worked, and the thread, heavily coated with beeswax, squeaked as they drew it through the cloth.
"We shall not be in time," said Madame Godere; "I know we shall not. Everything hinders me. My thread breaks or gets tangled and my needle's so rusty I can hardly stick it through the cloth. O dear!"
Alice encouraged her with both words and work, and they had almost finished when Rene came with a staff which he had brought from the fort.
"Mon dieu, but we have had a great meeting!" he cried. He was perspiring with excitement and fast walking; leaning on the staff he mopped his face with a blue handkerchief.
"We heard much shouting and noise," said Madame Godere, "M. Roussillon's voice rose loud above the rest. He roared like a lion."
"Ah, he was speaking to us; he was very eloquent," Rene replied. "But now they are waiting at the fort for the new flag. I have come for it."
"It is ready," said Madame Godere.
With flying fingers Alice sewed it to the staff.
"Voici!" she cried, "vive la republique Americaine!" She lifted the staff and let the flag droop over her from head to foot.
"Give it to me," said Rene, holding forth a hand for it, "and I'll run to the fort with it."
"No," said Alice, her face suddenly lighting up with resolve. "No, I am going to take it myself," and without a moment's delay off she went.
Rene was so caught by surprise that he stood gazing after her until she passed behind a house, where the way turned, the shining flag rippling around her, and her moccasins twinkling as she ran.
At the blockhouse, awaiting the moment when the symbol of freedom should rise like a star over old Vincennes the crowd had picturesquely broken into scattered groups. Alice entered through a rent in the stockade, as that happened to be a shorter route than through the gate, and appeared suddenly almost in their midst.
It was a happy surprise, a pretty and catching spectacular apparition of a sort to be thoroughly appreciated by the lively French fancy of the audience. The caught the girl's spirit, or it caught them, and they made haste to be noisy.
"V'la! V'la! l'p'tite Alice et la bannlere de Zhorzh Vasinton! (Look, look, little Alice and George Washington's flag!)" shouted Oncle Jazon. He put his wiry little legs through a sort of pas de zephyr and winked at himself with concentrated approval.
All the men danced around and yelled till they were hoarse.
By this time Rene had reached Alice's side; but she did not see him; she ran into the blockhouse and climbed up a rude ladder-way; then she appeared on the roof, still accompanied by Rene, and planted the staff in a crack of the slabs, where it stood bravely up, the colors floating free.
She looked down and saw M. Roussillon, Father Gibault and Father Beret grouped in the centre of the area. They were waving their hands aloft at her, while a bedlam of voices sent up applause which went through her blood like strong wine. She smiled radiantly, and a sweet flush glowed in her cheeks.
No one of all that wild crowd could ever forget the picture sketched so boldly at that moment when, after planting the staff, Alice stepped back a space and stood strong and beautiful against the soft blue sky. She glanced down first, then looked up, her arms folded across her bosom. It was a pose as unconsciously taken as that of a bird, and the grace of it went straight to the hearts of those below.
She turned about to descend, and for the first time saw that Rene had followed her. His face was beaming.
"What a girl you are!" he exclaimed, in a tone of exultant admiration. "Never was there another like you!"
Alice walked quickly past him without speaking; for down in the space where some women were huddled aside from the crowd, looking on, she had seen little Adrienne Bourcier. She made haste to descend. Now that her impulsively chosen enterprise was completed her boldness deserted her and she slipped out through a dilapidated postern opposite the crowd. On her right was the river, while southward before her lay a great flat plain, beyond which rose some hillocks covered with forest. The sun blazed between masses of slowly drifting clouds that trailed creeping fantastic shadows across the marshy waste.
Alice walked along under cover of the slight landswell which then, more plainly marked than it is now, formed the contour line of hummock upon which the fort and village stood. A watery swale grown full of tall aquatic weeds meandered parallel with the bluff, so to call it, and there was a soft melancholy whispering of wind among the long blades and stems. She passed the church and Father Beret's hut and continued for some distance in the direction of that pretty knoll upon which the cemetery is at present so tastefully kept. She felt shy now, as if to run away and hide would be a great relief. Indeed, so relaxed were her nerves that a slight movement in the grass and cat-tail flags near by startled her painfully, making her jump like a fawn.
"Little friend not be 'fraid," said a guttural voice in broken French. "Little friend not make noise."
At a glance she recognized Long-Hair, the Indian, rising out of the matted marsh growth. It was a hideous vision of embodied cunning, soullessness and murderous cruelty.
"Not tell white man you see me?" he grunted interrogatively, stepping close to her. He looked so wicked that she recoiled and lifted her hands defensively.
She trembled from head to foot, and her voice failed her; but she made a negative sign and smiled at him, turning as white as her tanned face could become.
In his left hand he held his bow, while in his right he half lifted a murderous looking tomahawk.
"What new flag mean?" he demanded, waving the bow's end toward the fort and bending his head down close to hers. "Who yonder?"
"The great American Father has taken us under his protection," she explained. "We are big-knives now." It almost choked her to speak.
"Ugh! heap damn fools," he said with a dark scowl. "Little friend much damn fool."
He straightened up his tall form and stood leering at her for some seconds, then added: "Little friend get killed, scalped, maybe."
The indescribable nobility of animal largeness, symmetry and strength showed in his form and attitude, but the expression of his countenance was absolutely repulsive--cold, hard, beastly.
He did not speak again, but turned quickly, and stooping low, disappeared like a great brownish red serpent in the high grass, which scarcely stirred as he moved through it.
Somehow that day made itself strangely memorable to Alice. She had been accustomed to stirring scenes and sudden changes of conditions; but this was the first time that she had ever joined actively in a public movement of importance. Then, too, Long-Hair's picturesque and rudely dramatic reappearance affected her imagination with an indescribable force. Moreover, the pathetic situation in the love affair between Rene and Adrienne had taken hold of her conscience with a disturbing grip. But the shadowy sense of impending events, of which she could form no idea, was behind it all. She had not heard of Brandywine, or Bunker Hill, or Lexington, or Concord; but something like a waft of their significance had blown through her mind. A great change was coming into her idyllic life. She was indistinctly aware of it, as we sometimes are of an approaching storm, while yet the sky is sweetly blue and serene. When she reached home the house was full of people to whom M. Roussillon, in the gayest of moods, was dispensing wine and brandy.
"Vive Zhorzh Vasinton!" shouted Oncle Jazon as soon as he saw her.
And then they all talked at once, saying flattering things about her. Madame Roussillon tried to scold as usual; but the lively chattering of the guests drowned her voice.
"I suppose the American commander will send a garrison here," some one said to Father Gibault, "and repair the fort."
"Probably," the priest replied, "in a very few weeks. Meantime we will garrison it ourselves."
"And we will have M. Roussillon for commander," spoke up Rene de Ronville, who was standing by.
"A good suggestion," assented Father Gibault; "let us organize at once."
Immediately the word was passed that there would be a meeting at the fort that evening for the purpose of choosing a garrison and a commander. Everybody went promptly at the hour set. M. Roussillon was elected Captain by acclamation, with Rene de Ronville as his Lieutenant. It was observed that Oncle Jazon had resumed his dignity, and that he looked into his cap several times without speaking.
Meantime certain citizens, who had been in close relations with Governor Abbott during his stay, quietly slipped out of town, manned a batteau and went up the river, probably to Ouiatenon first and then to Detroit. Doubtless they suspected that things might soon grow too warm for their comfort.
It was thus that Vincennes and Fort Sackville first acknowledged the American Government and hoisted the flag which, as long as it floated over the blockhouse, was lightly and lovingly called by everyone la banniere d'Alice Roussillon.
Father Gibault returned to Fort Kaskaskia and a little later Captain Leonard Helm, a jovial man, but past the prime of life, arrived at Vincennes with a commission from Col. Clark authorizing him to supersede M. Roussillon as commander, and to act as Indian agent for the American Government in the Department of the Wabash. He was welcomed by the villagers, and at once made himself very pleasing to them by adapting himself to their ways and entering heartily into their social activities.
M. Roussillon was absent when Captain Helm and his party came. Rene de Ronville, nominally in command of the fort, but actually enjoying some excellent grouse shooting with a bell-mouthed old fowling piece on a distant prairie, could not be present to deliver up the post; and as there was no garrison just then visible, Helm took possession, without any formalities.
"I think, Lieutenant, that you'd better look around through the village and see if you can scare up this Captain what's-his-name," said the new commander to a stalwart young officer who had come with him. "I can't think of these French names without getting my brain in a twist. Do you happen to recollect the Captain's name, Lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir; Gaspard Roussillon it reads in Colonel Clark's order; but I am told that he's away on a trading tour," said the young man.
"You may be told anything by these hair-tongued parlyvoos," Helm remarked. "It won't hurt, anyway, to find out where he lives and make a formal call, just for appearance sake, and to enquire about his health. I wish you would try it, sir, and let me know the result."
The Lieutenant felt that this was a peremptory order and turned about to obey promptly.
"And I say, Beverley, come back sober, if you possibly can," Helm added in his most genial tone, thinking it a great piece of humor to suggest sobriety to a man whose marked difference from men generally, of that time, was his total abstinence from intoxicating drinks.
Lieutenant Fitzhugh Beverley was a Virginian of Virginians. His family had long been prominent in colonial affairs and boasted a record of great achievements both in peace and in war. He was the only son of his parents and heir to a fine estate consisting of lands and slaves; but, like many another of the restless young cavaliers of the Old Dominion, he had come in search of adventure over into Kentucky, along the path blazed by Daniel Boone; and when Clark organized his little army, the young man's patriotic and chivalrous nature leaped at the opportunity to serve his country under so gallant a commander.
Beverley was not a mere youth, although yet somewhat under thirty. Educated abroad and naturally of a thoughtful and studious turn, he had enriched his mind far beyond the usual limit among young Americans of the very best class in that time; and so he appeared older than he really was: an effect helped out by his large and powerful form and grave dignity of bearing. Clark, who found him useful in emergencies, cool, intrepid, daring to a fault and possessed of excellent judgement, sent him with Helm, hoping that he would offset with his orderly attention to details the somewhat go-as-you-please disposition of that excellent officer.
Beverley set out in search of the French commander's house, impressed with no particular respect for him or his office. Somehow Americans of Anglo-Saxon blood were slow to recognize any good qualities whatever in the Latin Creoles of the West and South. It seemed to them that the Frenchman and the Spaniard were much too apt to equalize themselves socially and matrimonially with Indians and negroes. The very fact that for a century, while Anglo-Americans had been in constant bloody warfare with savages, Frenchmen had managed to keep on easy and highly profitable trading terms with them, tended to confirm the worst implication. "Eat frogs and save your scalp," was a bit of contemptuous frontier humor indicative of what sober judgement held in reserve on the subject.
Intent upon his formal mission, Lieutenant Beverley stalked boldly into the inclosure at Roussillon place and was met on the gallery by Madame Roussillon in one of her worst moods. She glared at him with her hands on her hips, her mouth set irritably aslant upward, her eyebrows gathered into a dark knot over her nose. It would be hard to imagine a more forbidding countenance; and for supplementary effect out popped hunchback Jean to stand behind her, with his big head lying back in the hollow of his shoulders and his long chin elevated, while he gawped intently up into Beverley's face.
"Bon jour, Madame," said the Lieutenant, lifting his hat and speaking with a pleasant accent. "Would it be agreeable to Captain Roussillon for me to see him a moment?"
Despite Beverley's cleverness in using the French language, he had a decided brusqueness of manner and a curt turn of voice not in the least Gallic. True, the soft Virginian intonation marked every word, and his obeisance was as low as if Madame Roussillon had been a queen; but the light French grace was wholly lacking.
"What do you want of my husband?" Madame Roussillon demanded.
"Nothing unpleasant, I assure you, Madame," said Beverley.
"Well, he's not at home, Mo'sieu; he's up the river for a few days."
She relaxed her stare, untied her eyebrows, and even let fall her hands from her shelf-like hips.
"Thank you, Madame," said Beverley, bowing again, "I am sorry not to have seen him."
As he was turning to go a shimmer of brown hair streaked with gold struck upon his vision from just within the door. He paused, as if in response to a military command, while a pair of gray eyes met his with a flash. The cabin room was ill lighted; but the crepuscular dimness did not seem to hinder his sight. Beyond the girl's figure, a pair of slender swords hung crossed aslant on the wall opposite the low door.
Beverley had seen, in the old world galleries, pictures in which the shadowy and somewhat uncertain background thus forced into strongest projection the main figure, yet without clearly defining it. The rough frame of the doorway gave just the rustic setting suited to Alice's costume, the most striking part of which was a grayish short gown ending just above her fringed buckskin moccasins. Around her head she had bound a blue kerchief, a wide corner of which lay over her crown like a loose cap. Her bright hair hung free upon her shoulders in tumbled half curls. As a picture, the figure and its entourage might have been artistically effective; but as Beverley saw it in actual life the first impression was rather embarrassing. Somehow he felt almost irresistibly invited to laugh, though he had never been much given to risibility. The blending, or rather the juxtaposition, of extremes--a face, a form immediately witching, and a costume odd to grotesquery--had made an assault upon his comprehension at once so sudden and so direct that his dignity came near being disastrously broken up. A splendidly beautiful child comically clad would have made much the same half delightful, half displeasing impression.
Beverley could not stare at the girl, and no sooner had he turned his back upon her than the picture in his mind changed like a scene in a kaleidoscope. He now saw a tall, finely developed figure and a face delicately oval, with a low, wide forehead, arched brows, a straight, slightly tip-tilted nose, a mouth sweet and full, dimpled cheeks, and a strong chin set above a faultless throat. His imagination, in casting off its first impression, was inclined to exaggerate Alice's beauty and to dwell upon its picturesqueness. He smiled as he walked back to the fort, and even found himself whistling gayly a snatch from a rollicking fiddle-tune that he had heard when a boy.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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6
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A FENCING BOUT
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A few days after Helm's arrival, M. Roussillon returned to Vincennes, and if he was sorely touched in his amour propre by seeing his suddenly acquired military rank and title drop away, he did not let it be known to his fellow citizens. He promptly called upon the new commander and made acquaintance with Lieutenant Fitzhugh Beverley, who just then was superintending the work of cleaning up an old cannon in the fort and mending some breaks in the stockade.
Helm formed a great liking for the big Frenchman, whose breezy freedom of manner and expansive good humor struck him favorably from the beginning. M. Roussillon's ability to speak English with considerable ease helped the friendship along, no doubt; at all events their first interview ended with a hearty show of good fellowship, and as time passed they became almost inseparable companions during M. Roussillon's periods of rest from his trading excursions among the Indians. They played cards and brewed hot drinks over which they told marvelous stories, the latest one invariably surpassing all its predecessors.
Helm had an eye to business, and turned M. Roussillon's knowledge of the Indians to valuable account, so that he soon had very pleasant relations with most of the tribes within reach of his agents. This gave a feeling of great security to the people of Vincennes. They pursued their narrow agricultural activities with excellent results and redoubled those social gayeties which, even in hut and cabin under all the adverse conditions of extreme frontier life, were dear to the volatile and genial French temperament.
Lieutenant Beverley found much to interest him in the quaint town; but the piece de resistance was Oncle Jazon, who proved to be both fascinating and unmanageable; a hard nut to crack, yet possessing a kernel absolutely original in flavor. Beverley visited him one evening in his hut--it might better be called den--a curiously built thing, with walls of vertical poles set in a quadrangular trench dug in the ground, and roofed with grass. Inside and out it was plastered with clay, and the floor of dried mud was as smooth and hard as concrete paving. In one end there was a wide fireplace grimy with soot, in the other a mere peep-hole for a window: a wooden bench, a bed of skins and two or three stools were barely visible in the gloom. In the doorway Oncle Jazon sat whittling a slender billet of hickory into a ramrod for his long flint-lock American rifle.
"Maybe ye know Simon Kenton," said the old man, after he and Beverley had conversed for a while, "seeing that you are from Kentucky--eh?"
"Yes, I do know him well; he's a warm personal friend of mine," said Beverley with quick interest, for it surprised him that Oncle Jazon should know anything about Kenton. "Do you know him, Monsieur Jazon?"
Oncle Jazon winked conceitedly and sighted along his rudimentary ramrod to see if it was straight; then puckering his lips, as if on the point of whistling, made an affirmative noise quite impossible to spell.
"Well, I'm glad you are acquainted with Kenton," said Beverley. "Where did you and he come together?"
Oncle Jazon chuckled reminiscently and scratched the skinless, cicatrized spot where his scalp had once flourished.
"Oh, several places," he answered. "Ye see thet hair a hangin' there on the wall?" He pointed at a dry wisp dangling under a peg in a log barely visible by the bad light. "Well, thet's my scalp, he! he! he!" He snickered as if the fact were a most enjoyable joke. "Simon Kenton can tell ye about thet little affair! The Indians thought I was dead, and they took my hair; but I wasn't dead; I was just a givin' 'em a 'possum act. When they was gone I got up from where I was a layin' and trotted off. My head was sore and ventrebleu! but I was mad, he! he! he!"
All this time he spoke in French, and the English but poorly paraphrases his odd turns of expression. His grimaces and grunts cannot even be hinted.
It was a long story, as Beverley received it, told scrappily, but with certain rude art. In the end Oncle Jazon said with unctuous self-satisfaction: "Accidents will happen. I got my chance at that damned Indian who skinned my head, and I jes took a bead on 'im with my old rifle. I can't shoot much, never could, but I happened to hit 'im square in the lef' eye, what I shot at, and it was a hundred yards. Down he tumbles, and I runs to 'im and finds my same old scalp a hangin' to his belt. Well, I lifted off his hair with my knife, and untied mine from the belt, and then I had both scalps, he! he! he! You ask Simon Kenton when ye see 'im. He was along at the same time, and they made 'im run the ga'ntlet and pretty nigh beat the life out o' 'im. Ventrebleu!"
Beverley now recollected hearing Kenton tell the same grim story by a camp-fire in the hills of Kentucky. Somehow it had caught a new spirit in the French rendering, which linked it with the old tales of adventure that he had read in his boyhood, and it suddenly endeared Oncle Jazon to him. The rough old scrap of a man and the powerful youth chatted together until sundown, smoking their pipes, each feeling for what was best in the other, half aware that in the future they would be tested together in the fire of wild adventure. Every man is more or less a prophet at certain points in his life.
Twilight and moonlight were blending softly when Beverley, on his way back to the fort, departing from a direct course, went along the river's side southward to have a few moments of reflective strolling within reach of the water's pleasant murmur and the town's indefinite evening stir. Rich sweetness, the gift of early autumn, was on the air blowing softly out of a lilac west and singing in the willow fringe that hung here and there over the bank.
On the farther side of the river's wide flow, swollen by recent heavy rains, Beverley saw a pirogue, in one end of which a dark figure swayed to the strokes of a paddle. The slender and shallow little craft was bobbing on the choppy waves and taking a zig-zag course among floating logs and masses of lighter driftwood, while making slow but certain headway toward the hither bank.
Beverley took a bit of punk and a flint and steel from his pocket, relit his pipe and stood watching the skilful boatman conduct his somewhat dangerous voyage diagonally against the rolling current. It was a shifting, hide-and-seek scene, its features appearing and disappearing with the action of the waves and the doubtful light reflected from fading clouds and sky. Now and again the man stood up in his skittish pirogue, balancing himself with care, to use a short pole in shoving driftwood out of his way; and more than once he looked to Beverley as if he had plunged head-long into the dark water.
The spot, as nearly as it can be fixed, was about two hundred yards below where the public road-bridge at present spans the Wabash. The bluff was then far different from what it is now, steeper and higher, with less silt and sand between it and the water's edge. Indeed, swollen as the current was, a man could stand on the top of the bank and easily leap into the deep water. At a point near the middle of the river a great mass of drift-logs and sand had long ago formed a barrier which split the stream so that one current came heavily shoreward on the side next the town and swashed with its muddy foam, making a swirl and eddy just below where Beverley stood.
The pirogue rounded the upper angle of this obstruction, not without difficulty to its crew of one, and swung into the rapid shoreward rush, as was evidently planned for by the steersman, who now paddled against the tide with all his might to keep from being borne too far down stream for a safe landing place.
Beverley stood at ease idly and half dreamily looking on, when suddenly something caused a catastrophe, which for a moment he did not comprehend. In fact the man in the pirogue came to grief, as a man in a pirogue is very apt to do, and fairly somersaulted overboard into the water. Nothing serious would have threatened (for the man could swim like an otter) had not a floating, half submerged log thrust up some short, stiff stumps of boughs, upon the points of which the man struck heavily and was not only hurt, but had his clothes impaled securely by one of the ugly spears, so that he hung in a helpless position, while the water's motion alternately lifted and submerged him, his arms beating about wildly.
When Beverley heard a strangling cry for help, he pulled himself promptly together, flung off his coat, as if by a single motion, and leaped down the bank into the water. He was a swimmer whose strokes counted for all that prodigious strength and excellent training could afford; he rushed through the water with long sweeps, making a semicircle, rounding against the current, so as to swing down upon the drowning man.
Less than a half-hour later a rumor by some means spread throughout the town that Father Beret and Lieutenant Beverley were drowned in the Wabash. But when a crowd gathered to verify the terrible news it turned out to be untrue. Gaspard Roussillon had once more distinguished himself by an exhibition of heroic nerve and muscle.
"Ventrebleu! Quel homme!" exclaimed Oncle Jazon, when told that M. Roussillon had come up the bank of the Wabash with Lieutenant Beverley under one arm and Father Beret under the other, both men apparently dead.
"Bring them to my house immediately," M. Roussillon ordered, as soon as they were restored to consciousness; and he shook himself, as a big wet animal sometimes does, covering everybody near him with muddy water. Then he led the way with melodramatic strides.
In justice to historical accuracy there must be a trifling reform of what appeared on the face of things to be grandly true. Gaspard Roussillon actually dragged Father Beret and Lieutenant Beverley one at a time out of the eddy water and up the steep river bank. That was truly a great feat; but the hero never explained. When men arrived he was standing between the collapsed forms, panting and dripping. Doubtless he looked just as if he had dropped them from under his arms, and why shouldn't he have the benefit of a great implication?
"I've saved them both," he roared; from which, of course, the ready creole imagination inferred the extreme of possible heroic performance.
"Bring them to my house immediately," and it was accordingly done.
The procession, headed by M. Roussillon, moved noisily, for the French tongue must shake off what comes to it on the thrill of every exciting moment. The only silent Frenchman is the dead one.
Father Beret was not only well-nigh drowned, but seriously hurt. He lay for a week on a bed in M. Roussillon's house before he could sit up. Alice hung over him night and day, scarcely sleeping or eating until he was past all danger. As for Beverley, he shook off all the effects of his struggle in a little while. Next day he was out, as well and strong as ever, busy with the affairs of his office. Nor was he less happy on account of what the little adventure had cast into his experience. It is good to feel that one has done an unselfish deed, and no young man's heart repels the freshness of what comes to him when a beautiful girl first enters his life.
Naturally enough Alice had some thoughts of Beverley while she was so attentively caring for Father Beret. She had never before seen a man like him, nor had she read of one. Compared with Rene de Ronville, the best youth of her acquaintance, he was in every way superior; this was too evident for analysis; but referred to the romantic standard taken out of the novels she had read, he somehow failed; and yet he loomed bravely in her vision, not exactly a knight of the class she had most admired, still unquestionably a hero of large proportions.
Beverley stepped in for a few minutes every day to see Father Beret, involuntarily lengthening his visit by a sliding ratio as he became better acquainted. He began to enjoy the priest's conversation, with its sly worldly wisdom cropping up through fervid religious sentiments and quaint humor. Alice must have interested him more than he was fully aware of; for his eyes followed her, as she came and went, with a curious criticism of her half-savage costume and her springy, Dryad-like suppleness, which reminded him of the shyest and gracefulest wild birds; and yet a touch of refinement, the subtlest and best, showed in all her ways. He studied her, as he would have studied a strange, showy and originally fragrant flower, or a bird of oddly attractive plumage. While she said little to him or to anyone else in his presence, he became aware of the willfulness and joyous lightness which played on her nature's changeable surface. He wondered at her influence over Father Beret, whom she controlled apparently without effort. But in due time he began to feel a deeper character, a broader intelligence, behind her superficial sauvagerie; and he found that she really had no mean smattering of books in the lighter vein.
A little thing happened which further opened his eyes and increased the interest that her beauty and elementary charm of style aroused in him gradually, apace with their advancing acquaintanceship.
Father Beret had got well and returned to his hut and his round of spiritual duties; but Beverley came to Roussillon place every day all the same. For a wonder Madame Roussillon liked him, and at most times held the scolding side of her tongue when he was present. Jean, too, made friendly advances whenever opportunity afforded. Of course Alice gave him just the frank cordiality of hospitable welcome demanded by frontier conditions. She scarcely knew whether she liked him or not; but he had a treasury of information from which he was enriching her with liberal carelessness day by day. The hungriest part of her mind was being sumptuously banqueted at his expense. Mere intellectual greediness drew her to him.
Naturally they soon threw off such troubling formalities as at first rose between them, and began to disclose to each other their true characteristics. Alice found in Beverley a large target for the missiles of her clever and tantalizing perversity. He in turn practiced a native dignity and an acquired superiority of manner to excellent effect. It was a meeting of Greek with Greek in a new Arcadia. To him here was Diana, strong, strange, simple, even crude almost to naturalness, yet admirably pure in spirit and imbued with highest womanly aspirations. To her Beverley represented the great outside area of life. He came to her from wonderland, beyond the wide circle of houseless woods and prairies. He represented gorgeous cities, teeming parks of fashion, boulevards, salons, halls of social splendor, the theater, the world of woman's dreams.
Now, there is an antagonism, vague yet powerful, generated between natures thus cast together from the opposite poles of experience and education: an antagonism practically equivalent to the most vigorous attraction. What one knows the other is but half aware of; neither knowledge nor ignorance being mutual, there is a scintillation of exchange, from opposing vantage grounds, followed by harmless snaps of thunder. Culture and refinement take on airs--it is the deepest artificial instinct of enlightenment to pose--in the presence of naturalness; and there is a certain style of ignorance which attitudinizes before the gate of knowledge. The return to nature has always been the dream of the conventionalized soul, while the simple Arcadian is forever longing for the maddening honey of sophistication.
Innate jealousies strike together like flint and steel dashing off sparks by which nearly everything that life can warm its core withal is kindled and kept burning. What I envy in my friend I store for my best use. I thrust and parry, not to kill, but to learn my adversary's superior feints and guards. And this hint of sword play leads back to what so greatly surprised and puzzled Beverley one day when he chanced to be examining the pair of colechemardes on the wall.
He took one down, and handling it with the indescribable facility possible to none save a practical swordsman, remarked: "There's a world of fascination in these things; I like nothing better than a bout at fencing. Does your father practice the art?"
"I have no father, no mother," she quickly said; "but good Papa Roussillon does like a little exercise with the colechemarde."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it, I shall ask to teach him a trick or two," Beverley responded in the lightest mood. "When will he return from the woods?"
"I can't tell you; he's very irregular in such matters," she said. Then, with a smile half banter and half challenge, she added; "if you are really dying for some exercise, you shall not have to wait for him to come home, I assure you, Monsieur Beverley."
"Oh, it's Monsieur de Ronville, perhaps, that you will offer up as a victim to my skill and address," he slyly returned; for he was suspecting that a love affair in some stage of progress lay between her and Rene.
She blushed violently, but quickly overcoming a combined rush of surprise and anger, added with an emphasis as charming as it was unexpected.
"I myself am, perhaps, swordsman enough to satisfy the impudence and vanity of Monsieur Beverley, Lieutenant in the American army."
"Pardon me, Mademoiselle; forgive me, I beg of you," he exclaimed, earnestly modulating his voice to sincerest beseechment; "I really did not mean to be impudent, nor--" Her vivacity cleared with a merry laugh.
"No apologies, I command you," she interposed. "We will have them after I have taught you a fencing lesson."
From a shelf she drew down a pair of foils and presenting the hilts, bade him take his choice.
"There isn't any difference between them that I know of," she said, and then added archly; "but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of having used every sensible precaution."
He looked straight into her eyes, trying to catch what was in her mind, but there was a bewildering glamour playing across those gray, opal-tinted wells of mystery, from which he could draw only a mischievous smile-glint, direct, daring, irresistible.
"Well," he said, taking one of the foils, "what do you really mean? Is it a challenge without room for honorable retreat?"
"The time for parley is past," she replied, "follow me to the battle-ground."
She led the way to a pleasant little court in the rear of the cabin's yard, a space between two wings and a vine-covered trellis, beyond which lay a well kept vineyard and vegetable garden. Here she turned about and faced him, poising her foil with a fine grace.
"Are you ready?" she inquired.
He tried again to force a way into the depths of her eyes with his; but he might as well have attacked the sun; so he stood in a confusion of not very well defined feelings, undecided, hesitating, half expecting that there would be some laughable turn to end the affair.
"Are you afraid, Monsieur Beverley?" she demanded after a short waiting in silence.
He laughed now and whipped the air with his foil.
"You certainly are not in earnest?" he said interrogatively. "Do you really mean that you want to fence with me?"
"If you think because I'm only a girl you can easily beat me, try it," she tauntingly replied making a level thrust toward his breast.
Quick as a flash he parried, and then a merry clinking and twinkling of steel blades kept time to their swift movements. Instantly, by the sure sense which is half sight, half feeling--the sense that guides the expert fencer's hand and wrist--Beverley knew that he had probably more than his match, and in ten seconds his attack was met by a time thrust in opposition which touched him sharply.
Alice sprang far back, lowered her point and laughed.
"Je vous salue, Monsieur Beverley!" she cried, with childlike show of delight. "Did you feel the button?"
"Yes, I felt it," he said with frank acknowledgment in his voice, "it was cleverly done. Now give me a chance to redeem myself."
He began more carefully and found that she, too, was on her best mettle; but it was a short bout, as before. Alice seemed to give him an easy opening and he accepted it with a thrust; then something happened that he did not understand. The point of his foil was somehow caught under his opponent's hilt-guard while her blade seemed to twist around his; at the same time there was a wring and a jerk, the like of which he had never before felt, and he was disarmed, his wrist and fingers aching with the wrench they had received.
Of course the thing was not new; he had been disarmed before; but her trick of doing it was quite a mystery to him, altogether different from any that he had ever seen.
"Vous me pardonnerez, Monsieur," she mockingly exclaimed, picking up his weapon and offering the hilt to him. "Here is your sword!"
"Keep it," he said, folding his arms and trying to look unconcerned, "you have captured it fairly. I am at your mercy; be kind to me."
Madame Roussillon and Jean, the hunchback, hearing the racket of the foils had come out to see and were standing agape.
"You ought to be ashamed, Alice," said the dame in scolding approval of what she had done; "girls do not fence with gentlemen."
"This girl does," said Alice.
"And with extreme disaster to this gentleman," said Beverley, laughing in a tone of discomfiture and resignation.
"Ah, Mo'sieu', there's nothing but disaster where she goes," complained Madame Roussillon, "she is a destroyer of everything. Only yesterday she dropped my pink bowl and broke it, the only one I had."
"And just to think," said Beverley, "what would have been the condition of my heart had we been using rapiers instead of leather-buttoned foils! She would have spitted it through the very center."
"Like enough," replied the dame indifferently. "She wouldn't wince, either,--not she."
Alice ran into the house with the foils and Beverley followed.
"We must try it over again some day soon," he said; "I find that you can show me a few points. Where did you learn to fence so admirably? Is Monsieur Roussillon your master?"
"Indeed he isn't," she quickly replied, "he is but a bungling swordsman. My master--but I am not at liberty to tell you who has taught me the little I know."
"Well, whoever he is I should be glad to have lessons from him."
"But you'll never get them."
"Why?"
"Because."
"A woman's ultimatum."
"As good as a man's!" she bridled prettily; "and sometimes better--at the foils for example. Vous--comprenez, n'est ce pas?"
He laughed heartily.
"Yes, your point reaches me," he said, "but sperat et in saeva victus gladiatur arena, as the old Latin poet wisely remarks." The quotation was meant to tease her.
"Yes, Montaigne translated that or something in his book," she commented with prompt erudition. "I understand it."
Beverley looked amazed.
"What do you know about Montaigne?" he demanded with a blunt brevity amounting to something like gruffness.
"Sh', Monsieur, not too loud," she softly protested, looking around to see that neither Madame Roussillon nor Jean had followed them into the main room. "It is not permitted that I read that old book; but they do not hide it from me, because they think I can't make out its dreadful spelling."
She smiled so that her cheeks drew their dimples deep into the delicately tinted pink-and-brown, where wind and sun and wholesome exercise had set the seal of absolute health, and took from a niche in the logs of the wall a stained and dog-eared volume. He looked, and it was, indeed, the old saint and sinner, Montaigne.
Involuntarily he ran his eyes over the girl from head to foot, comparing her show of knowledge with the outward badges of abject rusticity, and even wildness, with which she was covered.
"Well," he said, "you are a mystery."
"You think it surprising that I can read a book! Frankly I can't understand half of this one. I read it because--well just because they want me to read about nothing but sickly old saints and woe-begone penitents. I like something lively. What do I care for all that uninteresting religious stuff?"
"Montaigne IS decidedly lively in spots," Beverley remarked. "I shouldn't think a girl--I shouldn't think you'd particularly enjoy his humors."
"I don't care for the book at all," she said, flushing quickly, "only I seem to learn about the world from it. Sometimes it seems as if it lifted me up high above all this wild, lonely and tiresome country, so that I can see far off where things are different and beautiful. It is the same with the novels; and they don't permit me to read them either; but all the same I do."
When Beverley, taking his leave, passed through the gate at Roussillon place, he met Rene de Ronville going in. It was a notable coincidence that each young man felt something troublesome rise in his throat as he looked into the other's eyes.
A week of dreamy autumn weather came on, during which Beverley managed to be with Alice a great deal, mostly sitting on the Roussillon gallery, where the fading vine leaves made fairy whispering, and where the tempered breeze blew deliciously cool from over the distant multi-colored woods. The men of Vincennes were gathering their Indian corn early to dry it on the cob for grating into winter meal. Many women made wine from the native grapes and from the sweeter and richer fruit of imported vines. Madame Roussillon and Alice stained their hands a deep purple during the pressing season, and Beverley found himself engaged in helping them handle the juicy crop, while around the overflowing earthen pots the wild bees, wasps and hornets hummed with an incessant, jarring monotony.
Jean, the hunchback, gathered ample stores of hickory nuts, walnuts, hazel-nuts and pin-oak acorns. Indeed, the whole population of the village made a great spurt of industry just before the falling of winter; and presently, when every preparation had been completed for the dreaded cold season, M. Roussillon carried out his long-cherished plan, and gave a great party at the river house. After the most successful trading experience of all his life he felt irrepressibly liberal.
"Let's have one more roaring good time," he said, "that's what life is for."
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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7
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THE MAYOR'S PARTY
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Beverley was so surprised and confused in his mind by the ease with which he had been mastered at swordplay by a mere girl, that he felt as if just coming out of a dream. In fact the whole affair seemed unreal, yet so vivid and impressive in all its main features, that he could not emerge from it and look it calmly over from without. His experience with women had not prepared him for a ready understanding and acceptance of a girl like Alice. While he was fully aware of her beauty, freshness, vivacity and grace, this Amazonian strength of hers, this boldness of spirit, this curious mixture of frontier crudeness and a certain adumbration--so to call it--of patrician sensibilities and aspirations, affected him both pleasantly and unpleasantly. He did not sympathize promptly with her semi-barbaric costume; she seemed not gently feminine, as compared with the girls of Virginia and Maryland. He resented her muscular development and her independent disposition. She was far from coarseness, however, and, indeed, a trace of subtle refinement, although not conventional, imbued her whole character.
But why was he thinking so critically about her? Had his selfishness received an incurable shock from the button of her foil? A healthy young man of the right sort is apt to be jealous of his physical prowess--touch him there and he will turn the world over to right himself in, his own admiration and yours. But to be beaten on his highest ground of virility by a dimple-faced maiden just leaving her teens could not offer Beverley any open way to recoupment of damages.
He tried to shake her out of his mind, as a bit of pretty and troublesome rubbish, what time he pursued his not very exacting military duties. But the more he shook the tighter she clung, and the oftener he went to see her.
Helm was a good officer in many respects, and his patriotism was of the best; but he liked jolly company, a glass of something strong and a large share of ease. Detroit lay many miles northeastward across the wilderness, and the English, he thought, would scarcely come so far to attack his little post, especially now that most of the Indians in the intervening country had declared in favor of the Americans. Recently, too, the weather had been favoring him by changing from wet to dry, so that the upper Wabash and its tributaries were falling low and would soon be very difficult to navigate with large batteaux.
Very little was done to repair the stockade and dilapidated remnant of a blockhouse. There were no sufficient barracks, a mere shed in one angle serving for quarters, and the old cannon could not have been used to any effect in case of attack. As for the garrison, it was a nominal quantity, made up mostly of men who preferred hunting and fishing to the merest pretense of military duty.
Gaspard Roussillon assumed to know everything about Indian affairs and the condition of the English at Detroit. His optimistic eloquence lulled Helm to a very pleasant sense of security. Beverley was not so easy to satisfy; but his suggestions regarding military discipline and a vigorous prosecution of repairs to the blockhouse and stockade were treated with dilatory geniality by his superior officer. The soft wonder of a perfect Indian summer glorified land, river and sky. Why not dream and bask? Why not drink exhilarating toddies?
Meantime the entertainment to be given by Gaspard Roussillon occupied everybody's imagination to an unusual extent. Rene de Ronville, remembering but not heeding the doubtful success of his former attempt, went long beforehand to claim Alice as his partenaire; but she flatly refused him, once more reminding him of his obligations to little Adrienne Bourcier. He would not be convinced.
"You are bound to me," he said, "you promised before, you know, and the party was but put off. I hold you to it; you are my partenaire, and I am yours, you can't deny that."
"No you are not my partenaire," she firmly said; then added lightly, "Feu mon partenaire, you are dead and buried as my partner at that dance."
He glowered in silence for a few moments, then said: "It is Lieutenant Beverley, I suppose."
She gave him a quick contemptuous look, but turned it instantly into one of her tantalising smiles.
"Do you imagine that?" she demanded.
"Imagine it! I know it," he said with a hot flush. "Have I no sense?"
"Precious little," she replied with a merry laugh.
"You think so."
"Go to Father Beret, tell him everything, and then ask him what he thinks," she said in a calm, even tone, her face growing serious.
There was an awkward silence.
She had touched Rene's vulnerable spot; he was nothing if not a devout Catholic, and his conscience rooted itself in what good Father Beret had taught him.
The church, no matter by what name it goes, Catholic or Protestant, has a saving hold on the deepest inner being of its adherents. No grip is so hard to shake off as that of early religious convictions. The still, small voice coming down from the times "When shepherds watched their flocks by night," in old Judea, passes through the priest, the minister, the preacher; it echoes in cathedral, church, open-air meeting; it gently and mysteriously imparts to human life the distinctive quality which is the exponent of Christian civilization. Upon the receptive nature of children it makes an impress that forever afterward exhales a fragrance and irradiates a glory for the saving of the nations.
Father Beret was the humble, self-effacing, never-tiring agent of good in his community. He preached in a tender sing-song voice the sweet monotonies of his creed and the sublime truths of Christ's code. He was indeed the spiritual father of his people. No wonder Rene's scowling expression changed to one of abject self-concern when the priest's name was suddenly connected with his mood. The confessional loomed up before the eyes of his conscience, and his knees smote together, spiritually if not physically.
"Now," said Alice, brusquely, but with sweet and gentle firmness, "go to your fiancee, go to pretty and good Adrienne, and ask her to be your partenaire. Refresh your conscience with a noble draught of duty and make that dear little girl overflow with joy. Go, Rene de Ronville."
In making over what she said into English, the translation turns out to be but a sonorous paraphrase. Her French was of that mixed creole sort, a blending of linguistic elegance and patois, impossible to imitate. Like herself it was beautiful, crude, fascinating, and something in it impressed itself as unimpeachable, despite the broken and incongruous diction. Rene felt his soul cowering, even slinking; but he fairly maintained a good face, and went away without saying another word.
"Ciel, ciel, how beautiful she is!" he thought, as he walked along the narrow street in the dreamy sunshine. "But she is not for me, not for me."
He shook himself and tried to be cheerful. In fact he hummed a Creole ditty, something about "La belle Jeanette, qu' a brise mon coeur."
Days passed, and at last the time of the great event arrived. It was a frosty night, clear, sparkling with stars, a keen breath cutting down from the northwest. M. Roussillon, Madame Roussillon, Alice and Lieutenant Beverley went together to the river house, whither they had been preceded by almost the entire population of Vincennes. Some fires had been built outside; the crowd proving too great for the building's capacity, as there had to be ample space for the dancers. Merry groups hovered around the flaming logs, while within the house a fiddle sang its simple and ravishing tunes. Everybody talked and laughed; it was a lively racket of clashing voices and rhythmical feet.
You would have been surprised to find that Oncle Jazon was the fiddler; but there he sat, perched on a high stool in one corner of the large room, sawing away as if for dear life, his head wagging, his elbow leaping back and forth, while his scalpless crown shone like the side of a peeled onion and his puckered mouth wagged grotesquely from side to side keeping time to his tuneful scraping.
When the Roussillon party arrived it attracted condensed attention. Its importance, naturally of the greatest in the assembled popular mind, was enhanced--as mathematicians would say, to the nth power--by the gown of Alice. It was resplendent indeed in the simple, unaccustomed eyes upon which it flashed with a buff silken glory. Matrons stared at it; maidens gazed with fascinated and jealous vision; men young and old let their eyes take full liberty. It was as if a queen, arrayed in a robe of state, had entered that dingy log edifice, an apparition of dazzling and awe-inspiring beauty. Oncle Jazon caught sight of her, and snapped his tune short off. The dancers swung together and stopped in confusion. But she, fortified by a woman's strongest bulwark, the sense of resplendency, appeared quite unconscious of herself.
Little Adrienne, hanging in blissful delight upon Rene's strong arm, felt the stir of excitement and wondered what was the matter, being too short to see over the heads of those around her.
"What is it? what is it?" she cried, tiptoeing and tugging at her companion's sleeve. "Tell me, Rene, tell me, I say."
Rene was gazing in dumb admiration into which there swept a powerful anger, like a breath of flame. He recollected how Alice had refused to wear that dress when he had asked her, and now she had it on. Moreover, there she stood beside Lieutenant Beverley, holding his arm, looking up into his face, smiling, speaking to him.
"I think you might tell me what has happened," said Adrienne, pouting and still plucking at his arm. "I can't see a thing, and you won't tell me."
"Oh, it's nothing," he presently answered, rather fretfully. Then he stooped, lowered his voice and added; "it's Mademoiselle Roussillon all dressed up like a bride or something. She's got on a buff silk dress that Mo'sieu' Roussillon's mother had in France."
"How beautiful she must look!" cried the girl. "I wish I could see her."
Rene put a hand on each side of her slender waist and lifted her high, so that her pretty head rose above the crowding people. Alice chanced to turn her face that way just then and saw the unconventional performance. Her eyes met those of Adrienne and she gave a nod of smiling recognition. It was a rose beaming upon a gilliflower.
M. Roussillon naturally understood that all this stir and crowding to see was but another demonstration of his personal popularity. He bowed and waved a vast hand.
But the master of ceremonies called loudly for the dancers to take their places. Oncle Jazon attacked his fiddle again with startling energy. Those who were not to dance formed a compact double line around the wall, the shorter ones in front, the taller in the rear. And what a scene it was! but no person present regarded it as in any way strange or especially picturesque, save as to the gown of Alice, which was now floating and whirling in time to Oncle Jazon's mad music. The people outside the house cheerfully awaited their turn to go in while an equal number went forth to chat and sing around the fires.
Beverley was in a young man's seventh heaven. The angels formed a choir circling around his heart, and their song brimmed his universe from horizon to horizon.
When he called at Roussillon place, and Alice appeared so beautifully and becomingly robed, it was another memorable surprise. She flashed a new and subtly stimulating light upon him. The old gown, rich in subdued splendor of lace and brocade, was ornamented at the throat with a heavy band of pearls, just above which could be seen a trace of the gold chain that supported her portrait locket. There, too, with a not unbecoming gleam of barbaric colors, shone the string of porcupine beads to which the Indian charmstone hidden in her bosom was attached. It all harmonized with the time, the place, the atmosphere. Anywhere else it would have been preposterous as a decorative presentment, but here, in this little nook where the coureurs de bois, the half-breeds, the traders and the missionaries had founded a centre of assembly, it was the best possible expression in the life so formed at hap-hazard, and so controlled by the coarsest and narrowest influences. To Fitzhugh Beverley, of Beverley Hall, the picture conveyed immediately a sweet and pervading influence.
Alice looked superbly tall, stately and self-possessed in her transforming costume, a woman of full stature, her countenance gravely demure yet reserving near the surface the playful dimples and mischievous smiles so characteristic of her more usual manner. A sudden mood of the varium et mutabile semper femina had led her to wear the dress, and the mood still illuminated her.
Beverley stood before her frankly looking and admiring. The underglow in her cheeks deepened and spread over her perfect throat; her eyes met his a second, then shyly avoided him. He hardly could have been sure which was master, her serenity or her girlish delight in being attractively dressed; but there could be no doubt as to her self-possession; for, saving the pretty blush under his almost rude gaze of admiration, she bore herself as firmly as any fine lady he remembered.
They walked together to the river house, she daintily holding up her skirts, under the insistent verbal direction of Madame Roussillon, and at the same time keeping a light, strangely satisfying touch on his arm. When they entered the room there was no way for Beverley to escape full consciousness of the excitement they aroused; but M. Roussillon's assumption broke the force of what would have otherwise been extremely embarrassing.
"It is encouraging, very encouraging," murmured the big man to Beverley in the midst of the staring and scrambling and craning of necks, "to have my people admire and love me so; it goes to the middle of my heart." And again he bowed and waved his hand with an all-including gesture, while he swept his eyes over the crowd.
Alice and Beverley were soon in the whirl of the dance, forgetful of everything but an exhilaration stirred to its utmost by Oncle Jazon's music.
A side remark here may be of interest to those readers who enjoy the dream that on some fortunate day they will invade a lonely nook, where amid dust and cobwebs, neglected because unrecognized, reposes a masterpiece of Stradivari or some other great fiddle-maker. Oncle Jazon knew nothing whatever about old violins. He was a natural musician, that was all, and flung himself upon his fiddle with the same passionate abandon that characterizes a healthy boy's assault when a plum pudding is at his mercy. But his fiddle was a Carlo Bergonzi; and now let the search be renewed, for the precious instrument was certainly still in Vincennes as late as 1819, and there is a vague tradition that Governor Whitcomb played on it not long before he died. The mark by which it may be identified is the single word "Jazon" cut in the back of its neck by Oncle Jazon himself.
When their dance was ended Alice and Beverley followed the others of their set out into the open air while a fresh stream of eager dancers poured in. Beverley insisted upon wrapping Alice in her mantle of unlined beaver skin against the searching winter breath. They did not go to the fire, but walked back and forth, chatting until their turn to dance should come again, pausing frequently to exchange pleasantries with some of the people. Curiously enough both of them had forgotten the fact that other young men would be sure to ask Alice for a dance, and that more than one pretty creole lass was rightfully expecting a giddy turn with the stalwart and handsome Lieutenant Beverley.
Rene de Ronville before long broke rudely into their selfish dream and led Alice into the house. This reminded Beverley of his social duty, wherefore seeing little Adrienne Bourcier he made a rush and secured her at a swoop from the midst of a scrambling circle of mutually hindered young men.
"Allons, ma petite!" he cried, quite in the gay tone of the occasion, and swung her lightly along with him.
It was like an eagle dancing with a linnet, or a giant with a fairy, when the big Lieutenant led out la petite Adrienne, as everybody called her. The honor of Beverley's attention sat unappreciated on Adrienne's mind, for all her thoughts went with her eyes toward Rene and Alice. Nor was Beverley so absorbed in his partner's behalf that he ever for a moment willingly lost sight of the floating buff gown, the shining brown hair and the beautiful face, which formed, indeed, the center of attraction for all eyes.
Father Beret was present, sharing heartily in the merriment of his flock. Voices greeted him on all sides with intonations of tender respect. The rudest man there was loyal to the kind-hearted priest, and would as soon have thought of shooting him as of giving him any but the most reverent attention. It is to be noted, however, that their understanding of reverence included great freedom and levity not especially ecclesiastical in its nature. Father Beret understood the conditions around him and had the genius to know what not to hear, what not to see; but he never failed when a good word or a fatherly touch with his hand seemed worth trying on a sheep that appeared to be straying dangerously far from the fold. Upon an occasion like this dance at the river house, he was no less the faithful priest because of his genial sympathy with the happiness of the young people who looked to him for spiritual guidance.
It was some time before Beverley could again secure Alice for a dance, and he found it annoying him atrociously to see her smile sweetly on some buckskin-clad lout who looked like an Indian and danced like a Parisian. He did not greatly enjoy most of his partners; they could not appeal to any side of his nature just then. Not that he at all times stood too much on his aristocratic traditions, or lacked the virile traits common to vigorous and worldly-minded men; but the contrast between Alice and the other girls present was somehow an absolute bar to a democratic freedom of the sort demanded by the occasion. He met Father Beret and passed a few pleasant words with him.
"They have honored your flag, my son, I am glad to see," the priest said, pointing with a smile to where, in one corner, the banner that bore Alice's name was effectively draped.
Beverley had not noticed it before, and when he presently got possession of Alice he asked her to tell him the story of how she planted it on the fort, although he had heard it to the last detail from Father Beret just a moment ago. They stood together under its folds while she naively sketched the scene for him, even down to her picturesquely disagreeable interview with Long-Hair, mention of whom led up to the story of the Indian's race with the stolen dame jeanne of brandy under his arm on that memorable night, and the subsequent services performed for him by Father Beret and her, after she and Jean had found him in the mud beyond the river.
The dancing went on at a furious pace while they stood there. Now and again a youth came to claim her, but she said she was tired and begged to rest awhile, smiling so graciously upon each one that his rebuff thrilled him as if it had been the most flattering gift of tender partiality, while at the same time he suspected that it was all for Beverley.
Helm in his most jovial mood was circulating freely among those who formed the periphery of the dancing-area; he even ventured a few clumsy capers in a cotillion with Madame Godere for partner. She danced well; but he, as someone remarked, stumbled all over himself.
There was but one thing to mar the evening's pleasure: some of the men drank too much and grew boisterous. A quarrel ended in a noisy but harmless fight near one of the fires. M. Roussillon rushed to the spot, seized the combatants, tousled them playfully, as if they had been children, rubbed their heads together, laughed stormily and so restored the equilibrium of temper.
It was late when fathers and mothers in the company began to suggest adjournment. Oncle Jazon's elbow was tired and the enthusiasm generated by his unrecognized Bergonzi became fitful, while the relaxing crowd rapidly encroached upon the space set apart for the dancers. In the open lamps suspended here and there the oil was running low, and the rag wicks sputtered and winked with their yellow flames.
"Well," said M. Roussillon, coming to where Alice and Beverley stood insulated and isolated by their great delight in each other's company, "it's time to go home."
Beverley looked at his watch; it was a quarter to three!
Alice also looked at the watch, and saw engraved and enameled on its massive case the Beverley crest, but she did not know what it meant. There was something of the sort in the back of her locket, she remembered with satisfaction.
Just then there was a peculiar stir in the flagging crowd. Someone had arrived, a coureur de bois from the north. Where was the commandant? the coureur had something important for him.
Beverley heard a remark in a startled voice about the English getting ready for a descent upon the Wabash valley. This broke the charm which thralled him and sent through his nerves the bracing shock that only a soldier can feel when a hint of coming battle reaches him.
Alice saw the flash in his face.
"Where is Captain Helm? I must see him immediately. Excuse me," he said, abruptly turning away and looking over the heads of the people; "yonder he is, I must go to him."
The coureur de bois, Adolphe Dutremble by name, was just from the head waters of the Wabash. He was speaking to Helm when Beverley came up. M. Roussillon followed close upon the Lieutenant's heels, as eager as he to know what the message amounted to; but Helm took the coureur aside, motioning Beverley to join them. M. Roussillon included himself in the conference.
After all it was but the gossip of savages that Dutremble communicated; still the purport was startling in the extreme. Governor Hamilton, so the story ran, had been organizing a large force; he was probably now on his way to the portage of the Wabash with a flotilla of batteaux, some companies of disciplined soldiers, artillery and a strong body of Indians.
Helm listened attentively to Dutremble's lively sketch, then cross-questioned him with laconic directness.
"Send Mr. Jazon to me," he said to M. Roussillon, as if speaking to a servant.
The master Frenchman went promptly, recognizing Captain Helm's right to command, and sympathizing With his unpleasant military predicament if the news should prove true.
Oncle Jazon came in a minute, his fiddle and bow clamped under his arm, to receive a verbal commission, which sent him with some scouts of his own choosing forthwith to the Wabash portage, or far enough to ascertain what the English commander was doing.
After the conference Beverley made haste to join Alice; but he found that she had gone home.
"One hell of a fix we'll be in if Hamilton comes down here with a good force," said Helm.
Beverley felt like retorting that a little forethought, zeal and preparation might have lessened the prospective gloom. He had been troubled all the time about Helm's utter lack of military precaution. True, there was very little material out of which that optimistic officer could have formed a body of resistance against the army probably at Hamilton's command; but Beverley was young, energetic, bellicose, and to him everything seemed possible; he believed in vigilance, discipline, activity, dash; he had a great faith in the efficacy of enthusiasm.
"We must organize these Frenchmen," he said; "they will make good fighters if we can once get them to act as a body. There's no time to be lost; but we have time enough in which to do a great deal before Hamilton can arrive, if we go at it in earnest."
"Your theory is excellent, Lieutenant, but the practice of it won't be worth a damn," Helm replied with perfect good nature. "I'd like to see you organize these parly-voos. There ain't a dozen of 'em that wouldn't accept the English with open arms. I know 'em. They're good hearted, polite and all that; they'll hurrah for the flag; that's easy enough; but put 'em to the test and they'll join in with the strongest side, see if they don't. Of course there are a few exceptions. There's Jazon, he's all right, and I have faith in Bosseron, and Legrace, and young Ronville."
"Roussillon--" Beverley began.
"Is much of a blow-hard," Helm interrupted with a laugh. "Barks loud, but his biting disposition is probably not vicious."
"He and Father Beret control the whole population at all events," said Beverley.
"Yes, and such a population!"
While joining in Captain Helm's laugh at the expense of Vincennes, Beverley took leave to indulge a mental reservation in favor of Alice. He could not bear to class her with the crowd of noisy, thoughtless, mercurial beings whom he heard still singing gay snatches and calling to one another from distance to distance, as they strolled homeward in groups and pairs. Nor could the impending danger of an enforced surrender to the English and Indians drive from his mind her beautiful image, while he lay for the rest of the night between sleeping and waking on his primitive bed, alternately hearing over again her every phrase and laugh, and striving to formulate some definite plan for defending the town and fort. His heart was full of her. She had surprised his nature and filled it, as with a wonderful, haunting song. His youth, his imagination, all that was fresh and spontaneously gentle and natural in him, was flooded with the magnetic splendor of her beauty. And yet, in his pride (and it was not a false pride, but rather a noble regard for his birthright) he vaguely realized how far she was from him, how impossible.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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8
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THE DILEMMA OF CAPTAIN HELM
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Oncle Jazon, feeling like a fish returned to the water after a long and torturing captivity in the open air, plunged into the forest with anticipations of lively adventure and made his way toward the Wea plains. It was his purpose to get a boat at the village of Ouiatenon and pull thence up the Wabash until he could find out what the English were doing. He chose for his companions on this dangerous expedition two expert coureurs de bois, Dutremble and Jacques Bailoup. Fifty miles up the river they fell in with some friendly Indians, well known to them all, who were returning from the portage.
The savages informed them that there were no signs of an English advance in that quarter. Some of them had been as far as the St. Joseph river and to within a short distance of Detroit without seeing a white man or hearing of any suspicious movements on the part of Hamilton. So back came Oncle Jazon with his pleasing report, much disappointed that he had not been able to stir up some sort of trouble.
It was Helm's turn to laugh.
"What did I tell you?" he cried, in a jolly mood, slapping Beverley on the shoulder. "I knew mighty well that it was all a big story with nothing in it. What on earth would the English be thinking about to march an army away off down here only to capture a rotten stockade and a lot of gabbling parly-voos?"
Beverley, while he did not feel quite as confident as his chief, was not sorry that things looked a little brighter than he had feared they would turn out to be. Secretly, and without acknowledging it to himself, he was delighted with the life he was living. The Arcadian atmosphere of Vincennes clothed him in its mists and dreams. No matter what way the weather blew its breath, cold or warm, cloudy or fair, rain or snow, the peace in his soul changed not. His nature seemed to hold all of its sterner and fiercer traits in abeyance while he domiciled himself absolutely within his narrow and monotonous environment. Since the dance at the river house a new content, like a soft and diffused sweetness, had crept through his blood with a vague, tingling sense of joy.
He began to like walking about rather aimlessly in the town's narrow streets, with the mud-daubed cabins on either hand. This simple life under low, thatched roofs had a charm. When a door was opened he could see a fire of logs on the ample hearth shooting its yellow tongues up the sooty chimney-throat. Soft creole voices murmured and sang, or jangled their petty domestic discords. Women in scant petticoats, leggings and moccasins swept snow from the squat verandas, or fed the pigs in little sties behind the cabins. Everybody cried cheerily: "Bon jour, Monsieur, comment allez-vous?" as he went by, always accompanying the verbal salute with a graceful wave of the hand.
When he walked early in the morning a waft of broiling game and browning corn scones was abroad. Pots and kettles occupied the hearths with glowing coals heaped around and under. Shaggy dogs whined at the doors until the mensal remnants were tossed out to them in the front yard.
But it was always a glimpse of Alice that must count for everything in Beverley's reckonings, albeit he would have strenuously denied it. True he went to Roussillon place almost every day, it being a fixed part of his well ordered habit, and had a talk with her. Sometimes, when Dame Roussillon was very busy and so quite off her guard, they read together in a novel, or in certain parts of the odd volume of Montaigne. This was done more for the sweetness of disobedience than to enjoy the already familiar pages.
Now and again they repeated their fencing bout; but never with the result which followed the first. Beverley soon mastered Alice's tricks and showed her that, after all, masculine muscle is not to be discounted at its own game by even the most wonderful womanly strength and suppleness. She struggled bravely to hold her vantage ground once gained so easily, but the inevitable was not to be avoided. At last, one howling winter day, he disarmed her by the very trick that she had shown him. That ended the play and they ran shivering into the house.
"Ah," she cried, "it isn't fair. You are so much bigger than I; you have so much longer arms; so much more weight and power. It all counts against me! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" She was rosy with the exhilarating exercise and the biting of the frosty breeze. Her beauty gave forth a new ray.
Deep in her heart she was pleased to have him master her so superbly; but as the days passed she never said so, never gave over trying to make him feel the touch of her foil. She did not know that her eyes were getting through his guard, that her dimples were stabbing his heart to its middle.
"You have other advantages," he replied, "which far overbalance my greater stature and stronger muscles." Then after a pause he added: "After all a girl must be a girl."
Something in his face, something in her heart, startled her so that she made a quick little move like that of a restless bird.
"You are beautiful and that makes my eyes and my hand uncertain," he went on. "Were I fencing with a man there would be no glamour."
He spoke in English, which he did not often do in conversation with her. It was a sign that he was somewhat wrought upon. She followed his rapid words with difficulty; but she caught from them a new note of feeling. He saw a little pale flare shoot across her face and thought she was angry.
"You should not use your dimples to distract my vision," he quickly added, with a light laugh. "It would be no worse for me to throw my hat in your face!"
His attempt at levity was obviously weak; she looked straight into his eyes, with the steady gaze of a simple, earnest nature shocked by a current quite strange to it. She did not understand him, and she did. Her fine intuition gathered swiftly together a hundred shreds of impression received from him during their recent growing intimacy. He was a patrician, as she vaguely made him out, a man of wealth, whose family was great. He belonged among people of gentle birth and high attainments. She magnified him so that he was diffused in her imagination, as difficult to comprehend as a mist in the morning air--and as beautiful.
"You make fun of me," she said, very deliberately, letting her eyes droop; then she looked up again suddenly and continued, with a certain naive expression of disappointment gathering in her face. "I have been too free with you. Father Beret told me not to forget my dignity when in your company. He told me you might misunderstand me. I don't care; I shall not fence with you again." She laughed, but there was no joyous freedom in the sound.
"Why, Alice--my dear Miss Roussillon, you do me a wrong; I beg a thousand pardons if I've hurt you," he cried, stepping nearer to her, "and I can never forgive myself. You have somehow misunderstood me, I know you have!"
On his part it was exaggerating a mere contact of mutual feelings into a dangerous collision. He was as much self-deceived as was she, and he made more noise about it.
"It is you who have misunderstood me," she replied, smiling brightly now, but with just a faint, pitiful touch of regret, or self-blame lingering in her voice. "Father Beret said you would. I did not believe him; but--" "And you shall not believe him," said Beverley. "I have not misunderstood you. There has been nothing. You have treated me kindly and with beautiful friendliness. You have not done or said a thing that Father Beret or anybody else could criticise. And if I have said or done the least thing to trouble you I repudiate it--I did not mean it. Now you believe me, don't you, Miss Roussillon?"
He seemed to be falling into the habit of speaking to her in English. She understood it somewhat imperfectly, especially when in an earnest moment he rushed his words together as if they had been soldiers he was leading at the charge-step against an enemy. His manner convinced her, even though his diction fell short.
"Then we'll talk about something else," she said, laughing naturally now, and retreating to a chair by the hearthside. "I want you to tell me all about yourself and your family, your home and everything."
She seated herself with an air of conscious aplomb and motioned him to take a distant stool.
There was a great heap of dry logs in the fireplace, with pointed flames shooting out of its crevices and leaping into the gloomy, cave-like throat of the flue. Outside a wind passed heavily across the roof and bellowed in the chimney-top.
Beverley drew the stool near Alice, who, with a charred stick, used as a poker, was thrusting at the glowing crevices and sending showers of sparks aloft.
"Why, there wouldn't be much to tell," he said, glad to feel secure again. "Our home is a big old mansion named Beverley Hall on a hill among trees, and half surrounded with slave cabins. It overlooks the plantation in the valley where a little river goes wandering on its way." He was speaking French and she followed him easily now, her eyes beginning to fling out again their natural sunny beams of interest. "I was born there twenty-six years ago and haven't done much of anything since. You see before you, Mademoiselle, a very undistinguished young man, who has signally failed to accomplish the dream of his boyhood, which was to be a great artist like Raphael or Angelo. Instead of being famous I am but a poor Lieutenant in the forces of Virginia."
"You have a mother, father, brothers and sisters?" she interrogated. She did not understand his allusion to the great artists of whom she knew nothing. She had never before heard of them. She leaned the poker against the chimney jamb and turned her face toward him.
"Mother, father, and one sister," he said, "no brothers. We were a happy little group. But my sister married and lives in Baltimore. I am here. Father and mother are alone in the old house. Sometimes I am terribly homesick." He was silent a moment, then added: "But you are selfish, you make me do all the telling. Now I want you to give me a little of your story, Mademoiselle, beginning as I did, at the first."
"But I can't," she replied with childlike frankness, "for I don't know where I was born, nor my parents' names, nor who I am. You see how different it is with me. I am called Alice Roussillon, but I suppose that my name is Alice Tarleton; it is not certain, however. There is very little to help out the theory. Here is all the proof there is. I don't know that it is worth anything."
She took off her locket and handed it to him.
He handled it rather indifferently, for he was just then studying the fine lines of her face. But in a moment he was interested.
"Tarleton, Tarleton," he repeated. Then he turned the little disc of gold over and saw the enameled drawing on the back,--a crest clearly outlined.
He started. The crest was quite familiar.
"Where did you get this?" he demanded in English, and with such blunt suddenness that she was startled. "Where did it come from?"
"I have always had it."
"Always? It's the Tarleton crest. Do you belong to that family?"
"Indeed I do not know. Papa Roussillon says he thinks I do."
"Well, this is strange and interesting," said Beverley, rather to himself than addressing her. He looked from the miniature to the crest and back to the miniature again, then at Alice. "I tell you this is strange," he repeated with emphasis. "It is exceedingly strange."
Her cheeks flushed quickly under their soft brown and her eyes flashed with excitement.
"Yes, I know." Her voice fluttered; her hands were clasped in her lap. She leaned toward him eagerly. "It is strange. I've thought about it a great deal."
"Alice Tarleton; that is right; Alice is a name of the family. Lady Alice Tarleton was the mother of the first Sir Garnett Tarleton who came over in the time of Yardley. It's a great family. One of the oldest and best in Virginia." He looked at her now with a gaze of concentrated interest, under which her eyes fell. "Why, this is romantic!" he exclaimed, "absolutely romantic. And you don't know how you came by this locket? You don't know who was your father, your mother?"
"I do not know anything."
"And what does Monsieur Roussillon know?"
"Just as little."
"But how came he to be taking you and caring for you? He must know how he got you, where he got you, of whom he got you? Surely he knows--" "Oh, I know all that. I was twelve years old when Papa Roussillon took me, eight years ago. I had been having a hard life, and but for him I must have died. I was a captive among the Indians. He took me and has cared for me and taught me. He has been very, very good to me. I love him dearly."
"And don't you remember anything at all about when, where, how the Indians got you?"
"No." She shook her head and seemed to be trying to recollect something. "No, I just can't remember; and yet there has always been something like a dream in my mind, which I could not quite get hold of. I know that I am not a Catholic. I vaguely remember a sweet woman who taught me to pray like this: 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.'"
And Alice went on through the beautiful and perfect prayer, which she repeated in English with infinite sweetness and solemnity, her eyes uplifted, her hands clasped before her. Beverley could have sworn that she was a shining saint, and that he saw an aureole.
"I know," she continued, "that sometime, somewhere, to a very dear person I promised that I never, never, never would pray any prayer but that. And I remember almost nothing else about that other life, which is far off back yonder in the past, I don't know where,--sweet, peaceful, shadowy; a dream that I have all but lost from my mind."
Beverley's sympathy was deeply moved. He sat for some minutes looking at her without speaking. She, too, was pensive and silent, while the fire sputtered and sang, the great logs slowly melting, the flames tossing wisps of smoke into the chimney still booming to the wind.
"I know, too, that I am not French," she presently resumed, "but I don't know just how I know it. My first words must have been English, for I have always dreamed of talking in that language, and my dimmest half recollections of the old days are of a large, white house, and a soft-voiced black woman, who sang to me in that language the very sweetest songs in the world."
It must be borne in mind that all this was told by Alice in her creole French, half bookish, half patois, of which no translation can give any fair impression.
Beverley listened, as one who hears a clever reader intoning a strange and captivating poem. He was charmed. His imagination welcomed the story and furnished it with all that it lacked of picturesque completeness. In those days it was no uncommon thing for a white child to be found among the Indians with not a trace left by which to restore it to its people. He had often heard of such a case. But here was Alice right before him, the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen, telling him the strangest story of all. To his mind it was clear that she belonged to the Tarleton family of Virginia. Youth always concludes a matter at once. He knew some of the Tarletons; but it was a widely scattered family, its members living in almost every colony in America. The crest he recognized at a glance by the dragon on the helmet with three stars. It was not for a woman to bear; but doubtless it had been enameled on the locket merely as a family mark, as was often done in America.
"The black woman was your nurse, your mammy," he said. "I know by that and by your prayer in English, as well as by your locket, that you are of a good old family."
Like most Southerners, he had strong faith in genealogy, and he held at his tongue's tip the names of all the old families. The Carters, the Blairs, the Fitzhughs, the Hansons, the Randolphs, the Lees, the Ludwells, the Joneses, the Beverleys, the Tarletons--a whole catalogue of them stretched back in his memory. He knew the coat of arms displayed by each house. He could repeat their legends.
"I wish you could tell me more," he went on. "Can't you recollect anything further about your early childhood, your first impressions--the house, the woman who taught you to pray, the old black mammy? Any little thing might be of priceless value as evidence."
Alice shrugged her shoulders after the creole fashion with something of her habitual levity of manner, and laughed. His earnestness seemed disproportioned to the subject, as she fancied he must view it, although to her it had always been something to dream over. It was impossible for her to realize, as he did, the importance of details in solving a problem like that involved in her past history. Nor could she feel the pathos and almost tragic fascination with which her story had touched him.
"There is absolutely nothing more to tell," she said. "All my life I have tried to remember more, but it's impossible; I can't get any further back or call up another thing. There's no use trying. It's all like a dream--probably it is one. I do have such dreams. In my sleep I can lift myself into the air, just as easy, and fly back to the same big white house that I seem to remember. When you told me about your home it was like something that I had often seen before. I shall be dreaming about it next!"
Beverley cross-questioned her from every possible point of view; he was fascinated with the mystery; but she gave him nothing out of which the least further light could be drawn. A half-breed woman, it seemed, had been her Indian foster-mother; a silent, grave, watchful guardian from whom not a hint of disclosure ever fell. She was, moreover, a Christian woman, had received her conversion from an English-speaking Protestant missionary. She prayed with Alice, thus keeping in the child's mind a perfect memory of the Lord's prayer.
"Well," said Beverley at last, "you are more of a mystery to me, the longer I know you."
"Then I must grow every day more distasteful to you."
"No, I love mystery."
He went away feeling a new web of interest binding him to this inscrutable maiden whose life seemed to him at once so full of idyllic happiness and so enshrouded in tantalizing doubt. At the first opportunity he frankly questioned M. Roussillon, with no helpful result. The big Frenchman told the same meager story. The woman was dying in the time of a great epidemic, which killed most of her tribe. She gave Alice to M. Roussillon, but told him not a word about her ancestry or previous life. That was all.
A wise old man, when he finds himself in a blind alley, no sooner touches the terminal wall than he faces about and goes back the way he came. Under like circumstances a young man must needs try to batter the wall down with his head. Beverley endeavored to break through the web of mystery by sheer force. It seemed to him that a vigorous attempt could not fail to succeed; but, like the fly in the spider's lines, he became more hopelessly bound at every move he made. Moreover against his will he was realizing that he could no longer deceive himself about Alice. He loved her, and the love was mastering him body and soul. Such a confession carries with it into an honest masculine heart a sense of contending responsibilities. In Beverley's case the clash was profoundly disturbing. And now he clutched the thought that Alice was not a mere child of the woods, but a daughter of an old family of cavaliers!
With coat buttoned close against the driving wind, he strode toward the fort in one of those melodramatic moods to which youth in all climes and times is subject. It was like a slap in the face when Captain Helm met him at the stockade gate and said: "Well, sir, you are good at hiding."
"Hiding! what do you mean, Captain Helm?" he demanded, not in the mildest tone.
"I mean, sir, that I've been hunting you for an hour and more, over the whole of this damned town. The English and Indians are upon us, and there's no time for fooling. Where are all the men?"
Beverley comprehended the situation in a second. Helm's face was congested with excitement. Some scouts had come in with the news that Governor Hamilton, at the head of five or six hundred soldiers and Indians, was only three or four miles up the river.
"Where are all the men?" Helm repeated.
"Buffalo hunting, most of them," said Beverley.
"What in hell are they off hunting buffaloes for?" raged the excited captain.
"You might go to hell and see," Beverley suggested, and they both laughed in sheer masculine contempt of a predicament too grave for anything but grim mirth.
What could they do? Even Oncle Jazon and Rene de Ronville were off with the hunters. Helm sent for M. Roussillon in the desperate hope that he could suggest something; but he lost his head and hustled off to hide his money and valuables. Indeed the French people all felt that, so far as they were concerned, the chief thing was to save what they had. They well knew that it mattered little which of the two masters held over them--they must shift for themselves. In their hearts they were true to France and America; but France and America could not now protect them against Hamilton; therefore it would be like suicide to magnify patriotism or any other sentiment objectionable to the English. So they acted upon M. Roussillon's advice and offered no resistance when the new army approached.
"My poor people are not disloyal to your flag and your cause," said good Father Beret next morning to Captain Helm, "but they are powerless. Winter is upon us. What would you have us do? This rickety fort is not available for defense; the men are nearly all far away on the plains. Isn't it the part of prudence and common sense to make the best of a desperate situation? Should we resist, the British and their savage allies would destroy the town and commit outrages too horrible to think about. In this case diplomacy promises much more than a hopeless fight against an overwhelming force."
"I'll fight 'em," Helm ground out between his teeth, "if I have to do it single-handed and alone! I'll fight 'em till hell freezes over!"
Father Beret smiled grimly, as if he, too, would enjoy a lively skirmish on the ice of Tophet, and said: "I admire your courage, my son. Fighting is perfectly proper upon fair occasion. But think of the poor women and children. These old eyes of mine have seen some terrible things done by enraged savages. Men can die fighting; but their poor wives and daughters--ah, I have seen, I have seen!"
Beverley felt a pang of terror shoot through his heart as Father Beret's simple words made him think of Alice in connection with an Indian massacre.
"Of course, of course it's horrible to think of," said Helm; "but my duty is clear, and that flag," he pointed to where la banniere d'Alice Roussillon was almost blowing away in the cold wind, "that flag shall not come down save in full honor."
His speech sounded preposterously boastful and hollow; but he was manfully in earnest; every word came from his brave heart.
Father Beret's grim smile returned, lighting up his strongly marked face with the strangest expression imaginable.
"We will get all the women inside the fort," Helm began to say.
"Where the Indians will find them ready penned up and at their mercy," quickly interpolated the priest "That will not do."
"Well, then, what can be done?" Beverley demanded, turning with a fierce stare upon Father Beret. "Don't stand there objecting to everything, with not a suggestion of your own to offer."
"I know what is best for my people," the old man replied softly, still smiling, "I have advised them to stay inside their houses and take no part in the military event. It is the only hope of averting an indiscriminate massacre, and things worse."
The curt phrase, "things worse," went like a bullet-stroke through Beverley's heart. It flashed an awful picture upon his vision. Father Beret saw his face whiten and his lips set themselves to resist a great emotion.
"Do not be angry with me, my son," he said, laying a hand on the young man's arm. "I may be wrong, but I act upon long and convincing experience."
"Experience or no experience," Helm exclaimed with an oath, "this fort must be manned and defended. I am commanding here!"
"Yes, I recognize your authority," responded the priest in a firm yet deferential tone, "and I heartily wish you had a garrison; but where is your command, Captain Helm?" Then it was that the doughty Captain let loose the accumulated profanity with which he had been for some time well-nigh bursting. He tiptoed in order to curse with extremest violence. His gestures were threatening. He shook his fists at Father Beret, without really meaning offence.
"Where is my garrison, you ask! Yes, and I can tell you. It's where you might expect a gang of dad blasted jabbering French good-for-nothings to be, off high-gannicking around shooting buffaloes instead of staying here and defending their wives, children, homes and country, damn their everlasting souls! The few I have in the fort will sneak off, I suppose."
"The French gave you this post on easy terms, Captain," blandly retorted Father Beret.
"Yes, and they'll hand it over to Hamilton, you think, on the same basis," cried Helm, "but I'll show you! I'll show you, Mr. Priest!"
"Pardon me, Captain, the French are loyal to you and to the flag yonder. They have sworn it. Time will prove it. But in the present desperate dilemma we must choose the safer horn."
Saying this Father Beret turned about and went his way. He was chuckling heartily as he passed out of the gate.
"He is right," said Beverley after a few moments of reflection, during which he was wholly occupied with Alice, whose terrified face in his anticipation appealed to him from the midst of howling savages, smoking cabins and mangled victims of lust and massacre. His imagination painted the scene with a merciless realism that chilled his blood. All the sweet romance fell away from Vincennes.
"Well, sir, right or wrong, your, duty is to obey orders," said Helm with brutal severity.
"We had better not quarrel, Captain," Beverley replied. "I have not signified any unwillingness to obey your commands. Give them, and you will have no cause to grumble."
"Forgive me, old fellow," cried the impulsive commander. "I know you are true as steel. I s'pose I'm wound up too tight to be polite. But the time is come to do something. Here we are with but five or six men--" He was interrupted by the arrival of two more half-breed scouts.
Only three miles away was a large flotilla of boats and canoes with cannon, a force of Indians on land and the British flag flying,--that was the report.
"They are moving rapidly," said the spokesman, "and will be here very soon. They are at least six hundred strong, all well armed."
"Push that gun to the gate, and load it to the muzzle, Lieutenant Beverley," Helm ordered with admirable firmness, the purple flush in his face giving way to a grayish pallor. "We are going to die right here, or have the honors of war."
Beverley obeyed without a word. He even loaded two guns instead of one--charging each so heavily that the last wad looked as if ready to leap from the grimy mouth.
Helm had already begun, on receiving the first report, a hasty letter to Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia. He now added a few words and at the last moment sent it out by a trusted man, who was promptly captured by Hamilton's advance guard. The missive, evidently written in installments during the slow approach of the British, is still in the Canadian archives, and runs thus: "Dear Sir--At this time there is an army within three miles of this place; I heard of their coming several days beforehand. I sent spies to find the certainty--the spies being taken prisoner I never got intelligence till they got within three miles of town. As I had called the militia and had all assurances of their integrity I ordered at the firing of a cannon every man to appear, but I saw but few. Captain Buseron behaved much to his honor and credit, but I doubt the conduct of a certain gent. Excuse haste, as the army is in sight. My determination is to defend the garrison, (sic) though I have but twenty-one men but what has left me. I refer you to Mr. Wmes (sic) for the rest. The army is within three hundred yards of the village. You must think how I feel; not four men that I really depend upon; but am determined to act brave--think of my condition. I know it is out of my power to defend the town, as not one of the militia will take arms, though before sight of the army no braver men. There is a flag at a small distance, I must conclude.
"Your humble servant, "Leo'd Helm. Must stop."
"To Colonel Clark."
Having completed this task, the letter shows under what a nervous strain, Helm turned to his lieutenant and said: "Fire a swivel with a blank charge. We'll give these weak-kneed parly-voos one more call to duty. Of course not a frog-eater of them all will come. But I said that a gun should be the signal. Possibly they didn't hear the first one, the damned, deaf, cowardly hounds!"
Beverley wheeled forth the swivel and rammed a charge of powder home. But when he fired it, the effect was far from what it should have been. Instead of calling in a fresh body of militia, it actually drove out the few who up to that moment had remained as a garrison; so that Captain Helm and his Lieutenant found themselves quite alone in the fort, while out before the gate, deployed in fine open order, a strong line of British soldiers approached with sturdy steps, led by a tall, erect, ruddy-faced young officer.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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9
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THE HONORS OF WAR
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Gaspard Roussillon was thoroughly acquainted with savage warfare, and he knew all the pacific means so successfully and so long used by French missionaries and traders to control savage character; but the emergency now upon him was startling. It confused him. The fact that he had taken a solemn oath of allegiance to the American government could have been pushed aside lightly enough upon pressing occasion, but he knew that certain confidential agents left in Vincennes by Governor Abbott had, upon the arrival of Helm, gone to Detroit, and of course they had carried thither a full report of all that happened in the church of St. Xavier, when Father Gibault called the people together, and at the fort, when the British flag was hauled down and la banniere d'Alice Roussillon run up in its place. His expansive imagination did full credit to itself in exaggerating the importance of his part in handing the post over to the rebels. And what would Hamilton think of this? Would he consider it treason? The question certainly bore a tragic suggestion.
M. Roussillon lacked everything of being a coward, and treachery had no rightful place in his nature. He was, however, so in the habit of fighting windmills and making mountains of molehills that he could not at first glance see any sudden presentment with a normal vision. He had no love for Englishmen and he did like Americans, but he naturally thought that Helm's talk of fighting Hamilton was, as his own would have been in a like case, talk and nothing more. The fort could not hold out an hour, he well knew. Then what? Ah, he but too well realized the result.
Resistance would inflame the English soldiers and madden the Indians. There would be a massacre, and the belts of savages would sag with bloody scalps. He shrugged his shoulders and felt a chill creep up his back.
The first thing M. Roussillon did was to see Father Beret and take counsel of him; then he hurried home to dig a great pit under his kitchen floor in which he buried many bales of fur and all his most valuable things. He worked like a giant beaver all night long. Meantime Father Beret went about over the town quietly notifying the inhabitants to remain in their houses until after the fort should surrender, which he was sure would happen the next day.
"You will be perfectly safe, my children," he said to them. "No harm can come to you if you follow my directions."
Relying implicitly upon him, they scrupulously obeyed in every particular.
He did not think it necessary to call at Roussillon place, having already given M. Roussillon the best advice he could command.
Just at the earliest break of day, while yet the gloom of night scarcely felt the sun's approach, a huge figure made haste along the narrow streets in the northern part of the town. If any person had been looking out through the little holes, called windows, in those silent and rayless huts, it would have been easy to recognize M. Roussillon by his stature and his gait, dimly outlined as he was. A thought, which seemed to him an inspiration of genius, had taken possession of him and was leading him, as if by the nose, straight away to Hamilton's lines. He was freighted with eloquence for the ear of that commander, and as he strode along facing the crisp morning air he was rehearsing under his breath, emphasizing his periods in tragic whispers with sweeping gestures and liberal facial contortions. So absorbed was he in his oratorical soliloquy that he forgot due military precaution and ran plump into the face of a savage picket guard who, without respect for the great M. Roussillon's dignity, sprang up before him, grunted cavernously, flourished a tomahawk and spoke in excellent and exceedingly guttural Indian: "Wah, surrender!"
It is probable that no man ever complied with a modest request in a more docile spirit than did M. Roussillon upon that occasion. In fact his promptness must have been admirable, for the savage grunted approval and straightway conducted him to Hamilton's headquarters on a batteau in the river.
The British commander, a hale man of sandy complexion and probably under middle age, was in no very pleasant humor. Some of his orders had been misunderstood by the chief of his Indian allies, so that a premature exposure of his approach had been made to the enemy.
"Well, sir, who are you?" he gruffly demanded, when M. Roussillon loomed before him.
"I am Gaspard Roussillon, the Mayor of Vincennes," was the lofty reply. "I have come to announce to you officially that my people greet you loyally and that my town is freely at your command." He felt as important as if his statements had been true.
"Humph, that's it, is it? Well, Mr. Mayor, you have my congratulations, but I should prefer seeing the military commander and accepting his surrender. What account can you give me of the American forces, their numbers and condition?"
M. Roussillon winced, inwardly at least, under Hamilton's very undeferential air and style of address. It piqued him cruelly to be treated as a person without the slightest claim to respect. He somehow forgot the rolling and rhythmical eloquence prepared for the occasion.
"The American commander naturally would not confide in me, Monsieur le Gouverneur, not at all; we are not very friendly; he ousted me from office, he offended me--" he was coughing and stammering.
"Oh, the devil! what do I care? Answer my question, sir," Hamilton gruffly interrupted. "Tell me the number of American troops at the fort, sir."
"I don't know exactly. I have not had admittance to the fort. I might be deceived as to numbers; but they're strong, I believe, Monsieur le Gouverneur, at least they make a great show and much noise."
Hamilton eyed the huge bulk before him for a moment, then turning to a subaltern said: "Place this fellow under guard and see that he doesn't get away. Send word immediately to Captain Farnsworth that I wish to see him at once."
The interview thereupon closed abruptly. Hamilton's emissaries had given him a detailed account of M. Roussillon's share in submitting Vincennes to rebel dominion, and he was not in the least inclined toward treating him graciously.
"I would suggest to you, Monsieur le Gouverneur, that my official position demands--" M. Roussillon began; but he was fastened upon by two guards, who roughly hustled him aft and bound him so rigidly that he could scarcely move finger or toe.
Hamilton smiled coldly and turned to give some orders to a stalwart, ruddy young officer who in a canoe had just rowed alongside the batteau.
"Captain Farnsworth," he said, acknowledging the military salute, "you will take fifty men and make everything ready for a reconnaissance in the direction of the fort. We will move down the river immediately and choose a place to land. Move lively, we have no time to lose."
In the meantime Beverley slipped away from the fort and made a hurried call upon Alice at Roussillon place. There was not much they could say to each other during the few moments at command. Alice showed very little excitement; her past experience had fortified her against the alarms of frontier life; but she understood and perfectly appreciated the situation.
"What are you going to do?" Beverley demanded in sheer despair. He was not able to see any gleam of hope out of the blackness which had fallen around him and into his soul.
"What shall you do?" he repeated.
"Take the chances of war," she said, smiling gravely. "It will all come out well, no doubt."
"I hope so, but--but I fear not."
His face was gray with trouble. "Helm is determined to fight, and that means--" "Good!" she interrupted with spirit. "I am so glad of that. I wish I could go to help him! If I were a man I'd love to fight! I think it's just delightful."
"But it is reckless bravado; it is worse than foolishness," said Beverley, not feeling her mood. "What can two or three men do against an army?"
"Fight and die like men," she replied, her whole countenance lighting up. "Be heroic!"
"We will do that, of course; we--I do not fear death; but you--you--" His voice choked him.
A gun shot rang out clear in the distance, and he did not finish speaking.
"That's probably the beginning," he added in a moment, extending both hands to her. "Good bye. I must hurry to the fort. Good bye."
She drew a quick breath and turned so white that her look struck him like a sudden and hard blow. He stood for a second, his arms at full reach, then: "My God, Alice, I cannot, cannot leave you!" he cried, his voice again breaking huskily.
She made a little movement, as if to take hold of his hands: but in an instant she stepped back a pace and said: "Don't fear about me. I can take care of myself. I'm all right. You'd better return to the fort as quickly as you can. It is your country, your flag, not me, that you must think of now."
She folded her arms and stood boldly erect.
Never before, in all his life, had he felt such a rebuke. He gave her a straight, strong look in the eyes.
"You are right, Alice." he cried, and rushed from the house to the fort.
She held her rigid attitude for a little while after she heard him shut the front gate of the yard so forcibly that it broke in pieces, then she flung her arms wide, as if to clasp something, and ran to the door; but Beverley was out of sight. She turned and dropped into a chair. Jean came to her out of the next room. His queer little face was pale and pinched; but his jaw was set with the expression of one who has known danger and can meet it somehow.
"Are they going to scalp us?" he half whispered presently, with a shuddering lift of his distorted shoulders.
Her face was buried in her hands and she did not answer. Childlike he turned from one question to another inconsequently.
"Where did Papa Roussillon go to?" he next inquired. "Is he going to fight?"
She shook her head.
"They'll tear down the fort, won't they?"
If she heard him she did not make any sign.
"They'll kill the Captain and Lieutenant and get the fine flag that you set so high on the fort, won't they, Alice?"
She lifted her head and gave the cowering hunchback such a stare that he shut his eyes and put up a hand, as if afraid of her. Then she impulsively took his little misshapen form in her arms and hugged it passionately. Her bright hair fell all over him, almost hiding him. Madame Roussillon was lying on a bed in an adjoining room moaning diligently, at intervals handling her rosary and repeating a prayer. The whole town was silent outside.
"Why don't you go get the pretty flag down and hide it before they come?" Jean murmured from within the silken meshes of Alice's hair.
In his small mind the gaudy banner was the most beautiful of all things. Every day since it was set up he had gone to gaze at it as it fluttered against the sky. The men had frequently said in his presence that the enemy would take it down if they captured the fort.
Alice heard his inquisitive voice; but it seemed to come from far off; his words were a part of the strange, wild swirl in her bosom. Beverley's look, as he turned and left her, now shook every chord of her being. He had gone to his death at her command. How strong and true and brave he was! In her imagination she saw the flag above him, saw him die like a panther at bay, saw the gay rag snatched down and torn to shreds by savage hands. It was the tragedy of a single moment, enacted in a flashlight of anticipation.
She released Jean so suddenly that he fell to the floor. She remembered what she had said to Beverley on the night of the dance when they were standing under the flag.
"You made it and set it up," he lightly remarked; "you must see that no enemy ever gets possession of it, especially the English."
"I'll take it down and hide it when there's danger of that," she said in the same spirit.
And now she stood there looking at Jean, without seeing him, and repeated the words under her breath.
"I'll take it down and hide it. They shan't have it."
Madame Roussillon began to call from the other room in a loud, complaining voice; but Alice gave no heed to her querulous demands.
"Stay here, Jean, and take care of Mama Roussillon," she presently said to the hunchback. "I am going out; I'll be back soon; don't you dare leave the house while I'm gone; do you hear?"
She did not wait for his answer; but snatching a hood-like fur cap from a peg on the wall, she put it on and hastily left the house.
Down at the fort Helm and Beverley were making ready to resist Hamilton's attack, which they knew would not be long deferred. The two heavily charged cannon were planted so as to cover the space in front of the gate, and some loaded muskets were ranged near by ready for use.
"We'll give them one hell of a blast," growled the Captain, "before they overpower us."
Beverley made no response in words; but he was preparing a bit of tinder on the end of a stick with which to fire the cannon. Not far away a little heap of logs was burning in the fort's area.
The British officer, already mentioned as at the head of the line advancing diagonally from the river's bank, halted his men at a distance of three hundred yards from the fort, and seemed to be taking a deliberately careful survey of what was before him.
"Let 'em come a little nearer, Lieutenant," said Helm, his jaw setting itself like a lion's. "When we shoot we want to hit."
He stooped and squinted along his gun.
"When they get to that weedy spot out yonder," he added, "just opposite the little rise in the river bank, we'll turn loose on 'em."
Beverley had arranged his primitive match to suit his fancy, and for probably the twentieth time looked critically to the powder in the beveled touch-hole of his old cannon. He and Helm were facing the enemy, with their backs to the main area of the stockade, when a well known voice attracted their attention to the rear.
"Any room for a feller o' my size in this here crowded place?" it demanded in a cracked but cheerful tenor. "I'm kind o' outen breath a runnin' to git here."
They turned about. It was Oncle Jazon with his long rifle on his shoulder and wearing a very important air. He spoke in English, using the backwoods lingo with the ease of long practice.
"As I's a comin' in f'om a huntin' I tuck notice 'at somepin' was up. I see a lot o' boats on the river an' some fellers wi' guns a scootin' around, so I jes' slipped by 'em all an' come in the back way. They's plenty of 'em, I tell you what! I can't shoot much, but I tuck one chance at a buck Indian out yander and jes' happened to hit 'im in the lef' eye. He was one of the gang 'at scalped me down yander in Kaintuck."
The greasy old sinner looked as if he had not been washed since he was born. He glanced about with furtive, shifty eyes, grimaced and winked, after the manner of an animal just waking from a lazy nap.
"Where's the rest o' the fighters?" he demanded quizzically, lolling out his tongue and peeping past Helm so as to get a glimpse of the English line. "Where's yer garrison? Have they all gone to breakfas'?"
The last question set Helm off again cursing and swearing in the most melodramatic rage.
Oncle Jazon turned to Beverley and said in rapid French: "Surely the man's not going to fight those fellows yonder?"
Beverley nodded rather gloomily.
"Well," added the old man, fingering his rifle's stock and taking another glance through the gate, "I can't shoot wo'th a cent, bein' sort o' nervous like; but I'll stan' by ye awhile, jes' for luck. I might accidentally hit one of 'em."
When a man is truly brave himself there is nothing that touches him like an exhibition of absolutely unselfish gameness in another. A rush of admiration for Oncle Jazon made Beverley feel like hugging him.
Meantime the young British officer showed a flag of truce, and, with a file of men, separated himself from the line, now stationary, and approached the stockade. At a hundred yards he halted the file and came on alone, waving the white clout. He boldly advanced to within easy speaking distance and shouted: "I demand the surrender of this fort."
"Well, you'll not get it, young man," roared Helm, his profanity well mixed in with the words, "not while there's a man of us left!"
"Ye'd better use sof' soap on 'im, Cap'n," said Oncle Jazon in English, "cussin' won't do no good." While he spoke he rubbed the doughty Captain's arm and then patted it gently.
Helm, who was not half as excited as he pretended to be, knew that Oncle Jazon's remark was the very essence of wisdom; but he was not yet ready for the diplomatic language which the old trooper called "soft soap."
"Are you the British commander?" he demanded.
"No," said the officer, "but I speak for him."
"Not to me by a damned sight, sir. Tell your commander that I will hear what he has to say from his own mouth. No understrapper will be recognized by me."
That ended the conference. The young officer, evidently indignant, strode back to his line, and an hour later Hamilton himself demanded the unconditional surrender of the fort and garrison.
"Fight for it," Helm stormed forth. "We are soldiers."
Hamilton held a confab with his officers, while his forces, under cover of the town's cabins, were deploying so as to form a half circle about the stockade. Some artillery appeared and was planted directly opposite the gate, not three hundred yards distant. One blast of that battery would, as Helm well knew, level a large part of the stockade.
"S'posin' I hev' a cannon, too, seein' it's the fashion," said Oncle Jazon. "I can't shoot much, but I might skeer 'em. This little one'll do me."
He set his rifle against the wall and with Beverley's help rolled one of the swivels alongside the guns already in position.
In a few minutes Hamilton returned under the white flag and shouted: "Upon what terms will you surrender?"
"All the honors of war," Helm firmly replied. "It's that or fight, and I don't care a damn which!"
Hamilton half turned away, as if done with the parley, then facing the fort again, said: "Very well, sir, haul down your flag."
Helm was dumfounded at this prompt acceptance of his terms. Indeed the incident is unique in history.
As Hamilton spoke he very naturally glanced up to where la banniere d'Alice Roussillon waved brilliantly. Someone stood beside it on the dilapidated roof of the old blockhouse, and was already taking it from its place. His aid, Captain Farnsworth, saw this, and the vision made his heart draw in a strong, hot flood It was a girl in short skirts and moccasins, with a fur hood on her head, her face, thrillingly beautiful, set around with fluffs of wind-blown brown-gold hair. Farnsworth was too young to be critical and too old to let his eyes deceive him. Every detail of the fine sketch, with its steel-blue background of sky, flashed into his mind, sharp-cut as a cameo. Involuntarily he took off his hat.
Alice had come in by way of the postern. She mounted to the roof unobserved, and made her way to the flag, just at the moment when Helm, glad at heart to accept the easiest way out of a tight place, asked Oncle Jazon to lower it.
Beverley was thinking of Alice, and when he looked up he could scarcely realize that he saw her; but the whole situation was plain the instant she snatched the staff from its place; for he, too, recollected what she had said at the river house. The memory and the present scene blended perfectly during the fleeting instant that she was visible. He saw that Alice was smiling somewhat as in her most mischievous moods, and when she jerked the staff from its fastening she lifted it high and waved it once, twice, thrice defiantly toward the British lines, then fled down the ragged roof-slope with it and disappeared. The vision remained in Beverley's eyes forever afterward. The English troops, thinking that the flag was taken down in token of surrender, broke into a wild tumult of shouting.
Oncle Jazon intuitively understood just what Alice was doing, for he knew her nature and could read her face. His blood effervesced in an instant.
"Vive Zhorzh Vasinton! Vive la banniere d'Alice Roussillon!" he screamed, waving his disreputable cap round his scalpless head. "Hurrah for George Washington! Hurrah for Alice Roussillon's flag!"
It was all over soon. Helm surrendered himself and Beverley with full honors. As for Oncle Jazon, he disappeared at the critical moment. It was not just to his mind to be a prisoner of war, especially under existing conditions; for Hamilton's Indian allies had some old warpath scores to settle with him dating back to the days when he and Simon Kenton were comrades in Kentucky.
When Alice snatched the banner and descended with it to the ground, she ran swiftly out through the postern, as she had once before done, and sped along under cover of the low bluff or swell, which, terrace-like, bounded the flat "bottom" lands southward of the stockade. She kept on until she reached a point opposite Father Beret's hut, to which she then ran, the flag streaming bravely behind her in the wind, her heart beating time to her steps.
It was plainly a great surprise to Father Beret, who looked up from his prayer when she rushed in, making a startling clatter, the loose puncheons shaking together under her reckless feet.
"Oh, Father, here it is! Hide it, hide it, quick!"
She thrust the flag toward him.
"They shall not have it! They shall never have it!"
He opened wide his shrewd, kindly eyes; but did not fairly comprehend her meaning.
She was panting, half laughing, half crying. Her hair, wildly disheveled, hung in glorious masses over her shoulders. Her face beamed triumphantly.
"They are taking the fort," she breathlessly added, again urging the flag upon him, "they're going in, but I got this and ran away with it. Hide it, Father, hide it, quick, quick, before they come!"
The daring light in her eyes, the witching play of her dimples, the madcap air intensified by her attitude and the excitement of the violent exercise just ended--something compounded of all these and more--affected the good priest strangely. Involuntarily he crossed himself, as if against a dangerous charm.
"Mon Dieu, Father Beret," she exclaimed with impatience, "haven't you a grain of sense left? Take this flag and hide it, I tell you! Don't stay there gazing and blinking. Here, quick! They saw me take it, they may be following me. Hurry, hide it somewhere!"
He comprehended now, rising from his knees with a queer smile broadening on his face. She put the banner into his hands and gave him a gentle push.
"Hide it, I tell you, hide it, you dear old goose!"
Without sneaking he turned the staff over and over in his hand, until the flag was closely wrapped around it, then stooping he lifted a puncheon and with it covered the gay roll from sight.
Alice caught him in her arms and kissed him vigorously on the cheek. Her warm lips made the spot tingle.
"Don't you dare to let any person have it! It's the flag of George Washington."
She gave him a strong squeeze.
He pushed her from him with both hands and hastily crossed himself; but his eyes were laughing.
"You ought to have seen me; I waved the flag at them--at the English--and one young officer took off his hat to me! Oh, Father Beret, it was like what is in a novel. They'll get the fort, but not the banner! Not the banner! I've saved it, I've saved it!"
Her enthusiasm gave a splendor to her countenance, heightening its riches of color and somehow adding to its natural girlish expression an audacious sweetness. The triumphant success of her undertaking lent the dignity of conscious power to her look, a dignity which always sits well upon a young and somewhat immaturely beautiful face.
Father Beret could not resist her fervid eloquence, and he could not run away from her or stop up his ears while she went on. So he had to laugh when she said: "Oh, if you had seen it all you would have enjoyed it. There was Oncle Jazon squatting behind the little swivel, and there were Captain Helm and Lieutenant Beverley holding their burning sticks over the big cannon ready to shoot--all of them so intent that they didn't see me--and yonder came the English officer and his army against the three. When they got close to the gate the officer called out: 'Surrender!' and then Captain Helm yelled back: 'Damned if I do! Come another step and I'll blow you all to hell in a second!' I was mightily in hopes that they'd come on; I wanted to see a cannon ball hit that English commander right in the face; he looked so arrogant."
Father Beret shook his head and tried to look disapproving and solemn.
Meantime down at the fort Hamilton was demanding the flag. He had seen Alice take it down, and supposed that it was lowered officially and would be turned over to him. Now he wanted to handle it as the best token of his bloodless but important victory.
"I didn't order the flag down until after I had accepted your terms," said Helm, "and when my man started to obey, we saw a young lady snatch it and run away with it."
"Who was the girl?"
"I do not inform on women," said Helm.
Hamilton smiled grimly, with a vexed look in his eyes, then turned to Captain Farnsworth and ordered him to bring up M. Roussillon, who, when he appeared, still had his hands tied together.
"Tell me the name of the young woman who carried away the flag from the fort. You saw her, you know every soul in this town. Who was it, sir?"
It was a hard question for M. Roussillon to answer. Although his humiliating captivity had somewhat cowed him, still his love for Alice made it impossible for him to give the information demanded by Hamilton. He choked and stammered, but finally managed to say: "I assure you that I don't know--I didn't look--I didn't see--It was too far off for me to--I was some-what excited--I--" "Take him away. Keep him securely bound," said Hamilton. "Confine him. We'll see how long it will take to refresh his mind. We'll puncture the big windbag."
While this curt scene was passing, the flag of Great Britain rose over the fort to the lusty cheering of the victorious soldiers.
Hamilton treated Helm and Beverley with extreme courtesy. He was a soldier, gruff, unscrupulous and cruel to a degree; but he could not help admiring the daring behavior of these two officers who had wrung from him the best terms of surrender. He gave them full liberty, on parole of honor not to attempt escape or to aid in any way an enemy against him while they were prisoners.
Nor was it long before Helm's genial and sociable disposition won the Englishman's respect and confidence to such an extent that the two became almost inseparable companions, playing cards, brewing toddies, telling stories, and even shooting deer in the woods together, as if they had always been the best of friends.
Hamilton did not permit his savage allies to enter the town, and he immediately required the French inhabitants to swear allegiance to Great Britain, which they did with apparent heartiness, all save M. Roussillon, who was kept in close confinement and bound like a felon, chafing lugubriously and wearing the air of a martyr. His prison was a little log pen in one corner of the stockade, much open to the weather, its gaping cracks giving him a dreary view of the frozen landscape through which the Wabash flowed in a broad steel-gray current. Helm, who really liked him, tried in vain to procure his release; but Hamilton was inexorable on account of what he regarded as duplicity in M. Roussillon's conduct.
"No, I'll let him reflect," he said; "there's nothing like a little tyranny to break up a bad case of self-importance. He'll soon find out that he has over-rated himself!"
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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10
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M. ROUSSILLON ENTERTAINS COLONEL HAMILTON
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A day or two after the arrival of Hamilton the absent garrison of buffalo hunters straggled back to Vincennes and were duly sworn to demean themselves as lawful subjects of Great Britain. Rene de Ronville was among the first to take the oath, and it promptly followed that Hamilton ordered him pressed into service as a wood-chopper and log-hauler during the erection of a new blockhouse, large barracks and the making of some extensive repairs of the stockade. Nothing could have been more humiliating to the proud young Frenchman. Every day he had to report bright and early to a burly Irish Corporal and be ordered about, as if he had been a slave, cursed at, threatened and forced to work until his hands were blistered and his muscles sore. The bitterest part of it all was that he had to trudge past both Roussillon place and the Bourcier cabin with the eyes of Alice and Adrienne upon him.
Hamilton did not forget M. Roussillon in this connection. The giant orator soon found himself face to face with a greater trial even than Rene's. He was calmly told by the English commander that he could choose between death and telling who it was that stole the flag.
"I'll have you shot, sir, to-morrow morning if you prevaricate about this thing any longer," said Hamilton, with a right deadly strain in his voice. "You told me that you knew every man, woman and child in Vincennes at sight. I know that you saw that girl take the flag--lying does not serve your turn. I give you until this evening to tell me who she is; if you fail, you die at sunrise to-morrow."
In fact, it may be that Hamilton did not really purpose to carry out this blood-thirsty threat; most probably he relied upon M. Roussillon's imagination to torture him successfully; but the effect, as time proved, could not be accurately foreseen.
Captain Farnsworth had energy enough for a dozen ordinary men. Before he had been in Vincennes twelve hours he had seen every nook and corner of its surface. Nor was his activity due altogether to military ardor, although he never let pass an opportunity to serve the best interests of his commander; all the while his mind was on the strikingly beautiful girl whose saucy countenance had so dazzled him from the roof-top of the fort, what time she wrenched away the rebel flag.
"I'll find her, high or low," he thought, "for I never could fail to recognize that face. She's a trump."
It was not in Alice's nature to hide from the English. They had held the town and fort before Helm came, and she had not found them troublesome under Abbott. She did not know that M. Roussillon was a prisoner, the family taking it for granted that he had gone away to avoid the English. Nor was she aware that Hamilton felt so keenly the disappearance of the flag. What she did know, and it gladdened her greatly, was that Beverley had been well treated by his captor. With this in her heart she went about Roussillon place singing merry snatches of Creole songs; and when at the gate, which still hung lop-sided on account of Beverley's force in shutting it, she came unexpectedly face to face with Captain Farnsworth, there was no great surprise on her part.
He lifted his hat and bowed very politely; but a bold smile broke over his somewhat ruddy face. He spoke in French, but in a drawling tone and with a bad accent: "How do you do, Mademoiselle; I am right glad to see you again."
Alice drew back a pace or two. She was quick to understand his allusion, and she shrank from him, fearing that he was going to inquire about the flag.
"Don't be afraid," he laughed. "I am not so dangerous. I never did hurt a girl in all my life. In fact, I am fond of them when they're nice."
"I am not in the least afraid," she replied, assuming an air of absolute dismissal, "and you don't look a bit ferocious, Monsieur. You may pass on, if you please."
He flushed and bit his lip, probably to keep back some hasty retort, and thought rapidly for a moment. She looked straight at him with eyes that stirred and dazzled him. He was handsome in a coarse way, like a fine young animal, well groomed, well fed, magnetic, forceful; but his boldness, being of a sort to which she had not been accustomed, disturbed her vaguely and strangely.
"Suppose that I don't pass on?" he presently ventured, with just a suspicion of insolence in his attitude, but laughing until he showed teeth of remarkable beauty and whiteness. "Suppose that I should wish to have a little chat with you, Mademoiselle?"
"I have been told that there are men in the world who think themselves handsome, and clever, and brilliant, when in fact they are but conceited simpletons," she remarked, rather indifferently, muffling herself in her fur wrap. "You certainly would be a fairly good hitching-post for our horses if you never moved." Then she laughed out of the depth of her hood, a perfectly merry laugh, but not in the least flattering to Captain Farnsworth's vanity. He felt the scorn that it conveyed.
His face grew redder, while a flash from hers made him wish that he had been more gracious in his deportment. Here, to his surprise, was not a mere creole girl of the wild frontier.
Her superiority struck him with the force of a captivating revelation, under the light of which he blinked and winced.
She laid a shapely hand on the broken gate and pushed it open.
"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle;" his manner softened as he spoke; "I beg your pardon; but I came to speak to you about the flag--the flag you took away from the fort."
She had been half expecting this; but she was quite unprepared, and in spite of all she could do showed embarrassment.
"I have come to get the flag; if you will kindly bring it to me, or tell me where it is I--" She quickly found words to interrupt him with, and at the same time by a great effort pulled herself together.
"You have come to the wrong place," she flung in. "I assure you that I haven't the flag."
"You took it down, Mademoiselle."
"Oh, did I?"
"With bewitching grace you did, Mademoiselle. I saw and admired. Will you fetch it, please?"
"Indeed I won't."
The finality in her voice belied her face, which beamed without a ray of stubbornness or perversity. He did not know how to interpret her; but he felt that he had begun wrong. He half regretted that he had begun at all.
"More depends upon returning that flag than you are probably aware of," he presently said in a more serious tone. "In fact, the life of one of your townsmen, and a person of some importance here I believe, will surely be saved by it. You'd better consider, Mademoiselle. You wouldn't like to cause the death of a man."
She did not fairly grasp the purport of his words; yet the change in his manner, and the fact that he turned from French to English in making the statement, aroused a sudden feeling of dread or dark apprehension in her breast. The first distinct thought was of Beverley--that some deadly danger threatened him.
"Who is it?" she frankly demanded.
"It's the Mayor, the big man of your town, Monsieur Roussillon, I think he calls himself. He's got himself into a tight place. He'll be shot to-morrow morning if that flag is not produced. Governor Hamilton has so ordered, and what he orders is done."
"You jest, Monsieur."
"I assure you that I speak the plain truth."
"You will probably catch Monsieur Roussillon before you shoot him." She tossed her head.
"He is already a prisoner in the fort."
Alice turned pale.
"Monsieur, is this true?" Her voice had lost its happy tone. "Are you telling me that to--" "You can verify it, Mademoiselle, by calling upon the commander at the fort. I am sorry that you doubt my veracity. If you will go with me I will show you M. Roussillon a tightly bound prisoner."
Jean had crept out of the gate and was standing just behind Alice with his feet wide apart, his long chin elevated, his head resting far back between his upthrust shoulders, his hands in his pockets, his uncanny eyes gazing steadily at Farnsworth. He looked like a deformed frog ready to jump.
Alice unmistakably saw truth in the Captain's countenance and felt it in his voice. The reality came to her with unhindered effect. M. Roussillon's life depended upon the return of the flag. She put her hands together and for a moment covered her eyes with them.
"I will go now, Mademoiselle," said Farnsworth; "but I hope you will be in great haste about returning the flag."
He stood looking at her. He was profoundly touched and felt that to say more would be too brutal even for his coarse nature; so he simply lifted his hat and went away.
Jean took hold of Alice's dress as she turned to go back into the house.
"Is he going to take the flag? Can he find it? What does he want with it? What did you do with the flag, Alice?" he whined, in his peculiar, quavering voice. "Where is it?"
Her skirt dragged him along as she walked.
"Where did you put it, Alice?"
"Father Beret hid it under his floor," she answered, involuntarily, and almost unconsciously. "I shall have to take it back and give it up."
"No--no--I wouldn't," he quavered, dancing across the veranda as she quickened her pace and fairly spun him along. "I wouldn't let 'em have it at all."
Alice's mind was working with lightning speed. Her imagination took strong grip on the situation so briefly and effectively sketched by Captain Farnsworth. Her decision formed itself quickly.
"Stay here, Jean. I am going to the fort. Don't tell Mama Roussillon a thing. Be a good boy."
She was gone before Jean could say a word. She meant to face Hamilton at once and be sure what danger menaced M. Roussillon. Of course, the flag must be given up if that would save her foster father any pain; and if his life were in question there could not be too great haste on her part.
She ran directly to the stockade gate and breathlessly informed a sentinel that she must see Governor Hamilton, into whose presence she was soon led. Captain Farnsworth had preceded her but a minute or two, and was present when she entered the miserable shed room where the commander was having another talk with M. Roussillon.
The meeting was a tableau which would have been comical but for the pressure of its tragic possibilities. Hamilton, stern and sententious, stood frowning upon M. Roussillon, who sat upon the ground, his feet and hands tightly bound, a colossal statue of injured innocence.
Alice, as soon as she saw M. Roussillon, uttered a cry of sympathetic endearment and flung herself toward him with open arms. She could not reach around his great shoulders; but she did her best to include the whole bulk.
"Papa! Papa Roussillon!" she chirruped between the kisses that she showered upon his weather-beaten face.
Hamilton and Farnsworth regarded the scene with curious and surprised interest. M. Roussillon began speaking rapidly; but being a Frenchman he could not get on well with his tongue while his hands were tied. He could shrug his shoulders; that helped him some.
"I am to be shot, MA PETITE," he pathetically growled in his deep bass voice; "shot like a dog at sunrise to-morrow."
Alice kissed M. Roussillon's rough cheek once more and sprang to her feet facing Hamilton.
"You are not such a fiend and brute as to kill Papa Roussillon," she cried. "Why do you want to injure my poor, good papa?"
"I believe you are the young lady that stole the flag?" Hamilton remarked, smiling contemptuously.
She looked at him with a swift flash of indignation as he uttered these words.
"I am not a thief. I could not steal what was my own. I helped to make that flag. It was named after me. I took it because it was mine. You understand me, Monsieur."
"Tell where it is and your father's life will be spared."
She glanced at M. Roussillon.
"No, Alice," said he, with a pathetically futile effort to make a fine gesture, "don't do it. I am brave enough to die. You would not have me act the coward."
No onlooker would have even remotely suspected the fact that M. Roussillon had chanced to overhear a conversation between Hamilton and Farnsworth, in which Hamilton stated that he really did not intend to hurt M. Roussillon in any event; he merely purposed to humiliate the "big wind-bag!"
"Ah, no; let me die bravely for honor's sake--I fear death far less than dishonor! They can shoot me, my little one, but they cannot break my proud spirit." He tried to strike his breast over his heart.
"Perhaps it would be just as well to let him be shot," said Hamilton gruffly, and with dry indifference. "I don't fancy that he's of much value to the community at best. He'll make a good target for a squad, and we need an example."
"Do you mean it? --you ugly English brute--would you murder him?" she stamped her foot.
"Not if I get that flag between now and sundown. Otherwise I shall certainly have him shot. It is all in your hands, Mademoiselle. You can tell me where the flag is." Hamilton smiled again with exquisite cruelty.
Farnsworth stood by gazing upon Alice in open admiration. Her presence had power in it, to which he was very susceptible.
"You look like a low, dishonorable, soulless tyrant," she said to Hamilton, "and if you get my flag, how shall I know that you will keep your promise and let Papa Roussillon go free?"
"I am sorry to say that you will have to trust me, unless you'll take Captain Farnsworth for security. The Captain is a gentleman, I assure you. Will you stand good for my veracity and sincerity, Captain Farnsworth?"
The young man smiled and bowed.
Alice felt the irony; and her perfectly frank nature preferred to trust rather than distrust the sincerity of others. She looked at Farnsworth, who smiled encouragingly.
"The flag is under Father Beret's floor," she said.
"Under the church floor?"
"No, under the floor of his house."
"Where is his house?"
She gave full directions how to reach it.
"Untie the prisoner," Hamilton ordered, and it was quickly done. "Monsieur Roussillon, I congratulate you upon your narrow escape. Go to the priest's house, Monsieur, and bring me that flag. It would be well, I assure you, not to be very long about it. Captain Farnsworth, you will send a guard with Monsieur Roussillon, a guard of honor, fitting his official dignity, a Corporal and two men. The honorable Mayor of this important city should not go alone upon so important an errand. He must have his attendants."
"Permit me to go myself and get it," said Alice, "I can do it quickly. May I, please, Monsieur?"
Hamilton looked sharply at her.
"Why, certainly, Mademoiselle, certainly. Captain Farnsworth, you will escort the young lady."
"It is not necessary, Monsieur."
"Oh, yes, it is necessary, my dear young lady, very necessary; so let's not have further words. I'll try to entertain his honor, the Mayor, while you go and get the flag. I feel sure, Mademoiselle, that you'll return with it in a few minutes. But you must not go alone."
Alice set forth immediately, and Farnsworth, try as hard as he would, could never reach her side, so swift was her gait.
When they arrived at Father Beret's cabin, she turned and said with imperious severity: "Don't you come in; you stay out here: I'll get it in a minute."
Farnsworth obeyed her command.
The door was wide open, but Father Beret was not inside; he had gone to see a sick child in the outskirts of the village. Alice looked about and hesitated. She knew the very puncheon that covered the flag; but she shrank from lifting it. There seemed nothing else to do, however; so, after some trouble with herself, she knelt upon the floor and turned the heavy slab over with a great thump. The flag did not appear. She peeped under the other puncheons. It was not there. The only thing visible was a little ball of paper fragments not larger than an egg.
Farnsworth heard her utter a low cry of surprise or dismay, and was on the point of going in when Father Beret, coming around the corner of the cabin, confronted him. The meeting was so sudden and unexpected that both men recoiled slightly, and then, with a mutual stare, saluted.
"I came with a young lady to get the flag," said Farnsworth. "She is inside. I hope there is no serious intrusion. She says the flag is hidden under your floor."
Father Beret said nothing, but frowning as if much annoyed, stepped through the doorway to Alice's side, and stooping where she knelt, laid a hand on her shoulder as she glanced up and recognized him.
"What are you doing, my child?"
"Oh, Father, where is the flag?" It was all that she could say. "Where is the flag?"
"Why, isn't it there?"
"No, you see it isn't there! Where is it?"
The priest stood as if dumfounded, gazing into the vacant space uncovered by the puncheon.
"Is it gone? Has some one taken it away?"
They turned up all the floor to no avail. La banniere d'Alice Roussillon had disappeared, and Captain Farnsworth went forthwith to report the fact to his commander. When he reached the shed at the angle of the fort he found Governor Hamilton sitting stupid and dazed on the ground. One jaw was inflamed and swollen and an eye was half closed and bloodshot. He turned his head with a painful, irregular motion and his chin sagged.
Farnsworth sprang to him and lifted him to his feet; but he could scarcely stand. He licked his lips clumsily.
"What is the matter? What hurt you?"
The Governor rubbed his forehead trying to recollect.
"He struck me," he presently said with difficulty. "He hit me with his fist Where--where is he?"
"Who?"
"That big French idiot--that Roussillon--go after him, take him, shoot him--quick! I have been stunned; I don't know how long he's been gone. Give the alarm--do something!"
Hamilton, as he gathered his wits together, began to foam with rage, and his passion gave his bruised and swollen face a terrible look.
The story was short, and may be quickly told. M. Roussillon had taken advantage of the first moment when he and Hamilton were left alone. One herculean buffet, a swinging smash of his enormous fist on the point of the Governors jaw, and then he walked out of the fort unchallenged, doubtless on account of his lordly and masterful air.
"Ziff!" he exclaimed, shaking himself and lifting his shoulders, when he had passed beyond hearing of the sentinel at the gate, "ziff! I can punch a good stiff stroke yet, Monsieur le Gouverneur. Ah, ziff!" and he blew like a porpoise.
Every effort was promptly made to recapture M. Roussillon; but his disappearance was absolute; even the reward offered for his scalp by Hamilton only gave the Indians great trouble--they could not find the man.
Such a beginning of his administration of affairs at Vincennes did not put Hamilton into a good humor. He was overbearing and irascible at best, and under the irritation of small but exceedingly unpleasant experiences he made life well-nigh unendurable to those upon whom his dislike chanced to fall. Beverley quickly felt that it was going to be very difficult for him and Hamilton to get along agreeably. With Helm it was quite different; smoking, drinking, playing cards, telling good stories--in a word, rude and not unfrequently boisterous conviviality drew him and the commandant together.
Under Captain Farnsworth's immediate supervision the fort was soon in excellent repair and a large blockhouse and comfortable quarters for the men were built. Every day added to the strength of the works and to the importance of the post as a strategic position for the advance guard of the British army.
Hamilton was ambitious to prove himself conspicuously valuable to his country. He was dreaming vast dreams and laying large plans. The Indians were soon anxious to gain his favor; and to bind them securely to him he offered liberal pay in rum and firearms, blankets, trinkets and ammunition for the scalps of rebels. He kept this as secret as possible from his prisoners; but Beverley soon suspected that a "traffic in hair," as the terrible business had been named, was going on. Savages came in from far away with scalps yet scarcely dry dangling at their belts. It made the young Virginian's blood chill in his heart, and he regretted that he had given Hamilton his parole of honor not to attempt to escape.
Among the Indians occasionally reporting to Hamilton with their ghastly but valuable trophies was Long-Hair, who slipped into the fort and out again rather warily, not having much confidence in those Frenchmen who had once upon a time given him a memorable run for his life.
Winter shut down, not cold, but damp, changeable, raw. The work on the fort was nearly completed, and Rene de Ronville would have soon been relieved of his servile and exasperating employment under the Irish Corporal; but just at the point of time when only a few days' work remained for him, he became furious, on account of an insulting remark, and struck the Corporal over the head with a handspike. This happened in a wood some miles from town, where he was loading logs upon a sled. There chanced to be no third person present when the deed was done, and some hours passed before they found the officer quite cold and stiff beside the sled. His head was crushed to a pulp.
Hamilton, now thoroughly exasperated, began to look upon the French inhabitants of Vincennes as all like M. Roussillon and Rene, but waiting for an opportunity to strike him unawares. He increased his military vigilance, ordered the town patrolled day and night, and forbade public gatherings of the citizens, while at the same time he forced them to furnish him a large amount of provisions.
When little Adrienne Bourcier heard of Renews terrible act, followed by his successful escape to the woods, and of the tempting reward offered by Hamilton for his scalp, she ran to Roussillon place well-nigh crazed with excitement. She had always depended upon Alice for advice, encouragement and comfort in her troubles; but in the present case there was not much that her friend could do to cheer her. With M. Roussillon and Rene both fugitives, tracked by wily savages, a price on their heads, while every day added new dangers to the French inhabitants of Vincennes, no rosy view could possibly be taken of the situation. Alice did her best, however, to strengthen her little friend's faith in a happy outcome. She quoted what she considered unimpeachable authority to support her optimistic argument.
"Lieutenant Beverley says that the Americans will be sure to drive Hamilton out of Vincennes, or capture him. Probably they are not so very far away now, and Rene may join them and come back to help punish these brutal Englishmen. Don't you wish he would, Adrienne? Wouldn't it be romantic?"
"He's armed, I know that," said Adrienne, brightening a little, "and he's brave, Alice, brave as can be. He came right back into town the other night and got his gun and pistols. He was at our house, too, and, oh! --" She burst out crying again. "O Alice! It breaks my heart to think that the Indians will kill him. Do you think they will kill him, Alice?"
"He'll come nearer killing them," said Alice confidently, with her strong, warm arms around the tiny lass; "he's a good woodsman, a fine shot--he's not so easy to kill, my dear. If he and Papa Roussillon should get together by chance they would be a match for all the Indians in the country. Anyway, I feel that it's much better for them to take their chances in the woods than to be in the hands of Governor Hamilton. If I were a man I'd do just as Papa Roussillon and Rene did; I'd break the bigoted head of every Englishman that mistreated me, I'll do it, girl as I am, if they annoy me, see if I don't!"
She was thinking of Captain Farnsworth, who had been from the first untiring in his efforts to gain something more than a passing acquaintance. As yet he had not made himself unbearable; but Alice's fine intuition led her to the conclusion that she must guard against him from the outset.
Adrienne's simple heart could not grasp the romantic criterion with which Alice was wont to measure action. Her mind was single, impulsive, narrow and direct in all its movements. She loved, hated, desired, caressed, repulsed, not for any assignable reason more solid or more luminous than "because." She adored Rene and wanted him near her. He was a hero in her imagination, no matter what he did. Little difference was it to her whether he hauled logs for the English or smoked his pipe in idleness by the winter fire--what could it matter which flag he served under, so that he was true to her? Or whom he served if she could always have him coming to see her and calling her his little pet? He might crush an Irish Corporal's head every day, if he would but stroke her hair and say: "My sweet little one."
"Why couldn't he be quiet and do as your man, Lieutenant Beverley, did?" she cried in a sudden change of mood, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Lieutenant Beverley surrendered and took the consequences. He didn't kill somebody and run off to be hunted like a bear. No wonder you're happy, Alice; I'd be happy, too, if Rene were here and came to spend half of every day with me. I--" "Why, what a silly girl you are!" Alice exclaimed, her face reddening prettily. "How foolishly you prattle! I'm sure I don't trouble myself about Lieutenant Beverley--what put such absurd nonsense into your head, Adrienne?"
"Because, that's what, and you know it's so, too. You love him just as much as I love Rene, and that's just all the love in the world, and you needn't deny it, Alice Roussillon!"
Alice laughed and hugged the wee, brown-faced mite of a girl until she almost smothered her.
It was growing dusk when Adrienne left Roussillon place to go home. The wind cut icily across the commons and moaned as it whirled around the cabins and cattle-sheds. She ran briskly, muffled in a wrap, partly through fear and partly to keep warm, and had gone two-thirds of her way when she was brought to an abrupt stop by the arms of a man. She screamed sharply, and Father Beret, who was coming out of a cabin not far away, heard and knew the voice.
"Ho-ho, my little lady!" cried Adrienne's captor in a breezy, jocund tone, "you wouldn't run over a fellow, would you?" The words were French, but the voice was that of Captain Farnsworth, who laughed while he spoke. "You jump like a rabbit, my darling! Why, what a lively little chick of a girl it is!"
Adrienne screamed and struggled recklessly.
"Now don't rouse up the town," coaxed the Captain. He was just drunk enough to be quite a fool, yet sufficiently sober to imagine himself the most proper person in the world. "I don't mean you any harm, Mademoiselle; I'll just see you safe home, you know; 'scort you to your residence; come on, now--that's a good girl."
Father Beret hurried to the spot, and when in the deepening gloom he saw Adrienne flinging herself violently this way and that, helplessly trying to escape from the clasp of a man, he did to perfection what a priest is supposed to be the least fitted to do. Indeed, considering his age and leaving his vocation out of the reckoning, his performance was amazing. It is not certain that the blow dealt upon Governor Hamilton's jaw by M. Roussillon was a stiffer one than that sent straight from the priest's shoulder right into the short ribs of Captain Farnsworth, who there-upon released a mighty grunt and doubled himself up.
Adrienne recognized her assailant at the first and used his name freely during the struggle. When Father Beret appeared she cried out to him-- "Oh, Father--Father Beret! help me! help me!"
When Farnsworth recovered from the breath-expelling shock of the jab in his side and got himself once more in a vertical position, both girl and priest were gone. He looked this way and that, rapidly becoming sober, and beginning to wonder how the thing could have happened so easily. His ribs felt as if they had been hit with a heavy hammer.
"By Jove!" he muttered all to himself, "the old prayer-singing heathen! By Jove!" And with this very brilliant and relevant observation he rubbed his sore side and went his way to the fort.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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11
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A SWORD AND A HORSE PISTOL
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We hear much about the "days that tried men's souls"; but what about the souls of women in those same days? Sitting in the liberal geniality of the nineteenth century's sunset glow, we insist upon having our grumble at the times and the manners of our generation; but if we had to exchange places, periods and experiences with the people who lived in America through the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there would be good ground for despairing ululations. And if our men could not bear it, if it would try their souls too poignantly, let us imagine the effect upon our women. No, let us not imagine it; but rather let us give full credit to the heroic souls of the mothers and the maidens who did actually bear up in the center of that terrible struggle and unflinchingly help win for us not only freedom, but the vast empire which at this moment is at once the master of the world and the model toward which all the nations of the earth are slowly but surely tending.
If Alice was an extraordinary girl, she was not aware of it; nor had she ever understood that her life was being shaped by extraordinary conditions. Of course it could not but be plain to her that she knew more and felt more than the girls of her narrow acquaintance; that her accomplishments were greater; that she nursed splendid dreams of which they could have no proper comprehension, but until now she had never even dimly realized that she was probably capable of being something more than a mere creole lass, the foster daughter of Gaspard Roussillon, trader in pelts and furs. Even her most romantic visions had never taken the form of personal desire, or ambition in its most nebulous stage; they had simply pleased her fresh and natural fancy and served to gild the hardness and crudeness of her life,--that was all.
Her experiences had been almost too terrible for belief, viewed at our distance from them; she had passed through scenes of incredible horror and suffering, but her nature had not been chilled, stunted or hardened. In body and in temper her development had been sound and beautiful. It was even thus that our great-grandmothers triumphed over adversity, hardship, indescribable danger. We cannot say that the strong, lithe, happy-hearted Alice of old Vincennes was the only one of her kind. Few of us who have inherited the faded portraits of our revolutionary forbears can doubt that beauty, wit and great lovableness flourished in the cabins of pioneers all the way from the Edisto to the Licking, from the Connecticut to the Wabash.
Beverley's advent could not fail to mean a great deal in the life of a girl like Alice; a new era, as it were, would naturally begin for her the moment that his personal influence touched her imagination; but it is well not to measure her too strictly by the standard of our present taste and the specialized forms of our social and moral code. She was a true child of the wilderness, a girl who grew, as the wild prairie rose grew, not on account of innumerable exigencies, accidents and hardships, but in spite of them. She had blushed unseen, and had wasted divine sweets upon a more than desert air. But when Beverley came near her, at first carelessly droning his masculine monotonies, as the wandering bee to the lonely and lovely rose, and presently striking her soul as with the wings of Love, there fell a change into her heart of hearts, and lo! her haunting and elusive dreams began to condense and take on forms that startled her with their wonderful splendor and beauty. These she saw all the time, sleeping or waking; they made bright summer of the frozen stream and snapping gale, the snowdrifts and the sleet. In her brave young heart, swelled the ineffable song--the music never yet caught by syrinx or flute or violin, the words no tongue can speak.
Ah, here may be the secret of that vigorous, brave, sweet life of our pioneer maids, wives, and mothers. It was love that gave those tender hearts the iron strength and heroic persistence at which the world must forever wonder. And do we appreciate those women? Let the Old World boast its crowned kings, its mailed knights, its ladies of the court and castle; but we of the New World, we of the powerful West, let us brim our cups with the wine of undying devotion, and drink to the memory of the Women of the Revolution,--to the humble but good and marvelously brave and faithful women like those of old Vincennes.
But if Alice was being radically influenced by Beverley, he in turn found a new light suffusing his nature, and he was not unaware that it came out of her eyes, her face, her smiles, her voice, her soul. It was the old, well-known, inexplicable, mutual magnetism, which from the first has been the same on the highest mountain-top and in the lowest valley. The queen and the milkmaid, the king and the hind may come together only to find the king walking off with the lowly beauty and her fragrant pail, while away stalks the lusty rustic, to be lord and master of the queen. Love is love, and it thrives in all climes, under all conditions.
There is an inevitable and curious protest that comes up unbidden between lovers; it takes many forms in accordance with particular circumstances. It is the demand for equality and perfection. Love itself is without degrees--it is perfect--but when shall it see the perfect object? It does see it, and it does not see it, in every beloved being. Beverley found his mind turning, as on a pivot, round and round upon the thought that Alice might be impossible to him. The mystery of her life seemed to force her below the line of his aristocratic vision, so that he could not fairly consider her, and yet with all his heart he loved her. Alice, on the other hand, had her bookish ideal to reckon with, despite the fact that she daily dashed it contemptuously down. She was different from Adrienne Bourcier, who bewailed the absence of her un-tamable lover; she wished that Beverley had not, as she somehow viewed it, weakly surrendered to Hamilton. His apparently complacent acceptance of idle captivity did not comport with her dream of knighthood and heroism. She had been all the time half expecting him to do something that would stamp him a hero.
Counter protests of this sort are never sufficiently vigorous to take a fall out of Love; they merely serve to worry his temper by lightly hindering his feet. And it is surprising how Love does delight himself with being entangled.
Both Beverley and Alice day by day felt the cord tightening which drew their hearts together--each acknowledged it secretly, but strove not to evince it openly. Meantime both were as happy and as restlessly dissatisfied as love and uncertainty could make them.
Amid the activities in which Hamilton was engaged--his dealings with the Indians and the work of reconstructing the fort--he found time to worry his temper about the purloined flag. Like every other man in the world, he was superstitious, and it had come into his head that to insure himself and his plans against disaster, he must have the banner of his captives as a badge of his victory. It was a small matter; but it magnified itself as he dwelt upon it. He suspected that Alice had deceived him. He sharply questioned Father Beret, only to be half convinced that the good priest told the truth when he said that he knew nothing whatever on the subject beyond the fact that the banner had mysteriously disappeared from under his floor.
Captain Farnsworth scarcely sympathized with his chief about the flag, but he was nothing if not anxious to gain Hamilton's highest confidence. His military zeal knew no bounds, and he never let pass even the slightest opportunity to show it. Hence his persistent search for a clue to the missing banner. He was no respecter of persons. He frankly suspected both Alice and Father Beret of lying. He would himself have lied under the existing circumstances, and he considered himself as truthful and trustworthy as priest or maiden.
"I'll get that flag for you," he said to Hamilton, "if I have to put every man, woman and child in this town on the rack. It lies, I think, between Miss Roussillon and the priest, although both insistently deny it. I've thought it over in every way, and I can't see how they can both be ignorant of where it is, or at least who got it."
Hamilton, since being treated to that wonderful blow on the jaw, was apt to fall into a spasm of anger whenever the name Roussillon was spoken in his hearing. Involuntarily he would put his hand to his cheek, and grimace reminiscently.
"If it's that girl, make her tell," he savagely commanded. "Let's have no trifling about it. If it's the priest, then make him tell, or tie him up by the thumbs. Get that flag, or show some good reason for your failure. I'm not going to be baffled."
The Captain's adventure with Father Beret came just in time to make it count against that courageous and bellicose missionary in more ways than one. Farnsworth did not tell Hamilton or any other person about what the priest had done to him, but nursed his sore ribs and his wrath, waiting patiently for the revenge that he meant soon to take.
Alice heard from Adrienne the story of Farnsworth's conduct and his humiliating discomfiture at the hands of Father Beret. She was both indignant and delighted, sympathizing with Adrienne and glorying in the priest's vigorous pugilistic achievement.
"Well," she remarked, with one of her infectious trills of laughter, "so far the French have the best of it, anyway! Papa Roussillon knocked the Governor's cheek nearly off, then Rene cracked the Irish Corporal's head, and now Father Beret has taught Captain Farnsworth a lesson in fisticuffs that he'll not soon forget! If the good work can only go on a little longer we shall see every English soldier in Vincennes wearing the mark of a Frenchman's blow." Then her mood suddenly changed from smiling lightness to almost fierce gravity, and she added: "Adrienne Bourcier, if Captain Farnsworth ever offers to treat me as he did you, mark my words, I'll kill him--kill him, indeed I will! You ought to see me!"
"But he won't dare touch you," said Adrienne, looking at her friend with round, admiring eyes. "He knows very well that you are not little and timid like me. He'd be afraid of you."
"I wish he would try it. How I would love to shoot him into pieces, the hateful wretch! I wish he would."
The French inhabitants all, or nearly all, felt as Alice did; but at present they were helpless and dared not say or do anything against the English. Nor was this feeling confined to the Creoles of Vincennes; it had spread to most of the points where trading posts existed. Hamilton found this out too late to mend some of his mistakes; but he set himself on the alert and organized scouting bodies of Indians under white officers to keep him informed as to the American movements in Kentucky and along the Ohio. One of these bands brought in as captive Colonel Francis Vigo, of St. Louis, a Spaniard by birth, an American by adoption, a patriot to the core, who had large influence over both Indians and Creoles in the Illinois country.
Colonel Vigo was not long held a prisoner. Hamilton dared not exasperate the Creoles beyond their endurance, for he knew that the savages would closely sympathize with their friends of long standing, and this might lead to revolt and coalition against him,--a very dangerous possibility. Indeed, at least one of the great Indian chieftains had already frankly informed him that he and his tribe were loyal to the Americans. Here was a dilemma requiring consummate diplomacy. Hamilton saw it, but he was not of a diplomatic temper or character. With the Indians he used a demoralizing system of bribery, while toward the whites he was too often gruff, imperious, repellant. Helm understood the whole situation and was quick to take advantage of it. His personal relations with Hamilton were easy and familiar, so that he did not hesitate to give advice upon all occasions. Here his jovial disposition helped him.
"You'd better let Vigo return to St. Louis," he said. They had a bowl of something hot steaming between them. "I know him. He's harmless if you don't rub him too hard the wrong way. He'll go back, if you treat him well, and tell Clark how strong you are here and how foolish it would be to think of attacking you. Clark has but a handful of men, poorly supplied and tired with long, hard marches. If you'll think a moment you cannot fail to understand that you'd better be friends with this man Vigo. He and Father Gibault and this old priest here, Beret, carry these Frenchmen in their pockets. I'm not on your side, understand, I'm an American, and I'd blow the whole of you to kingdom come in a minute, if I could; but common sense is common sense all the same. There's no good to you and no harm to Clark in mistreating, or even holding this prisoner. What harm can he do you by going back to Clark and telling him the whole truth? Clark knew everything long before Vigo reached here. Old Jazon, my best scout, left here the day you took possession, and you may bet he got to Kaskaskia in short order. He never fails. But he'll tell Clark to stay where he is, and Vigo can do no more."
What effect Helm's bold and apparently artless talk had upon Hamilton's mind is not recorded; but the meager historical facts at command show that Vigo was released and permitted to return under promise that he would give no information to the enemy ON HIS WAY to Kaskaskia.
Doubtless this bit of careless diplomacy on the Governor's part did have a somewhat soothing effect upon a large class of Frenchmen at Vincennes; but Farnsworth quickly neutralized it to a serious extent by a foolish act while slightly under the influence of liquor.
He met Father Beret near Roussillon place, and feeling his ribs squirm at sight of the priest, he accosted him insolently, demanding information as to the whereabouts of the missing flag.
A priest may be good and true--Father Beret certainly was--and yet have the strongest characteristics of a worldly man. This thing of being bullied day after day, as had recently been the rule, generated nothing to aid in removing a refractory desire from the priest's heart--the worldly desire to repeat with great increment of force the punch against Famsworth's lower ribs.
"I order you, sir, to produce that rebel flag," said Farnsworth. "You will obey forthwith or take the consequences. I am no longer in the humor to be trifled with. Do you understand?"
"I might be forced to obey you, if I could," said the priest, drawing his robe about him; "but, as I have often told you, my son, I do not know where the flag is or who took it. I do not even suspect any person of taking it. All that I know about it is the simple fact that it is gone."
Father Beret's manner and voice were very mild, but there must have been a hint of sturdy defiance somewhere in them. At all events Farnsworth was exasperated and fell into a white rage. Perhaps it was the liquor he had been drinking that made him suddenly desperate.
"You canting old fool!" he cried, "don't lie to me any longer; I won't have it. Don't stand there grinning at me. Get that flag, or I'll make you."
"What is impossible, my son, is possible to God alone. Apud homines hoc impossible est, apud Deum autem omnia possibilia sunt."
"None of your Jesuit Latin or logic to me--I am not here to argue, but to command. Get that flag. Be in a hurry about it, sir."
He whipped out his sword, and in his half drunken eyes there gathered the dull film of murderous passion.
"Put up your weapon, Captain; you will not attack an unarmed priest. You are a soldier, and will not dare strike an old, defenceless man."
"But I will strike a black-robed and black-hearted French rebel. Get that flag, you grinning fool!"
The two men stood facing each other. Father Beret's eyes did not stir from their direct, fearless gaze. What Farnsworth had called a grin was a peculiar smile, not of merriment, a grayish flicker and a slight backward wrinkling of the cheeks. The old man's arms were loosely crossed upon his sturdy breast.
"Strike if you must," he said very gently, very firmly. "I never yet have seen the man that could make me afraid." His speech was slightly sing-song in tone, as it would have been during a prayer or a blessing.
"Get the flag then!" raged Farnsworth, in whose veins the heat of liquor was aided by an unreasoning choler.
"I cannot," said Father Beret.
"Then take the consequences!"
Farnsworth lifted his sword, not to thrust, but to strike with its flat side, and down it flashed with a noisy whack. Father Beret flung out an arm and deftly turned the blow aside. It was done so easily that Farnsworth sprang back glaring and surprised.
"You old fool!" he cried, leveling his weapon for a direct lunge. "You devilish hypocrite!"
It was then that Father Beret turned deadly pale and swiftly crossed himself. His face looked as if he saw something startling just beyond his adversary. Possibly this sudden change of expression caused Farnsworth to hesitate for a mere point of time. Then there was the swish of a woman's skirts; a light step pattered on the frozen ground, and Alice sprang between the men, facing Farnsworth. As she did this something small and yellow,--the locket at her throat,--fell and rolled under her feet. Nobody saw it.
In her hand she held an immense horse pistol, which she leveled in the Captain's face, its flaring, bugle-shaped muzzle gaping not a yard from his nose. The heavy tube was as steady as if in a vise.
"Drop that sword!"
That was all she said; but her finger was pressing the trigger, and the flint in the backward slanting hammer was ready to click against the steel. The leaden slugs were on the point of leaping forth.
"Drop that sword!"
The repetition seemed to close the opportunity for delay.
Farnsworth was on his guard in a twinkling. He set his jaw and uttered an ugly oath; then quick as lightning he struck sidewise at the pistol with his blade. It was a move which might have taken a less alert person than Alice unawares; but her training in sword-play was ready in her wrist and hand. An involuntary turn, the slightest imaginable, set the heavy barrel of her weapon strongly against the blow, partly stopping it, and then the gaping muzzle spat its load of balls and slugs with a bellow that awoke the drowsy old village.
Farnsworth staggered backward, letting fall his sword. There was a rent in the clothing of his left shoulder. He reeled; the blood spun out; but he did not fall, although he grew white.
Alice stood gazing at him with a look on her face he would never forget. It was a look that changed by wonderful swift gradations from terrible hate to something like sweet pity. The instant she saw him hurt and bleeding, his countenance relaxing and pale, her heart failed her. She took a step toward him, her hand opened, and with a thud the heavy old pistol fell upon the ground beside her.
Father Beret sprang nimbly to sustain Farnsworth, snatching up the pistol as he passed around Alice.
"You are hurt, my son," he gently said, "let me help you." He passed his arm firmly under that of Farnsworth, seeing that the Captain was unsteady on his feet.
"Lean upon me. Come with me, Alice, my child, I will take him into the house."
Alice picked up the Captain's sword and led the way.
It was all done so quickly that Farnsworth, in his half dazed condition, scarcely realized what was going on until he found himself on a couch in the Roussillon home, his wound (a jagged furrow plowed out by slugs that the sword's blade had first intercepted) neatly dressed and bandaged, while Alice and the priest hovered over him busy with their careful ministrations.
Hamilton and Helm were, as usual, playing cards at the former's quarters when a guard announced that Mademoiselle Roussillon wished an audience with the Governor.
"Bring the girl in," said Hamilton, throwing down his cards and scowling darkly.
"Now you'd better be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove," remarked Helm. "There is something up, and that gun-shot we heard awhile ago may have a good deal to do with it. At any rate, you'll find kindness your best card to play with Alice Roussillon just at the present stage of the game."
Of course they knew nothing of what had happened to Farnsworth; but they had been discussing the strained relations between the garrison and the French inhabitants when the roar of Alice's big-mouthed pistol startled them. Helm was slyly beating about to try to make Hamilton lose sight of the danger from Clark's direction. To do this he artfully magnified the insidious work that might be done by the French and their Indian friends should they be driven to desperation by oppressive or exasperating action on the part of the English.
Hamilton felt the dangerous uncertainty upon which the situation rested; but, like many another vigorously self-reliant man, he could not subordinate his passions to the dictates of policy. When Alice was conducted into his presence he instantly swelled with anger. It was her father who had struck him and escaped, it was she who had carried off the rebel flag at the moment of victory.
"Well, Miss, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?" he demanded with a supercilious air, bending a card between his thumb and finger on the rude table.
She stood before him tall and straight, well bundled in furs. She was not pale; her blood was too rich and brilliant for that; but despite a half-smile and the inextinguishable dimples, there was a touch of something appealingly pathetic in the lines of her mouth. She did not waver or hesitate, however, but spoke promptly and distinctly.
"I have come, Monsieur, to tell you that I have hurt Captain Farnsworth. He was about to kill Father Beret, and I shot him. He is in our house and well cared for. I don't think his wound is bad. And--" here she hesitated at last and let her gaze fall,--"so here I am." Then she lifted her eyes again and made an inimitable French gesture with her shoulders and arms. "You will do as you please, Monsieur, I am at your mercy."
Hamilton was astounded. Helm sat staring phlegmatically. Meantime Beverley entered the room and stopped hat in hand behind Alice. He was flushed and evidently excited; in fact, he had heard of the trouble with Farnsworth, and seeing Alice enter the floor of Hamilton's quarters he followed her in, his heart stirred by no slight emotion. He met the Governor's glare and parried it with one of equal haughtiness. The veins on his forehead swelled and turned dark. He was in a mood to do whatever desperate act should suggest itself.
When Hamilton fairly comprehended the message so graphically presented by Alice, he rose from his seat by the fire.
"What's this you tell me?" he blurted. "You say you've shot Captain Farnsworth?"
"Oui, Monsieur."
He stared a moment, then his features beamed with hate.
"And I'll have you shot for it, Miss, as sure as you stand there in your silly impudence ogling me so brazenly!"
He leaned toward her as he spoke and sent with the words a shock of coarse, passionate energy from which she recoiled as if expecting a blow to follow it.
An irresistible impulse swept Beverley to Alice's side, and his attitude was that of a protector. Helm sprang up.
A Lieutenant came in and respectfully, but with evident over-haste, reported that Captain Farnsworth had been shot and was at Roussillon place in care of the surgeon.
"Take this girl into custody. Confine her and put a strong guard over her."
In giving the order Hamilton jerked his thumb contemptuously toward Alice, and at the same time gave Beverley a look of supreme defiance and hatred. When Helm began to speak he turned fiercely upon him and stopped him with: "None of your advice, sir. I have had all I want of it. Keep your place or I'll make you."
Then to Beverley: "Retire, sir. When I wish to see you I'll send for you. At present you are not needed here."
The English Lieutenant saluted his commander, bowed respectfully to Alice and said: "Come with me, Miss, please."
Helm and Beverley exchanged a look of helpless and enquiring rage. It was as if they had said: "What can we do? Must we bear it?" Certainly they could do nothing. Any interference on their part would be sure to increase Alice's danger, and at the same time add to the weight of their own humiliation.
Alice silently followed the officer out of the room. She did not even glance toward Beverley, who moved as if to interfere and was promptly motioned back by the guard. His better judgement returning held him from a rash and futile act, until Hamilton spoke again, saying loudly as Alice passed through the door: "I'll see who's master of this town if I have to shoot every French hoyden in it!"
"Women and children may well fear you, Colonel Hamilton," said Beverley. "That young lady is your superior."
"You say that to me, sir!"
"It is the best I could possibly say of you."
"I will send you along with the wench if you do not guard your language. A prisoner on parole has no license to be a blackguard."
"I return you my parole, sir, I shall no longer regard it as binding," said Beverley, by a great effort, holding back a blow; "I will not keep faith with a scoundrel who does not know how to be decent in the presence of a young girl. You had better have me arrested and confined. I will escape at the first opportunity and bring a force here to reckon with you for your villainy. And if you dare hurt Alice Roussillon I will have you hanged like a dog!"
Hamilton looked at him scornfully, smiling as one who feels safe in his authority and means to have his own way with his victim. Naturally he regarded Beverley's words as the merest vaporings of a helpless and exasperated young man. He saw very clearly that love was having a hand in the affair, and he chuckled inwardly, thinking what a fool Beverley was.
"I thought I ordered you to leave this room," he said with an air and tone of lofty superiority, "and I certainly mean to be obeyed. Go, sir, and if you attempt to escape, or in any way break your parole, I'll have you shot."
"I have already broken it. From this moment I shall not regard it. You have heard my statement. I shall not repeat it. Govern yourself accordingly."
With these words Beverley turned and strode out of the house, quite beside himself, his whole frame quivering.
Hamilton laughed derisively, then looked at Helm and said: "Helm, I like you; I don't wish to be unkind to you; but positively you must quit breaking in upon my affairs with your ready-made advice. I've given you and Lieutenant Beverley too much latitude, perhaps. If that young fool don't look sharp he'll get himself into a beastly lot of trouble. You'd better give him a talk. He's in a way to need it just now."
"I think so myself," said Helm, glad to get back upon fair footing with the irascible Governor. "I'll wait until he cools off somewhat, and then I can manage him. Leave him to me."
"Well, come walk with me to see what has really happened to Farnsworth. He's probably not much hurt, and deserves what he's got. That girl has turned his head. I think I understand the whole affair. A little love, a little wine, some foolishness, and the wench shot him."
Helm genially assented; but they were delayed for some time by an officer who came in to consult with Hamilton on some pressing Indian affairs. When they reached Roussillon place they met Beverley coming out; but he did not look at them. He was scarcely aware of them. A little way outside the gate, on going in, he had picked up Alice's locket and broken chain, which he mechanically put into his pocket. It was all like a dream to him, and yet he had a clear purpose. He was going away from Vincennes, or at least he would try, and woe be to Hamilton on his coming back. It was so easy for an excited young mind to plan great things and to expect success under apparently impossible conditions. Beverley gave Jean a note for Alice; it was this that took him to Roussillon place; and no sooner fell the night than he shouldered a gun furnished him by Madame Godere, and guided by the woodsman's fine craft, stole away southward, thinking to swim the icy Wabash some miles below, and then strike across the plains of Illinois to Kaskaskia.
It was a desperate undertaking; but in those days desperate undertakings were rather the rule than the exception. Moreover, love was the leader and Beverley the blind follower. Nothing could daunt him or turn him back, until he found an army to lead against Hamilton. It seems but a romantic burst of indignation, as we look back at it, hopelessly foolish, with no possible end but death in the wilderness. Still there was a method in love's madness, and Beverley, with his superb physique, his knowledge of the wilderness and his indomitable self-reliance, was by no means without his fighting chance for success.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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12
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MANON LESCAUT. AND A RAPIER-THRUST
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Beverley's absence was not noticed by Hamilton until late on the following day, and even then he scouted Helm's suggestion that the young man was possibly carrying out his threat to disregard his parole.
"He would be quite justified in doing it; you know that very well," said Helm with a laugh, "and he's just the man to undertake what is impossible. Of course, however, he'll get scalped for his trouble, and that will cost you something, I'm happy to say."
"It's a matter of small importance," Hamilton replied; "but I'll wager you the next toddy that he's not at the present moment a half-mile from this spot. He may be a fool, I readily grant that he is, but even a fool is not going to set out alone in this kind of weather to go to where your rebel friends are probably toasting their shins by a fire of green logs and half starving over yonder on the Mississippi."
"Joking aside, you are doubtless right. Beverley is hot-headed, and if he could he'd get even with you devilish quick; but he hasn't left Vincennes, I think. Miss Roussillon would keep him here if the place were on fire!"
Hamilton laughed dryly. He had thought just what Helm was saying. Beverley's attentions to Alice had not escaped his notice.
"Speaking of that girl," he remarked after a moment's silence, "what am I do to do with her? There's no place to keep her, and Farnsworth insists that she wasn't to blame." He chuckled again and added: "It's true as gospel. He's in love with her, too. Seems to be glad she shot him. Says he's ashamed of himself for ever suspecting her of anything but being a genuine angel. Why, he's got as flabby as a rabbit and mumbles like a fool!"
"Same as you or I at his age," said Helm, taking a chew of tobacco. "She IS a pretty thing. Beverley don't know his foot from his shoulder-blade when she's anywhere near him. Boys are boys. I'm a sort of a boy myself."
"If she'd give up that flag he'd let her go," said Hamilton. "I hate like the devil to confine her; it looks brutal, and makes me feel like a tyrant."
"Have you ever happened to notice the obvious fact, Governor Hamilton, that Alice Roussillon and Father Beret are not all the French in Vincennes?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I don't for a moment believe that either the girl or the priest knows a thing about where that flag is. They are both as truthful and honorable as people ever get to be. I know them. Somebody else got that flag from under the priest's floor. You may depend upon that. If Miss Roussillon knew where it is she'd say so, and then dare you to make her tell where it's hidden."
"Oh, the whole devilish town is rotten with treason; that's very clear. There's not a loyal soul in it outside of my forces."
"Thank you for not including me among the loyalists."
"Humph, I spoke of these French people; they pretend to be true; but I believe they are all traitors."
"You can manage them if you try. A little jolly kindness goes a long way with 'em. _I_ had no trouble while _I_ held the town."
Hamilton bit his lip and was silent. Helm was exasperatingly good tempered, and his jocularity was irresistible. While he was yet speaking a guard came up followed by Jean, the hunchback, and saluting said to Hamilton: "The lad wants to see the young lady, sir."
Hamilton gazed quizzically at Jean, who planted himself in his habitual attitude before him and stared up into his face with the grotesque expression which seems to be characteristic of hunchbacks and unfledged birds--the look of an embodied and hideous joke.
"Well, sir, what will you have?" the Governor demanded.
"I want to see Alice, if you please."
"What for?"
"I want to give her a book to read."
"Ah, indeed. Where is it? Let me see it."
Jean took from the breast of his loose jerkin a small volume, dog-eared and mildewed, and handed it to Hamilton. Meantime he stood first on one foot, then the other, gnawing his thumb-nail and blinking rapidly.
"Well, Helm, just look here!"
"What?"
"Manon Lescaut."
"And what's that?"
"Haven't you ever read it?"
"Read what?"
"This novel--Manon Lescaut."
"Never read a novel in my life. Never expect to."
Hamilton laughed freely at Helm's expense, then turned to Jean and gave him back the book.
It would have been quite military, had he taken the precaution to examine between the pages for something hidden there, but he did not.
"Go, give it to her," he said, "and tell her I send my compliments, with great admiration of her taste in literature." He motioned the soldier to show Jean to Alice. "It's a beastly French story," he added, addressing Helm; "immoral enough to make a pirate blush. That's the sort of girl Mademoiselle Roussillon is!"
"I don't care what kind of a book she reads," blurted Helm, "she's a fine, pure, good girl. Everybody likes her. She's the good angel of this miserable frog-hole of a town. You'd like her yourself, if you'd straighten up and quit burning tow in your brain all the time. You're always so furious about something that you never have a chance to be just to yourself, or pleasant to anybody else."
Hamilton turned fiercely on Helm, but a glimpse of the Captain's broad good-humored face heartily smiling, dispelled his anger. There was no ground upon which to maintain a quarrel with a person so persistently genial and so absurdly frank. And in fact Hamilton was not half so bad as his choleric manifestations seemed to make him out. Besides, Helm knew just how far to go, just when to stop.
"If I had got furious at you every time there was overwhelming provocation for it," Hamilton said, "you'd have been long since hanged or shot. I fancy that I have shown angelic forbearance. I've given you somewhat more than a prisoner's freedom."
"So you have, so you have," assented Helm. "I've often been surprised at your generous partiality in my case. Let's have some hot water with something else in it, what do you say? I won't give you any more advice for five minutes by your watch."
"But I want some advice at once."
"What about?"
"That girl."
"Turn her loose. That's easy and reputable."
"I'll have to, I presume; but she ought to be punished."
"If you'll think less about punishment, revenge and getting even with everybody and everything, you'll soon begin to prosper."
Hamilton winced, but smiled as one quite sure of himself.
Jean followed the soldier to a rickety log pen on the farther side of the stockade, where he found the prisoner restlessly moving about like a bird in a rustic cage. It had no comforts, that gloomy little room. There was no fireplace, the roof leaked, and the only furniture consisted of a bench to sit on and a pile of skins for bed. Alice looked charmingly forlorn peeping out of the wraps in which she was bundled against the cold, her hair fluffed and rimpled in shining disorder around her face.
The guard let Jean in and closed the door, himself staying outside.
Alice was as glad to see the poor lad as if they had been parted for a year. She hugged him and kissed his drawn little face.
"You dear, good Jean!" she murmured, "you did not forget me."
"I brought you something," he whispered, producing the book.
Alice snatched it, looked at it, and then at Jean.
"Why, what did you bring this for? you silly Jean! I didn't want this. I don't like this book at all. It's hateful. I despise it. Take it back."
"There's something in it for you, a paper with writing on it; Lieutenant Beverley wrote it on there. It's shut up between the leaves about the middle."
"Sh-s-sh! not so loud, the guard'll hear you," Alice breathlessly whispered, her whole manner changing instantly. She was trembling, and the color had been whisked from her face, as the flame from a candle in a sudden draught.
She found the note and read it a dozen times without a pause, her eyes leaping along the lines back and forth with pathetic eagerness and concentration. Presently she sat down on the bench and covered her face with her hands. A tremor first, then a convulsive sobbing, shook her collapsed form. Jean regarded her with a drolly sympathetic grimace, elevating his long chin and letting his head settle back between his shoulders.
"Oh, Jean, Jean!" she cried at last, looking up and reaching out her arms; "O Jean, he is gone, gone, gone!"
Jean stepped closer to her while she sobbed again like a little child.
She pulled him to her and held him tightly against her breast while she once more read the note through blinding tears. The words were few, but to her they bore the message of desolation and despair. A great, haunting, hollow voice in her heart repeated them until they echoed from vague distance to distance.
It was written with a bit of lead on the half of a mildewed fly-leaf torn from the book: "Dear Alice: "I am going away. When you read this, think of me as hurrying through the wilderness to reach our army and bring it here. Be brave, as you always have been; be good, as you cannot help being; wait and watch for me; love me, as I love you. I will come. Do not doubt it, I will come, and I will crush Hamilton and his command. Courage, Alice dear; courage, and wait for me.
"Faithfully ever, "Beverley."
She kissed the paper with passionate fervor, pouring her tears upon it in April showers between which the light of her eyes played almost fiercely, so poignant was her sense of a despair which bordered upon desperation. "Gone, gone!" It was all she could think or say. "Gone, gone."
Jean took the offending novel back home with him, hidden under his jerkin; but Beverley's note lay upon Alice's heart, a sweet comfort and a crushing weight, when an hour later Hamilton sent for her and she was taken before him. Her face was stained with tears and she looked pitifully distressed and disheveled; yet despite all this her beauty asserted itself with subtle force.
Hamilton felt ashamed looking at her, but put on sternness and spoke without apparent sympathy: "Miss Roussillon, you came near committing a great crime. As it is, you have done badly enough; but I wish not to be unreasonably severe. I hope you are sorry for your act, and feel like doing better hereafter."
She was trembling, but her eyes looked steadily straight into his. They were eyes of baby innocence, yet they irradiated a strong womanly spirit just touched with the old perverse, mischievous light which she could neither banish nor control. When she did not make reply, Hamilton continued: "You may go home now, and I shall expect to have no more trouble on your account." He made a gesture indicative of dismissal; then, as she turned from him, he added, somewhat raising his voice: "And further, Miss Roussillon, that flag you took from here must positively be returned. See that it is done."
She lifted her head high and walked away, not deigning to give him a word.
"Humph! what do you think now of your fine young lady?" he demanded, turning to Helm with a sneering curl of his mouth. "She gives thanks copiously for a kindness, don't you think?"
"Poor girl, she was scared nearly out of her life," said Helm. "She got away from you, like a wounded bird from a snare. I never saw a face more pitiful than hers."
"Much pity she needs, and greatly like a wounded bird she acts, I must say; but good riddance if she'll keep her place hereafter. I despise myself when I have to be hard with a woman, especially a pretty one. That girl's a saucy and fascinating minx, and as dangerous as twenty men. I'll keep a watch on her movements from this on, and if she gets into mischief again I'll transport her to Detroit, or give her away to the Indians, She must stop her high-handed foolishness."
Helm saw that Hamilton was talking mere wind, VOX ET PRAETEREA NIHIL, and he furthermore felt that his babbling signified no harm to Alice; but Hamilton surprised him presently by saying: "I have just learned that Lieutenant Beverley is actually gone. Did you know of his departure?"
"What are you saying, sir?"
Helm jumped to his feet, not angry, but excited.
"Keep cool, you need not answer if you prefer silence or evasion. You may want to go yourself soon."
Helm burst out laughing, but quickly growing serious said: "Has Beverley been such a driveling fool as that? Are you in earnest?"
"He killed two of my scouts, wounded another, and crossed the Wabash in their canoe. He is going straight towards Kaskaskia."
"The idiot! Hurrah for him! If you catch your hare you may roast him, but catch him first, Governor!"
"You'll joke out of the other corner of your mouth, Captain Helm, if I find out that you gave him aid or countenance in breaking his parole."
"Aid or countenance! I never saw him after he walked out of this room. You gave him a devil of a sight more aid and countenance than I did. What are you talking about! Broke his parole! He did no such thing. He returned it to you fairly, as you well know. He told you he was going."
"Well, I've sent twenty of my swiftest Indians after him to bring him back. I'll let you see him shot. That ought to please you."
"They'll never get him, Governor. I'll bet high on him against your twenty scalp-lifters any day. Fitzhugh Beverley is the best Indian fighter, Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton excepted, in the American colonies."
On her way home Alice met Father Beret, who turned and walked beside her. He was so overjoyed at her release that he could scarcely speak; but held her hand and stroked it gently while she told him her story. It was beginning to rain, a steady, cold shower, when they reached the house, and for many days and nights thereafter the downfall continued almost incessantly.
"Dear child," said Father Beret, stopping at the gate and looking beseechingly into Alice's face, "you must stay at home now--stay in the house--it will be horribly dangerous for you to pass about in the village after your--after what has happened."
"Do not fear, Father, I will be careful. Aren't you coming in? I'll find you a cake and a glass of wine."
"No, child, not now."
"Then good-bye, good-bye," she said, turning from him to run into the house. "Come soon, I shall be so lonesome."
On the veranda she suddenly stopped, running her fingers about her neck and into her bosom.
"Oh, Father, Father Beret, I've lost my locket!" she cried. "See if I dropped it there."
She went back to the gate, searching the ground with her eyes. Of course she did not find the locket. It was miles and miles away close to the heart of her lover. If she could but have known this, it would have comforted her. Beverley had intended to leave it with Jean, but in his haste and excitement he forgot; writing the note distracted his attention; and so he bore Alice's picture on his breast and in his heart while pursuing his long and perilous journey.
Four of Hamilton's scouts came upon Beverley twenty miles south of Vincennes, but having the advantage of them, he killed two almost immediately, and after a running fight, the other two attempted escape in a canoe on the Wabash. Here, firing from a bluff, he wounded a third. Both then plunged head-foremost into the water, and by keeping below the surface, got away. The adventure gave Beverley new spirit and self-reliance; he felt that he could accomplish anything necessary to his undertaking. In the captured pirogue he crossed the river, and, to make his trail hard to find, sent the little craft adrift down the current.
Then alone, in the dead of winter, he took his bearings and struck across the dreary, houseless plain toward St. Louis.
As soon as Hamilton's discomfited scouts reported to him, he sent Long-Hair with twenty picked savages, armed and supplied for continuous and rapid marching, in pursuit of Beverley. There was a large reward for bringing him in alive, a smaller one for his scalp.
When Alice heard of all this, her buoyant and happy nature seemed entirely to desert her for a time. She was proud to find out that Beverley had shown himself brave and capable; it touched her love of heroism; but she knew too much about Indian warfare to hope that he could hold his own against Long-Hair, the wiliest and boldest of scalp-hunters, and twenty of the most experienced braves in Hamilton's forces. He would almost certainly be killed and scalped, or captured and brought back to be shot or hanged in Vincennes. The thought chilled and curdled her blood.
Both Helm and Father Beret tried to encourage and comfort her by representing the probabilities in the fairest light.
"It's like hunting for a needle in a haystack, going out to find a man in that wilderness," said Helm with optimistic cheerfulness; "and besides Beverley is no easy dose for twenty red niggers to take. I've seen him tried at worse odds than that, and he got out with a whole skin, too. Don't you fret about him, Miss Roussillon."
Little help came to her from attempts of this sort. She might brighten up for a while, but the dark dread, and the terrible gnawing at her heart, the sinking and despairing in her soul, could not be cured.
What added immeasurably to her distress was the attention of Farnsworth, whose wound troubled him but a short time. He seemed to have had a revelation and a change of spirit since the unfortunate rencounter and the subsequent nursing at Alice's hands. He was grave, earnest, kindly, evidently striving to play a gentle and honorable part. She could feel that he carried a load of regret, that he wanted to pay a full price in good for the evil that he had done; his sturdy English heart was righting itself nobly, yet she but half understood him, until his actions and words began to betray his love; and then she hated him unreasonably. Realizing this, Farnsworth bore himself more like a faithful dog than in the manner hitherto habitual to him. He simply shadowed Alice and would not be rebuffed.
There can be nothing more painful to a finely sympathetic nature than regret for having done a kindness. Alice experienced this to the fullest degree. She had nursed Farnsworth but a little while, yet it was a while of sweet influence. Her tender woman nature felt the blessedness of doing good to her enemy lying helpless in her house and hurt by her own hand. But now she hated the man, and with all her soul she was sorry that she had been kind to him; for out of her kindness he had drawn the spell of a love under which he lived a new life, and all for her. Yet deep down in her consciousness the pity and the pathos of the thing hovered gloomily and would not be driven out.
The rain in mid-winter gave every prospect a sad, cold, sodden gray appearance. The ground was soaked, little rills ran in the narrow streets, the small streams became great rivers, the Wabash overflowed its banks and made a sea of all the lowlands on either side. It was hard on the poor dwellers in the thatched and mostly floorless cabins, for the grass roofs gradually let the water through and puddles formed on the ground inside. Fuel was distant and had to be hauled in the pouring rain; provisions were scarce and hunting almost impossible. Many people, especially children, were taken ill with colds and fever. Alice found some relief from her trouble in going from cabin to cabin and waiting upon the sufferers; but even here Farnsworth could not be got rid of; he followed her night and day. Never was a good soldier, for he was that from head to foot, more lovelorn and love-docile. The maiden had completely subdued the man.
About this time, deep in a rainy and pitch-black night, Gaspard Roussillon came home. He tapped on the door again and again. Alice heard, but she hesitated to speak or move. Was she growing cowardly? Her heart beat like a drum. There was but one person in all the world that she could think of--it was not M. Roussillon. Ah, no, she had well-nigh forgotten her gigantic foster father.
"It is I, ma cherie, it is Gaspard, my love, open the door," came in a booming half-whisper from without. "Alice, Jean, it is your Papa Roussillon, my dears. Let me in."
Alice was at the door in a minute, unbarring it. M. Roussillon entered, armed to the teeth, the water dribbling from his buckskin clothes.
"Pouf!" he exclaimed, "my throat is like dust." His thoughts were diving into the stores under the floor. "I am famished. Dear children, dear little ones! They are glad to see papa! Where is your mama?"
He had Alice in his arms and Jean clung to his legs. Madame Roussillon, to be sure of no mistake, lighted a lamp with a brand that smoldered on the hearth and held it up, then, satisfied as to her husband's identity, set it on a shelf and flung herself into the affectionate group with clumsy abandon, making a great noise.
"Oh, my dear Gaspard!" she cried as she lunged forward. "Gaspard, Gaspard!" Her voice fairly lifted the roof; her great weight, hurled with such force, overturned everybody, and all of them tumbled in a heap, the rotund and solid dame sitting on top.
"Ouf! not so impetuous, my dear," puffed M. Roussillon, freeing himself from her unpleasant pressure and scrambling to his feet. "Really you must have fared well in my absence, Madame, you are much heavier." He laughed and lifted her up as if she had been a child, kissing her resonantly.
His gun had fallen with a great clatter. He took it from the floor and examined it to see if it had been injured, then set it in a corner.
"I am afraid we have been making too much noise," said Alice, speaking very low. "There is a patrol guard every night now. If they should hear you--" "Shh!" whispered M. Roussillon, "we will be very still. Alice, is there something to eat and a drop of wine handy? I have come many miles; I am tired, hungry, thirsty,--ziff!"
Alice brought some cold roast venison, a loaf, and a bottle of claret. These she set before him on a little table.
"Ah, this is comfort," he said after he had gulped a full cup. "Have you all been well?"
Then he began to tell where he had been, what he had seen, and the many things he had done. A Frenchman must babble while he eats and drinks. A little wine makes him eloquent. He talks with his hands, shoulders, eyes. Madame Roussillon, Alice and Jean, wrapped in furs, huddled around him to hear. He was very entertaining, and they forgot the patrol until a noise startled them. It was the low of a cow. They laughed and the master of the house softened his voice.
M. Roussillon had been the guest of a great Indian chieftain, who was called the "Gate of the Wabash," because he controlled the river. The chief was an old acquaintance and treated him well.
"But I wanted to see you all," Gaspard said. "I was afraid something might have happened to you. So I came back just to peep in. I can't stay, of course; Hamilton would kill me as if I were a wolf. I can remain but an hour and then slip out of town again before daylight conies. The rain and darkness are my friends."
He had seen Simon Kenton, who said he had been in the neighborhood of Vincennes acting as a scout and spy for Clark. Presently and quite casually he added: "And I saw Lieutenant Beverley, too. I suppose you know that he has escaped from Hamilton, and--" Here a big mouthful of venison interfered.
Alice leaned toward him white and breathless, her heart standing still.
Then the door, which had been left unbarred, was flung open and, along with a great rush of wind and rain, the patrol guard, five in number, sprang in.
M. Roussillon reached his gun with one hand, with the other swung a tremendous blow as he leaped against the intruders. Madame Roussillon blew out the light. No cave in the depth of earth was ever darker than that room. The patrolmen could not see one another or know what to do; but M. Roussillon laid about him with the strength of a giant. His blows sounded as if they smashed bones. Men fell heavily thumping on the floor where he rushed along. Some one fired a pistol and by its flash they all saw him; but instantly the darkness closed again, and before they could get their bearings he was out and gone, his great hulking form making its way easily over familiar ground where his would-be captors could have proceeded but slowly, even with a light to guide them. There was furious cursing among the patrolmen as they tumbled about in the room, the unhurt ones trampling their prostrate companions and striking wildly at each other in their blindness and confusion. At last one of them bethought him to open a dark lantern with which the night guards were furnished. Its flame was fluttering and gave forth a pale red light that danced weirdly on the floors and walls.
Alice had snatched down one of her rapiers when the guards first entered. They now saw her facing them with her slender blade leveled, her back to the wall, her eyes shining dangerously. Madame Roussillon had fled into the adjoining room. Jean had also disappeared. The officer, a subaltern, in charge of the guard, seeing Alice, and not quickly able to make out that it was a woman thus defying him, crossed swords with her. There was small space for action; moreover the officer being not in the least a swordsman, played awkwardly, and quick as a flash his point was down. The rapier entered just below his thread with a dull chucking stab. He leaped backward, feeling at the same time a pair of arms clasp his legs. It was Jean, and the Lieutenant, thus unexpectedly tangled, fell to the floor, breaking but not extinguishing the guard's lantern as he went down. The little remaining oil spread and flamed up brilliantly, as if eager for conflagration, sputtering along the uneven boards.
"Kill that devil!" cried the Lieutenant, in a strangling voice, while trying to regain his feet. "Shoot! Bayonet!"
In his pain, rage and haste, he inadvertently set his hand in the midst of the blazing oil, which clung to the flesh with a seething grip.
"Hell!" he screamed, "fire, fire!"
Two or three bayonets were leveled upon Alice. Some one kicked Jean clean across the room, and he lay there curled up in his hairy night-wrap looking like an enormous porcupine.
At this point a new performer came upon the stage, a dark-robed thing, so active that its outlines changed elusively, giving it no recognizable features. It might have been the devil himself, or some terrible unknown wild animal clad somewhat to resemble a man, so far as the startled guards could make out. It clawed right and left, hurled one of them against the wall, dashed another through the door into Madame Roussillon's room, where the good woman was wailing at the top of her voice, and felled a third with a stroke like that of a bear's paw.
Consternation was at high tide when Farnsworth, who always slept with an ear open, reached Roussillon place and quickly quieted things. He was troubled beyond expression when he found out the true state of the affair, for there was nothing that he could do but arrest Alice and take her to Hamilton. It made his heart sink. He would have thought little of ordering a file of soldiers to shoot a man under the same conditions; but to subject her again to the Governor's stern cruelty--how could he do it? This time there would be no hope for her.
Alice stood before him flushed, disheveled, defiant, sword in hand, beautiful and terrible as an angel. The black figure, man or devil, had disappeared as strangely as it had come. The sub-Lieutenant was having his slight wound bandaged. Men were raging and cursing under their breath, rubbing their bruised heads and limbs.
"Alice--Mademoiselle Roussillon, I am so sorry for this," said Captain Farnsworth. "It is painful, terrible--" He could not go on, but stood before her unmanned. In the feeble light his face was wan and his hurt shoulder, still in bandages, drooped perceptibly.
"I surrender to you," she presently said in French, extending the hilt of her rapier to him. "I had to defend myself when attacked by your Lieutenant there. If an officer finds it necessary to set upon a girl with his sword, may not the girl guard her life if she can?"
She was short of breath, so that her voice palpitated with a touching plangency that shook the man's heart.
Farnsworth accepted the sword; he could do nothing less. His duty admitted of no doubtful consideration; yet he hesitated, feeling around in his mind for a phrase with which to evade the inevitable.
"It will be safer for you at the fort, Mademoiselle; let me take you there."
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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13
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A MEETING IN THE WILDERNESS
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Beverley set out on his mid-winter journey to Kaskaskia with a tempest in his heart, and it was, perhaps, the storm's energy that gave him the courage to face undaunted and undoubting what his experience must have told him lay in his path. He was young and strong; that meant a great deal; he had taken the desperate chances of Indian warfare many times before this, and the danger counted as nothing, save that it offered the possibility of preventing him from doing the one thing in life he now cared to do. What meant suffering to him, if he could but rescue Alice? And what were life should he fail to rescue her? The old, old song hummed in his heart, every phrase of it distinct above the tumult of the storm. Could cold and hunger, swollen streams, ravenous wild beasts and scalp-hunting savages baffle him? No, there is no barrier that can hinder love. He said this over and over to himself after his rencounter with the four Indian scouts on the Wabash. He repeated it with every heart-beat until he fell in with some friendly red men, who took him to their camp, where to his great surprise he met M. Roussillon. It was his song when again he strode off toward the west on his lonely way.
We need not follow him step by step; the monotony of the woods and prairies, the cold rains, alternating with northerly winds and blinding snow, the constant watchfulness necessary to guard against a meeting with hostile savages, the tiresome tramping, wading and swimming, the hunger, the broken and wretched sleep in frozen and scant wraps,--why detail it all?
There was but one beautiful thing about it--the beauty of Alice as she seemed to walk beside him and hover near him in his dreams. He did not know that Long-Hair and his band were fast on his track; but the knowledge could not have urged him to greater haste. He strained every muscle to its utmost, kept every nerve to the highest tension. Yonder towards the west was help for Alice; that was all he cared for.
But if Long-Hair was pursuing him with relentless greed for the reward offered by Hamilton, there were friendly footsteps still nearer behind him; and one day at high noon, while he was bending over a little fire, broiling some liberal cuts of venison, a finger tapped him on the shoulder. He sprang up and grappled Oncle Jazon; at the same time, standing near by, he saw Simon Kenton, his old-time Kentucky friend. The pungled features of one and the fine, rugged face of the other swam as in a mist before Beverley's eyes. Kenton was laughing quietly, his strong, upright form shaking to the force of his pleasure. He was in the early prime of a vigorous life, not handsome, but strikingly attractive by reason of a certain glow in his face and a kindly flash in his deep-set eyes.
"Well, well, my boy!" he exclaimed, laying his left hand on Beverley's shoulder, while in the other he held a long, heavy rifle. "I'm glad to see ye, glad to see ye."
"Thought we was Injuns, eh?" said Oncle Jazon. "An' ef we had 'a' been we'd 'a' been shore o' your scalp!" The wizzened old creole cackled gleefully.
"And where are ye goin'?" demanded Kenton. "Ye're making what lacks a heap o' bein' a bee-line for some place or other."
Beverley was dazed and vacant-minded; things seemed wavering and dim. He pushed the two men from him and gazed at them without speaking. Their presence and voices did not convince him.
"Yer meat's a burnin'," said Oncle Jazon, stooping to turn it on the smouldering coals. "Ye must be hungry. Cookin' enough for a regiment."
Kenton shook Beverley with rough familiarity, as if to rouse his faculties.
"What's the matter? Fitz, my lad, don't ye know Si Kenton? It's not so long since we were like brothers, and now ye don't speak to me! Ye've not forgot me, Fitz!"
"Mebby he don't like ye as well as ye thought he did," drawled Oncle Jazon. "I HEV known o' fellers a bein' mistaken jes' thet way."
Beverley got his wits together as best he could, taking in the situation by such degrees as seemed at the time unduly slow, but which were really mere momentary falterings.
"Why, Kenton! Jazon!" he presently exclaimed, a cordial gladness blending with his surprise. "How did you get here? Where did you come from?"
He looked from one to the other back and forth with a wondering smile breaking over his bronzed and determined face.
"We've been hot on yer trail for thirty hours," said Kenton. "Roussillon put us on it back yonder. But what are ye up to? Where are ye goin'?"
"I'm going to Clark at Kaskaskia to bring him yonder." He waved his hand eastward. "I am going to take Vincennes and kill Hamilton."
"Well, ye're taking a mighty queer course, my boy, if ye ever expect to find Kaskaskia. Ye're already twenty miles too far south."
"Carryin' his gun on the same shoulder all the time," said Oncle Jazon, "has made 'im kind o' swing in a curve like. 'Tain't good luck no how to carry yer gun on yer lef' shoulder. When you do it meks yer take a longer step with yer right foot than ye do with yer lef' an' ye can't walk a straight line to save yer liver. Ventreblue! La venaison brule encore! Look at that dasted meat burnin' agin!"
He jumped back to the fire to turn the scorching cuts.
Beverley wrung Kenton's hand and looked into his eyes, as a man does when an old friend comes suddenly out of the past, so to say, and brings the freshness and comfort of a strong, true soul to brace him in his hour of greatest need.
"Of all men in the world, Simon Kenton, you were the least expected; but how glad I am! How thankful! Now I know I shall succeed. We are going to capture Vincennes, Kenton, are we not? We shall, sha'n't we, Jazon? Nothing, nothing can prevent us, can it?"
Kenton heartily returned the pressure of the young man's hand, while Oncle Jazon looked up quizzically and said: "We're a tol'ble 'spectable lot to prevent; but then we might git pervented. I've seed better men an' us purty consid'ble pervented lots o' times in my life."
In speaking the colloquial dialect of the American backwoodsmen, Oncle Jazon, despite years of practice among them, gave to it a creole lisp and some turns of pronunciation not to be indicated by any form of spelling. It added to his talk a peculiar soft drollery. When he spoke French it was mostly that of the COUREURS DE BOIS, a PATOIS which still lingers in out-of-the-way nooks of Louisiana.
"For my part," said Kenton, "I am with ye, old boy, in anything ye want to do. But now ye've got to tell me everything. I see that ye're keeping something back. What is it?" He glanced sidewise slyly at Oncle Jazon.
Beverley was frank to a fault; but somehow his heart tried to keep Alice all to itself. He hesitated; then-- "I broke my parole with Governor Hamilton," he said. "He forced me to do it. I feel altogether justified. I told him beforehand that I should certainly leave Vincennes and go get a force to capture and kill him; and I'll do it, Simon Kenton, I'll do it!"
"I see, I see," Kenton assented, "but what was the row about? What did he do to excite ye--to make ye feel justified in breakin' over yer parole in that high-handed way? Fitz, I know ye too well to be fooled by ye--you've got somethin' in mind that ye don't want to tell. Well, then don't tell it. Oncle Jazon and I will go it blind, won't we, Jazon?"
"Blind as two moles," said the old man; "but as for thet secret," he added, winking both eyes at once, "I don't know as it's so mighty hard to guess. It's always safe to 'magine a woman in the case. It's mostly women 'at sends men a trottin' off 'bout nothin', sort o' crazy like."
Beverley looked guilty and Oncle Jazon continued: "They's a poo'ty gal at Vincennes, an' I see the young man a steppin' into her house about fifteen times a day 'fore I lef' the place. Mebbe she's tuck up wi' one o' them English officers. Gals is slippery an' onsartin'."
"Jazon!" cried Beverley, "stop that instantly, or I'll wring your old neck." His anger was real and he meant what he said. He clenched his hands and glowered.
Oncle Jazon, who was still squatting by the little fire, tumbled over backwards, as if Beverley had kicked him; and there he lay on the ground with his slender legs quivering akimbo in the air, while he laughed in a strained treble that sounded like the whining of a screech-owl.
The old scamp did not know all the facts in Beverley's case, nor did he even suspect what had happened; but he was aware of the young man's tender feeling for Alice, and he did shrewdly conjecture that she was a factor in the problem.
The rude jest at her expense did not seem to his withered and toughened taste in the least out of the way. Indeed it was a delectable bit of humor from Oncle Jazon's point of view.
"Don't get mad at the old man," said Kenton, plucking Beverley aside. "He's yer friend from his heels to his old scalped crown. Let him have his fun." Then lowering his voice almost to a whisper he continued: "I was in Vincennes for two days and nights spyin' around. Madame Godere hid me in her house when there was need of it. I know how it is with ye; I got all the gossip about ye and the young lady, as well as all the information about Hamilton and his forces that Colonel Clark wants. I'm goin' to Kaskaskia; but I think it quite possible that Clark will be on his march to Vincennes before we get there; for Vigo has taken him full particulars as to the fort and its garrison, and I know that he's determined to capture the whole thing or die tryin'."
Beverley felt his heart swell and his blood leap strong in his veins at these words.
"I saw ye while I was in Vincennes," Kenton added, "but I never let ye see me. Ye were a prisoner, and I had no business with ye while your parole held. I felt that it was best not to tempt ye to give me aid, or to let ye have knowledge of me while I was a spy. I left two days before ye did, and should have been at Kaskaskia by this time if I hadn't run across Jazon, who detained me. He wanted to go with me, and I waited for him to repair the stock of his old gun. He tinkered at it 'tween meals and showers for half a week at the Indian village back yonder before he got it just to suit him. But I tell ye he's wo'th waiting for any length of time, and I was glad to let him have his way."
Kenton, who was still a young man in his early thirties, respected Beverley's reticence on the subject uppermost in his mind. Madame Godere had told the whole story with flamboyant embellishments; Kenton tiad seen Alice, and, inspired with the gossip and a surreptitious glimpse of her beauty, he felt perfectly familiar with Beverley's condition. He was himself a victim of the tender passion to the extent of being an exile from his Virginia home, which he had left on account of dangerously wounding a rival. But he was well touched with the backwoodsman's taste for joke and banter. He and Oncle Jazon, therefore, knowing the main feature of Beverley's predicament, enjoyed making the most of their opportunity in their rude but perfectly generous and kindly way.
By indirection and impersonal details, as regarded his feelings toward Alice, Beverley in due time made his friends understand that his whole ambition was centered in rescuing her. Nor did the motive fail to enlist their sympathy to the utmost. If all the world loves a lover, all men having the best virile instinct will fight for a lover's cause. Both Kenton and Oncle Jazon were enthusiastic; they wanted nothing better than an opportunity to aid in rescuing any girl who had shown so much patriotism and pluck. But Oncle Jazon was fond of Alice, and Beverley's story affected him peculiarly on her account.
"They's one question I'm a goin' to put to ye, young man," he said, after he had heard everything and they had talked it all over, "an' I want ye to answer it straight as a bullet f'om yer gun."
"Of course, Jazon, go ahead," said Beverley. "I shall be glad to answer." But his mind was far away with the gold-haired maiden in Hamilton's prison. He scarcely knew what he was saying.
"Air ye expectin' to marry Alice Roussillon?"
The three men were at the moment eating the well broiled venison. Oncle Jazon's puckered lips and chin were dripping with the fragrant grease and juice, which also flowed down his sinewy, claw-like fingers. Overhead in the bare tops of the scrub oaks that covered the prairie oasis, the February wind sang a shrill and doleful song.
Beverley started as if a blow had been aimed at him. Oncle Jazon's question, indeed, was a blow as unexpected as it was direct and powerful.
"I know it's poo'ty p'inted," the old man added after a short pause, "an' ye may think 'at I ain't got no business askin' it; but I have. That leetle gal's a pet o' mine, an' I'm a lookin' after her, an' expectin' to see 'at she's not bothered by nobody who's not goin' to do right by her. Marryin' is a mighty good thing, but--" "What do ye know about matrimony, ye old raw-headed bachelor?" demanded Kenton, who felt impelled to relieve Beverley of the embarrassment of an answer. "Ye wouldn't know a wife from a sack o' meal!"
"Now don't git too peart an' fast, Si Kenton," cried Oncle Jazon, glaring truculently at his friend, but at the same time showing a dry smile that seemed to be hopelessly entangled in criss-cross wrinkles. "Who told ye I was a bach'lor? Not by a big jump. I've been married mighty nigh on to twenty times in my day. Mos'ly Injuns, o' course; but a squaw's a wife w'en ye marries her, an' I know how it hurts a gal to be dis'p'inted in sich a matter. That's w'y I put the question I did. I'm not goin' to let no man give sorry to that little Roussillon gal; an' so ye've got my say. Ye seed her raise thet flag on the fort, Lieutenant Beverley, an' ye seed her take it down an' git away wi' it. You know 'at she deserves nothin' but the best; an' by the Holy Virgin, she's got to have it, or I'm a goin' to know several reasons why. Thet's what made me put the question straight to ye, young man, an' I expects a straight answer."
Beverley's face paled; but not with anger. He grasped one of Oncle Jazon's greasy hands and gave it such a squeeze that the old fellow grimaced painfully.
"Thank you, Oncle Jazon, thank you!" he said, with a peculiar husky burr in his voice. "Alice will never suffer if I can help it. Let the subject drop now, my friend, until we have saved her from the hands of Hamilton." In the power of his emotion he continued to grip the old man's hand with increasing severity of pressure.
"Ventrebleu! let go! Needn't smash a feller's fingers 'bout it!" screeched Oncle Jazon. "I can't shoot wo'th a cent, nohow, an' ef ye cripple up my trigger-finger--" Kenton had been peeping under the low-hanging scrub-oak boughs while Oncle Jazon was speaking these last words; and now he suddenly interrupted: "The devil! look yonder!" he growled out in startling tone. "Injuns!"
It was a sharp snap of the conversation's thread, and at the same time our three friends realized that they had been careless in not keeping a better look-out. They let fall the meat they had not yet finished eating and seized their guns.
Five or six dark forms were moving toward them across a little point of the prairie that cut into the wood a quarter of a mile distant.
"Yander's more of 'em," said Oncle Jazon, as if not in the least concerned, wagging his head in an opposite direction, from which another squad was approaching.
That he duly appreciated the situation appeared only in the celerity with which he acted.
Kenton at once assumed command, and his companions felt his perfect fitness. There was no doubt from the first as to what the Indians meant; but even if there had been it would have soon vanished; for in less than three minutes twenty-one savages were swiftly and silently forming a circle inclosing the spot where the three white men, who had covered themselves as best they could with trees, waited in grim steadiness for the worst.
Quite beyond gunshot range, but near enough for Oncle Jazon to recognize Long-Hair as their leader, the Indians halted and began making signs to one another all round the line. Evidently they dreaded to test the marksmanship of such riflemen as they knew most border men to be. Indeed, Long-Hair had personal knowledge of what might certainly be expected from both Kenton and Oncle Jazon; they were terrible when out for fight; the red warriors from Georgia to the great lakes had heard of them; their names smacked of tragedy. Nor was Beverley without fame among Long-Hair's followers, who had listened to the story of his fighting qualities, brought to Vincennes by the two survivors of the scouting party so cleverly defeated by him.
"The liver-colored cowards," said Kenton, "are afeared of us in a shootin'-match; they know that a lot of 'em would have to die if they should undertake an open fight with us. It's some sort of a sneakin' game they are studyin' about just now."
"I'm a gittin' mos' too ole to shoot wo'th a cent," said Oncle Jazon, "but I'd give half o' my scalp ef thet Long-Hair would come clost enough fo' me to git a bead onto his lef' eye. It's tol'ble plain 'at we're gone goslins this time, I'm thinkin'; still it'd be mighty satisfyin' if I could plug out a lef' eye or two 'fore I go."
Beverley was silent; the words of his companions were heard by him, but not noticed. Nothing interested him save the thought of escaping and making his way to Clark. To fail meant infinitely more than death, of which he had as small fear as most brave men, and to succeed meant everything that life could offer. So, in the unlimited selfishness of love, he did not take his companions into account.
The three stood in a close-set clump of four or five scrub oaks at the highest point of a thinly wooded knoll that sloped down in all directions to the prairie. Their view was wide, but in places obstructed by the trees.
"Men," said Kenton, after a thoughtful and watchful silence, "the thing looks kind o' squally for us. I don't see much of a chance to get out of this alive; but we've got to try."
He showed by the density of his voice and a certain gray film in his face that he felt the awful gravity of the situation; but he was calm and not a muscle quivered.
"They's jes' two chances for us," said Oncle Jazon, "an' them's as slim as a broom straw. We've got to stan' here an' fight it out, or wait till night an' sneak through atween 'em an' run for it."
"I don't see any hope o' sneakin' through the line," observed Kenton. "It's not goin' to be dark tonight."
"Wa-a-l," Oncle Jazon drawled nonchalantly while he took in a quid of tobacco, "I've been into tighter squeezes 'an this, many a time, an' I got out, too."
"Likely enough," said Kenton, still reflecting while his eyes roamed around the circle of savages.
"I fit the skunks in Ferginny 'fore you's thought of, Si Kenton, an' down in Car'lina in them hills. If ye think I'm a goin' to be scalped where they ain't no scalp, 'ithout tryin' a few dodges, yer a dad dasteder fool an' I used to think ye was, an' that's makin' a big compliment to ye."
"Well, we don't have to argy this question, Oncle Jazon; they're a gittin' ready to run in upon us, and we've got to fight. I say, Beverley, are ye ready for fast shootin'? Have ye got a plenty of bullets?"
"Yes, Roussillon gave me a hundred. Do you think--" He was interrupted by a yell that leaped from savage mouth to mouth all round the circle, and then the charge began.
"Steady, now," growled Kenton, "let's not be in a hurry. Wait till they come nigh enough to hit 'em before we shoot."
The time was short; for the Indians came on at almost race-horse speed.
Oncle Jazon fired first, the long, keen crack of his small-bore rifle splitting the air with a suggestion of vicious energy, and a lithe young warrior, who was outstripping all his fellows, leaped high and fell paralyzed.
"Can't shoot wo'th a cent," muttered the old man, deftly beginning to reload his gun the while; "but I jes' happened to hit that buck. He'll never git my scalp, thet's sartin an' sure."
Beverley and Kenton each likewise dropped an Indian; but the shots did not even check the rush. Long-Hair had planned to capture his prey, not kill it. Every savage had his orders to take the white men alive; Hamilton's larger reward depended on this.
Right on they came, as fast as their nimble legs could carry them, yelling like demons; and they reached the grove before the three white men could reload their guns. Then every warrior took cover behind a tree and began scrambling forward from bole to bole, thus approaching rapidly without much exposure.
"Our 'taters is roasted brown," muttered Oncle Jazon. He crossed himself. Possibly he prayed; but he was priming his old gun the next instant.
Kenton fired again, making a hurried and ineffectual attempt to stop the nearest warrior, who saved himself by quickly skipping behind a tree. Beverley's gun snapped, the flint failing to make fire; but Oncle Jazon bored a little hole through the head of the Indian nearest him; and then the final rush was made from every direction.
A struggle ensued, which for desperate energy has probably never been surpassed. Like three lions at bay, the white men met the shock, and lion-like they fought in the midst of seventeen stalwart and determined savages.
"Don't kill them, take them alive; throw them down and hold them!" was Long-Hair's order loudly shouted in the tongue of his tribe.
Both Kenton and Jazon understood every word and knew the significance of such a command from the leader. It naturally came into Kenton's mind that Hamilton had been informed of his visit to Vincennes and had offered a reward for his capture. This being true, death as a spy would be the certain result if he were taken back. He might as well die now. As for Beverley, he thought only of Alice, yonder as he had left her, a prisoner in Hamilton's hands, Oncle Jazon, if he thought at all, probably considered nothing but present escape, though he prayed audibly to the Blessed Virgin, even while he lay helpless upon the ground, pinned down by the weight of an enormous Indian. He could not move any part of himself, save his lips, and these mechanically put forth the wheezing supplication.
Beverley and Kenton, being young and powerful, were not so easily mastered. For a while, indeed, they appeared to be more than holding their own. They time and time again scattered the entire crowd by the violence of their muscular efforts; and after it had finally closed in upon them in a solid body they swayed and swung it back and forth and round and round until the writhing, savage mass looked as if caught in the vortex of a whirlwind. But such tremendous exertion could not last long. Eight to one made too great a difference between the contending parties, and the only possible conclusion of the struggle soon came. Seized upon by desperate, clinging, wolf-like assailants, the white men felt their arms, legs and bodies weighted down and their strength fast going.
Kenton fell next after Oncle Jazon, and was soon tightly bound with rawhide thongs. He lay on his back panting and utterly exhausted, while Beverley still kept up the unequal fight.
Long-Hair sprang in at the last moment to make doubly certain the securing of his most important captive. He flung his long and powerful arms around Beverley from behind and made a great effort to throw him upon the ground. The young man, feeling this fresh and vigorous clasp, turned himself about to put forth one more mighty spurt of power. He lifted the stalwart Indian bodily and dashed him headlong against the buttressed root of a tree half a rod distant, breaking the smaller bone of his left fore-arm and well-nigh knocking him senseless.
It was a fine exhibition of manly strength; but there could be nothing gained by it. A blow on the back of his head the next instant stretched Beverley face downward and unconscious on the ground. The savages turned him over and looked satisfied when they found that he was not dead. They bound him with even greater care than they had shown in securing the others, while Long-Hair stood by stolidly looking on, meantime supporting his broken fore-arm in his hand.
"Ugh! dog!" he grunted, and gave Beverley a kick in the side. Then turning a fiendish stare upon Oncle Jazon he proceeded to deliver against his old, dry ribs three or four like contributions with resounding effect. "Polecat! Little old greasy woman!" he snarled, "make good fire for warrior to dance by!" Kenton also received his full share of the kicks and verbal abuse, after which Long-Hair gave orders for fires to be built. Then he looked to his hurt arm and had the bone set and bandaged, never so much as wincing the while.
It was soon apparent that the Indians purposed to celebrate their successful enterprise with a feast. They cooked a large amount of buffalo steak; then, each with his hands full of the savory meat, they began to dance around the fires, droning meantime an atrociously repellant chant.
"They're a 'spectin' to hev a leetle bit o' fun outen us," muttered Oncle Jazon to Beverley, who lay near him. "I onderstan' what they're up to, dad dast 'em! More'n forty years ago, in Ca'lina, they put me an' Jim Hipes through the ga'ntlet, an' arter thet, in Kaintuck, me an' Si Kenton tuck the run. Hi, there, Si! where air ye?"
"Shut yer fool mouth," Kenton growled under his breath. "Ye'll have that Injun a kickin' our lights out of us again."
Oncle Jazon winked at the gray sky and puckered his mouth so that it looked like a nutgall on an old, dry leaf.
"What's the diff'ence?" he demanded. "I'd jest as soon be kicked now as arter while; it's got to come anyhow."
Kenton made no response. The thongs were torturing his arms and legs. Beverley was silent, but consciousness had returned, and with it a sense of despair. All three of the prisoners lay face upward quite unable to move, knowing full well that a terrible ordeal awaited them. Oncle Jazon's grim humor could not be quenched, even by the galling agony of the thongs that buried themselves in the flesh, and the anticipation of torture beside which death would seem a luxury.
"Yap! Long-Hair, how's yer arm?" he called jeeringly. "Feels pooty good, hay?"
Long-Hair, who was not joining in the dance and song, turned when he heard these taunting words, and mistaking whence they came, went to Beverley's side and kicked him again and again.
Oncle Jazon heard the loud blows, and considered the incident a remarkably good joke.
"He, he, he!" he snickered, as soon as Long-Hair walked away again. "I does the talkin' an' somebody else gits the thumpin'! He, he, he! I always was devilish lucky. Them kicks was good solid jolts, wasn't they, Lieutenant? Sounded like they was. He, he, he!"
Beverley gave no heed to Oncle Jazon's exasperating pleasantry; but Kenton, sorely chafing under the pressure of his bonds, could not refrain from making retort in kind.
"I'd give ye one poundin' that ye'd remember, Emile Jazon, if I could get to ye, ye old twisted-face, peeled-headed, crooked-mouthed, aggravatin' scamp!" he exclaimed, not thinking how high his naturally strong voice was lifted. "I can stand any fool but a damn fool!"
Long-Hair heard the concluding epithet and understood its meaning. Moreover, he thought himself the target at which it was so energetically launched. Wherefore he promptly turned back and gave Kenton a kicking that made his body resound not unlike a drum.
And here it was that Oncle Jazon overreached himself. He was so delighted at Kenton's luck that he broke forth giggling and thereby drew against his own ribs a considerable improvement of Long-Hair's pedal applications.
"Ventrebleu!" whined the old man, when the Indian had gone away again. "Holy Mary! Jee-ru-sa-lem! They's nary bone o' me left 'at's not splintered as fine as toothpickers! S'pose yer satisfied now, ain't ye, Si Kenton? Ef ye ain't I'm shore to satisfy ye the fust time I git a chance at ye, ye blab-mouthed eejit!"
Before this conversation was ended a rain began to fall, and it rapidly thickened from a desultory shower to a roaring downpour that effectually quenched not only the fires around which the savages were dancing, but the enthusiasm of the dancers as well. During the rest of the afternoon and all night long the fall was incessant, accompanied by a cold, panting, wailing southwest wind.
Beverley lay on the ground, face upward, the rawhide strings torturing his limbs, the chill of cold water searching his bones. He could see nothing but the dim, strange canopy of flying rain, against which the bare boughs of the scrub oaks were vaguely outlined; he could hear nothing but the cry of the wind and the swash of the water which fell upon him and ran under him, bubbling and gurgling as if fiendishly exultant.
The night dragged on through its terrible length, dealing out its indescribable horrors, and at last morning arrived, with a stingy and uncertain gift of light slowly increasing until the dripping trees appeared forlornly gray and brown against clouds now breaking into masses that gave but little rain.
Beverley lived through the awful trial and even had the hardihood to brighten inwardly with the first flash of sunlight that shot through a cloud-crack on the eastern horizon. He thought of Alice, as he had done all night; but now the thought partook somehow of the glow yonder above old Vincennes, although he could only see its reflection.
There was great stir among the Indians. Long-Hair stalked about scrutinizing the ground. Beverley saw him come near time and again with a hideous, inquiring scowl on his face. Grunts and laconic exclamations passed from mouth to mouth, and presently the import of it all could not be mistaken. Kenton and Jazon were gone--had escaped during the night--and the rain had completely obliterated their tracks.
The Indians were furious. Long-Hair sent out picked parties of his best scouts with orders to scour the country in all directions, keeping with himself a few of the older warriors. Beverley was fed what he would eat of venison, and Long-Hair made him understand that he would have to suffer some terrible punishment on account of the action of his companions.
Late in the day the scouts straggled back with the report that no track or sign of the fugitives had been discovered, and immediately a consultation was held. Most of the warriors, including all of the young bucks, demanded a torture entertainment as compensation for their exertions and the unexpected loss of their own prisoners; for it had been agreed that Beverley belonged exclusively to Long-Hair, who objected to anything which might deprive him of the great reward offered by Hamilton for the prisoner if brought to him alive.
In the end it was agreed that Beverley should be made to run the gauntlet, provided that no deadly weapons were used upon him during the ordeal.
|
{
"id": "4097"
}
|
14
|
A PRISONER OF LOVE
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Alice put on her warmest clothes and followed Captain Farnsworth to the fort, realizing that no pleasant experience awaited her. The wind and rain still prevailed when they were ready to set forth, and, although it was not extremely cold, a searching chill went with every throb that marked the storm's waves. No lights shone in the village houses. Overhead a gray gloom covered stars and sky, making the darkness in the watery streets seem densely black. Farnsworth offered Alice his arm, but she did not accept it.
"I know the way better than you do," she said. "Come on, and don't be afraid that I am going to run. I shall not play any trick on you."
"Very well, Mademoiselle, as you like. I trust you."
He followed her from the house. He was so filled with the bitterness of what he was doing that he carried her sword in his hand all the way to the fort, quite unaware that its point often touched her dress so that she plainly felt it. Indeed, she thought he was using that ruffianly and dangerous means of keeping pace with her. He had sent the patrol on its rounds, taking upon himself the responsibility of delivering her to Hamilton. She almost ran, urged by the strange excitement that burned in her heart, and he followed somewhat awkwardly, stumbling over the unfamiliar way in the rain and darkness.
At every step he was wishing that she would escape from him. Coarse as his nature was and distorted by hardening experiences, it was rooted in good English honesty and imbued with a chivalric spirit. When, as happened too often, he fell under the influence of liquor, the bad in him promptly came uppermost; but at all other times his better traits made him a good fellow to meet, genial, polite, generous, and inclined to recognize the finer sentiments of manliness. To march into his commander's presence with Alice as his prisoner lacked everything of agreeing with his taste; yet he had not been willing to give her over into the hands of the patrol. If his regard for military obligation had not been exceptionally strong, even for an English soldier, he would have given way to the temptation of taking her to some place of hiding and safety, instead of brutally subjecting her to Hamilton's harsh judgment. He anticipated a trying experience for her on account of this new transgression.
They hastened along until a lantern in the fort shot a hazy gleam upon them.
"Stop a moment, Mademoiselle," Farnsworth called. "I say, Miss Roussillon, stop a moment, please."
Alice halted and turned facing him so short and so suddenly that the rapier in his hand pricked through her wraps and slightly scratched her arm.
"What do you mean, sir?" she demanded, thinking that he had thrust purposely. "Do I deserve this brutality?"
"You mistake me, Miss Roussillon. I cannot be brutal to you now. Do not fear me; I only had a word to say."
"Oh, you deem it very polite and gentle to jab me with your sword, do you? If I had one in my hand you would not dare try such a thing, and you know it very well."
He was amazed, not knowing that the sword-point had touched her. He could not see her face, but there was a flash in her voice that startled him with its indignant contempt and resentment.
"What are you saying, Miss Roussillon? I don't understand you. When did I ever--when did I jab you with my sword? I never thought of such a thing."
"This moment, sir, you did, and you know you did. My arm is bleeding now."
She spoke rapidly in French; but he caught her meaning, and for the first became aware of the rapier in his hand. Even then its point was toward her and very near her breast. He lowered it instantly while the truth rushed into his mind.
"Forgive me," he murmured, his words barely audible in the tumult of wind and rain, but charged with the intensest feeling.
"Forgive me; I did not know--it was an accident--I could not do such a thing purposely. Believe me, believe me, Miss Roussillon. I did not mean it."
She stood facing him, trying to look right into his eyes. A quality in his voice had checked her hot anger. She could only see his dim outlines in the dull gleam from the fort's lantern. He seemed to be forlornly wretched.
"I should like to believe you," she presently said, "but I cannot. You English are all, all despicable, mean, vile!"
She was remembering the young officer who had assaulted her with his sword in the house a while ago. And (what a strange thing the human brain is!) she at the same time comforted herself with the further thought that Beverley would never, never, be guilty of rudeness to a woman.
"Some time you shall not say that," Farnsworth responded. "I asked you to stop a moment that I might beg you to believe how wretchedly sorry I am for what I am doing. But you cannot understand me now. Are you really hurt, Miss Roussillon? I assure you that it was purely accidental."
"My hurt is nothing," she said.
"I am very glad."
"Well, then, shall we go on to the fort?"
"You may go where you please, Mademoiselle."
She turned her back upon him and without an answering word walked straight to the lantern that hung by the gate of the stockade, where a sentinel tramped to and fro. A few moments later Captain Farnsworth presented her to Hamilton, who had been called from his bed when the news of the trouble at Roussillon place reached the fort.
"So you've been raising hell again, have you, Miss?" he growled, with an ugly frown darkening his face.
"I beg your pardon," said Farnsworth, "Miss Roussillon was not to blame for--" "In your eyes she'd not be to blame, sir, if she burned up the fort and all of us in it," Hamilton gruffly interrupted. "Miss, what have you been doing? What are you here for? Captain Farnsworth, you will please state the particulars of the trouble that I have just heard about. And I may as well notify you that I wish to hear no special lover's pleading in this girl's behalf."
Farnsworth's face whitened with anger; he bit his lip and a shiver ran through his frame; but he had to conquer the passion. In a few words, blunt and direct as musket-balls, he told all the circumstances of what had taken place, making no concealments to favor Alice, but boldly blaming the officer of the patrol, Lieutenant Barlow, for losing his head and attacking a young girl in her own home.
"I will hear from Barlow," said Hamilton, after listening attentively to the story. "But take this girl and confine her. Show her no favors. I hold you responsible for her until to-morrow morning. You can retire."
There was no room for discussion. Farnsworth saluted and turned to Alice.
"Come with me," he gently said.
Hamilton looked after them as they went out of his room, a curious smile playing around his firmly set lips.
"She's the most beautiful vixen that I ever saw," he thought. "She doesn't look to be a French girl, either--decidedly English." He shrugged his shoulders, then laughed dryly. "Farnsworth's as crazy as can be, the beggar; in love with her so deep that he can't see out. By Jove, she IS a beauty! Never saw such eyes. And plucky to beat the devil. I'll bet my head Barlow'll be daft about her next!"
Still, notwithstanding the lightness of his inward comments, Hamilton regarded the incident as rather serious. He knew that the French inhabitants were secretly his bitter enemies, yet probably willing, if he would humor their peculiar social, domestic and commercial prejudices, to refrain from active hostilities, and even to aid him in furnishing his garrison with a large amount of needed supplies. The danger just now was twofold; his Indian allies were deserting him, and a flotilla loaded with provisions and ammunition from Detroit had failed to arrive. He might, if the French rose against him and were joined by the Indians, have great difficulty defending the fort. It was clear that M. Roussillon had more influence with both creoles and savages than any other person save Father Beret. Urgent policy dictated that these two men should somehow be won over. But to do this it would be necessary to treat Alice in such a way that her arrest would aid, instead of operating against the desired result,--a thing not easy to manage.
Hamilton was not a man of fine scruples, but he may have been, probably was, better than our American historians have made him appear. His besetting weakness, which, as a matter of course, he regarded as the highest flower of efficiency, was an uncontrollable temper, a lack of fine human sympathy and an inability to forgive. In his calmest moments, when prudence appealed to him, he would resolve to use diplomatic means; but no sooner was his opinion questioned or his purpose opposed than anger and the thirst for revenge overpowered every gentler consideration. He returned to his bed that night fully resolved upon a pleasant and successful interview with Alice next morning.
Captain Farnsworth took his fair prisoner straight-way from Hamilton's presence to a small room connected with a considerable structure in a distant angle of the stockade. Neither he nor Alice spoke on the way. With a huge wooden key he unlocked the door and stepped aside for her to enter. A dim lamp was burning within, its yellowish light flickering over the scant furniture, which consisted of a comfortable bed, a table with some books on it, three chairs, a small looking-glass on the wall, a guitar and some articles of men's clothing hanging here and there. A heap of dull embers smouldered in the fireplace. Alice did not falter at the threshold, but promptly entered her prison.
"I hope you can be comfortable," said Farnsworth in a low tone. "It's the best I can give you."
"Thank you," was the answer spoken quite as if he had handed her a glass of water or picked up her handkerchief.
He held the door a moment, while she stopped, with her back toward him, in the middle of the room; then she heard him close and lock it. The air was almost too warm after her exposure to the biting wind and cold dashes of rain. She cast off her outer wraps and stood by the fireplace. At a glance she comprehended that the place was not the one she had formerly occupied as a prisoner, and that it belonged to a man. A long rifle stood in a corner, a bullet-pouch and powder-horn hanging on a projecting hickory ramrod; a heavy fur top-coat lay across one of the chairs.
Alice felt her situation bitterly enough; but she was not of the stuff that turns to water at the touch of misfortune. Pioneer women took hardships as a matter of course, and met calamity with admirable fortitude. There was no wringing of hands, no frantic wailing, no hollow, despairing groan. While life lasted hope flourished, even in most tragic surroundings; and not unfrequently succor came, at the last verge of destruction, as the fitting reward of unconquerable courage. A girl like Alice must be accepted in the spirit of her time and surroundings. She was born amid experiences scarcely credible now, and bred in an area and an atmosphere of incomparable dangers. Naturally she accepted conditions of terrible import with a sang froid scarcely possible to a girl of our day. She did not cry, she did not sink down helpless when she found herself once more imprisoned with some uncertain trial before her; but simply knelt and repeated the Lord's prayer, then went to bed and slept; even dreamed the dream of a maid's first love.
Meantime Farnsworth, who had given Alice his own apartment, took what rest he could on the cold ground under a leaky shed hard by. His wound, not yet altogether healed, was not benefited by the exposure.
In due time next morning Hamilton ordered Alice brought to his office, and when she appeared he was smiling with as near an approach to affability as his disposition would permit. He rose and bowed like a courtier.
"I hope you rested well, Mademoiselle," he said in his best French. He imagined that the use of her language would be agreeable to begin with.
The moment that Alice saw him wearing that shallow veneering of pleasantness on his never prepossessing visage, she felt a mood of perversity come over her. She, too, smiled, and he mistook her expression for one of reciprocal amenity. She noticed that her sword was on his table.
"I am sorry, Monsieur, that I cannot say as much to you," she glibly responded. "If you lay upon a bed of needles the whole night through, your rest was better than you deserved. My own sleep was quite refreshing, thank you."
Instantly Hamilton's choler rose. He tried to suppress it at first; but when he saw Alice actually laughing, and Farnsworth (who had brought her in) biting his lip furiously to keep from adding an uproarious guffaw, he lost all hold of himself. He unconsciously picked up the rapier and shook it till its blade swished.
"I might have known better than to expect decency from a wench of your character," he said. "I hoped to do you a favor; but I see that you are not capable of accepting kindness politely."
"I am sure, Monsieur, that I have but spoken the truth plainly to you. You would not have me do otherwise, I hope."
Her voice, absolutely witching in its softness, freshness and suavity, helped the assault of her eyes, while her dimples twinkled and her hair shone. Hamilton felt his heart move strangely; but he could not forbear saying in English: "If you are so devilish truthful, Miss, you will probably tell me where the flag is that you stole and hid."
It was always the missing banner that came to mind when he saw her.
"Indeed I will do nothing of the sort," she promptly replied. "When you see that flag again you will be a prisoner and I will wave it high over your head."
She lifted a hand as she spoke and made the motion of shaking a banner above him. It was exasperation sweetened almost to delight that took hold of the sturdy Briton. He liked pluck, especially in a woman; all the more if she was beautiful. Yet the very fact that he felt her charm falling upon him set him hard against her, not as Hamilton the man, but as Hamilton the commander at Vincennes.
"You think to fling yourself upon me as you have upon Captain Farnsworth," he said, with an insulting leer and in a tone of prurient innuendo. "I am not susceptible, my dear." This more for Farnsworth's benefit than to insult her, albeit he was not in a mood to care.
"You are a coward and a liar!" she exclaimed, her face flushing with hot shame. "You stand here," she quickly added, turning fiercely upon Farnsworth, "and quietly listen to such words! You, too, are a coward if you do not make him retract! Oh, you English are low brutes!"
Hamilton laughed; but Farnsworth looked dark and troubled, his glance going back and forth from Alice to his commander, as if another word would cause him to do something terrible.
"I rather think I've heard all that I care to hear from you, Miss," Hamilton presently said. "Captain Farnsworth, you will see that the prisoner is confined in the proper place, which, I suggest to you, is not your sleeping quarters, sir."
"Colonel Hamilton," said Farnsworth in a husky voice, "I slept on the ground under a shed last night in order that Miss Roussillon might be somewhat comfortable."
"Humph! Well, see that you do not do it again. This girl is guilty of harboring a spy and resisting a lawful attempt of my guards to capture him. Confine her in the place prepared for prisoners and see that she stays there until I am ready to fix her punishment."
"There is no place fit for a young girl to stay in," Farnsworth ventured. "She can have no comfort or--" "Take her along, sir; any place is good enough for her so long as she behaves like a--" "Very well," Farnsworth bluntly interrupted, thus saving Alice the stroke of a vile comparison. "Come with me, please, Miss Roussillon."
He pulled her toward the door, then dropped the arm he had grasped and murmured an apology.
She followed him out, holding her head high. No one looking on would have suspected that a sinking sensation in her heart made it difficult for her to walk, or that her eyes, shining like stars, were so inwardly clouded with distress that she saw her way but dimly.
It was a relief to Hamilton when Helm a few minutes later entered the room with something breezy to say.
"What's up now, if I may ask?" the jolly American demanded. "What's this I hear about trouble with the French women? Have they begun a revolution?"
"That elephant, Gaspard Roussillon, came back into town last night," said Hamilton sulkily.
"Well, he went out again, didn't he?"
"Yes, but--" "Stepped on somebody's toe first, eh?"
"The guard tried to capture him, and that girl of his wounded Lieutenant Barlow in the neck with a sword. Roussillon fought like a tiger and the men swear that the devil himself appeared on the scene to help the Frenchman out."
"Moral: Be generous in your dealings with Frenchmen and Frenchwomen and so get the devil on your side."
"I've got the girl a prisoner, and I swear to you that I'll have her shot this time if--" "Why not shoot her yourself? You oughtn't to shirk a dirty job like that and force it upon your men."
Hamilton laughed and elevated his shoulders as if to shake off an annoying load. Just then a young officer with a white bandage around his neck entered and saluted. He was a small, soft-haired, blue-eyed man of reckless bearing, with marks of dissipation sharply cut into his face. He saluted, smiling self-consciously.
"Well, Barlow," said Hamilton, "the kitten scratched you, did she?"
"Yes, slightly, and I don't think I've been treated fairly in the matter, sir."
"How so?"
"I stood the brunt and now Captain Farnsworth gets the prize." He twisted his mouth in mock expression of maudlin disappointment. "I'm always cheated out of the sweets. I never get anything for gallant conduct on the field."
"Poor boy! It is a shame. But I say, Lieutenant, has Roussillon really escaped, or is he hidden somewhere in town? Have you been careful?"
"Oh, it's the Indians. They all swear by these Frenchmen. You can't get any help from them against a fellow like Roussillon. In fact they aid him; he's among them now."
"Moral again," Helm interposed; "keep on the good side of the French!"
"That's sensible talk, sir," assented Barlow.
"Bah!" exclaimed Hamilton. "You might as well talk of keeping on the good side of the American traitors--a bloody murrain seize the whole race!"
"That's what I say," chimed in the Lieutenant, with a sly look at Helm.
"They have been telling me a cock-and-bull story concerning the affair at the Roussillon cabin," Hamilton said, changing his manner. "What is this about a disguised and wonderful man who rushed in and upset the whole of you. I want no romancing; give me the facts."
Barlow's dissolute countenance became troubled.
"The facts," he said, speaking with serious deliberation, "are not clear. It was like a clap of thunder, the way that man performed. As you say, he did fling the whole squad all of a heap, and it was done that quickly," he snapped his thumb and finger demonstratively with a sharp report; "nobody could understand it."
Hamilton looked at his subaltern with a smile of unlimited contempt and said: "A pretty officer of His Majesty's army, you are, Lieutenant Barlow! First a slip of a girl shows herself your superior with the sword and wounds you, then a single man wipes up the floor of a house with you and your guard, depriving you at the same time of both vision and memory, so that you cannot even describe your assailant!"
"He was dressed like a priest," muttered Barlow, evidently frightened at his commander's scathing comment. "That was all there was to see."
"A priest! Some of the men say the devil. I wonder--" Hamilton hesitated and looked at the floor.
"This Father Beret, he is too old for such a thing, isn't he?"
"I have thought of him--it was like him--but he is, as you say, very old to be so tremendously strong and active. Why, I tell you that men went from his hands against the walls and floor as if shot out of a mortar. It was the strangest and most astounding thing I ever heard of."
A little later Barlow seized a favorable opportunity and withdrew. The conversation was not to his liking.
Hamilton sent for Father Beret and had a long talk with him, but the old man looked so childishly inoffensive in spirit and so collapsed physically that it seemed worse than foolishness to accuse him of the exploit over which the entire garrison was wondering. Farnsworth sat by during the interview. He looked the good priest curiously and critically over from head to foot, remembering, but not mentioning, the most unclerical punch in the side received from that energetic right arm now lying so flabbily across the old man's lap.
When the talk ended and Father Beret humbly took his leave, Hamilton turned to Farnsworth and said: "What do you think of this affair? I have cross-questioned all the men who took part in it, and every one of them says simply priest or devil. I think old Beret is both; but plainly he couldn't hurt a chicken, you can see that at a glance."
Farnsworth smiled, rubbing his side reminiscently; but he shook his head.
"I'm sure it's puzzling, indeed."
Hamilton sat in thoughtful silence for a while, then abruptly changed the subject.
"I think, Captain, that you had better send out Lieutenant Barlow and some of the best woodsmen to kill some game. We need fresh venison, and, by George! I'm not going to depend upon these French traitors any longer. I have set my foot down; they've got to do better or take the consequences." He paused for a breath, then added: "That girl has done too much to escape severest punishment. The garrison will be demoralized if this thing goes on without an example of authority rigidly enforced. I am resolved that there shall be a startling and effective public display of my power to punish. She shot you; you seem to be glad of it, but it was a grave offence. She has stabbed Barlow; that is another serious crime; but worst of all she aided a spy and resisted arrest. She must be punished."
Farnsworth knew Hamilton's nature, and he now saw that Alice was in dreadful danger of death or something even worse. Whenever his chief talked of discipline and the need of maintaining his authority, there was little hope of softening his decisions. Moreover, the provocation to apply extreme measures really seemed sufficient, regarded from a military point of view, and Captain Farnsworth was himself, under ordinary circumstances, a disciplinarian of the strictest class. The fascination, however, by which Alice held him overbore every other influence, and his devotion to her loosened every other tie and obligation to a most dangerous extent. No sooner had he left headquarters and given Barlow his instructions touching the hunting expedition, than his mind began to wander amid visions and schemes by no means consistent with his military obligations. In order to reflect undisturbed he went forth into the dreary, lane-like streets of Vincennes and walked aimlessly here and there until he met Father Beret.
Farnsworth saluted the old man, and was passing him by, when seeing a sword in his hand, half hidden in the folds of his worn and faded cassock, he turned and addressed him.
"Why are you armed this morning, Father?" he demanded very pleasantly. "Who is to suffer now?"
"I am not on the war-path, my son," replied the priest. "It is but a rapier that I am going to clean of rust spots that are gathering on its blade."
"Is it yours, Father? Let me see it." He held out his hand.
"No, not mine."
Father Beret seemed not to notice Farnsworth's desire to handle the weapon, and the young man, instead of repeating his words, reached farther, nearly grasping the scabbard.
"I cannot let you take it, my son," said Father Beret "You have its mate, that should satisfy you."
"No, Colonel Hamilton took it," Farnsworth quickly replied. "If I could I would gladly return it to its owner. I am not a thief, Father, and I am ashamed of--of--what I did when I was drunk."
The priest looked sharply into Farnsworth's eyes and read there something that reassured him. His long experience had rendered him adept at taking a man's value at a glance. He slightly lifted his face and said: "Ah, but the poor little girl! why do you persecute her? She really does not deserve it. She is a noble child. Give her back to her home and her people. Do not soil and spoil her sweet life."
It was the sing-song voice used by Father Beret in his sermons and prayers; but something went with it indescribably touching. Farnsworth felt a lump rise in his throat and his eyes were ready to show tears. "Father," he said, with difficulty making his words distinct, "I would not harm Miss Roussillon to save my own life, and I would do anything--" he paused slightly, then added with passionate force; "I would do anything, no matter what, to save her from the terrible thing that now threatens her."
Father Beret's countenance changed curiously as he gazed at the young man and said: "If you really mean what you say, you can easily save her, my son."
"Father, by all that is holy, I mean just what I say."
"Swear not at all, my son, but give me your hand."
The two men stood with a tight grip between them and exchanged a long, steady, searching gaze.
A drizzling rain had begun to fall again, with a raw wind creeping from the west.
"Come with me to my house, my son," Father Beret presently added; and together they went, the priest covering Alice's sword from the rain with the folds of his cassock.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
|
15
|
VIRTUE IN A LOCKET
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Long-Hair stood not upon ceremony in conveying to Beverley the information that he was to run the gauntlet, which, otherwise stated, meant that the Indians would form themselves in two parallel lines facing each other about six feet apart, and that the prisoner would be expected to run down the length of the space between, thus affording the warriors an opportunity, greatly coveted and relished by their fiendish natures, to beat him cruelly during his flight. This sort of thing was to the Indians, indeed, an exquisite amusement, as fascinating to them as the theater is to more enlightened people. No sooner was it agreed upon that the entertainment should again be undertaken than all the younger men began to scurry around getting everything ready for it. Their faces glowed with a droll cruelty strange to see, and they further expressed their lively expectations by playful yet curiously solemn antics.
The preparations were simple and quickly made. Each man armed himself with a stick three feet long and about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Rough weapons they were, cut from boughs of scrub-oak, knotty and tough as horn. Long-Hair unbound Beverley and stripped his clothes from his body down to the waist. Then the lines formed, the Indians in each row standing about as far apart as the width of the space in which the prisoner was to run. This arrangement gave them free use of their sticks and plenty of room for full swing of their lithe bodies.
In removing Beverley's clothes Long-Hair found Alice's locket hanging over the young man's heart. He tore it rudely off and grunted, glaring viciously, first at it, then at Beverley. He seemed to be mightily wrought upon.
"White man damn thief," he growled deep in his throat; "stole from little girl!"
He put the locket in his pouch and resumed his stupidly indifferent expression.
When everything was ready for the delightful entertainment to begin, Long-Hair waved his tomahawk three times over Beverley's head, and pointing down between the waiting lines said: "Ugh, run!"
But Beverley did not budge. He was standing erect, with his arms, deeply creased where the thongs had sunk, folded across his breast. A rush of thoughts and feelings had taken tumultuous possession of him and he could not move or decide what to do. A mad desire to escape arose in his heart the moment that he saw Long-Hair take the locket. It was as if Alice had cried to him and bidden him make a dash for liberty.
"Ugh, run!"
The order was accompanied with a push of such violence from Long-Hair's left elbow that Beverley plunged and fell, for his limbs, after their long and painful confinement in the raw-hide bonds, were stiff and almost useless. Long-Hair in no gentle voice bade him get up. The shock of falling seemed to awaken his dormant forces; a sudden resolve leaped into his brain. He saw that the Indians had put aside their bows and guns, most of which were leaning against the boles of trees here and yonder. What if he could knock Long-Hair down and run away? This might possibly be easy, considering the Indian's broken arm. His heart jumped at the possibility. But the shrewd savage was alert and saw the thought come into his face.
"You try git 'way, kill dead!" he snarled, lifting his tomahawk ready for a stroke. "Brains out, damn!"
Beverley glanced down the waiting and eager lines. Swiftly he speculated, wondering what would be his chance for escape were he to break through. But he did not take his own condition into account.
"Ugh, run!"
Again the elbow of Long-Hair's hurt arm pushed him toward the expectant rows of Indians, who flourished their clubs and uttered impatient grunts.
This time he did not fall; but in trying to run he limped stiffly at first, his legs but slowly and imperfectly regaining their strength and suppleness from the action. Just before reaching the lines, however, he stopped short. Long-Hair, who was close behind him, took hold of his shoulder and led him back to the starting place. The big Indian's arm must have given him pain when he thus used it, but he did not wince. "Fool--kill dead!" he repeated two or three times, holding his tomahawk on high with threatening motions and frequent repetitions of his one echo from the profanity of civilization. He was beginning to draw his mouth down at the corners, and his eyes were narrowed to mere slits.
Beverley understood now that he could not longer put off the trial. He must choose between certain death and the torture of the gauntlet, as frontiersmen named this savage ordeal. An old man might have preferred the stroke of the hatchet to such an infliction as the clubs must afford, considering that, even after all the agony, his captivity and suffering would be only a little nearer its end. Youth, however, has faith in the turn of fortune's wheel, and faith in itself, no matter how dark the prospect. Hope blows her horn just over the horizon, and the strain bids the young heart take courage and beat strong. Moreover, men were men, who led the van in those days on the outmost lines of our march to the summit of the world. Beverley was not more a hero than any other young, brave, unconquerable patriot of the frontier army. His situation simply tried him a trifle harder than was common. But it must be remembered that he had Love with him, and where Love is there can be no cowardice, no surrender.
Long-Hair once again pushed him and said "Ugh, run!"
Beverley made a direct dash for the narrow lane between the braced and watchful lines. Every warrior lifted his club; every copper face gleamed stolidly, a mask behind which burned a strangely atrocious spirit. The two savages standing at the end nearest Beverley struck at him the instant he reached than, but they taken quite by surprise when he checked himself between them and, leaping this way and that, swung out two powerful blows, left and right, stretching one of them flat and sending the other reeling and staggering half a dozen paces backward with the blood streaming from his nose.
This done, Beverley turned to run away, but his breath was already short and his strength rapidly going.
Long-Hair, who was at his heels, leaped before him when he had gone but a few steps and once more flourished the tomahawk. To struggle was useless, save to insist upon being brained outright, which just then had no part in Beverley's considerations. Long-Hair kicked his victim heavily, uttering laconic curses meanwhile, and led him back again to the starting-point.
A genuine sense of humor seems almost entirely lacking in the mind of the American Indian. He smiles at things not in the least amusing to us and when he laughs, which is very seldom, the cause of his merriment usually lies in something repellantly cruel and inhuman. When Beverley struck his two assailants, hurting them so that one lay half stunned, while the other spun away from his fist with a smashed nose, all the rest of the Indians grunted and laughed raucously in high delight. They shook their clubs, danced, pointed at their discomfited fellows and twisted their painted faces into knotted wrinkles, their eyes twinkling with devilish expression of glee quite indescribable.
"Ugh, damn, run!" said Long-Half, this time adding a hard kick to the elbow-shove he gave Beverley.
The young man, who had borne all he could, now turned upon him furiously and struck straight from the shoulder, setting the whole weight of his body into the blow. Long-Hair stepped out of the way and quick as a flash brought the flat side of his tomahawk with great force against Beverley's head. This gave the amusement a sudden and disappointing end, for the prisoner fell limp and senseless to the ground. No more running the gauntlet for him that day. Indeed it required protracted application of the best Indian skill to revive him so that he could fairly be called a living man. There had been no dangerous concussion, however, and on the following morning camp was broken.
Beverley, sore, haggard, forlornly disheveled, had his arms bound again and was made to march apace with his nimble enemies, who set out swiftly eastward, their disappointment at having their sport cut short, although bitter enough, not in the least indicated by any facial expression or spiteful act.
Was it really a strange thing, or was it not, that Beverley's mind now busied itself unceasingly with the thought that Long-Hair had Alice's picture in his pouch? One might find room for discussion of a cerebral problem like this; but our history cannot be delayed with analyses and speculations; it must run its direct course unhindered to the end. Suffice it to record that, while tramping at Long-Hair's side and growing more and more desirous of seeing the picture again, Beverley began trying to converse with his taciturn captor. He had a considerable smattering of several Indian dialects, which he turned upon Long-Hair to the best of his ability, but apparently without effect. Nevertheless he babbled at intervals, always upon the same subject and always endeavoring to influence that huge, stolid, heartless savage in the direction of letting him see again the child face of the miniature.
A stone, one of our travel-scarred and mysterious western granite bowlders brought from the far north by the ancient ice, would show as much sympathy as did the face of Long-Hair. Once in a while he gave Beverley a soulless glance and said "damn" with utter indifference. Nothing, however, could quench or even in the slightest sense allay the lover's desire. He talked of Alice and the locket with constantly increasing volubility, saying over and over phrases of endearment in a half-delirious way, not aware that fever was fermenting his blood and heating his brain. Probably he would have been very ill but for the tremendous physical exercise forced upon him. The exertion kept him in a profuse perspiration and his robust constitution cast off the malarial poison. Meantime he used every word and phrase, every grunt and gesture of Indian dialect that he could recall, in the iterated and reiterated attempt to make Long-Hair understand what he wanted.
When night came on again the band camped under some trees beside a swollen stream. There was no rain falling, but almost the entire country lay under a flood of water. Fires of logs were soon burning brightly on the comparatively dry bluff chosen by the Indians. The weather was chill, but not cold. Long-Hair took great pains, however, to dry Beverley's clothes and see that he had warm wraps and plenty to eat. Hamilton's large reward would not be forthcoming should the prisoner die, Beverley was good property, well worth careful attention. To be sure his scalp, in the worst event, would command a sufficient honorarium, but not the greatest. Beverley thought of all this while the big Indian was wrapping him snugly in skins and blankets for the night, and there was no comfort in it, save that possibly if he were returned to Hamilton he might see Alice again before he died.
A fitful wind cried dolefully in the leafless treetops, the stream hard by gave forth a rushing sound, and far away some wolves howled like lost souls. Worn out, sore from head to foot, Beverley, deep buried in the blankets and skins, soon fell into a profound sleep. The fires slowly crumbled and faded; no sentinel was posted, for the Indians did not fear an attack, there being no enemies that they knew of nearer than Kaskaskia. The camp slumbered as one man.
At about the mid-hour of the night Long-Hair gently awoke his prisoner by drawing a hand across his face, then whispered in his ear: "Damn, still!"
Beverley tried to rise, uttering a sleepy ejaculation under his breath. "No talk," hissed Long-Hair. "Still!"
There was something in his voice that not only swept the last film of sleep out of Beverley's brain, but made it perfectly clear to him that a very important bit of craftiness was being performed; just what its nature was, however, he could not surmise. One thing was obvious, Long-Hair did not wish the other Indians to know of the move he was making. Deftly he slipped the blankets from around Beverley, and cut the thongs at his ankles.
"Still!" he whispered. "Come 'long."
Under such circumstances a competent mind acts with lightning celerity. Beverley now understood that Long-Hair was stealing him away from the other savages and that the big villain meant to cheat them out of their part of the reward. Along with this discovery came a fresh gleam of hope. It would be far easier to escape from one Indian than from nearly a score. Ah, he would follow Long-Hair, indeed he would! The needed courage came with the thought, and so with immense labor he crept at the heels of that crawling monster. It was a painful process, for his arms were still fast bound at the wrists with the raw-hide strings; but what was pain to him? He shivered with joy, thinking of what might happen. The voice of the wind overhead and the noisy bubbling of the stream near by were cheerful and cheering sounds to him now. So much can a mere shadow of hope do for a human soul on the verge of despair! Already he was planning or trying to plan some way by which he could kill Long-Hair when they should reach a safe distance from the sleeping camp.
But how could the thing be done? A man with his hands tied, though they are in front of him, is in no excellent condition to cope with a free and stalwart savage armed to the teeth. Still Beverley's spirits rose with every rod of distance that was added to their slow progress.
Their course was nearly parallel with that of the stream, but slightly converging toward it, and after they had gone about a furlong they reached the bank. Here Long-Hair stopped and, without a word, cut the thongs from Beverley's wrists. This was astounding; the young man could scarcely realize it, nor was he ready to act.
"Swim water," Long-Hair said in a guttural murmur barely audible. "Swim, damn!"
Again it was necessary for Beverley's mind to act swiftly and with prudence. The camp was yet within hailing distance. A false move now would bring the whole pack howling to the rescue. Something told him to do as Long-Hair ordered, so with scarcely a perceptible hesitation he scrambled down the bushy bank and slipped into the water, followed by Long-Hair, who seized him by one arm when he began to swim, and struck out with him into the boiling and tumbling current.
Beverley had always thought himself a master swimmer, but Long-Hair showed him his mistake. The giant Indian, with but one hand free to use, fairly rushed through that deadly cold and turbulent water, bearing his prisoner with him despite the wounded arm, as easily as if towing him at the stern of a pirogue. True, his course was down stream for a considerable distance, but even when presently he struck out boldly for the other bank, breasting a current in which few swimmers could have lived, much less made headway, he still swung forward rapidly, splitting the waves and scarcely giving Beverley freedom enough so that he could help in the progress. It was a long, cold struggle, and when at last they touched the sloping low bank on the other side, Long-Hair had fairly to lift his chilled and exhausted prisoner to the top.
"Ugh, cold," he grunted, beginning to pound and rub Beverley's arms, legs and body. "Make warm, damn heap!"
All this he did with his right hand, holding the tomahawk in his left.
It was a strange, bewildering experience out of which the young man could not see in any direction far enough to give him a hint upon which to act. In a few minutes Long-Hair jerked him to his feet and said: "Go."
It was just light enough to see that the order had a tomahawk to enforce it withal. Long-Hair indicated the direction and drove Beverley onward as fast as he could.
"Try run 'way, kill, damn!" he kept repeating, while with his left hand on the young man's shoulder he guided him from behind dexterously through the wood for some distance. Then he stopped and grunted, adding his favorite expletive, which he used with not the least knowledge of its meaning. To him the syllable "damn" was but a mouthful of forcible wind.
They had just emerged from a thicket into an open space, where the ground was comparatively dry. Overhead the stars were shining in great clusters of silver and gold against a dark, cavernous looking sky, here and there overrun with careering black clouds. Beverley shivered, not so much with cold as on account of the stress of excitement which amounted to nervous rigor. Long-Hair faced him and leaned toward him, until his breathing was audible and his massive features were dimly outlined. A dragon of the darkest age could not have been more repulsive.
"Ugh, friend, damn!"
Beverley started when these words were followed by a sentence in an Indian dialect somewhat familiar to him, a dialect in which he had tried to talk with Long-Hair during the day's march. The sentence, literally translated, was: "Long-Hair is friendly now."
A blow in the face could not have been so surprising. Beverley not only started, but recoiled as if from a sudden and deadly apparition. The step between supreme exhilaration and utter collapse is now and then infinitesimal. There are times, moreover, when an expression on the face of Hope makes her look like the twin sister of Despair. The moment falling just after Long-Hair spoke was a century condensed in a breath.
"Long-Hair is friendly now; will white man be friendly?"
Beverley heard, but the speech seemed to come out of vastness and hollow distance; he could not realize it fairly. He felt as if in a dream, far off somewhere in loneliness, with a big, shadowy form looming before him. He heard the chill wind in the thickets round about, and beyond Long-Hair rose a wall of giant trees.
"Ugh, not understand?" the savage presently demanded in his broken English.
"Yes, yes," said Beverley, "I understand."
"Is the white man friendly now?" Long-Hair then repeated in his own tongue, with a certain insistence of manner and voice.
"Yes, friendly."
Beverley said this absently in a tone of perfunctory dryness. His throat was parched, his head seemed to waver. But he was beginning to comprehend that Long-Hair, for some inscrutable reason of his own, was desirous of making a friendship between them. The thought was bewildering.
Long-Hair fumbled in his pouch and took out Alice's locket, which he handed to Beverley. "White man love little girl?" he inquired in a tone that bordered upon tenderness, again speaking in Indian.
Beverley clutched the disk as soon as he saw it gleam in the star-light.
"White man going to have little girl for his squaw--eh?"
"Yes, yes," cried Beverley without hearing his own voice. He was trying to open the locket but his hands were numb and trembling. When at last he did open it he could not see the child face within, for now even the star-light was shut off by a scudding black cloud.
"Little girl saved Long-Hair's life. Long-Hair save white warrior for little girl."
A dignity which was almost noble accompanied these simple sentences. Long-Hair stood proudly erect, like a colossal dark statue in the dimness.
The great truth dawned upon Beverley that here was a characteristic act. He knew that an Indian rarely failed to repay a kindness or an injury, stroke for stroke, when opportunity offered. Long-Hair was a typical Indian. That is to say, a type of inhumanity raised to the last power; but under his hideous atrocity of nature lay the indestructible sense of gratitude so fixed and perfect that it did its work almost automatically.
It must be said, and it may or may not be to the white man's shame, that Beverley did not respond with absolute promptness and sincerity to Long-Hair's generosity. He had suffered terribly at the hands of this savage. His arms and legs were raw from the biting of the thongs; his body ached from the effect of blows and kicks laid upon him while bound and helpless. Perhaps he was not a very emotional man. At all events there was no sudden recognition of the favor he was receiving. And this pleased Long-Hair, for the taste of the American Indian delights in immobility of countenance and reserve of feeling under great strain.
"Wait here a little while," Long-Hair presently said, and without lingering for reply, turned away and disappeared in the wood. Beverley was free to run if he wished to, and the thought did surge across his mind; but a restraining something, like a hand laid upon him, would not let his limbs move. Down deep in his heart a calm voice seemed to be repeating Long-Hair's Indian sentence--"Wait here a little while."
A few minutes later Long-Hair returned bearing two guns, Beverley's and his own, the latter, a superb weapon given him by Hamilton. He afterward explained that he had brought these, with their bullet-pouches and powder-horns, to a place of concealment near by before he awoke Beverley. This meant that he had swum the cold river three times since night-fall; once over with the guns and accouterments; once back to camp, then over again with Beverley! All this with a broken arm, and to repay Alice for her kindness to him.
Beverley may have been slow, but at last his appreciation was, perhaps, all the more profound. As best he could he expressed it to Long-Hair, who showed no interest whatever in the statement. Instead of responding in Indian, he said "damn" without emphasis. It was rather as if he had yawned absently, being bored.
Delay could not be thought of. Long-Hair explained briefly that he thought. Beverley must go to Kaskaskia. He had come across the stream in the direction of Vincennes in order to set his warriors at fault. The stream must be recrossed, he said, farther down, and he would help Beverley a certain distance on his way, then leave him to shift for himself. He had a meager amount of parched corn and buffalo meat in his pouch, which would stay hunger until they could kill some game. Now they must go.
The resilience of a youthful and powerful physique offers many a problem to the biologist. Vital force seems to find some mysterious reservoir of nourishment hidden away in the nerve-centers. Beverley set out upon that seemingly impossible undertaking with renewed energy. It could not have been the ounce of parched corn and bit of jerked venison from which he drew so much strength; but on the other hand, could it have been the miniature of Alice, which he felt pressing over his heart once more, that afforded a subtle stimulus to both mind and body? They flung miles behind them before day-dawn, Long-Hair leading, Beverley pressing close at his heels. Most of the way led over flat prairies covered with water, and they therefore left no track by which they could be followed.
Late in the forenoon Long-Hair killed a deer at the edge of a wood. Here they made a fire and cooked a supply which would last them for a day or two, and then on they went again. But we cannot follow them step by step. When Long-Hair at last took leave of Beverley, the occasion had no ceremony. It was an abrupt, unemotional parting. The stalwart Indian simply said in his own dialect, pointing westward: "Go that way two days. You will find your friends."
Then, without another look or word, he turned about and stalked eastward at a marvelously rapid gait. In his mind he had a good tale to tell his warrior companions when he should find them again: how Beverley escaped that night and how he followed him a long, long chase, only to lose him at last under the very guns of the fort at Kaskaskia. But before he reached his band an incident of some importance changed his story to a considerable degree. It chanced that he came upon Lieutenant Barlow, who, in pursuit of game, had lost his bearings and, far from his companions, was beating around quite bewildered in a watery solitude. Long-Hair promptly murdered the poor fellow and scalped him with as little compunction as he would have skinned a rabbit; for he had a clever scheme in his head, a very audacious and outrageous scheme, by which he purposed to recoup, to some extent, the damages sustained by letting Beverley go.
Therefore, when he rejoined his somewhat disheartened and demoralized band he showed them the scalp and gave them an eloquent account of how he tore it from Beverley's head after a long chase and a bloody hand to hand fight. They listened, believed, and were satisfied.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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16
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FATHER BERET'S OLD BATTLE
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The room in which Alice was now imprisoned formed part of the upper story of a building erected by Hamilton in one of the four angles of the stockade. It had no windows and but two oblong port-holes made to accommodate a small swivel, which stood darkly scowling near the middle of the floor. From one of these apertures Alice could see the straggling roofs and fences of the dreary little town, while from the other a long reach of watery prairie, almost a lake, lay under view with the rolling, muddy Wabash gleaming beyond. There seemed to be no activity of garrison or townspeople. Few sounds broke the silence of which the cheerless prison room seemed to be the center.
Alice felt all her courage and cheerfulness leaving her. She was alone in the midst of enemies. No father or mother, no friend--a young girl at the mercy of soldiers, who could not be expected to regard her with any sympathy beyond that which is accompanied with repulsive leers and hints. Day after day her loneliness and helplessness became more agonizing. Farnsworth, it is true, did all he could to relieve the strain of her situation; but Hamilton had an eye upon what passed and soon interfered. He administered a bitter reprimand, under which his subordinate writhed in speechless anger and resentment.
"Finally, Captain Farnsworth," he said in conclusion, "you will distinctly understand that this girl is my prisoner, not yours; that I, not you, will direct how she is to be held and treated, and that hereafter I will suffer no interference on your part. I hope you fully understand me, sir, and will govern yourself accordingly."
Smarting, or rather smothering, under the outrageous insult of these remarks, Farnsworth at first determined to fling his resignation at the Governor's feet and then do whatever desperate thing seemed most to his mood. But a soldier's training is apt to call a halt before the worst befalls in such a case. Moreover, in the present temptation, Farnsworth had a special check and hindrance. He had had a conference with Father Beret, in which the good priest had played the part of wisdom in slippers, and of gentleness more dove-like than the dove's. A very subtle impression, illuminated with the "hope that withers hope," had come of that interview; and now Farnsworth felt its restraint. He therefore saluted Hamilton formally and walked away.
Father Beret's paternal love for Alice,--we cannot characterize it more nicely than to call it paternal,--was his justification for a certain mild sort of corruption insinuated by him into the heart of Farnsworth. He was a crafty priest, but his craft was always used for a good end. Unquestionably Jesuitic was his mode of circumventing the young man's military scruples by offering him a puff of fair weather with which to sail toward what appeared to be the shore of delight. He saw at a glance that Farnsworth's love for Alice was a consuming passion in a very ardent yet decidedly weak heart. Here was the worldly lever with which Father Beret hoped to raze Alice's prison and free her from the terrible doom with which she was threatened.
The first interview was at Father Beret's cabin, to which, as will be remembered, the priest and Farnsworth went after their meeting in the street. It actually came to nothing, save an indirect understanding but half suggested by Father Beret and never openly sanctioned by Captain Farnsworth. The talk was insinuating on the part of the former, while the latter slipped evasively from every proposition, as if not able to consider it on account of a curious obtuseness of perception. Still, when they separated they shook hands and exchanged a searching look perfectly satisfactory to both.
The memory of that interview with the priest was in Farnsworth's mind when, boiling with rage, he left Hamilton's presence and went forth into the chill February air. He passed out through the postern and along the sodden and queachy aedge of the prairie, involuntarily making his way to Father Beret's cabin. His indignation was so great that he trembled from head to foot at every step. The door of the place was open and Father Beret was eating a frugal meal of scones and sour wine (of his own make, he said), which he hospitably begged to share with his visitor. A fire smouldered on the hearth, and a flat stone showed, by the grease smoking over its hot surface, where the cakes had been baked.
"Come in, my son," said the priest, "and try the fare of a poor old man. It is plain, very plain, but good." He smacked his lips sincerely and fingered another scone. "Take some, take some."
Farnsworth was not tempted. The acid bouquet of the wine filled the room with a smack of vinegar, and the smoke from rank scorching fat and wheat meal did not suggest an agreeable feast.
"Well, well, if you are not hungry, my son, sit down on the stool there and tell me the news."
Farnsworth took the low seat without a word, letting his eyes wander over the walls. Alice's rapier, the mate to that now worn by Hamilton, hung in its curiously engraved scabbard near one corner. The sight of it inflamed Farnsworth.
"It's an outrage," he broke forth. "Governor Hamilton sent a man to Roussillon place with orders to bring him the scabbard of Miss Roussillon's sword, and he now wears the beautiful weapon as if he had come by it honestly. Damn him!"
"My dear, dear son, you must not soil your lips with such language!" Father Beret let fall the half of a well bitten cake and held up both hands.
"I beg your pardon, Father; I know I ought to be more careful in your presence; but--but--the beastly, hellish scoundrel--" "Bah! doucement, mon fils, doucement." The old man shook his head and his finger while speaking. "Easy, my son, easy. You would be a fine target for bullets were your words to reach Hamilton's ears. You are not permitted to revile your commander."
"Yes, I know; but how can a man restrain himself under such abominable conditions?"
Father Beret shrewdly guessed that Hamilton had been giving the Captain fresh reason for bitter resentment. Moreover, he was sure that the moving cause had been Alice. So, in order to draw out what he wished to hear, he said very gently: "How is the little prisoner getting along?"
Farnsworth ground his teeth and swore; but Father Beret appeared not to hear; he bit deep into a scone, took a liberal sip of the muddy red wine and added: "Has she a comfortable place? Do you think Governor Hamilton would let me visit her?"
"It is horrible!" Farnsworth blurted. "She's penned up as if she were a dangerous beast, the poor girl. And that damned scoundrel--" "Son, son!"
"Oh, it's no use to try, I can't help it, Father. The whelp--" "We can converse more safely and intelligently if we avoid profanity, and undue emotion, my son. Now, if you will quit swearing, I will, and if you will be calm, so will I." Farnsworth felt the sly irony of this absurdly vicarious proposition. Father Beret smiled with a kindly twinkle in his deep-set eyes.
"Well, if you don't use profane language, Father, there's no telling how much you think in expletives. What is your opinion of a man who tumbles a poor, defenseless girl into prison and then refuses to let her be decently cared for? How do you express yourself about him?"
"My son, men often do things of which they ought to be ashamed. I heard of a young officer once who maltreated a little girl that he met at night in the street. What evil he would have done, had not a passing kind-hearted man reminded him of his honor by a friendly punch in the ribs, I dare not surmise."
"True, and your sarcasm goes home as hard as your fist did, Father. I know that I've been a sad dog all my life. Miss Roussillon saved you by shooting me, and I love her for it. Lay on, Father, I deserve more than you can give me."
"Surely you do, my son, surely you do; but my love for you will not let me give you pain. Ah, we priests have to carry all men's loads. Our backs are broad, however, very broad, my son."
"And your fists devilish heavy, Father, devilish heavy."
The gentle smile again flickered over the priest's weather-beaten face as he glanced sidewise at Farnsworth and said: "Sometimes, sometimes, my son, a carnal weapon must break the way for a spiritual one. But we priests rarely have much physical strength; our dependence is upon--" "To be sure; certainly," Farnsworth interrupted, rubbing his side, "your dependence is upon the first thing that offers. I've had many a blow; but yours was the solidest that ever jarred thy mortal frame, Father Beret."
The twain began to laugh. There is nothing like a reminiscence to stir up fresh mutual sympathy.
"If your intercostals were somewhat sore for a time, on account of a contact with priestly knuckles, doubtless there soon set in a corresponding uneasiness in the region of your conscience. Such shocks are often vigorously alterative and tonic--eh, my son?"
"You jolted me sober, Father, and then I was ashamed of myself. But where does all your tremendous strength lie? You don't look strong."
While speaking Farnsworth leaned near Father Beret and grasped his arm. The young man started, for his fingers, instead of closing around a flabby, shrunken old man's limb, spread themselves upon a huge, knotted mass of iron muscles. With a quick movement Father Beret shook off Farnsworth's hand, and said: "I am no Samson, my son. Non sum qualis eram." Then, as if dismissing a light subject for a graver one, he sighed and added; "I suppose there is nothing that can be done for little Alice."
He called the tall, strong girl "little Alice," and so she seemed to him. He could not, without direct effort, think of her as a magnificently maturing woman. She had always been his spoiled pet child, perversely set against the Holy Church, but dear to him nevertheless.
"I came to you to ask that very question, Father," said Farnsworth.
"And what do I know? Surely, my son, you see how utterly helpless an old priest is against all you British. And besides--" "Father Beret," Farnsworth huskily interrupted, "is there a place that you know of anywhere in which Miss Roussillon could be hidden, if--" "My dear son."
"But, Father, I mean it."
"Mean what? Pardon an old man's slow understanding. What are you talking about, my son?"
Father Beret glanced furtively about, then quickly stepped through the doorway, walked entirely around the house and came in again before Farnsworth could respond. Once more seated on his stool he added interrogatively: "Did you think you heard something moving outside?"
"No."
"You were saying something when I went out. Pardon my interruption."
Farnsworth gave the priest a searching and not wholly confiding look.
"You did not interrupt me, Father Beret. I was not speaking. Why are you so watchful? Are you afraid of eavesdroppers?"
"You were speaking recklessly. Your words were incendiary: ardentia verba. My son, you were suggesting a dangerous thing. Your life would scarcely satisfy the law were you convicted of insinuating such treason. What if one of your prowling guards had overheard you? Your neck and mine might feel the halter. Quod avertat dominus." He crossed himself and in a solemn voice added in English: "May the Lord forbid! Ah, my son, we priests protect those we love."
"And I, who am not fit to tie a priest's shoe, do likewise. Father, I love Alice Roussillon."
"Love is a holy thing, my son. Amare divinum est et humanum."
"Father Beret, can you help me?"
"Spiritually speaking, my son?"
"I mean, can you hide Mademoiselle Roussillon in some safe place, if I take her out of the prison yonder? That's just what I mean. Can you do it?"
"Your question is a remarkable one. Have you thought upon it from all directions, my son? Think of your position, your duty as an officer."
A shrewd polemical expression beamed from Father Beret's eyes, and a very expert physiogomist might have suspected duplicity from certain lines about the old man's mouth.
"I simply know that I cannot stand by and see Alice--Mademoiselle Roussillon, forced to suffer treatment too beastly for an Indian thief. That's the only direction there is for me to look at it from, and you can understand my feelings if you will; you know that very well, Father Beret. When a man loves a girl, he loves her; that's the whole thing." .
The quiet, inscrutable half-smile flickered once more on Father Beret's face; but he sat silent some time with a sinewy forefinger lying alongside his nose. When at last he spoke it was in a tone of voice indicative of small interest in what he was saying. His words rambled to their goal with the effect of happy accident.
"There are places in this neighborhood in which a human being would be as hard to find as the flag that you and Governor Hamilton have so diligently and unsuccessfully been in quest of for the past month or two. Really, my son, this is a mysterious little town."
Farnsworth's eyes widened and a flush rose in his swarthy cheeks.
"Damn the flag!" he exclaimed. "Let it lie hidden forever; what do I care? I tell you, Father Beret, that Alice Roussillon is in extreme danger. Governor Hamilton means to put some terrible punishment on her. He has a devil's vindictiveness. He showed it to me clearly awhile ago."
"You showed something of the same sort to me, once upon a time, my son."
"Yes, I did, Father Beret, and I got a load of slugs in my shoulder for it from that brave girl's pistol. She saved your life. Now I ask you to help me save hers; or, if not her life, what is infinitely more, her honor."
"Her honor!" cried Father Beret, leaping to his feet so suddenly and with such energy that the cabin shook from base to roof. "What do you say, Captain Farnsworth? What do you mean?"
The old man was transformed. His face was terrible to see, with its narrow, burning eyes deep under the shaggy brows, its dark veins writhing snakelike on the temples and forehead, the projected mouth and chin, the hard lines of the jaws, the iron-gray gleam from all the features--he looked like an aged tiger stiffened for a spring.
Farnsworth was made of right soldierly stuff; but he felt a distinct shiver flit along his back. His past life had not lacked thrilling adventures and strangely varied experiences with desperate men. Usually he met sudden emergencies rather calmly, sometimes with phlegmatic indifference. This passionate outburst on the priest's part, however, surprised him and awed him, while it stirred his heart with a profound sympathy unlike anything he had ever felt before.
Father Beret mastered himself in a moment, and passing his hand over his face, as if to brush away the excitement, sat down again on his stool. He appeared to collapse inwardly.
"You must excuse the weakness of an old man, my son," he said, in a voice hoarse and shaking. "But tell me what is going to be done with Alice. Your words--what you said--I did not understand."
He rubbed his forehead slowly, as one who has difficulty in trying to collect his thoughts.
"I do not know what Governor Hamilton means to do, Father Beret. It will be something devilish, however,--something that must not happen," said Farnsworth.
Then he recounted all that Hamilton had done and said. He described the dreary and comfortless room in which Alice was confined, the miserable fare given her, and how she would be exposed to the leers and low remarks of the soldiers. She had already suffered these things, and now that she could no longer have any protection, what was to become of her? He did not attempt to overstate the case; but presented it with a blunt sincerity which made a powerfully realistic impression.
Father Beret, like most men of strong feeling who have been subjected to long years of trial, hardship, multitudinous dangers and all sorts of temptation, and who have learned the lessons of self-control, had an iron will, and also an abiding distrust of weak men. He saw Farnsworth's sincerity; but he had no faith in his constancy, although satisfied that while resentment of Hamilton's imperiousness lasted, he would doubtless remain firm in his purpose to aid Alice. Let that wear off, as in a short time it would, and then what? The old man studied his companion with eyes that slowly resumed their expression of smouldering and almost timid geniality. His priestly experience with desperate men was demanding of him a proper regard for that subtlety of procedure which had so often compassed most difficult ends.
He listened in silence to Farnsworth's story. When it came to an end he began to offer some but half relevant suggestions in the form of indirect cross-questions, by means of which he gradually drew out a minute description of Alice's prison, the best way to reach it, the nature of its door-fastenings, where the key was kept, and everything, indeed, likely to be helpful to one contemplating a jail delivery. Farnsworth was inwardly delighted. He felt Father Beret's cunning approach to the central object and his crafty method of gathering details.
The shades of evening thickened in the stuffy cabin room while the conversation went on. Father Beret presently lifted a puncheon in one corner of the floor and got out a large bottle, which bore a mildewed and faded French label, and with it a small iron cup. There was just light enough left to show a brownish sparkle when, after popping out the cork, he poured a draught in the fresh cup and in his own.
"We may think more clearly, my son, if we taste this old liquor. I have kept it a long while to offer upon a proper occasion. The occasion is here."
A ravishing bouquet quickly imbued the air. It was itself an intoxication.
"The Brothers of St. Martin distilled this liquor," Father Beret added, handing the cup to Farnsworth, "not for common social drinking, my son, but for times when a man needs extraordinary stimulation. It is said to be surpassingly good, because St. Martin blessed the vine."
The doughty Captain felt a sudden and imperious thirst seize his throat. The liquor flooded his veins before his lips touched the cup. He had been abstaining lately; now his besetting appetite rushed upon him. At one gulp he took in the fiery yet smooth and captivating draught. Nor did he notice that Father Beret, instead of joining him in the potation, merely lifted his cup and set it down again, smacking his lips gusto.
There followed a silence, during which the aromatic breath of the bottle increased its dangerous fascination. Then Father Beret again filled Farnsworth's cup and said: "Ah, the blessed monks, little thought they that their matchless brew would ever be sipped in a poor missionary's hut on the Wabash! But, after all, my son, why not here as well as in sunny France? Our object justifies any impropriety of time and place."
"You are right, Father. I drink to our object. Yes, I say, to our object."
In fact, the drinking preceded his speech, and his tongue already had a loop in it The liquor stole through him, a mist of bewildering and enchanting influence. The third cup broke his sentences into unintelligible fragments; the fourth made his underjaw sag loosely, the fifth and sixth, taken in close succession, tumbled him limp on the floor, where he slept blissfully all night long, snugly covered with some of Father Beret's bed clothes.
"Per casum obliquum, et per indirectum," muttered the priest, when he had returned the bottle and cup to their hiding-place." The end justifies the means. Sleep well, my son. Ah, little Alice, little Alice, your old Father will try--will try!"
He fumbled along the wall in the dark until he found the rapier, which he took down; then he went out and sat for some time motionless beside the door, while the clouds thickened overhead. It was late when he arose and glided away shadow-like toward the fort, over which the night hung black, chill and drearily silent. The moon was still some hours high, smothered by the clouds; a fog slowly drifted from the river.
Meantime Hamilton and Helm had spent a part of the afternoon and evening, as usual, at cards. Helm broke off the game and went to his quarters rather early for him, leaving the Governor alone and in a bad temper, because Farnsworth, when he had sent for him, could not be found. Three times his orderly returned in as many hours with the same report; the Captain had not been seen or heard of. Naturally this sudden and complete disappearance, immediately after the reprimand, suggested to Hamilton an unpleasant possibility. What if Farnsworth had deserted him? Down deep in his heart he was conscious that the young man had good cause for almost any desperate action. To lose Captain Farnsworth, however, would be just now a calamity. The Indians were drifting over rapidly to the side of the Americans, and every day showed that the French could not long be kept quiet.
Hamilton sat for some time after Helm's departure, thinking over what he now feared was a foolish mistake. Presently he buckled on Alice's rapier, which he had lately been wearing as his own, and went out into the main area of the stockade. A sentinel was tramping to and fro at the gate, where a hazy lantern shone. The night was breathless and silent. Hamilton approached the soldier on duty and asked him if he had seen Captain Farnsworth, and receiving a negative reply, turned about puzzled and thoughtful to walk back and forth in the chill, foggy air.
Presently a faint yellow light attracted his attention. It shone through a porthole in an upper room of the block-house at the farther angle of the stockade. In fact, Alice was reading by a sputtering lamp a book Farnsworth had sent her, a volume of Ronsard that he had picked up in Canada. Hamilton made his way in that direction, at first merely curious to know who was burning oil so late; but after a few paces he recognized where the light came from, and instantly suspected that Captain Farnsworth was there. Indeed he felt sure of it. Somehow he could not regard Alice as other than a saucy hoyden, incapable of womanly virtue. His experience with the worst element of Canadian French life and his peculiar cast of mind and character colored his impression of her. He measured her by the women with whom the coureurs de bois and half-breed trappers consorted in Detroit and at the posts eastward to Quebec.
Alice, unable to sleep, had sought forgetfulness of her bitter captivity in the old poet's charming lyrics. She sat on the floor, some blankets and furs drawn around her, the book on her lap, the stupidly dull lamp hanging beside her on a part of the swivel. Her hair lay loose over her neck and shoulders and shimmered around her face with a cloud-like effect, giving to the features in their repose a setting that intensified their sweetness and sadness. In a very low but distinct voice was reading, with a slightly quavering emotion: "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose, Que ce matin avoit desclose Sa robe de pourpe au soleil."
When Hamilton, after stealthily mounting the rough stairway which led to her door, peeped in through a space between the slabs and felt a stroke of disappointment, seeing at a glance that Farnsworth was not there. He gazed for some time, not without a sense of villainy, while she continued her sweetly monotonous reading. If his heart had been as hard as the iron swivel-balls that lay beside Alice, he must still have felt a thrill of something like tender sympathy. She now showed no trace of the vivacious sauciness which had heretofore always marked her features when she was in his presence. A dainty gentleness, touched with melancholy, gave to her face an appealing look all the more powerful on account of its unconscious simplicity of expression.
The man felt an impulse pure and noble, which would have borne him back down the ladder and away from the building, had not a stronger one set boldly in the opposite direction. There was a short struggle with the seared remnant of his better nature, and then he tried to open the door; but it was locked.
Alice heard the slight noise and breaking off her reading turned to look. Hamilton made another effort to enter before he recollected that the wooden key, or notched lever, that controlled the cumbrous wooden lock, hung on a peg beside the door. He felt for it along the wall, and soon laid his hand on it. Then again he peeped through to see Alice, who was now standing upright near the swivel. She had thrown her hair back from her face and neck; the lamp's flickering light seemed suddenly to have magnified her stature and enhanced her beauty. Her book lay on the tumbled wraps at her feet, and in either hand she grasped a swivel-shot.
Hamilton's combative disposition came to the aid of his baser passion when he saw once more a defiant flash from his prisoner's face. It was easy for him to be fascinated by opposition. Helm had profited by this trait as much as others had suffered by it; but, in the case of Alice, Hamilton's mingled resentment and admiration were but a powerful irritant to the coarsest and most dangerous side of his nature.
After some fumbling and delay he fitted the key with a steady hand and moved the wooden bolt creaking and jolting from its slot. Then flinging the clumsy door wide open, he stepped in.
Alice started when she recognized the midnight intruder, and a second deeper look into his countenance made her brave heart recoil, while with a sinking sensation her breath almost stopped. It was but a momentary weakness, however, followed by vigorous reaction.
"What are you here for, sir?" she demanded. "What do you want?"
"I am neither a burglar nor a murderer, Mademoiselle," he responded, lifting his hat and bowing, with a smile not in the least reassuring.
"You look like both. Stop where you are!"
"Not so loud, my dear Miss Roussillon; I am not deaf. And besides the garrison needs to sleep."
"Stop, sir; not another step."
She poised herself, leaning slightly backward, and held the iron ball in her right hand ready to throw it at him.
He halted, still smiling villainously.
"Mademoiselle, I assure you that your excitement is quite unnecessary. I am not here to harm you."
"You cannot harm me, you cowardly wretch!"
"Humph! Pride goes before a fall, wench," he retorted, taking a half-step backward. Then a thought arose in his mind which added a new shade to the repellent darkness of his countenance.
"Miss Roussillon," he said in English and with a changed voice, which seemed to grow harder, each word deliberately emphasized, "I have come to break some bad news to you."
"You would scarcely bring me good news, sir, and I am not curious to hear the bad."
He was silent for a little while, gazing at her with the sort of admiration from which a true woman draws away appalled. He saw how she loathed him, saw how impossible it was for him to get a line nearer to her by any turn of force or fortune. Brave, high-headed, strong as a young leopard, pure and sweet as a rose, she stood before him fearless, even aggressive, showing him by every line of her face and form that she felt her infinite superiority and meant to maintain it. Her whole personal expression told him he was defeated; therefore he quickly seized upon a suggestion caught from a transaction with Long-Hair, who had returned a few hours before from his pursuit of Beverley.
"It pains me, I assure you, Miss Roussillon, to tell you what will probably grieve you deeply," he presently added; "but I have not been unaware of your tender interest in Lieutenant Beverley, and when I had bad news from him, I thought it my duty to inform you."
He paused, feeling with a devil's satisfaction the point of his statement go home to the girl's heart.
The wind was beginning to blow outside, shaking open the dark clouds and letting gleams of moonlight flicker on the thinning fog. A ghostly ray came through a crack between the logs and lit Alice's face with a pathetic wanness. She moved her lips as if speaking, but Hamilton heard no sound.
"The Indian, Long-Hair, whom I sent upon Lieutenant Beverley's trail, reported to me this afternoon that his pursuit had been quite successful. He caught his game."
Alice's voice came to her now. She drew in a quivering breath of relief.
"Then he is here--he is--you have him a prisoner again?"
"A part of him, Miss Roussillon. Enough to be quite sure that there is one traitor who will trouble his king no more. Mr. Long-Hair brought in the Lieutenant's scalp."
Alice received this horrible statement in silence; but her face blanched and she stood as if frozen by the shock. The shifty moon-glimmer and the yellow glow of the lamp showed Hamilton to what an extent his devilish cruelty hurt her, and somehow it chilled him as if by reflection; but he could not forego another thrust.
"He deserved hanging, and would have got it had he been brought to me alive. So after all, you should be satisfied. He escaped my vengeance and Long-Hair got his pay. You see I am the chief sufferer."
These words, however, fell without effect upon the girl's ears, in which was booming the awful, storm-like roar of her excitement. She did not see her persecutor standing there; her vision, unhindered by walls and distance, went straight away to a place in the wilderness, where all mangled and disfigured Beverley lay dead. A low cry broke from her lips; she dropped the heavy swivel-balls; and then, like a bird, swiftly, with a rustling swoop, she went past Hamilton and down the stair.
For perhaps a full minute the man stood there motionless, stupefied, amazed; and when at length he recovered himself, it was with difficulty that he followed her. Everything seemed to hinder him. When he reached the open air, however, he quickly regained his activity of both mind and body, and looked in all directions. The clouds were breaking into parallel masses with streaks of sky between. The moon hanging aslant against the blue peeped forth just in time to show him a flying figure which, even while he looked, reached the postern, opened it and slipped through.
With but a breath of hesitation between giving the alarm and following Alice silently and alone, he chose the latter. He was a swift runner and light footed. With a few bounds he reached the little gate, which was still oscillating on its hinges, darted through and away, straining every muscle in desperate pursuit, gaining rapidly in the race, which bore eastward along the course twice before chosen by Alice in leaving the stockade.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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17
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A MARCH THROUGH COLD WATER
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On the fifth day of February, 1779, Colonel George Rogers Clark led an army across the Kaskaskia River and camped. This was the first step in his march towards the Wabash. An army! Do not smile. Fewer than two hundred men, it is true, answered the roll-call, when Father Gibault lifted the Cross and blessed them; but every name told off by the company sergeants belonged to a hero, and every voice making response struck a full note in the chorus of freedom's morning song.
It was an army, small indeed, but yet an army; even though so rudely equipped that, could we now see it before us, we might wonder of what use it could possibly be in a military way.
We should nevertheless hardly expect that a hundred and seventy of our best men, even if furnished with the latest and most deadly engines of destruction, could do what those pioneers cheerfully undertook and gloriously accomplished in the savage wilderness which was to be the great central area of the United States of America.
We look back with a shiver of awe at the three hundred Spartans for whom Simonides composed his matchless epitaph. They wrought and died gloriously; that was Greek. The one hundred and seventy men, who, led by the backwoodsman, Clark, made conquest of an empire's area for freedom in the west, wrought and lived gloriously; that was American. It is well to bear in mind this distinction by which our civilization separates itself from that of old times. Our heroism has always been of life--our heroes have conquered and lived to see the effect of conquest. We have fought all sorts of wars and have never yet felt defeat. Washington, Jackson, Taylor, Grant, all lived to enjoy, after successful war, a triumphant peace. "These Americans," said a witty Frenchman, "are either enormously lucky, or possessed of miraculous vitality. You rarely kill them in battle, and if you wound them their wounds are never mortal. Their history is but a chain of impossibilities easily accomplished. Their undertakings have been without preparation, their successes in the nature of stupendous accidents." Such a statement may appear critically sound from a Gallic point of view; but it leaves out the dominant element of American character, namely, heroic efficiency. From the first we have had the courage to undertake, the practical common sense which overcomes the lack of technical training, and the vital force which never flags under the stress of adversity.
Clark knew, when he set out on his march to Vincennes, that he was not indulging a visionary impulse. The enterprise was one that called for all that manhood could endure, but not more. With the genius of a born leader he measured his task by his means. He knew his own courage and fortitude, and understood the best capacity of his men. He had genius; that is, he possessed the secret of extracting from himself and from his followers the last refinement of devotion to purpose. There was a certainty, from first to last, that effort would not flag at any point short of the top-most possible strain.
The great star of America was no more than a nebulous splendor on the horizon in 1779. It was a new world forming by the law of youth. The men who bore the burdens of its exacting life were mostly stalwart striplings who, before the down of adolescence fairly sprouted on their chins, could swing the ax, drive a plow, close with a bear or kill an Indian. Clark was not yet twenty-seven when he made his famous campaign. A tall, brawny youth, whose frontier experience had enriched a native character of the best quality, he marched on foot at the head of his little column, and was first to test every opposing danger. Was there a stream to wade or swim? Clark enthusiastically shouted, "Come on!" and in he plunged. Was there a lack of food? "I'm not hungry," he cried. "Help yourselves, men!" Had some poor soldier lost his blanket? "Mine is in my way," said Clark. "Take it, I'm glad to get rid of it!" His men loved him, and would die rather than fall short of his expectations.
The march before them lay over a magnificent plain, mostly prairie, rich as the delta of the Nile, but extremely difficult to traverse. The distance, as the route led, was about a hundred and seventy miles. On account of an open and rainy winter all the basins and flat lands were inundated, often presenting leagues of water ranging in depth from a few inches to three of four feet. Cold winds blew, sometimes with spits of snow and dashes of sleet, while thin ice formed on the ponds and sluggish streams. By day progress meant wading ankle-deep, knee-deep, breast-deep, with an occasional spurt of swimming. By night the brave fellows had to sleep, if sleep they could, on the cold ground in soaked clothing under water-heavy blankets. They flung the leagues behind them, however, cheerfully stimulating one another by joke and challenge, defying all the bitterness of weather, all the bitings of hunger, all the toil, danger and deprivation of a trackless and houseless wilderness, looking only eastward, following their youthful and intrepid commander to one of the most valuable victories gained by American soldiers during the War of the Revolution.
Colonel Clark understood perfectly the strategic importance of Vincennes as a post commanding the Wabash, and as a base of communication with the many Indian tribes north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi. Francis Vigo (may his name never fade!) had brought him a comprehensive and accurate report of Hamilton's strength and the condition of the fort and garrison. This information confirmed his belief that it would be possible not only to capture Vincennes, but Detroit as well.
Just seven days after the march began, the little army encamped for a night's rest at the edge of a wood; and here, just after nightfall, when the fires were burning merrily and the smell of broiling buffalo steaks burdened the damp air, a wizzened old man suddenly appeared, how or from where nobody had observed He was dirty and in every way disreputable in appearance, looking like an animated mummy, bearing a long rifle on his shoulder, and walking with the somewhat halting activity of a very old, yet vivacious and energetic simian. Of course it was Oncle Jason, "Oncle Jazon sui generis," as Father Beret had dubbed him.
"Well, here I am!" he cried, approaching the fire by which Colonel Clark and some of his officers were cooking supper, "but ye can't guess in a mile o' who I am to save yer livers and lights."
He danced a few stiff steps, which made the water gush out of his tattered moccasins, then doffed his nondescript cap and nodded his scalpless head in salutation to the commander.
Clark looked inquiringly at him, while the old fellow grimaced and rubbed his shrunken chin.
"I smelt yer fat a fryin' somepin like a mile away, an' it set my in'ards to grumblin' for a snack; so I jes thought I'd drap in on ye an' chaw wittles wi' ye."
"Your looks are decidedly against you," remarked the Colonel with a dry smile. He had recognized Oncle Jazon after a little sharp scrutiny. "I suppose, however, that we can let you gnaw the bones after we've got off the meat."
"Thank 'ee, thank 'ee, plenty good. A feller 'at's as hongry as I am kin go through a bone like a feesh through water."
Clark laughed and said: "I don't see any teeth that you have worth mentioning, but your gums may be unusually sharp."
"Ya-a-s, 'bout as sharp as yer wit, Colonel Clark, an' sharper'n yer eyes, a long shot. Ye don't know me, do ye? Take ernother squint at me, an' see'f ye kin 'member a good lookin' man!"
"You have somewhat the appearance of an old scamp by the name of Jazon that formerly loafed around with a worthless gun on his shoulder, and used to run from every Indian he saw down yonder in Kentucky." Clark held out his hand and added cordially: "How are you, Jazon, my old friend, and where upon earth have you come from?"
Oncle Jazon pounced upon the hand and gripped it in his own knotted fingers, gazing delightedly up into Clark's bronzed and laughing face.
"Where'd I come frum? I come frum ever'wheres. Fust time I ever got lost in all my born days. Fve been a trompin' 'round in the water seems like a week, crazy as a pizened rat, not a knowin' north f'om south, ner my big toe f'om a turnip! Who's got some tobacker?"
Oncle Jazon's story, when presently he told it, interested Clark deeply. In the first place he was glad to hear that Simon Kenton had once more escaped from the Indians; and the news from Beverley, although bad enough, left room for hope. Frontiersmen always regarded the chances better than even, so long as there was life. Oncle Jazon, furthermore, had much to tell about the situation at Vincennes, the true feeling of the French inhabitants, the lukewarm friendship of the larger part of the Indians for Hamilton, and, indeed, everything that Clark wished to know regarding the possibilities of success in his arduous undertaking. The old man's advent cheered the whole camp. He soon found acquaintances and friends among the French volunteers from Kaskaskia, with whom he exchanged creole gestures and chatter with a vivacity apparently inexhaustible. He and Kenton had, with wise judgement, separated on escaping from the Indian camp, Kenton striking out for Kentucky, while Oncle Jazon went towards Kaskaskia.
The information that Beverley would be shot as soon as he was returned to Hamilton, caused Colonel Clark serious worry of mind. Not only the fact that Beverley, who had been a charming friend and a most gallant officer, was now in such imminent danger, but the impression (given by Oncle Jazon's account) that he had broken his parole, was deeply painful to the brave and scrupulously honorable commander. Still, friendship rose above regret, and Clark resolved to push his little column forward all the more rapidly, hoping to arrive in time to prevent the impending execution.
Next morning the march was resumed at the break of dawn; but a swollen stream caused some hours of delay, during which Beverley himself arrived from the rear, a haggard and weirdly unkempt apparition. He had been for three days following hard on the army's track, which he came to far westward. Oncle Jazon saw him first in the distance, and his old but educated eyes made no mistake.
"Yander's that youngster Beverley," he exclaimed. "Ef it ain't I'm a squaw!"
Nor did he parley further on the subject; but set off at a rickety trot to meet and assist the fagged and excited young man.
Clark had given Oncle Jazon his flask, which contained a few gills of whisky. This was the first thing offered to Beverley; who wisely took but a swallow. Oncle Jazon was so elated that he waved his cap on high, and unconsciously falling into French, yelled in a piercing voice: "VIVE ZHORSH VASINTON! VIVE LA BANNIERE D'ALICE ROUSSILLON!"
Seeing Beverley reminded him of Alice and the flag. As for Beverley, the sentiment braced him, and the beloved name brimmed his heart with sweetness.
Clark went to meet them as they came in. He hugged the gaunt Lieutenant with genuine fervor of joy, while Oncle Jazon ran around them making a series of grotesque capers. The whole command, hearing Oncle Jazon's patriotic words, set up a wild shouting on the spur of a general impression that Beverley came as a messenger bearing glorious news from Washington's army in the east.
It was a great relief to Clark when he found out that his favorite Lieutenant had not broken his parole; but had instead boldly resurrendered himself, declaring the obligation no longer binding, and notifying Hamilton of his intention to go away with the purpose of returning and destroying him and his command. Clark laughed heartily when this explanation brought out Beverley's tender interest in Alice; but he sympathized cordially; for he himself knew what love is.
Although Beverley was half starved and still suffering from the kicks and blows given him by Long-Hair and his warriors, his exhausting run on the trail of Clark aad his band had not worked him serious harm. All of the officers and men did their utmost to serve him. He was feasted without stint and furnished with everything that the scant supply of clothing on the pack horses could afford for his comfort. He promptly asked for an assignment to duty in his company and took his place with such high enthusiasm that his companions regarded him with admiring wonder. None of them save Clark and Oncle Jazon suspected that love for a fair-haired girl yonder in Vincennes was the secret of his amazing zeal and intrepidity.
In one respect Clark's expedition was sadly lacking in its equipment for the march. It had absolutely no means of transporting adequate supplies. The pack-horses were not able to carry more than a little extra ammunition, a few articles of clothing, some simple cooking utensils and such tools as were needed in improvising rafts and canoes. Consequently, although buffalo and deer were sometimes plentiful, they furnished no lasting supply of meat, because it could not be transported; and as the army neared Vincennes wild animals became scarce, so that the men began to suffer from hunger when within but a few days of their journey's end.
Clark made almost superhuman efforts in urging forward his chilled, water-soaked, foot-sore command; and when hunger added its torture to the already disheartening conditions, his courage and energy seemed to burn stronger and brighter. Beverley was always at his side ready to undertake any task, accept any risk; his ardor made his face glow, and he seemed to thrive upon hardships. The two men were a source of inspiration--their followers could not flag and hesitate while under the influence of their example.
Toward the end of the long march a decided fall of temperature added ice to the water through which our dauntless patriots waded and swam for miles. The wind shifted northwesterly, taking on a searching chill. Each gust, indeed, seemed to shoot wintry splinters into the very marrow of the men's bones. The weaker ones began to show the approach of utter exhaustion just at the time when a final spurt of unflinching power was needed. True, they struggled heroically; but nature was nearing the inexorable limit of endurance. Without food, which there was no prospect of getting, collapse was sure to come.
Standing nearly waist-deep in freezing water and looking out upon the muddy, sea-like flood that stretched far away to the channel of the Wabash and beyond, Clark turned to Beverley and said, speaking low, so as not to be overheard by any other of his officers or men: "Is it possible, Lieutenant Beverley, that we are to fail, with Vincennes almost in sight of us?"
"No, sir, it is not possible," was the firm reply. "Nothing must, nothing can stop us. Look at that brave child! He sets the heroic example."
Beverley pointed, as he spoke, at a boy but fourteen years old, who was using his drum as a float to bear him up while he courageously swam beside the men.
Clark's clouded face cleared once more. "You are right," he said, "come on! we must win or die."
"Sergeant Dewit," he added, turning to an enormously tall and athletic man near by, "take that little drummer and his drum on your shoulder and lead the way. And, sergeant, make him pound that drum like the devil beating tan-bark!"
The huge man caught the spirit of his commander's order. In a twinkling he had the boy astride of his neck with the kettle-drum resting on his head, and then the rattling music began. Clark followed, pointing onward with his sword. The half frozen and tottering soldiers sent up a shout that went back to where Captain Bowman was bringing up the rear under orders to shoot every man that straggled or shrank from duty.
Now came a time when not a mouthful of food was left. A whole day they floundered on, starving, growing fainter at every step, the temperature falling, the ice thickening. They camped on high land; and next morning they heard Hamilton's distant sunrise gun boom over the water.
"One half-ration for the men," said Clark, looking disconsolately in the direction whence the sound had come. "Just five mouthfuls apiece, even, and I'll have Hamilton and his fort within forty-eight hours."
"We will have the provisions, Colonel, or I will die trying to get them," Beverley responded "Depend upon me."
They had constructed some canoes in which to transport the weakest of the men.
"I will take a dugout and some picked fellows. We will pull to the wood yonder, and there we shall find some kind of game which has been forced to shelter from the high water."
It was a cheerful view of a forlorn hope. Clark grasped the hand extended by Beverley and they looked encouragement into each other's eyes.
Oncle Jazon volunteered to go in the pirogue. He was ready for anything, everything.
"I can't shoot wo'th a cent," he whined, as they took their places in the cranky pirogue; "but I might jes' happen to kill a squir'l or a elephant or somepin 'nother."
"Very well," shouted Clark in a loud, cheerful voice, when they had paddled away to a considerable distance, "bring the meat to the woods on the hill yonder," pointing to a distant island-like ridge far beyond the creeping flood. "We'll be there ready to eat it!"
He said this for the ears of his men. They heard and answered with a straggling but determined chorus of approval. They crossed the rolling current of the Wabash by a tedious process of ferrying, and at last found themselves once more wading in back-water up to their armpits, breaking ice an inch thick as they went. It was the closing struggle to reach the high wooded lands. Many of them fell exhausted; but their stronger comrades lifted them, holding their heads above water, and dragged them on.
Clark, always leading, always inspiring, was first to set foot on dry land. He shouted triumphantly, waved his sword, and then fell to helping the men out of the freezing flood. This accomplished, he ordered fires built; but there was not a soldier of them all whose hands could clasp an ax-handle, so weak and numbed with cold were they. He was not to be baffled, however. If fire could not be had, exercise must serve its purpose. Hastily pouring some powder into his hand he dampened it and blacked his face. "Victory, men, victory!" he shouted, taking off his hat and beginning to leap and dance. "Come on! We'll have a war dance and then a feast, as soon as the meat arrives that I have sent for. Dance! you brave lads, dance! Victory! victory!"
The strong men, understanding their Colonel's purpose, took hold of the delicate ones; and the leaping, the capering, the tumult of voices and the stamping of slushy moccasins with which they assaulted that stately forest must have frightened every wild thing thereabout into a deadly rigor, dark's irrepressible energy and optimism worked a veritable charm upon his faithful but almost dying companions in arms. Their trust in him made them feel sure that food would soon be forthcoming. The thought afforded a stimulus more potent than wine; it drove them into an ecstasy of frantic motion and shouting which soon warmed them thoroughly.
It is said that fortune favors the brave. The larger meaning of the sentence may be given thus: God guards those who deserve His protection. History tells us that just when Clark halted his command almost in sight of Vincennes--just when hunger was about to prevent the victory so close to his grasp--a party of his scouts brought in the haunch of a buffalo captured from some Indians. The scouts were Lieutenant Beverley and Oncle Jazon. And with the meat they brought Indian kettles in which to cook it.
With consummate forethought Clark arranged to prevent his men doing themselves injury by bolting their food or eating it half-cooked. Broth was first made and served hot; then small bits of well broiled steak were doled out, until by degrees the fine effect of nourishment set in, and all the command felt the fresh courage of healthy reaction.
"I ain't no gin'ral, nor corp'ral, nor nothin'," remarked Oncle Jazon to Colonel Clark, "but 'f I's you I'd h'ist up every dad dinged ole flag in the rig'ment, w'en I got ready to show myself to 'em, an' I'd make 'em think, over yander at the fort, 'at I had 'bout ninety thousan' men. Hit'd skeer that sandy faced Gov'nor over there till he'd think his back-bone was a comin' out'n 'im by the roots."
Clark laughed, but his face showed that the old man's suggestion struck him forcibly and seriously.
"We'll see about that presently, Oncle Jazon. Wait till we reach the hill yonder, from which the whole town can observe our manoeuvres, then we'll try it, maybe."
Once more the men were lined up, the roll-call gone through with satisfactorily, and the question put: "Are we ready for another plunge through the mud and water?"
The answer came in the affirmative, with a unanimity not to be mistaken. The weakest heart of them all beat to the time of the charge step. Again Clark and Beverley clasped hands and took the lead.
When they reached the next high ground they gazed in silence across a slushy prairie plot to where, on a slight elevation, old Vincennes and Fort Sackville lay in full view.
Beverley stood apart. A rush of sensations affected him so that he shook like one whose strength is gone. His vision was blurred. Fort and town swimming in a mist were silent and still. Save the British flag twinkling above Hamilton's headquarters, nothing indicated that the place was not deserted. And Alice? With the sweet name's echo Beverley's heart bounded high, then sank fluttering at the recollection that she was either yonder at the mercy of Hamilton, or already the victim of an unspeakable cruelty. Was it weakness for him to lift his clasped hands heavenward and send up a voiceless prayer?
While he stood thus Oncle Jazon came softly to his side and touched his arm. Beverley started.
"The nex' thing'll be to shoot the everlastin' gizzards outen 'em, won't it?" the old man inquired. "I'm jes' a eetchin' to git a grip onto that Gov'nor. Ef I don't scelp 'em I'm a squaw."
Beverley drew a deep breath and came promptly back from his dream. It was now Oncle Jazon's turn to assume a reflective, reminiscent mood. He looked about him with an expression of vague half tenderness on his shriveled features.
"I's jes' a thinkin' how time do run past a feller," he presently remarked. "Twenty-seven years ago I camped right here wi' my wife--ninth one, ef I 'member correct--jes' fresh married to 'r; sort o' honey-moon. 'Twus warm an' sunshiny an' nice. She wus a poorty squaw, mighty poorty, an' I wus as happy as a tomtit on a sugar-trough. We b'iled sap yander on them nobs under the maples. It wus glor'us. Had some several wives 'fore an' lots of 'm sence; but she wus sweetes' of 'm all. Strange how a feller 'members sich things an' feels sort o' lonesome like!"
The old man's mouth drooped at the corners and he hitched up his buckskin trousers with a ludicrous suggestion of pathos in every line of his attitude. Unconsciously he sidled closer to Beverley, remotely feeling that he was giving the young man very effective sympathy, well knowing that Alice was the sweet burden of his thoughts. It was thus Oncle Jazon honestly tried to fortify his friend against what probably lay in store for him.
But Beverley failed to catch the old man's crude comfort thus flung at him. The analogy was not apparent. Oncle Jazon probably felt that his kindness had been ineffectual, for he changed his tone and added: "But I s'pose a young feller like ye can't onderstan' w'at it is to love a 'oman an' 'en hev 'er quit ye for 'nother feller, an' him a buck Injin. Wall, wall, wall, that's the way it do go! Of all the livin' things upon top o' this yere globe, the mos' onsartin', crinkety-crankety an' slippery thing is a young 'oman 'at knows she's poorty an' 'at every other man in the known world is blind stavin' crazy in love wi' 'er, same as you are. She'll drop ye like a hot tater 'fore ye know it, an' 'en look at ye jes' pine blank like she never knowed ye afore in her life. It's so, Lieutenant, shore's ye'r born. I know, for I've tried the odd number of 'em, an' they're all jes' the same."
By this time Beverley's ears were deaf to Oncle Jazon's querulous, whining voice, and his thoughts once more followed his wistful gaze across the watery plain to where the low roofs of the creole town appeared dimly wavering in the twilight of eventide, which was fast fading into night. The scene seemed unsubstantial; he felt a strange lethargy possessing his soul; he could not realize the situation. In trying to imagine Alice, she eluded him, so that a sort of cloudy void fell across his vision with the effect of baffling and benumbing it. He made vain efforts to recall her voice, things that she had said to him, her face, her smiles; all he could do was to evoke an elusive, tantalizing, ghostly something which made him shiver inwardly with a haunting fear that it meant the worst, whatever the worst might be. Where was she? Could she be dead, and this the shadowy message of her fate?
Darkness fell, and a thin fog began to drift in wan streaks above the water. Not a sound, save the suppressed stir of the camp, broke the wide, dreary silence. Oncle Jazon babbled until satisfied that Beverley was unappreciative, or at least unresponsive.
"Got to hev some terbacker," he remarked, and shambled away in search of it among his friends.
A little later Clark approached hastily and said: "I have been looking for you. The march has begun. Bowman and Charleville are moving; come, there's no time to lose."
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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18
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A DUEL BY MOONLIGHT
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When Hamilton, after running some distance, saw that he was gaining upon Alice and would soon overtake her, it added fresh energy to his limbs. He had quickly realized the foolishness of what he had done in visiting the room of his prisoner at so late an hour in the night. What would his officers and men think? To let Alice escape would be extremely embarrassing, and to be seen chasing her would give good ground for ridicule on the part of his entire command. Therefore his first thought, after passing through the postern and realizing fully what sort of predicament threatened him, was to recapture her and return her to the prison room in the block-house without attracting attention. This now promised to be an easier task than he had at first feared; for in the moonlight, which on account of the dispersing clouds, was fast growing stronger, he saw her seem to falter and weaken. Certainly her flight was checked and took an eccentric turn, as if some obstruction had barred her way. He rushed on, not seeing that, as Alice swerved, a man intervened. Indeed he was within a few strides of laying his hand on her when he saw her make the strange movement. It was as if, springing suddenly aside, she had become two persons instead of one. But instantly the figures coincided again, and in becoming taller faced about and confronted him.
Hamilton stopped short in his tracks. The dark figure was about five paces from him. It was not Alice, and a sword flashed dimly but unmistakably in a ray of the moon. The motion visible was that of an expert swordsman placing himself firmly on his legs, with his weapon at guard.
Alice saw the man in her path just in time to avoid running against him. Lightly as a flying bird, when it whisks itself in a short semicircle past a tree or a bough, she sprang aside and swung around to the rear of him, where she could continue her course toward the town. But in passing she recognized him. It was Father Beret, and how grim he looked! The discovery was made in the twinkling of an eye, and its effect was instantaneous, not only checking the force of her flight, but stopping her and turning her about to gaze before she had gone five paces farther.
Hamilton's nerve held, startled as he was, when he realized that an armed man stood before him. Naturally he fell into the error of thinking that he had been running after this fellow all the way from the little gate, where, he supposed, Alice had somehow given him the slip. It was a mere flash of brain-light, so to call it, struck out by the surprise of this curious discovery. He felt his bellicose temper leap up furiously at being balked in a way so unexpected and withal so inexplicable. Of course he did not stand there reasoning it all out. The rush of impressions came, and at the same time he acted with promptness. Changing the rapier, which he held in his right hand, over into his left, he drew a small pistol from the breast of his coat and fired. The report was sharp and loud; but it caused no uneasiness or inquiry in the fort, owing to the fact that Indians invariably emptied their guns when coming into the town.
Hamilton's aim, although hasty, was not bad. The bullet from his weapon cut through Father Beret's clothes between his left arm and his body, slightly creasing the flesh on a rib. Beyond him it struck heavily and audibly. Alice fell limp and motionless to the soft wet ground, where cold puddles of water were splintered over with ice. She lay pitifully crumpled, one arm outstretched in the moonlight. Father Beret heard the bullet hit her, and turned in time to see her stagger backward with a hand convulsively pressed over her heart. Her face, slightly upturned as she reeled, gave the moon a pallid target for its strengthening rays. Sweet, beautiful, its rigid features flashed for a second and then half turned away from the light and went down.
Father Beret uttered a short, thin cry and moved as if to go to the fallen girl, but just then he saw Hamilton's sword pass over again into his right hand, and knew that there was no time for anything but death or fight. The good priest did not shirk what might have made the readiest of soldiers nervous. Hamilton was known to be a great swordsman and proud of the distinction. Father Beret had seen him fence with Farnsworth in remarkable form, touching him at will, and in ministering to the men in the fort he had heard them talk of the Governor's incomparable skill.
A priest is, in perhaps all cases but the last out of a thousand, a man of peace, not to be forced into a fight; but the exceptional one out of the ten hundred it is well not to stir up if you are looking for an easy victim. Hamilton was in the habit of considering every antagonist immediately conquerable. His domineering spirit could not, when opposed, reckon with any possibility of disaster. As he sprang toward Father Beret there was a mutual recognition and, we speak guardedly, something that sounded exactly like an exchange of furious execrations. As for Father Beret's words, they may have been a mere priestly formula of objurgation.
The moon was accommodating. With a beautiful white splendor it entered a space of cloudless sky, where it seemed to slip along the dusky blue surface among the stars, far over in the west.
"It's you, is it?" Hamilton exclaimed between teeth that almost crushed one another. "You prowling hypocrite of hell!"
Father Beret said something. It was not complimentary, and it sounded sulphurous, if not profane. Remember, however, that a priest can scarcely hope to be better than Peter, and Peter did actually make the Simon pure remark when hard pressed. At all events Father Beret said something with vigorous emphasis, and met Hamilton half way.
Both men, stimulated to the finger-tips by a draught of imperious passion, fairly plunged to the inevitable conflict. Ah, if Alice could have seen her beautiful weapons cross, if she could have heard the fine, far-reaching clink, clink, clink, while sparks leaped forth, dazzling even in the moonlight; if she could have noted the admirable, nay, the amazing, play, as the men, regaining coolness to some extent, gathered their forces and fell cautiously to the deadly work, it would have been enough to change the cold shimmer of her face to a flash of warm delight. For she would have understood every feint, longe, parry, and seen at a glance how Father Beret set the pace and led the race at the beginning. She would have understood; for Father Beret had taught her all she knew about the art of fencing.
Hamilton quickly felt, and with a sense of its strangeness, the priest's masterly command of his weapon. The surprise called up all his caution and cleverness. Before he could adjust himself to such an unexpected condition he came near being spitted outright by a pretty pass under his guard. The narrow escape, while it put him on his best mettle, sent a wave of superstition through his brain. He recalled what Barlow had jocularly said about the doings of the devil-priest or priest-devil at Roussillon place on that night when the patrol guard attempted to take Gaspard Roussillon. Was this, indeed, Father Beret, that gentle old man, now before him, or was it an avenging demon from the shades?
The thought flitted electrically across his mind, while he deftly parried, feinted, longed, giving his dark antagonist all he could do to meet the play. Priest or devil, he thought, he cared not which, he would reach its vitals presently. Yet there lingered with him a haunting half-fear, or tenuous awe, which may have aided, rather than hindered his excellent swordsmanship.
Under foot it was slushy with mud, water and ice, the consistency varying from a somewhat solid crust to puddles that half inundated Hamilton's boots and quite overflowed Father Beret's moccasins. An execrable field for the little matter in hand. They gradually shifted position. Now it was the Governor, then the priest, who had advantage as to the light. For some time Father Beret seemed quite the shiftier and surer fighter, but (was it his age telling on him?) he lost perceptibly in suppleness. Still Hamilton failed to touch him. There was a baffling something in the old man's escape now and again from what ought to have been an inevitable stroke. Was it luck? It seemed to Hamilton more than that--a sort of uncanny evasion. Or was it supreme mastery, the last and subtlest reach of the fencer's craft?
Youth forced age slowly backward in the struggle, which at times took on spurts so furious that the slender blades, becoming mere glints of acicular steel, split the moonlight back and forth, up and down, so that their meetings, following one another in a well-nigh continuous stroke, sent a jarring noise through the air. Father Beret lost inch by inch, until the fighting was almost over the body of Alice; and now for the first time Hamilton became aware of that motionless something with the white, luminous face in profile against the ground; but he did not let even that unsettle his fencing gaze, which followed the sunken and dusky eyes of his adversary. A perspiration suddenly flooded his body, however, and began to drip across his face. His arm was tiring. A doubt crept like a chill into his heart. Then the priest appeared to add a cubit to his stature and waver strangely in the soft light. Behind him, low against the sky, a wide winged owl shot noiselessly across just above the prairie.
The soul of a true priest is double: it is the soul of a saint and the soul of a worldly man. What is most beautiful in this duality is the supreme courage with which the saintly spirit attacks the worldly and so often heroically masters it. In the beginning of the fight Father Beret let a passion of the earthly body take him by storm. It was well for Governor Henry Hamilton that the priest was so wrought upon as to unsettle his nerves, otherwise there would have been an evil heart impaled midway of Father Beret's rapier. A little later the saintly spirit began to assert itself, feebly indeed, but surely. Then it was that Father Beret seemed to be losing agility for a while as he backstepped away from Hamilton's increasing energy of assault. In his heart the priest was saying: "I will not murder him. I must not do that. He deserves death, but vengeance is not mine. I will disarm him." Step by step he retreated, playing erratically to make an opening for a trick he meant to use.
It was singularly loose play, a sort of wavering, shifty, incomprehensible show of carelessness, that caused Hamilton to entertain a doubt, which was really a fear, as to what was going to happen; for, notwithstanding all this neglect of due precaution on the priest's part, to touch him seemed impossible, miraculously so, and every plan of attack dissolved into futility in the most maddening way.
"Priest, devil or ghost!" raged Hamilton, with a froth gathering around his mouth; "I'll kill you, or--" He made a longe, when his adversary left an opening which appeared absolutely beyond defence. It was a quick, dextrous, vicious thrust. The blade leaped toward Father Beret's heart with a twinkle like lightning.
At that moment, although warily alert and hopeful that his opportunity was at hand, Father Beret came near losing his life; for as he side-stepped and easily parried Hamilton's thrust, which he had invited, thinking to entangle his blade and disarm him, he caught his foot in Alice's skirt and stumbled, nearly falling across her. It would have been easy for Hamilton to run him through, had he instantly followed up the advantage. But the moonlight on Alice's face struck his eyes, and by that indirect ray of vision which is often strangely effective, he recognized her lying there. It was a disconcerting thing for him, but he rallied instantly and sprang aside, taking a new position just in time to face Father Beret again. A chill crept up his back. The horror which he could not shake off enraged him beyond measure. Gathering fresh energy, he renewed the assault with desperate steadiness the highest product of absolutely molten fury.
Father Beret felt the dangerous access of power in his antagonist's arm, and knew that a crisis had arrived. He could not be careless now. Here was a swordsman of the best school calling upon him for all the skill and strength and cunning that he could command. Again the saintly element was near being thrown aside by the worldly in the old man's breast. Alice lying there seemed mutely demanding that he avenge her. A riotous something in his blood clamored for a quick and certain act in this drama by moonlight--a tragic close by a stroke of terrible yet perfectly fitting justice.
There was but the space of a breath for the conflict in the priest's heart, yet during that little time he reasoned the case and quoted scripture to himself.
"Domine, percutimus in gladio?" rang through his mind. "Lord, shall we smite with the sword?"
Hamilton seemed to make answer to this with a dazzling display of skill. The rapiers sang a strange song above the sleeping girl, a lullaby with coruscations of death in every keen note.
Father Beret was thinking of Alice. His brain, playing double, calculated with lightning swiftness the chances and movements of that whirlwind rush of fight, while at the same time it swept through a retrospect of all the years since Alice came into his life. How he had watched her grow and bloom; how he had taught her, trained her mind and soul and body to high things, loved her with a fatherly passion unbounded, guarded her from the coarse and lawless influences of her surroundings. Like the tolling of an infinitely melancholy bell, all this went through his breast and brain, and, blending with a furious current of whatever passions were deadly dangerous in his nature, swept as a storm bearing its awful force into his sword-arm.
The Englishman was a lion, the priest a gladiator. The stars aloft in the vague, dark, yet splendid, amphitheater were the audience. It was a question. Would the thumbs go down or up? Life and death held the chances even; but it was at the will of Heaven, not of the stars. "Hoc habet" must follow the stroke ordered from beyond the astral clusters and the dusky blue.
Hamilton pressed, nay rushed, the fight with a weight and at a pace which could not last. But Father Beret withstood him so firmly that he made no farther headway; he even lost some ground a moment later.
"You damned Jesuit hypocrite!" he snarled; "you lowest of a vile brotherhood of liars!"
Then he rushed again, making a magnificent show of strength, quickness and accuracy. The sparks hissed and crackled from the rasping and ringing blades.
Father Beret was, in truth, a Jesuit, and as such a zealot; but he was not a liar or a hypocrite. Being human, he resented an insult. The saintly spirit in him was strong, yet not strong enough to breast the indignation which now dashed against it. For a moment it went down.
"Liar and scoundrel yourself!" he retorted, hoarsely forcing the words out of his throat. "Spawn of a beastly breed!"
Hamilton saw and felt a change pass over the spirit of the old priest's movements. Instantly the sword leaping against his own seemed endowed with subtle cunning and malignant treachery. Before this it had been difficult enough to meet the fine play and hold fairly even; now he was startled and confused; but he rose to the emergency with admirable will power and cleverness.
"Murderer of a poor orphan girl!" Father Beret added with a hot concentrated accent; "death is too good for you."
Hamilton felt nearer his grave than ever before in all his wild experience, for somehow doom, shadowy and formless, like the atmosphere of an awful dream, enmisted those words; but he was no weakling to quit at the height of desperate conflict. He was strong, expert, and game to the middle of his heart.
"I'll add a traitor Jesuit to my list of dead," he panted forth, rising yet again to the extremest tension of his power.
As he did this Father Beret settled himself as you have seen a mighty horse do in the home stretch of a race. Both men knew that the moment had arrived for the final act in their impromptu play. It was short, a duel condensed and crowded into fifteen seconds of time, and it was rapid beyond the power of words to describe. A bystander, had there been one, could not have seen what was finally done or how it was done. Father Beret's sword seemed to be revolving--it was a halo in front of Hamilton for a mere point of time. The old priest seemed to crouch and then make a quick motion as if about to leap backward. A wrench and a snip, as of something violently jerked from a fastening, were followed by a semicircular flight of Hamilton's rapier over Father Beret's head to stick in the ground ten feet behind him. The duel was over, and the whole terrible struggle had occupied less than three minutes.
With his wrist strained and his fingers almost broken, Hamilton stumbled forward and would have impaled himself had not Father Beret turned the point of his weapon aside as he lowered it.
"Surrender, or die!"
That was a strange order for a priest to make, but there could be no mistaking its authority or the power behind it. Hamilton regained his footing and looked dazed, wheezing and puffing like a porpoise, but he clearly understood what was demanded of him.
"If you call out I'll run you through," Father Beret added, seeing him move his lips as if to shout for help.
The level rapier now reinforced the words. Hamilton let the breath go noiselessly from his mouth and waved his hand in token of enforced submission.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" he demanded after a short pause. "You seem to have me at your mercy. What are your terms?"
Father Beret hesitated. It was a question difficult to answer.
"Give me your word as a British officer that you will never again try to harm any person, not an open, armed enemy, in this town."
Hamilton's gorge rose perversely. He erected himself with lofty reserve and folded his arms. The dignity of a Lieutenant Governor leaped into him and took control. Father Beret correctly interpreted what he saw.
"My people have borne much," he said, "and the killing of that poor child there will be awfully avenged if I but say the word. Besides, I can turn every Indian in this wilderness against you in a single day. You are indeed at my mercy, and I will be merciful if you will satisfy my demand."
He was trembling with emotion while he spoke and the desire to kill the man before him was making a frightful struggle with his priestly conscience; but conscience had the upper hand. Hamilton stood gazing fixedly, pale as a ghost, his thoughts becoming more and more clear and logical. He was in a bad situation. Every word that Father Beret had spoken was true and went home with force. There was no time for parley or subterfuge; the sword looked as if, eager to find his heart, it could not be held back another moment. But the wan, cold face of the girl had more power than the rapier's hungry point. It made an abject coward of him.
"I am willing to give you my word," he presently said. "And let me tell you," he went on more rapidly, "I did not shoot at her. She was behind you."
"Your word as a British officer?"
Hamilton again stiffened and hesitated, but only for the briefest space, then said: "Yes, my word as a British officer."
Father Beret waved his hand with impatience.
"Go, then, back to your place in the fort and disturb, my people no more. The soul of this poor little girl will haunt you forever. Go!"
Hamilton stood a little while gazing at the face of Alice with the horrible wistfulness of remorse. What would he not have given to rub his eyes and find it all a dream?
He turned away; a cloud scudded across the moon; here and yonder in the dim town cocks crowed with a lonesome, desultory effect.
Father Beret plucked up the rapier that he had wrenched from Hamilton's hand. It suggested something.
"Hold!" he called out, "give me the scabbard of this sword." Hamilton, who was striding vigorously in the direction of the fort, turned about as the priest hastened to him.
"Give me the scabbard of this rapier; I want it. Take it off."
The command was not gently voiced. A hoarse, half-whisper winged every word with an imperious threat.
Hamilton obeyed. His hands were not firm; his fingers fumbled nervously; but he hurried, and Father Beret soon had the rapier sheathed and secured at his belt beside its mate.
A good and true priest is a burden-bearer. His motto is: Alter alterius onera portate; bear ye one another's burdens. His soul is enriched with the cast-off sorrows of those whom he relieves. Father Beret scarcely felt the weight of Alice's body when he lifted it from the ground, so heavy was the pressure of his grief. All that her death meant, not only to him, but to every person who knew her, came into his heart as the place of refuge consecrated for the indwelling of pain. He lifted her and bore her as far toward Roussillon place as he could; but his strength fell short just in front of the little Bourcier cottage, and half dead he staggered across the veranda to the door, where he sank exhausted.
After a breathing spell he knocked. The household, fast asleep, did not hear; but he persisted until the door was opened to him and his burden.
Captain Farnsworth unclosed his bloodshot eyes, at about eight o'clock in the morning, quite confused as to his place and surroundings. He looked about drowsily with a sheepish half-knowledge of having been very drunk. A purring in his head and a dull ache reminded him of an abused stomach. He yawned and stretched himself, then sat up, running a hand through his tousled hair. Father Beret was on his knees before the cross, still as a statue, his clasped hands extended upward.
Farnsworth's face lighted with recognition, and he smiled rather bitterly. He recalled everything and felt ashamed, humiliated, self-debased. He had outraged even a priest's hospitality with his brutish appetite, and he hated himself for it. Disgust nauseated his soul apace with the physical sinking and squirming that grew upon him.
"I'm a shabby, worthless dog!" he muttered, with petulant accent; "why don't you kick me out, Father?"
The priest turned a collapsed and bloodless gray face upon him, smiled in a tired, perfunctory way, crossed himself absently and said: "You have rested well, my son. Hard as the bed is, you have done it a compliment in the way of sleeping. You young soldiers understand how to get the most out of things."
"You are too generous, Father, and I can't appreciate it. I know what I deserve, and you know it, too. Tell me what a brute and fool I am; it will do me good. Punch me a solid jolt in the ribs, like the one you gave me not long ago."
"Qui sine peccato est, primus lapidem mittat" said the priest. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
He had gone to the hearth and was taking from the embers an earthen saucer, or shallow bowl, in which some fragrant broth simmered and steamed.
"A man who has slept as long as you have, my son, usually has a somewhat delicate appetite. Now, here is a soup, not especially satisfying to the taste of a gourmet like yourself, but possessing the soothing quality that is good for one just aroused from an unusual nap. I offer it, my son, propter stomachum tuum, et frequentes tuas infirmitates (on account of thy stomach, and thine often infirmities). This soup will go to the right spot."
While speaking he brought the hot bowl to Farnsworth and set it on the bedcover before him, then fetched a big horn spoon.
The fragrance of pungent roots and herbs, blent with a savory waft of buffalo meat, greeted the Captain's sense, and the anticipation itself cheered his aching throat. It made him feel greedy and in a hurry. The first spoonful, a trifle bitter, was not so pleasant at the beginning, but a moment after he swallowed it a hot prickling set in and seemed to dart through him from extremity to extremity.
Slowly, as he ate, the taste grew more agreeable, and all the effects of his debauch disappeared. It was like magic; his blood warmed and glowed, as if touched with mysterious fire.
"What is this in this soup, Father Beret, that makes it so searching and refreshing?" he demanded, when the bowl was empty.
Father Beret shook his head and smiled drolly.
"That I cannot divulge, my son, owing to a promise I had to make to the aged Indian who gave me the secret. It is the elixir of the Miamis. Only their consecrated medicine men hold the recipe. The stimulation is but temporary."
Just then someone knocked on the door. Father Beret opened it to one of Hamilton's aides.
"Your pardon, Father, but hearing Captain Farnsworth's voice I made bold to knock."
"What is it, Bobby?" Farnsworth called out.
"Nothing, only the Governor has been having you looked for in every nook and corner of the fort and town. You'd better report at once, or hell be having us drag the river for your body."
"All right, Lieutenant, go back and keep mum, that's a dear boy, and I'll shuffle into Colonel Hamilton's august presence before many minutes."
The aide laughed and went his way whistling a merry tune.
"Now I am sure to get what I deserve, with usury at forty per cent in advance," said Farnsworth dryly, shrugging his shoulders with undissembled dread of Hamilton's wrath. But the anticipation was not realized. The Governor received Farnsworth stiffly enough, yet in a way that suggested a suppressed desire to avoid explanations on the Captain's part and a reprimand on his own. In fact, Hamilton was hoping that something would turn up to shield him from the effect of his terrible midnight adventure, which seemed the darker the more he thought of it. He had a slow, numb conscience, lying deep where it was hard to reach, and when a qualm somehow entered it he endured in secret what most men would have cast off or confessed. He was haunted, if not with remorse, at least by a dread of something most disagreeable in connection with what he had done. Alice's white face had impressed itself indelibly on his memory, so that it met his inner vision at every turn. He was afraid to converse with Farnsworth lest she should come up for discussion; consequently their interview was curt and formal.
It was soon discovered that Alice had escaped from the stockade, and some show of search was made for her by Hamilton's order, but Farnsworth looked to it that the order was not carried out. He thought he saw at once that his chief knew where she was. The mystery perplexed and pained the young man, and caused him to fear all sorts of evil; but there was a chance that Alice had found a safe retreat and he knew that nothing but ill could befall her if she were discovered and brought back to the fort. Therefore his search for her became his own secret and for his own heart's ease. And doubtless he would have found her; for even handicapped and distorted love like his is lynx-eyed and sure on the track of its object; but a great event intervened and swept away his opportunity.
Hamilton's uneasiness, which was that of a strong, misguided nature trying to justify itself amid a confusion of unmanageable doubts and misgivings, now vented itself in a resumption of the repairs he had been making at certain points in the fort. These he completed just in time for the coming of Clark.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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19
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THE ATTACK
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It has already been mentioned that Indians, arriving singly or in squads, to report at Hamilton's headquarters, were in the habit of firing their guns before entering the town or the fort, not only as a signal of their approach, but in order to rid their weapons of their charges preliminary to cleaning them before setting out upon another scalp-hunting expedition. A shot, therefore, or even a volley, heard on the outskirts of the village, was not a noticeable incident in the daily and nightly experience of the garrison. Still, for some reason, Governor Hamilton started violently when, just after nightfall, five or six rifles cracked sharply a short distance from the stockade.
He and Helm with two other officers were in the midst of a game of cards, while a kettle, swinging on a crane in the ample fire-place, sang a shrill promise of hot apple-jack toddy.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Farnsworth, who, although not in the game, was amusing himself with looking on; "you jump like a fine lady! I almost fancied I heard a bullet hit you."
"You may all jump while you can," remarked Helm. "That's Clark, and your time's short--He'll have this fort tumbling on your heads before daylight of to-morrow morning comes."
As he spoke he arose from his seat at the card table and went to look after the toddy, which, as an expert, he had under supervision.
Hamilton frowned. The mention of Clark was disturbing. Ever since the strange disappearance of Lieutenant Barlow he had nursed the fear that possibly Clark's scouts had captured him and that the American forces might be much nearer than Kaskaskia. Besides, his nerves were unruly, as they had been ever since the encounter with Father Beret; and his vision persisted in turning back upon the accusing cold face of Alice, lying in the moonlight. One little detail of that scene almost maddened him at times; it was a sheeny, crinkled wisp of warm looking hair looped across the cheek in which he had often seen a saucy dimple dance when Alice spoke or smiled. He was bad enough, but not wholly bad, and the thought of having darkened those merry eyes and stilled those sweet dimples tore through him with a cold, rasping pang.
"Just as soon as this toddy is properly mixed and tempered," said Helm, with a magnetic jocosity beaming from his genial face, "I'm going to propose a toast to the banner of Alice Roussillon, which a whole garrison of British braves has been unable to take!"
"If you do I'll blow a hole through you as big as the south door of hell," said Hamilton, in a voice fairly shaken to a husky quaver with rage. "You may do a great many insulting things; but not that."
Helm was in a half stooping attitude with a ladle in one hand, a cup in the other. He had met Hamilton's glowering look with a peculiarly innocent smile, as if to say: "What in the world is the matter now? I never felt in a better humor in all my life. Can't you take a joke, I wonder?" He did not speak, however, for a rattling volley of musket and rifle shots hit the top of the clay-daubed chimney, sending down into the toddy a shower of soot and dirt.
In a wink every man was on his feet and staring.
"Gentlemen," said Helm, with an impressive oath, "that is Clark's soldiers, and they will take your fort; but they ought not to have spoiled this apple toddy!"
"Oh, the devil!" said Hamilton, forcibly resuming a calm countenance, "it is only a squad of drunken Indians coming in. We'll forego excitement; there's no battle on hand, gentlemen."
"I'm glad you think so, Governor Hamilton," Helm responded, "but I should imagine that I ought to know the crack of a Kentucky rifle. I've heard one occasionally in my life. Besides, I got a whiff of freedom just now."
"Captain Helm is right," observed Farnsworth. "That is an attack."
Another volley, this time nearer and more concentrated, convinced Hamilton that he was, indeed, at the opening of a fight. Even while he was giving some hurried orders to his officers, a man was wounded at one of the port-holes. Then came a series of yells, answered by a ripple of sympathetic French shouting that ran throughout the town. The patrol guards came straggling in, breathless with excitement. They swore to having seen a thousand men marching across the water-covered meadows.
Hamilton was brave. The approach of danger stirred him like a trumpet-strain. His fighting blood rose to full tide, and he gave his orders with the steadiness and commanding force of a born soldier. The officers hastened to their respective positions. On all sides sounds indicative of rapid preparations for the fight mingled into a confused strain of military energy. Men marched to their places; cannon were wheeled into position, and soon enough the firing began in good earnest.
Late in the afternoon a rumor of Clark's approach had gone abroad through the village; but not a French lip breathed it to a friend of the British. The creoles were loyal to the cause of freedom; moreover, they cordially hated Hamilton, and their hearts beat high at the prospect of a change in masters at the fort. Every cabin had its hidden gun and supply of ammunition, despite the order to disarm issued by Hamilton. There was a hustling to bring these forth, which was accompanied with a guarded yet irrepressible chattering, delightfully French and infinitely volatile.
"Tiens! je vais frotter mon fusil. J'ai vu un singe!" said Jaques Bourcier to his daughter, the pretty Adrienne, who was coming out of the room in which Alice lay.
"I saw a monkey just now; I must rub up my gun!" He could not be solemn; not he. The thought of an opportunity to get even with Hamilton was like wine in his blood.
If you had seen those hardy and sinewy Frenchmen gliding in the dusk of evening from cottage to cottage, passing the word that the Americans had arrived, saying airy things and pinching one another as they met and hurried on, you would have thought something very amusing and wholly jocund was in preparation for the people of Vincennes.
There was a current belief in the town that Gaspard Roussillon never missed a good thing and always somehow got the lion's share. He went out with the ebb to return on the flood. Nobody was surprised, therefore, when he suddenly appeared in the midst of his friends, armed to the teeth and emotionally warlike to suit the occasion. Of course he took charge of everybody and everything. You could have heard him whisper a bowshot away.
"Taisons!" he hissed, whenever he met an acquaintance. "We will surprise the fort and scalp the whole garrison. Aux armes! les Americains viennent d'arriver!"
At his own house he knocked and called in vain. He shook the door violently; for he was thinking of the stores under the floor, of the grimy bottles, of the fragrant Bordeaux--ah, his throat, how it throbbed! But where was Madame Roussillon? Where was Alice? "Jean! Jean!" he cried, forgetting all precaution, "come here, you scamp, and let me in this minute!"
A profoundly impressive silence gave him to understand that his home was deserted.
"Chiff! frightened and gone to stay with Madame Godere, I suppose--and I so thirsty! Bah! hum, hum, apres le vin la bataille, ziff!"
He kicked in the door and groped his way to the liquors. While he hastily swigged and smacked he heard the firing begin with a crackling, desultory volley. He laughed jovially, there in the dark, between draughts and deep sighs of enjoyment.
"Et moi aussi," he murmured, like the vast murmur of the sea, "I want to be in that dance! Pardonnez, messieurs. Moi, je veux danser, s'il vous plait."
And when he had filled himself he plunged out and rushed away, wrought up to the extreme fighting pitch of temper. Diable! if he could but come across that Lieutenant Barlow, how he would smash him and mangle him! In magnifying his prowess with the lens of imagination he swelled and puffed as he lumbered along.
The firing sounded as if it were between the fort and the river; but presently when one of Hamilton's cannon spoke, M. Roussillon saw the yellow spike of flame from its muzzle leap directly toward the church, and he thought it best to make a wide detour to avoid going between the firing lines. Once or twice he heard the whine of a stray bullet high overhead. Before he had gone very far he met a man hurrying toward the fort. It was Captain Francis Maisonville, one of Hamilton's chief scouts, who had been out on a reconnoissance and, cut off from his party by some of Clark's forces, was trying to make his way to the main gate of the stockade.
M. Roussillon knew Maisonville as a somewhat desperate character, a leader of Indian forays and a trader in human scalps. Surely the fellow was legitimate prey.
"Ziff! diable de gredin!" he snarled, and leaping upon him choked him to the ground, "Je vais vous scalper immediatement!"
Clark's plan of approach showed masterly strategy. Lieutenant Bailey, with fourteen regulars, made a show of attack on the east, while Major Bowman led a company through the town, on a line near where Main street in Vincennes is now located, to a point north of the stockade. Charleville, a brave creole, who was at the head of some daring fellows, by a brilliant dash got position under cover of a natural terrace at the edge of the prairie, opposite the fort's southwestern angle. Lieutenant Beverley, in whom the commander placed highest confidence, was sent to look for a supply of ammunition, and to gather up all the Frenchmen in the town who wished to join in the attack. Oncle Jazon and ten other available men went with him.
They all made a great noise when they felt that the place was completely invested. Nor can we deny, much as we would like to, the strong desire for vengeance which raised those shouting voices and nerved those steady hearts to do or die in an undertaking which certainly had a desperate look. Patriotism of the purest strain those men had, and that alone would have borne them up; but the recollection of smouldering cabin homes in Kentucky, of women and children murdered and scalped, of men brave and true burned at the stake, and of all the indescribable outrages of Indian warfare incited and rewarded by the commander of the fort yonder, added to patriotism the terrible urge of that dark passion which clamors for blood to quench the fire of wrath. Not a few of those wet, half-frozen, emaciated soldiers of freedom had experienced the soul rending shock of returning from a day's hunting in the forest to find home in ashes and loved ones brutally murdered and scalped, or dragged away to unspeakable outrage under circumstances too harrowing for description, the bare thought of which turns our blood cold, even at this distance. Now the opportunity had arrived for a stroke of retaliation. The thought was tremendously stimulating.
Beverley, with the aid of Oncle Jazon, was able to lead his little company as far as the church before the enemy saw him. Here a volley from the nearest angle of the stockade had to be answered, and pretty soon a cannon began to play upon the position.
"We kin do better some'rs else," was Oncle Jazon's laconic remark flung back over his shoulder, as he moved briskly away from the spot just swept by a six-pounder. "Come this yer way, Lieutenant. I hyer some o' the fellers a talkin' loud jes' beyant Legrace's place. They ain't no sort o' sense a tryin' to hit anything a shootin' in the dark nohow."
When they reached the thick of the town there was a strange stir in the dusky streets. Men were slipping from house to house, arming themselves and joining their neighbors. Clark had sent an order earlier in the evening forbidding any street demonstration by the inhabitants; but he might as well have ordered the wind not to blow or the river to stand still. Oncle Jazon knew every man whose outlines he could see or whose voice he heard. He called each one by name: "Here, Roger, fall in! --Come Louis, Alphonse, Victor, Octave--venez ici, here's the American army, come with me!" His rapid French phrases leaped forth as if shot from a pistol, and his shrill voice, familiar to every ear in Vincennes, drew the creole militiamen to him, and soon Beverley's company had doubled its numbers, while at the same time its enthusiasm and ability to make a noise had increased in a far greater proportion. In accordance with an order from Clark they now took position near the northeast corner of the stockade and began firing, although in the darkness there was but little opportunity for marksmanship.
Oncle Jazon had found citizens Legrace and Bosseron, and through them Clark's men were supplied with ammunition, of which they stood greatly in need, their powder having got wet during their long, watery march. By nine o'clock the fort was completely surrounded, and from every direction the riflemen and musketeers were pouring in volley after volley. Beverley with his men took the cover of a fence and some houses sixty yards from the stockade. Here to their surprise they found themselves below the line of Hamilton's cannon, which, being planted on the second floor of the fort, could not be sufficiently depressed to bear upon them. A well directed musket fire, however, fell from the loopholes of the blockhouses, the bullets rattling merrily against the cover behind which the attacking forces lay.
Beverley was thinking of Alice during every moment of all this stir and tumult He feared that she might still be a prisoner in the fort exposed to the very bullets that his men were discharging at every crack and cranny of those loosely constructed buildings. Should he ever see her again? Would she care for him? What would be the end of all this terrible suspense? Those remote forebodings of evils, formless, shadowy, ineffable, which have harried the lover's heart since time began, crowded all pleasant anticipations out of his mind.
Clark, in passing hurriedly from company to company around the line, stopped for a little while when he found Beverley.
"Have you plenty of ammunition?" was his first inquiry.
"A mighty sight more'n we kin see to shoot with," spoke up Oncle Jazon. "It's a right smart o' dad burn foolishness to be wastin' it on nothin'; seems like to me 'at we'd better set the dasted fort afire an' smoke the skunks out!"
"Speak when you are spoken to, my man," said the Colonel a trifle hotly, and trying by a sharp scrutiny to make him out in the gloom where he crouched.
"Ventrebleu! I'm not askin' YOU, Colonel Clark, nor no other man, when I shill speak. I talks whenever I gits ready, an' I shoots jes' the same way. So ye'd better go on 'bout yer business like a white man! Close up yer own whopper jawed mouth, ef ye want anything shet up!"
"Oho! is that you, Jazon? You're so little I didn't know you! Certainly, talk your whole damned under jaw off, for all I care," Clark replied, assuming a jocose tone. Then turning again to Beverley: "Keep up the firing and the noise; the fort will be ours in the morning."
"What's the use of waiting till morning?" Beverley demanded with impatience. "We can tear that stockade to pieces with our hands in half an hour."
"I don't think so, Lieutenant. It is better to play for the sure thing. Keep up the racket, and be ready for 'em if they rush out. We must not fail to capture the hair-buyer General."
He passed on, with something cheerful to say whenever he found a squad of his devoted men. He knew how to humor and manage those independent and undisciplined yet heroically brave fellows. What to see and hear, what to turn aside as a joke, what to insist upon with inflexible mastery, he knew by the fine instantaneous sense of genius. There were many men of Oncle Jazon's cast, true as steel, but refractory as flint, who could not be dominated by any person, no matter of what stamp or office. To them an order was an insult; but a suggestion pleased and captured them. Strange as it may seem, theirs was the conquering spirit of America--the spirit which has survived every turn of progress and built up the great body of our independence.
Beverley submitted to Clark's plan with what patience he could, and all night long fired shot for shot with the best riflemen in his squad. It was a fatiguing performance, with apparently little result beyond forcing the garrison now and again to close the embrasures, thus periodically silencing the cannon. Toward the close of the night a relaxation showed itself in the shouting and firing all round the line. Beverley's men, especially the creoles, held out bravely in the matter of noise; but even they flagged at length, their volatility simmering down to desultory bubbling and half sleepy chattering and chaffing.
Beverley leaned upon a rude fence, and for a time neglected to reload his hot rifle. Of course he was thinking of Alice,--he really could not think in any other direction; but it gave him a shock and a start when he presently heard her name mentioned by a little Frenchman near him on the left.
"There'll never be another such a girl in Post Vincennes as Alice Roussillon," the fellow said in the soft creole patois, "and to think of her being shot like a dog!"
"And by a man who calls himself a Governor, too!" said another. "Ah, as for myself, I'm in favor of burning him alive when we capture him. That's me!"
"Et moi aussi," chimed in a third voice. "That poor girl must be avenged. The man who shot her must die. Holy Virgin, but if Gaspard Roussillon were only here!"
"But he is here; I saw him just after dark. He was in great fighting temper, that terrible man. Ouf! but I should not like to be Colonel Hamilton and fall in the way of that Gaspard Roussillon!"
"Morbleu! I should say not. You may leave me out of a chance like that! I shouldn't mind seeing Gaspard handle the Governor, though. Ah, that would be too good! He'd pay him up for shooting Mademoiselle Alice."
Beverley could scarcely hold himself erect by the fence; the smoky, foggy landscape swam round him heavy and strange. He uttered a groan, which brought Oncle Jazon to his side in a hurry.
"Qu' avez-vous? What's the matter?" the old man demanded with quick sympathy. "Hev they hit ye? Lieutenant, air ye hurt much?"
Beverley did not hear the old man's words, did not feel his kindly touch.
"Alice! Alice!" he murmured, "dead, dead!"
"Ya-as," drawled Oncle Jazon, "I hearn about it soon as I got inter town. It's a sorry thing, a mighty sorry thing. But mebby I won't do a little somepin' to that--" Beverley straightened himself and lifted his gun, forgetting that he had not reloaded it since firing last. He leveled it at the fort and touched the trigger. Simultaneously with his movement an embrasure opened and a cannon flashed, its roar flanked on either side by a crackling of British muskets. Some bullets struck the fence and flung splinters into Oncle Jazon's face. A cannon ball knocked a ridge pole from the roof of a house hard by, and sent it whirling through the air.
"Ventrebleu! --et apres? What the devil next? Better knock a feller's eyes out!" the old man cried. "I ain't a doin' nothin' to ye!"
He capered around rubbing his leathery face after the manner of a scalded monkey. Beverley was struck in the breast by a flattened and spent ball that glanced from a fence-picket. The shock caused him to stagger and drop his gun; but he quickly picked it up and turned to his companion.
"Are you hurt, Oncle Jazon?" he inquired. "Are you hurt?"
"Not a bit--jes' skeert mos' into a duck fit. Thought a cannon ball had knocked my whole dang face down my throat! Nothin' but a handful o' splinters in my poorty count'nance, makin' my head feel like a porc'-pine. But I sort o' thought I heard somepin' give you a diff."
"Something did hit me," said Beverley, laying a hand on his breast, "but I don't think it was a bullet. They seem to be getting our range at last. Tell the men to keep well under cover. They must not expose themselves until we are ready to charge."
The shock had brought him back to his duty as a leader of his little company, and with the funeral bell of all his life's happiness tolling in his agonized heart he turned afresh to directing the fire upon the block-house.
About this time a runner came from Clark with an order to cease firing and let a returning party of British scouts under Captain Lamothe re-enter the fort unharmed. A strange order it seemed to both officers and men; but it was implicitly obeyed. Clark's genius here made another fine strategic flash. He knew that unless he let the scouts go back into the stockade they would escape by running away, and might possibly organize an army of Indians with which to succor Hamilton. But if they were permitted to go inside they could be captured with the rest of the garrison; hence his order.
A few minutes passed in dead silence; then Captain Lamothe and his party marched close by where Beverley's squad was lying concealed. It was a difficult task to restrain the creoles, for some of them hated Lamothe. Oncle Jazon squirmed like a snake while they filed past all unaware that an enemy lurked so near. When they reached the fort, ladders were put down for them and they began to clamber over the wall, crowding and pushing one another in wild haste. Oncle Jazon could hold in no longer.
"Ya! ya! ya!" he yelled. "Look out! the ladder is a fallin' wi' ye!"
Then all the lurking crowd shouted as one man, and, sure enough, down came a ladder--men and all in a crashing heap.
"Silence! silence!" Beverley commanded; but he could not check the wild jeering and laughing, while the bruised and frightened scouts hastily erected their ladder again, fairly tumbling over one another in their haste to ascend, and so cleared the wall, falling into the stockade to join the garrison.
"Ventrebleu!" shrieked Oncle Jazon. "They've gone to bed; but we'll wake 'em up at the crack o' day an' give 'em a breakfas' o' hot lead!"
Now the fighting was resumed with redoubled spirit and noise, and when morning came, affording sufficient light to bring out the "bead sights" on the Kentucky rifles, the matchless marksmen in Clark's band forced the British to close the embrasures and entirely cease trying to use their cannon; but the fight with small arms went merrily on until the middle of the forenoon.
Meantime Gaspard Roussillon had tied Francis Maisonville's hands fast and hard with the strap of his bullet-pouch.
"Now, I'll scalp you," he said in a rumbling tone, terrible to hear. And with his words out came his hunting knife from its sheath.
"O have mercy, my dear Monsieur Roussillon!" cried the panting captive; "have mercy!"
"Mercy! yes, like your Colonel's, that's what you'll get. You stand by that forban, that scelerat, that bandit, and help him. Oh, yes, you'll get mercy! Yes, the same mercy that he showed to my poor little Alice! Your scalp, Monsieur, if you please! A small matter; it won't hurt much!"
"But, for the sake of old friendship, Gaspard, for the sake--" "Ziff! poor little Alice!"
"But I swear to you that I--" "Tout de meme, Monsieur, je vais vous scalper maintenant."
In fact he had taken off a part of Maisonville's scalp, when a party of soldiers, among whom was Maisonville's brother, a brave fellow and loyal to the American cause, were attracted by his cries and came to his rescue.
M. Roussillon struggled savagely, insisting upon completing his cruel performance; but he was at last overpowered, partly by brute force and partly by the pleading of Maisonville's brother, and made to desist. The big man wept with rage when he saw the bleeding prisoner protected. "Eh bien! I'll keep what I've got," he roared, "and I'll take the rest of it next time."
He shook the tuft of hair at Maisonville and glared like a mad bull.
Two or three other members of Lamothe's band were captured about the same time by some of the French militiamen; and Clark, when on his round cheering and directing his forces, discovered that these prisoners were being used as shields. Some young creoles, gay with drink and the stimulating effect of fight, had bound the poor fellows and were firing from behind them! Of course the commander promptly put an end to this cruelty; but they considered it exquisite fun while it lasted. It was in broad daylight, and they knew that the English in the fort could see what they were doing.
"It's shameful to treat prisoners in this way," said Clark. "I will not permit it. Shoot the next man that offers to do such a thing!"
One of the creole youths, a handsome, swarthy Adonis in buckskin, tossed his shapely head with a debonair smile and said: "To be sure, mon Colonel! but what have they been doing to us? We have amused them all winter; it's but fair that they should give us a little fun now."
Clark shrugged his broad shoulders and passed on. He understood perfectly what the people of Vincennes had suffered under Hamilton's brutal administration.
At nine o'clock an order was passed to cease firing, and a flag of truce was seen going from Clark's headquarters to the fort. It was a peremptory demand for unconditional surrender. Hamilton refused, and fighting was fiercely resumed from behind rude breastworks meantime erected. Every loop-hole and opening of whatever sort was the focus into which the unerring backwoods rifles sent their deadly bullets. Men began to fall in the fort, and every moment Hamilton expected an assault in force on all sides of the stockade. This, if successful, would mean inevitable massacre. Clark had warned him of the terrible consequences of holding out until the worst should come. "For," said he in his note to the Governor, "if I am obliged to storm, you may depend upon such treatment as is justly due to a murderer."
Historians have wondered why Hamilton became so excited and acted so strangely after receiving the note. The phrase, "justly due to a murderer," is the key to the mystery. When he read it his heart sank and a terrible fear seized him. "Justly due to a murderer!" ah, that calm, white, beautiful girlish face, dead in the moonlight, with the wisp of shining hair across it! "Such treatment as is justly due to a murderer!" Cold drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and a shiver went through his body.
During the truce Clark's weary yet still enthusiastic besiegers enjoyed a good breakfast prepared for them by the loyal dames of Vincennes. Little Adrienne Bourcier was one of the handmaidens of the occasion. She brought to Beverley's squad a basket, almost as large as herself, heaped high with roasted duck and warm wheaten bread, while another girl bore two huge jugs of coffee, fragrant and steaming hot. The men cheered them lustily and complimented them without reserve, so that before their service was over their faces were glowing with delight.
And yet Adrienne's heart was uneasy, and full of longing to hear something of Rene de Ronville. Surely some one of her friends must know something about him. Ah, there was Oncle Jazon! Doubtless he could tell her all that she wanted to know. She lingered, after the food was distributed, and shyly inquired.
"Hain't seed the scamp," said Oncle Jazon, only he used the patois most familiar to the girl's ear. "Killed an' scelped long ago, I reckon."
His mouth was so full that he spoke mumblingly and with utmost difficulty. Nor did he glance at Adrienne, whose face took on as great pallor as her brown complexion could show.
Beverley ate but little of the food. He sat apart on a piece of timber that projected from the rough breastwork and gave himself over to infinite misery of spirit, which was trebled when he took Alice's locket from his bosom, only to discover that the bullet which struck him had almost entirely destroyed the face of the miniature.
He gripped the dinted and twisted case and gazed at it with the stare of a blind man. His heart almost ceased to beat and his breath had the rustling sound we hear when a strong man dies of a sudden wound. Somehow the defacement of the portrait was taken by his soul as the final touch of fate, signifying that Alice was forever and completely obliterated from his life. He felt a blur pass over his mind. He tried in vain to recall the face and form so dear to him; he tried to imagine her voice; but the whole universe was a vast hollow silence. For a long while he was cold, staring, rigid; then the inevitable collapse came, and he wept as only a strong man can who is hurt to death, yet cannot die.
Adrienne approached him, thinking to speak to him about Rene; but he did not notice her, and she went her way, leaving beside him a liberal supply of food.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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20
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ALICE'S FLAG
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Governor Hamilton received the note sent him by Colonel Clark and replied to it with curt dignity; but his heart was quaking. As a soldier he was true to the military tradition, and nothing could have induced him to surrender his command with dishonor.
"Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton," he wrote to Clark, "begs leave to acquaint Colonel Clark that he and his garrison are not disposed to be awed into any action unworthy of British subjects."
"Very brave words," said Helm, when Hamilton read the note to him, "but you'll sing a milder tune before many minutes, or you and your whole garrison will perish in a bloody heap. Listen to those wild yells! Clark has enough men to eat you all up for breakfast. You'd better be reasonable and prudent. It's not bravery to court massacre."
Hamilton turned away without a word and sent the message; but Helm saw that he was excited, and could be still further wrought up.
"You are playing into the hands of your bitterest enemies, the frog-eaters," he went on. "These creoles, over whom you've held a hot poker all winter, are crazy to be turned loose upon you; and you know that they've got good cause to feel like giving you the extreme penalty. They'll give it to you without a flinch if they get the chance. You've done enough."
Hamilton whirled about and glared ferociously.
"Helm, what do you mean?" he demanded in a voice as hollow as it was full of desperate passion.
The genial Captain laughed, as if he had heard a good joke.
"You won't catch any fish if you swear, and you look blasphemous," he said with the lightness of humor characteristic of him at all times. "You'd better say a prayer or two. Just reflect a moment upon the awful sins you have committed and--" A crash of coalescing volleys from every direction broke off his levity. Clark was sending his response to Hamilton's lofty note. The guns of freedom rang out a prophecy of triumph, and the hissing bullets clucked sharply as they entered the solid logs of the walls or whisked through an aperture and bowled over a man. The British musketeers returned the fire as best they could, with a courage and a stubborn coolness which Helm openly admired, although he could not hide his satisfaction whenever one of them was disabled.
"Lamothe and his men are refusing to obey orders," said Farnsworth a little later, hastily approaching Hamilton, his face flushed and a gleam of hot anger in his eyes. "They're in a nasty mood; I can do nothing with them; they have not fired a shot."
"Mutiny?" Hamilton demanded.
"Not just that. They say they do not wish to fire on their kinsmen and friends. They are all French, you know, and they see their cousins, brothers, uncles and old acquaintances out there in Clark's rabble. I can do nothing with them."
"Shoot the scoundrels, then!"
"It will be a toss up which of us will come out on top if we try that. Besides, if we begin a fight inside, the Americans will make short work of us."
"Well, what in hell are we to do, then?"
"Oh, fight, that's all," said Farnsworth apathetically turning to a small loop-hole and leveling a field glass through it. "We might make a rush from the gates and stampede them," he presently added. Then he uttered an exclamation of great surprise.
"There's Lieutenant Beverley out there," he exclaimed.
"You're mistaken, you're excited," Hamilton half sneeringly remarked, yet not without a shade of uneasiness in his expression. "You forget, sir."
"Look for yourself, it's easily settled," and Farnsworth proffered the glass. "He's there, to a certainty, sir."
"I saw Beverley an hour ago," said Helm. "I knew all the time that he'd be on hand."
It was a white lie. Captain Helm was as much surprised as his captors at what he heard; but he could not resist the temptation to be annoying.
Hamilton looked as Farnsworth directed, and sure enough, there was the young Virginian Lieutenant, standing on a barricade, his hat off, cheering his men with a superb show of zeal. Not a hair of his head was missing, so far as the glass could be relied upon to show.
Oncle Jazon's quick old eyes saw the gleam of the telescope tube in the loop-hole.
"I never could shoot much," he muttered, and then a little bullet sped with absolute accuracy from his disreputable looking rifle and shattered the object-lens, just as Hamilton moved to withdraw the glass, uttering an ejaculation of intense excitement.
"Such devils of marksmen!" said he, and his face was haggard. "That infernal Indian lied."
"I could have told you all the time that the scalp Long-Hair brought to you was not Beverley's," said Helm indifferently. "I recognized Lieutenant Barlow's hair as soon as I saw it."
This was another piece of off-hand romance. Helm did not dream that he was accidentally sketching a horrible truth.
"Barlow's!" exclaimed Farnsworth.
"Yes, Barlow's, no mistake--" Two more men reeled from a port-hole, the blood spinning far out of their wounds. Indeed, through every aperture in the walls the bullets were now humming like mad hornets.
"Close that port-hole!" stormed Hamilton; then turning to Farnsworth he added: "We cannot endure this long. Shut up every place large enough for a bullet to get through. Go all around, give strict orders to all. See that the men do not foolishly expose themselves. Those ruffians out there have located every crack."
His glimpse of Beverley and the sinister remark of Helm had completely unmanned him before his men fell. Now it rushed upon him that if he would escape the wrath of the maddened creoles and the vengeance of Alice's lover, he must quickly throw himself upon the mercy of Clark. It was his only hope. He chafed inwardly, but bore himself with stern coolness. He presently sought Farnsworth, pulled him aside and suggested that something must be done to prevent an assault and a massacre. The sounds outside seemed to forebode a gathering for a desperate rush, and in his heart he felt all the terrors of awful anticipation.
"We are completely at their mercy, that is plain," he said, shrugging his shoulders and gazing at the wounded men writhing in their agony. "What do you suggest?"
Captain Farnsworth was a shrewd officer. He recollected that Philip Dejean, justice of Detroit, was on his way down the Wabash from that post, and probably near at hand, with a flotilla of men and supplies. Why not ask for a few days of truce? It could do no harm, and if agreed to, might be their salvation. Hamilton jumped at the thought, and forthwith drew up a note which he sent out with a white flag. Never before in all his military career had he been so comforted by a sudden cessation of fighting. His soul would grovel in spite of him. Alice's cold face now had Beverley's beside it in his field of inner vision--a double assurance of impending doom, it seemed to him.
There was short delay in the arrival of Colonel Clark's reply, hastily scrawled on a bit of soiled paper. The request for a truce was flatly refused; but the note closed thus: "If Mr. Hamilton is Desirous of a Conferance with Col. Clark he will meet him at the Church with Captn. Helms."
The spelling was not very good, and there was a redundancy of capital letters; yet Hamilton understood it all; and it was very difficult for him to conceal his haste to attend the proposed conference. But he was afraid to go to the church--the thought chilled him. He could not face Father Beret, who would probably be there. And what if there should be evidences of the funeral? --what if? --he shuddered and tried to break away from the vision in his tortured brain.
He sent a proposition to Clark to meet him on the esplanade before the main gate of the fort; but Clark declined, insisting upon the church. And thither he at last consented to go. It was an immense brace to his spirit to have Helm beside him during that walk, which, although but eighty yards in extent, seemed to him a matter of leagues. On the way he had to pass near the new position taken up by Beverley and his men. It was a fine test of nerve, when the Lieutenant's eyes met those of the Governor. Neither man permitted the slightest change of countenance to betray his feelings. In fact, Beverley's face was as rigid as marble; he could not have changed it.
But with Oncle Jazon it was a different affair. He had no dignity to preserve, no fine military bearing to sustain, no terrible tug of conscience, no paralyzing grip of despair on his heart. When he saw Hamilton going by, bearing himself so superbly, it affected the French volatility in his nature to such an extent that his tongue could not be controlled.
"Va t'en, bete, forban, meurtrier! Skin out f'om here! beast, robber, murderer!" he cried, in his keen screech-owl voice. "I'll git thet scelp o' your'n afore sundown, see 'f I don't! Ye onery gal-killer an' ha'r buyer!"
The blood in Hamilton's veins caught no warmth from these remarks; but he held his head high and passed stolidly on, as if he did not hear a word. Helm turned the tail of an eye upon Oncle Jazon and gave him a droll, quizzical wink of approval. In response the old man with grotesque solemnity drew his buckhorn handled knife, licked its blade and returned it to its sheath,--a bit of pantomime well understood and keenly enjoyed by the onlooking creoles.
"Putois! coquin!" they jeered, "goujat! poltron!"
Beverley heard the taunting racket, but did not realize it, which was well enough, for he could not have restrained the bitter effervescence. He stood like a statue, gazing fixedly at the now receding figure, the lofty, cold-faced man in whom centered his hate of hates. Clark had requested him to be present at the conference in the church; but he declined, feeling that he could not meet Hamilton and restrain himself. Now he regretted his refusal, half wishing that--no, he could not assassinate an enemy under a white flag. In his heart he prayed that there would be no surrender, that Hamilton would reject every offer. To storm the fort and revel in butchering its garrison seemed the only desirable thing left for him in life.
Father Beret was, indeed, present at the church, as Hamilton had dreaded; and the two duelists gave each other a rapier-like eye-thrust. Neither spoke, however, and Clark immediately demanded a settlement of the matter in hand. He was brusque and imperious to a degree, apparently rather anxious to repel every peaceful advance.
It was a laconic interview, crisp as autumn ice and bitter as gallberries. Colonel Clark had no respect whatever for Hamilton, to whom he had applied the imperishable adjective "hair-buyer General." On the other hand Governor Hamilton, who felt keenly the disgrace of having to equalize himself officially and discuss terms of surrender with a rough backwoodsman, could not conceal his contempt of Clark.
The five men of history, Hamilton, Helm, Hay, Clark and Bowman, were not distinguished diplomats. They went at their work rather after the hammer-and-tongs fashion. Clark bluntly demanded unconditional surrender. Hamilton refused. They argued the matter. Helm put in his oar, trying to soften the situation, as was his custom on all occasions, and received from Clark a stinging reprimand, with the reminder that he was nothing but a prisoner on parole, and had no voice at all in settling the terms of surrender.
"I release him, sir," said Hamilton. "He is no longer a prisoner. I am quite willing to have Captain Helm join freely in our conference."
"And I refuse to permit his acceptance of your favor," responded Clark. "Captain Helm, you will return with Mr. Hamilton to the fort and remain his captive until I free you by force. Meantime hold your tongue."
Father Beret, suave looking and quiet, occupied himself at the little altar, apparently altogether indifferent to what was being said; but he lost not a word of the talk.
"Qui habet aures audiendi, audiat," he inwardly repeated, smiling blandly. "Gaudete in illa die, et exultate!"
Hamilton rose to go; deep lines of worry creased his face; but when the party had passed outside, he suddenly turned upon Clark and said: "Why do you demand impossible terms of me?"
"I will tell you, sir," was the stern answer, in a tone in which there was no mercy or compromise. "I would rather have you refuse. I desire nothing so much as an excuse to wreak full and bloody vengeance on every man in that fort who has engaged in the business of employing savages to scalp brave, patriotic men and defenseless women and children. The cries of the widows and the fatherless on our frontiers require the blood of the Indian partisans at my hands. If you choose to risk the massacre of your garrison to save those despicable red-handed partisans, have your pleasure. What you have done you know better than I do. I have a duty to perform. You may be able to soften its nature. I may take it into my head to send for some of our bereaved women to witness my terrible work and see that it is well done, if you insist upon the worst."
Major Hay, who was Hamilton's Indian agent, now, with some difficulty clearing his throat, spoke up.
"Pray, sir," said he, "who is it that you call Indian partisans?"
"Sir," replied Clark, seeing that his words had gone solidly home, "I take Major Hay to be one of the principals."
This seemed to strike Hay with deadly force. Clark's report says that he was "pale and trembling, scarcely able to stand," and that "Hamilton blushed, and, I observed, was much affected at his behavior. "Doubtless, if the doughty American commander had known more about the Governor's feelings just then, he would have added that an awful fear, even greater than the Indian agent's, did more than anything else to congest the veins in his face."
The parties separated without reaching an agreement; but the end had come. The terror in Hamilton's soul was doubled by a wild scene enacted under the walls of his fort; a scene which, having no proper place in this story, strong as its historical interest unquestionably is, must be but outlined. A party of Indians returning from a scalping expedition in Kentucky and along the Ohio, was captured on the outskirts of the town by some of Clark's men, who proceeded to kill and scalp them within full view of the beleaguered garrison, after which their mangled bodies were flung into the river.
If the British commander needed further wine of dread to fill his cup withal, it was furnished by ostentatious marshaling of the American forces for a general assault. His spirit broke completely, so that it looked like a godsend to him when Clark finally offered terms of honorable surrender, the consummation of which was to be postponed until the following morning. He accepted promptly, appending to the articles of capitulation the following reasons for his action: "The remoteness from succor; the state and quantity of provisions, etc.; unanimity of officers and men in its expediency; the honorable terms allowed; and, lastly, the confidence in a generous enemy."
Confidence in a generous enemy! Abject fear of the vengeance just wreaked upon his savage emissaries would have been the true statement. Beverley read the paper when Clark sent for him; but he could not join in the extravagant delight of his fellow officers and their brave men. What did all this victory mean to him? Hamilton to be treated as an honorable prisoner of war, permitted to strut forth from the feat with his sword at his side, his head up--the scalp-buyer, the murderer of Alice! What was patriotism to the crushed heart of a lover? Even if his vision had been able to pierce the future and realize the splendor of Anglo-Saxon civilization which was to follow that little triumph at Vincennes, what pleasure could it have afforded him? Alice, Alice, only Alice; no other thought had influence, save the recurring surge of desire for vengeance upon her murderer.
And yet that night Beverley slept, and so forgot his despair for many hours, even dreamed a pleasant dream of home, where his childhood was spent, of the stately old house on the breezy hill-top overlooking a sunny plantation, with a little river lapsing and shimmering through it. His mother's dear arms were around him, her loving breath stirred his hair; and his stalwart, gray-headed father sat on the veranda comfortably smoking his pipe, while away in the wide fields the negroes sang at the plow and the hoe. Sweeter and sweeter grew the scene, softer the air, tenderer the blending sounds of the water-murmur, leaf-rustle, bird-song, and slave-song, until hand in hand he wandered with Alice in greening groves, where the air was trembling with the ecstacy of spring.
A young officer awoke him with an order from Clark to go on duty at once with Captains Worthington and Williams, who, under Colonel Clark himself, were to take possession of the fort. Mechanically he obeyed. The sun was far up, shining between clouds of a leaden, watery hue, by the time everything was ready for the important ceremony. Beside the main gate of the stockade two companies of patriots under Bowman and McCarty were drawn up as guards, while the British garrison filed out and was taken in charge. This bit of formality ended, Governor Hamilton, attended by some of his officers, went back into the fort and the gate was closed.
Clark now gave orders that preparations be made for hauling down the British flag and hoisting the young banner of liberty in its place, when everything should be ready for a salute of thirteen guns from the captured battery.
Helm's round face was beaming. Plainly it showed that his happiness was supreme. He dared not say anything, however; for Clark was now all sternness and formality; it would be dangerous to take any liberties; but he could smile and roll his quid of tobacco from cheek to cheek.
Hamilton and Farnsworth, the latter slightly wounded in the left arm, which was bandaged, stood together somewhat apart from their fellow officers, while preliminary steps for celebrating their defeat and capture were in progress. They looked forlorn enough to have excited deep sympathy under fairer conditions.
Outside the fort the creoles were beginning a noise of jubilation. The rumor of what was going to be done had passed from mouth to mouth, until every soul in the town knew and thrilled with expectancy. Men, women and children came swarming to see the sight, and to hear at close range the crash of the cannon. They shouted, in a scattering way at first, then the tumult grew swiftly to a solid rolling tide that seemed beyond all comparison with the population of Vincennes. Hamilton heard it, and trembled inwardly, afraid lest the mob should prove too strong for the guard.
One leonine voice roared distinctly, high above the noise. It was a sound familiar to all the creoles,--that bellowing shout of Gaspard Roussillon's. He was roaming around the stockade, having been turned back by the guard when he tried to pass through the main gate.
"They shut me out!" he bellowed furiously. "I am Gaspard Roussillon, and they shut me out, me! Ziff! me voici! je vais entrer immediatement, moi!"
He attracted but little attention, however; the people and the soldiery were all too excited by the special interest of the occasion, and too busy with making a racket of their own, for any individual, even the great Roussillon, to gain their eyes or ears. He in turn scarcely heard the tumult they made, so self-centered were his burning thoughts and feelings. A great occasion in Vincennes and he, Gaspard Roussillon, not recognized as one of the large factors in it! Ah, no, never! And he strode along the wall of the stockade, turning the corners and heavily shambling over the inequalities till he reached the postern. It was not fastened, some one having passed through just before him.
"Ziff!" he ejaculated, stepping into the area and shaking himself after the manner of a dusty mastiff. "C'est moi! Gaspard Roussillon!" His massive under jaw was set like that of a vise, yet it quivered with rage, a rage which was more fiery condensation of self-approval than anger.
Outside the shouting, singing and huzzahs gathered strength and volume, until the sound became a hoarse roar. Clark was uneasy; he had overheard much of a threatening character during the siege. The creoles were, he knew, justly exasperated, and even his own men had been showing a spirit which might easily be fanned into a dangerous flame of vengeance. He was very anxious to have the formalities of taking possession of the fort over with, so that he could the better control his forces. Sending for Beverley he assigned him to the duty of hauling down the British flag and running up that of Virginia. It was an honor of no doubtful sort, which under different circumstances would have made the Lieutenant's heart glow. As it was, he proceeded without any sense of pride or pleasure, moving as a mere machine in performing an act significant beyond any other done west of the mountains, in the great struggle for American independence and the control of American territory.
Hamilton stood a little way from the foot of the tall flag-pole, his arms folded on his breast, his chin slightly drawn in, his brows contracted, gazing steadily at Beverley while he was untying the halyard, which had been wound around the pole's base about three feet above the ground. The American troops in the fort were disposed so as to form three sides of a hollow square, facing inward. Oncle Jazon, serving as the ornamental extreme of one line, was conspicuous for his outlandish garb and unmilitary bearing. The silence inside the stockade offered a strong contrast to the tremendous roar of voices outside. Clark made a signal, and at the tap of a drum, Beverley shook the ropes loose and began to lower the British colors. Slowly the bright emblem of earth's mightiest nation crept down in token of the fact that a handful of back-woodsmen had won an empire by a splendid stroke of pure heroism. Beverley detached the flag, and saluting, handed it to Colonel Clark. Hamilton's breast heaved and his iron jaws tightened their pressure until the lines of his cheeks were deep furrows of pain.
Father Beret, who had just been admitted, quietly took a place at one side near the wall. There was a fine, warm, benignant smile on his old face, yet his powerful shoulders drooped as if weighted down with a heavy load. Hamilton was aware when he entered, and instantly the scene of their conflict came into his memory with awful vividness, and he saw Alice lying outstretched, stark and, cold, the shining strand of hair fluttering across her pallid cheek. Her ghost overshadowed him.
Just then there was a bird-like movement, a wing-like rustle, and a light figure flitted swiftly across the area. All eyes were turned upon it. Hamilton recoiled, as pale as death, half lifting his hands, as if to ward off a deadly blow, and then a gay flag was flung out over his head. He saw before him the girl he had shot; but her beautiful face was not waxen now, nor was it cold or lifeless. The rich red blood was strong under the browned, yet delicate skin, the eyes were bright and brave, the cherry lips, slightly apart, gave a glimpse of pearl white teeth, and the dimples,--those roguish dimples,--twinkled sweetly.
Colonel Clark looked on in amazement, and in spite of himself, in admiration. He did not understand; the sudden incident bewildered him; but his virile nature was instantly and wholly charmed. Something like a breath of violets shook the tenderest chords of his heart.
Alice stood firmly, a statue of triumph, her right arm outstretched, holding the flag high above Hamilton's head; and close by her side the little hunchback Jean was posed in his most characteristic attitude, gazing at the banner which he himself had stolen and kept hidden for Alice's sake, and because he loved it.
There was a dead silence for some moments, during which Hamilton's face showed that he was ready to collapse; then the keen voice of Oncle Jazon broke forth: "Vive Zhorzh Vasinton! Vim la banniere d'Alice Roussillon!"
He sprang to the middle of the area and flung his old cap high in air, with a shrill war-whoop.
"H'ist it! h'ist it! hissez la banniere de Mademoiselle Alice Roussillon! Voila, que c'est glorieuse, cette banniere la! H'ist it! h'ist it!"
He was dancing with a rickety liveliness, his goatish legs and shriveled body giving him the look of an emaciated satyr.
Clark had been told by some of his creole officers the story of how Alice raised the flag when Helm took the fort, and how she snatched it from Hamilton's hand, as it were, and would not give it up when he demanded it. The whole situation pretty soon began to explain itself, as he saw what Alice was doing. Then he heard her say to Hamilton, while she slowly swayed the rippling flag back and forth: "I said, as you will remember, Monsieur le Gouverneur, that when you next should see this flag, I should wave it over your head. Well, look, I am waving it! Vive la republique! Vive George Washington! What do you think of it, Monsieur le Gouverneur?"
The poor little hunchback Jean took off his cap and tossed it in rhythmical emphasis, keeping time to her words.
And now from behind the hollow square came a mighty voice: "C'est moi, Gaspard Roussillon; me voici, messieurs!"
There was a spirit in the air which caught from Alice a thrill of romantic energy. The men in the ranks and the officers in front of them felt a wave of irresistible sympathy sweep through their hearts. Her picturesque beauty, her fine temper, the fitness of the incident to the occasion, had an instantaneous power which moved all men alike.
"Raise her flag! Run up the young lady's flag!" some one shouted, and then every voice seemed to echo the words. Clark was a young man of noble type, in whose veins throbbed the warm chivalrous blood of the cavaliers. A waft of the suddenly prevailing influence bore him also quite off his feet. He turned to Beverley and said: "Do it! It will have a great effect. It is a good idea; get the young lady's flag and her permission to run it up."
Before he finished speaking, indeed at the first glance, he saw that Beverley, like Hamilton, was white as a dead man; and at the same time it came to his memory that his young friend had confided to him during the awful march through the prairie wilderness, a love-story about this very Alice Roussillon. In the worry and stress of the subsequent struggle, he had forgotten the tender basis upon which Beverley had rested his excuse for leaving Vincennes. Now, it all reappeared in justification of what was going on. It touched the romantic core of his southern nature.
"I say, Lieutenant Beverley," he repeated, "beg the young lady's permission to use her flag upon this glorious occasion; or shall I do it for you?"
There were no miracles in those brave days, and the strain of life with its terrible realities braced all men and women to meet sudden explosions of surprise, whether of good or bad effect, with admirable equipoise; but Beverley's trial, it must be admitted, was extraordinary; still he braced himself quickly and his whole expression changed when Clark moved to go to Alice. For he realized now that it was, indeed, Alice in flesh and blood, standing there, the center of admiration, filling the air with her fine magnetism and crowning a great triumph with her beauty. He gave her a glad, flashing smile, as if he had just discovered her, and walked straight to her, his hands extended. She was not looking toward him; but she saw him and turned to face him. Hers was the advantage; for she had known, for some hours, of his presence in Vincennes, and had prepared herself to meet him courageously and with maidenly reserve.
There is no safety, however, where Love lurks. Neither Beverley nor Alice was as much agitated at Hamilton, yet they both forgot, what he remembered, that a hundred grim frontier soldiers were looking on. Hamilton had his personal and official dignity to sustain, and he fairly did it, under what a pressure of humiliating and surprising circumstances we can fully comprehend. Not so with the two young people, standing as it were in a suddenly bestowed and incomparable happiness, on the verge of a new life, each to the other an unexpected, unhoped-for resurrection from the dead. To them there was no universe save the illimitable expanse of their love. In that moment of meeting, all that they had suffered on account of love was transfused and poured forth,--a glowing libation for love's sake,--a flood before which all barriers broke.
Father Beret was looking on with a strange fire in his eyes, and what he feared would happen, did happen. Alice let the flag fall at Hamilton's feet, when Beverley came near her smiling that great, glad smile, and with a joyous cry leaped into his outstretched arms.
Jean snatched up the fallen banner and ran to Colonel Clark with it. Two minutes later it was made fast and the halyard began to squeak through the rude pulley at the top of the pole. Up, up, climbed the gay little emblem of glory, while the cannon crashed from the embrasures of the blockhouse hard by, and outside the roar of voices redoubled. Thirteen guns boomed the salute, though it should have been fourteen,--the additional one for the great Northwestern Territory, that day annexed to the domain of the young American Republic. The flag went up at old Vincennes never to come down again, and when it reached its place at the top of the staff, Beverley and Alice stood side by side looking at it, while the sun broke through the clouds and flashed on its shining folds, and love unabashed glorified the two strong young faces.
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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21
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SOME TRANSACTIONS IN SCALPS
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History would be a very orderly affair, could the dry-as-dust historians have their way, and doubtless it would be thrillingly romantic at every turn if the novelists were able to control its current. Fortunately neither one nor the other has much influence, and the result, in the long run, is that most novels are shockingly tame, while the large body of history is loaded down with picturesque incidents, which if used in fiction, would be thought absurdly romantic and improbable.
Were our simple story of old Vincennes a mere fiction, we should hesitate to bring in the explosion of a magazine at the fort with a view to sudden confusion and, by that means, distracting attention from our heroine while she betakes herself out of a situation which, although delightful enough for a blessed minute, has quickly become an embarrassment quite unendurable. But we simply adhere to the established facts in history. Owing to some carelessness there was, indeed, an explosion of twenty-six six-pound cartridges, which made a mighty roar and struck the newly installed garrison into a heap, so to say, scattering things terribly and wounding six men, among them Captains Bowman and Worthington.
After the thunderous crash came a momentary silence, which embraced both the people within the fort and the wild crowd outside. Then the rush and noise were indescribable. Even Clark gave way to excitement, losing command of himself and, of course, of his men. There was a stampede toward the main gate by one wing of the troops in the hollow square. They literally ran over Beverley and Alice, flinging them apart and jostling them hither and yonder without mercy. Of course the turmoil quickly subsided. Clark and Beverley got hold of themselves and sang out their peremptory orders with excellent effect. It was like oil on raging water; the men obeyed in a straggling way, getting back into ranks as best they could.
"Ventrebleu!" squeaked Oncle Jazon, "ef I didn't think the ole world had busted into a million pieces!"
He was jumping up and down not three feet from Beverley's toes, waving his cap excitedly.
"But wasn't I skeert! Ya, ya, ya! Vive la banniere d'Alice Roussillon! Vive Zhorzh Vasinton!"
Hearing Alice's name caused Beverley to look around. Where was she? In the distance he saw Father Beret hurrying to the spot where some of the men burnt and wounded by the explosion were being stripped and cared for. Hamilton still stood like a statue. He appeared to be the only cool person in the fort.
"Where is Alice? --Miss Roussillon--where did Miss Roussillon go?" Beverley exclaimed, staring around like a lost man. "Where is she?"
"D'know," said Oncle Jazon, resuming his habitual expression of droll dignity, "she shot apast me jes' as thet thing busted loose, an' she went like er hummin' bird, skitch! --jes' thet way--an' I didn't see 'r no more. 'Cause I was skeert mighty nigh inter seven fits; 'spect that 'splosion blowed her clean away! Ventrebleu! never was so plum outen breath an' dead crazy weak o' bein' afeard!"
"Lieutenant Beverley," roared Clark in his most commanding tone, "go to the gate and settle things there. That mob outside is trying to break in!"
The order was instantly obeyed, but Beverley had relapsed. Once more his soul groped in darkness, while the whole of his life seemed unreal, a wavering, misty, hollow dream. And yet his military duty was all real enough. He knew just what to do when he reached the gate.
"Back there at once!" he commanded, not loudly, but with intense force, "back there!" This to the inward surging wedge of excited outsiders. Then to the guard.
"Shoot the first man who crosses the line!"
"Ziff! me voici! moi! Gaspard Roussillon. Laissez-moi passer, messieurs."
A great body hurled itself frantically past Beverley and the guard, going out through the gateway against the wall of the crowd, bearing everything before it and shouting: "Back, fools! you'll all be killed--the powder is on fire! Ziff! run!"
Wild as a March hare, he bristled with terror and foamed at the mouth. He stampeded the entire mass. There was a wild howl; a rush in the other direction followed, and soon enough the esplanade and all the space back to the barricades and beyond were quite deserted.
Alice was not aware that a serious accident had happened. Naturally she thought the great, rattling, crashing noise of the explosion a mere part of the spectacular show. When the rush followed, separating her and Beverley, it was a great relief to her in some way; for a sudden recognition of the boldness of her action in the little scene just ended, came over her and bewildered her. An impulse sent her running away from the spot where, it seemed to her, she had invited public derision. The terrible noises all around her were, she now fancied, but the jeering and hooting of rude men who had seen her unmaidenly forwardness.
With a burning face she flew to the postern and slipped out, once more taking the course which had become so familiar to her feet. She did not slacken her speed until she reached the Bourcier cabin, where she had made her home since the night when Hamilton's pistol ball struck her. The little domicile was quite empty of its household, but Alice entered and flung herself into a chair, where she sat quivering and breathless when Adrienne, also much excited, came in, preceded by a stream of patois that sparkled continuously.
"The fort is blown up!" she cried, gesticulating in every direction at once, her petite figure comically dilated with the importance of her statement. "A hundred men are killed, and the powder is on fire!"
She pounced into Alice's arms, still talking as fast as her tongue could vibrate, changing from subject to subject without rhyme or reason, her prattle making its way by skips and shies until what was really upper-most in her sweet little heart disclosed itself.
"And, O Alice! Rene has not come yet!"
She plunged her dusky face between Alice's cheek and shoulder; Alice hugged her sympathetically and said: "But Rene will come, I know he will, dear."
"Oh, but do you know it? is it true? who told you? when will he come? where is he? tell me about him!"
Her head popped up from her friend's neck and she smiled brilliantly through the tears that were still sparkling on her long black lashes.
"I didn't mean that I had heard from him, and I don't know where he is; but--but they always come back."
"You say that because your man--because Lieutenant Beverley has returned. It is always so. You have everything to make you happy, while I--I--" Again her eyes spilled their shower, and she hid her face in her hands which Alice tried in vain to remove.
"Don't cry, Adrienne. You didn't see me crying--" "No, of course not; you didn't have a thing to cry about. Lieutenant Beverley told you just where he was going and just what--" "But think, Adrienne, only think of the awful story they told--that he was killed, that Governor Hamilton had paid Long-Hair for killing him and bringing back his scalp--oh dear, just think! And I thought it was true."
"Well, I'd be willing to think and believe anything in the world, if Rene would come back," said Adrienne, her face, now uncovered, showing pitiful lines of suffering. "O Alice, Alice, and he never, never will come!"
Alice exhausted every device to cheer, encourage and comfort her. Adrienne had been so good to her when she lay recovering from the shock of Hamilton's pistol bullet, which, although it came near killing her, made no serious wound--only a bruise, in fact. It was one of those fortunate accidents, or providentially ordered interferences, which once in a while save a life. The stone disc worn by Alice chanced to lie exactly in the missile's way, and while it was not broken, the ball, already somewhat checked by passing through several folds of Father Beret's garments, flattened itself upon it with a shock which somehow struck Alice senseless.
Here again, history in the form of an ancient family document (a letter written in 1821 by Alice herself), gives us the curious brace of incidents, to wit, the breaking of the miniature on Beverley's breast by a British musket-ball, and the stopping of Hamilton's bullet over Alice's heart by the Indian charm-stone.
"Which shows the goodness of God," the letter goes on, "and also seems to sustain the Indian legend concerning the stone, that whoever might wear it could not be killed. Unquestionable (sic) Mr. Hamilton's shot, which was aimed at poor, dear old Father Beret, would have pierced my heart, but for that charm-stone. As for my locket, it did not, as some have reported, save Fitzhugh's life when the musket-ball was stopped. The ball was so spent that the blow was only hard enough to spoil temporary (sic) the face of the miniature, which was afterwards restored fairly well by an artist in Paris. When it did actually save Fitzhugh's life was out on the Illinois plain. The savage, Long-Hair, peace to his memory, worked the miracle of restoring to me--" Here a fold in the paper has destroyed a line of the writing.
The letter is a sacred family paper, and there is not justification for going farther into its faded and, in some parts, almost obliterated writing. But so much may pass into these pages as a pleasant authentication of what otherwise might be altogether too sweet a double nut for the critic's teeth to crack.
While Adrienne and Alice were still discussing the probability of Rene de Ronville's return, M. Roussillon came to the door. He was in search of Madame, his wife, whom he had not yet seen.
He gathered the two girls in his mighty arms, tousling them with rough tenderness. Alice returned his affectionate embrace and told him where to find Madame Roussillon, who was with Dame Godere, probably at her house.
"Nobody killed," he said, in answer to Alice's inquiry about the catastrophe at the fort. "Some of 'em hurt and burnt a little. Great big scare about nearly nothing. Ziff! my children, you should have seen me quiet things. I put out my hands, this way--omme ca--pouf! It was all over. The people went home."
His gestures indicated that he had borne back an army with open hands. Then he chucked Adrienne under the chin with his finger and added in his softest voice: "I saw somebody's lover the other day, over yonder in the Indian village. He spoke to me about somebody--eh, ma petite, que voulez-vous dire?"
"Oh, Papa Roussillon! we were just talking about Rene!" cried Alice. "Have you seen him?"
"I saw you, you little minx, jumping into a man's arms right under the eyes of a whole garrison! Bah! I could not believe it was my little Alice!"
He let go a grand guffaw, which seemed to shake the cabin's walls. Alice blushed cherry red. Adrienne, too bashful to inquire about Rene, was trembling with anxiety. The truth was not in Gaspard Roussillon, just then; or if it was it stayed in him, for he had not seen Rene de Ronville. It was his generous desire to please and to appear opulent of knowledge and sympathy that made him speak. He knew what would please Adrienne, so why not give her at least a delicious foretaste? Surely, when a thing was so cheap, one need not be so parsimonious as to withhold a mere anticipation. He was off before the girls could press him into details, for indeed he had none.
"There now, what did I tell you?" cried Alice, when the big man was gone. "I told you Rene would come. They always come back!"
Father Beret came in a little later. As soon as he saw Alice he frowned and began to shake his head; but she only laughed, and imitating his hypocritical scowl, yet fringing it with a twinkle of merry lines and dimples, pointed a taper finger at him and exclaimed: "You bad, bad, man! why did you pretend to me that Lieutenant Beverley was dead? What sinister ecclesiastical motive prompted you to describe how Long-Hair scalped him? Ah, Father--" The priest laid a broad hand over her saucy mouth. "Something or other seems to have excited you mightily, ma fille, you are a trifle impulsively inclined to-day."
"Yes, Father Beret; yes I know, and I am ashamed. My heart shrinks when I think of what I did; but I was so glad, such a grand joy came all over me when I saw him, so strong and brave and beautiful, coming toward me, smiling that warm, glad smile and holding out his arms--ah, when I saw all that--when I knew for sure that he was not dead--I, why, Father--I just had to, I couldn't help it!"
Father Beret laughed in spite of himself, but quickly managed to resume his severe countenance.
"Ta! ta!" he exclaimed, "it was a bold thing for a little girl to do."
"So it was, so it was. But it was also a bold thing for him to do--to come back after he was dead and scalped and look so handsome and grand! I'm ashamed and sorry, Father; but--but, I'm afraid I might do it again if--well, I don't care if I did--so there, now!"
"But what in the world are you talking about?" interposed Adrienne. Evidently they were discussing a most interesting matter of which she knew nothing, and that did not suit her feminine curiosity. "Tell me." She pulled Father Beret's sleeve. "Tell me, I say!"
It is probable that Father Beret would have pretended to betray Alice's source of mingled delight and embarrassment, had not the rest of the Bourcier household returned in time to break up the conversation. A little later Alice gave Adrienne a vividly dramatic account of the whole scene.
"Ah, mon Dieu!" exclaimed the petite brunette, after she had heard the exciting story. "That was just like you, Alice. You always do superb things. You were born to do them. You shoot Captain Farnsworth, you wound Lieutenant Barlow, you climb onto the fort and set up your flag--you take it down again and run away with it--you get shot and you do not die--you kiss your lover right before a whole garrison! Bon Dieu! if I could but do all those things!"
She clasped her tiny hands before her and added rather dejectedly: "But I couldn't, I couldn't. I couldn't kiss a man in that way!"
Late in the evening news came to Roussillon place, where Gaspard Roussillon was once more happy in the midst of his little family, that the Indian Long-Hair had just been brought to the fort, and would be shot on the following day. A scouting party captured him as he approached the town, bearing at his belt the fresh scalp of a white man. He would have been killed forthwith, but Clark, who wished to avoid a repetition of the savage vengeance meted out to the Indians on the previous day, had given strict orders that all prisoners should be brought into the fort, where they were to have a fair trial by court martial.
Both Helm and Beverley were at Roussillon place, the former sipping wine and chatting with Gaspard, the latter, of course, hovering around Alice, after the manner of a hungry bee around a particularly sweet and deliciously refractory flower. It was raining slowly, the fine drops coming straight down through the cold, still February air; but the two young people found it pleasant enough for them on the veranda, where they walked back and forth, making fair exchange of the exciting experiences which had befallen them during their long separation. Between the lines of these mutual recitals sweet, fresh echoes of the old, old story went from heart to heart, an amoebaean love-bout like that of spring birds calling tenderly back and forth in the blooming Maytime woods.
Both Captain Helm and M. Roussillon were delighted to hear of Long-Hair's capture and certain fate, but neither of them regarded the news as of sufficient importance to need much comment. They did not think of telling Beverley and Alice. Jean, however, lying awake in his little bed, overheard the conversation, which he repeated to Alice next morning with great circumstantiality.
Having the quick insight bred of frontier experience, Alice instantly caught the terrible significance of the dilemma in which she and Beverley would be placed by Long-Hair's situation. Moreover, something in her heart arose with irresistible power demanding the final, the absolute human sympathy and gratitude. No matter what deeds Long-Hair had committed that were evil beyond forgiveness, he had done for her the all-atoning thing. He had saved Beverley and sent him back to her.
With a start and a chill of dread, she thought: "What if it is already too late!"
But her nature could not hesitate. To feel the demand of an exigency was to act. She snatched a wrap from its peg on the wall and ran as fast as she could to the fort. People who met her flying along wondered, staring after her, what could be urging her so that she saw nobody, checked herself for nothing, ran splashing through the puddles in the street, gazing ahead of her, as if pursuing some flying object from which she dared not turn her eyes.
And there was, indeed, a call for her utmost power of flight, if she would be of any assistance to Long-Hair, who even then stood bound to a stake in the fort's area, while a platoon of riflemen, those unerring shots from Kentucky and Virginia, were ready to make a target of him at a range of but twenty yards.
Beverley, greatly handicapped by the fact that the fresh scalp of a white man hung at Long-Hair's belt, had exhausted every possible argument to avert or mitigate the sentence promptly spoken by the court martial of which Colonel Clark was the ruling spirit. He had succeeded barely to the extent of turning the mode of execution from tomahawking to shooting. All the officers in the fort approved killing the prisoner, and it was difficult for Colonel Clark to prevent the men from making outrageous assaults upon him, so exasperated were they at sight of the scalp.
Oncle Jazon proved to be one of the most refractory among those who demanded tomahawking and scalping as the only treatment due Long-Hair. The repulsive savage stood up before them stolid, resolute, defiant, proudly flaunting the badge which testified to his horrible efficiency as an emissary of Hamilton's. It had been left in his belt by Clark's order, as the best justification of his doom.
"L' me hack 'is damned head," Oncle Jazon pleaded. "I jes' hankers to chop a hole inter it. An' besides I want 'is scelp to hang up wi' mine an' that'n o' the Injun what scelped me. He kicked me in the ribs, the stinkin' varmint."
Beverley pleaded eloquently and well, but even the genial Major Helm laughed at his sentiment of gratitude to a savage who at best but relented at the last moment, for Alice's sake, and concluded not to sell him to Hamilton. It is due to the British commander to record here that he most positively and with what appeared to be high sincerity, denied the charge of having offered rewards for the taking of human scalps. He declared that his purposes and practices were humane, and that while he did use the Indians as military allies, his orders to them were that they must forego cruel modes of warfare and refrain from savage outrage upon prisoners. Certainly the weight of contemporary testimony seems overwhelmingly against him, but we enter his denial. Long-Hair himself, however, taunted him with accusations of unfaithfulness in carrying out some very inhuman contracts, and to add a terrible sting, volunteered the statement that poor Barlow's scalp had served his turn in the place of Beverley's.
With conditions so hideous to contend against, Beverley, of course, had no possible means of succoring the condemned savage.
"Him a kickin' yer ribs clean inter ye, an' a makin' ye run the ga'ntlet, an' here ye air a tryin' to save 'is life!" whined Oncle Jazon, "W'y man, I thought ye hed some senterments! Dast 'is Injin liver, I kin feel them kicks what he guv me till yit. Ventrebleu! que diable voulez-vous?"
Clark simply pushed Beverley's pleadings aside as not worth a moment's consideration. He easily felt the fine bit of gratitude at the bottom of it all; but there was too much in the other side of the balance; justice, the discipline and confidence of his little army, and the claim of the women and children on the frontier demanded firmness in dealing with a case like Long-Hair's.
"No, no," he said to Beverley, "I would do anything in the world for you, Fitz, except to swerve an inch from duty to my country and the defenceless people down yonder in Kentucky, I can't do it. There's no use to press the matter further. The die is cast. That brute's got to be killed, and killed dead. Look at him--look at that scalp! I'd have him killed if I dropped dead for it the next instant."
Beverley shuddered. The argument was horribly convincing, and yet, somehow, the desire to save Long-Hair overbore everything else in his mind. He could not cease his efforts; it seemed to him as if he were pleading for Alice herself. Captain Farnsworth, strange to say, was the only man in the fort who leaned to Beverley's side; but he was reticent, doubtless feeling that his position as a British prisoner gave him no right to speak, especially when every lip around him was muttering something about "infamous scalp-buyers and Indian partisans," with whom he was prominently counted by the speakers.
As Clark had said, the die was cast. Long-Hair, bound to a stake, the scalp still dangling at his side, grimly faced his executioners, who were eager to fire. He appeared to be proud of the fact that he was going to be killed.
"One thing I can say of him," Helm remarked to Beverley; "he's the grandest specimen of the animal--I might say the brute--man that I ever saw, red, white or black. Just look at his body and limbs! Those muscles are perfectly marvelous."
"He saved my life, and I must stand here and see him murdered," the young man replied with intense bitterness. It was all that he could think, all that he could say. He felt inefficient and dejected, almost desperate.
Clark himself, not willing to cast responsibility upon a subordinate, made ready to give the fatal order. Turning to Long-Hair first, he demanded of him as well as he could in the Indian dialect of which he had a smattering, what he had to say at his last moment.
The Indian straightened his already upright form, and, by a strong bulging of his muscles, snapped the thongs that bound him. Evidently he had not tried thus to free himself; it was rather a spasmodic expression of savage dignity and pride. One arm and both his legs still were partially confined by the bonds, but his right hand he lifted, with a gesture of immense self-satisfaction, and pointed at Hamilton.
"Indian brave; white man coward," he said, scowling scornfully. "Long-Hair tell truth; white man lie, damn!"
Hamilton's countenance did not change its calm, cold expression. Long-Hair gazed at him fixedly for a long moment, his eyes flashing most concentrated hate and contempt. Then he tore the scalp from his belt and flung it with great force straight toward the captive Governor's face. It fell short, but the look that went with it did not, and Hamilton recoiled.
At that moment Alice arrived. Her coming was just in time to interrupt Clark, who had turned to the waiting platoon with the order of death on his lips. She made no noise, save the fluttering of her skirts, and her loud and rapid panting on account of her long, hard run. She sprang before Long-Hair and faced the platoon.
"You cannot, you shall not kill this man!" she cried in a voice loaded with excitement. "Put away those guns!"
Woman never looked more thrillingly beautiful to man than she did just then to all those rough, stern backwoodsmen. During her flight her hair had fallen down, and it glimmered like soft sunlight around her face. Something compelling flashed out of her eyes, an expression between a triumphant smile and a ray of irresistible beseechment. It took Colonel Clark's breath when he turned and saw her standing there, and heard her words.
"This man saved Lieutenant Beverley's life," she presently added, getting better control of her voice, and sending into it a thrilling timbre; "you shall not harm him--you must not do it!"
Beverley was astounded when he saw her, the thing was so unexpected, so daring, and done with such high, imperious force; still it was but a realization of what he had imagined she would be upon occasion. He stood gazing at her, as did all the rest, while she faced Clark and the platoon of riflemen. To hear his own name pass her quivering lips, in that tone and in that connection, seemed to him a consecration.
"Would you be more savage than your Indian prisoner?" she went on, "less grateful than he for a life saved? I did him a small, a very small, service once, and in memory of that he saved Lieutenant Beverley's life, because--because--" she faltered for a single breath, then added clearly and with magnetic sweetness--"because Lieutenant Beverley loved me, and because I loved him. This Indian Long-Hair showed a gratitude that could overcome his strongest passion. You white men should be ashamed to fall below his standard."
Her words went home. It was as if the beauty of her face, the magnetism of her lissome and symmetrical form, the sweet fire of her eyes and the passionate appeal of her voice gave what she said a new and irresistible force of truth. When she spoke of Beverley's love for her, and declared her love for him, there was not a manly heart in all the garrison that did not suddenly beat quicker and feel a strange, sweet waft of tenderness. A mother, somewhere, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a sweetheart, called through that voice of absolute womanhood.
"Beverley, what can I do?" muttered Clark, his bronze face as pale as it could possibly become.
"Do!" thundered Beverley, "do! you cannot murder that man. Hamilton is the man you should shoot! He offered large rewards, he inflamed the passions and fed the love of rum and the cupidity of poor wild men like the one standing yonder. Yet you take him prisoner and treat him with distinguished consideration. Hamilton offered a large sum for me taken alive, a smaller one for my scalp. Long-Hair saved me. You let Hamilton stand yonder in perfect safety while you shoot the Indian. Shame on you, Colonel Clark! shame on you, if you do it."
Alice stood looking at the stalwart commander while Beverley was pouring forth his torrent of scathing reference to Hamilton, and she quickly saw that Clark was moved. The moment was ripe for the finishing stroke. They say it is genius that avails itself of opportunity. Beverley knew the fight was won when he saw what followed. Alice suddenly left Long-Hair and ran to Colonel Clark, who felt her warm, strong arms loop round him for a single point of time never to be effaced from his memory; then he saw her kneeling at his feet, her hands upstretched, her face a glorious prayer, while she pleaded the Indian's cause and won it.
Doubtless, while we all rather feel that Clark was weak to be thus swayed by a girl, we cannot quite blame him. Alice's flag was over him; he had heard her history from Beverley's cunning lips; he actually believed that Hamilton was the real culprit, and besides he felt not a little nauseated with executing Indians. A good excuse to have an end of it all did not go begging.
But Long-Hair was barely gone over the horizon from the fort, as free and as villainous a savage as ever trod the earth, when a discovery made by Oncle Jazon caused Clark to hate himself for what he had done.
The old scout picked up the scalp, which Long-Hair had flung at Hamilton, and examined it with odious curiosity. He had lingered on the spot with no other purpose than to get possession of that ghastly relic. Since losing his own scalp the subject of crownlocks had grown upon his mind until its fascination was irresistible. He studied the hair of every person he saw, as a physiognomist studies faces. He held the gruesome thing up before him, scrutinizing it with the expression of a connoisseur who has discovered, on a grimy canvas, the signature of an old master.
"Sac' bleu!" he presently broke forth. "Well I'll be--Look'ee yer, George Clark! Come yer an' look. Ye've been sold ag'in. Take a squint, ef ye please!"
Colonel Clark, with his hands crossed behind him, his face thoughtfully contracted, was walking slowly to and fro a little way off. He turned about when Oncle Jazon spoke.
"What now, Jazon?"
"A mighty heap right now, that's what; come yer an' let me show ye. Yer a fine sort o' eejit, now ain't ye!"
The two men walked toward each other and met. Oncle Jazon held up the scalp with one hand, pointing at it with the index finger of the other.
"This here scalp come off'n Rene de Ronville's head."
"And who is he?"
"Who's he? Ye may well ax thet. He wuz a Frenchman. He wuz a fine young feller o' this town. He killed a Corp'ral o' Hamilton's an' tuck ter the woods a month or two ago. Hamilton offered a lot o' money for 'im or 'is scalp, an' Long-Hair went in fer gittin' it. Now ye knows the whole racket. An' ye lets that Injun go. An' thet same Injun he mighty nigh kicked my ribs inter my stomach!"
Oncle Jazon's feelings were visible and audible; but Clark could not resent the contempt of the old man's looks and words. He felt that he deserved far more than he was receiving. Nor was Oncle Jazon wrong. Rene de Ronville never came back to little Adrienne Bourcier, although, being kept entirely ignorant of her lover's fate, she waited and dreamed and hoped throughout more than two years, after which there is no further record of her life.
Clark, Beverley and Oncle Jazon consulted together and agreed among themselves that they would hold profoundly secret the story of the scalp. To have made it public would have exasperated the creoles and set them violently against Clark, a thing heavy with disaster for all his future plans. As it was, the release of Long-Hair caused a great deal of dissatisfaction and mutinous talk. Even Beverley now felt that the execution ordered by the commander ought to have been sternly carried out.
A day or two later, however, the whole dark affair was closed forever by a bit of confidence on the part of Oncle Jazon when Beverley dropped into his hut one evening to have a smoke with him.
The rain was over, the sky shone like one vast luminary, with a nearly full moon and a thousand stars reinforcing it. Up from the south poured one of those balmy, accidental wind floods, sometimes due in February on the Wabash, full of tropical dream-hints, yet edged with a winter chill that smacks of treachery. Oncle Jazon was unusually talkative; he may have had a deep draught of liquor; at all events Beverley had little room for a word.
"Well, bein' as it's twixt us, as is bosom frien's," the old fellow presently said, "I'll jes' show ye somepin poorty."
He pricked the wick of a lamp and took down his bunch of scalps.
"I hev been a addin' one more to keep company o' mine an' the tothers."
He separated the latest acquisition from the rest of the wisp and added, with a heinous chuckle: "This'n's Long-Hair's!"
And so it was. Beverley knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to go.
"Wen they kicks yer Oncle Jazon's ribs," the old man added, "they'd jes' as well lay down an' give up, for he's goin' to salervate 'em."
Then, after Beverley had passed out of the cabin, Oncle Jazon chirruped after him: "Mebbe ye'd better not tell leetle Alice. The pore leetle gal hev hed worry 'nough."
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{
"id": "4097"
}
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22
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CLARK ADVISES ALICE
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A few days after the surrender of Hamilton, a large boat, the Willing, arrived from Kaskaskia. It was well manned and heavily armed. Clark fitted it out before beginning his march and expected it to be of great assistance to him in the reduction of the fort, but the high waters and the floating driftwood delayed its progress, so that its disappointed crew saw Alice's flag floating bright and high when their eyes first looked upon the dull little town from far down the swollen river. There was much rejoicing, however, when they came ashore and were enthusiastically greeted by the garrison and populace. A courier whom they picked up on the Ohio came with them. He bore dispatches from Governor Henry of Virginia to Clark and a letter for Beverley from his father. With them appeared also Simon Kenton, greatly to the delight of Oncle Jazon, who had worried much about his friend since their latest fredaine--as he called it--with the Indians. Meantime an expedition under Captain Helm had been sent up the river with the purpose of capturing a British flotilla from Detroit.
Gaspard Roussillon, immediately after Clark's victory, thought he saw a good opening favorable to festivity at the river house, for which he soon began to make some of his most ostentatious preparations. Fate, however, as usual in his case, interfered. Fate seemed to like pulling the big Frenchman's ear now and again, as if to remind him of the fact--which he was apt to forget--that he lacked somewhat of omnipotence.
"Ziff! Je vais donner un banquet a tout le moonde, moi!" he cried, hustling and bustling hither and thither.
A scout from up the river announced the approach of Philip Dejean with his flotilla richly laden, and what little interest may have been gathering in the direction of M. Roussillon's festal proposition vanished like the flame of a lamp in a puff of wind when this news reached Colonel Clark and became known in the town.
Beverley and Alice sat together in the main room of the Roussillon cabin--you could scarcely find them separated during those happy days--and Alice was singing to the soft tinkle of a guitar, a Creole ditty with a merry smack in its scarcely intelligible nonsense. She knew nothing about music beyond what M. Roussillon, a jack of all trades, had been able to teach her,--a few simple chords to accompany her songs, picked up at hap-hazard. But her voice, like her face and form, irradiated witchery. It was sweet, firm, deep, with something haunting in it--the tone of a hermit thrush, marvelously pure and clear, carried through a gay strain like the mocking-bird's. Of course Beverley thought it divine; and when a message came from Colonel Clark bidding him report for duty at once, he felt an impulse toward mutiny of the rankest sort. He did not dream that a military expedition could be on hand; but upon reaching headquarters, the first thing he heard was: "Report to Captain Helm. You are to go with him up the river and intercept a British force. Move lively, Helm is waiting for you, probably."
There was no time for explanations. Evidently Clark expected neither questions nor delay. Beverley's love of adventure and his patriotic desire to serve his country came to his aid vigorously enough; still, with Alice's love-song ringing in his heart, there was a cord pulling him back from duty to the sweetest of all life's joys.
Helm was already at the landing, where a little fleet of boats was being prepared. A thousand things had to be done in short order. All hands were stimulated to highest exertion with the thought of another fight. Swivels were mounted in boats, ammunition and provisions stored abundantly, flags hoisted and oars dipped. Never was an expedition of so great importance more swiftly organized and set in motion, nor did one ever have a more prosperous voyage or completer triumph. Philip Dejean, Justice of Detroit, with his men, boats and rich cargo, was captured easily, with not a shot fired, nor a drop of blood spilled in doing it.
If Alice could have known all this before it happened, she would probably have saved herself from the mortification of a rebuke administered very kindly, but not the less thoroughly, by Colonel Clark.
The rumor came to her--a brilliant creole rumor, duly inflated--that an overwhelming British force was descending the river, and that Beverley with a few men, not sufficient to base the expedition on a respectable forlorn hope, would be sent to meet them. Her nature, as was its wont, flared into high indignation. What right had Colonel Clark to send her lover away to be killed just at the time when he was all the whole world to her? Nothing could be more outrageous. She would not suffer it to be done; not she!
Colonel Clark greeted her pleasantly, when she came somewhat abruptly to him, where he was directing a squad of men at work making some repairs in the picketing of the fort. He did not observe her excitement until she began to speak, and then it was noticeable only, and not very strongly, in her tone. She forgot to speak English, and her French was Greek to him.
"I am glad to see you, Mademoiselle," he said, rather inconsequently, lifting his hat and bowing with rough grace, while he extended his right hand cordially. "You have something to say to me? Come with me to my office."
She barely touched his fingers.
"Yes, I have something to say to you. I can tell it here," she said, speaking English now with softest Creole accent. "I wanted--I came to--" It was not so easy as she had imagined it would be to utter what she had in mind. Clark's steadfast, inscrutable eyes, kindly yet not altogether sympathetic, met her own and beat them down. Her voice failed.
He offered her his arm and gravely said: "We will go to my office. I see that you have some important communication to make. There are too many ears here."
Of a sudden she felt like running home. Somehow the situation broke upon her with a most embarrassing effect. She did not take Clark's arm, and she began to tremble. He appeared unconscious of this, and probably was, for his mind had a fine tangle of great schemes in it just then; but he turned toward his office, and bidding her follow him, walked away in that direction.
She was helpless. Not the slightest trace of her usual brilliant self-assertion was at her command. Saving the squad of men sawing and hacking, digging and hammering, the fort appeared as deserted as her mind. She stood gazing after Clark. He did not look back, but strode right on. If she would speak with him, she must follow. It was a surprise to her, for heretofore she had always had her own way, even if she found it necessary to use force. And where was Beverley? Where was the garrison? Colonel Clark did not seem to be at all concerned about the approach of the British--and yet those repairs--perhaps he was making ready for a desperate resistance! She did not move until he reached the door of his office where he stopped and stepped aside, as if to let her pass in first; he even lifted his hat, then looked a trifle surprised when he saw that she was not near him, frowned slightly, changed the frown to a smile and said, lifting his voice so that she felt a certain imperative meaning in it: "Did I walk too fast for you? I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle."
He stood waiting for her, as a father waits for a lagging, wilful child.
"Come, please," he added, "if you have something to say to me; my time just now is precious--I have a great deal to do."
She was not of a nature to retreat under fire, and yet the panic in her breast came very near mastering her will. Clark saw a look in her face which made him speak again: "I assure you, Mademoiselle, that you need not feel embarrassed. You can rely upon me to--" She made a gesture that interrupted him; at the same time she almost ran toward him, gathering in breath, as one does who is about to force out a desperately resisting and riotous thought. The strong, grave man looked at her with a full sense of her fascination, and at the same time he felt a vague wish to get away from her, as if she were about to cast unwelcome responsibility upon him.
"Where is Lieutenant Beverley?" she demanded, now close to Clark, face to face, and gazing straight into his eyes. "I want to see him." Her tone suggested intensest excitement. She was trembling visibly.
Clark's face changed its expression. He suddenly recalled to mind Alice's rapturous public greeting of Beverley on the day of the surrender. He was a cavalier, and it did not agree with his sense of high propriety for girls to kiss their lovers out in the open air before a gazing army. True enough, he himself had been hoodwinked by Alice's beauty and boldness in the matter of Long-Hair. He confessed this to himself mentally, which may have strengthened his present disapproval of her personal inquiry about Beverley. At all events he thought she ought not to be coming into the stockade on such an errand.
"Lieutenant Beverley is absent acting under my orders he said, with perfect respectfulness, yet in a tone suggesting military finality. He meant to set an indefinite yet effective rebuke in his words.
"Absent?" she echoed. "Gone? You sent him away to be killed! You had no right--you--" "Miss Roussillon," said Clark, becoming almost stern, "you had better go home and stay there; young girls oughtn't to run around hunting men in places like this."
His blunt severity of speech was accompanied by a slight frown and a gesture of impatience.
Alice's face blazed red to the roots of her sunny hair; the color ebbed, giving place to a pallor like death. She began to tremble, and her lips quivered pitifully, but she braced herself and tried to force back the choking sensation in her throat.
"You must not misconstrue my words," Clark quickly added; "I simply mean that men will not rightly understand you. They will form impressions very harmful to you. Even Lieutenant Beverley might not see you in the right light."
"What--what do you mean?" she gasped, shrinking from him, a burning spot reappearing under the dimpled skin of each cheek.
"Pray, Miss, do not get excited. There is nothing to make you cry." He saw tears shining in her eyes. "Beverley is not in the slightest danger. All will be well, and he'll come back in a few days. The expedition will be but a pleasure trip. Now you go home. Lieutenant Beverley is amply able to take care of himself. And let me tell you, if you expect a good man to have great confidence in you, stay home and let him hunt you up instead of you hunting him. A man likes that better."
It would be impossible to describe Alice's feelings, as they just then rose like a whirling storm in her heart. She was humiliated, she was indignant, she was abashed; she wanted to break forth with a tempest of denial, self-vindication, resentment; she wanted to cry with her face hidden in her hands. What she did was to stand helplessly gazing at Clark, with two or three bright tears on either cheek, her hands clenched, her eyes flashing. She was going to say some wild thing; but she did not; her voice lodged fast in her throat. She moved her lips, unable to make a sound.
Two of Clark's officers relieved the situation by coming up to get orders about some matter of town government, and Alice scarcely knew how she made her way home. Every vein in her body was humming like a bee when she entered the house and flung herself into a chair.
She heard Madame Roussillon and Father Beret chatting in the kitchen, whence came a fragrance of broiling buffalo steak besprinkled with garlic. It was Father Beret's favorite dish, wherefore his tongue ran freely--almost as freely as that of his hostess, and when he heard Alice come in, he called gayly to her through the kitchen door: "Come here, ma fille, and lend us old folks your appetite; nous avons une tranche a la Bordelaise!"
"I am not hungry," she managed to say, "you can eat it without me."
The old man's quick ears caught the quaver of trouble in her voice, much as she tried to hide it. A moment later he was standing beside her with his hand on her head.
"What is the matter now, little one?" he tenderly demanded. "Tell your old Father."
She began to cry, laying her face in her crossed arms, the tears gushing, her whole frame aquiver, and heaving great sobs. She seemed to shrink like a trodden flower. It touched Father Beret deeply.
He suspected that Beverley's departure might be the cause of her trouble; but when presently she told him what had taken place in the fort, he shook his head gravely and frowned.
"Colonel Clark was right, my daughter," he said after a short silence, "and it is time for you to ponder well upon the significance of his words. You can't always be a wilful, headstrong little girl, running everywhere and doing just as you please. You have grown to be a woman in stature--you must be one in fact. You know I told you at first to be careful how you acted with--" "Father, dear old Father!" she cried, springing from her seat and throwing her arms around his neck. "Have I appeared forward and unwomanly? Tell me, Father, tell me! I did not mean to do anything--" "Quietly, my child, don't give way to excitement." He gently put her from him and crossed himself--a habit of his when suddenly perplexed--then added: "You have done no evil; but there are proprieties which a young woman must not overstep. You are impulsive, too impulsive; and it will not do to let a young man see that you--that you--" "Father, I understand," she interrupted, and her face grew very pale.
Madame Roussillon came to the door, flushed with stooping over the fire, and announced that the steak was ready.
"Bring the wine, Alice," she added, "a bottle of Bordeaux."
She stood for a breath of two, her red hands on her hips, looking first at Father Beret, then at Alice.
"Quarreling again about the romances?" she inquired. "She's been at it again? --she's found 'em again?"
"Yes," said Father Beret, with a queer, dry smile, "more romance. Yes, she's been at it again! Now fetch the Bordeaux, little one."
The following days were cycles of torture to Alice. She groveled in the shadow of a great dread. It seemed to her that Beverley could not love her, could not help looking upon her as a poor, wild, foolish girl, unworthy of consideration. She magnified her faults and crudities, she paraded before her inner vision her fecent improprieties, as they had been disclosed to her, until she saw herself a sort of monstrosity at which all mankind was gazing with disgust. Life seemed dry and shriveled, a mere jaundiced shadow, while her love for Beverley took on a new growth, luxuriant, all-embracing, uncontrollable. The ferment of spirit going on in her breast was the inevitable process of self-recognition which follows the terrible unfolding of the passion-flower, in a nature almost absolutely simple and unsophisticated.
Vincennes held its breath while waiting for news from Helm's expedition. Every day had its nimble, yet wholly imaginary account of what had happened, skipping from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The French folk ran hither and thither in the persistent rain, industriously improving the dramatic interest of each groundless report. Alice's disturbed imagination reveled in the kaleidoscopic terrors conjured up by these swift changes of the form and color of the stories "from the front," all of them more or less tragic. To-day the party is reported as having been surprised and massacred to a man--to-morrow there has been a great fight, many killed, the result in doubt--next day the British are defeated, and so on. The volatile spirit of the Creoles fairly surpassed itself in ringing the changes on stirring rumors.
Alice scarcely left the house during the whole period of excitement and suspense. Like a wounded bird, she withdrew herself from the light and noisy chatter of her friends, seeking only solitude and crepuscular nooks in which to suffer silently. Jean brought her every picturesque bit of the ghastly gossip, thus heaping coals on the fire of her torture. But she did not grow pale and thin. Not a dimple fled from cheek or chin, not a ray of saucy sweetness vanished from her eyes. Her riant health was unalterable. Indeed, the only change in her was a sudden ripening and mellowing of her beauty, by which its colors, its lines, its subtle undercurrents of expression were spiritualized, as if by some powerful clarifying process.
Tremendous is the effect of a soul surprised by passion and brought hard up against an opposing force which dashes it back upon itself with a flare and explosion of self-revealment. Nor shall we ever be able to foretell just how small a circumstance, just how slight an exigency, will suffice to bring on the great change. The shifting of a smile to the gloom of a frown, the snap of a string on the lute of our imagination, just at the point when a rich melody is culminating; the waving of a hand, a vanishing face--any eclipse of tender, joyous expectation--dashes a nameless sense of despair into the soul. And a young girl's soul--who shall uncover its sacred depths of sensitiveness, or analyze its capacity for suffering under such a stroke?
On the fifth day of March, back came the victorious Helm, having surrounded and captured seven boats, richly loaded with provisions and goods, and Dejean's whole force. Then again the little Creole town went wild with rejoicing. Alice heard the news and the noise; but somehow there was no response in her heart. She dreaded to meet Beverley; indeed, she did not expect him to come to her. Why should he?
M. Roussillon, who had volunteered to accompany Helm, arrived in a mood of unlimited proportions, so far as expressing self-admiration and abounding delight was concerned. You would have been sure that he had done the whole deed single-handed, and brought the flotilla and captives to town on his back. But Oncle Jazon for once held his tongue, being too disgusted for words at not having been permitted to fire a single shot. What was the use of going to fight and simply meeting and escorting down the river a lot of non-combatants?
There is something inscrutably delightful about a girl's way of thinking one thing and doing another. Perversity, thy name is maidenhood; and maidenhood, thy name is delicious inconsequence! When Alice heard that Beverley had come back, safe, victorious, to be greeted as one of the heroes of an important adventure, she immediately ran to her room frightened and full of vague, shadowy dread, to hide from him, yet feeling sure that he would not come! Moreover, she busied herself with the preposterous task of putting on her most attractive gown--the buff brocade which she wore that evening at the river house--how long ago it seemed! --when Beverley thought her the queenliest beauty in the world. And she was putting it on so as to look her prettiest while hiding from him!
It is a toss-up where happiness will make its nest. The palace, the hut, the great lady's garden, the wild lass's bower,--skip here, alight there,--the secret of it may never be told. And love and beauty find lodgment, by the same inexplicable route, in the same extremes of circumstances. The wind bloweth where it listeth, finding many a matchless flower and many a ravishing fragrance in the wildest nooks of the world.
No sooner did Beverley land at the little wharf than, rushing to his quarters, he made a hasty exchange of water-soaked apparel for something more comfortable, and then bolted in the direction of Roussillon place.
Now Alice knew by the beating of her heart that he was coming. In spite of all she could do, trying to hold on hard and fast to her doubt and gloom, a tide of rich sweetness began to course through her heart and break in splendid expectation from her eyes, as they looked through the little unglazed window toward the fort. Nor had she long to wait. He came up the narrow wet street, striding like a tall actor in the height of a melodrama, his powerful figure erect as an Indian's, and his face glowing with the joy of a genuine, impatient lover, who is proud of himself because of the image he bears in his heart.
When Alice flung wide the door (which was before Beverley could cross the veranda), she had quite forgotten how she had gowned and bedecked herself; and so, without a trace of self-consciousness, she flashed upon him a full-blown flower--to his eyes the loveliest that ever opened under heaven.
Gaspard Roussillon, still overflowing with the importance of his part in the capture of Dejean, came puffing homeward just in time to see a man at the door holding Alice a-tiptoe in his arms.
"Ziff!" he cried, as he pushed open the little front gate of the yard, "en voila assez, vogue la galere!"
The two forms disappeared within the house, as if moved by his roaring voice.
The letter to Beverley from his father was somewhat disturbing. It bore the tidings of his mother's failing health. This made it easier for the young Lieutenant to accept from Clark the assignment to duty with a party detailed for the purpose of escorting Hamilton, Farnsworth and several other British officers to Williamsburg, Virginia. It also gave him a most powerful assistance in persuading Alice to marry him at once, so as to go with him on what proved to be a delightful wedding journey through the great wilderness to the Old Dominion. Spring's verdure burst abroad on the sunny hills as they slowly went their way; the mating birds sang in every blooming brake and grove by which they passed, and in their joyous hearts they heard the bubbling of love's eternal fountain.
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AND SO IT ENDED
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Our story must end here, because at this point its current flows away forever from old Vincennes; and it was only of the post on the Wabash that we set out to make a record. What befell Alice and Beverley after they went to Virginia we could go on to tell; but that would be another story. Suffice it to say, they lived happily ever after, or at least somewhat beyond three score and ten, and left behind them a good name and numerous descendants.
How Alice found out her family in Virginia, we are not informed; but after a lapse of some years from the date of her marriage, there appears in one of her letters a reference to an estate inherited from her Tarleton ancestors, and her name appears in old records signed in full, Alice Tarleton Beverley. A descendant of hers still treasures the locket, with its broken miniature and battered crest, which won Beverley's life from Long-Hair, the savage. Beside it, as carefully guarded, is the Indian charm-stone that stopped Hamilton's bullet over Alice's heart The rapiers have somehow disappeared, and there is a tradition in the Tarleton family that they were given by Alice to Gaspard Roussillon, who, after Madame Roussillon's death in 1790, went to New Orleans, where he stayed a year or two before embarking for France, whither he took with him the beautiful pair of colechemardes and Jean the hunchback.
Oncle Jazon lived in Vincennes many years after the war was over; but he died at Natchez, Mississippi, when ninety-three years old. He said, with almost his last breath, that he couldn't shoot very well, even in his best days; but that he had, upon various occasions, "jes' kind o' happened to hit a Injun in the lef' eye." They used to tell a story, as late as General Harrison's stay in Vincennes, about how Oncle Jazon buried his collection of scalps, with great funeral solemnity, as his part of the celebration of peace and independence about the year 1784.
Good old Father Beret died suddenly soon after Alice's marriage and departure for Virginia. He was found lying face downward on the floor of his cabin. Near him, on a smooth part of a puncheon, were the mildewed fragments of a letter, which he had been arranging, as if to read its contents. Doubtless it was the same letter brought to him by Rene de Ronville, as recorded in an early chapter of our story. The fragments were gathered up and buried with him. His dust lies under the present Church of St. Xavier,--the dust of as noble a man and as true a priest as ever sacrificed himself for the good of humanity.
In after years Simon Kenton visited Beverley and Alice in their Virginia home. To his dying day he was fond of describing their happy and hospitable welcome and the luxuries to which they introduced him. They lived in a stately white mansion on a hill overlooking a vast tobacco plantation, where hundreds of negro slaves worked and sang by day and frolicked by night. Their oldest child was named Fitzhugh Gaspard. Kenton died in 1836.
There remains but one little fact worth recording before we close the book. In the year 1800, on the fourth of July, a certain leading French family of Vincennes held a patriotic reunion, during which a little old flag was produced and its story told. Some one happily proposed that it be sent to Mrs. Alice Tarleton Beverley with a letter of explanation, and in profound recognition of the glorious circumstances which made it the true flag of the great Northwest.
And so it happened that Alice's little banner went to Virginia and is still preserved in an old mansion not very far from Monticello; but it seems likely that the Wabash Valley will soon again possess the precious relic. The marriage engagement of Miss Alice Beverley to a young Indiana officer, distinguished for his patriotism and military ardor, has been announced at the old Beverley homestead on the hill, and the high contracting parties have planned that the wedding ceremony shall take place under the famous little flag, on the anniversary of dark's capture of Post Vincennes. When the bride shall be brought to her new home on the banks of the Wabash, the flag will come with her; but Oncle Jazon will not be on hand with his falsetto shout: "VIVE LA BANNIERE D'ALICE ROUSSILLON! VIVE ZHORZZH VASINTON!"
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How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day, From every opening flower. WATTS' HYMNS FOR CHILDREN.
We have heard of those who fancied that they beheld a signal instance of the hand of the Creator in the celebrated cataract of Niagara. Such instances of the power of sensible and near objects to influence certain minds, only prove how much easier it is to impress the imaginations of the dull with images that are novel, than with those that are less apparent, though of infinitely greater magnitude. Thus it would seem to be strange indeed, that any human being should find more to wonder at in any one of the phenomena of the earth, than in the earth itself; or should especially stand astonished at the might of Him who created the world, when each night brings into view a firmament studded with other worlds, each equally the work of His hands!
Nevertheless, there is (at bottom) a motive for adoration, in the study of the lowest fruits of the wisdom and power of God. The leaf is as much beyond our comprehension of remote causes, as much a subject of intelligent admiration, as the tree which bears it: the single tree confounds our knowledge and researches the same as the entire forest; and, though a variety that appears to be endless pervades the world, the same admirable adaptation of means to ends, the same bountiful forethought, and the same benevolent wisdom, are to be found in the acorn, as in the gnarled branch on which it grew.
The American forest has so often been described, as to cause one to hesitate about reviving scenes that might possibly pall, and in retouching pictures that have been so frequently painted as to be familiar to every mind. But God created the woods, and the themes bestowed by his bounty are inexhaustible. Even the ocean, with its boundless waste of water, has been found to be rich in its various beauties and marvels; and he who shall bury himself with us, once more, in the virgin forests of this widespread land, may possibly discover new subjects of admiration, new causes to adore the Being that has brought all into existence, from the universe to its most minute particle.
The precise period of our legend was in the year 1812, and the season of the year the pleasant month of July, which had now drawn near to its close. The sun was already approaching the western limits of a wooded view, when the actors in its opening scene must appear on a stage that is worthy of a more particular description.
The region was, in one sense, wild, though it offered a picture that was not without some of the strongest and most pleasing features of civilization. The country was what is termed “rolling,” from some fancied resemblance to the surface of the ocean, when it is just undulating with a long “ground-swell.”
Although wooded, it was not, as the American forest is wont to grow, with tail straight trees towering toward the light, but with intervals between the low oaks that were scattered profusely over the view, and with much of that air of negligence that one is apt to see in grounds where art is made to assume the character of nature. The trees, with very few exceptions, were what is called the “burr-oak,” a small variety of a very extensive genus; and the spaces between them, always irregular, and often of singular beauty, have obtained the name of “openings”; the two terms combined giving their appellation to this particular species of native forest, under the name of “Oak Openings.”
These woods, so peculiar to certain districts of country, are not altogether without some variety, though possessing a general character of sameness. The trees were of very uniform size, being little taller than pear-trees, which they resemble a good deal in form; and having trunks that rarely attain two feet in diameter. The variety is produced by their distribution. In places they stand with a regularity resembling that of an orchard; then, again, they are more scattered and less formal, while wide breadths of the land are occasionally seen in which they stand in copses, with vacant spaces, that bear no small affinity to artificial lawns, being covered with verdure. The grasses are supposed to be owing to the fires lighted periodically by the Indians in order to clear their hunting-grounds.
Toward one of these grassy glades, which was spread on an almost imperceptible acclivity, and which might have contained some fifty or sixty acres of land, the reader is now requested to turn his eyes. Far in the wilderness as was the spot, four men were there, and two of them had even some of the appliances of civilization about them. The woods around were the then unpeopled forest of Michigan; and the small winding reach of placid water that was just visible in the distance, was an elbow of the Kalamazoo, a beautiful little river that flows westward, emptying its tribute into the vast expanse of Lake Michigan. Now, this river has already become known, by its villages and farms, and railroads and mills; but then, not a dwelling of more pretension than the wigwam of the Indian, or an occasional shanty of some white adventurer, had ever been seen on its banks. In that day, the whole of that fine peninsula, with the exception of a narrow belt of country along the Detroit River, which was settled by the French as far back as near the close of the seventeenth century, was literally a wilderness. If a white man found his way into it, it was as an Indian trader, a hunter, or an adventurer in some other of the pursuits connected with border life and the habits of the savages.
Of this last character were two of the men on the open glade just mentioned, while their companions were of the race of the aborigines. What is much more remarkable, the four were absolutely strangers to each other's faces, having met for the first time in their lives, only an hour previously to the commencement of our tale. By saying that they were strangers to each other, we do not mean that the white men were acquaintances, and the Indians strangers, but that neither of the four had ever seen either of the party until they met on that grassy glade, though fame had made them somewhat acquainted through their reputations. At the moment when we desire to present this group to the imagination of the reader, three of its number were grave and silent observers of the movements of the fourth. The fourth individual was of middle size, young, active, exceedingly well formed, and with a certain open and frank expression of countenance, that rendered him at least well-looking, though slightly marked with the small-pox. His real name was Benjamin Boden, though he was extensively known throughout the northwestern territories by the sobriquet of Ben Buzz--extensively as to distances, if not as to people. By the voyageurs, and other French of that region, he was almost universally styled le Bourdon or the “Drone”; not, however, from his idleness or inactivity, but from the circumstances that he was notorious for laying his hands on the products of labor that proceeded from others. In a word, Ben Boden was a “bee-hunter,” and as he was one of the first to exercise his craft in that portion of the country, so was he infinitely the most skilful and prosperous. The honey of le Bourdon was not only thought to be purer and of higher flavor than that of any other trader in the article, but it was much the most abundant. There were a score of respectable families on the two banks of the Detroit, who never purchased of any one else, but who patiently waited for the arrival of the capacious bark canoe of Buzz, in the autumn, to lay in their supplies of this savory nutriment for the approaching winter. The whole family of griddle cakes, including those of buckwheat, Indian rice, and wheaten flour, were more or less dependent on the safe arrival of le Bourdon, for their popularity and welcome. Honey was eaten with all; and wild honey had a reputation, rightfully or not obtained, that even rendered it more welcome than that which was formed by the labor and art of the domesticated bee.
The dress of le Bourdon was well adapted to his pursuits and life. He wore a hunting-shirt and trousers, made of thin stuff, which was dyed green, and trimmed with yellow fringe. This was the ordinary forest attire of the American rifleman; being of a character, as it was thought, to conceal the person in the woods, by blending its hues with those of the forest. On his head Ben wore a skin cap, somewhat smartly made, but without the fur; the weather being warm. His moccasins were a good deal wrought, but seemed to be fading under the exposure of many marches. His arms were excellent; but all his martial accoutrements, even to a keen long-bladed knife, were suspended from the rammer of his rifle; the weapon itself being allowed to lean, in careless confidence, against the trunk of the nearest oak, as if their master felt there was no immediate use for them.
Not so with the other three. Not only was each man well armed, but each man kept his trusty rifle hugged to his person, in a sort of jealous watchfulness; while the other white man, from time to time, secretly, but with great minuteness, examined the flint and priming of his own piece.
This second pale-face was a very different person from him just described. He was still young, tall, sinewy, gaunt, yet springy and strong, stooping and round-shouldered, with a face that carried a very decided top-light in it, like that of the notorious Bardolph. In short, whiskey had dyed the countenance of Gershom Waring with a tell-tale hue, that did not less infallibly betray his destination than his speech denoted his origin, which was clearly from one of the States of New England. But Gershom had been so long at the Northwest as to have lost many of his peculiar habits and opinions, and to have obtained substitutes.
Of the Indians, one, an elderly, wary, experienced warrior, was a Pottawattamie, named Elksfoot, who was well known at all the trading-houses and “garrisons” of the northwestern territory, including Michigan as low down as Detroit itself. The other red man was a young Chippewa, or O-jeb-way, as the civilized natives of that nation now tell us the word should be spelled. His ordinary appellation among his own people was that of Pigeonswing; a name obtained from the rapidity and length of his flights. This young man, who was scarcely turned of five-and-twenty, had already obtained a high reputation among the numerous tribes of his nation, as a messenger, or “runner.”
Accident had brought these four persons, each and all strangers to one another, in communication in the glade of the Oak Openings, which has already been mentioned, within half an hour of the scene we are about to present to the reader. Although the rencontre had been accompanied by the usual precautions of those who meet in a wilderness, it had been friendly so far; a circumstance that was in some measure owing to the interest they all took in the occupation of the bee-hunter. The three others, indeed, had come in on different trails, and surprised le Bourdon in the midst of one of the most exciting exhibitions of his art--an exhibition that awoke so much and so common an interest in the spectators, as at once to place its continuance for the moment above all other considerations. After brief salutations, and wary examinations of the spot and its tenants, each individual had, in succession, given his grave attention to what was going on, and all had united in begging Ben Buzz to pursue his occupation, without regard to his visitors. The conversation that took place was partly in English, and partly in one of the Indian dialects, which luckily all the parties appeared to understand. As a matter of course, with a sole view to oblige the reader, we shall render what was said, freely, into the vernacular.
“Let's see, let's see, STRANger,” cried Gershom, emphasizing the syllable we have put in italics, as if especially to betray his origin, “what you can do with your tools. I've heer'n tell of such doin's, but never see'd a bee lined in all my life, and have a desp'rate fancy for larnin' of all sorts, from 'rithmetic to preachin'.”
“That comes from your Puritan blood,” answered le Bourdon, with a quiet smile, using surprisingly pure English for one in his class of life. “They tell me you Puritans preach by instinct.”
“I don't know how that is,” answered Gershom, “though I can turn my hand to anything. I heer'n tell, across at Bob Ruly (Bois Brulk [Footnote: This unfortunate name, which it may be necessary to tell a portion of our readers means “burnt wood,” seems condemned to all sorts of abuses among the linguists of the West. Among other pronunciations is that of “Bob Ruly”; while an island near Detroit, the proper name of which is “Bois Blanc,” is familiarly known to the lake mariners by the name of “Bobolo.”]) of sich doin's, and would give a week's keep at Whiskey Centre, to know how 'twas done.”
“Whiskey Centre” was a sobriquet bestowed by the fresh-water sailors of that region, and the few other white adventurers of Saxon origin who found their way into that trackless region, firstly on Gershom himself, and secondly on his residence. These names were obtained from the intensity of their respective characters, in favor of the beverage named. L'eau de mort was the place termed by the voyagers, in a sort of pleasant travesty on the eau de vie of their distant, but still well-remembered manufactures on the banks of the Garonne. Ben Boden, however, paid but little attention to the drawling remarks of Gershom Waring. This was not the first time he had heard of “Whiskey Centre,” though the first time he had ever seen the man himself. His attention was on his own trade, or present occupation; and when it wandered at all, it was principally bestowed on the Indians; more especially on the runner. Of Elk's foot, or Elksfoot, as we prefer to spell it, he had some knowledge by means of rumor; and the little he knew rendered him somewhat more indifferent to his proceedings than he felt toward those of the Pigeonswing. Of this young redskin he had never heard; and, while he managed to suppress all exhibition of the feeling, a lively curiosity to learn the Chippewa's business was uppermost in his mind. As for Gershom, he had taken HIS measure at a glance, and had instantly set him down to be, what in truth he was, a wandering, drinking, reckless adventurer, who had a multitude of vices and bad qualities, mixed up with a few that, if not absolutely redeeming, served to diminish the disgust in which he might otherwise have been held by all decent people. In the meanwhile, the bee-hunting, in which all the spectators took so much interest, went on. As this is a process with which most of our readers are probably unacquainted, it may be necessary to explain the modus operandi, as well as the appliances used.
The tools of Ben Buzz, as Gershom had termed these implements of his trade, were neither very numerous nor very complex. They were all contained in a small covered wooden pail like those that artisans and laborers are accustomed to carry for the purpose of conveying their food from place to place. Uncovering this, le Bourdon had brought his implements to view, previously to the moment when he was first seen by the reader. There was a small covered cup of tin; a wooden box; a sort of plate, or platter, made also of wood; and a common tumbler, of a very inferior, greenish glass. In the year 1812, there was not a pane, nor a vessel, of clear, transparent glass, made in all America! Now, some of the most beautiful manufactures of that sort, known to civilization, are abundantly produced among us, in common with a thousand other articles that are used in domestic economy. The tumbler of Ben Buzz, however, was his countryman in more senses than one. It was not only American, but it came from the part of Pennsylvania of which he was himself a native. Blurred, and of a greenish hue, the glass was the best that Pittsburg could then fabricate, and Ben had bought it only the year before, on the very spot where it had been made.
An oak, of more size than usual, had stood a little remote from its fellows, or more within the open ground of the glade than the rest of the “orchard.” Lightning had struck this tree that very summer, twisting off its trunk at a height of about four feet from the ground. Several fragments of the body and branches lay near, and on these the spectators now took their seats, watching attentively the movements of the bee-hunter. Of the stump Ben had made a sort of table, first levelling its splinters with an axe, and on it he placed the several implements of his craft, as he had need of each in succession.
The wooden platter was first placed on this rude table. Then le Bourdon opened his small box, and took out of it a piece of honeycomb, that was circular in shape, and about an inch and a half in diameter. The little covered tin vessel was next brought into use. Some pure and beautifully clear honey was poured from its spout into the cells of the piece of comb, until each of them was about half filled. The tumbler was next taken in hand, carefully wiped, and examined, by holding it up before the eyes of the bee-hunter. Certainly, there was little to admire in it, but it was sufficiently transparent to answer his purposes. All he asked was to be able to look through the glass in order to see what was going on in its interior.
Having made these preliminary arrangements, Buzzing Ben--for the sobriquet was applied to him in this form quite as often as in the other--next turned his attention to the velvet-like covering of the grassy glade. Fire had run over the whole region late that spring, and the grass was now as fresh, and sweet and short, as if the place were pastured. The white clover, in particular, abounded, and was then just bursting forth into the blossom. Various other flowers had also appeared, and around them were buzzing thousands of bees. These industrious little animals were hard at work, loading themselves with sweets; little foreseeing the robbery contemplated by the craft of man. As le Bourdon moved stealthily among the flowers and their humming visitors, the eyes of the two red men followed his smallest movement, as the cat watches the mouse; but Gershom was less attentive, thinking the whole curious enough, but preferring whiskey to all the honey on earth.
At length le Bourdon found a bee to his mind, and watching the moment when the animal was sipping sweets from a head of white clover, he cautiously placed his blurred and green-looking tumbler over it, and made it his prisoner. The moment the bee found itself encircled with the glass, it took wing and attempted to rise. This carried it to the upper part of its prison, when Ben carefully introduced the unoccupied hand beneath the glass, and returned to the stump. Here he set the tumbler down on the platter in a way to bring the piece of honeycomb within its circle.
So much done successfully, and with very little trouble, Buzzing Ben examined his captive for a moment, to make sure that all was right. Then he took off his cap and placed it over tumbler, platter, honeycomb, and bee. He now waited half a minute, when cautiously raising the cap again, it was seen that the bee, the moment a darkness like that of its hive came over it, had lighted on the comb, and commenced filling itself with the honey. When Ben took away the cap altogether, the head and half of the body of the bee was in one of the cells, its whole attention being bestowed on this unlooked-for hoard of treasure. As this was just what its captor wished, he considered that part of his work accomplished. It now became apparent why a glass was used to take the bee, instead of a vessel of wood or of bark. Transparency was necessary in order to watch the movements of the captive, as darkness was necessary in order to induce it to cease its efforts to escape, and to settle on the comb.
As the bee was now intently occupied in filling itself, Buzzing Ben, or le Bourdon, did not hesitate about removing the glass. He even ventured to look around him, and to make another captive, which he placed over the comb, and managed as he had done with the first. In a minute, the second bee was also buried in a cell, and the glass was again removed. Le Bourdon now signed for his companions to draw near.
“There they are, hard at work with the honey,” he said, speaking in English, and pointing at the bees. “Little do they think, as they undermine that comb, how near they are to the undermining of their own hive! But so it is with us all! When we think we are in the highest prosperity we may be nearest to a fall, and when we are poorest and hum-blest, we may be about to be exalted. I often think of these things, out here in the wilderness, when I'm alone, and my thoughts are acTYVE.”
Ben used a very pure English, when his condition in life is remembered; but now and then, he encountered a word which pretty plainly proved he was not exactly a scholar. A false emphasis has sometimes an influence on a man's fortune, when one lives in the world; but it mattered little to one like Buzzing Ben, who seldom saw more than half a dozen human faces in the course of a whole summer's hunting. We remember an Englishman, however, who would never concede talents to Burr, because the latter said, a L'AmEricaine, EurOpean, instead of EuropEan.
“How hive in danger?” demanded Elksfoot, who was very much of a matter-of-fact person. “No see him, no hear him--else get some honey.”
“Honey you can have for asking, for I've plenty of it already in my cabin, though it's somewhat 'arly in the season to begin to break in upon the store. In general, the bee-hunters keep back till August, for they think it better to commence work when the creatures”--this word Ben pronounced as accurately as if brought up at St. James's, making it neither “creatur'” nor “creatOOre”--“to commence work when the creatures have had time to fill up, after winter's feed. But I like the old stock, and, what is more, I feel satisfied this is not to be a common summer, and so I thought I would make an early start.”
As Ben said this, he glanced his eyes at Pigeonswing, who returned the look in a way to prove there was already a secret intelligence between them, though neither had ever seen the other an hour before.
“Waal!” exclaimed Gershom, “this is cur'ous, I'll allow THAT; yes, it's cur'ous--but we've got an article at Whiskey Centre that'll put the sweetest honey bee ever suck'd, altogether out o' countenance!”
“An article of which you suck your share, I'll answer for it, judging by the sign you carry between the windows of your face,” returned Ben, laughing; “but hush, men, hush. That first bee is filled, and begins to think of home. He'll soon be off for HONEY Centre, and I must keep my eye on him. Now, stand a little aside, friends, and give me room for my craft.”
The men complied, and le Bourdon was now all intense attention to his business. The bee first taken had, indeed, filled itself to satiety, and at first seemed to be too heavy to rise on the wing. After a few moments of preparation, however, up it went, circling around the spot, as if uncertain what course to take. The eye of Ben never left it, and when the insect darted off, as it soon did, in an air-line, he saw it for fifty yards after the others had lost sight of it. Ben took the range, and was silent fully a minute while he did so.
“That bee may have lighted in the corner of yonder swamp,” he said, pointing, as he spoke, to a bit of low land that sustained a growth of much larger trees than those which grew in the “opening,” “or it has crossed the point of the wood, and struck across the prairie beyond, and made for a bit of thick forest that is to be found about three miles further. In the last case, I shall have my trouble for nothing.”
“What t'other do?” demanded Elksfoot, with very obvious curiosity.
“Sure enough; the other gentleman must be nearly ready for a start, and we'll see what road HE travels. 'Tis always an assistance to a bee-hunter to get one creature fairly off, as it helps him to line the next with greater sartainty.”
Ben WOULD say acTYVE, and SARtain, though he was above saying creatoore, or creatur'. This is the difference between a Pennsylvanian and a Yankee. We shall not stop, however, to note all these little peculiarities in these individuals, but use the proper or the peculiar dialect, as may happen to be most convenient to ourselves.
But there was no time for disquisition, the second bee being now ready for a start. Like his companion, this insect rose and encircled the stump several times, ere it darted away toward its hive, in an air-line. So small was the object, and so rapid its movement, that no one but the bee-hunter saw the animal after it had begun its journey in earnest. To HIS disappointment, instead of flying in the same direction as the bee first taken, this little fellow went buzzing off fairly at a right angle! It was consequently clear that there were two hives, and that they lay in very different directions.
Without wasting his time in useless talk, le Bourdon now caught another bee, which was subjected to the same process as those first taken. When this creature had filled it-self, it rose, circled the stump as usual, as if to note the spot for a second visit, and darted away, directly in a line with the bee first taken. Ben noted its flight most accurately, and had his eye on it, until it was quite a hundred yards from the stump. This he was enabled to do, by means of a quick sight and long practice.
“We'll move our quarters, friends,” said Buzzing Ben, good-humoredly, as soon as satisfied with this last observation, and gathering together his traps for a start. “I must angle for that hive, and I fear it will turn out to be across the prairie, and quite beyond my reach for to-day.”
The prairie alluded to was one of those small natural meadows, or pastures, that are to be found in Michigan, and may have contained four or five thousand acres of open land. The heavy timber of the swamp mentioned, jutted into it, and the point to be determined was, to ascertain whether the bees had flown OVER these trees, toward which they had certainly gone in an air-line, or whether they had found their hive among them. In order to settle this material question, a new process was necessary.
“I must 'angle' for them chaps,” repeated le Bourdon; “and if you will go with me, strangers, you shall soon see the nicest part of the business of bee-hunting. Many a man who can 'line' a bee, can do nothing at an 'angle'.”
As this was only gibberish to the listeners, no answer was made, but all prepared to follow Ben, who was soon ready to change his ground. The bee-hunter took his way across the open ground to a point fully a hundred rods distant from his first position, where he found another stump of a fallen tree, which he converted into a stand. The same process was gone through with as before, and le Bourdon was soon watching two bees that had plunged their heads down into the cells of the comb. Nothing could exceed the gravity and attention of the Indians, all this time. They had fully comprehended the business of “lining” the insects toward their hives, but they could not understand the virtue of the “angle.” The first bore so strong an affinity to their own pursuit of game, as to be very obvious to their senses; but the last included a species of information to which they were total strangers. Nor were they much the wiser after le Bourdon had taken his “angle”; it requiring a sort of induction to which they were not accustomed, in order to put the several parts of his proceedings together, and to draw the inference. As for Gershom, he affected to be familiar with all that was going on, though he was just as ignorant as the Indians themselves. This little bit of hypocrisy was the homage he paid to his white blood: it being very unseemly, according to his view of the matter, for a pale-face not to know more than a redskin.
The bees were some little time in filling themselves. At length one of them came out of his cell, and was evidently getting ready for his flight. Ben beckoned to the spectators to stand farther back, in order to give him a fair chance, and, just as he had done so, the bee rose. After humming around the stump for an instant, away the insect flew, taking a course almost at right angles to that in which le Bourdon had expected to see it fly. It required half a minute for him to recollect that this little creature had gone off in a line nearly parallel to that which had been taken by the second of the bees, which he had seen quit his original position. The line led across the neighboring prairie, and any attempt to follow these bees was hopeless.
But the second creature was also soon ready, and when it darted away, le Bourdon, to his manifest delight, saw that it held its flight toward the point of the swamp INTO, or OVER which two of his first captives had gone. This settled the doubtful matter. Had the hive of these bees been BEYOND that wood, the angle of intersection would not have been there, but at the hive across the prairie. The reader will understand that creatures which obey an instinct, or such a reason as bees possess, would never make a curvature in their flights without some strong motive for it. Thus, two bees taken from flowers that stood half a mile apart would be certain not to cross each other's tracks, in returning home, until they met at the common hive: and wherever the intersecting angle in their respective flights may be, there would that hive be also. As this repository of sweets was the game le Bourdon had in view, it is easy to see how much he was pleased when the direction taken by the last of his bees gave him the necessary assurance that its home would certainly be found in that very point of dense wood.
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How skilfully it builds its cell, How neat it spreads the wax, And labors hard to store it well, With the sweet food it makes. WATTS' HYMNS FOR CHILDREN.
The next thing was to ascertain which was the particular tree in which the bees had found a shelter. Collecting his implements, le Bourdon was soon ready, and, with a light elastic tread, he moved off toward the point of the wood, followed by the whole party. The distance was about half a mile, and men so much accustomed to use their limbs made light of it. In a few minutes all were there, and the bee-hunter was busy in looking for his tree. This was the consummation of the whole process, and Ben was not only provided for the necessities of the case, but he was well skilled in all the signs that betokened the abodes of bees.
An uninstructed person might have passed that point of wood a thousand times, without the least consciousness of the presence of a single insect of the sort now searched for. In general, the bees flew too high to be easily perceptible from the ground, though a practised eye can discern them at distances that would almost seem to be marvellous. But Ben had other assistants than his eyes. He knew that the tree he sought must be hollow, and such trees usually give outward signs of the defect that exists within. Then, some species of wood are more frequented by the bees than others, while the instinct of the industrious little creatures generally enables them to select such homes as will not be very likely to destroy all the fruits of their industry by an untimely fall. In all these particulars, both bees and bee-hunter were well versed, and Ben made his search accordingly.
Among the other implements of his calling, le Bourdon had a small spy-glass; one scarcely larger than those that are used in theatres, but which was powerful and every way suited to its purposes. Ben was not long in selecting a tree, a half-decayed elm, as the one likely to contain the hive; and by the aid of his glass he soon saw bees flying among its dying branches, at a height of not less than seventy feet from the ground. A little further search directed his attention to a knot-hole, in and out of which the glass enabled him to see bees passing in streams. This decided the point; and putting aside all his implements but the axe, Buzzing Ben now set about the task of felling the tree.
“STRANger,” said Gershom, when le Bourdon had taken out the first chip, “perhaps you'd better let ME do that part of the job. I shall expect to come in for a share of the honey, and I'm willing to 'arn all I take. I was brought up on axes, and jack-knives, and sich sort of food, and can cut OR whittle with the best chopper, or the neatest whittler, in or out of New England.”
“You can try your hand, if you wish it,” said Ben, relinquishing the axe. “I can fell a tree as well as yourself, but have no such love for the business as to wish to keep it all to myself.”
“Waal, I can say, I LIKE it,” answered Gershom, first passing his thumb along the edge of the axe, in order to ascertain its state; then swinging the tool, with a view to try its “hang.”
“I can't say much for your axe, STRANGER, for this helve has no tarve to't, to my mind; but, sich as it is, down must come this elm, though ten millions of bees should set upon me for my pains.”
This was no idle boast of Waring's. Worthless as he was in so many respects, he was remarkably skilful with the axe, as he now proved by the rapid manner in which he severed the trunk of the large elm on which he was at work. He inquired of Ben where he should “lay the tree,” and when it came clattering down, it fell on the precise spot indicated. Great was the confusion among the bees at this sudden downfall of their long-cherished home. The fact was not known to their enemy, but they had inhabited that tree for a long time; and the prize now obtained was the richest he had ever made in his calling. As for the insects, they filled the air in clouds, and all the invaders deemed it prudent to withdraw to some little distance for a time, lest the irritated and wronged bees should set upon them and take an ample revenge. Had they known their power, this might easily have been done, no ingenuity of man being able to protect him against the assaults of this insignificant-looking animal, when unable to cover himself, and the angry little heroes are in earnest. On the present occasion, however, no harm befell the marauders. So suddenly had the hive tumbled that its late occupants appeared to be astounded, and they submitted to their fate as men yield to the power of tempests and earthquakes. In half an hour most of them were collected on an adjacent tree, where doubtless a consultation on the mode of future proceedings was held, after their fashion.
The Indians were more delighted with le Bourdon's ingenious mode of discovering the hive than with the richness of the prize; while Ben himself, and Gershom, manifested most satisfaction at the amount of the earnings. When the tree was cut in pieces, and split, it was ascertained that years of sweets were contained within its capacious cavities, and Ben estimated the portion that fell to his share at more than three hundred pounds of good honey--comb included--after deducting the portions that were given to the Indians, and which were abstracted by Gershom. The three last, however, could carry but little, as they had no other means of bearing it away than their own backs.
The honey was not collected that night. The day was too far advanced for that; and le Bourdon--certainly never was name less merited than this sobriquet as applied to the active young bee-hunter--but le Bourdon, to give him his quaint appellation, offered the hospitalities of his own cabin to the strangers, promising to put them on their several paths the succeeding day, with a good store of honey in each knapsack.
“They do say there ar' likely to be troublesome times.” he continued, with simple earnestness, after having given the invitation to partake of his homely fare; “and I should like to hear what is going on in the world. From Whiskey Centre I do not expect to learn much, I will own; but I am mistaken if the Pigeonswing, here, has not a message that will make us all open our ears.”
The Indians ejaculated their assent; but Gershom was a man who could not express anything sententiously. As the bee-hunter led the way toward his cabin, or shanty, he made his comments with his customary freedom. Before recording what he communicated, however, we shall digress for one moment in order to say a word ourselves concerning this term “shanty.” It is now in general use throughout the whole of the United States, meaning a cabin that has been constructed in haste, and for temporary purposes. By a license of speech, it is occasionally applied to more permanent residences, as men are known to apply familiar epithets to familiar objects. The derivation of the word has caused some speculation. The term certainly came from the West-perhaps from the Northwest-and the best explanation we have ever heard of its derivation is to sup-pose “shanty,” as we now spell it, a corruption of “chiente,” which it is thought may have been a word in Canadian French phrase to express a “dog-kennel.” “Chenil,” we believe, is the true French term for such a thing, and our own word is said to be derived from it--“meute” meaning “a kennel of dogs,” or “a pack of hounds,” rather than their dwelling. At any rate, “chiente” is so plausible a solution of the difficulty, that one may hope it is the true one, even though he has no better authority for it than a very vague rumor. Curious discoveries are sometimes made by these rude analogies, however, though they are generally thought not to be very near akin to learning. For ourselves, now, we do not entertain a doubt that the sobriquet of “Yankees” which is in every man's mouth, and of which the derivation appears to puzzle all our philologists, is nothing but a slight corruption of the word “Yengeese,” the term applied to the “English,” by the tribes to whom they first became known. We have no other authority for this derivation than conjecture, and conjectures that are purely our own; but it is so very plausible as almost to carry conviction of itself. [Footnote: Since writing the above, the author has met with an allusion that has induced him to think he may not have been the first to suggest this derivation of the word “Yankee.” With himself, the suggestion is perfectly original, and has long since been published by him; but nothing is more probable than the fact that a solution so very natural, of this long-disputed question in language, may have suggested itself to various minds.]
The “chiente'” or shanty of le Bourdon stood quite near to the banks of the Kalamazoo, and in a most beautiful grove of the burr-oak. Ben had selected the site with much taste, though the proximity of a spring of delicious water had probably its full share in influencing his decision. It was necessary, moreover, that he should be near the river, as his great movements were all made by water, for the convenience of transporting his tools, furniture, etc., as well as his honey. A famous bark canoe lay in a little bay, out of the current of the stream, securely moored, head and stern, in order to prevent her beating against any object harder than herself.
The dwelling had been constructed with some attention to security. This was rendered necessary, in some measure, as Ben had found by experience, on account of two classes of enemies--men and bears. From the first, it is true, the bee-hunter had hitherto apprehended but little. There were few human beings in that region. The northern portions of the noble peninsula of Michigan are some-what low and swampy, or are too broken and savage to tempt the native hunters from the openings and prairies that then lay, in such rich profusion, further south and west. With the exception of the shores, or coasts, it was seldom that the northern half of the peninsula felt the footstep of man. With the southern half, however, it was very different; the “openings,” and glades, and watercourses, offering almost as many temptations to the savage as they have since done to the civilized man. Nevertheless, the bison, or the buffalo, as the animal is erroneously, but very generally, termed throughout the country, was not often found in the vast herds of which we read, until one reached the great prairies west of the Mississippi. There it was that the red men most loved to congregate; though always bearing, in numbers, but a trifling proportion to the surface they occupied. In that day, however, near as to the date, but distant as to the events, the Chippewas, Ottawas, Pottawattamies, kindred tribes, we believe, had still a footing in Michigan proper, and were to be found in considerable numbers in what was called the St. Joseph's country, or along the banks of the stream of that name; a region that almost merits the lofty appellation of the garden of America. Le Bourdon knew many of their warriors, and was much esteemed among them; though he had never met with either of those whom chance now had thrown in his way. In general, he suffered little wrong from the red men, who wondered at his occupation, while they liked his character; but he had sustained losses, and even ill-treatment, from certain outcasts of the tribes, as well as from vagrant whites, who occasionally found their way to his temporary dwellings. On the present occasion, le Bourdon felt far more uneasiness from the circumstance of having his abode known to Gershom Waring, a countryman and fellow-Christian, in one sense at least, than from its being known to the Chippewa and the Pottawattamie.
The bears were constant and dangerous sources of annoyance to the bee-hunter. It was not often that an armed man--and le Bourdon seldom moved without his rifle--has much to apprehend from the common brown bear of America. Though a formidable-looking animal, especially when full grown, it is seldom bold enough to attack a human being, nothing but hunger, or care for its young, ever inducing it to go so much out of the ordinary track of its habits. But the love of the bear for honey amounts to a passion. Not only will it devise all sorts of bearish expedients to get at the sweet morsels, but it will scent them from afar. On one occasion, a family of Bruins had looked into a shanty of Ben's, that was not constructed with sufficient care, and consummated their burglary by demolishing the last comb. That disaster almost ruined the adventurer, then quite young in his calling; and ever since its occurrence he had taken the precaution to build such a citadel as should at least set teeth and paws at defiance. To one who had an axe, with access to young pines, this was not a difficult task, as was proved by the present habitation of our hero.
This was the second season that le Bourdon had occupied “Castle Meal,” as he himself called the shanty. This appellation was a corruption of “chateau au Mtel” a name given to it by a wag of a voyageur who had aided Ben in ascending the Kalamazoo the previous summer, and had remained long enough with him to help him put up his habitation. The building was just twelve feet square, in the interior, and somewhat less than fourteen on its exterior. It was made of pine logs, in the usual mode, with the additional security of possessing a roof of squared timbers of which the several parts were so nicely fitted together as to shed rain. This unusual precaution was rendered necessary to protect the honey, since the bears would have unroofed the common bark coverings of the shanties, with the readiness of human beings, in order to get at stores as ample as those which the bee-hunter had soon collected beneath his roof. There was one window of glass, which le Bourdon had brought in his canoe; though it was a single sash of six small lights, that opened on hinges; the exterior being protected by stout bars of riven oak, securely let into the logs. The door was made of three thicknesses of oaken plank, pinned well together, and swinging on stout iron hinges, so secured as not to be easily removed. Its outside fastening was made by means of two stout staples, a short piece of ox-chain, and an unusually heavy padlock. Nothing short of an iron bar, and that cleverly applied, could force this fastening. On the inside, three bars of oak rendered all secure, when the master was at home.
“You set consid'rable store by your honey, I guess, STRANger,” said Gershom, as le Bourdon unlocked the fastenings and removed the chain, “if a body may judge by the kear (care) you take on't! Now, down our way we ain't half so partic'lar; Dolly and Blossom never so much as putting up a bar to the door, even when I sleep out, which is about half the time, now the summer is fairly set in.”
“And whereabouts is 'down our way,' if one may be so bold as to ask the question?” returned le Bourdon, holding the door half-opened, while he turned his face toward the other, in expectation of the answer.
“Why, down at Whiskey Centre, to be sure, as the v'y'gerers and other boatmen call the place.”
“And where is Whiskey Centre?” demanded Ben, a little pertinaciously.
“Why, I thought everybody would 'a' known that,” answered Greshom; “sin' whiskey is as drawin' as a blister. Whiskey Centre is just where _I_ happen to live; bein' what a body may call a travellin' name. As I'm now down at the mouth of the Kalamazoo, why Whiskey Centre's there, too.”
“I understand the matter, now,” answered le Bourdon, composing his well-formed mouth in a sort of contemptuous smile. “You and whiskey, being sworn friends, are always to be found in company. When I came into the river, which was the last week in April, I saw nothing like whiskey, nor anything like a Centre at the mouth.”
“If you'd 'a' be'n a fortnight later, STRANger, you'd 'a' found both. Travellin' Centres, and stationary, differs somewhat, I guess; one is always to be found, while t'other must be s'arched a'ter.”
“And pray who are Dolly and Blossom; I hope the last is not a WHISKEY blossom?”
“Not she--she never touches a spoonful, though I tell her it never hurt mortal! She tries hard to reason me into it that it hurts ME--but that's all a mistake, as anybody can see that jest looks at me.”
Ben DID look at him; and, to say truth, came to a somewhat different conclusion.
“Is she so blooming that you call her 'Blossom'?” demanded the bee-hunter, “or is she so young?”
“The gal's a little of both. Dolly is my wife, and Blossom is my sister. The real name of Blossom is Margery Waring, but everybody calls her Blossom; and so I gi'n into it, with the rest on 'em.”
It is probable that le Bourdon lost a good deal of his interest in this flower of the wilderness, as soon as he learned she was so nearly related to the Whiskey Centre. Gershom was so very uninviting an object, and had so many palpable marks, that he had fairly earned the nickname which, as it afterward appeared, the western adventurers had given HIM, as well as his ABODE, wherever the last might be, that no one of decently sober habits could readily fancy anything belonging to him. At any rate, the bee-hunter now led the way into his cabin, whither he was followed without unnecessary ceremony, by all three of his guests.
The interior of the “chiente,” to use the most poetical, if not the most accurate word, was singularly clean for an establishment set up by a bachelor, in so remote a part of the world. The honey, in neat, well-constructed kegs, was carefully piled along one side of the apartment, in a way to occupy the minimum of room, and to be rather ornamental than unsightly. These kegs were made by le Bourdon himself, who had acquired as much of the art as was necessary to that object. The woods always furnished the materials; and a pile of staves that was placed beneath a neighboring tree sufficiently denoted that he did not yet deem that portion of his task completed.
In one corner of the hut was a pile of well-dressed bearskins, three in number, each and all of which had been taken from the carcasses of fallen foes, within the last two months. Three more were stretched on saplings, near by, in the process of curing. It was a material part of the bee-hunter's craft to kill this animal, in particular; and the trophies of his conflicts with them were proportionably numerous. On the pile already prepared, he usually slept.
There was a very rude table, a single board set up on sticks; and a bench or two, together with a wooden chest of some size, completed the furniture. Tools were suspended from the walls, it is true; and no less than three rifles, in addition to a very neat double-barrelled “shot-gun,” or fowling-piece, were standing in a corner. These were arms collected by our hero in his different trips, and retained quite as much from affection as from necessity, or caution. Of ammunition, there was no very great amount visible; only three or four horns and a couple of pouches being suspended from pegs: but Ben had a secret store, as well as another rifle, carefully secured, in a natural magazine and arsenal, at a distance sufficiently great from the chiente to remove it from all danger of sharing in the fortunes of his citadel, should disaster befall the last.
The cooking was done altogether out of doors. For this essential comfort, le Bourdon had made very liberal provision. He had a small oven, a sufficiently convenient fire-place, and a storehouse, at hand; all placed near the spring, and beneath the shade of a magnificent elm. In the storehouse he kept his barrel of flour, his barrel of salt, a stock of smoked or dried meat, and that which the woodsman, if accustomed in early life to the settlements, prizes most highly, a half-barrel of pickled pork. The bark canoe had sufficed to transport all these stores, merely ballasting handsomely that ticklish craft; and its owner relied on the honey to perform the same office on the return voyage, when trade or consumption should have disposed of the various articles just named.
The reader may smile at the word “trade,” and ask where were those to be found who could be parties to the traffic. The vast lakes and innumerable rivers of that region, however, remote as it then was from the ordinary abodes of civilized man, offered facilities for communication that the active spirit of trade would be certain not to neglect. In the first place, there were always the Indians to barter skins and furs against powder, lead, rifles, blankets, and unhappily “fire-water.” Then, the white men who penetrated to those semi-wilds were always ready to “dicker” and to “swap,” and to “trade” rifles, and watches, and whatever else they might happen to possess, almost to their wives and Children.
But we should be doing injustice to le Bourdon, were we in any manner to confound him with the “dickering” race. He was a bee-hunter quite as much through love of the wilderness and love of adventure, as through love of gain. Profitable he had certainly found the employment, or he probably would not have pursued it; but there was many a man who--nay, most men, even in his own humble class in life-would have deemed his liberal earnings too hardly obtained, when gained at the expense of all intercourse with their own kind. But Buzzing Ben loved the solitude of his situation, its hazards, its quietude, relieved by passing moments of high excitement; and, most of all, the self-reliance that was indispensable equally to his success and his happiness. Woman, as yet, had never exercised her witchery over him, and every day was his passion for dwelling alone, and for enjoying the strange, but certainly most alluring, pleasures of the woods, increasing and gaining strength in his bosom. It was seldom, now, that he held intercourse even with the Indian tribes that dwelt near his occasional places of hunting; and frequently had he shifted his ground in order to avoid collision, however friendly, with whites who, like himself, were pushing their humble fortunes along the shores of those inland seas, which, as yet, were rarely indeed whitened by a sail. In this respect, Boden and Waring were the very antipodes of each other; Gershom being an inveterate gossip, in despite of his attachment to a vagrant and border life.
The duties of hospitality are rarely forgotten among border men. The inhabitant of a town may lose his natural disposition to receive all who offer at his board, under the pressure of society; but it is only in most extraordinary exceptions that the frontier man is ever known to be inhospitable. He has little to offer, but that little is seldom withheld, either through prudence or niggardliness. Under this feeling--we might call it habit also--le Bourdon now set himself at work to place on the table such food as he had at command and ready cooked. The meal which he soon pressed his guests to share with him was composed of a good piece of cold boiled pork, which Ben had luckily cooked the day previously, some bear's meat roasted, a fragment of venison steak, both lean and cold, and the remains of a duck that had been shot the day before, in the Kalamazoo, with bread, salt, and, what was somewhat unusual in the wilderness, two or three onions, raw. The last dish was highly relished by Gershom, and was slightly honored by Ben; but the Indians passed it over with cold indifference. The dessert consisted of bread and honey, which were liberally partaken of by all at table.
Little was said by either host or guests, until the supper was finished, when the whole party left the chiente, to enjoy their pipes in the cool evening air, beneath the oaks of the grove in which the dwelling stood. Their conversation began to let the parties know something of each other's movements and characters.
“YOU are a Pottawattamie, and YOU a Chippewa,” said le Bourdon, as he courteously handed to his two red guests pipes of theirs, that he had just stuffed with some of his own tobacco--“I believe you are a sort of cousins, though your tribes are called by different names.”
“Nation, Ojebway,” returned the elder Indian, holding up a finger, by way of enforcing attention.
“Tribe, Pottawattamie,” added the runner, in the same sententious manner.
“Baccy, good”--put in the senior, by way of showing he was well contented with his comforts.
“Have you nothin' to drink?” demanded Whiskey Centre, who saw no great merit in anything but “firewater.”
“There is the spring,” returned le Bourdon, gravely; “a gourd hangs against the tree.”
Gershom made a wry face, but he did not move.
“Is there any news stirring among the tribes?” asked the bee-hunter, waiting, however, a decent interval, lest he might be supposed to betray a womanly curiosity.
Elksfoot puffed away some time before he saw fit to answer, reserving a salvo in behalf of his own dignity. Then he removed the pipe, shook off the ashes, pressed down the fire a little, gave a reviving draught or two, and quietly replied: “Ask my young brother--he runner--he know.”
But Pigeonswing seemed to be little more communicative than the Pottawattamie. He smoked on in quiet dignity, while the bee-hunter patiently waited for the moment when it might suit his younger guest to speak. That moment did not arrive for some time, though it came at last. Almost five minutes after Elksfoot had made the allusion mentioned, the Ojebway, or Chippewa, removed his pipe also, and looking courteously round at his host, he said with emphasis: “Bad summer come soon. Pale-faces call young men togedder, and dig up hatchet.”
“I had heard something of this,” answered le Bourdon, with a saddened countenance, “and was afraid it might happen.”
“My brother dig up hatchet too, eh?” demanded Pigeonswing.
“Why should I? I am alone here, on the Openings, and it would seem foolish in me to wish to fight.”
“Got no tribe--no Ojebway--no Pottawattamie, eh?”
“I have my tribe, as well as another, Chippewa, but can see no use I can be to it, here. If the English and Americans fight, it must be a long way from this wilderness, and on or near the great salt lake.”
“Don't know--nebber know, 'till see. English warrior plenty in Canada.”
“That may be; but American warriors are not plenty here. This country is a wilderness, and there are no soldiers hereabouts, to cut each other's throats.”
“What you t'ink him?” asked Pigeonswing, glancing at Gershom; who, unable to forbear any longer, had gone to the spring to mix a cup from a small supply that still remained of the liquor with which he had left home. “Got pretty good scalp?”
“I suppose it is as good as another's--but he and I are countrymen, and we cannot raise the tomahawk on one another.”
“Don't t'ink so. Plenty Yankee, him!”
Le Bourdon smiled at this proof of Pigeonswings sagacity, though he felt a good deal of uneasiness at the purport of his discourse.
“You are right enough in THAT” he answered, “but I'm plenty of Yankee, too.”
“No, don't say so,” returned the Chippewa--“no, mustn't say DAT. English; no Yankee. HIM not a bit like you.”
“Why, we are unlike each other, in some respects, it is true, though we are countrymen, notwithstanding. My great father lives at Washington, as well as his.”
The Chippewa appeared to be disappointed; perhaps he appeared sorry, too; for le Bourdon's frank and manly hospitality had disposed him to friendship instead of hostilities, while his admissions would rather put him in an antagonist position. It was probably with a kind motive that he pursued the discourse in a way to give his host some insight into the true condition of matters in that part of the world.
“Plenty Breetish in woods,” he said, with marked deliberation and point. “Yankee no come yet.”
“Let me know the truth, at once, Chippewa,” exclaimed le Bourdon. “I am but a peaceable bee-hunter, as you see, and wish no man's scalp, or any man's honey but my own. Is there to be a war between America and Canada, or not?”
“Some say, yes; some say, no,” returned Pigeonswing, evasively, “My part, don't know. Go, now, to see. But plenty Montreal belt among redskins; plenty rifle; plenty powder, too.”
“I heard something of this as I came up the lakes,” rejoined Ben; “and fell in with a trader, an old acquaintance, from Canada, and a good friend, too, though he is to be my enemy, according to law, who gave me to understand that the summer would not go over without blows. Still, they all seemed to be asleep at Mackinaw (Michilimackinac) as I passed there.”
“Wake up pretty soon. Canada warrior take fort.”
“If I thought that, Chippewa, I would be off this blessed night to give the alarm.”
“No--t'ink better of dat.”
“Go I would, if I died for it the next hour!”
“T'ink better--be no such fool, I tell you.”
“And I tell you, Pigeonswing, that go I would, if the whole Ojebway nation was on my trail. I am an American, and mean to stand by my own people, come what will.”
“T'ought you only peaceable bee-hunter, just now,” retorted the Chippewa, a little sarcastically.
By this time le Bourdon had somewhat cooled, and he became conscious of his indiscretion. He knew enough of the history of the past, to be fully aware that, in all periods of American history, the English, and, for that matter, the French too, so long as they had possessions on this continent, never scrupled about employing the savages in their conflicts. It is true, that these highly polished, and, we may justly add, humane nations--(for each is, out of all question, entitled to that character in the scale of comparative humanity as between communities, and each if you will take its own account of the matter, stands at the head of civilization in this respect)--would, notwithstanding these high claims, carry on their AMERICAN wars by the agency of the tomahawk, the scalping-knife, and the brand. Eulogies, though pronounced by ourselves on ourselves, cannot erase the stains of blood. Even down to the present hour, a cloud does not obscure the political atmosphere between England and America, that its existence may not be discovered on the prairies, by a movement among the In-dians. The pulse that is to be felt there is a sure indication of the state of the relations between the parties. Every one knows that the savage, in his warfare, slays both sexes and all ages; that the door-post of the frontier cabin is defiled by the blood of the infant, whose brains have been dashed against it; and that the smouldering ruins of log-houses oftener than not cover the remains of their tenants. But what of all that? Brutus is still “an honorable man,” and the American, who has not this sin to answer for among his numberless transgressions, is reviled as a semi-barbarian! The time is at hand, when the Lion of the West will draw his own picture, too; and fortunate will it be for the characters of some who will gather around the easel, if they do not discover traces of their own lineaments among his labors.
The feeling engendered by the character of such a warfare is the secret of the deeply seated hostility which pervades the breast of the WESTERN American against the land of his ancestors. He never sees the Times, and cares not a rush for the mystifications of the Quarterly Review; but he remembers where his mother was brained, and his father or brother tortured; aye, and by whose instrumentality the foul deeds were mainly done. The man of the world can understand that such atrocities may be committed, and the people of the offending nation remain ignorant of their existence, and, in a measure, innocent of the guilt; but the sufferer, in his provincial practice, makes no such distinction, confounding all alike in his resentments, and including all that bear the hated name in his maledictions. It is a fearful thing to awaken the anger of a nation; to excite in it a desire for revenge; and thrice is that danger magnified, when the people thus aroused possess the activity, the resources, the spirit, and the enterprise of the Americans. We have been openly derided, and that recently, because, in the fulness of our sense of power and sense of right, language that exceeds any direct exhibition of the national strength has escaped the lips of legislators, and, perhaps justly, has exposed them to the imputation of boastfulness. That derision, however, will not soon be repeated. The scenes enacting in Mexico, faint as they are in comparison with what would have been seen, had hostilities taken an other direction, place a perpetual gag in the mouths of all scoffers. The child is passing from the gristle into the bone, and the next generation will not even laugh, as does the present, at any idle and ill-considered menaces to coerce this republic; strong in the consciousness of its own power, it will eat all such fanfaronades, if any future statesman should be so ill-advised as to renew them, with silent indifference.
Now, le Bourdon was fully aware that one of the surest pulses of approaching hostilities between England and America was to be felt in the far West. If the Indians were in movement, some power was probably behind the scenes to set them in motion. Pigeonswing was well known to him by reputation; and there was that about the man which awakened the most unpleasant apprehensions, and he felt an itching desire to learn all he could from him, without betraying any more of his own feelings, if that were possible.
“I do not think the British will attempt Mackinaw,” Ben remarked, after a long pause and a good deal of smoking had enabled him to assume an air of safe indifference.
“Got him, I tell you,” answered Pigeonswing, pointedly.
“Got what, Chippewa?”
“Him--Mac-naw--got fort--got so'gers--got whole island. Know dat, for been dere.”
This was astounding news, indeed! The commanding officer of that ill-starred garrison could not himself have been more astonished, when he was unexpectedly summoned to surrender by an enemy who appeared to start out of the earth, than was le Bourdon, at hearing this intelligence. To western notions, Michilimackinac was another Gibraltar, although really a place of very little strength, and garrisoned by only one small company of regulars. Still, habit had given the fortress a sort of sanctity among the adventurers of that region; and its fall, even in the settled parts of the country, sounded like the loss of a province. It is now known that, anticipating the movements of the Americans, some three hundred whites, sustained by more than twice that number of Indians, including warriors from nearly every adjacent tribe, had surprised the post on the 17th of July, and compelled the subaltern in command, with some fifty odd men, to surrender. This rapid and highly military measure, on the part of the British, completely cut off the post of Chicago, at the head of Lake Michigan, leaving it isolated, on what was then a very remote wilderness. Chicago, Mackinac, and Detroit, were the three grand stations of the Americans on the upper lakes, and here were two of them virtually gone at a blow!
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--Ho! who's here? If anything that's civil, speak; if savage, Take, or lend-- Cymbeline Not another syllable did le Bourdon utter to the Chippewa, or the Chippewa to him, in that sitting, touching the important event just communicated. Each carefully avoided manifesting any further interest in the subject, but the smoking continued for some time after the sun had set. As the shades of evening began to gather, the Pottawattamie arose, shook the ashes from his pipe, gave a grunt, and uttered a word or two, by way of announcing his disposition to retire. On this hint, Ben went into the cabin, spread his skins, and intimated to his guests that their beds were ready for them. Few compliments pass among border men on such occasions, and one after another dropped off, until all were stretched on the skins but the master of the place. He remained up two hours later, ruminating on the state of things; when, perceiving that the night was wearing on, he also found a nest, and sought his repose.
Nothing occurred to disturb the occupants of “Castle Meal,” as le Bourdon laughingly called his cabin, until the return of day. If there were any bears scenting around the place, as often occurred at night, their instinct must have apprised them that a large reinforcement was present, and caused them to defer their attack to a more favorable opportunity. The first afoot next morning was the bee-hunter himself, who arose and left his cabin just as the earliest streaks of day were appearing in the east. Although dwelling in a wilderness, the “openings” had not the character of ordinary forests. The air circulates freely beneath their oaks, the sun penetrates in a thousand places, and grass grows, wild but verdant. There was little of the dampness of the virgin woods; and the morning air, though cool, as is ever the case, even in midsummer, in regions still covered with trees, was balmy; and, at that particular spot, it came to the senses of le Bourdon loaded with the sweets of many a wide glade of his favorite white clover. Of course, he had placed his cabin near those spots where the insect he sought most abounded; and a fragrant site it proved to be, in favorable conditions of the atmosphere. Ben had a taste for all the natural advantages of his abode, and was standing in enjoyment of its placid beauties when some one touched his elbow. Turning, quick as thought, he perceived the Chippewa at his side. That young Indian had approached with the noiseless tread of his people, and was now anxious to hold a private communication with him.
“Pottawattamie got long ear--come fudder--” said Pigeonswing; “go cook-house--t'ink we want breakfast.”
Ben did as desired; and the two were soon side by side at the spring, in the outlet of which they made their ablutions--the redskin being totally without paint. When this agreeable office was performed, each felt in better condition for a conference.
“Elkfoot got belt from Canada fadder,” commenced the Chippewa, with a sententious allusion to the British propensity to keep the savages in pay. “KNOW he got him KNOW he keep him.”
“And you, Pigeonswing--by your manner of talking I had set you down for a king's Injin, too.”
“TALK so--no FEEL bit so. MY heart Yankee.”
“And have you not had a belt of wampum sent you, as well as the rest of them?”
“Dat true--got him--don't keep him.”
“What! did you dare to send it back?”
“Ain't fool, dough young. Keep him; no keep him. Keep him for Canada fadder; no keep him for Chippewa brave.”
“What have you then done with your belt?”
“Bury him where nobody find him dis war. No--Waubkenewh no hole in heart to let king in.”
Pigeonswing, as this young Indian was commonly called in his tribe, in consequence of the rapidity of his movement when employed as a runner, had a much more respectable name, and one that he had fairly earned in some of the forays of his people, but which the commonalty had just the same indisposition to use as the French have to call Marshal Soult the Duc de Dalmatie. The last may be the most honorable title, but it is not that by which he is the best known to his countrymen. Waubkenewh was an appellation, notwithstanding, of which the young Chippewa was justly proud; and he often asserted his right to use it, as sternly as the old hero of Toulouse asserted his right to his duchy, when the Austrians wished to style him “le Marechal DUC Soult.”
“And you are friendly to the Yankees, and an enemy to the red-coats?”
Waubkenewh grasped the hand of le Bourdon, and squeezed it firmly. Then he said, warily: “Take care--Elkfoot friend of Blackbird; like to look at Canada belt. Got medal of king, too. Have Yankee scalp, bye'm by. Take care--must speak low, when Elkfoot near.”
“I begin to understand you, Chippewa; you wish me to believe that YOU are a friend to America, and that the Pottawatamie is not. If this be so, why have you held the speech that you did last night, and seemed to be on a war-path AGAINST my countrymen?”
“Dat good way, eh? Elkfoot den t'ink me HIS friend dat very good in war-time.”
“But is it true, or false, that Mackinaw is taken by the British?”
“Dat true too--gone, and warrior all prisoner. Plenty Winnebago, plenty Pottawatamie, plenty Ottowa, plenty redskin, dere.”
“And the Chippewas?”
“Some Ojebway, too”--answered Pigeonswing, after a reluctant pause. “Can't all go on same path this war. Hatchets, somehow, got two handle--one strike Yankee; one strike King George.”
“But what is your business here, and where are you now going if you are friendly to the Americans? I make no secret of my feelings--I am for my own people, and I wish proof that you are a friend, and not an enemy.”
“Too many question, one time,” returned the Chippewa, a little distastefully. “No good have so long tongue. Ask one question, answer him--ask anoder, answer HIM, too.”
“Well, then, what is your business, here?”
“Go to Chicago, for gen'ral.”
“Do you mean that you bear a message from some American general to the commandant at Chicago?”
“Just so--dat my business. Guess him, right off; he, he, he!”
It is so seldom that an Indian laughs that the bee-hunter was startled.
“Where is the general who has sent you on this errand?” he demanded.
“He at Detroit--got whole army dere--warrior plenty as oak in opening.”
All this was news to the bee-hunter, and it caused him to muse a moment, ere he proceeded.
“What is the name of the American general who has sent you on this path?” he then demanded.
“Hell,” answered the Ojebway, quietly.
“Hell! You mean to give his Indian title, I suppose, to show that he will prove dangerous to the wicked. But how is he called in our own tongue?”
“Hell--dat he name--good name for so'ger, eh?”
“I believe I understand you, Chippewa--Hull is the name of the governor of the territory, and you must have mistaken the sound--'is it not so?”
“Hull--Hell--don't know--just same--one good as t'other.”
“Yes, one will do as well as the other, if a body only understands you. So Governor Hull sent you here?”
“No gubbernor--general, tell you. Got big army--plenty warrior--eat Breesh up!”
“Now, Chippewa, answer me one thing to my likin', or I shall set you down as a man with a forked tongue, though you do call yourself a friend of the Yankees. If you have been sent from Detroit to Chicago, why are you so far north as this? Why are you here, on the banks of the Kalamazoo, when your path ought to lead you more toward the St. Joseph's?”
“Been to Mackinaw. Gen'ral says, first go to Mackinaw and see wid own eye how garrison do--den go to Chicago, and tell warrior dere what happen, and how he best manage. Understan' dat, Bourdon?”
“Aye, it all sounds well enough, I will acknowledge. You have been to Mackinaw to look about you, there, and having seen things with your own eyes, have started for Chicago to give your knowledge to the commandant at that place. Now, redskin, have you any proof of what you say?”
For some reason that the bee-hunter could not yet fathom, the Chippewa was particularly anxious either to obtain his confidence, or to deceive him. Which he was attempting, was not yet quite apparent; but that one or other was uppermost in his mind, Ben thought was beyond dispute. As soon as the question last named was put, however, the Indian looked cautiously around him, as if to be certain there were no spectators. Then he carefully opened his tobacco-pouch, and extricated from the centre of the cut weed a letter that was rolled into the smallest compass to admit of this mode of concealment, and which was encircled by a thread. The last removed, the letter was unrolled, and its superscription exposed. The address was to “Captain--Heald, U. S. Army, commanding at Chicago.” In one corner were the words “On public service, by Pigeonswing.” All this was submitted to the bee-hunter, who read it with his own eyes.
“Dat good”--asked the Chippewa, pointedly--“dat tell trut'-b'lieve HIM?”
Le Bourdon grasped the hand of the Indian, and gave it a hearty squeeze. Then he said frankly, and like a man who no longer entertained any doubts: “I put faith in all you say, Chippewa. That is an officer's letter, and I now see that you are on the right side. You play'd so deep a game, at first, hows'ever, that I didn't know exactly what to make of you. Now, as for the Pottawattamie--do you set him down as friend or foe, in reality?”
“Enemy--take your scalp--take my scalp, in minute only can't catch him. He got belt from Montreal, and it look handsome in his eye.”
“Which way d'ye think he's travelling? As I understood you, he and you fell into the same path within a mile of this very spot. Was the meeting altogether friendly?”
“Yes; friendly--but ask too many question--too much squaw--ask one question, den stop for answer.”
“Very true--I will remember that an Indian likes to do one thing at a time. Which way, then, do you think he's travelling?”
“Don't know--on'y guess--guess he on path to Blackbird.”
“And where is Blackbird, and what is he about?”
“Two question, dat!” returned the Chippewa, smiling, and holding up two of his fingers, at the same time, by way of rebuke. “Blackbird on war-path;--when warrior on dat path, he take scalp if can get him.”
“But where is his enemy? There are no whites in this part of the country, but here and there a trader, or a trapper, or a bee-hunter, or a VOYAGEUR.”
“Take HIS scalp--all scalp good, in war time. An't partic'lar, down at Montreal. What you call garrison at Chicago?”
“Blackbird, you then think, may be moving upon Chicago. In that case, Chippewa, you should outrun this Pottawatamie, and reach the post in time to let its men know the danger.”
“Start, as soon as eat breakfast. Can't go straight, nudder, or Pottawatamie see print of moccasin. Must t'row him off trail.”
“Very true; but I'll engage you're cunning enough to do that twice over, should it be necessary.”
Just then Gershom Waring came out of the cabin, gaping like a hound, and stretching his arms, as if fairly wearied with sleep. At the sight of this man the Indian made a gesture of caution, saying, however, in an undertone: “How is heart--Yankee or Breesh--love Montreal, eh? Pretty good scalp! Love King George, eh?”
“I rather think not, but am not certain. He is a poor pale-face, however, and it's of no great account how he stands. His scalp would hardly be worth the taking, whether by English or American.”
“Sell, down at Montreal--better look out for Pottawatamie. Don't like that Injin.”
“We'll be on our guard against him; and there he comes, looking as if his breakfast would be welcome, and as if he was already thinking of a start.”
Le Bourdon had been busy with his pots, during the whole time this discourse was going on, and had warmed up a sufficiency of food to supply the wants of all his guests. In a few minutes each was busy quietly eating his morning's meal, Gershom having taken his bitters aside, and, as he fancied, unobserved. This was not so much owing to niggardliness, as to a distrust of his having a sufficient supply of the liquor, that long indulgence had made, in a measure, necessary to him, to last until he could get back to the barrels that were still to be found in his cabin, down on the shore of the lake.
During the breakfast little was said, conversation forming no material part of the entertainment, at the meals of any but the cultivated. When each had risen, however, and by certain preliminary arrangements it was obvious that the two Indians intended to depart, the Pottawatamie advanced to le Bourdon, and thrust out a hand.
“Thankee”--he said, in the brief way in which he clipped his English--“good supper--good sleep--good breakfast. Now go. Thankee--when any friend come to Pottawatamie village, good wigwam dere, and no door.”
“I thank you, Elksfoot--and should you pass this way, ag'in, soon, I hope you'll just step into this chiente and help yourself it I should happen to be off on a hunt. Good luck to you, and a happy sight of home.”
The Pottawatamie then turned and thrust out a hand to each of the others, who met his offered leave-taking with apparent friendship. The bee-hunter observed that neither of the Indians said anything to the other touching the path he was about to travel, but that each seemed ready to pursue his own way as if entirely independent, and without the expectation of having a companion.
Elksfoot left the spot the first. After completing his adieus, the Pottawattamie threw his rifle into the hollow of his arm, felt at his belt, as if to settle it into its place, made some little disposition of his light summer covering, and moved off in a southwesterly direction, passing through the open glades, and almost equally unobstructed groves, as steady in his movements as if led by an instinct.
“There he goes, on a bee-line,” said le Bourdon, as the straight form of the old savage disappeared at length, behind a thicket of trees. “On a bee-line for the St. Joseph's river, where he will shortly be, among friends and neighbors, I do not doubt. What, Chippewa! are you in motion too?”
“Must go, now,” returned Pigeonswing, in a friendly way. “Bye'm by come back and eat more honey-bring sweet news, hope-no Canada here,” placing a finger on his heart-“all Yankee.”
“God be with you, Chippewa-God be with you. We shall have a stirring summer of it, and I expect to hear of your name in the wars, as of a chief who knows no fear.”
Pigeonswing waved his hand, cast a glance, half friendly half contemptuously, at Whiskey Centre, and glided away. The two who remained standing near the smouldering fire remarked that the direction taken by the Chippewa was toward the lake, and nearly at right angles to that taken by the Pottawattamie. They also fancied that the movement of the former was about half as fast again as that of the latter. In less than three minutes the young Indian was concealed in the “openings,” though he had to cross a glade of considerable width in order to reach them.
The bee-hunter was now alone with the only one of his guests who was of the color and race to which he himself belonged. Of the three, he was the visitor he least respected; but the dues of hospitality are usually sacred in a wilderness, and among savages, so that he could do nothing to get rid of him. As Gershom manifested no intention to quit the place, le Bourdon set about the business of the hour, with as much method and coolness as if the other had not been present. The first thing was to bring home the honey discovered on the previous day; a task of no light labor, the distance it was to be transported being so considerable, and the quantity so large. But our bee-hunter was not without the means of accomplishing such an object, and he now busied himself in getting ready. As Gershom volunteered his assistance, together they toiled in apparent amity and confidence.
The Kalamazoo is a crooked stream; and it wound from the spot where le Bourdon had built his cabin, to a point within a hundred yards of the fallen tree in which the bees had constructed their hive. As a matter of course, Ben profited by this circumstance to carry his canoe to the latter place, with a view to render it serviceable in transporting the honey. First securing everything in and around the chiente, he and Gershom embarked, taking with them no less than four pieces of fire-arms; one of which was, to use the language of the west, a double-barrelled “shot-gun.” Before quitting the place, however, the bee-hunter went to a large kennel made of logs, and let out a mastiff of great power and size. Between this dog and himself there existed the best possible intelligence; the master having paid many visits to the prisoner since his return, feeding and caressing him. Glad, indeed, was this fine animal to be released, bounding back and forth, and leaping about le Bourdon in a way to manifest his delight. He had been cared for in his kennel, and well cared for, too; but there is no substitute for liberty, whether in man or beast, individuals or communities.
When all Was ready, le Bourdon and Gershom got into the canoe, whither the former now called his dog, using the name of “Hive,” an appellation that was doubtless derived from his own pursuit. As soon as the mastiff leaped into the canoe, Ben shoved off, and the light craft was pushed up the stream by himself and Gershom without much difficulty, and with considerable rapidity. But little driftwood choked the channel; and, after fifteen minutes of moderate labor, the two men came near to the point of low wooded land in which the bee-tree had stood. As they drew nigh, certain signs of uneasiness in the dog attracted his master's attention, and he pointed them out to Gershom.
“There's game in the wind,” answered Whiskey Centre, who had a good knowledge of most of the craft of border life, notwithstanding his ungovernable propensity to drink, and who, by nature, was both shrewd and resolute. “I shouldn't wonder”--a common expression of his class--“if we found bears prowling about that honey!”
“Such things have happened in my time,” answered the bee-hunter, “and twice in my experience I've been driven from the field, and forced to let the devils get my 'arnin's.”
“That was when you had no comrade, stranger” returned Gershom, raising a rifle, and carefully examining its flint and its priming. “It will be a large family on 'em that drives us from that tree; for my mind is made up to give Doll and Blossom a taste of the sweets.”
If this was said imprudently, as respects ownership in the prize, it was said heartily, so far as spirit and determination were concerned. It proved that Whiskey Centre had points about him which, if not absolutely redeeming, served in some measure to lessen the disgust which one might other-wise have felt for his character. The bee-hunter knew that there was a species of hardihood that belonged to border men as the fruits of their habits, and, apparently, he had all necessary confidence in Gershom's disposition to sustain him, should there be occasion for a conflict with his old enemies.
The first measure of the bee-hunter, after landing and securing his boat, was to quiet Hive. The animal being under excellent command, this was soon done; the mastiff maintaining the position assigned him in the rear, though evidently impatient to be let loose. Had not le Bourdon known the precise position of the fallen tree, and through that the probable position of his enemies, he would have placed the mastiff in advance, as a pioneer or scout; but he deemed it necessary, under the actual circumstances, to hold him as a reserve, or a force to be directed whither occasion might require. With this arrangement, then, le Bourdon and Whiskey Centre advanced, side by side, each carrying two pieces, from the margin of the river toward the open land that commanded a view of the tree. On reaching the desired point, a halt was called, in order to reconnoitre.
The reader will remember that the bee-elm had stood on the edge of a dense thicket, or swamp, in which the trees grew to a size several times exceeding those of the oaks in the openings; and le Bourdon had caused it to fall upon the open ground, in order to work at the honey with greater ease to himself. Consequently, the fragments lay in full view of the spot where the halt was made. A little to Gershom's surprise, Ben now produced his spy-glass, which he levelled with much earnestness toward the tree. The bee-hunter, however, well knew his business, and was examining into the state of the insects whom he had so violently invaded the night before. The air was filled with them, flying above and around the tree; a perfect cloud of the little creatures hovering directly over the hole, as if to guard its treasure.
“Waal,” said Gershom, in his drawling way, when le Bourdon had taken a long look with the glass, “I don't see much use in spy-glassin' in that fashion. Spy-glassin' may do out on the lake, if a body has only the tools to do it with; but here, in the openin's, nature's eyes is about as good as them a body buys in the stores.”
“Take a look at them bees, and see what a fret they're in,” returned Ben, handing the glass to his companion. “As long as I've been in the business, I've never seen a colony in such a fever. Commonly, a few hours after the bees find that their tree is down, and their plans broken into, they give it up, and swarm; looking for a new hive, and setting about the making more food for the next winter; but here are all the bees yet, buzzing above the hole, as if they meant to hold out for a siege.”
“There's an onaccountable grist on 'em”--Gershom was never very particular in his figures of speech, usually terming anything in quantities a'grist”; and meaning in the present instance by “onaccountable,” a number not to be counted--“an onaccountable grist on 'em, I can tell you, and if you mean to charge upon sich enemies, you must look out for somebody besides Whiskey Centre for your vanguard. What in natur' has got into the critters! They can't expect to set that tree on its legs ag'in!”
“Do you see a flight of them just in the edge of the for-est--here, more to the southward?” demanded le Bourdon.
“Sure enough! There is a lot on 'em there, too, and they seem to be comin' and goin' to the tree, like folks”--Gershom WOULD put his noun of multitude into the plural, Nova-Anglice--“comin' and goin' like folks carryin' water to a fire. A body would think, by the stir among 'em, them critters' barrel was empty!”
“The bears are there,” coolly returned the bee-hunter; “I've seen such movements before, and know how to account for them. The bears are in the thicket, but don't like to come out in the face of such a colony. I have heard of bears being chased miles by bees, when their anger was up!”
“Mortality! They have a good deal of dander (dandruff) for sich little vipers! But what are WE to do, Bourdon? for Doll and Blossom MUST taste that honey! Half's mine, you know, and I don't like to give it up.”
The bee-hunter smiled at the coolness with which Gershom assigned to himself so large a portion of his property; though he did not think it worth his while, just then, to “demur to his declaration,” as the lawyers might have it. There was a sort of border rule, which gave all present equal shares in any forest captures; just as vessels in sight come in for prize-money, taken in time of war by public cruisers. At any rate, the honey of a single tree was not of sufficient value to induce a serious quarrel about it. If there should be any extra trouble or danger in securing the present prize, every craft in view might, fairly enough, come in for its share.
“Doll shall not be forgotten, if we can only house our honey,” answered the bee-hunter; “nor Blossom, neither. I've a fancy, already, for that blossom of the wilderness, and shall do all I can to make myself agreeable to her. A man cannot approach a maiden with anything sweeter than honey.”
“Some gals like sugar'd words better; but, let me tell you one thing, STRANger-” “You have eaten bread and salt with me, Whiskey, and both are scarce articles in a wilderness; and you've slept under my roof: is it not almost time to call me something else than stranger?”
“Well, Bourdon, if you prefer that name; though STRANger is a name I like, it has sich an up and off sound to it. When a man calls all he sees STRANgers, it's a sign he don't let the grass grow in the road for want of movin'; and a movin' man for me, any day, before your stationaries. I was born on the sea-shore, in the Bay State; and here I am, up among the fresh-water lakes, as much nat'ralized as any muskelunge that was ever cotch'd in Huron, or about Mackinaw. If I can believe my eyes, Bourdon, there is the muzzle of a bear to be seen, jist under that heavy hemlock--here, where the bees seem thickest!”
“No doubt in the world,” answered le Bourdon, coolly; though he had taken the precaution to look to the priming of each of his pieces, as if he expected there would soon be occasion to use them. “But what was that you were about to say concernin' Blossom? It would not be civil to the young woman to overlook her, on account of a bear or two.”
“You take it easy, STRANger--Bourdon, I should say--you take it easy! What I was about to say was this: that the whull lake country, and that's a wide stretch to foot it over, I know; but, big as it is, the whull lake country don't contain Blossom's equal. I'm her brother, and perhaps ought to be a little modest in sich matters; but I an't a bit, and let out jist what I think. Blossom's a di'mond, if there be di'monds on 'arth.”
“And yonder is a bear, if there be bears on earth!” exclaimed le Bourdon, who was not a little amused with Gershom's account of his family, but who saw that the moment was now arrived when it would be necessary to substitute deeds for words. “There they come, in a drove, and they seem in earnest.”
This was true enough. No less than eight bears, half of which, however, were quite young, came tumbling over the logs, and bounding up toward the fallen tree, as if charging the citadel of the bees by preconcert. Their appearance was the signal for a general rally of the insects, and by the time the foremost of the clumsy animals had reached the tree, the air above and around him was absolutely darkened by the cloud of bees that was collected to defend their treasures. Bruin trusted too much to the thickness of his hide and to the defences with which he was provided by nature, besides being too much incited by the love of honey, to regard the little heroes, but thrust his nose in at the hole, doubtless hoping to plunge it at once into the midst of a mass of the sweets. A growl, a start backward, and a flourishing of the fore-paws, with sundry bites in the air, at once announced that he had met with greater resistance than he had anticipated. In a minute, all the bears were on their hind-legs, beating the air with their fore-paws, and nipping right and left with their jaws, in vigorous combat with their almost invisible foes. Instinct supplied the place of science, and spite of the hides and the long hair that covered them, the bees found the means of darting their stings into unprotected places, until the quadrupeds were fairly driven to rolling about on the grass in order to crush their assailants. This last process had some effect, a great many bees being destroyed by the energetic rollings and tumblings of the bears; but, as in the tide of battle, the places of those who fell were immediately supplied by fresh assailants, until numbers seemed likely to prevail over power, if not over discipline. At this critical instant, when the bears seemed fatigued with their nearly frantic saltations, and violent blows upon nothing, le Bourdon deemed it wise to bring his forces into the combat. Gershom having been apprised of the plan, both fired at the same instant. Each ball took effect; one killing the largest of all the bears, dead on the spot, while the other inflicted a grievous wound on a second. This success was immediately followed by a second discharge, wounding two more of the enemy, while Ben held the second barrel of his “shot-gun” in reserve. While the hurt animals were hobbling off, the men reloaded their pieces; and by the time the last were ready to advance on the enemy, the ground was cleared of bears and bees alike, only two of the former remaining, of which one was already dead and the other dying. As for the bees, they followed their retreating enemies in a body, making a mistake that sometimes happens to still more intelligent beings; that of attributing to themselves, and their own prowess, a success that had been gained by others.
The bee-hunter and his friend now set themselves at work to provide a reception for the insects, the return of which might shortly be expected. The former lighted a fire, being always provided with the means, while Gershom brought dry wood. In less than five minutes a bright blaze was gleaming upward, and when the bees returned, as most of them soon did, they found this new enemy intrenched, as it might be, behind walls of flame. Thousands of the little creatures perished by means of this new invention of man, and the rest soon after were led away by their chiefs to seek some new deposit for the fruits of their industry.
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The sad butterfly, Waving his lackered wings, darts quickly on, And, by his free flight, counsels us to speed For better lodgings, and a scene more sweet, Than these dear borders offer us to-night. SIMMS.
It was noon before Ben and Gershom dared to commence the process of cutting and splitting the tree, in order to obtain the honey. Until then, the bees lingered around their fallen hive, and it would have been dangerous to venture beyond the smoke and heat, in order to accomplish the task. It is true, le Bourdon possessed several secrets, of more or less virtue, to drive off the bees when disposed to assault him, but no one that was as certain as a good fire, backed by a dense column of vapor. Various plants are thought to be so offensive to the insects, that they avoid even their odor; and the bee-hunter had faith in one or two of them; but none of the right sort happened now to be near, and he was obliged to trust, first to a powerful heat, and next to the vapor of damp wood.
As there were axes, and wedges, and a beetle in the canoe, and Gershom was as expert with these implements as a master of fencing is with his foil, to say nothing of the skill of le Bourdon, the tree was soon laid open, and its ample stores of sweets exposed. In the course of the afternoon the honey was deposited in kegs, the kegs were transferred to the canoe, and the whole deposited in the chiente. The day had been one of toil, and when our two bordermen sat down near the spring, to take their evening meal, each felt glad that his work was done.
“I believe this must be the last hive I line, this summer,” said le Bourdon, while eating his supper. “My luck has been good so far, but in troublesome times one had better not be too far from home. I am surprised, Waring, that you have ventured so far from your family, while the tidings are so gloomy.”
“That's partly because you don't know ME, and partly because you don't know DOLLY. As for leaving hum, with anybody to kear for it, I should like to know who is more to the purpose than Dolly Waring? I haven't no idee that even bees would dare get upon HER! If they did, they'd soon get the worst on't Her tongue is all-powerful, to say nawthin' of her arms; and if the so'gers can only handle their muskets as she can handle a broom, there is no need of new regiments to carry on this war.”
Now, nothing could be more false than this character; but a drunkard has little regard to what he says.
“I am glad your garrison is so strong,” answered the beehunter, thoughtfully; “but mine is too weak to stay any longer, out here in the openings. Whiskey Centre, I intend to break up, and return to the settlement, before the red-skins break loose in earnest. If you will stay and lend me a hand to embark the honey and stores, and help to carry the canoe down the river, you shall be well paid for your trouble.”
“Waal, I'd about as lief do that, as do anything else. Good jobs is scarce, out here in the wilderness, and when a body lights of one, he ought to profit by it. I come up here thinkin' to meet you, for I heer'n tell from a voyager that you was a-beeing it, out in the openin's, and there's nawthin' in natur' that Dolly takes to with a greater relish than good wild honey. 'Try whiskey,' I've told her a thousand times, 'and you'll soon get to like THAT better than all the rest of creation'; but not a drop could I ever get her, or Blossom, to swallow. It's true, that leaves so much the more for me; but I'm a companionable crittur, and don't think I've drunk as much as I want, unless I take it society-like. That's one reason I've taken so mightily to you, Bourdon; you're not much at a pull, but you an't downright afeared of a jug, neither.”
The bee-hunter was glad to hear that all the family had not this man's vice, for he now plainly foresaw that the accidents of his position must bring him and these strangers much in contact, for some weeks, at least. Le Bourdon, though not absolutely “afraid of a jug,” as Whiskey Centre had expressed it, was decidedly a temperate man; drinking but seldom, and never to excess. He too well knew the hazards by which he was surrounded, to indulge in this way, even had he the taste for it; but he had no taste that way, one small jug of brandy forming his supply for a whole season. In these days of exaggeration in all things, exaggeration in politics, in religion, in temperance, in virtue, and even in education, by putting “new wine into old bottles,” that one little jug might have sufficed to give him a bad name; but five-and-thirty years ago men had more real independence than they now possess, and were not as much afraid of that croquemitaine, public opinion, as they are to-day. To be sure, it was little to le Bourdon's taste to make a companion of such a person as Whiskey Centre; but there was no choice. The man was an utter stranger to him; and the only means he possessed of making sure that he did not carry off the property that lay so much at his mercy, was by keeping near him. With many men, the bee-hunter would have been uneasy at being compelled to remain alone with them in the woods; for cases in which one had murdered another, in order to get possession of the goods, in these remote regions, were talked of, among the other rumors of the borders; but Gershom had that in his air and manner that rendered Ben confident his delinquencies, at the most, would scarcely reach bloodshed. Pilfer he might; but murder was a crime which he did not appear at all likely to commit.
After supping in company, our two adventurers secured everything; and, retiring to the chiente, they went to sleep. No material disturbance occurred, but the night passed in tranquillity; the bee-hunter merely experiencing some slight interruption to his slumbers, from the unusual circumstance of having a companion. One as long accustomed to be alone as himself would naturally submit to some such sensation, our habits getting so completely the mastery as often to supplant even nature.
The following morning the bee-hunter commenced his preparations for a change of residence. Had he not been discovered, it is probable that the news received from the Chippewa would not have induced him to abandon his present position, so early in the season; but he thought the risk of remaining was too great under all the circumstances. The Pottawattamie, in particular, was a subject of great distrust to him, and he believed it highly possible some of that old chief's tribe might be after his scalp ere many suns had risen. Gershom acquiesced in these opinions, and, as soon as his brain was less under the influence of liquor than was common with him, he appeared to be quite happy in having it in his power to form a species of alliance, offensive and defensive, with a man of his own color and origin. Great harmony now prevailed between the two, Gershom improving vastly in all the better qualities, the instant his intellect and feelings got to be a little released from the thraldom of the jug. His own immediate store of whiskey was quite exhausted, and le Bourdon kept the place in which his own small stock of brandy was secured a profound secret. These glimmerings of returning intellect, and of reviving principles, are by no means unusual with the sot, thus proving that “so long as there is life, there is hope,” for the moral, as well as for the physical being. What was a little remarkable, Gershom grew less vulgar, even in his dialect, as he grew more sober, showing that in all respects he was becoming a greatly improved person.
The men were several hours in loading the canoe, not only all the stores and ammunition, but all the honey being transferred to it. The bee-hunter had managed to conceal his jug of brandy, reduced by this time to little more than a quart, within an empty powder-keg, into which he had crammed a beaver-skin or two, that he had taken, as it might be incidentally, in the course of his rambles. At length everything was removed and stowed in its proper place, on board the capacious canoe, and Gershom expected an announcement on the part of Ben of his readiness to embark. But there still remained one duty to perform. The beehunter had killed a buck only the day before the opening of our narrative, and shouldering a quarter, he had left the remainder of the animal suspended from the branches of a tree, near the place where it had been shot and cleaned. As venison might be needed before they could reach the mouth of the river, Ben deemed it advisable that he and Gershom should go and bring in the remainder of the carcass. The men started on this undertaking accordingly, leaving the canoe about two in the afternoon.
The distance between the spot where the deer had been killed, and the chiente, was about three miles; which was the reason why the bee-hunter had not brought home the entire animal the day he killed it; the American woodsman often carrying his game great distances in preference to leaving it any length of time in the forest. In the latter case there is always danger from beasts of prey, which are drawn from afar by the scent of blood. Le Bourdon thought it possible they might now encounter wolves; though he had left the carcass of the deer so suspended as to place it beyond the reach of most of the animals of the wilderness. Each of the men, however, carried a rifle: and Hive was allowed to accompany them, by an act of grace on the part of his master.
For the first half-hour, nothing occurred out of the usual course of events. The bee-hunter had been conversing freely with his companion, who, he rejoiced to find, manifested far more common sense, not to say good sense, than he had previously shown; and from whom he was deriving information touching the number of vessels, and the other movements on the lakes, that he fancied might be of use to himself when he started for Detroit. While thus engaged, and when distant only a hundred rods from the place where he had left the venison, le Bourdon was suddenly struck with the movements of the dog. Instead of doubling on his own tracks, and scenting right and left, as was the animal's wont, he was now advancing cautiously, with his head low, seemingly feeling his way with his nose, as if there was a strong taint in the wind.
“Sartain as my name is Gershom,” exclaimed Waring, just after he and Ben had come to a halt, in order to look around them--“yonder is an Injin! The crittur' is seated at the foot of the large oak--hereaway, more to the right of the dog, and Hive has struck his scent. The fellow is asleep, with his rifle across his lap, and can't have much dread of wolves or bears!”
“I see him,” answered le Bourdon, “and am as much surprised as grieved to find him there. It is a little remarkable that I should have so many visitors, just at this time, on my hunting-ground, when I never had any at all before yesterday. It gives a body an uncomfortable feeling, Waring, to live so much in a crowd! Well, well--I'm about to move, and it will matter little twenty-four hours hence.”
“The chap's a Winnebago by his paint,” added Gershom--“but let's go up and give him a call.”
The bee-hunter assented to this proposal, remarking, as they moved forward, that he did not think the stranger of the tribe just named; though he admitted that the use of paint was so general and loose among these warriors, as to render it difficult to decide.
“The crittur' sleeps soundly!” exclaimed Gershom, stopping within ten yards of the Indian, to take another look at him.
“He'll never awake,” put in the bee-hunter, solemnly--“the man is dead. See; there is blood on the side of his head, and a rifle-bullet has left its hole there.”
Even while speaking, the bee-hunter advanced, and raising a sort of shawl, that once had been used as an ornament, and which had last been thrown carelessly over the head of its late owner, he exposed the well-known features of Elks-foot, the Pottawattamie, who had left them little more than twenty-four hours before! The warrior had been shot by a rifle-bullet directly through the temple, and had been scalped. The powder had been taken from his horn, and the bullets from his pouch; but, beyond this, he had not been plundered. The body was carefully placed against a tree, in a sitting attitude, the rifle was laid across its legs, and there it had been left, in the centre of the openings, to become food for beasts of prey, and to have its bones bleached by the snows and the rains!
The bee-hunter shuddered, as he gazed at this fearful memorial of the violence against which even a wilderness could afford no sufficient protection. That Pigeonswing had slain his late fellow-guest, le Bourdon had no doubt, and he sickened at the thought. Although he had himself dreaded a good deal from the hostility of the Pottawattamie, he could have wished this deed undone. That there was a jealous distrust of each other between the two Indians had been sufficiently apparent; but the bee-hunter could not have imagined that it would so soon lead to results as terrible as these!
After examining the body, and noting the state of things around it, the men proceeded, deeply impressed with the necessity, not only of their speedy removal, but of their standing by each other in that remote region, now that violence had so clearly broken out among the tribes. The bee-hunter had taken a strong liking to the Chippewa, and he regretted so much the more to think that he had done this deed. It was true, that such a state of things might exist as to justify an Indian warrior, agreeably to his own notions, in taking the life of any one of a hostile tribe; but le Bourdon wished it had been otherwise. A man of gentle and peaceable disposition himself, though of a profoundly enthusiastic temperament in his own peculiar way, he had ever avoided those scenes of disorder and bloodshed, which are of so frequent occurrence in the forest and on the prairies; and this was actually the first instance in which he had ever beheld a human body that had fallen by human hands. Gershom had seen more of the peculiar life of the frontiers than his companion, in consequence of having lived so closely in contact with the “fire-water”; but even HE was greatly shocked with the suddenness and nature of the Pottawattamie's end.
No attempt was made to bury the remains of Elksfoot, inasmuch as our adventurers had no tools fit for such a purpose, and any merely superficial interment would have been a sort of invitation to the wolves to dig the body up again.
“Let him lean ag'in' the tree,” said Waring, as they moved on toward the spot where the carcass of the deer was left, “and I'll engage nothin' touches him. There's that about the face of man, Bourdon, that skears the beasts; and if a body can only muster courage to stare them full in the eye, one single human can drive before him a whull pack of wolves.”
“I've heard as much,” returned the bee-hunter, “but should not like to be the 'human' to try the experiment That the face of man may have terrors for a beast, I think likely; but hunger would prove more than a match for such fear. Yonder is our venison, Waring; safe where I left it.”
The carcass of the deer was divided, and each man shouldering his burden, the two returned to the river, taking care to avoid the path that led by the body of the dead Indian. As both labored with much earnestness, everything was soon ready, and the canoe speedily left the shore. The Kalamazoo is not in general a swift and turbulent stream, though it has a sufficient current to carry away its waters without any appearance of sluggishness. Of course, this character is not uniform, reaches occurring in which the placid water is barely seen to move; and others, again, are found, in which something like rapids, and even falls, appear. But on the whole, and more especially in the part of the stream where it was, the canoe had little to disturb it, as it glided easily down, impelled by a light stroke of the paddle.
The bee-hunter did not abandon his station without regret. He had chosen a most agreeable site for his chiente, consulting air, shade, water, verdure, and groves, as well as the chances of obtaining honey. In his regular pursuit he had been unusually fortunate; and the little pile of kegs in the centre of his canoe was certainly a grateful sight to his eyes. The honey gathered this season, moreover, had proved to be of an unusually delicious flavor, affording the promise of high prices and ready sales. Still, the bee-hunter left the place with profound regret. He loved his calling; he loved solitude to a morbid degree, perhaps; and he loved the gentle excitement that naturally attended his “bee-lining,” his discoveries, and his gains. Of all the pursuits that are more or less dependent on the chances of the hunt and the field, that of the bee-hunter is of the most quiet and placid enjoyment. He has the stirring motives of uncertainty and doubt, without the disturbing qualities of bustle and fatigue; and, while his exercise is sufficient for health, and for the pleasures of the open air, it is seldom of a nature to weary or unnerve. Then the study of the little animal that is to be watched, and, if the reader will, plundered, is not without a charm for those who delight in looking into the wonderful arcana of nature. So great was the interest that le Bourdon sometimes felt in his little companions, that, on three several occasions that very summer, he had spared hives after having found them, because he had ascertained that they were composed of young bees, and had not yet got sufficiently colonized to render a new swarming more than a passing accident. With all this kindness of feeling toward his victims, Boden had nothing of the transcendental folly that usually accompanies the sentimentalism of the exaggerated, but his feelings and impulses were simple and direct, though so often gentle and humane. He knew that the bee, like all the other inferior animals of creation, was placed at the disposition of man, and did not scruple to profit by the power thus beneficently bestowed, though he exercised it gently, and with a proper discrimination between its use and its abuse.
Neither of the men toiled much, as the canoe floated down the stream. Very slight impulses served to give their buoyant craft a reasonably swift motion, and the current itself was a material assistant. These circumstances gave an opportunity for conversation, as the canoe glided onward.
“A'ter all,” suddenly exclaimed Waring, who had been examining the pile of kegs for some time in silence--“a'ter all, Bourdon, your trade is an oncommon one! A most extr'ornary and oncommon callin'!”
“More so, think you, Gershom, than swallowing whiskey, morning, noon, and night?” answered the bee-hunter, with a quiet smile.
“Aye, but that's not a reg'lar callin'; only a likin'! Now a man may have a likin' to a hundred things in which he don't deal. I set nothin' down as a business, which a man don't live by.”
“Perhaps you're right, Waring. More die by whiskey than live by whiskey.”
Whiskey Centre seemed struck with this remark, which was introduced so aptly, and was uttered so quietly. He gazed earnestly at his companion for near a minute, ere he attempted to resume the discourse.
“Blossom has often said as much as this,” he then slowly rejoined; “and even Dolly has prophesized the same.”
The bee-hunter observed that an impression had been made, and he thought it wisest to let the reproof already administered produce its effect, without endeavoring to add to its power. Waring sat with his chin on his breast, in deep thought, while his companion, for the first time since they had met, examined the features and aspect of the man. At first sight, Whiskey Centre certainly offered little that was inviting; but a closer study of his countenance showed that he had the remains of a singularly handsome man. Vulgar as were his forms of speech, coarse and forbidding as his face had become, through the indulgence which was his bane, there were still traces of this truth. His complexion had once been fair almost to effeminacy, his cheeks ruddy with health, and his blue eye bright and full of hope. His hair was light; and all these peculiarities strongly denoted his Saxon origin. It was not so much Anglo-Saxon as Americo-Saxon, that was to be seen in the physical outlines and hues of this nearly self-destroyed being. The heaviness of feature, the ponderousness of limb and movement, had all long disappeared from his race, most probably under the influence of climate, and his nose was prominent and graceful in outline, while his mouth and chin might have passed for having been under the chisel of some distinguished sculptor. It was, in truth, painful to examine that face, steeped as it was in liquor, and fast losing the impress left by nature. As yet, the body retained most of its power, the enemy having insidiously entered the citadel, rather than having actually subdued it. The bee-hunter sighed as he gazed at his moody companion, and wondered whether Blossom had aught of this marvellous comeliness of countenance, without its revolting accompaniments.
All that afternoon, and the whole of the night that succeeded, did the canoe float downward with the current. Occasionally, some slight obstacle to its progress would present itself; but, on the whole, its advance was steady and certain. As the river necessarily followed the formation of the land, it was tortuous and irregular in its course, though its general direction was toward the northwest, or west a little northerly. The river-bottoms being much more heavily “timbered”--to use a woodsman term--than the higher grounds, there was little of the park-like “openings” on its immediate banks, though distant glimpses were had of many a glade and of many a charming grove.
As the canoe moved toward its point of destination, the conversation did not lag between the bee-hunter and his companion. Each gave the other a sort of history of his life; for, now that the jug was exhausted, Gershom could talk not only rationally, but with clearness and force. Vulgar he was, and, as such, uninviting and often repulsive; still his early education partook of that peculiarity of New England which, if it do not make her children absolutely all they are apt to believe themselves to be, seldom leaves them in the darkness of a besotted ignorance. As usually happens with this particular race, Gershom had acquired a good deal for a man of his class in life; and this information, added to native shrewdness, enabled him to maintain his place in the dialogue with a certain degree of credit. He had a very lively perception--fancied or real--of all the advantages of being born in the land of the Puritans, deeming everything that came of the great “Blarney Stone” superior to everything else of the same nature elsewhere; and, while much disposed to sneer and rail at all other parts of the country, just as much indisposed to “take,” as disposed to “give.” Ben Boden soon detected this weakness in his companion's character, a weakness so very general as scarce to need being pointed out to any observant man, and which is almost inseparable from half-way intelligence and provincial self-admiration; and Ben was rather inclined to play on it, whenever Gershom laid himself a little more open than common on the subject. On the whole, however, the communications were amicable; and the dangers of the wilderness rendering the parties allies, they went their way with an increasing confidence in each other's support. Gershom, now that he was thoroughly sober, could impart much to Ben that was useful; while Ben knew a great deal that even his companion, coming as he did from the chosen people, was not sorry to learn. As has been, already intimated, each communicated to the other, in the course of this long journey on the river, an outline of his past life.
The history of Gershom Waring was one of every-day occurrence. He was born of a family in humble circumstances in Massachusetts, a community in which, however, none are so very humble as to be beneath the paternal watchfulness of the State. The common schools had done their duty by him; while, according to his account of the matter, his only sister had fallen into the hands of a female relative, who was enabled to impart an instruction slightly superior to that which is to be had from the servants of the public. After a time, the death of this relative, and the marriage of Gershom, brought the brother and sister together again, the last still quite young. From this period the migratory life of the family commenced. Previously to the establishment of manufactories within her limits, New England systematically gave forth her increase to the States west and south of her own territories. A portion of this increase still migrates, and will probably long continue so to do; but the tide of young women, which once flowed so steadily from that region, would now seem to have turned, and is setting back in a flood of “factory girls.” But the Warings lived at too early a day to feel the influence of such a pass of civilization, and went west, almost as a matter of course. With the commencement of his migratory life, Gershom began to “dissipate,” as it has got to be matter of convention to term “drinking.” Fortunately, Mrs. Waring had no children, thus lessening in a measure the privations to which those unlucky females were obliged to submit. When Gershom left his birthplace he had a sum of money exceeding a thousand dollars in amount, the united means of himself and sister; but, by the time he had reached Detroit, it was reduced to less than a hundred. Several years, however, had been consumed by the way, the habits growing worse and the money vanishing, as the family went further and further toward the skirts of society. At length Gershom attached himself to a sutler, who was going up to Michilimackinac, with a party of troops; and finally he left that place to proceed, in a canoe of his own, to the head of Lake Michigan, where was a post on the present site of Chicago, which was then known as Fort Dearborn.
In quitting Mackinac for Chicago, Waring had no very settled plan. His habits had completely put him out of favor at the former place; and a certain restlessness urged him to penetrate still farther into the wilderness. In all his migrations and wanderings the two devoted females followed his fortunes; the one because she was his wife, the other because she was his sister. When the canoe reached the mouth of the Kalamazoo, a gale of wind drove it into the river; and finding a deserted cabin, ready built, to receive him, Gershom landed, and had been busy with the rifle for the last fortnight, the time he had been on shore. Hearing from some voyageurs who had gone down the lake that a bee-hunter was up the river, he had followed the stream in its windings until he fell in with le Bourdon.
Such is an outline of the account which Whiskey Centre gave of himself. It is true, he said very little of his propensity to drink, but this his companion was enabled to conjecture from the context of his narrative, as well as from what he had seen. It was very evident to the bee-hunter, that the plans of both parties for the summer were about to be seriously deranged by the impending hostilities, and that some decided movement might be rendered necessary, even for the protection of their lives. This much he communicated to Gershom, who heard his opinions with interest, and a concern in behalf of his wife and sister that at least did some credit to his heart. For the first time in many months, indeed, Gershom was now PERFECTLY sober, a circumstance that was solely owing to his having had no access to liquor for eight-and-forty hours. With the return of a clear head, came juster notions of the dangers and difficulties in which he had involved the two self-devoted women who had accompanied him so far, and who really seemed ready to follow him in making the circuit of the earth.
“It's troublesome times,” exclaimed Whiskey Centre, when his companion had just ended one of his strong and lucid statements of the embarrassments that might environ them, ere they could get back to the settled portions of the country--“it's troublesome times, truly! I see all you would say, Bourdon, and wonder I ever got my foot so deep into it, without thinkin' of all, beforehand! The best on us will make mistakes, hows'ever, and I suppose I've been called on to make mine, as well as another.”
“My trade speaks for itself,” returned the bee-hunter, “and any man can see why one who looks for bees must come where they're to be found; but I will own, Gershom, that your speculation lies a little beyond my understanding. Now, you tell me you have two full barrels of whiskey--” “Had, Bourdon--HAD--one of them is pretty nearly half used, I am afeared.”
“Well, HAD, until you began to be your own customer. But here you are, squatted at the mouth of the Kalamazoo, with a barrel and a half of liquor, and nobody but yourself to drink it! Where the profits are to come from, exceeds Pennsylvany calculations; perhaps a Yankee can tell.”
“You forget the Injins. I met a man at Mackinaw, who only took out in his canoe ONE barrel, and he brought in skins enough to set up a grocery, at Detroit. But I was on the trail of the soldiers, and meant to make a business on't, at Fort Dearborn. What between the soldiers and the redskins, a man might sell gallons a day, and at fair prices.”
“It's a sorry business at the best, Whiskey; and now you're fairly sober, if you'll take my advice you'll remain so. Why not make up your mind, like a man, and vow you'll never touch another drop.”
“Maybe I will, when these two barrels is emptied--I've often thought of doin' some sich matter; and, ag'in and ag'in, has Dolly and Blossom advised me to fall into the plan; but it's hard to give up old habits, all at once. If I could only taper off on a pint a day, for a year or so, I think I might come round in time. I know as well as you do, Bourdon, that sobriety is a good thing, and dissipation a bad thing; but it's hard to give up all at once.”
Lest the instructed reader should wonder at a man's using the term “dissipation” in a wilderness, it may be well to explain that, in common American parlance, “dissipation” has got to mean “drunkenness.” Perhaps half of the whole country, if told that a man, or a woman, might be exceedingly dissipated and never swallow anything stronger than water, would stoutly deny the justice of applying the word to such a person. This perversion of the meaning of a very common term has probably arisen from the circumstance that there is very little dissipation in the country that is not connected with hard drinking. A dissipated woman is a person almost unknown in America; or when the word is applied, it means a very different degree of misspending of time, from that which is understood by the use of the same reproach in older and more sophisticated states of society. The majority rules in this country, and with the majority excess usually takes this particular aspect; refinement having very little connection with the dissipation of the masses, anywhere.
The excuses of his companion, however, caused le Bourdon to muse, more than might otherwise have been the case, on Whiskey Centre's condition. Apart from all considerations connected with the man's own welfare, and the happiness of his family, there were those which were inseparable from the common safety, in the present state of the country. Boden was a man of much decision and firmness of character, and he was clear-headed as to causes and consequences. The practice of living alone had induced in him the habits of reflection; and the self-reliance produced by his solitary life, a life of which he was fond almost to a passion, caused him to decide warily, but to act promptly. As they descended the river together, therefore, he went over the whole of Gershom Waring's case and prospects, with great impartiality and care, and settled in his own mind what ought to be done, as well as the mode of doing it. He kept his own counsel, however, discussing all sorts of subjects that were of interest to men in their situation, as they floated down the stream, avoiding any recurrence to this theme, which was possibly of more importance to them both, just then, than any other that could be presented.
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He was a wight of high renown, And thou art but of low degree; 'Tis pride that pulls the country down-- Then take thine auld cloak about thee. SHAKESPEARE.
The canoe did not reach the mouth of the river until near evening of the third day of its navigation. It was not so much the distance, though that was considerable, as it was the obstacles that lay in the way, which brought the travellers to the end of their journey at so late a period. As they drew nearer and nearer to the place where Gershom had left his wife and sister, le Bourdon detected in his companion signs of an interest in the welfare of the two last, as well as a certain feverish uneasiness lest all might not be well with them, that said something in favor of his heart, whatever might be urged against his prudence and care in leaving them alone in so exposed a situation.
“I'm afeard a body don't think as much as he ought to do, when liquor is in him,” said Whiskey Centre, just as the canoe doubled the last point, and the hut came into view; “else I never could have left two women by them-selves in so lonesome a place. God be praised! there is the chiente at any rate; and there's a smoke comin' out of it, if my eyes don't deceive me! Look, Bourdon, for I can scarcely see at all.”
“There is the house; and, as you say, there is certainly a smoke rising from it.”
“There's comfort in that!” exclaimed the truant husband and brother, with a sigh that seemed to relieve a very loaded breast. “Yes, there's comfort in that! If there's a fire, there must be them that lighted it; and a fire at this season, too, says that there's somethin' to eat, I should be sorry, Bourdon, to think I'd left the women folks without food; though, to own the truth, I don't remember whether I did or not.”
“The man who drinks, Gershom, has commonly but a very poor memory.”
“That's true--yes, I'll own that; and I wish it warn't as true as it is; but reason and strong drink do NOT travel far in company--” Gershom suddenly ceased speaking; dropping his paddle like one beset by a powerless weakness. The bee-hunter saw that he was overcome by some unexpected occurrence, and that the man's feelings were keenly connected with the cause, whatever that might be. Looking eagerly around in quest of the explanation, le Bourdon saw a female standing on a point of land that commanded a view of the river and its banks for a considerable distance, unequivocally watching the approach of the canoe.
“There she is,” said Gershom, in a subdued tone--“that's Dolly; and there she has been, I'll engage, half the time of my absence, waitin' to get the first glimpse of my miserable body, as it came back to her. Sich is woman, Bourdon; and God forgive me, if I have ever forgotten their natur', when I was bound to remember it. But we all have our weak moments, at times, and I trust mine will not be accounted ag'in' me more than them of other men.”
“This is a beautiful sight, Gershom, and it almost makes me your friend! The man for whom a woman can feel so much concern--that a woman--nay, women; for you tell me your sister is one of the family--but the man whom DECENT women can follow to a place like this, must have some good p'ints about him. That woman is a-weepin'; and it must be for joy at your return.”
“'Twould be jist like Dolly to do so--she's done it before, and would be likely to do so ag'in,” answered Gershom, nearly choked by the effort he made to speak without betraying his own emotion. “Put the canoe into the p'int, and let me land there. I must go up and say a kind word to poor Dolly; while you can paddle on, and let Blossom know I'm near at hand.”
The bee-hunter complied in silence, casting curious glances upward at the woman while doing so, in order to ascertain what sort of a female Whiskey Centre could possibly have for a wife. To his surprise, Dorothy Waring was not only decently, but she was neatly clad, appearing as if she had studiously attended to her personal appearance, in the hope of welcoming her wayward and unfortunate husband back to his forest home. This much le Bourdon saw by a hasty glance as his companion landed, for a feeling of delicacy prevented him from taking a longer look at the woman. As Gershom ascended the bank to meet his wife, le Bourdon paddled on, and landed just below the grove in which was the chiente. It might have been his long exclusion from all of the other sex, and most especially from that portion of it which retains its better looks, but the being which now met the bee-hunter appeared to him to belong to another world, rather than to that in which he habitually dwelt. As this was Margery Waring, who was almost uniformly called Blossom by her acquaintances, and who is destined to act an important part in this legend of the “openings,” it may be well to give a brief description of her age, attire, and personal appearance, at the moment when she was first seen by le Bourdon.
In complexion, color of the hair, and outline of face, Margery Waring bore a strong family resemblance to her brother. In spite of exposure, and the reflection of the sun's rays from the water of the lake, however, HER skin was of a clear, transparent white, such as one might look for in a drawing-room, but hardly expect to find in a wilderness; while the tint of her lips, cheeks, and, in a diminished degree, of her chin and ears, were such as one who wielded a pencil might long endeavor to catch without succeeding. Her features had the chiselled outline which was so remarkable in her brother; while in HER countenance, in addition to the softened expression of her sex and years, there was nothing to denote any physical or moral infirmity, to form a drawback to its witchery and regularity. Her eyes were blue, and her hair as near golden as human tresses well could be. Exercise, a life of change, and of dwelling much in the open air, had given to this unusually charming girl not only health, but its appearance. Still, she was in no respect coarse, or had anything in the least about her that indicated her being accustomed to toil, with some slight exception in her hands, perhaps, which were those of a girl who did not spare herself, when there was an opportunity to be of use. In this particular, the vagrant life of her brother had possibly been of some advantage to her, as it had prevented her being much employed in the ordinary toil of her condition in life. Still, Margery Waring had that happy admixture of delicacy and physical energy, which is, perhaps, oftener to be met in the American girl of her class, than in the girl of almost any other nation; and far oftener than in the young American of her sex, who is placed above the necessity of labor.
As a stranger approached her, the countenance of this fair creature expressed both surprise and satisfaction; surprise that any one should have been met by Gershom, in such a wilderness, and satisfaction that the stranger proved to be a white man, and seemingly one who did not drink.
“You are Blossom,” said the bee-hunter, taking the hand of the half-reluctant girl, in a way so respectful and friendly that she could not refuse it, even while she doubted the propriety of thus receiving an utter stranger--“the Blossom of whom Gershom Waring speaks so often, and so affectionately?”
“You are, then, my brother's friend,” answered Margery, smiling so sweetly, that le Bourdon gazed on her with delight. “We are SO glad that he has come back! Five terrible nights have sister and I been here alone, and we have believed every bush was a red man!”
“That danger is over, now, Blossom; but there is still an enemy near you that must be overcome.”
“An enemy! There is no one here, but Dolly and myself. No one has been near us, since Gershom went after the bee-hunter, whom we heard was out in the openings. Are you that bee-bunter?”
“I am, beautiful Blossom; and I tell you there is an enemy here, in your cabin, that must be looked to.”
“We fear no enemies but the red men, and we have seen none of them since we reached this river. What is the name of the enemy you so dread, and where is he to be found?”
“His name is Whiskey, and he is kept somewhere in this hut, in casks. Show me the place, that I may destroy him, before his friend comes to his assistance.”
A gleam of bright intelligence flashed into the face of the beautiful young creature. First she reddened almost to scarlet; then her face became pale as death. Compressing her lips intensely, she stood irresolute--now gazing at the pleasing and seemingly well-disposed stranger before her, now looking earnestly toward the still distant forms of her brother and sister, which were slowly advancing in the direction of the cabin.
“Dare you?” Margery at length asked, pointing toward her brother.
“I dare: he is now quite sober, and may be reasoned with. For the sake of us all, let us profit by this advantage.”
“He keeps the liquor in two casks that you will find under the shed, behind the hut.”
This said, the girl covered her face with both her hands, and sunk on a stool, as if afraid to be a witness of that which was to follow. As for le Bourdon, he did not delay a moment, but passed out of the cabin by a second door, that opened in its rear. There were the two barrels, and by their side an axe. His first impulse was to dash in the heads of the casks where they stood; but a moment's reflection told him that the odor, so near the cabin, would be unpleasant to every one, and might have a tendency to exasperate the owner of the liquor. He cast about him, therefore, for the means of removing the casks, in order to stave them, at a distance from the dwelling.
Fortunately, the cabin of Whiskey Centre stood on the brow of a sharp descent, at the bottom of which ran a brawling brook. At another moment, le Bourdon would have thought of saving the barrels; but time pressed, and he could not delay. Seizing the barrel next to him, he rolled it without difficulty to the brow of the declivity, and set it off with a powerful shove of his foot. It was the half-empty cask, and away it went, the liquor it contained washing about as it rolled over and over, until hitting a rock about half-way down the declivity, the hoops gave way, when the staves went over the little precipice, and the water of the stream was tumbling through all that remained of the cask, at the next instant. A slight exclamation of delight behind him caused the bee-hunter to look round, and he saw Margery watching his movement with an absorbed interest. Her smile was one of joy, not unmingled with terror; and she rather whispered than said aloud--“The other--the other--THAT is full--be quick; there is no time to lose.” The bee-hunter seized the second cask and rolled it toward the brow of the rocks. It was not quite as easily handled as the other barrel, but his strength sufficed, and it was soon bounding down the declivity after its companion. The second cask hit the same rock as the first, whence it leaped off the precipice, and, aided by its greater momentum, it was literally dashed in pieces at its base.
Not only was this barrel broken into fragments, but its hoops and staves were carried down the torrent, driving before them those of the sister cask, until the whole were swept into the lake, which was some distance from the cabin.
“That job is well done!” exclaimed le Bourdon, when the last fragment of the wreck was taken out of sight. “No man will ever turn himself into a beast by means of that liquor.”
“God be praised!” murmured Margery. “He is SO different, stranger, when he has been drinking, from what he is when he has not! You have been sent by Providence to do us this good.”
“I can easily believe that, for it is so with us all. But you must not call me stranger, sweet Margery; for, now that you and I have this secret between us, I am a stranger no longer.”
The girl smiled and blushed; then she seemed anxious to ask a question. In the mean time they left the shed, and took seats, in waiting for the arrival of Gershom and his wife. It was not long ere the last entered; the countenance of the wife beaming with a satisfaction she made no effort to conceal. Dolly was not as beautiful as her sister-in-law; still, she was a comely woman, though one who had been stricken by sorrow. She was still young, and might have been in the pride of her good looks, had it not been for the manner in which she had grieved over the fall of Gershom. The joy that gladdens a woman's heart, however, was now illuminating her countenance, and she welcomed le Bourdon most cordially, as if aware that he had been of service to her husband. For months she had not seen Gershom quite himself, until that evening.
“I have told Dolly all our adventur's, Bourdon,” cried Gershom, as soon as the brief greetings were over, “and she tells me all's right, hereabouts. Three canoe-loads of Injins passed along shore, goin' up the lake, she tells me, this very a'ternoon; but they didn't see the smoke, the fire bein' out, and must have thought the hut empty; if indeed, they knew anythin' of it, at all.”
“The last is the most likely,” remarked Margery; “for I watched them narrowly from the beeches on the shore, and there was no pointing, or looking up, as would have happened had there been any one among them who could show the others a cabin. Houses an't so plenty, in this part of the country, that travellers pass without turning round to look at them. An Injin has curiosity as well as a white man, though he manages so often to conceal it.”
“Didn't you say, Blossom, that one of the canoes was much behind the others, and that a warrior in that canoe DID look up toward this grove, as if searching for the cabin?” asked Dorothy.
“Either it was so, or my fears made it SEEM so. The two canoes that passed first were well filled with Injins, each having eight in it; while the one that came last held but four warriors. They were a mile apart, and the last canoe seemed to be trying to overtake the others. I did think that nothing but their haste prevented the men in the last canoe from landing; but my fears may have made that seem so that was not so.”
As the cheek of the charming girl flushed with excitement, and her race became animated, Margery appeared marvellously handsome; more so, the bee-hunter fancied, than any other female he had ever before seen. But her words impressed him quite as much as her looks; for he at once saw the importance of such an event, to persons in their situation. The wind was rising on the lake, and it was ahead for the canoes; should the savages feel the necessity of making a harbor, they might return to the mouth of the Kalamazoo; a step that would endanger all their lives, in the event of these Indians proving to belong to those, whom there was now reason to believe were in British pay. In times of peace, the intercourse between the whites and the red men was usually amicable, and seldom led to violence, unless through the effects of liquor; but, a price being placed on scalps, a very different state of things might be anticipated, as a consequence of the hostilities. This was then a matter to be looked to; and, as evening was approaching, no time was to be lost.
The shores of Michigan are generally low, nor are harbors either numerous, or very easy of access. It would be difficult, indeed, to find in any other part of the world, so great an extent of coast that possesses so little protection for the navigator, as that of this very lake. There are a good many rivers, it is true, but usually they have bars, and are not easy of entrance. This is the reason why that very convenient glove, the Constitution, which can be made to fit any hand, has been discovered to have an extra finger in it, which points out a mode by which the federal government can create ports wherever nature has forgotten to perform this beneficent office. It is a little extraordinary that the fingers of so many of the great “expounders” turn out to be “thumbs,” however, exhibiting clumsiness, rather than that adroit lightness which usually characterizes the dexterity of men who are in the habit of rummaging other people's pockets, for their own especial purposes. It must be somewhat up-hill work to persuade any disinterested and clear-headed man, that a political power to “regulate commerce” goes the length of making harbors; the one being in a great measure a moral, while the other is exclusively a physical agency; any more than it goes the length of making ware-houses, and cranes, and carts, and all the other physical implements for carrying on trade. Now, what renders all this “thumbing” of the Constitution so much the more absurd, is the fact, that the very generous compact interested does furnish a means, by which the poverty of ports on the great lakes may be remedied, without making any more unnecessary rents in the great national glove. Congress clearly possesses the power to create and maintain a navy, which includes the power to create all sorts of necessary physical appliances; and, among others, places of refuge for that navy, should they be actually needed. As a vessel of war requires a harbor, and usually a better harbor than a merchant-vessel, it strikes us the “expounders” would do well to give this thought a moment's attention. Behind it will be found the most unanswerable argument in favor of the light-houses, too.
But, to return to the narrative: the Kalamazoo could be entered by canoes, though it offered no very available shelter for a vessel of any size. There was no other shelter for the savages for several miles to the southward; and, should the wind increase, of which there were strong indications, it was not only possible, but highly probable, that the canoes would return. According to the account of the females, they had passed only two hours before, and the breeze had been gradually gathering strength ever since. It was not unlikely, indeed, that the attention paid to the river by the warrior in the last canoe may have had reference to this very state of the weather; and his haste to overtake his companions been connected with a desire to induce them to seek a shelter. All this presented itself to the beehunter's mind, at once; and it was discussed between the members of the party, freely, and not without some grave apprehensions.
There was one elevated point--elevated comparatively, if not in a very positive sense--whence the eye could command a considerable distance along the lake shore. Thither Margery now hastened to look after the canoes. Boden accompanied her; and together they proceeded, side by side, with a new-born but lively and increasing confidence, that was all the greater, in consequence of their possessing a common secret.
“Brother must be much better than he was,” the girl observed, as they hurried on, “for he has not once been into the shed to look at the barrels! Before he went into the openings, he never entered the house without drinking; and sometimes he would raise the cup to his mouth as often as three times in the first half-hour. Now, he does not seem even to think of it!”
“It may be well that he can find nothing to put into his cup, should he fall into his old ways. One is never sure of a man of such habits, until he is placed entirely out of harm's way.”
“Gershom is such a different being when he has not been drinking!” rejoined the sister, in a touching manner. “We love him, and strive to do all we can to keep him up, but it IS hard.”
“I am surprised that YOU should have come into this wilderness with any one of bad habits.”
“Why not? He is my brother, and I have no parents--he is all to me: and what would become of Dorothy if I were to quit her, too! She has lost most of her friends, since Gershom fell into these ways, and it would quite break her heart, did I desert her.”
“All this speaks well for you, pretty Margery, but it is not the less surprising--ah, there is my canoe, in plain sight of all who enter the river; THAT must be concealed, Injins or no Injins.”
“It is only a step further to the place where we can get a lookout. Just there, beneath the burr-oak. Hours and hours have I sat on that spot, with my sewing, while Gershom was gone into the openings.”
“And Dolly--where was she while you were here?”
“Poor Dolly! --I do think she passed quite half her time up at the beech-tree, where you first saw her, looking if brother was not coming home. It is a cruel thing to a wife to have a truant husband!”
“Which I hope may never be your case, pretty Margery, and which I think never CAN.”
Margery did not answer: but the speech must have been heard, uttered as it was in a much lower tone of voice than the young man had hitherto used; for the charming maiden looked down and blushed. Fortunately, the two now soon arrived at the tree, and their conversation naturally reverted to the subject which had brought them there. Three canoes were in sight, close in with the land, but so distant as to render it for some time doubtful which way they were moving. At first, the bee-hunter said that they were still going slowly to the southward; but he habitually carried his little glass, and, on levelling that, it was quite apparent that the savages were paddling before the wind, and making for the mouth of the river. This was a very grave fact; and, as Blossom flew to communicate it to her brother and his wife, le Bourdon moved toward his own canoe, and looked about for a place of concealment.
Several considerations had to be borne in mind, in disposing of the canoes; for that of Gershom was to be secreted, as well as that of the bee-hunter. A tall aquatic plant, that is termed wild rice, and which we suppose to be the ordinary rice-plant, unimproved by tillage, grows spontaneously about the mouths and on the flats of most of the rivers of the part of Michigan of which we are writing; as, indeed, it is to be found in nearly all the shallow waters of those regions. There was a good deal of this rice at hand; and the bee-hunter, paddling his own canoe and towing the other, entered this vegetable thicket, choosing a channel that had been formed by some accident of nature, and which wound through the herbage in a way soon to conceal all that came within its limits. These channels were not only numerous, but exceedingly winding; and the bee-hunter had no sooner brought his canoes to the firm ground and fastened them there, than he ascended a tree, and studied the windings of these narrow passages, until he had got a general idea of their direction and characters. This precaution taken, he hurried back to the hut.
“Well, Gershom, have you settled on the course to be taken?” were the first words uttered by the bee-hunter when he rejoined the family of Whiskey Centre.
“We haven't,” answered the husband. “Sister begs us to quit the chiente, for the Indians must soon be here; but wife seems to think that she MUST be safe, now I'm at home ag'in.”
“Then wife is wrong, and sister is right. If you will take my advice, you will hide all your effects in the woods, and quit the cabin as soon as possible. The Injins cannot fail to see this habitation, and will be certain to destroy all they find in it, and that they do not carry off. Besides, the discovery of the least article belonging to a white man will set them on our trail; for scalps will soon bear a price at Montreal. In half an hour, all that is here can be removed into the thicket that is luckily so near; and by putting out the fire with care, and using proper caution, we may give the place such a deserted look, that the savages will suspect nothing.”
“If they enter the river, Bourdon, they will not camp out with a wigwam so near by, and should they come here, what is to prevent their seein' the footprints we shall leave behind us?”
“The night, and that only. Before morning their own footsteps will be so plenty as to deceive them. Luckily we all wear moccasins, which is a great advantage just now. But every moment is precious, and we should be stirring. Let the women take the beds and bedding, while you and I shoulder this chest. Up it goes, and away with it!”
Gershom had got to be so much under his companion's influence, that he complied, though his mind suggested various objections to the course taken, to which his tongue gave utterance as they busied themselves in this task. The effects of Whiskey Centre had been gradually diminishing in quantity, as well as in value, for the last three years, and were now of no great amount, in any sense. Still there were two chests, one large, and one small. The last contained all that a generous regard for the growing wants of the family had left to Margery; while the first held the joint wardrobes of the husband and wife, with a few other articles that were considered as valuable. Among other things were half a dozen of very thin silver tea-spoons, which had fallen to Gershom on a division of family plate. The other six were carefully wrapped up in paper and put in the till of Margery's chest, being her portion of this species of property. The Americans, generally, have very little plate; though here and there marked exceptions do exist; nor do the humbler classes lay out much of their earnings in jewelry, while they commonly dress far beyond their means in all other ways. In this respect, the European female of the same class in life frequently possesses as much in massive golden personal ornaments as would make an humble little fortune, while her attire is as homely as cumbrous petticoats, coarse cloth, and a vile taste can render it. On the other hand, the American matron that has not a set--one half-dozen--of silver tea-spoons must be poor indeed, and can hardly be said to belong to the order of housekeepers at all. By means of a careful mother, both Gershom and his sister had the half-dozen mentioned; and they were kept more as sacred memorials of past and better days than as articles of any use. The household goods of Waring would have been limited by his means of transportation, if not by his poverty. Two common low-post maple bedsteads were soon uncorded and carried off, as were the beds and bedding. There was scarcely any crockery, pewter and tin being its substitutes; and as for chairs there was only one, and that had rockers: a practice of New England that has gradually diffused itself over the whole country, looking down ridicule, the drilling of boarding-schools, the comments of elderly ladies of the old school, the sneers of nurses, and, in a word, all that venerable ideas of decorum could suggest, until this appliance of domestic ease has not only fairly planted itself in nearly every American dwelling, but in a good many of Europe also!
It required about twenty minutes for the party to clear the cabin of every article that might induce an Indian to suspect the presence of white men. The furniture was carried to a sufficient distance to be safe from everything but a search; and care was had to avoid as much as possible making a trail, to lead the savages to the place selected for the temporary storeroom. This was merely a close thicket, into which there was a narrow but practicable entrance on the side the least likely to be visited. When all was accomplished the four went to the lookout to ascertain how far the canoes had come. It was soon ascertained that they were within a mile, driving down before a strong breeze and following sea, and impelled by as many paddles as there were living beings in them. Ten minutes would certainly bring them up with the bar, and five more fairly within the river. The question now arose, where the party was to be concealed during the stay of the savages. Dolly, as was perhaps natural for the housewife, wished to remain by her worldly goods, and pretty Margery had a strong feminine leaning to do the same. But neither of the men approved of the plan. It was risking too much in one spot; and a suggestion that the bee-hunter was not long in making prevailed.
It will be remembered that le Bourdon had carried the canoes within the field of wild rice, and bestowed them there with a good deal of attention to security. Now these canoes offered, in many respects, better places of temporary refuge, under all the circumstances, than any other that could readily be found on shore. They were dry; and by spreading skins, of which Boden had so many, comfortable beds might be made for the females, which would be easily protected from the night air and dews by throwing a rug over the gunwales. Then, each canoe contained many articles that would probably be wanted; that of the bee-hunter in particular furnishing food in abundance, as well as diverse other things that would be exceedingly useful to persons in their situation. The great advantage of the canoes, however, in the mind of le Bourdon, was the facilities they offered for flight. He hardly hoped that Indian sagacity would be so far blinded as to prevent the discovery of the many footsteps they must have left in their hurried movements, and he anticipated that with the return of day something would occur to render it necessary for them to seek safety by a stealthy removal from the spot. This might be done, he both hoped and believed, under cover of the rice, should sufficient care be taken to avoid exposure. In placing the canoes, he had used the precaution to leave them where they could not be seen from the cabin or its vicinity, or, indeed, from any spot in the vicinity of the ground that the savages would be likely to visit during their stay. All these reasons le Bourdon now rapidly laid before his companions, and to the canoes the whole party retired as fast as they could walk.
There was great judgment displayed on the part of the bee-hunter in selecting the wild rice as a place of shelter. At that season it was sufficiently grown to afford a complete screen to everything within it that did not exceed the height of a man, or which was not seen from some adjacent elevation. Most of the land near the mouth of the river was low, and the few spots which formed exceptions had been borne in mind when the canoes were taken into the field. But just as Gershom was on the point of putting a foot into his own canoe, with a view to arrange it for the reception of his wife, he drew back, and exclaimed after the manner of one to whom a most important idea suddenly occurs: “Land's sake! I've forgotten all about them barrels! They'll fall into the hands of the savages, and an awful time they'll make with them! Let me pass, Dolly; I must look after the barrels this instant.”
While the wife gently detained her eager husband, the bee-hunter quietly asked to what barrels he alluded.
“The whiskey casks,” was the answer. “There's two on 'em in the shed behind the hut, and whiskey enough to set a whole tribe in commotion. I wonder I should have overlooked the whiskey!”
“It is a sign of great improvement, friend Waring, and will lead to no bad consequences,” returned le Bourdon, coolly. “I foresaw the danger, and rolled the casks down the hill, where they were dashed to pieces in the brook, and the liquor has long since been carried into the lake in the shape of grog.”
Waring seemed astounded; but was so completely mystified as not to suspect the truth. That his liquor should be hopelessly lost was bad enough; but even that was better than to have it drunk by savages without receiving any re-turns. After groaning and lamenting over the loss for a few minutes, he joined the rest of the party in making some further dispositions, which le Bourdon deemed prudent, if not necessary.
It had occurred to the bee-hunter to divide his own cargo between the two canoes, which was the task that the whole party was now engaged in. The object was to lighten his own canoe in the event of flight, and, by placing his effects in two parcels, give a chance to those in the boat which might escape, of having wherewithal to comfort and console themselves. As soon as this new arrangement was completed, le Bourdon ran up to a tree that offered the desired facilities, and springing into its branches, was soon high enough to get a view of the bar and the mouth of the river. By the parting light of day, he distinctly saw FOUR canoes coming up the stream; which was one more than those reported to him by Margery as having passed.
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And long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief and pointed spear; And reason's self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here. FRENEAU.
A bright moon reflected on the earth for about an hour the light of the sun, as the latter luminary disappeared. By its aid the bee-hunter, who still continued in the tree, was enabled to watch the movements of the canoes of the Indians, though the persons they contained soon got to be so indistinct as to render it impossible to do more than count their numbers. The last he made out to be five each in three of the canoes, and six in the other, making twenty-one individuals in all. This was too great an odds to think of resisting, in the event of the strangers turning out to be hostile; and the knowledge of this disparity in force admonished all the fugitives of the necessity of being wary and prudent.
The strangers landed just beneath the hut, or at the precise spot where Whiskey Centre was in the habit of keeping his canoe, and whence Boden had removed it only an hour or two before. The savages had probably selected the place on account of its shores being clear of the wild rice, and because the high ground near it promised both a lookout and comfortable lodgings. Several of the party strolled upward, as if searching for an eligible spot to light their fire, and one of them soon discovered the cabin. The warrior announced his success by a whoop, and a dozen of the Indians were shortly collected in and about the chiente. All this proved the prudence of the course taken by the fugitives.
Blossom stood beneath the tree, and the bee-hunter told her, as each incident occurred, all that passed among the strangers, when the girl communicated the same to her brother and his wife, who were quite near at hand in one of the canoes. As there was no danger of being overheard, conversation in an ordinary tone passed between the parties, two of whom at least were now fond of holding this sort of communion.
“Do they seem to suspect the neighborhood of the occupants of the cabin?” asked Margery, when the bee-hunter had let her know the manner in which the savages had taken possession of her late dwelling.
“One cannot tell. Savages are always distrustful and cautious when on a war-path; and these seem to be scenting about like so many hounds which are nosing for a trail. They are now gathering sticks to light a fire, which is better than burning the chiente.”
“THAT they will not be likely to do until they have no further need of it. Tell me, Bourdon, do any go near the thicket of alders where we have hidden our goods?”
“Not as yet; though there is a sudden movement and many loud yells among them!”
“Heaven send that it may not be at having discovered anything we have forgotten. The sight of even a lost dipper or cup would set them blood-hounds on our path, as sure as we are white and they are savages!”
“As I live, they scent the whiskey! There is a rush toward, and a pow-wow in and about the shed--yes, of a certainty they smell the liquor! Some of it has escaped in rolling down the hill, and their noses are too keen to pass over a fragrance that to them equals that of roses. Well, let them SCENT as they may--even an Injin does not get drunk through his NOSE.”
“You are quite right, Bourdon: but is not this a most unhappy scent for us, since the smell of whiskey can hardly be there without their seeing it did not grow in the woods of itself, like an oak or a beech?”
“I understand you, Margery, and there is good sense in what you say. They will never think the liquor grew there, like a blackberry or a chestnut, though the place IS called Whiskey Centre!”
“It is hard enough to know that a family has deserved such a name, without being reminded of it by those that call themselves friends,” answered the girl pointedly, after a pause of near a minute, though she spoke in sorrow rather than in anger.
In an instant the bee-hunter was at pretty Margery's side, making his peace by zealous apologies and winning protestations of respect and concern. The mortified girl was soon appeased; and, after consulting together for a minute, they went to the canoe to communicate to the husband and wife what they had seen.
“The whiskey after all is likely to prove our worst enemy,” said the bee-hunter as he approached. “It would seem that in moving the barrels some of the liquor has escaped, and the nose of an Injin is too quick for the odor it leaves, not to scent it.”
“Much good may it do them,” growled Gershom--“they've lost me that whiskey, and let them long for it without gettin' any, as a punishment for the same. My fortun' would have been made could I only have got them two barrels as far as Fort Dearborn before the troops moved!”
“The BARRELS might have been got there, certainly,” answered le Bourdon, so much provoked at the man's regrets for the destroyer which had already come so near to bringing want and ruin on himself and family, as momentarily to forget his recent scene with pretty Margery; “but whether anything would have been IN them is another question. One of those I rolled to the brow of the hill was half empty as it was.”
“Gershom is so troubled with the ague, if he don't take stimulant in this new country,” put in the wife, in the apologetic manner in which woman struggles to conceal the failings of him she loves. “As for the whiskey, I don't grudge THAT in the least; for it's a poor way of getting rich to be selling it to soldiers, who want all the reason liquor has left 'em, and more too. Still, Gershom needs bitters; and ought not to have every drop he has taken thrown into his face.”
By this time le Bourdon was again sensible of his mistake, and he beat a retreat in the best manner he could, secretly resolving not to place himself any more between two fires, in consequence of further blunders on this delicate subject. He now found that it was a very different thing to joke Whiskey Centre himself on the subject of his great failing, from making even the most distant allusion to it in the presence of those who felt for a husband's and a brother's weakness, with a liveliness of feeling that brutal indulgence had long since destroyed in the object of their solicitude. He accordingly pointed out the risk there was that the Indians should make the obvious inference, that human beings must have recently been in the hut, to leave the fresh scent of the liquor in question behind them. This truth was so apparent that all felt its force, though to no one else did the danger seem so great as to the bee-hunter. He had greater familiarity with the Indian character than any of his companions, and dreaded the sagacity of the savages in a just proportion to his greater knowledge. He did not fail, therefore, to admonish his new friends of the necessity for vigilance.
“I will return to the tree and take another look at the movements of the savages,” le Bourdon concluded by saying. “By this time their fire must be lighted; and by the aid of my glass a better insight may be had into their plans and feelings.”
The bee-hunter now went back to his tree, whither he was slowly followed by Margery; the girl yielding to a feverish desire to accompany him, at the very time she was half restrained by maiden bashfulness; though anxiety and the wish to learn the worst as speedily as possible, prevailed.
“They have kindled a blazing fire, and the whole of the inside of the house is as bright as if illuminated,” said le Bourdon, who was now carefully bestowed among the branches of his small tree. “There are lots of the red devils moving about the chiente, inside and out; and they seem to have fish as well as venison to cook. Aye, there goes more dry brush on the fire to brighten up the picture, and daylight is almost eclipsed. As I live, they have a prisoner among 'em!”
“A prisoner!” exclaimed Margery, in the gentle tones of female pity. “Not a white person, surely?”
“No--he is a red-skin like all of them--but--wait a minute till I can get the glass a little more steady. Yes--it is so--I was right at first!”
“What is so, Bourdon--and in what are you right?”
“You may remember, Blossom, that your brother and I spoke of the two Injins who visited me in the Openings. One was a Pottawattamie and the other a Chippewa. The first we found dead and scalped, after he had left us; and the last is now in yonder hut, bound and a prisoner. He has taken to the lake on his way to Fort Dearborn, and has, with all his craft and resolution, fallen into enemies' hands. Well will it be for him if his captors do not learn what befell the warrior who was slain near my cabin, and left seated against a tree!”
“Do you think these savages mean to revenge the death of their brother on this unfortunate wretch?”
“I know that he is in the pay of our general at Detroit, while the Pottawattamies are in the pay of the English. This of itself would make them enemies, and has no doubt been the cause of his being taken; but I do not well see how Injins on the lake here can know anything of what happened some fifty miles or so up in the Openings.”
“Perhaps the savages in the canoes belong to the same party as the warrior you call Elksfoot, and that they have had the means of learning his death, and by whose hand he fell.”
The bee-hunter was surprised at the quickness of the girl's wit, the suggestion being as discreet as it was ingenious. The manner in which intelligence flies through the wilderness had often surprised him, and certainly it was possible that the party now before him might have heard of the fate of the chief whose body he had found in the Openings, short as was the time for the news to have gone so far. The circumstance that the canoes had come from the northward was against the inference, however, and after musing a minute on the facts, le Bourdon mentioned this objection to his companion.
“Are we certain these are the same canoes as those which I saw pass this afternoon?” asked Margery, who comprehended the difficulty in an instant. “Of those I saw, two passed first, and one followed; while here are FOUR that have landed.”
“What you say may be true enough. We are not to suppose that the canoes you saw pass are all that are on the lake. But let the savages be whom they may, prudence tells us to keep clear of them if we can; and this more so than ever, now I can see that Pigeonswing, who I know to be an American Injin, is treated by them as an enemy.”
“How are the savages employed now, Bourdon? Do they prepare to eat, or do they torture their prisoner?”
“No fear of their attempting the last to-night. There is an uneasiness about them, as if they still smelt the liquor; but some are busy cooking at the fire. I would give all my honey, pretty Margery, to be able to save Pigeonswing! He is a good fellow for a savage, and is heart and hand with us in this new war, that he tells me has begun between us and the English!”
“You surely would not risk your own life to save a savage, who kills and scalps at random, as this man has done!”
“In that he has but followed the habits of his color and race. I dare say WE do things that are quite as bad, according to Injin ways of thinking. I DO believe, Margery, was that man to see ME in the hands of the Pottawattamies, as I now see HIM, he would undertake something for my relief.”
“But what can you, a single man, do when there are twenty against you?” asked Margery, a little reproachfully as to manner, speaking like one who had more interest in the safety of the young bee-hunter than she chose very openly to express.
“No one can say what he can do till he tries. I do not like the way they are treating that Chippewa, for it looks as if they meant to do him harm. He is neither fed, nor suffered to be with his masters; but there the poor fellow is, bound hand and foot near the cabin door, and lashed to a tree. They do not even give him the relief of suffering him to sit down.”
The gentle heart of Margery was touched by this account of the manner in which the captive was treated, and she inquired into other particulars concerning his situation, with a more marked interest than she had previously manifested in his state. The bee-hunter answered her questions as they were put; and the result was to place the girl in possession of a minute detail of the true manner in which Pigeonswing was treated.
Although there was probably no intention on the part of the captors of the Chippewa to torture him before his time, tortured he must have been by the manner in which his limbs and body were confined. Not only were his arms fastened behind his back at the elbows, but the hands were also tightly bound together in front. The legs had ligatures in two places, just above the knees and just below the ankles. Around the body was another fastening; which secured the captive to a beech that stood about thirty feet from the door of the cabin, and so nearly in a line with the fire within and the lookout of le Bourdon, as to enable the last distinctly to note these particulars, aided as he was by his glass. Relying on the manner in which they secured their prisoner, the savages took little heed of him; but each appeared bent on attending to his own comfort, by means of a good supper, and by securing a dry lair in which to pass the night. All this le Bourdon saw and noted too, ere he dropped lightly on his feet by the side of Margery, at the root of the tree.
Without losing time that was precious, the bee-hunter went at once to the canoes and communicated his intention to Waring. The moon had now set, and the night was favorable to the purpose of le Bourdon. At the first glance it might seem wisest to wait until sleep had fallen upon the savages, ere any attempt were made to approach the hut; but Boden reasoned differently. A general silence would succeed as soon as the savages disposed of themselves to sleep, which would be much more likely to allow his footsteps to be overheard, than when tongues and bodies and teeth were all in active movement. A man who eats after a long march, or a severe paddling, usually concentrates his attention on his food, as le Bourdon knew by long experience; and it is a much better moment to steal upon the hungry and weary, to do so when they feed, than to do so when they sleep, provided anything like a watch be kept. That the Pottawattamie would neglect this latter caution le Bourdon did not believe; and his mind was made up, not only to attempt the rescue of his Chippewa friend, but to attempt it at once.
After explaining his plan in a few words, and requesting Waring's assistance, le Bourdon took a solemn leave of the party, and proceeded at once toward the hut. In order to understand the movements of the bee-hunter, it may be well now briefly to explain the position of the chiente, and the nature of the ground on which the adventurer was required to act. The hut stood on a low and somewhat abrupt swell, being surrounded on all sides by land so low as to be in many places wet and swampy. There were a good many trees on the knoll, and several thickets of alders and other bushes on the lower ground; but on the whole, the swamps were nearly devoid of what is termed “timber.” Two sides of the knoll were abrupt; that on which the casks had been rolled into the lake, and that opposite, which was next to the tree where Boden had so long been watching the proceedings of the savages. The distance between the hut and this tree was somewhat less than a mile. The intervening ground was low, and most of it was marshy; though it was possible to cross the marsh by following a particular course. Fortunately this course, which was visible to the eye by daylight, and had been taken by the fugitives on quitting the hut, might be dimly traced at night, by one who understood the ground, by means of certain trees and bushes, that formed so many finger-posts for the traveller. Unless this particular route were taken, however, a circuit of three or four miles must be made, in order to pass from the chiente to the spot where the family had taken refuge. As le Bourdon had crossed this firm ground by daylight and had observed it well from his tree, he thought himself enough of a guide to find his way through it in the dark, aided by the marks just mentioned.
The bee-hunter had got as far as the edge of the marsh on his way toward the hut, when, pausing an instant to examine the priming of his rifle, he fancied that he heard a light footstep behind him. Turning, quick as thought, he perceived that pretty Margery had followed him thus far. Although time pressed, he could not part from the girl without showing that he appreciated the interest she manifested in his behalf. Taking her hand, therefore, he spoke with a simplicity and truth, that imparted to his manner a natural grace that one bred in courts might have envied. What was more, with a delicacy that few in course would deem necessary under the circumstances, he did not in his language so much impute to concern on his own account this movement of Margery's, as to that she felt for her brother and sister; though in his inmost heart a throbbing hope prevailed that he had his share in it.
“Do not be troubled on account of Gershom and his wife, pretty Margery,” said the bee-hunter, “which, as I perceive, is the main reason why you have come here; and as for myself, be certain that I shall not forget who I have left behind, and how much her safety depends on my prudence.”
Margery was pleased, though a good deal confused. It was new to her to hear allusions of this sort, but nature supplied the feeling to appreciate them.
“Is it not risking too much, Bourdon?” she said. “Are you sure of being able to find the crossing in the marsh, in a night so very dark? I do not know but looking so long at the bright light in the cabin may blind me, but it DOES seem as if I never saw a darker night!”
“The darkness increases, for the star-light is gone; but I can see where I go, and so long as I can do that there is not much fear of losing my way. I do not like to expose you to danger, but--” “Never mind me, Bourdon--set me to do anything in which you think I can be of use!” exclaimed the girl, eagerly.
“Well then, Margery, you may do this: come with me to the large tree in the centre of the marsh, and I will set you on a duty that may possibly save my life. I will tell you my meaning when there.”
Margery followed with a light, impatient step; and, as neither stopped to speak or to look around, the two soon stood beneath the tree in question. It was a large elm that completely overshadowed a considerable extent of firm ground. Here a full and tolerably near view could be had of the hut, which was still illuminated by the blazing fire within. For a minute both stood silently gazing at the strange scene; then le Bourdon explained to his companion the manner in which she might assist him.
Once at the elm, it was not so difficult to find the way across the marsh, as it was to reach that spot, coming FROM the chiente. As there were several elms scattered about in the centre of the marsh, the bee-hunter was fearful that he might not reach the right tree; in which case he would be compelled to retrace his steps, and that at the imminent hazard of being captured. He carried habitually a small dark lantern, and had thought of so disposing of it in the lower branches of this very elm, as to form a focus of it, but hesitated about doing that which might prove a guide to his enemies as well as to himself. If Margery would take charge of this lantern, he could hope to reap its advantages without incurring the hazard of having a light suspended in the tree for any length of time. Margery understood the lessons she received, and promised to obey all the injunctions by which they were accompanied.
“Now, God bless you, Margery,” added the bee-hunter. “Providence has brought me and your brother's family together in troublesome times; should I get back safe from this adventure, I shall look upon it as a duty to do all I can to help Gershom place his wife and sister beyond the reach of harm.”
“God bless you, Bourdon!” half whispered the agitated girl. “I know it is worth some risk to save a human life, even though it be that of an Injin, and I will not try to persuade you from this undertaking; but do not attempt more than is necessary, and rely on my using the lantern just as you have told me to use it.”
Those young persons had not yet known each other a single day, yet both felt that confidence which years alone, in the crowds of the world, can ordinarily create in the human mind. The cause of the sympathy which draws heart to heart, which generates friendships, and love, and passionate attachments, is not obvious to all who choose to talk of it. There is yet a profound mystery in our organization, which has hitherto escaped the researches of both classes of philosophers, and which it probably was the design of the Creator should not be made known to us until we draw nearer to that great end which, sooner or later, is to be accomplished in behalf of our race, when “knowledge will abound,” and we shall better understand our being and its objects, than is permitted to us in this our day of ignorance. But while we cannot trace the causes of a thousand things, we know and feel their effects. Among the other mysteries of our nature is this of sudden and strong sympathies, which, as between men for men, and women for women, awaken confidence and friendship; and as between those of different sexes, excite passionate attachments that more or less color their future lives. The great delineator of our common nature, in no one of the many admirable pictures he has drawn of men, manifests a more profound knowledge of his subject, than in that in which he portrays the sudden and nearly ungovernable inclination which Romeo and Juliet are made to display for each other; an inclination that sets reason, habit, prejudice, and family enmities at defiance. That such an attachment is to be commended, we do not say; that all can feel it, we do not believe; that connections formed under its influence can always be desirable, we are far from thinking: but that it may exist we believe is just as certain as any of the incomprehensible laws of our wayward and yet admirable nature. We have no Veronese tale to relate here, however, but simply a homely legend, in which human feeling may occasionally be made to bear an humble resemblance to that world-renowned picture which had its scenes in the beautiful capital of Venetian Lombardy.
When le Bourdon left his companion, now so intensely interested in his success, to pick his way in the darkness across the remainder of the marsh, Margery retired behind the tree, where the first thing she did was to examine her lantern, and to see that its light was ready to perform the very important office which might so speedily be required of it. Satisfied on this point, she turned her eyes anxiously in the direction of the hut. By this time every trace of the bee-hunter was lost, the hillock in his front forming too dark a background to admit of his being seen. But the fire still blazed in the chiente, the savages not having yet finished their cooking, though several had satisfied their appetites, and had already sought places where they might stretch themselves for the night. Margery was glad to see that these last individuals bestowed themselves within the influence of the fire, warm as was the night. This was done most probably to escape from the annoyance of the mosquitos, more or less of which are usually found in the low lands of the new countries, and near the margins of rivers.
Margery could distinctly see the Chippewa, erect and bound to his tree. On him she principally kept her looks riveted, for near his person did she expect first again to find the bee-hunter. Indeed, there was no chance of seeing one who was placed beneath the light of the fire, since the brow of the acclivity formed a complete cover, throwing all below it into deep shade. This circumstance was of the greatest importance to the adventurer, however, enabling him to steal quite near to his friend, favored by a darkness that was getting to be intense. Quitting Margery, we will now rejoin le Bourdon, who by this time was approaching his goal.
The bee-hunter had some difficulty in finding his way across the marsh; but floundering through the impediments, and on the whole preserving the main direction, he got out on the firm ground quite as soon as he had expected to do. It was necessary for him to use extreme caution. The Indians according to their custom had dogs, two of which had been in sight, lying about half-way between the prisoner and the door of the hut. Boden had seen a savage feeding these dogs; and it appeared to him at the time as if the Indian had been telling them to be watchful of the Chippewa. He well knew the services that the red men expected of these animals, which are kept rather as sentinels than for any great use they put them to in the hunts. An Indian dog is quick enough to give the alarm, and he will keep on a trail for a long run and with considerable accuracy, but it is seldom that he closes and has his share in the death, unless in the case of very timid and powerless creatures.
Nevertheless, the presence of these dogs exacted extra caution in the movements of the bee-hunter. He had ascended the hill a little out of the stream of light which still issued from the open door of the hut, and was soon high enough to get a good look at the state of things on the bit of level land around the cabin. Fully one-half of the savages were yet up and in motion; though the processes of cooking and eating were by this time nearly ended. These men had senses almost as acute as those of their dogs, and it was very necessary to be on his guard against them also. By moving with the utmost caution, le Bourdon reached the edge of the line of light, where he was within ten yards of the captive. Here he placed his rifle against a small tree, and drew his knife, in readiness to cut the prisoner's thongs. Three several times, while the bee-hunter was making these preparations, did the two dogs raise their heads and scent the air; once, the oldest of the two gave a deep and most ominous growl. Singular as it may seem, this last indication of giving the alarm was of great service to le Bourdon and the Chippewa. The latter heard the growl, and saw two of the movements of the animals' heads, from all which he inferred that there was some creature, or some danger behind him. This naturally enough induced him to bestow a keen attention in that direction, and being unable to turn body, limbs, or head, the sense of hearing was his only means of watchfulness. It was while in this state of profound listening that Pigeonswing fancied he heard his own name, in such a whisper as one raises when he wishes to call from a short distance with the least possible expenditure of voice. Presently the words “Pigeonswing,” and “Chippewa,” were succeeded by those of “bee-hunter,” “Bourdon.” This was enough: the quick-witted warrior made a low ejaculation, such as might be mistaken for a half-suppressed murmur that proceeded from pain, but which one keenly on the watch, and who was striving to communicate with him, would be apt to understand as a sign of attention. The whispering then ceased altogether, and the prisoner waited the result with the stoic patience of an American Indian. A minute later the Chippewa felt the thongs giving way, and his arms were released at the elbows. An arm was next passed round his body, and the fastenings at the wrist were cut. At this instant a voice whispered in his ear--“Be of good heart, Chippewa--your friend, Bourdon, is here. Can you stand?”
“No stand,” answered the Indian in a low whisper--“too much tie.”
At the next moment the feet of the Chippewa were released, as were also his knees. Of all the fastenings none now remained but that which bound the captive to the tree. In not cutting this, the bee-hunter manifested his coolness and judgment; for were the stout rope of bark severed, the Indian would have fallen like a log, from total inability to stand. His thongs had impeded the circulation of the blood, and the usual temporary paralysis had been the consequence. Pigeonswing understood the reason of his friend's forbearance, and managed to rub his hands and wrists together, while the bee-hunter himself applied friction to his feet, by passing his own arms around the bottom of the tree. The reader may imagine the intense anxiety of Margery the while; for she witnessed the arrival of le Bourdon at the tree, and could not account for the long delay which succeeded.
All this time, the dogs were far from being quiet or satisfied. Their masters, accustomed to being surrounded at night by wolves and foxes, or other beasts, took little heed, however, of the discontent of these creatures, which were in the habit of growling in their lairs. The bee-hunter, as he kept rubbing at his friend's legs, felt now but little apprehension of the dogs, though a new source of alarm presented itself by the time the Chippewa was barely able to sustain his weight on his feet, and long before he could use them with anything like his former agility. The manner in which the savages came together in the hut, and the gestures made by their chief, announced pretty plainly that a watch was about to be set for the night. As it was probable that the sentinel would take his station near the prisoner, the bee-hunter was at a loss to decide whether it were better to commence the flight before or after the rest of the savages were in their lairs. Placing his mouth as close to the ear of Pigeonswing as could be done without bringing his head into the light, the following dialogue passed between le Bourdon and the captive.
“Do you see, Chippewa,” the bee-hunter commenced, “the chief is telling one of the young men to come and keep guard near you?”
“See him, well 'nough. Make too many sign, no to see.”
“What think you--shall we wait till the warriors are asleep, or try to be off before the sentinel comes?”
“Bess wait, if one t'ing. You got rifle--got tomahawk--got knife, eh?”
“I have them all, though my rifle is a short distance behind me, and a little down the hill.”
“Dat bad--nebber let go rifle on war-path. Well, YOU tomahawk him--_I_ scalp him--dat'll do.”
“I shall kill no man, Chippewa, unless there is great occasion for it. If there is no other mode of getting you off, I shall choose to cut this last thong, and leave you to take care of yourself.”
“Give him tomahawk, den--give him knife, too.”
“Not for such a purpose. I do not like to shed blood without a good reason for it.”
“No call war good reason, eh? Bess reason in world Pottawattamie dig up hatchet ag'in' Great Fadder at Wash'ton--dat no good reason why take his scalp, eh?”
In whispering these last words the Chippewa used so much energy, that the dogs again raised their heads from between their forepaws and growled. Almost at that instant the chief and his few remaining wakeful companions laid themselves down to sleep, and the young warrior designated as the sentinel left the hut and came slowly toward the prisoner. The circumstances admitted of no delay; le Bourdon pressed the keen edge of his knife across the withe that bound the Indian to the tree; first giving him notice, in order that he might be prepared to sustain his own weight. This done, the bee-hunter dropped on the ground, crawling away out of the light; though the brow of the hill almost immediately formed a screen to conceal his person from all near the hut. In another instant he had regained his rifle, and was descending swiftly toward the crossing at the marsh.
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We call them savage--oh, be just! Their outraged feelings scan; A voice comes forth, 'tis from the dust-- The savage was a man! SPRAGUE.
As soon as le Bourdon reached the commencement of that which might be called his path across the marsh, he stopped and looked backward. He was now sufficiently removed from the low acclivity to see objects on its summit, and had no difficulty in discerning all that the waning fire illuminated. There stood the Chippewa erect against the tree as if still bound with thongs, while the sentinel was slowly approaching him. The dogs were on their feet, and gave two or three sharp barks, which had the effect to cause five or six of the savages to lift their heads in their lairs. One arose even and threw an armful of dried branches on the fire, producing a bright blaze, that brought everything around the hut, and which the light could touch, into full view.
The bee-hunter was astonished at the immovable calmness with which Pigeonswing still stood to his tree, awaiting the approach of the sentinel. In a few moments the latter was at his side. At first the Pottawattamie did not perceive that the prisoner was unbound. He threw him into shadow by his own person, and it required a close look to note the circumstance. Boden was too far from the spot to see all the minor movements of the parties, but there was soon a struggle that could not be mistaken. As the Pottawattamie was examining the prisoner, an exclamation that escaped him betrayed the sudden consciousness that the Chippewa was unbound. The sound was no sooner uttered than Pigeonswing made a grasp at the sentinel's knife, which however he did not obtain, when the two closed and fell, rolling down the declivity into the darkness. When the Pottawattamie seized the Chippewa, he uttered a yell, which instantly brought every man of his party to his feet. As the savages now united in the whoops, and the dogs began to bark wildly, an infernal clamor was made.
At first, le Bourdon did not know how to act. He greatly feared the dogs, and could not but think of Margery, and the probable consequences, should those sagacious animals follow him across the marsh. But he did not like the idea of abandoning Pigeonswing, when a single blow of his arm, or a kick of his foot, might be the cause of his escape. While deliberating in painful uncertainty, the sounds of the struggle ceased, and he saw the sentinel rising again into the light, limping like one who had suffered by a fall. Presently he heard a footstep near him, and, calling in a low voice, he was immediately joined by Pigeonswing. Before the bee-hunter was aware of his intention, the Chippewa seized his rifle, and levelling at the sentinel, who still stood on the brow of the hill, drawn in all his savage outlines distinctly in the light of the flames, he fired. The cry, the leap into the air, and the fall, announced the unerring character of the aim. In coming to the earth, the wounded man fell over the brow of the sharp acclivity, and was heard rolling toward its base.
Le Bourdon felt the importance of now improving the precious moments, and was in the act of urging his companion to follow, when the latter passed an arm around his body, whipped his knife from the girdle and sheath, and dropping the rifle into his friend's arms, bounded away in the darkness, taking the direction of his fallen enemy. There was no mistaking all this; Chippewa, led by his own peculiar sense of honor, risking everything to obtain the usual trophy of victory. By this time, a dozen of the savages stood on the brow of the hill, seemingly at a loss to understand what had become of the combatants. Perceiving this, the bee-hunter profited by the delay and reloaded his rifle. As everything passed almost as swiftly as the electric spark is known to travel, it was but a moment after the Pottawattamie fell ere his conqueror was through with his bloody task. Just as le Bourdon threw his rifle up into the hollow of his arm, he was rejoined by his red friend, who bore the reeking scalp of the sentinel at his belt; though fortunately the bee-hunter did not see it on account of the obscurity, else might he not have been so willing to continue to act with so ruthless an ally.
Further stay was out of the question; for the Indians were now collected in a body on the brow of the hill, where the chief was rapidly issuing his orders. In a minute the band dispersed, every man bounding into the darkness, as if aware of the danger of remaining within the influence of the bright light thrown from the fire. Then came such a clamor from the dogs, as left no doubt in the mind of the bee-hunter that they had scented and found the remains of the fallen man. A fierce yell came from the same spot, the proof that some of the savages had already discovered the body; and le Bourdon told his companion to follow, taking his way across the marsh as fast as he could overcome the difficulties of the path.
It has already been intimated that it was not easy, if indeed it were possible, to cross that piece of low wet land in a direct line. There was tolerably firm ground on it, but it lay in an irregular form, its presence being generally to be noted by the growth of trees. Le Bourdon had been very careful in taking his landmarks, foreseeing the probability of a hasty retreat, and he had no difficulty for some time in keeping in the right direction. But the dogs soon left the dead body, and came bounding across the marsh, disregarding its difficulties; though their plunges and yells soon made it apparent that even they did not escape altogether with dry feet. As for the savages, they poured down the declivity in a stream, taking the dogs as their guides; and safe ones they might well be accounted, so far as the SCENT was concerned, though they did not happen to be particularly well acquainted with all the difficulties of the path.
At length le Bourdon paused, causing his companion to stop also. In the hurry and confusion of the flight, the former had lost his landmarks, finding himself amidst a copse of small trees, or large bushes, but not in the particular copse he sought. Every effort to get out of this thicket, except by the way he had entered it, proved abortive, and the dogs were barking at no great distance in his rear. It is true that these animals no longer approached: for they were floundering in the mud and water; but their throats answered every purpose to lead the pursuers on, and the low calls that passed from mouth to mouth, let the pursued understand that the Pottawattamies were at their heels, if not absolutely on their trail.
The crisis demanded both discretion and decision; qualities in which the bee-hunter, with his forest training, was not likely to be deficient. He looked out for the path by which he had reached the unfortunate thicket, and having found it, commenced a retreat by the way he had come. Nerve was needed to move almost in a line toward the dogs and their masters; but the nerve was forthcoming, and the two advanced like veterans expecting the fire of some concealed but well-armed battery. Presently, le Bourdon stopped, and examined the ground on which he stood.
“HERE we must turn, Chippewa,” he said, in a guarded voice. “This is the spot where I must have missed my way.”
“Good place to turn 'bout,” answered the Indian--“dog too near.”
“We must shoot the dogs if they press us too hard,” returned the bee-hunter, leading off rapidly, now secure in the right direction. “They seem to be in trouble, just at this time; but animals like them will soon find their way across this marsh.”
“Bess shoot Pottawattamie,” coolly returned Pigeonswing. “Pottawattamie got capital scalp--dog's ears no good for nutting any more.”
“Yonder, I believe, is the tree I am in search of!” exclaimed le Bourdon. “If we can reach that tree, I think all will go well with us.”
The tree was reached, and the bee-hunter proceeded to make sure of his course from that point. Removing from his pouch a small piece of moistened powder that he had prepared ere he liberated the Chippewa, he stuck it on a low branch of the tree he was under, and on the side next the spot where he had stationed Margery. When this was done, he made his companion stand aside, and lighting some spunk with his flint and steel, he fired his powder. Of course, this little preparation burned like the fireworks of a boy, making sufficient light, however, to be seen in a dark night for a mile or more. No sooner was the wetted powder hissing and throwing off its sparks, than the bee-hunter gazed intently into the now seemingly tangible obscurity of the marsh. A bright light appeared and vanished. It was enough; the bee-hunter threw down his own signal and extinguished it with his foot; and, as he wished, the lantern of Margery appeared no more. Assured now of the accuracy of his position, as well as of the course he was to pursue, le Bourdon bade his companion follow, and pressed anew across the marsh. A tree was soon visible, and toward that particular object the fugitives steadily pressed, until it was reached. At the next instant Margery was joined; and the bee-hunter could not refrain from kissing her, in the excess of his pleasure.
“There is a dreadful howling of dogs,” said Margery, feeling no offence at the liberty taken, in a moment like that, “and it seems to me that a whole tribe is following at their heels. For Heaven's sake, Bourdon, let us hasten to the canoes; brother and sister must think us lost!”
The circumstances pressed, and the bee-hunter took Margery's arm, passing it through one of his own, with a decided and protecting manner, that caused the girl's heart to beat with emotions not in the least connected with fear, leaving an impression of pleasure even at that perilous moment. As the distance was not great, the three were soon on the beach and near to the canoes. Here they met Dorothy, alone, and pacing to and fro like a person distressed. She had doubtless heard the clamor, and was aware that the savages were out looking for their party. As Margery met her sister, she saw that something more than common had gone wrong, and in the eagerness of her apprehensions she did not scruple about putting her questions.
“What has become of brother? Where is Gershom?” demanded the sensitive girl, at once.
The answer was given in a low voice, and in that sort of manner with which woman struggles to the last to conceal the delinquencies of him she loves.
“Gershom is not himself, just now,” half whispered the wife--“he has fallen into one of his old ways, ag'in.”
“Old ways?” slowly repeated the sister, dropping her own voice to tones similar to those in which the unpleasant news had just been communicated. “How is that possible, now that all the whiskey is emptied?”
“It seems that Bourdon had a jug of brandy among his stores, and Gershom found it out. I blame no one; for Bourdon, who never abuses the gifts of Providence, had a right to his comforts at least; but it IS a pity that there was anything of the sort in the canoes!”
The bee-hunter was greatly concerned at this unwelcome intelligence, feeling all its importance far more vividly than either of his companions. They regretted as women; but he foresaw the danger, as a man accustomed to exertion in trying scenes. If Whiskey Centre had really fallen into his old ways, so as to render himself an incumbrance, instead of being an assistant at such a moment, the fact was to be deplored, but it could only be remedied by time. Luckily they had the Indian with them, and he could manage one of the canoes, while he himself took charge of the other. As no time was to be lost--the barking of the dogs and the cries of the savages too plainly letting it be known that the enemy was getting through the marsh by some means or other--he hurried the party down to the canoes, entering that of Whiskey Centre at once.
Le Bourdon found Gershom asleep, but with the heavy slumbers of the drunkard. Dolly had removed the jug and concealed it, as soon as the state of her husband enabled her to do so without incurring his violence. Else might the unfortunate man have destroyed himself, by indulging in a liquor so much more palatable than that he was accustomed to use, after so long and compelled an abstinence. The jug was now produced, however, and le Bourdon emptied it in the river, to the great joy of the two females, though not without a sharp remonstrance from the Chippewa. The bee-hunter was steady, and the last drop of the liquor of Gascony was soon mingling with the waters of the Kalamazoo. This done, the bee-hunter desired the women to embark, and called to the Chippewa to do the same. By quitting the spot in the canoes, it was evident the pursuers would be balked, temporarily at least, since they must recross the marsh in order to get into their own boats, without which further pursuit would be fruitless.
It might have been by means of a secret sympathy, or it was possibly the result of accident, but certain it is, that the Chippewa was placed in that of le Bourdon. As for Whiskey Centre, he lay like a log in the bottom of his own light bark, cared for only by his affectionate wife, who had made a pillow for his head; but, fortunately, if no assistance just then, not any material hindrance to the movements of his friends. By the time le Bourdon and the Chippewa had got their stations, and the canoes were free of the bottom, it was evident by the sounds, that not only the dogs, but divers of their masters, had floundered through the swamp, and were already on the firm ground east of it. As the dogs ran by scent, little doubt remained of their soon leading the savages to the place of embarkation. Aware of this, the bee-hunter directed the Chippewa to follow, and urged his own canoe away from the shore, following one of three of the natural channels that united just at that point.
The clamor now sensibly increased, and the approach of the pursuers was much faster than it had previously been, in consequence of there no longer being wet land beneath their feet. At the distance of fifty yards from the shore, however, the channel, or open avenue among the rice-plants that the canoes had taken, made a short turn to the northward; for all the events we have just been recording occurred on the northern, or leeward side of the river. Once around this bend in the channel, the canoes would have been effectually concealed from those on the beach, had it even been broad daylight, and, of course, were so much more hidden from view under the obscurity of a very dark night. Perceiving this, and fearful that the dip of the paddles might be heard, le Bourdon ceased to urge his canoe through the water, telling the Chippewa to imitate his example, and let the boats drift. In consequence of this precaution the fugitives were still quite near the shore when, first, the dogs, then a party of their masters, came rushing down to the very spot whence the canoes had departed scarcely two minutes before. As no precautions were taken to conceal the advance of the pursuers, the pursued, or the individuals among them who alone understood the common language of the great Ojebway nation well, had an opportunity of hearing and understanding all that was said. Le Bourdon had brought the two canoes together; and the Chippewa, at his request, now translated such parts of the discourse of their enemies as he deemed worthy of communicating to the females.
“Say, now, nobody dere!” commenced the Indian, coolly. “T'ink he no great way off--mean to look for him--t'ink dog uneasy--won'er why dog so uneasy.”
“Them dogs are very likely to scent us here in the canoes, we are so near them,” whispered le Bourdon.
“S'pose he do, can't catch us,” coolly answered the Chippewa--“beside, shoot him, don't take care--bad for dog to chase warrior too much.”
“There is one speaking now, who seems to have authority.”
“Yes--he chief--know he voice--hear him too often--he mean to put Pigeonswing to torture. Well, let him catch Pigeonswing fust--swift bird do that, eh?”
“But what says he? --it may be of importance to learn what the chief says, just now.”
“Who care what he say--can't do nuttin'--if get good chance, take HIS scalp, too.”
“Aye, that I dare say--but he is speaking earnestly and in a low voice; listen, and let us know what he says. I do not well understand at this distance.”
The Chippewa complied, and maintained an attentive silence until the chief ceased to speak. Then he rendered what had been said into such English as he could command, accompanying the translation by the explanations that naturally suggested themselves to one like himself.
“Chief talk to young men,” said the Chippewa--“all chief talk to young men--tell him dat Pigeonswing must get off in canoe--don't see canoe, nudder--but, muss be canoe, else he swim. T'ink more than one Injin here--don't know, dough--maybe, maybe not--can't tell, till see trail, morrow morning--” “Well, well; but what does he tell his young men to DO?” demanded the bee-hunter, impatiently.
“Don't be squaw, Bourdon--tell all by'em bye. Tell young men s'pose he get canoe, den he may get OUR canoe, and carry 'em off--s'pose he swim; dat Chippewa devil swim down stream and get OUR canoe dat fashion--bess go back, some of you, and see arter OUR canoe--dat what he tell young men most.”
“That is a lucky thought!” exclaimed le Bourdon--“let us paddle down, at once, and seize all their canoes before they can get there. The distance by water, owing to this bend in the river, is not half as great as that by land, and the marsh will double the distance to them.”
“Dat good counsel,” said Pigeonswing--“you go--I follow.”
This was no sooner said, than the canoes again got in motion. The darkness might now have been a sufficient protection had there been no rice, but the plant would have concealed the movement, even at noon-day. The fire in the hut served as a beacon, and enabled le Bourdon to find the canoes. When he reached the landing, he could still hear the dogs barking on the marsh, and the voices of those with them, calling in loud tones to two of the savages who had remained at the chiente, as a sort of camp-guard.
“What do them chaps say?” asked le Bourdon of the Chippewa. “They yell as if striving to make the two men at the door of the hut hear them. Can you make out what they are bawling so loud?”
“Tell two warrior to come down and take care of canoe--dat all--let 'em come--find two here to take care of DEM--got good scalp, them two rascal Pottawattamie!”
“No--no--Pigeonswing--we must have no more of that work to-night, but must set about towing these four canoes off the shore as fast as we can. Have you got hitches on your two?”
“Fast 'nough--so fast, he follow,” answered the Indian, who, notwithstanding his preparations to help to remove the canoes, was manifestly reluctant to depart without striking another blow at his enemies. “Now good time for dem rascal to lose scalp!”
“Them rascals, as you call them, begin to understand their friends in the marsh, and are looking to the priming of their rifles. We must be moving, or they may see us, and give us a shot. Shove off, Chippewa, and paddle at once for the middle of the bay.”
As le Bourdon was much in earnest, Pigeonswing was fain to comply. Had the last possessed a rifle of his own, or even a knife, it is highly probable he would have leaped ashore, and found the means of stealing on some of his enemies unawares, and thus secured another trophy. But the bee-hunter was determined, and the Chippewa, however reluctant, was compelled to obey; for not only had le Bourdon kept his rifle at his side, but he had used the precaution of securing his knife and tomahawk, both of which he carried habitually, the same as a red man.
The canoes had now a somewhat difficult task. The wind still blew fresh, and it was necessary for one of these light craft, pretty well loaded with its proper freight, and paddled by only a single person, to tow two other craft of equal size dead to the windward. The weight in the towing craft, and the lightness of those that were towed, rendered this task, however, easier than it might otherwise have proved. In the course of a couple of minutes all the canoes were far enough from the shore to be out of sight of the two Indians, who, by that time, had got down to the beach to look after their own craft. The yell these savages raised on finding themselves too late, not only announced their disappointment, but communicated the extent of the disaster to their friends, who were still floundering through the marsh.
The great advantage that the party of the bee-hunter had now obtained must be very apparent to all. In possession of ALL the canoes, their enemies were, or would be for some time at least, confined to the northern side of the river, which was so wide near its mouth as to present an effectual barrier between them and those who occupied the opposite bank. The canoes, also, enabled the weaker party to change their position at will, carrying with them as many effects as were on board, and which included the whole of the property of le Bourdon; while their loss deprived their enemies of all extra means of motion, and would be very likely to induce them to proceed on their expedition by land. The objects of that expedition could only be conjectured by the bee-hunter, until he had questioned the Chippewa; a thing he did not fail to do, so soon as he believed the party quite safe under the south shore. Here the fugitives landed, proceeding up a natural channel in the wild rice in order to do so, and selecting a bit of dry beach for their purpose. Margery set about lighting a fire, in order to keep the mosquitos at a distance, selecting a spot to kindle it, behind a swell on the land, that concealed the light from all on the other shore. In the morning, it would be necessary to extinguish that fire, lest its smoke should betray their position. It was while these things were in progress, and after le Bourdon had himself procured the fuel necessary to feed pretty Margery's fire, that he questioned the Chippewa touching his captivity.
“Yes, tell all 'bout him,” answered the Indian, as soon as interrogated--“no good to hide trail from friend. 'Member when say good-by up in openin' to Bourdon?”
“Certainly--I remember the very instant when you left me. The Pottawattamie went on one path, and you went on another. I was glad of that, as you seemed to think he was not your friend.”
“Yes; good not to travel on same path as inimy, 'cause he quarrel sometime,” coolly returned the Indian. “Dis time, path come together, somehow; and Pottawattamie lose he scalp.”
“I am aware of all that, Pigeonswing, and wish it had not been so. I found the body of Elksfoot sitting up against a tree soon after you left me, and knew by whose hands he had fallen.”
“Didn't find scalp, eh?”
“No, the scalp had been taken; though I accounted that but for little, since the man's life was gone. There is little gained by carrying on war in this manner, making the woods, and the openings, and the prairies, alike unsafe. You see, to what distress this family is reduced by your Injin manner of making war.”
“How you make him, den--want, to hear. Go kiss, and give venison to inimy, or go get his scalp, eh? Which bess fashion to make him afeard, and own you master?”
“All that may be done without killing single travellers, or murdering women and children. The peace will be made none the sooner between England and America, because you have got the scalp of Elksfoot.”
“No haben't got him any longer; wish had--Pottawattamie take him away, and say he bury him. Well, let him hide him in a hole deep as white man's well, can't hide Pigeonswing honor dere, too. Dat is safe as notch cut on stick can make him!”
This notch on a stick was the Indian mode of gazetting a warrior; and a certain number of these notches was pretty certain to procure for him a sort of savage brevet, which answered his purpose quite as well as the modern mode of brevetting at Washington answers our purpose. Neither brings any pay, we believe, nor any command, except in such cases as rarely occur, and then only to the advantage of government. There are varieties in honor, as in any other human interest: so are there many moral degrees in warfare. Thus, the very individual who admires the occupation of Algiers, or that of Tahiti, or the attack on Canton, together with the long train of Indian events which have dyed the peninsulas of the East in the blood of their people, sees an alarming enormity in the knocking down of the walls of Vera Cruz, though the breach opened a direct road into San Juan de Ulloa. In the eyes of the same profound moralists, the garitas of Mexico ought to have been respected, as so many doors opening into the boudoirs of the beautiful dames of that fine capital; it being a monstrous thing to fire a shot into the streets of a town, no matter how many came out of them. We are happy, therefore, to have it in our power to add these touches of philosophy that came from Pigeonswing to those of the sages of the old world, by way of completing a code of international morals on this interesting subject, in which the student shall be at a loss to say which he most admires--that which comes from the schools, or that which comes direct from the wilderness.
“So best,” answered the bee-hunter. “I wish I could persuade you to throw away that disgusting thing at your belt. Remember, Chippewa, you are now among Christians, and ought to do as Christians wish.”
“What Christians DO, eh?” returned the Indian, with a sneer, “get drunk like Whiskey Centre, dere? Cheat poor red man; den get down on knee and look up at Manitou? DAT what Christian do, eh?”
“They who do such things are Christian but in name--you must think better of such as are Christians in fact.”
“Ebberybody call himself Christian, tell you--all pale-face Christian, dey say. Now, listen to Chippewa. Once talk long talk wit' missionary--tell all about Christian--what Christian do--what Christian say--how he eat, how he sleep, HOW he drink! --all good--wish Pigeonwing Christian--den 'member so'ger at garrison--no eat, no sleep, no drink Christian fashion--do ebbery t'ing so'ger fashion--swear, fight, cheat, get drunk--wuss dan Injin--dat Christian, eh?”
“No, that is not acting like a Christian; and I fear very few of us who call ourselves by that name, act as if we were Christians, in truth,” said le Bourdon, conscious of the justice of the Chippewa's accusation.
“Just dat--now, I get him--ask missionary, one day, where all Christian go to, so dat Injin can't find him--none in woods--none on prairie--none in garrison--none in Mack'naw--none at Detroit--where all go to, den, so Injin can't find him, on'y in missionary talk?”
“I am curious to know what answer your missionary made to that question.”
“Well, tell you--say, on'y one in ten t'ousant RAAL Christians 'mong pale-face, dough all call himself Christian! DAT what Injin t'ink queer, eh?”
“It is not easy to make a red man understand all the ways of the pale-faces, Pigeonswing; but we will talk of these things another time, when we are more at our ease. Just now, I wish to learn all I can of the manner in which you fell into the hands of the Pottawattamies.”
“Dat plain 'nough--wish Christian talk half as plain. You see, Bourdon, dat Elksfoot on scout, when we meet in openin', up river. I know'd his ar'nd, and so took scalp. Dem Pottawattamie his friend--when dey come to meet ole chief, no find him; but find Pigeonwing; got me when tired and 'sleep; got Elkfoot scalp wid me--sorry for dat--know scalp by scalp-lock, which had gray hair, and some mark. So put me in canoe, and meant to take Chippewa to Chicago to torture him--but too much wind. So, when meet friend in t'odder canoe, come back here to wait little while.”
This was the simple explanation of the manner in which Pigeonswing had fallen into the hands of his enemies. It would seem that Elksfoot had come in a canoe from the mouth of the St. Joseph's to a point about half-way between that river and the mouth of the Kalamazoo, and there landed. What the object of the party was, does not exactly appear, though it is far from being certain that it was not to seize the bee-hunter, and confiscate his effects. Although le Bourdon was personally a stranger to Elksfoot, news flies through the wilderness in an extraordinary manner; and it was not at all unlikely that the fact of a white American's being in the openings should soon spread, along with the tidings that the hatchet was dug up, and that a party should go out in quest of his scalp and the plunder. It would seem that the savage tact of the Chippewa detected that in the manner of the Pottawattamie chief, which assured him the intentions of the old warrior were not amicable; and that he took the very summary process which has been related, not only to secure HIS scalp, but effectually to put it out of his power to do any mischief to one who was an ally, and by means of recent confidence, now a friend. All this the Indian explained to his companion, in his usual clipped English, but with a clearness sufficient to make it perfectly intelligible to his listener. The bee-hunter listened with the most profound attention, for he was fully aware of the importance of comprehending all the hazards of his own situation.
While this dialogue was going on, Margery had succeeded in lighting her fire, and was busy in preparing some warm compound, which she knew would be required by her unhappy brother after his debauch, Dorothy passed often between the fire and the canoe, feeling a wife's anxiety in the fate of her husband. As for the Chippewa, intoxication was a very venial offence in his eyes; though he had a contempt for a man who would thus indulge while on a warpath. The American Indian does possess this merit of adapting his deportment to his circumstances. When engaged in war he usually prepares himself, in the coolest and wisest manner, to meet its struggles, indulging only in moments of leisure, and of comparative security. It is true that the march of what is called civilization is fast changing the red man's character, and he is very apt now to do that which he sees done by the “Christians” around him.
Le Bourdon, when his dialogue with the Chippewa was over, and after a few words of explanation with Margery, took his own canoe, and paddled through the rice-plants into the open water of the river, to reconnoitre. The breadth of the stream induced him to float down before the wind, until he reached a point where he could again command a view of the hut. What he there saw, and what he next did, must be reserved for a succeeding chapter.
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The elfin cast a glance around, As he lighted down from his courser toad, Then round his breast his wings he wound, And close to the river's brink he strode; He sprang on a rock, he breathed a prayer, Above his head his arm he threw, Then tossed a tiny curve in air, And headlong plunged in the water blue. DRAKE.
An hour had intervened between the time when le Bourdon had removed the canoes of the Pottawattamies, and the time when he returned alone to the northern side of the river. In the course of that hour the chief of the savages had time to ascertain all the leading circumstances that have just been related, and to collect his people in and around the hut, for a passing council. The moment was one of action, and not of ceremonies. No pipe was smoked, nor any of the observances of the great councils of the tribe attended to; the object was merely to glean facts and to collect opinions. In all the tribes of this part of North America, something very like a principle of democracy is the predominant feature of their politics. It is not, however, that bastard democracy which is coming so much in fashion among ourselves, and which looks into the gutters solely for the “people,” forgetting that the landlord has just as much right to protection as the tenant, the master as the servant, the rich as the poor, the gentleman as the blackguard. The Indians know better than all this. They understand, fully, that the chiefs are entitled to more respect than the loafers in their villages, and listen to the former, while their ears are shut to the latter. They appear to have a common sense, which teaches them to avoid equally the exaggerations of those who believe in blood, and of those who believe in blackguardism. With them the doctrines of “new men” would sound as an absurdity, for they never submit to change for change's sake. On the contrary, while there is no positive hereditary rank, there is much hereditary consideration; and we doubt if a red man could be found in all America, who is so much of a simpleton as to cite among the qualifications of any man for a situation of trust and responsibility, that he had never been TAUGHT how to perform its duties. They are not guilty of the contradiction of elevating men BECAUSE they are self-taught, while they expend millions on schools. Doubtless they have, after a fashion of their own, demagogues and Caesars, but they are usually kept within moderate limits; and in rare instances, indeed, do either ever seriously trespass on the rights of the tribe. As human nature is everywhere the same, it is not to be supposed that pure justice prevails even among savages; but one thing would seem to be certain, that, all over the world, man in his simplest and wildest state is more apt to respect his own ordinances, than when living in what is deemed a condition of high civilization.
When le Bourdon reached the point whence he could get a good view of the door of the hut, which was still illuminated by the fire within, he ceased using the paddle beyond the slight effort necessary to keep the canoe nearly stationary. He was quite within the range of a rifle, but trusted to the darkness of the night for his protection. That scouts were out, watching the approaches to the hut, he felt satisfied; and he did not doubt that some were prowling along the margin of the Kalamazoo, either looking for the lost boats, or for those who had taken them away. This made him cautious, and he took good care not to place his canoe in a position of danger.
It was very apparent that the savages were in great uncertainty as to the number of their enemies. Had not the rifle been fired, and their warrior killed and scalped, they might have supposed that their prisoner had found the means of releasing his limbs himself, and thus effected his escape; but they knew that the Chippewa had neither gun nor knife, and as all their own arms, even to those of the dead man, were still in their possession, it was clear that he had been succored from without. Now, the Pottawattamies had heard of both the bee-hunter and Whiskey Centre, and it was natural enough for them to ascribe some of these unlooked-for feats to one or the other of these agents. It is true, the hut was known to have been built three or four years earlier, by an Indian trader, and no one of the party had ever actually seen Gershom and his family in possession; but the conjectures on this head were as near the fact, as if the savages had passed and repassed daily. There was only one point on which these close calculators of events were at fault. So thoroughly had everything been removed from the chiente, and so carefully the traces of its recent occupation concealed, that no one among them suspected that the family had left the place only an hour before their own arrival. The bee-hunter, moreover, was well assured that the savages had not yet blundered on the hiding-place of the furniture. Had this been discovered, its contents would have been dragged to light, and seen around the fire; for there is usually little self-restraint among the red men, when they make a prize of this sort.
Nevertheless, there was one point about which even those keen-scented children of the forest were much puzzled, and which the bee-hunter perfectly comprehended, notwithstanding the distance at which he was compelled to keep himself. The odor of the whiskey was so strong, in and about the chiente, that the Pottawattamies did not know what to make of it. That there should be the remains of this peculiar smell--one so fragrant and tempting to those who are accustomed to indulge in the liquor--in the hut itself, was natural enough; but the savages were perplexed at finding it so strong on the declivity down which the barrels had been rolled. On this subject were they conversing, when le Bourdon first got near enough to observe their proceedings. After discussing the matter for some time, torches were lighted, and most of the party followed a grim old warrior, who had an exceedingly true nose for the scent of whiskey, and who led them to the very spot where the half-barrel had been first stove by rolling off a rock, and where its contents had been mainly spilled. Here the earth was yet wet in places, and the scent was so strong as to leave no doubt of the recent nature of the accident which had wasted so much of a liquor that was very precious in Pottawattamie eyes; for accident they thought it must be, since no sane man could think of destroying the liquor intentionally.
All the movements, gestures, and genuflections of the savages were plainly seen by the bee-hunter. We say the genuflections, for nearly all of the Indians got on their knees and applied their noses to the earth, in order to scent the fragrance of the beloved whiskey; some out of curiosity, but more because they loved even this tantalizing indulgence, when no better could be had. But le Bourdon was right in his conjectures, that the matter was not to end here. Although most of the Indians scented the remains of the whiskey out of love for the liquor, a few of their number reasoned on the whole transaction with quite as much acuteness as could have been done by the shrewdest natural philosopher living. To them it was very apparent that no great length of time, a few hours at most, could have elapsed since that whiskey was spilled; and human hands must have brought it there, in the first place, and poured it on the ground, in the second. There must have been a strong reason for such an act, and that reason presented itself to their minds with unerring accuracy. Their own approach must have been seen, and the liquor was destroyed because it could not be removed in time to prevent its falling into their hands. Even the precise manner in which the whiskey had been disposed of was pretty nearly conjectured by a few of the chiefs, acute and practised as they were; who, accustomed to this species of exercise of their wits, had some such dexterity in examining facts of this nature, and in arriving at just results, as the men of the schools manifest in the inquiries that more especially belong to their habits and training. But their conclusions were confined to themselves; and they were also sufficiently enveloped in doubts, to leave those who made them ready enough to receive new impressions on the same subject.
All this, moreover, le Bourdon both saw and understood; or, if not absolutely all, so much of it as to let him comprehend the main conclusions of the savages, as well as the process by which they were reached. To obtain light, the Indians made a fire near the charmed spot, which brought themselves and their movements into plain view from the canoe of the bee-hunter. Curiosity now became strongly awakened in the latter, and he ventured in nearer to the shore, in order to get the best possible view of what was going on. In a manner, he was solving an enigma; and he experienced the sort of pleasure we all feel at exercising our wits on difficulties of that nature. The interest he felt rendered the young man careless as respected the position of his canoe, which drifted down before the strong breeze, until le Bourdon found himself in the very edge of the wild rice, which at this point formed but a very narrow belt along the beach. It was this plant, indeed, that contributed to make the young man so regardless of his drift, for he looked upon the belt of rice as a species of landmark to warn him when to turn. But, at no other spot along that whole shore, where the plant was to be found at all, was its belt so narrow as at this, immediately opposite to the new fire of the savages, and almost within the influence of its rays. To le Bourdon's surprise, and somewhat to his consternation, just as his little craft touched the rice, the forms of two stout warriors passed along the beach, between him and the light, their feet almost dipping in the water. So near were these two warriors to him, that, on listening intently, he heard not only their voices, as they communicated their thoughts to each other in low tones, but the tread of their moccasined feet on the ground. Retreat, under the circumstances, would not be safe, for it must have been made under the muzzles of the rifles; and but one resource presented itself. By grasping in his hand two or three stalks of the rice-plant, and holding them firmly, the drift of the canoe was arrested.
After a moment's reflection, le Bourdon was better satisfied with this new station than he had been on first gaining it. To have ventured on such a near approach to his enemies, he would have regarded as madness; but now he was there, well concealed among the rice, he enjoyed the advantages of observation it gave him, and looked upon the chance that brought him there as lucky. He found a thong of buckskin, and fastened his canoe to the stalks of the plant, thus anchoring or mooring his little bark, and leaving himself at liberty to move about in it. The rice was high enough to conceal him, even when erect, and he had some difficulty in finding places favorable to making his observations through it. When the bee-hunter made his way into the bow of his canoe, however, which he did with a moccasined and noiseless foot, he was startled at perceiving how small was his cover. In point of fact, he was now within three feet of the inner edge of the rice-plant, which grew within ten feet of the shore, where the two warriors already mentioned were still standing, in close communication with each other. Their faces were turned toward the fire, the bright light from which, at times, streamed over the canoe itself, in a way to illumine all it contained. The first impulse of le Bourdon, on ascertaining how closely he had drifted to the shore, was to seize a paddle and make off, but a second thought again told him it would be far safer to remain where he was. Taking his seat, therefore, on a bit of board laid athwart, from gunwale to gunwale, if such a craft can be said to have gunwales at all, he patiently waited the course of events.
By this time, all or nearly all of the Pottawattamies had collected on this spot, on the side of the hill. The hut was deserted, its fire got to be low, and darkness reigned around the place. On the other hand, the Indians kept piling brush on their new fire, until the whole of that hill-side, the stream at its foot, and the ravine through which the latter ran, were fairly illuminated. Of course, all within the influence of this light was to be distinctly seen, and the bee-hunter was soon absorbed in gazing at the movements of savage enemies, under circumstances so peculiar.
The savages seemed to be entranced by the singular, and to most of them unaccountable circumstance of the earth's giving forth the scent of fresh whiskey, in a place so retired and unknown. While two or three of their number had certain inklings of the truth, as has been stated, to much the greater portion of their body it appeared to be a profound mystery; and one that, in some inexplicable manner, was connected with the recent digging up of the hatchet. Ignorance and superstition ever go hand in hand, and it was natural that many, perhaps most of these uninstructed beings should thus consider so unusual a fragrance, on such a spot. Whiskey has unfortunately obtained a power over the red man of this continent that it would require many Fathers Matthew to suppress, and which can only be likened to that which is supposed to belong to the influence of witchcraft. The Indian is quite as sensible as the white man of the mischief that the “fire-water” produces; but, like the white man, he finds how hard it is to get rid of a master passion, when we have once submitted ourselves to its sway. The portion of the band that could not account for the fact of the scent of their beloved beverage's being found in such a place, and it was all but three of their whole party, were quite animated in their discussions on the subject, and many and crude were the suggestions that fell from their lips. The two warriors on the beach were more deeply impressed than any of their companions, with the notion that some “medicine charm” was connected with this extraordinary affair.
The reader will not be surprised to hear that le Bourdon gazed on the scene before him with the most profound attention. So near did he seem to be, and so near was he, in fact, to the savages who were grouped around the fire, that he fancied he could comprehend what they were saying, by the expressions of their grim and swarthy countenances. His conjectures were in part just, and occasionally the bee-hunter was absolutely accurate in his notions of what was said. The frequency with which different individuals knelt on the ground, to scent an odor that is always so pleasant to the red man, would of itself have given a clew to the general character of the discourse; but the significant and expressive gestures, the rapid enunciation, and the manner in which the eyes of the speakers glanced from the faces near themselves to the spot consecrated by whiskey, pretty plainly told the story. It was while thus intently occupied in endeavoring to read the singular impression made on the minds of most of those wild beings, by an incident so much out of the usual track of their experience, that le Bourdon suddenly found the bow of his canoe thrusting itself beyond the inner margin of the rice, and issuing into open water, within ten feet of the very spot where the two nearest of the savages were still conferring together, apart. The buckskin thong which served as a fastening had got loosened, and the light craft was again drifting down before the strong southerly wind, which still continued to blow a little gale.
Had there been an opportunity for such a thing, the bee-hunter would have made an effort to escape. But so sudden and unexpected was this exposure, that he found himself almost within reach of a rifle, before he was aware of his approaching the two warriors on the shore, at all. His paddle was in the stern of the canoe, and had he used the utmost activity, the boat would have grounded on the beach, ere he could have obtained it. In this situation, therefore, he was absolutely without any other means than his hands of stopping the canoe, had there even been time.
Le Bourdon understood his real situation without stopping to reflect; and, though his heart made one violent leap as soon as he perceived he was out of cover, he immediately bethought him of the course he ought to pursue. It would have been fatal to betray alarm, or to attempt flight. As accident had thus brought him, as it might be on a visit, to the spot, he at once determined to give his arrival the character of a friendly call, and the better to support the pretension, to blend with it, if possible, a little of the oracular, or “medicine” manner, in order to impose on the imaginations of the superstitious beings into whose power he had so unwittingly fallen.
The instant the canoe touched the shore, and it was only a moment after it broke through the cover, le Bourdon arose, and extending his hand to the nearest Indian, saluted him with the mongrel term of “Sago.” A slight exclamation from this warrior communicated to his companion an arrival that was quite as much a matter of surprise to the Indians as to their guest, and through this second warrior to the whole party on the hill-side. A little clamor succeeded, and presently the bee-hunter was surrounded with savages.
The meeting was marked by the self-command and dignified quiet that are so apt to distinguish the deportment of Indian warriors, when they are on the war-path, and alive to the duties of manhood. The bee-hunter shook hands with several, who received his salutations with perfect calmness, if not with absolute confidence and amity. This little ceremony gave our hero an opportunity to observe the swarthy countenances by which he was surrounded, most of which were fierce in their paint, as well as to reflect a little on his own course. By a fortunate inspiration he now determined to assume the character of a “medicine man,” and to connect his prophecies and juggleries with this lucky accident of the whiskey. Accordingly, he inquired if any one spoke English, not wishing to trust his explanations to his own imperfect knowledge of the Ojebway tongue, which is spoken by all the numerous tribes of that widely-extended nation. Several could render themselves intelligible in English, and one was so expert as to render communication with him easy, if not very agreeable. As the savages, however, soon insisted on examining the canoe, and taking a look at its contents, previously to listening to their visitor's explanations, le Bourdon was fain to submit, and to let the young men satisfy their curiosity.
The bee-hunter had come on his hazardous expedition in his own canoe. Previously to quitting the south shore, however, he had lightened the little craft, by landing everything that was not essential to his present purpose. As nearly half of his effects were in the canoe of Whiskey Centre, the task was soon performed, and lucky it was for our hero that he had bethought him of the prudence of the measure. His sole object had been to render the canoe swifter and lighter, in the event of a chase; but, as things turned out, he saved no small portion of his property by using the precaution. The Indians found nothing in the canoe, but one rifle, with a horn and pouch, a few light articles belonging to the bee-hunter's domestic economy, and which he had not thought it necessary to remove, and the paddles. All the honey, and the skins and stores, and spare powder, and lead, and, in short, everything else that belonged to le Bourdon, was still safe on the other side of the river. The greatest advantage gained by the Pottawattamies was in the possession of the canoe itself, by means of which they would now be enabled to cross the Kalamazoo, or make any other similar expedition, by water.
But, as yet, not a sign of hostility was betrayed by either party. The bee-hunter seemed to pay no attention to his rifle and ammunition, or even to his canoe, while the savages, after having warily examined the last, together with its contents, returned to their visitor, to re-examine him, with a curiosity as lively as it was full of distrust. At this stage in the proceeding, something like a connected and intelligible conversation commenced between the chief who spoke English, and who was known in most of the north-western garrisons of the Americans by the name of Thundercloud, or Cloud, by way of abbreviation, on account of his sinister looks, though the man actually sustained a tolerably fair reputation for one of those who, having been wronged, was so certain to be calumniated. No man was ever yet injured, that he has not been slandered.
“Who kill and scalp my young man?” asked Cloud, a little abruptly.
“Has my brother lost a warrior?” was the calm reply. “Yes, I see that he has. A medicine-man can see that, though it is dark.”
“Who kill him, if can see? -who scalp him, too?”
“An enemy did both,” answered le Bourdon, oracularly. “Yes; 'twas an enemy that killed him; and an enemy that took his scalp.”
“Why do it, eh? Why come here to take Pottawattamia scalp, when no war-path open, eh?”
“Pottawattamie, the truth must always be said to a medicine-man. There is no use in trying to hide truth from HIM. There IS a war-path open; and a long and a tangled path it is. My Great Father at Washington has dug up the hatchet against my Great Father at Quebec. Enemies always take scalps when they can get them.”
“Dat true--dat right, too--nobody grumble at DAT--but who enemy? pale-face or red-skin?”
“This time it was a red-skin--a Chippewa--one of your own nation, though not of your own tribe. A warrior called Pigeonswing, whom you had in thongs, intending to torture him in the morning. He cut his thongs, and shot your young man--after which he took his scalp.”
“How know dat?” demanded the Cloud, a little fiercely. “You 'long, and help kill Pottawattamie, eh?”
“I know it,” answered le Bourdon, coolly, “because medicine-men know most of what happens. Do not be so hasty, chief, for this is a medicine spot--whiskey GROWS here.”
A common exclamation escaped all of the red men, who comprehended the clear, distinct, and oracular-like language and manner of the bee-hunter. He intended to make an impression on his listeners, and he succeeded admirably; perhaps as much by means of manner as of matter. As has been said, all who understood his words--some four or five of the party--grunted forth their surprise at this evidence of their guest's acquaintance with the secrets of the place, in which they were joined by the rest of their companions, as soon as the words of the pale-face had been translated. Even the experienced and wary old chiefs, who had more than half conjectured the truth, in connection with this mysterious odor of whiskey, were much unsettled in their opinions concerning the wonder, and got to be in that condition of mind when a man does not know what to think of any particular event. The bee-hunter, quick-witted, and managing for his life, was not slow to perceive the advantage he had gained, and he proceeded at once to clinch the nail he had so skilfully driven. Turning from Cloud to the head-chief of the party, a warrior whom he had no difficulty in recognizing, after having so long watched his movements in the earlier part of the night, he pushed the same subject a little further.
“Yes; this place is called by the whites Whiskey Centre,” he added--“which means that it is the centre of all the whiskey of the country round about.”
“Dat true,” said Cloud, quickly--“I hear so'ger at Fort Dearborn call him Whiskey Centre!”
This little circumstance greatly complicated the mystery, and le Bourdon perceived that he had hit on a lucky explanation.
“Soldiers far and near--soldiers drunk or sober--soldiers with scalps, and soldiers without scalps--all know the place by that name. But you need not believe with your eyes shut and noses stopped, chief, since you have the means of learning for yourselves the truth of what I tell you. Come with me, and I will tell you where to dig in the morning for a whiskey spring.”
This communication excited a tremendous feeling among the savages, when its purport came to be explained to the whole party. Apart from the extraordinary, miraculous nature of such a spring, which in itself was sufficient to keep alive expectation and gratify curiosity, it was so comfortable to have an inexhaustible supply of the liquor running out of the bowels of the earth, that it is no wonder the news spread infinite delight among the listeners. Even the two or three of the chiefs who had so shrewdly divined the manner in which the liquor had been spilled, were staggered by the solemnity and steadiness of the bee-hunter's manner, and perhaps a little carried away by sympathy with those around them. This yielding of the human mind to the influence of numbers is so common an occurrence as scarcely to require explanation, and is the source of half the evils that popular associations inflict on themselves. It is not that men capable of SEEING the truth are ever wanting; but men capable of MAINTAINING it, in the face of clamor and collected power.
It will be readily conceived that a medicine-man who is supposed to possess the means of discovering a spring that should overflow with pure whiskey, would not be left without urgent demands for a speedy exercise of this art. This was now the case with le Bourdon, who was called on from all sides to point out the precise spot where the young men were to commence digging in order to open on the treasure. Our hero knew that his only hope of escape was connected with his steadily maintaining his assumed character; or of maintaining this assumed character, with his going on, at once, to do something that might have the effect, temporarily at least, of satisfying the impatience of his now attentive listeners. Accordingly, when the demand was made on him to give some evidence of his power, he set about the task, not only with composure, but with a good deal of ingenuity.
Le Bourdon, it will be remembered, had, with his own hands, rolled the two barrels of whiskey down the declivity. Feeling the great importance of effectually destroying them, he had watched their descent, from the top to the bottom of the hill, and the final disappearance of the staves, etc., into the torrent which brawled at its foot. It had so happened that the half-filled cask broke and let out its liquor at a point much more remote from the stream, than the filled. The latter had held together until it went over the low rocky precipice, already mentioned, and was stove at its base, within two yards of the torrent, which received all its fragments and swept them away, including most of the liquor itself; but not until the last had been spilled. Now, the odorous spot which had attracted the noses of the savages, and near which they had built their fire, was that where the smallest quantity of the whiskey had fallen. Le Bourdon reasoned on these circumstances in this wise:--if half a barrel of the liquor can produce so strong a scent, a barrel filled ought to produce one still stronger; and I will manifest my medicine-character, by disregarding for the present moment the spot on the hill-side, and proceed at once to that at the foot of the rocks. To this latter point, therefore, did he direct all the ceremony, as well as his own footsteps, when he yielded to the solicitations of the Pottawattamies, and undertook to point out the position of the whiskey spring.
The bee-hunter understood the Indian character too well to forget to embellish his work with a proper amount of jugglery and acting. Luckily, he had left in the canoe a sort of frock of mottled colors that he had made himself, to wear in the woods in the autumn as a hunting-dress, under the notion that such a covering would conceal his approach from his game, by blending its hues with those of the autumn leaf. This dress he now assumed, extorting a good deal of half-suppressed admiration from the younger warriors, by the gay appearance he made. Then he drew out his spy-glass to its greatest length, making various mysterious signs and gestures as he did so. This glass proved to be a great auxiliary, and possibly alone kept the doubters in awe. Le Bourdon saw at once that it was entirely new, even to the oldest chief, and he felt how much it might be made to assist him. Beckoning to Cloud, and adjusting the focus, he directed the small end of his glass to the fire, and placed the large end to that Indian's eye. A solitary savage, who loved the scent of whiskey too much to tear himself away from the spot, was lingering within the influence of the rays, and of course was seen by the chief, with his person diminished to that of a dwarf, and his form thrown to a seeming distance.
An eloquent exclamation followed this exhibition of the medicine-man's power; and each of the chiefs, and most of the other warriors, were gratified with looks through the glass.
“What dat mean?” demanded Cloud, earnestly. “See Wolfeye well 'nough--why he so little? --why he so far off, he?”
“That is to show you what a medicine-man of the pale-faces can do, when he is so minded. That Indian is named Wolfseye, and he loves whiskey too well. That I know, as well as I know his name.”
Each of these exhibitions of intelligence extorted exclamations of wonder. It is true, that one or two of the higher chiefs understood that the name might possibly have been obtained from Cloud; but how was the medicine-man to know that Wolfseye was a drunkard? This last had not been said in terms; but enough had been said, to let those who were aware of the propensity feel that more was meant than had been expressed. Before there was time, however, to deliberate on, or to dissect this specimen of mysterious knowledge, le Bourdon reversed the glass, and applied the small end to the eye of Cloud, after having given it its former direction. The Indian fairly yelled, partly with dread, and partly with delight, when he saw Wolfseye, large as life, brought so near him that he fancied he might be touched with his own hand.
“What dat mean?” exclaimed Cloud, as soon as surprise and awe enabled him to find his voice. “Fuss he little, den he big--fuss he great way, den he close by--what dat mean, eh?”
“It means that I am a medicine-man, and this is a medicine-glass, and that I can see with it into the earth, deeper than the wells, or higher than the mountains!”
These words were translated, and explained to all three. They extorted many ejaculations of wonder, and divers grunts of admiration and contentment. Cloud conferred a moment with the two principal chiefs; then he turned eagerly to the bee-hunter, saying-- “All good, but want to hear more--want to l'arn more--want to SEE more.”
“Name your wants freely, Pottawattamie,” answered le Bourdon, with dignity, “they shall be satisfied.”
“Want to see--want to TASTE whiskey spring--see won't do--want to TASTE” “Good--you shall smell first; then you shall see; after that you shall taste. Give me room, and be silent; a great medicine is near.”
Thus delivering himself, le Bourdon proceeded with his necromancy.
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He turned him round, and fled amain With hurry and dash to the beach again; He twisted over from side to side, And laid his cheek to the cleaving tide; The strokes of his plunging arms are fleet, And with all his might he flings his feet, But the water-sprites are round him still, To cross his path and work him ill. --The Culprit Fay.
The first step in the conjuration of the bee-hunter was, to produce an impression on the minds of his untutored observers, by resorting to a proper amount of mummery and mystical action. This he was enabled to do with some effect, in consequence of having practised as a lad in similar mimicry, by way of pastime. The Germans, and the descendants of Germans in America, are not of a very high class, as respects education, taken as a body, and they retain many of the most inveterate of the superstitions of their Teutonic ancestors. Although the bee-hunter himself was of purely English descent, he came from a State that was in part peopled by these Germans and their descendants; and, by intercourse with them, he had acquired a certain knowledge of their notions on the subject of necromancy, that he now found was of use. So far as gravity of mien, solemn grimaces, and unintelligible mutterings were concerned, le Bourdon played his part to admiration; and by the time he had led the party half the distance he intended to go, our necromancer, or “medicine-man,” had complete possession of the imaginations of all the savages, the two or three chiefs already mentioned alone excepted. At this stage of the proceedings occurred a little incident, which goes to prove the disposition of the common mind to contribute in deceiving itself, and which was of considerable assistance to le Bourdon, in maintaining his assumed character.
It will be remembered that the place where the Indians had found their strongest scent was on the hill-side, or the spot where the half-filled barrel had let out most of its contents. Near this spot their new fire was still brightly blazing, and there Wolfseye remained, regaling one of his senses, at least, with an odor that he found so agreeable. But the bee-hunter knew that he should greatly increase the wonder of the savages by leading them to a NEW scent-spot, one to which there was no visible clew, and where the odor was probably much stronger than on the hill-side. Accordingly he did not approach the fire, but kept around the base of the hill, just enough within the influence of the light to pick his way readily, and yet so distant from it as to render his countenance indistinct and mysterious. No sooner, however, had he got abreast of the scent-spot known to the savages, than the crowd endeavored to lead him toward it, by gestures and hints, and, finally, by direct intimations that he was going astray. All this our “medicine-man” disregarded; he held his way steadily and solemnly toward that place at the foot of the hill where he knew that the filled barrel had let out its contents, and where he, reasonably enough, expected to find sufficient traces of the whiskey to answer his purposes. At first, this pertinacity provoked the crowd, which believed he was going wrong; but a few words from Crowsfeather, the principal chief, caused the commotion to cease. In a few more minutes le Bourdon stopped, near the place of his destination. As a fresh scent of whiskey was very perceptible here, a murmur of admiration, not unmixed with delight, passed among the attendants.
“Now, let the young men build a fire for ME” said the bee-hunter, solemnly--“not such a fire as that which is burning on the hill, but a medicine-fire. I SMELL the whiskey spring, and want a medicine-light to SEE it.”
A dozen young men began to collect the brush; in a minute a pile of some size had been accumulated on a flat rock, within twenty feet of the spot where le Bourdon knew that the cask had been dashed to pieces. When he thought the pile sufficiently large, he told Crowsfeather that it might be lighted by bringing a brand from the other fire.
“This will not be a medicine-light, for that can come only from 'medicine-matches,'” he added; “but I want a fire to see the shape of the ground. Put in the brand, brothers; let us have a flame.”
The desire of the bee-hunter was gratified, and the whole of the base of the hill around the spot where the filled cask had broken, was illuminated.
“Now, let all the Pottawattamies stand back,” added le Bourdon, earnestly. “It might cost a warrior his life to come forward too soon--or, if not his life, it might give a rheumatism that can never be cured, which is worse. When it is time for my red brothers to advance, they will be called.”
As the bee-hunter accompanied this announcement by suitable gestures, he succeeded in ranging all of the silent, but excited savages on three sides of his fire, leaving that next his mysterious spring to himself, alone. When all was arranged, le Bourdon moved slowly, but unaccompanied, to the precise spot where the cask had broken. Here he found the odor of the whiskey so strong, as to convince him that some of the liquor must yet remain. On examining more closely, he ascertained that several shallow cavities of the flat rock, on which the cask had been dashed, still contained a good deal of the liquor; enough to prove of great assistance to his medicine character.
All this while the bee-hunter kept one portion of his faculties on the alert, in order to effect his escape. That he might deceive for a time, aided as he was by so many favorable circumstances, he did not doubt; but he dreaded the morning and the results of a night of reflection and rest. Crowsfeather, in particular, troubled him; and he foresaw that his fate would be terrible, did the savages once get an inkling of the deception he was practising. As he stood there, bending over the little pools of whiskey, he glanced his eyes toward the gloom which pervaded the northern side of the hill, and calculated the chances of escape by trusting to his speed. All of the Pottawattamies were on the opposite side, and there was a thicket favorably placed for a cover, so near that the rifle would scarce have time to perform its fatal office, ere he might hope to bury himself within its leaves. So tempting did the occasion appear, that, for a single instant, le Bourdon forgot his caution, and his mummeries, and had actually advanced a step or two in the direction toward which he contemplated flight, when, on glancing an uneasy look behind him, he perceived Crowsfeather and his two intimate counsellors stealthily preparing their rifles, as if they distrusted his intentions. This at once induced a change of plan, and brought the bee-hunter back to a sense of his critical position, and of the indispensable necessity of caution to a man in his situation.
Le Bourdon now seemingly gave all his attention to the rocks where he stood, and out of which the much-coveted liquor was expected to flow; though his thoughts were still busily employed in considering the means of escape, the whole time. While stooping over the different pools, and laying his plans for continuing his medicine-charms, the bee-hunter saw how near he had been to committing a great mistake. It was almost as indispensable to carry off the canoe, as it was to carry off himself; since, with the canoe, not only would all his own property, but pretty Margery, and Gershom and his wife, be at the mercy of the Pottawattamies; whereas, by securing the boat, the wide Kalamazoo would serve as a nearly impassable barrier, until time was given to the whites to escape. His whole plan was changed by this suggestion, and he no longer thought of the thicket and of flight inland. At the same time that the bee hunter was laying up in his mind ideas so important to his future movements, he did not neglect the necessary examination of the means that might be required to extend and prolong his influence over the minds of the superstitious children of the forest on whom he was required to practise his arts. His thoughts reverted to the canoe, and he concocted a plan by which he believed it possible to get possession of his little craft again. Once on board it, by one vigorous shove he fancied he might push it within the cover of the rice-plants, where he would be in reasonable safety against the bullets of the savages. Could he only get the canoe on the outer side of the narrow belt of the plant, he should deem himself safe!
Having arranged his course in his own mind, le Bourdon now beckoned to Crowsfeather to draw near, at the same time inviting the whole party to approach within a few feet of the spot where he himself stood. The bee-hunter had brought with him from the boat a fragment of the larger end of a cane fishing-rod, which he used as a sort of wand. Its size was respectable, and its length about eight feet. With this wand he pointed out the different objects he named, and it answered the very important purpose of enabling him to make certain small changes in the formation of the ground, that were of the greatest service to him, without permitting curious eyes to come so near as to detect his artifices.
“Now open your ears, Crowsfeather; and you, Cloud; and all of you, young braves,” commenced the bee-hunter, solemnly, and with a steadiness that was admirable; “yes, open wide your ears. The Great Spirit has given the red man a nose that he might smell--does the Cloud smell more than common?”
“Sartain--smell whiskey--this Whiskey Centre dey say--nat'ral dat such smell be here.”
“Do all the chiefs and warriors of the Pottawattamies who are present, also smell the same?”
“S'pose so--why he don't, eh? Got nose--can smell whiskey good way, tell you.”
“It is right they should smell the liquor here, for out of this rock a whiskey spring will soon begin to run. It will begin with a very small stream, but soon will there be enough to satisfy everybody. The Great Manitou knows that his red children are dry; he has sent a 'medicine-man' of the pale-faces to find a spring for them. Now, look at this piece of rock--it is dry--not even the dew has yet moistened it. See--it is made like a wooden bowl, that it may hold the liquor of the spring. Let Crowsfeather smell it--smell it, Cloud--let all my young men smell it, too, that they may be certain that there is nothing there.”
On this invitation, accompanied as it was by divers flourishes of the wand, and uttered in a deep, solemn tone of voice, the whole party of the Indians gathered around the small hollow basin-like cavity pointed out by the bee-hunter, in order both to see and to smell. Most knelt, and each and all applied their noses to the rock, as near the bowl as they could thrust them. Even the dignified and distrustful Crowsfeather could not refrain from bending in the crowd. This was the moment for which le Bourdon wished, and he instantly prepared to carry out his design.
Previously, however, to completing the project originally conceived, a momentary impulse prevailed which urged him to adopt a new mode of effecting his escape. Now, that most of the savages were on their hands and knees, struggling to get their noses as near as possible to the bowl, and all were intent on the same object, it occurred to the bee-hunter, who was almost as active as the panther of the American forest, that he might dash on toward the canoe, and make his escape without further mummery. Had it been only a question of human speed perhaps such would have been the wisest thing he could do; but a moment's reflection told him how much swifter than any foot of man was the bullet of a rifle. The distance exceeded a hundred yards, and it was altogether in bright light, by means of the two fires, Wolfseye continuing to pile brush on that near which he still maintained his post, as if afraid the precious liquor would start out of the scent-spot, and be wasted should he abandon his ward. Happily, therefore, le Bourdon relinquished his dangerous project almost as soon as it was entertained, turning his attention immediately to the completion of the plan originally laid.
It has been said that the bee-hunter made sundry flourishes with his wand. While the savages were most eager in endeavoring to smell the rock, he lightly touched the earth that confined the whiskey in the largest pool, and opened a passage by which the liquor could trickle down the side of the rock, selecting a path for itself, until it actually came into the bowl, by a sinuous but certain channel.
Here was a wonder! Liquor could not only be smelled, but it could be actually seen! As for Cloud, not satisfied with gratifying the two senses connected with the discoveries named, he began to lap with his tongue, like a dog, to try the effect of taste.
“The Manitou does not hide his face from the Pottawattamie!” exclaimed this savage, rising to his feet in astonishment; “this is the fire-water, and such as the pale-faces bring us for skins!”
Others imitated his example, and the exclamations of wonder and delight flew from mouth to mouth, in a torrent of vehement assertions and ejaculations. So great a “medicine” charm had never before been witnessed in that tribe, or in that region, and a hundred more might succeed, before another should equal this in its welcome character. There was whiskey, of a certainty, not much in quantity, to be sure, but of excellent quality, as several affirmed, and coming in a current that was slowly increasing! This last sign was owing to the circumstance that le Bourdon had deepened the outlet of the pool, permitting a larger quantity to flow down the little channel.
The moment had now come for a decisive step. The bee-hunter knew that his precious rivulet would soon cease to run, and that he must carry out his design under the first impressions of his charm, or that he probably would not be permitted to carry it out, at all. At this moment even Crowsfeather appeared to be awed by what he had seen; but a chief so sagacious might detect the truth, and disappointment would then be certain to increase the penalties he would incur.
Making many sweeps of his wand, and touching various points of the rock, both to occupy the attention of the savages, and to divert it from his pool, the bee-hunter next felt in his pocket and drew out a small piece of resin that he knew was there; the remains of a store with which he resined the bow of his fiddle; for our hero had a violin among his effects, and often used it in his solitary abodes in the openings. Breaking this resin on a coal, he made it flash and blaze; but the quantity was too small to produce the “medicine-fire” he wanted.
“I have more in my canoe,” he said, addressing himself to the interpreter; “while I go for it, the red men must not stir, lest they destroy a pale-face's doings. Least of all they must go near the spring. It would be better for the chiefs to lead away their young men, and make them stand under the oak, where nothing can be done to hurt the 'medicine-charm.'”
The bee-hunter pointed to a tree that stood in the direction of the canoe, in order to prevent distrust, though he had taken care to select a spot whence the little craft could not be seen, on account of an intervening swell in the land, Crowsfeather led his warriors to the indicated place, where they took their stations, in silent and grave attention.
In the mean while, le Bourdon continued his incantations aloud; walking toward his canoe, waving his hand, and uttering a great deal of gibberish as he slowly proceeded. In passing the tree, our hero, though he did not turn his head, was sensible that he was followed by the chiefs, a movement against which he did not dare to remonstrate, though it sadly disappointed him. Neither hastening nor retarding his steps, however, in consequence of this unpleasant circumstance, the young man continued on; once or twice sweeping the wand behind him, in order to ascertain if he could reach his followers. But Crowsfeather and his companions stopped when they reached the swell of land which concealed the canoe, suffering the “medicine-man” to move on alone. Of this fact le Bourdon became aware, by turning three times in a circle, and pointing upward at the heavens with his wand, as he did so.
It was a nervous moment when the bee-hunter reached the canoe. He did not like to look behind him again, lest the chiefs should suspect his motive, and, in shoving off from the shore, he might do so within a few yards of the muzzle of a hostile rifle. There was no time to lose, however, for any protracted delay on his part would certainly cause the savages to approach, through curiosity, if not through distrust of his motives. He stepped into his light craft, therefore, without any delay, still flourishing his wand, and muttering his incantations. The first thing was to walk to the stern of the canoe, that his weight might raise the bow from the shore, and also that he might have an excuse for turning round, and thus get another look at the Indians. So critical was his situation, and so nervous did it make our young hero, that he took no heed of the state of matters in the canoe, until the last moment. When he had turned, however, he ascertained that the two principal chiefs had drawn so near as to be within twenty yards of him, though neither held his rifle at “ready,” but each leaned on it in a careless manner, as if in no anticipation of any necessity to make a speedy use of the weapon. This state of things could not last, and le Bourdon braced his nerves for the final trial. On looking for his paddle, however, he found that of three which the canoe had contained when he left it, not even one was to be seen! These wily savages had, out of all question, taken their opportunity to remove and secrete these simple, but almost indispensable, means of motion.
At the instant when first apprised of the loss just mentioned, the bee-hunter's heart sunk within him, and he fell into the seat in the stern of the canoe, nearly with the weight of so much lead. Then a species of desperation came over him, and putting an end of his cane wand upon the bottom, with a vigorous shove he forced the canoe swiftly astern and to windward. Sudden as was this attempt, and rapid as was the movement, the jealous eyes and ready hands of the chiefs seemed to anticipate it. Two shots were fired within a few seconds after the canoe had quitted the shore. The reports of the rifles were a declaration of hostilities, and a general yell, accompanied by a common rush toward the river, announced that the whole band now understood that some deception had been practised at their expense.
Although the two chiefs in advance had been so very prompt, they were not quick enough for the rapid movement of the canoe. The distance between the stern of the boat and the rice-plants was so small, that the single desperate shove given by the bee-hunter sufficed to bury his person in the cover, before the leaden messengers reached him. Anticipating this very attempt, and knowing that the savages might get their range from the part of the canoe that was still in sight, le Bourdon bent his body far over the gunwale, grasping the rice-plants at the same time, and hauling his little craft through them, in the way that sailors call “hand over hand.” This expedient most probably saved his life. While bending over the gunwale, he heard the crack of the rifles, and the whizzing of two bullets that appeared to pass just behind him. By this time the whole of the canoe was within the cover.
In a moment like that we are describing, incidents pass so rapidly as almost to defy description. It was not twenty seconds from the instant when le Bourdon first put his wand down to push the canoe from the land, ere he found his person emerging from the cover, on its weather side. Here he was effectually concealed from his enemies, not only on account of the cover made by the rice-plants, but by reason of the darkness; the light not extending far enough from the fire to illumine objects on the river. Nevertheless, new difficulties presented themselves. When clear of the rice, the wind, which still blew strong, pressed upon his canoe to such a degree as not only to stop its further movement from the shore, but so as to turn it broadside to, to its power. Trying with his wand, the bee-hunter ascertained that it would no longer reach the bottom. Then he attempted to use the cane as a paddle, but soon found it had not sufficient hold of the water to answer for such an implement. The most he could effect with it, in that way, was to keep the canoe for a short distance along the outer edge of the rice, until it reached a spot where the plant extended a considerable distance farther toward the middle of the river. Once within this little forest of the wild rice, he was enabled to drag the canoe farther and farther from the north shore, though his progress was both slow and laborious, on account of the resistance met.
All this time, the savages were not idle. Until the canoe got within its new cover, it was at no instant fifty yards from the beach, and the yells, and orders, and whoopings sounded as if uttered directly in le Bourdon's ear. A splashing in the water soon announced that our fugitive was pursued by swimmers. As the savages knew that the beehunter was without a paddle, and that the wind blew fresh, the expectation of overtaking their late captive, in this manner, was by no means chimerical. Half a dozen active young men would prove very formidable to one in such a situation, more especially while entangled in the mazes of the rice-plant. The bee-hunter was so well convinced of this circumstance, that no sooner did he hear the splashes of the swimmers, than he redoubled his exertions to pull his canoe farther from the spot. But his progress was slow, and he was soon convinced that his impunity was more owing to the fact that his pursuers did not know where to find him, than to the rapidity of his flight.
Notwithstanding his exertions, and the start obtained, le Bourdon soon felt assured that the swimmers were within a hundred feet of him, their voices coming from the outer margin of the cover in which he now lay, stationary. He had ceased dragging the canoe ahead, from an apprehension of being heard, though the rushing of the wind and the rustling of the rice might have assured him that the slight noises made by his own movements would not be very likely to rise above those sounds. The splashing of the swimmers, and their voices, gradually drew nearer, until the bee-hunter took up his rifle, determined to sacrifice the first savage who approached; hoping, thereby, to intimidate the others. For the first time, it now occurred to him that the breech of his rifle might be used as a paddle, and he was resolved to apply it to that service, could he once succeed in extricating himself from the enemies by whom he was nearly environed, and from the rice.
Just as le Bourdon fancied that the crisis had arrived, and that he should soon be called on to kill his man, a shout was given by a savage at some distance in the river, and presently calls passed from mouth to mouth, among the swimmers. Our hero now listened to a degree that kept his faculty of hearing at a point of painful attention. The voices and plashes on the water receded, and what was startling, a sound was heard resembling that which as produced by a paddle when struck incautiously against the side of a canoe. Was it then possible that the Chippewa was out, or had the Pottawattamies one boat that had escaped his attention? The last was not very probable, as he had several times counted their little fleet, and was pretty sure of having taken it all to the other side of the river. The sound of the paddle was repeated, however; then it occurred to the bee-hunter, that Pigeonswing might be on the scent for another scalp.
Although the conjecture just mentioned was exceedingly unpleasant to le Bourdon, the chase of the strange canoe gave him an opportunity to drag his own light craft ahead, penetrating deeper and deeper among the wild rice, which now spread itself to a considerable distance from the shore, and grew so thick as to make it impossible to get through the waving mass. At length, wearied with his exertions, and a little uncertain as to his actual position, our hero paused, listening intently, in order to catch any sounds that might direct his future movements.
By this time the savages ceased to call to each other; most probably conscious of the advantage it gave the fugitive. The bee-hunter perfectly understood that his pursuers must be aware of its being entirely out of his power to get to windward, and that they would keep along the shore of the river, as he did himself, expecting to see his canoe sooner or later driven by the wind on the beach. This had made him anxious to drag his boat as much toward the outer edge of the rice as he could get it, and by the puffs of wind that he occasionally felt, he hoped he had, in a great measure, effected his purpose. Still he had his apprehensions of the savages; as some would be very apt to swim quite out into the stream, not only to look for him, but to avoid being entangled among the plants. It was only in the natural channels of the rice, of which there were a good many, that a swimmer could very readily make his way, or be in much safety. By waiting long enough, moreover, the bee-hunter was sure he should tire out his pursuers, and thus get rid of them.
Just as le Bourdon began to think this last-mentioned purpose had been accomplished, he heard low voices directly to windward, and the splashing of water, as if more than one man was coming down upon him, forcing the stalks of the plants aside. He grasped the rifle, and let the canoe drift, which it did slowly, under the power of the wind, notwithstanding the protection of the cover. The swimmers forced their way through the stalks; but it was evident, just then, that they were more occupied by their present pursuit than in looking for him. Presently a canoe came brushing through the rice, forced by the wind, and dragged by two savages, one of whom swam on each bow. The last did not see the bee-hunter, or his canoe, the one nearest having his face turned in the opposite direction; but they were distinctly seen by the former. Surprised that a seizure should be made with so little fracas, le Bourdon bent forward to look the better, and, as the stern of the strange canoe came almost under his eyes, he saw the form of Margery lying in its bottom. His blood curdled at this sight; for his first impression was, that the charming young creature had been killed and scalped; but there being no time to lose, he sprang lightly from one canoe to the other, carrying the rifle in his hand. As he struck in the bottom of the boat of Gershom, he heard his name uttered in a sweet female voice, and knew that Margery was living. Without stopping, however, to inquire more, he moved to the head of the canoe, and, with a sharp blow on the fingers, made each of the savages release his grasp. Then, seizing the rice-plants, he dragged the little craft swiftly to windward again. All this was done, as it might be, in an instant; the savages and the canoe being separated some twenty feet, in much less time than is required to relate the occurrence.
“Bourdon, are you injured?” asked Margery, her voice trembling with anxiety.
“Not in the least, dear Margery--and you, my excellent girl?”
“They caught my canoe, and I almost died of fright; but they have only dragged it toward the shore.”
“God be praised! Is there any paddle in the canoe?”
“There are several--one is at your feet, Bourdon--and here, I have another.”
“Then, let us search for my canoe, and get out of the rice. If we can but find my canoe, we shall be safe enough, for the savages have nothing in which to cross the river. Keep your eyes about you, Margery, and look among the rice for the other boat.”
The search was not long, but it was intently anxious. At length Margery saw the lost canoe just as it was drifting past them, and it was secured immediately. In a few minutes, le Bourdon succeeded in forcing the two craft into open water, when it was easy for him to paddle both to windward. The reader can readily imagine that our hero did not permit many minutes to elapse, ere he questioned his companion on the subject of her adventures. Nor was Margery reluctant to tell them. She had become alarmed at le Bourdon's protracted absence, and taking advantage of Pigeonswing lying down, she unloaded her brother's canoe, and went out into the river to look for the absent one. As a matter of course--though so feminine and far removed from all appearance of coarseness, a true American girl in this respect--Margery knew perfectly well how to manage a bark canoe. The habits of her life for the last few years, made her acquainted with this simple art; and strength being much less needed than skill, she had no difficulty in going whither she wished. The fires served as beacons, and Margery had been a distant witness of the bee-hunter's necromancy as well as of his escape. The instant the latter was effected, she endeavored to join him; and it was while incautiously paddling along the outer edge of the rice, with this intention, that her canoe was seized by two of the swimmers. As soon as these last ascertained that they had captured a “squaw,” they did not give themselves the trouble to get into the canoe--a very difficult operation with one made of bark, and which is not loaded--but they set about towing the captured craft to the shore, swimming each with a single hand and holding on by the other.
“I shall not soon forget this kindness of yours, Margery,” said le Bourdon, with warmth, when the girl had ended her simple tale, which had been related in the most artless and ingenuous manner. “No man could forget so generous a risk on the part of a young woman in his behalf.”
“I hope you do not think it wrong, Bourdon--I should be sorry to have you think ill of me!”
“Wrong, dear Margery! --but no matter. Let us get ourselves out of present difficulties, and into a place of safety; then I will tell you honestly what I think of it, and of you, too. Was your brother awake, dear Margery, when you left the family?”
“I believe not--he sleeps long and heavily after drinking. But he can now drink no more, until he reaches the settlements.”
“Not unless he finds the whiskey spring,” returned the bee-hunter, laughing.
The young man then related to his wondering companion the history of the mummery and incantations of which she had been a distant spectator. Le Bourdon's heart was light, after his hazards and escape, and his spirits rose as his narrative proceeded. Nor was pretty Margery in a mood to balk his humor. As the bee-hunter recounted his contrivances to elude the savages, and most especially when he gave the particulars of the manner in which he managed to draw whiskey out of the living rock, the girl joined in his merriment, and filled the boat with that melody of the laugh of her years and sex, which is so beautifully described by Halleck.
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The things that once she loved are still the same; Yet now there needs another name To give the feeling which they claim, While she the feeling gives; She cannot call it gladness or delight; And yet there seems to be a richer, lovelier light On e'en the humblest thing that lives. --WASHINGTON ALLSTON.
The history given by le Bourdon lasted until the canoes reached the south shore. Glad enough was Dorothy to see them both safe back, for neither of her companions had yet awoke. It was then midnight, and all now retired to seek the rest which might be so needful to prepare them for the exertions of the next day. The bee-hunter slept in his canoe, while Margery shared the buffalo-skin of her sister.
As perfect security, for the moment at least, was felt by the sleepers, their slumbers were sound, and reached into the morning. Then le Bourdon arose, and withdrawing to a proper distance, he threw off his clothes and plunged into the stream, in conformity with a daily practice of his at that genial season of the year. After bathing, the young man ascended a hill, whence he might get a good view of the opposite shore, and possibly obtain some notion of what the Pottawattamies were about. In all his movements, however, the bee-hunter had an eye to the concealment of his person, it being of the last importance that the savages should not learn his position. With the intention of concealment, the fire had been suffered to go down, a smoke being a sign that no Indian would be likely to overlook. As for the canoe and the bivouac of the party, the wild rice and an intermediate hill formed a perfect cover, so long as nothing was shown above them.
From the height to which he ascended, the bee-hunter, aided by his glass, got a very clear view of Whiskey Centre and the parts adjacent. The savages were already stirring, and were busy in the various avocations of the red man on a war-path. One party was disposing of the body of their dead companion. Several were cooking, or cleaning the wild-fowl shot in the bay, while a group was collected near the spot of the wished-for spring, reluctant to abandon the hopes to which it had given birth, at the very moment they were plotting to obtain the scalp of the “medicine-man.” The beloved “fire-water,” that seduces so many to their destruction, who have enjoyed the advantages of moral teaching, and which has been a withering curse on the red man of this continent, still had its influence; and the craving appetites of several of the drunkards of the party brought them to the spot, as soon as their eyes opened on the new day. The bee-hunter could see some of this cluster kneeling on the rocks, lapping like hounds at the scattered little pools of the liquor, while others scented around, in the hope of yet discovering the bird that laid the golden egg. Le Bourdon had now little expectation that his assumed character could be maintained among these savages any longer, did accident again throw him in their way. The chiefs, he saw, had distrusted him all along, but had given him an opportunity to prove what he could do, in order to satisfy the more vulgar curiosity of their young men. He wisely determined, therefore, to keep out of the hands of his enemies.
Although le Bourdon could hold a conversation in the tongue of the Ojebways, he was not fond of so doing. He comprehended without difficulty nearly all of what was said by them, and had observed the previous night that the warriors made many allusions to a chief whom they styled Onoah, but who he himself knew was usually called Scalping Peter among the whites of that frontier. This savage had a fearful reputation at all the garrisons, though he never showed himself in them; and he was now spoken of by the Pottawattamies present, as if they expected to meet him soon, and to be governed by his commands or his advice. The bee-hunter had paid great attention whenever this dreaded name was mentioned, for he was fully aware of the importance of keeping clear of an enemy who bore so bad a reputation that it was not considered prudent for a white man to remain long in his company even in a time of peace. His English sobriquet had been obtained from the circumstances of its being reputed that this chief, who seemed to belong to no tribe in particular, while he had great influence with all, had on divers occasions murdered the palefaces who fell in his way, and then scalped them. It was added, that he had already forty notches on his pole, to note that number of scalps taken from the hated whites. In short, this Indian, a sort of chief by birth, though of what tribe no one exactly knew, appeared to live only to revenge the wrongs done his color by the intruders, who had come from toward the rising sun to drive his people into the great salt lake on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. Of course there was a good deal that was questionable in these reports; a rumor in the “openings” and on the prairies, having this general resemblance to those that circulate in town, and in drawing-rooms, and at feasts, that no one of them all can be relied on as rigidly exact. But le Bourdon was still young, and had yet to learn how little of that which we all hear is true, and how very much is false. Nevertheless, as an Indian tradition is usually more accurate than a white man's written history, so is a rumor of the forest generally entitled to more respect than the ceaseless gossipings of the beings who would be affronted were they not accounted civilized.
The bee-hunter was still on the elevated bit of ground, making his observations, when he was joined by Margery. The girl appeared fresh and handsome, after a night of sleep, and coming from her dressing-room in a thicket, and over a stream of sweet running water; but she was sad and thoughtful. No sooner had le Bourdon shaken her hand, and repeated his thanks for the succor of the past night, than the full heart of Margery poured out its feelings, as the swollen stream overflows its banks, and began to weep.
“Brother is awake,” she said, as soon as her sobs were quieted by a powerful effect; “but, as is usual with him after hard drinking, so stupid, that Dolly cannot make him understand our danger. He tells her he has seen too many Injins to be afraid of these, and that they will never harm a family that has brought so much liquor into their country.”
“His senses must be at a low ebb, truly, if he counts on Injin friendship because he has sold fire-water to the young men!” answered le Bourdon, with a nice understanding of not only Indian nature, but of human nature. “We may like the sin, Margery, while we detest the tempter. I have never yet met with the man, pale-face or red-skin, who did not curse, in his sober moments, the hand that fed his appetite while intoxicated.”
“I dare say that may be very true,” returned the girl, in a low voice; “but one has need of his reason to understand it. What will become of us now, it is hard to say.”
“Why, now, Margery, more than yesterday, or the day before?”
“Yesterday there were no savages near us, and Gershorn had all along told us he intended to start for the garrison at the head of the lake, as soon as he got back from his visit to the openings. He is back; but not in a state to protect his wife and sister from the red man, who will be looking for us as soon as they can build a canoe, or anything that will do to cross the river with.”
“Had they even a canoe,” returned le Bourdon, coolly, “they would not know where to look for us. Thank Heaven! that will be a job that would take some time; nor is a bark canoe built in a minute. But, Margery, if your brother be a little dull and heavy, after his debauch, _I_ am sober, and as much awake as ever I was in my life.”
“Oh! you have no weakness like that of poor brother's, to make you otherwise; but, Bourdon, you will naturally wish to take care of yourself and your property, and will quit us the first good opportunity. I'm sure that we have no right to expect you will stay a minute longer than it is your interest to do so, and I do not know that I wish it.”
“Not wish it, Margery!” exclaimed the bee-hunter, in the manner of a disappointed man. “I had supposed you would have wished my company. But, now I know the contrary, I shall not much care how soon I go, or into whose hands I fall.”
It is strange how apt are those who ought to understand one another so readily, to misinterpret each other's thoughts. Margery had never seen the bee-hunter twenty-four hours before, though she had often heard of him, and of his success in his art; for the fame of a man of good reputation and active qualities spreads far on a frontier. The very individual whose existence would be nearly overlooked in a crowded region, shall be spoken of, and known by his qualities, a hundred leagues from his place of residence, when settlements are few and far apart. In this way, Margery had heard of Boden, or of “Bourdon,” as she called him, in common with hundreds who, confounding his real name with his sobriquet, made the mistake of using the last under the impression that it was the true appellation. Margery had no other knowledge of French than the few words gleaned in her slow progress among a frontier on which, it is true, more of that language than of any other was heard, but heard under circumstances that were not particularly favorable to the acquisition of a foreign tongue. Had she understood the real meaning of “Bourdon,” she would have bitten off her tongue before she would have once called Boden by such an appellation; though the bee-hunter himself was so accustomed to his Canadian nickname as to care nothing at all about it. But Margery did not like to give pain to any one; and, least of all, would she desire to inflict it on the bee-hunter, though he were only an acquaintance of a day. Still, Margery could not muster sufficient courage to tell her new friend how much he was mistaken, and that of all the youths she had ever met she would most prefer to keep him near her brother and sister in their distress; while the young man, inspired by a pure and infant passion, was just in the frame of mind to believe the worst of himself, and of his claims to the attention of her who had begun to occupy so many of his thoughts.
No explanation occurring, our young people descended from the hill, misconceiving each other's meaning and wishes, and unhappy under the influence of an ideal source of misery, when actual circumstances created so many that were substantial and real. Gershom was found awake, but, as his sister had described him, stupid and lethargic. The bee-hunter at once saw that, in his present condition, Whiskey Centre would still be an incumbrance rather than of any service, in the event of an occasion for extraordinary exertion. Margery had hinted that it usually took twenty-four hours to bring her brother entirely round, after one of his serious debauches; and within that time it was more than probable that the fate of the family would be decided.
Le Bourdon thought intently, during breakfast, of the condition of his party, and of the best mode of proceeding, while the pallid and anxious young creature at his side believed he was deliberating solely on the best means of extricating himself and his store of honey, from the savages on the other shore. Had the acquaintance between these young people been of longer date than it actually was, Margery could not have entertained a notion so injurious to the bee-hunter, for a single moment; but there was nothing either violent, or depreciating, in supposing that one so near being a total stranger would think first of himself and his own interests, in the situation in which this young man was now placed.
Little was said during the meal. Dorothy was habitually silent; the result of grief and care. As for her husband, he was too stupid to talk, though usually somewhat garrulous; while the Indian seldom did two things at the same time. This was the hour for acting; when that for talking should arrive, he would be found equal to its duties. Pigeonswing could either abstain from food, or could indulge in it without measure, just as occasion offered. He had often gone for days without tasting a mouthful, with the exception of a few berries, perhaps; and he had lain about the camp-fire, a week at a time, gorging himself with venison, like an anaconda. It is perhaps fortunate for the American Indian, that this particular quality of food is so very easy of digestion, since his excesses on it are notorious, and so common to his habits as almost to belong to his nature. Death might otherwise often be the consequence.
When the breakfast was ended, it was time to consult about the future course. As yet, the Pottawattamies had made no new discovery; but the sagacity of the red man was ever to be feared, when it came to be merely a question of finding his foe in a forest.
“We have obtained one advantage over the enemy,” said le Bourdon, “by crossing the river. Water leaves no trail; even had Crowsfeather a canoe, he might not know where to go in it, in order to find us.”
“Dat not so,” put in the Chippewa, a little dogmatically; “know we hab canoe--know cross river in him.”
“Why should they know this, Pigeonswing? We may have gone out upon the lake, or we may have gone up in the oak openings again, for anything the Pottawattamies can know to the contrary.”
“Tell you, not so. Know don't go on lake, cause wind blow. Know don't go up river, cause dat hard work; know come here, cause dat easy. Injin like to do what easy, and pale-face do just what Injin do. Crowsfeather make raft, pretty soon; den he come look arter scalp.”
“Yes,” said Margery, gently; “you had better load your canoe at once, and go on the lake, while the savages cannot reach you. The wind is fair for them that are to go north; and I have heard you say that you are bound to Mackinaw.”
“I shall load my canoe, and I shall load yours, too, Margery; but I shall not go away from this family, so long as any in it stand in need of my services.”
“Brother will be able to help us by afternoon. He manages a canoe well, when himself; so go, Bourdon, while you can. I dare say you have a mother at home; or a sister perhaps a wife--” “Neither,” interrupted the bee-hunter, with emphasis. “No one expects me; no one has a right to expect me.”
The color stole into pretty Margery's cheeks as she heard these words, and a ray of comfort gleamed on an imagination that, for the last hour, had been portraying the worst. Still, her generous temper did not like the idea of the bee-hunter's sacrificing himself for those who had so few claims on him, and she could not but again admonish him of the necessity of losing no time.
“You will think better of this, Bourdon,” the girl resumed. “We are going south, and cannot quit the river with this wind, but you could not have a better time to go north, unless the wind blows harder than I think it does.”
“The lake is a bad water for a canoe, when there is much wind,” put in Gershom, yawning after he had spoken, as if the effort fatigued him, “I wonder what we're all doing over on this side of the river! Whiskey Centre is a good enough country for me; I'm going back to look arter my casks, now I've breakfasted. Come, Doll; let's load up, and be off.”
“You are not yourself yet, Gershom,” returned the sorrowful wife, “or you would not talk in this way. You had better listen to the advice of Bourdon, who has done so much for us already, and who will tell you the way to keep out of Injin clutches. We owe our lives to Bourdon, Gershom, and you should thank him for it.”
Whiskey Centre muttered a few half intelligible words of thanks, and relapsed into his state of drowsy indifference. The bee-hunter saw, however, that the effects of the brandy were leaving him, and he managed to get him on one side, where he persuaded the fellow to strip and go into the water. The bath did wonders for the poor creature, who soon got to be so far himself again, as to be of use, instead of being an incumbrance. When sober, and more especially when sober for several consecutive days, Gershom was a man of sufficient energy, possessing originally great personal strength and activity, which had been essentially lessened, however, by his excesses in liquor. It has already been stated what a different being he became, in a moral point of view, after having been sober for any length of time.
On his return from the bathing, le Bourdon again joined the females. Margery had been weeping; but she smiled in a friendly way, on meeting his eye, and appeared less anxious for his departure than she had been an hour before. As the day advanced, and no signs of the savages were seen, a sense of greater security began to steal over the females, and Margery saw less necessity for the departure of their new friend. It was true, he was losing a wind; but the lake was rough, and after all it might be better to wait. In short, now that no immediate danger was apparent, Margery began to reason in conformity with her wishes, as is so apt to be the case with the young and inexperienced. The bee-hunter perceived this change in the deportment of his fair friend, and was well enough disposed to hope it would admit of a favorable construction.
All this time, the Chippewa had taken little visible interest in the state of the party to which he had now attached himself. The previous evening had been fertile in excitement and in gratification, and he had since slept and ate to his entire content. He was ready to meet events as they might arise, and began to plot the means of obtaining more Pottawattamie scalps. Let not the refined reader feel disdisgust at this exhibition of the propensities of an American savage. Civilized life has had, and still has, very many customs, little less excusable than that of scalping. Without dragging into the account the thousand and one sins that disgrace and deform society, it will be sufficient to look into the single interest of civilized warfare, in order to make out our case. In the first place, the noblest strategy of the art is, to put the greatest possible force on the least of the enemy, and to slay the weaker party by the mere power of numbers. Then, every engine that ingenuity can invent, is drawn into the conflict; and rockets, revolvers, shells, and all other infernal devices, are resorted to, in order to get the better of an enemy who is not provided with such available means of destruction. And after the battle is over, each side commonly claims the victory; sometimes, because a partial success has been obtained in a small portion of the field; sometimes, because half a dozen horses have run away with a gun, carrying it into the hostile ranks; and, again, because a bit of rag has fallen from the hands of a dead man, and been picked up by one of the opposing side. How often has it happened that a belligerent, well practised in his art, has kept his own colors out of the affair, and then boasted that they were not lost! Now, an Indian practises no such shameless expedients. His point of honor is not a bit of rag, but a bit of his skin. He shaves his head because the hair encumbers him; but he chivalrously leaves a scalp-lock, by the aid of which his conquerors can the more easily carry away the coveted trophy. The thought of cheating in such a matter never occurs to his unsophisticated mind; and as for leaving his “colors” in barracks, while he goes in the field himself, he would disdain it--nay, cannot practise it; for the obvious reason that his head would have to be left with them.
Thus it was with Pigeonswing. He had made his toilet for the war-path, and was fierce in his paint, but honest and fair-dealing in other particulars. If he could terrify his enemies by looking like a skeleton, or a demon, it was well; his enemy would terrify him, if possible, by similar means. But neither would dream, or did dream, of curtailing, by a single hair, that which might be termed the flag-staff of his scalp. If the enemy could seize it, he was welcome to the prize; but if he could seize that of the enemy, no scruples on the score of refinement, or delicacy, would be apt to interfere with his movements. It was in this spirit, then, that Pigeonswing came to the canoe, where le Bourdon was holding a little private discourse with Margery, and gave utterance to what was passing in his mind.
“Good time, now, get more scalps, Bourdon,” said the Chippewa, in his clipping, sententious English.
“It is a good time, too, to keep our own, Chippewa,” was the answer. “Your scalp-lock is too long, to be put before Pottawattamie eyes without good looking after it.”
“Nebber mind him--if go, go; if stay, stay. Always good for warrior to bring home scalp.”
“Yes; I know your customs in this respect, Pigeonswing, but ours are different. We are satisfied if we can keep out of harm's way, when we have our squaws and pappooses with us.”
“No pappooses here,” returned the Indian, looking around him--“dat your squaw, eh?”
The reader can readily imagine that this abrupt question brought blushes into the cheeks of pretty Margery, making her appear ten times more handsome than before; while even le Bourdon did not take the interrogatory wholly undisturbed. Still, the latter answered manfully, as became his sex.
“I am not so fortunate as to have a squaw, and least of all to have this” said le Bourdon.
“Why no hab her--she good squaw,” returned the literal-minded Indian--“han'some 'nough for chief. You ask; she hab--now squaw well--always like warrior to ask him fuss; den say, yes.”
“Aye, that may do with your red-skin squaws,” le Bourdon hastily replied; for he saw that Margery was not only distressed, but a little displeased--“but not with the young women of the pale-faces. I never saw Margery before last evening; and it takes time for a pale-face girl to know a youth.”
“Just so wid red-skin--sometime don't know, till too late! See plenty dat, in wigwam.”
“Then it is very much in the wigwams as it is in the houses. I have heard this before.”
“Why not same? --skin make no difference--pale-face spile squaw, too--make too much of her.”
“That can never be!” exclaimed le Bourdon, earnestly. “When a pretty, modest, warm-hearted young woman accepts a youth for a husband, he can never make enough of her!”
On hearing sentiments so agreeable to a woman's ears, Margery looked down, but she looked pleased. Pigeonswing viewed the matter very differently; and being somewhat of a partisan in matters relating to domestic economy, he had no thought of leaving a point of so much importance in so bad a way. Accordingly, it is not surprising that, in pursuing the subject, he expressed opinions in several essentials diametrically the reverse of those of the bee-hunter. ' “Easy 'nough spile squaw,” rejoined the Chippewa. “What she good for, don't make her work? Can't go on the warpath--can't take scalp--can't shoot deer--can't hunt--can't kill warrior--so muss work. Dat what squaw good for.”
“That may do among red men, but we pale-faces find squaws good for something else--we love them and take care of them--keep them from the cold in winter, and from the heat in summer; and try to make them as comfortable and happy as we can.”
“Dat good talk for young squaw's ears,” returned the Chippewa, a little contemptuously as to manner; though his real respect for the bee-hunter, of whose prowess he had so lately been a witness, kept him a little within bounds “but it bess not take nobody in. What Injin say to squaw, he do--what pale-face say, he no do.”
“Is that true, Bourdon?” demanded Margery, laughing at the Indian's earnestness.
“I shall be honest, and own that there may be some truth in it--for the Injin promises nothing, or next to nothing, and it is easy to square accounts, in such cases. That white men undertake more than they always perform, is quite likely to be the fact The Injin gets his advantage in this matter, by not even thinking of treating his wife as a woman should be treated.”
“How should treat woman?” put in Pigeonswing with warmth. “When warrior eat venison, gib her rest, eh? Dat no good--what you call good, den? If good hunter husband, she get 'nough--if an't good hunter, she don't get 'nough. Just so wid Injin--sometime hungry, sometime full. Dat way to live!”
“Aye, that may be your red man's ways, but it is not the manner in which we wish to treat our wives. Ask pretty Margery, here, if she would be satisfied to wait until her husband had eaten his dinner, and then come in for the scraps. No-no-Pigeonswing; we feed our women and children first and come in last, ourselves.”
“Dat good for pappoose--he little; want venison--squaw tough; use to wait. Do her good.”
Margery now laughed outright, at these specimens of Indian gallantry, which only too well embody the code of the red man's habits. Doubtless the heart has its influence among even the most savage people, for nature has not put into our breasts feelings and passions to be discarded by one's own expedients, or wants. But no advocate of the American Indian has ever yet been able to maintain that woman fills her proper place in his estimate of claims. As for Margery, though so long subject to the whims, passions and waywardness of a drunkard, she had reaped many of the advantages of having been born in that woman's paradise, New England. We are no great admirers of the legacy left by the Puritan to his descendants, taken as an inheritance in morals, manners, and customs, and as a whole; though there are parts, in the way of codicils, that there is no portion of the Christian world which might not desire to emulate. In particular, do we allude to the estimate put upon, and the treatment received by their women. Our allusion is not to the refinements and gracefulness of polished intercourse; for of THEM, the Blarney Rock of Plymouth has transmitted but a meagre account in the inventory, and perhaps the less that is said about this portion of the family property the better; but, dropping a few degrees in the social scale, and coming down to the level where we are accustomed to regard people merely as men and women, we greatly question if any other portion of the world can furnish a parallel to the manly, considerate, rational, and wisely discriminating care, that the New England husband, as the rule, bestows on his wife; the father on his daughter; or the brother on his sister. Gershom was a living, and, all things considered, a remarkable instance of these creditable traits. When sober, he was uniformly kind to Dorothy; and for Margery he would at any time risk his life. The latter, indeed, had more power over him than his own wife possessed, and it was her will and her remonstrances that most frequently led him back from the verge of that precipice over which he was so often disposed to cast himself. By some secret link she bound him closest to the family dwelling, and served most to recall the days of youth and comparative innocence, when they dwelt together beneath the paternal roof, and were equally the objects of the affection and solicitude of the same kind mother. His attachment to Dorothy was sincere, and, for one so often brutalized by drink, steady; but Dorothy could not carry him as far back, in recollections, as the one only sister who had passed the morning of life with him, in the same homely but comfortable abode.
We have no disposition to exaggerate the character of those whom it is the fashion to term the American yeomen, though why such an appellation should be applied to any in a state of society to which legal distinctions are unknown, is what we could never understand. There are no more of esquires and yeomen in this country than there are of knights and nobles, though the quiet manner in which the transition from the old to the new state of things has been made, has not rendered the public mind very sensible to the changes. But, recurring to the class, which is a positive thing and consequently ought to have a name of some sort or other, we do not belong to those that can sound its praises without some large reservations on the score of both principles and manners. Least of all, are we disposed to set up these yeomen as a privileged class, like certain of the titular statesmen of the country, and fall down and worship a calf--not a golden one by the way--of our own setting up. We can see citizens in these yeomen, but not princes, who are to be especially favored by laws made to take from others to bestow on them. But making allowances for human infirmities, the American freeholder belongs to a class that may justly hold up its head among the tillers of the earth. He improves daily, under the influence of beneficent laws, and if he don't get spoiled, of which there is some danger, in the eagerness of factions to secure his favor, and through that favor his VOTE--if he escape this danger, he will ere long make a reasonably near approach to that being, which the tongue of the flatterer would long since have persuaded him he had already more than got to be.
To one accustomed to be treated kindly, as was the case with Margery, the Chippewa's theory for the management of squaws contained much to excite her mirth, as well as her resentment, as she now made apparent by her remarks.
“You do not deserve to HAVE a wife, Pigeonswing,” she cried, half-laughing, yet evidently alive to the feelings of her sex--“can have no gratitude for a wife's tenderness and care. I wonder that a Chippewa girl can be found to have you?”
“Don't want him,” coolly returned the Indian, making his preparations to light his pipe--“got Winnebagoe squaw, already; good 'nough for me. Shoot her t'other husband and take his scalp--den she come into my wigwam.”
“The wretch!” exclaimed Margery.
But this was a word the savage did not understand, and he continued to puff at the newly lighted tobacco, with all of a smoker's zeal. When the fire was secured, he found time to continue the subject.
“Yes, dat good war-path--got rifle; got wife; got TWO scalp! Don't do so well, ebbery day.”
“And that woman hoes your corn, and cooks your venison?” demanded the bee-hunter.
“Sartain--capital good to hoe--no good to cook--make deer meat too dry. Want to be made to mind business. Bye'm by teach him. No l'arn all at once, like pale-face pappoose in school.”
“Pigeonswing, have you never observed the manner in which the white man treats his squaw?”
“Sartain--see him make much of her--put her in warm corner--wrap blanket round her--give her venison 'fore he eat himself--see all dat, often--what den? DAT don't make it right.”
“I give you up, Chippewa, and agree with Margery in thinking you ought not to have a squaw, at all.”
“T'ink alike, den--why no get marry?” asked the Indian, without circumlocution.
Margery's face became red as fire; then her cheeks settled into the color of roses, and she looked down, embarrassed. The bee-hunter's admiration was very apparent to the Indian, though the girl did not dare to raise her eyes from the ground, and so did not take heed of it. But this gossiping was suddenly brought to an end by a most unexpected cause of interruption; the manner and form of which it shall be our office to relate, in the succeeding chapter.
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So should it be--for no heart beats Within his cold and silent breast; To him no gentle voice repeats The soothing words that make us blest. --PEABODY.
The interruption came from Dorothy, who, on ascending the little height, had discovered a canoe coming into the mouth of the river, and who was running, breathless with haste, to announce the circumstance to the bee-hunter. The latter immediately repaired to the eminence, and saw for himself the object that so justly had alarmed the woman. The canoe was coming in from the lake, after running before the wind, which now began to abate a little in its strength, and it evidently had been endeavoring to proceed to the northward. The reason for its entering the river, was probably connected with the cookery or food of the party, since the lake was each minute getting to be safer, and more navigable for so light a craft. To le Bourdon's great apprehension, he saw the savages on the north shore making signal to this strange canoe, by means of smoke, and he foresaw the probability of his enemies obtaining the means of crossing the stream, should the strangers proceed in the desired direction. To counteract this design, he ran down to a spot on the beach where there was no rice-plant, and showing himself to the strangers, invited them to land on the south side, which was much the nearest, and in other visible respects quite as convenient as the opposite bank of the river. One of the strangers soon made a gesture with an arm, implying assent, and the bows of this strange canoe were immediately turned toward the spot where the bee-hunter stood.
As the canoe drew near, the whole party, including Pigeonswing, came to the margin of the water to receive the strangers. Of the last, there were three; one paddling at each end of the light bark, and a third seated in its centre, doing nothing. As the bee-hunter had his glass, with which he examined these visitors, he was soon questioned by his companions concerning their character and apparent purposes.
“Who are they, Bourdon?” demanded the impatient Margery--“and why do they come here?”
“The last is a question they must answer for themselves, but the person paddling in the bows of the canoe seems to be a white man, and a soldier--or a half-soldier, if one may judge from his dress. The man in the middle of the canoe is white, also. This last fellow seems to be a parson--yes, he is a clergyman, though pretty well used up in the wilderness, as to dress. The third man is a red-skin, beyond all doubt.”
“A clergyman!” repeated Margery, in surprise. “What should a clergyman be doing here?”
“There are missionaries scattered about among the savages, I suppose you know, and this is probably one of them. A body can tell one of these parsons by his outside, as far as he can see him. The poor man has heard of the war, most likely, and is trying to get back into the settlements, while his scalp is safe on his head.”
“Don't hurt HIM” put in the Chippewa, pointedly. “Know MEAN well--talk about Great Spirit--Injin don't scalp sich medicine-men--if don't mind what he say, no good to take his scalp.”
“I'm glad to hear this, Pigeonswing, for I had begun to think NO man's scalp was safe under YOUR fingers. But what can the so'ger be doing down this-away? A body would think there was business enough for all the so'gers up at the garrison, at the head of the lake. By the way, Pigeonswing, what has become of your letter to the captain at Fort Dearborn, to let him know of the war?”
“Chaw him up, like so much 'baccy,” answered the Chippewa--“yes, chaw him up, lest Pottawattamie get hold on him, and ask one of King George's men to read him. No good to hab letter in sich times.”
“The general who employed you to carry that letter, will scarce thank you for your care.”
“Yes, he do--t'ank all same--pay all same--letter no use now.”
“How can you know that? The letter might be the means of preventing the garrison from falling into the enemy's hands.”
“Got dere, already. Garrison all kill, scalp, or prisoner. Pottawattamie talk tell me DAT!”
“Is this possible! Mackinaw and Chicago both gone, already! John Bull must have been at work among the savages a long time, to get them into this state of readiness!”
“Sartain--work long as can 'member. ALWAY somebody talkin' for great Montreal Fadder among red men.”
“It must be as you say, Chippewa--but, here are our visitors--let us see what we can make of THEM!”
By this time, the canoe was so near as to render it easy to distinguish countenances and dress, without the aid of the glass--so near, indeed, that a swift-moving boat, like the canoe, might be expected soon to reach the shore. The truth of the observation of the bee-hunter was confirmed, as the strangers approached. The individual in the bows of the canoe was clearly a soldier, in a fatigue-dress, and the musket between his legs was one of those pieces that government furnishes to the troops of the line. The man in the middle of the boat could no more be mistaken than he in its bows. Each might be said to be in uniform-- the well-worn, nay, almost threadbare black coat of the “minister,” as much denoting him to be a man of peace, as the fatigue-jacket and cap on the person of his hard-featured and weather-beaten companion indicated that the last was a man of war. As for the red man, Pigeonswing declared that he could not yet tell his tribe, though there was that about his air, attire and carriage, that proclaimed him a chief—and, as the Chippewa fancied, a chief of note. In another minute, the bows of the light craft grated gently on the shingle of the beach.
“Sago, sago,” said the soldier, rising to step ashore--“sago all, friends, and I hope we come to a welcome camp.”
“You are welcome,” returned the bee-hunter. “Welcome as strangers met in the wilderness, but more welcome, as I see by your dress that you are a veteran of one of Uncle Sam's regiments.”
“Quite true, Mr. Bee-hunter ; for such I see is _your_ callin', by the honey vessel and glass you carry, and by the other signs about you. We are travelling toward Mackinaw, and hope to fere as friends, while we stay in your good company.”
“In going to Mackinaw, do you expect to meet with an _American or an English_ garrison ?”
“One of our own, to be sure,” returned the soldier, looking up from his work, like one struck by the question.
“Mackinaw has fallen, and is now an English post, as well as Chicago.”
“This, then, must alter our plans, Mr. Amen !” exclaimed the soldier, addressing the minister. “If the enemy has Mackinaw, it will not do for us to trust ourselves on the island.”
“Amen” was not the real name of the missionary ; but it was a _sobriquet_ bestowed by the soldiers, on account of the unction with which this particular word was ordinarily pronounced, and quite likely, too, because it was the word of all others most pleasant to their ears, after a sermon, or a prayer. It had, by long use, got to be so familiar, that the men did not scruple to use it to the good man's face. This missionary was a Methodist ; a sect that possessed, in that day, very few clergymen of education, most of its divines coming of a class in life that did not predispose them to take offence at light invasions on their dignity, and whose zeal and habitual self-denial had schooled them into a submission to far more positive personal privations, than any connected with the mere tongue. That there are “wolves in sheep's clothing” among the Methodists, as well as among the other religious sects of the country, our daily experience shows ; but the mind must be sadly inclined to believe evil of others, which does not see in the humble and untiring efforts of this particular sect of Christians, more than mere fanaticism or hypocrisy can produce.
“You are right, corporal,” returned the missionary ; “since this is the case, I see no better course for us to pursue, than to put ourselves altogether in the hands of Onoah. He has counselled us well, hitherto, and will do better by us than any other guide to be found, out in this wilderness.”
Le Bourdon could scarcely trust his sense of hearing ! Onoah was the Indian appellation of the terrible and most dreaded savage, who, in English, went by the name of Scalping Peter, or “Scalping Pete,” among all the white dwellers on that frontier, and at all the garrisons of the Americans, far and near. The Indian name, indeed, was said to mean “scalp,” in several of the dialects of the Iroquois. Perhaps it may be well, also, to explain here, that the term “garrison” did not imply, in the language of that region, the troops only who garrisoned a post, but it was even oftener applied to the post itself than to those who held it. Thus old, empty, and deserted forts, those that have actually been abandoned, and are devoted to decay, are almost universally styled the ” garrisons,” even though a soldier had not put foot in them for a quarter of a century. This is one of the proofs of the convertible nature of our language, of which the country affords so many, and which has changed the smaller-sized rivers into “creeks,” “lakes” into “ponds,” “squares” into “parks,” public promenades on the water into “batteries”; to all of which innovations, bad as they may be, and useless and uncalled for, and wanton as they are, we are much more willing to submit, than to the new- fangled and lubberly abomination of saying “ON a steamboat,” or “ON a ship.”
While le Bourdon was so much astounded at hearing the terrible name of Onoah, which was familiar enough to him, neither of his white companions betrayed any emotion. Had the Indian been termed “Scalping Peter,” it is probable that both Dorothy and Margery would have screamed, if not actually fled; but they knew nothing of the appellation that was given to this mysterious chief, in the language of the red men. To this circumstance, therefore, was it owing that the utterance of his name did not produce a general commotion. The bee-hunter observed, nevertheless, a great change in the demeanor of the Chippewa, the instant the missionary had uttered the ominous word, though he did not seem to be alarmed. On the contrary, Boden fancied that his friend Pigeonswing was pleased, rather than terrified, at ascertaining the character of their visitor, though he no longer put himself forward, as had been the case previously; and from that moment the young warrior appeared to carry himself in a more subdued and less confident manner than was his wont. This unexpected demeanor on the part of his friend, somewhat confounded le Bourdon, though it in a degree relieved his apprehensions of any immediate danger. All this time, the conversation between the missionary and the corporal went on in as quiet and composed a manner, as if each saw no ground for any other uneasiness than that connected with the fall of Mackinaw.
“Yes, sir,” returned the soldier, “Onoah is a good guide, and a great hand at a council-fire; but these is war-times, and we must stand to our arms, each accordin' to his edication and temper--you, sir, with preachin' and prayin', and I with gun and baggonet.”
“Ah! corporal, the preaching and praying would be of quite as much account with you men of war, as your arms and ammunition, if you could only be made to think so. Look at Fort Dearborn! It was defended by human means, having its armed band, and its guns and swords, and captains and corporals; yet you have seen their pride lowered, their means of defence destroyed, and a large part of your comrades massacred. All this has been done to armed men, while the Lord has brought ME, an unarmed and humble teacher of his word, safely out of the hands of the Philistines, and placed me here in safety, on the shores of the Kalamazoo.”
“For that matter, Mr. Amen, the Lord has done the same by ME, with a musket on my shoulder and a baggonet by my side,” returned the literal corporal. “Preachin' may be good on some marches; but arms and ammunition answers well enough on others. Hearken to the Hebrew, who knows all the ways of the wilderness, and see if he don't give you the same opinion.” “The Hebrew is one of the discarded of the Lord, as he is one chosen of the Lord!” returned the missionary. “I agree with you, however, that he is as safe an adviser, for a human adviser, as can be easily found; therefore will I consult him. Child of the seed of Abraham,” he added, turning to Onoah, “thou hast heard the tidings from Mackinaw; we cannot think, any longer, of pursuing our journey in that direction; whither, then, wouldst thou advise that we shall direct our steps? I ask this question of THEE first, as an experienced and sagacious dweller in the wilderness: at a more fitting time, I intend to turn to the Lord, and seek divine aid for the direction of our footsteps.”
“Aye,” observed the corporal, who entertained a good deal of respect for the zealous, but slightly fanatical missionary, though he believed an Indian was always safe to consult in matters of this sort, “try BOTH--if one staff should fail, it may be well to have another to lean on. A good soldier always keeps a part of his troops for a reserve. I motto of his coat of arms; the “gare a qui la touchc,” or “noli me tangere,” of his device.”
The head was shaved, as is usual with a warrior, carrying only the chivalrous scalp-lock, but the chief was not in his paint. The outline of this celebrated savage's features was bold and eagle-like; a comparison that his steady, calm, piercing eye well sustained. The chin was full and expanded, the lips compressed and firm, the teeth were short, but even and sound, his smile courteous, and, at times, winning.
In the way of attire, Onoah was simply dressed, consulting the season and his journey. He had a single eagle's feather attached to the scalp-lock, and wore a belt of wampum of more than usual value, beneath which he had thrust his knife and tomahawk; a light, figured and fringed hunting-shirt of cotton covered his body, while leggings of deerskin, with a plain moccasin of similar material, rose to his knee. The latter, with the lower part of a stout sinewy thigh, was bare. He also carried a horn and pouch, and a rifle of the American rather than of the military fashion that is, one long, true, and sighted to the deviation of a hair.
On landing, Peter (for so he was generally called by the whites, when in courtesy they omitted the prefix of “Scalping”) courteously saluted the party assembled around the bow of the canoe. This he did with a grave countenance, like a true American, but in simple sincerity, so far as human eye could penetrate his secret feelings. To each man he offered his hand, glancing merely at the two females; though it may be questioned if he ever before had looked upon so perfect a picture of female loveliness as Margery at that precise instant presented, with her face flushed with excitement, her spirited blue eye wandering with curiosity, and her beautiful mouth slightly parted in admiration.
“Sago, sago!” said Peter, in his deep, guttural enunciation, speaking reasonably good English. “Sago, sago all, ole and young, friend come to see you, and eat in your wigwam--which head--chief, eh?”
“We have neither wigwam nor chief here,” answered le Bourdon, though he almost shrunk from taking the hand of one of whom he had heard the tales of which this savage had been the hero; “we are common people, and have no one among us who holds the States' commission. I live by taking honey, of which you are welcome to all you can want, and this man is a helper of the sutlers at the garrisons. He was travelling south to join the troops at the head of the lake, and I was going north to Mackinaw, on my way in, toward the settlements.”
“Why is my brother in such haste?” demanded Peter, mildly. “Bees get tired of making honey?”
“The times are troubled, and the red men have dug up the hatchet; a pale-face cannot tell when his wigwam is safe.”
“Where my brodder wigwam?” asked Peter, looking warily around him. “See he an't here; where is he?”
“Over in the openings, far up the Kalamazoo. We left it last week, and had got to the hut on the other shore, when a party of Pottawattamies came in from the lake, and drove us over here for safety.”
On hearing this, Peter turned slowly to the missionary, raising a finger as one makes a gesture to give emphasis to his words.
“Tole you so,” said the Indian. “Know dere was Pottawattamie dere. Can tell 'em great way off.”
“We fear them, having women in our party,” added the bee-hunter, “and think they might fancy our scalps.”
“Dat like enough; all Injin love scalp in war-time. You Yankee, dey Br'ish; can't travel on same path now, and not quarrel. Must not let Pottawattamie catch you.”
“How are we to help it, now you have come in? We had all the canoes on this side of the river, and were pretty safe, but should you cross and place your canoe in their hands, there is nothing to prevent them from doing what they please with us. If you will promise not to cross the river till we can get out well on the lake, we may shift our ground, however, and leave no trail.”
“Muss cross over--yes, muss cross over, else Pottawattamie t'ink it strange--yes, muss cross over. Shan't touch canoe, dough.”
“How can you help it, if they be so minded? You are but a single man, and they are twenty.”
On hearing this, Corporal Flint pricked up his ears, and stood if possible more erect than ever, for he considered himself a part of a man at least, and one moreover who had served in all the wars of the west, from the great battle of St. Glair to that of Mad Anthony. He was spared the necessity of a reply, however, for Peter made a significant gesture which as much as told him that he would take that office on himself.
“No need be afeard,” said Peter, quietly. “Know Pottawattamie--know all chief. Nobody touch canoe of Onoah when he say don't touch him.”
“Yet they are Injins of the British, and I see you here in company with a soldier of Uncle Sam.”
“No matter; Onoah go just where he please. Sometime to Pottawattamie; sometime to Iroquois. All Ojebways know Onoah. All Six Nation know him well. All Injin know him. Even Cherokee know him now, and open ears when he speak. Muss cross river, and shake hand with Crowsfeather.”
There was nothing boastful, or vaunting, in Peter's manner while he thus announced his immunity or power, but he alluded to it in a quiet, natural way, like one accustomed to being considered a personage of consequence. Mankind, in general, make few allowances for the influence of habit; the sensibilities of the vainglorious themselves being quite as often wounded by the most natural and direct allusions of those who enjoy advantages superior to their own, as by those that are intended to provoke comparisons. In the present instance, however, no such feeling could exist, the Indian asserting no more than his extended reputation would fully maintain.
When Peter had thus expressed himself, the missionary thought it meet to add a few words in explanation. This he did, however, aside, walking a little apart with the bee-hunter, in order so to do. As for Gershom, no one seemed to think him of sufficient importance to throw away any interest or care on him.
“You can trust to Peter, friend bee-hunter,” the missionary observed, “for what he promises he will perform. I know him well, and have put myself altogether in his hands. If he says that the Pottawattamies are not to have his canoe, the Pottawattamies will not get it. He is a man to be depended on.”
“Is not this, then, Scalping Peter, who bears so terrible a name on all this frontier?” demanded le Bourdon.
“The same; but do not disturb yourself with names: they hurt no one, and will soon be forgotten. A descendant of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, is not placed in the wilderness by the hand of divine power for no purpose; since he is here, rely on it, it is for good.”
“A descendant of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob! Is not Peter, then, a red-skin and an Injin?”
“Certainly; though no one knows his tribe but himself. I know it, friend bee-hunter, and shortly shall proclaim it throughout the length and breadth of the land. Yes, it has been given to me to make this important discovery, though I sometimes think that Peter himself is really as ignorant as all around him of the tribe to which he properly belongs.”
“Do you wish to keep it a secret from me, too? I own that, in my eyes, the tribe of a red-skin goes a good way in making up my opinions of the man. Is he a Winnebagoe?”
“No, my friend, the Winnebagoes have no claims on him at all.”
“Nor a Pottawattamie, Ottawa, or Ojebway of any sort?”
“He is none of these. Peter cometh of a nobler tribe than any that beareth such names.”
“Perhaps he is an Injin of the Six Nations? They tell me that many such have found their way hither since the war of the revolution.”
“All that may be true, but Peter cometh not of Pottawattamie, Ottawa, nor Ojebway.”
“He can hardly be of the Sacs or the Foxes; he has not the appearance of an Injin from a region so far west.”
“Neither, neither, neither,” answered Parson Amen, now so full of his secret as fairly to let it overflow. “Peter is a son of Israel; one of the lost children of the land of Judea, in common with many of his red brethren-mind, I do not say ALL, but with MANY of his red brethren--though he may not know exactly of what tribe himself. This last point has exercised me greatly, and days and nights have I pondered over the facts. Turn to Genesis XLIX and 14th, and there will you find all the authorities recorded. 'Zebulon shall dwell at the haven of the sea.' That refers to some other red brother, nearer to the coast, most clearly. 'Issachar is a strong ass, crouching down between two burdens'; 'and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute.' That refers, most manifestly, to the black man of the Southern States, and cannot mean Peter. 'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path.' There is the red man for you, drawn with the pencil of truth! 'Gad, a troop shall overcome him.' Here, corporal, come this way and tell our new friend how Mad Anthony with his troopers finally routed the red-skins. You were there, and know all about it. No language can be plainer: until the 'long-knives and leather-stockings' came into the woods, the red man had his way. Against THEM he COULD not prevail.”
“Yes,” returned Corporal Flint, who delighted in talking of the wars, “it was very much as Parson Amen says. The savages, by their nimbleness and artifices, would first ambush us, and then break away from our charges, until the gin'ral bethought him of bringing cavalry into the wilderness. Nobody ever thought of such a plan, until old Anthony invented it. As soon as we got the fire of the savages, at the Mawmee, we charged with the baggonet, and put 'em up; and no sooner was they up, than away went the horse into them, flourishing the 'long knife' and pressing the heel of the 'leather-stocking' into the flanks of their beasts. Mr. Amen has found a varse in Scriptur's that does come near to the p'int, and almost foretells our victory, and that, too, as plain as it stood in dispatches, arterward, from headquarters.”
“'Gad, a TROOP shall overcome him,'” put in the missionary, triumphantly.
“That's it--that's it; there was just one troop on 'em, and not a man more! Mad Anthony said a troop would answer, arter we had put the red-skins up out of their ambushes, or any other bushes; and so it did. I must acknowledge that I think more of the Scriptur's than ever, since Parson Amen read to me that varse.”
“Hearken unto this, friend bee-hunter,” added the missionary, who by this time had fairly mounted his hobby, and fancied he saw a true Israelite in every other Indian of the west, “and tell me if words were ever more prophetic--'Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour his prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.' The art of man could not draw a more faithful picture of these Indians.”
Boden was not much skilled in sacred lore, and scarce knew what to make of all this. The idea that the American Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel was entirely new to him; nor did he know anything to boast of, touching those tribes, even in their palmiest days, and while in possession of the promised land; still he had some confused recollection of that which he had read when a child--what American has not? --and was enabled to put a question or two, in return for the information now received. “What, do you take the savages of America for Jews?” he asked, understanding the general drift of the missionary's meaning.
“As sure as you are there, friend bee-hunter, though you are not to suppose that I think Peter Onoah of the tribe of Benjamin. No, I turn to the 21st verse for the tribe of Peter Naphthali--Naphthalis, the root of his stock. 'Naphthali is a hind, let loose: he giveth goodly words.' Now, what can be plainer than this? A hind let loose is a deer running at large, and, by a metaphor, that deer includes the man that hunts him. Now, Peter has been--nay, is still--a renowned hunter, and is intended to be enumerated among the hinds let loose; 'he giveth goodly words,' would set that point at rest, if anything were wanting to put it beyond controversy, for Onoah is the most eloquent speaker ear ever listened to! No one, that has ever heard him speak, can doubt that he is the one who 'giveth goodly words.'”
To what other circumstance the well-intentioned missionary would next have alluded, in the course of this demonstration of a theory that had got to be a favorite with him, is more than can now be related, since the Indian himself drew near, and put an end to the conversation. Peter had made up his mind to cross the river at once; and came to say as much to his companions, both of whom he intended to leave behind him. Le Bourdon could not arrest this movement, short of an appeal to force; and force he did not like to use, doubting equally its justice and its prudence.
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There is no other land like thee, No dearer shore; Thou art the shelter of the free; The home, the port of liberty Thou hast been, and shall ever be Till time is o'er. Ere I forget to think upon My land, shall mother curse the son She bore. --Percival.
The independent, not to say controlling, manner of Peter, would seem to put all remonstrances and arguments at defiance, Le Bourdon soon had occasion to see that both the missionary and the corporal submitted to his wishes, and that there was no use in gainsaying anything he proposed. In all matters he did as he pleased; his two companions submitting to his will as completely as if one of them had seen in this supposed child of Israel, Joshua, the son of Nun, and the other even Aaron, the high-priest, himself.
Peter's preparations were soon made. Everything belonging to the missionary and the corporal was removed from the canoe, which then contained only the extra clothing and the special property of the Indian himself. As soon as ready, the latter quietly and fearlessly paddled away, his canoe going easily and swiftly down before the wind. He had no sooner got clear of the rice, than the bee-hunter and Margery ran away to the eminence, to watch his movements, and to note his reception among the Pottawattamies. Leaving them there, we shall accompany the canoe, in its progress toward the northern shore.
At first, Peter paddled quietly on, as if he had no other object before him than the passage of the river. When quite clear of the rice, however, he ceased, and undid his bundle of clothes, which were carefully put away in the knapsack of a soldier. From this repository of his effects, the chief carefully drew forth a small bundle, on opening which, no less than seven fresh human scalps appeared. These he arranged in order on a wand-like pole, when, satisfied with the arrangement, he resumed the paddle. It was apparent, from the first, that the Pottawattamies on the north shore had seen the strange canoe when it entered the river, and they now collected in a group, at the ordinary landing beneath the chiente, to await its approach. Peter ceased his own exertion, as soon as he had got within a hundred yards of the beach, took the scalp-pole in his hand, arose, and permitted the canoe to drift down before the wind, certain it would take the desired direction, from the circumstance of his having placed it precisely to windward of the landing. Once or twice he slowly waved the pole in a way to draw attention to the scalps, which were suspended from its end, each obvious and distinct from its companions.
Napoleon, when he returned from the campaign of Austerlitz; or Wellington, when he entered the House of Commons to receive the thanks of its speaker, on his return from Spain; or the chief of all the battles of the Rio Bravo del Norte; or him of the valley of Mexico, whose exploits fairly rival those of Cortes himself, could scarcely be a subject of greater interest to a body of spectators, assembled to do him honor, than was this well-known Indian, as he drew near to the Pottawattamies, waving his scalps, in significant triumph! Glory, as the homage paid by man to military renown is termed, was the common impulse with them all. It is true, that, measured by the standards of reason and right, the wise and just might find motives for appreciating the victories of those named differently from the manner in which they are usually regarded through the atmosphere of success; but in the common mind it was all glory, alike. The name of “Onoah” passed in murmurs of admiration, from mouth to mouth; for, as it appeared, the person of this renowned Indian was recognized by many on the shore, some time ere he reached it himself.
Crowsfeather, and the other chiefs, advanced to meet the visitor; the young men standing in the background, in respectful admiration. Peter now stepped from the canoe, and greeted each of the principal men with the courteous gravity of a savage. He shook hands with each, calling one or two by name, a proof of the parties having met before; then the following dialogue occurred. All spoke in the tongue of the Pottawattamies, but, as we have had occasion to remark on previous occasions, it is to be presumed that the reader would scarcely be able to understand what was said, were we to record it, word for word, in the language in which it was uttered. In consequence of this difficulty, and for other reasons to which it may not be necessary to allude, we shall endeavor to translate that which passed, as closely as the English idioms will permit us so to do.
“My father is very welcome!” exclaimed Crowsfeather, who, by many degrees, exceeded all his companions in consideration and rank. “I see he has taken many scalps as is his practice, and that the pale-faces are daily getting to be fewer. Will the sun ever rise on that day when their wigwams will look like the branches of the oak in winter? Can my father give us any hope of seeing that hour?”
“It is a long path from the salt-lake out of which the sun rises, to that other salt-lake in which it hides itself at night. The sun sleeps each night beneath water, but it is so hot that it is soon dried when it comes out of its bed in the morning. This is the Great Spirit's doings, and not ours. The sun is his sun; the Indians can warm themselves by it, but they cannot shorten its journey a single tomahawk handle's length. The same is true of time; it belongs to the Manitou, who will lengthen or shorten it, as he may see fit. We are his children, and it is our duty to submit. He has not forgotten us. He made us with his own hand, and will no more turn us out of the land than a father will turn his child from the wigwam.”
“We hope this is so; but it does not seem thus to out poor weak eyes, Onoah. We count the pale-faces, and every summer they grow fast as the grass on the prairies. We can see more when the leaf falls than when the tree is in bud; and, then, more when the leaf is in bud than when it falls. A few moons will put a town where the pine stood, and wigwams drive the wolves from their homes. In a few years we shall have nothing but dogs to eat, if the pale-face dogs do not eat us.”
“Squaws are impatient, but men know how to wait. This land was given to the red man by the Great Spirit, as I have often told you, my children; if he has let in the pale-faces for a few winters, it is to punish us for having done wrong. Now that we are sorry for what we have done, he will help us to drive away the strangers, and give us the woods again to hunt in by ourselves. Have not messengers from our Great Father in Montreal been among the Pottawattamies to strengthen their hearts?”
“They are always whispering in the ears of our tribes. I cannot remember the time when whispers from Montreal have not been among us. Their blankets are warm, their fire-water is strong, their powder is good, and their rifles shoot well; but all this does not stop the children of Uncle Sam from being more at night than they were in the morning. The red men get tired of counting them. They have become plentier than the pigeons in the spring. My father has taken many of their scalps, but the hair must grow after his knife, their scalps are so many.”
“See!” rejoined Peter, lowering his pole so that all might examine his revolting trophies, “these come from the soldiers at the head of the lake. Blackbird was there with his young men; no one of them all got as many scalps! This is the way to stop the white pigeon from flying over us in such flocks as to hide and darken the sun.”
Another murmur of admiration passed through the crowd, as each young warrior bent forward to count the number of the scalps, and to note, by signs familiar to themselves, the ages, sex, and condition of the different victims. Here was another instance among a hundred others of which they had heard, of the prowess of the mysterious Onoah, as well as of his inextinguishable hatred of the race, that was slowly, but unerringly, supplanting the ancient stock, causing the places that once knew the people of their tribes “to know them no more.” As soon as this little burst of feeling had subsided, the conversation went on.
“We have had a pale-face medicine-man among us, Onoah,” continued Crowsfeather, “and he has so far blinded us that we know not what to think.”
The chief then recounted the leading events of the visit of the bee-hunter to the place, stating each occurrence fairly, as he understood it, and as fairly confessing that even the chiefs were at a loss to know what to make of the affair. In addition to this account, he gave the mysterious Onoah the history of the prisoner they had taken, the death of Elks-foot, their intention to torture that very morning the Chippewa they had captured, and his flight, together with the loss of their young man, and the subsequent escape of their unknown enemies, who had taken away all of their own canoes. How far the medicine-man had anything to do with the other events of his narrative, Crowsfeather very candidly admitted he could not even conjecture. He was still at a loss whether to set down the conjurer for a pretender, or as a real oracle. Peter, however, was less credulous even than the chiefs. He had his superstitious notions, like all uneducated men, but a clear head and quick intellect placed him far above the weaknesses of the red man in general. On receiving a description of the person of the unknown “medicine-man,” he at once recognized the bee-hunter. With an Indian to describe, and an Indian to interpret or apply, escape from discovery was next to impossible.
Although Onoah, or the “Tribeless,” as he was also frequently called by the red men, from the circumstance of no one's knowing to what particular section of the great Indian family he belonged, perfectly understood that the bee-hunter he had seen on the other shore was the individual who had been playing the part of a conjurer among these Pottawattamies, he was very careful not to reveal the fact to Crowsfeather. He had his own policy, and was fully aware of all the virtue there is in mystery and reserve. With an Indian, these qualities go farther even than with a white man; and we of the Caucasian race are not entirely exempt from the folly of being deceived by appearances. On the present occasion Peter kept his knowledge to himself, still leaving his red brethren in doubt and uncertainty; but he took care to be right in his own opinions by putting as many questions as were necessary for that purpose. Once assured of this fact, he turned to other subjects of even greater interest to himself and his companions.
The conference which now took place between the “Tribeless” and Crowsfeather was held apart, both being chiefs of too much importance to be intruded on at a moment like that. The two chiefs exhibited a very characteristic picture while engaged in this conference. They seated themselves on a bank, and drawing their legs partially under them, sat face to face, with their heads less than two feet asunder, occasionally gesticulating with dignity, but each speaking in his turn with studied decorum. Crowsfeather was highly painted, and looked fierce and warlike, but Onoah had nothing extraordinary about him, with the exception of the decorations and dress already described, unless it might be his remarkable countenance. The face of this Indian ordinarily wore a thoughtful cast, an expression which it is not unusual to meet with in a savage; though at times it lighted up, as it might be with the heat of inward fires, like the crater giving out its occasional flames beneath the hues of a saddened atmosphere. One accustomed to study the human face, and to analyze its expressions, would possibly have discovered in that countenance lines of deep artifice, together with the traces of a profound and constitutional enthusiasm. He was bent, at that very moment, on a scheme worthy of the loftiest spirit living; the regeneration and union of the people of his race, with a view to recover the possessions they had yielded to the pale-faces; but it was a project blended with the ferocity and revenge of a savage-noble while ferocious.
Not idly had the whites, scattered along that frontier, given the sobriquet of “Scalping” to Peter, As his pole now showed, it had been earned in a hundred scenes of bloody vengeance; and so great had been his success, that the warrior, prophet, and councillor, for all these characters were united in his single person, began to think the attainment of his wishes possible. As a matter of course, much ignorance of the power of the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent was blended with these opinions and hopes; but it was scarcely an ignorance exceeding that of certain persons of far higher pretensions in knowledge, who live in another hemisphere, and who often set themselves up as infallible judges of all things connected with man and his attributes. Peter, the “Tribeless,” was not more in fault than those who fancied they saw the power of this great republic in the gallant little band collected at Corpus Christi, under its indomitable chief, and who, march by march, nay, foot by foot, as it might be, have perseveringly predicted the halt, the defeat, the disasters, and final discomfiture, which it has not yet pleased Divine Providence to inflict on this slight effort of the young Hercules, as he merely moves in his cradle. Alas, the enemy that most menaces the overthrow of this new and otherwise invincible exhibition of human force, is within; seated in the citadel itself; and must be narrowly watched, or he will act his malignant purpose, and destroy the fairest hopes that ever yet dawned on the fortunes of the human race!
The conference between the chiefs lasted fully an hour. Crowsfeather possessed much of the confidence of Peter, and, as for Onoah, neither Tecumseh, nor his brother the Prophet, commanded as much of the respect of Crowsfeather as he did himself. Some even whispered that the “Tribeless” was the individual who lay behind all, and that the others named merely acted as he suggested, or advised. The reader will obtain all the insight into the future that it is necessary now to give him, by getting a few of the remarks made by the two colloquists, just before they joined the rest of the party.
“My father, then, intends to lead his pale-faces on a crooked path, and take their scalps when he has done with them,” said Crowsfeather, who had been gravely listening to Peter's plans of future proceeding; “but who is to get the scalp of the Chippewa?”
“One of my Pottawattamie young men; but not until I have made use of him. I have a medicine-priest of the pale-faces and a warrior with me, but shall not put their scalps on my pole until they have paddled me further. The council is to be first held in the Oak Openings”--we translate this term freely, that used by Peter meaning rather “the open woods of the prairies”--“and I wish to show my prisoners to the chiefs, that they may see how easy it is to cut off all the Yankees. I have now four men of that people, and two squaws, in my power; let every red man destroy as many, and the land will soon be clear of them all!”
This was uttered with gleamings of ferocity in the speaker's face, that rendered his countenance terrible. Even Crowsfeather quailed a little before that fierce aspect; but the whole passed away almost as soon as betrayed, and was succeeded by a friendly and deceptive smile, that was characteristic of the wily Asiatic rather than of the aboriginal American.
“They cannot be counted,” returned the Pottawattamie chief, as soon as his restraint was a little removed by this less terrific aspect of his companion, “if all I hear is true. Blackbird says that even the squaws of the pale-faces are numerous enough to overcome all the red men that remain.”
“There will be two less, when I fasten to my pole the scalps of those on the other side of the river,” answered Peter, with another of his transient, but startling gleams of intense revenge. “But no matter, now: my brother knows all I wish him to do. Not a hair of the head of any of these pale-faces must be touched by any hand but mine. When the time comes, the knife of Onoah is sure. The Pottawattamies shall have their canoes, and can follow us up the river. They will find us in the Openings, and near the Prairie Round. They know the spot; for the red men love to hunt the deer in that region. Now, go and tell this to your young men; and tell them that corn will not grow, nor the deer wait to be killed by any of your people, if they forget to do as I have said. Vengeance shall come, when it is time.”
Crowsfeather communicated all this to his warriors, who received it as the ancients received the words of their oracles. Each member of the party endeavored to get an accurate notion of his duty, in order that he might comply to the very letter with the injunctions received. So profound was the impression made among all the red men of the north-west by the previous labors of the “Tribeless” to awaken a national spirit, and so great was their dread of the consequences of disobedience, that every warrior present felt as if his life were the threatened penalty of neglect or disinclination to obey.
No sooner, however, had Crowsfeather got through with his communication, than a general request was made that the problem of the whiskey-spring might be referred to Onoah for solution. The young men had strong hopes, not-withstanding all that had passed, that this spring might yet turn out to be a reality. The scent was still there, strong and fragrant, and they could not get rid of the notion that “fire-water” grew on that spot. It is true, their faith had been somewhat disturbed by the manner in which the medicine-man had left them, and by his failure to draw forth the gushing stream which he had impliedly promised, and in a small degree performed; nevertheless little pools of whiskey had been found on the rock, and several had tasted and satisfied themselves of the quality of the liquor. As is usual, that taste had created a desire for more, a desire that seldom slumbered on an Indian palate when strong drinks were connected with its gratification.
Peter heard the request with gravity, and consented to look into the matter with a due regard to his popularity and influence. He had his own superstitious views, but among them there did not happen to be one which admitted the possibility of whiskey's running in a stream from the living rock. Still he was willing to examine the charmed spot, scent the fragrant odor, and make up his own estimate of the artifices by which the bee-hunter had been practising on the untutored beings into whose hand chance had thrown him.
While the young men eagerly pointed out the precise spots where the scent was the strongest, Peter maintained the most unmoved gravity. He did not kneel to smell the rocks, like the other chiefs, for this an innate sense of propriety told him would be undignified; but he made his observations closely, and with a keen Indian-like attention to every little circumstance that might aid him in arriving at the truth. All this time, great was the awe and deep the admiration of the lookers-on. Onoah had succeeded in creating a moral power for himself among the Indians of the northwest which much exceeded that of any other red man of that region. The whites scarcely heard of him, knew but little of his career, and less of his true character, for both were shrouded in mystery. There is nothing remarkable in this ignorance of the pale-faces of the time. They did not understand their own leaders; much less the leaders of the children of the openings, the prairies, and the forest. At this hour, what is really known by the mass of the American people of the true characters of their public men? No nation that has any claim to civilization and publicity knows less, and for several very obvious reasons. The want of a capital in which the intelligence of the nation periodically assembles and whence a corrected public opinion on all such matters ought constantly to flow, as truth emanates from the collisions of minds, is one of these reasons. The extent of the country, which separates men by distances that no fact can travel over without incurring the dangers of being perverted on the road, is another. But the most fatal of al he influences that tend to mislead the judgment of the American citizen, is to be found in the abuse of a machinery that was intended to produce an exactly contrary effect. If the tongue was given to man to communicate ideas to his fellows, so has philosophy described it as “a gift to conceal his thoughts.” If the press was devised to circulate truth, so has it been changed into a means of circulating lies. One is easily, nay, more easily, sent abroad on the four winds of the heavens than the other. Truth requires candor, impartiality, honesty, research, and industry; but a falsehood, whether designed or not, stands in need of neither. Of that which is the most easily produced, the country gets the most; and it were idle to imagine that a people who blindly and unresistingly submit to be put, as it might be, under the feet of falsehood, as respects all their own public men, can ever get very accurate notions of those of other nations.
Thus was it with Onoah. His name was unknown to the whites, except as a terrible and much-dreaded avenger of the wrongs of his race. With the red men it was very different. They had no “forked tongues” to make falsehood take the place of truth; or if such existed they were not believed. The Pottawattamies now present knew all about Tecumseh, [Footnote: A “tiger stooping for his prey.”] of whom the whites had also various and ample accounts. This Shawanee chief had long been active among them, and his influence was extended far and near. He was a bold, restless, and ingenious warrior; one, perhaps, who better understood the art of war, as it was practised among red men, than any Indian then living. They knew the name and person, also, of his brother Elkswatawa, [Footnote: “A door opened.”] or the Prophet, whose name has also become incorporated with the histories of the times. These two chiefs were very powerful, though scarce dwelling regularly in any tribe; but their origin, their careers, and their characters were known to all, as were those of their common father, Pukeesheno, [Footnote: “I light from fly--“] and their mother, Meethetaske. [Footnote: “A turtle laying her eggs in the sand.”] But with Onoah it was very different. With him the past was as much of a mystery as the future. No Indian could say even of what tribe he was born. The totem that he bore on his person belonged to no people then existing on the continent, and all connected with him, his history, nation, and family, was conjecture and fancy.
It is said that the Indians have traditions which are communicated only to a favored few, and which by them have been transmitted from generation to generation. An enlightened and educated red man has quite recently told us in person, that he had been made the repository of some of these traditions, and that he had thus obtained enough of the history of his race to be satisfied that they were not derived from the lost tribes of Israel, though he declined communicating any more. It is so natural to resort to secrecy in order to extend influence, that we can have no difficulty In believing the existence of the practice; there probably being no other reason why Free Masonry or Odd Fellowship should have recourse to such an expedient, but to rule through the imagination in preference to the judgment. Now Peter enjoyed all the advantages of mystery. It was said that even his real name was unknown, that of Onoah having been given in token of the many scalps he took, and that of Wa-wa-nosh, which he also sometimes bore, having been bestowed on him by adoption in consequence of an act of favor extended to him from an Ojebway of some note, while that of Peter was clearly derived from the whites. Some of his greatest admirers whispered that when the true name of the “Tribeless” should get to be known, his origin, early career, and all relating to him would at once become familiar to every red man. At present, the Indians must rest content with what they saw and understood. The wisdom of Wa-wa-nosh made itself felt in the councils; his eloquence no speaker has equalled for ages; as for his vengeance on the enemies of his race, that was to be estimated by the scalps he had taken. More than this no Indian was to be permitted to know, until the mission of this oracle and chief was completed.
Had one enlightened by the education of a civilized man been there, to watch the movements and countenance of Peter as he scented the whiskey, and looked in vain for the cause of the odor, and for a clew to the mystery which so much perplexed the Pottawattamies, he would probably have discovered some reason to distrust the sincerity of this remarkable savage's doubts. If ever Peter was an actor, it was on that occasion. He did not, in the least, fall into any of the errors of his companions; but the scent a good deal confounded him at first. At length he came to the natural conclusion, that this unusual odor was in some way connected with the family he had left on the other shore; and from that moment his mind was at ease.
It did not suit the views of Peter, however, to explain to the Pottawattamies that which was now getting to be so obvious to himself. On the contrary, he rather threw dust into the eyes of the chiefs, with a view to bring them also under the influence of superstition. After making his observations with unmoved gravity, he promised a solution of the whole affair when they should again meet in the Openings, and proposed to recross the river. Before quitting the shore Peter and Crowsfeather had a clear understanding on the subject of their respective movements; and, as soon as the former began to paddle up against the wind, the latter called his young men together, made a short address, and led them into the woods, as if about to proceed on a march of length. The party, notwithstanding, did not proceed more than a mile and a half, when it came to a halt, and lighted a fire in order to cook some venison taken on the way.
When Peter reached the south shore, he found the whole group assembled to receive him. His tale was soon told. He had talked with the Pottawattamies, and they were gone. The canoes, however, must be carried to the other shore and left there, in order that their owners might recover their property when they returned. This much had Peter promised, and his pale-face friends must help him to keep his word. Then he pointed to the Openings as to their place of present safety. There they would be removed from all immediate danger, and he would accompany them and give them the countenance and protection of his name and presence. As for going south on the lake, that was impossible, so long as the wind lasted, and it was useless even could it be done. The troops had all left Chicago, and the fort was destroyed.
Parson Amen and Corporal Flint, both of whom were completely deluded by Peter, fancying him a secret friend of the whites, in consequence of his own protestations to that effect and the service he had already rendered them, in appearance at least, instantly acquiesced in this wily savage's proposal. It was the best, the wisest, nay, the only thing that now could be done. Mackinaw was gone, as well as Chicago, and Detroit must be reached by crossing the peninsula, instead of taking the easier but far more circuitous route of the lakes. Gershom was easily enough persuaded into the belief of the feasibility, as well as of the necessity, of this deviation from his original road, and he soon agreed to accompany the party.
With le Bourdon the case was different. He understood himself and the wilderness. For him the wind was fair, and there was no necessity for his touching at Mackinaw at all. It is true, he usually passed several days on that pleasant and salubrious island, and frequently disposed of lots of honey there; but he could dispense with the visit and the sales. There was certainly danger now to be apprehended from the Ottawas, who would be very apt to be out on the lake after this maritime excursion against the fort; but it was possible even to elude their vigilance. In a word, the bee-hunter did not believe in the prudence of returning to the Openings, but thought it by far the wisest for the whole party to make the best of its way by water to the settlements. All this he urged warmly on his white companions, taking them aside for that purpose, and leaving Peter and Pigeonswing together while he did so.
But Parson Amen would as soon have believed that his old congregation in Connecticut was composed of Philistines, as not to believe that the red men were the lost tribes, and that Peter, in particular, was not especially and elaborately described in the Old Testament. He had become so thoroughly possessed by this crotchet as to pervert everything that he saw, read, or heard, into evidence, of some sort or other, of the truth of his notions. In this respect there was nothing peculiar in the good missionary's weakness, it being a failing common to partisans of a theory, to discover proofs of its truths in a thousand things in which indifferent persons can find even no connection with the subject at all. In this frame of mind the missionary would as soon think of letting go his hold on the Bible itself, as think of separating from an Indian who might turn out any day to be a direct representative of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. Not to speak irreverently, but to use language that must be familiar to all, the well-meaning missionary wished to be in at the death.
Corporal Flint, too, had great faith in Peter. It was a part of the scheme of the savage to make this straight for-ward soldier an instrument in placing many scalps in hit power; and though he had designed from the first to execute his bloody office on the corporal himself, he did not intend to do so until he had made the most of him as a stool-pigeon. Here were four more pale-faces thrown in his power, principally by means of the confidence he had awakened in the minds of the missionary and the soldier; and that same confidence might be made instrumental in adding still more to the number. Peter was a sagacious, even a far-seeing savage, but he labored under the curse of ignorance. Had his information been of a more extended nature, he would have seen the utter fallacy of his project to destroy the pale-faces altogether, and most probably would have abandoned it.
It is a singular fact that, while such men as Tecumseh, his brother the Prophet, and Peter, were looking forward to the downfall of the republic on the side of the forest, so many, who ought to have been better informed on such a subject, were anxiously expecting, nay confidently predicting it, from beyond the Atlantic. Notwithstanding these sinister soothsayers, the progress of the nation has, by a beneficent Providence, been onward and onward, until it is scarcely presumptuous to suppose that even England has abandoned the expectation of classing this country again among her dependencies. The fortunes of America, under God, depend only on herself. America may destroy America; of that there is danger; but it is pretty certain that Europe united could make no serious impression on her. Favored by position, and filled with a population that we have ever maintained was one of the most military in existence, a truth that recent events are hourly proving to be true, it much exceeds the power of all the enemies of her institutions to make any serious impression on her. There is an enemy who may prove too much for her; it exists in her bosom; and God alone can keep him in subjection, and repress his desolation.
These were facts, however, of which Wa-wa-nosh, or Onoah, was as ignorant as if he were an English or French minister of state, and had got his notions of the country from English or French travellers, who wished for what they predicted. He had heard of the towns and population of the republic; but one gets a very imperfect notion of any fact of this sort by report, unless previous experience has prepared the mind to make the necessary comparisons, and fitted it to receive the images intended to be conveyed. No wonder, then, that Peter fell into a mistake common to those who had so many better opportunities of forming just opinions, and of arriving at truths that were sufficiently obvious to all who did not wilfully shut their eyes to their existence.
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Hearest thou voices on the shore That our ears perceive no more, Deafened by the cataract's roar?
Bear, through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, In thy heart the dew of youth, On thy lips the smile of truth. --LONGFELLOW.
From all that has been stated, the reader will, probably, be prepared to learn that Boden did not succeed in his effort to persuade Gershom, and the other Christians, to accompany him on his voyage round by Lake Huron. Corporal Flint was obdurate, and Parson Amen confiding. As for Gershom, he did not like the thought of retracing his steps so soon, and the females were obliged to remain with the husband and brother.
“You had better get out of the river while all the canoes are on this side,” said Margery, as she and le Bourdon walked toward the boats in company, the council having ended, and everything beginning to assume the appearance of action. “Remember you will be quite alone, and have a long, long road to travel!”
“I do remember all this, Margery, and see the necessity for all of us getting back to the settlements as fast as we can. I don't half like this Peter; his name is a bad one in the garrisons, and it makes me miserable to think that you may be in his power.”
“The missionary and the corporal, as well as my brother, seem willing to trust him--what can two females do, when their male protector has made up his mind in such a matter?”
“One who would very gladly be your protector, pretty Margery, has not made up his mind to the prudence of trusting Peter at all. Put yourself under my care, and my life shall be lost, or I will carry you safe to your friends in Detroit.”
This might be deemed tolerably explicit; yet was it not sufficiently so to satisfy female scruples, or female rights. Margery blushed, and she looked down, while she did not look absolutely displeased. But her answer was given firmly, and with a promptitude that showed she was quite in earnest.
“I cannot quit Dorothy, placed as she is--and it is my duty to die with brother,” she said.
“Have you thought enough of this, Margery? may not reflection change your mind?”
“This is a duty on which a girl is not called to reflect; she must FEEL, in a matter of conscience.”
The bee-hunter fairly sighed, and from a very resolute he became a very irresolute sort of person. As was natural to one in his situation, he let out the secret current his thoughts had taken, in the remarks which followed.
“I do not like the manner in which Peter and Pigeonswing are now talking together,” he said. “When an Injin is so earnest, there is generally mischief brewing. Do you see Peter's manner?”
“He seems to be telling the young warrior something that makes both forget themselves. I never saw two men who seem so completely to forget all the rest of the world as them two savages! What can be the meaning, Bourdon, of so much fierce earnestness?”
“I would give the world to know-possibly the Chippewa may tell me. We understand each other tolerably well, and, just as you spoke, he gave me a secret sign that I have a right to think means confidence and friendship. That savage is either a fast friend, or a thorough villain.”
“Is it safe to trust any of them, Bourdon? No--no--your best way will be to go down the lakes, and get back to Detroit as soon as you can. Not only your property, but your LIFE, is at risk.”
“Go, and leave you here, Margery--here, with a brother whose failing you know as well as I do, and who may, at any moment, fall back into his old ways! I should not be a man to do it!”
“But brother can get no liquor, now, for it is all emptied. When himself for a few days, Gershom is a good protector, as well as a good provider. You must not judge brother too harshly, from what you have seen of him, Bourdon.”
“I do not wish to judge him at all, Margery. We all have our failin's, and whiskey is his. I dare say mine are quite as bad, in some other way. It's enough for me, Margery, that Gershom is your brother, to cause me to try to think well of him. We must not trust to there being no more liquor among us; for, if that so'ger is altogether without his rations, he's the first so'ger I ever met with who was!”
“But this corporal is a friend of the minister, and ministers ought not to drink!”
“Ministers are like other men, as them that live much among 'em will soon find out. Hows'ever, if you WILL stay, Margery, there is no more to be said. I must cache [Footnote: A Western term, obviously derived from cacher, to conceal. Cache is much used by the Western adventurers.] my honey, and get the canoe ready to go up stream again. Where you go, Margery, I go too, unless you tell me that you do not wish my company.”
This was said quietly, but in the manner of one whose mind was made up. Margery scarce knew how to take it. That she was secretly delighted, cannot be denied; while, at the same time, that she felt a generous and lively concern for the fortunes of le Bourdon, is quite as certain. As Gershom just then called to her to lend her assistance in preparing to embark, she had no leisure for expostulation, nor do we know that she now seriously wished to divert the bee-hunter from his purpose.
It was soon understood by every one that the river was to be crossed, in order that Gershom might get his household effects, previously to ascending the Kalamazoo. This set all at--work but the Chippewa, who appeared to le Bourdon to be watchful and full of distrust. As the latter had a job before him, that would be likely to consume a couple of hours, the others were ready for a start long before he had his hole dug. It was therefore arranged that the bee-hunter should complete his task, while the others crossed the stream, and went in quest of Gershom's scanty stock of household goods. Pigeonswing, however, was not to be found, when the canoes were ready, and Peter proceeded without him. Nor did le Bourdon see anything of his friend until the adventurers were fairly on the north shore, when he rejoined le Bourdon, sitting on a log, a curious spectator of the latter's devices to conceal his property, but not offering to aid him in a single movement. The bee-hunter too well understood an Indian warrior's aversion to labor of all sorts, unless it be connected with his military achievements, to be surprised at his companion's indifference to his own toil. As the work went on, a friendly dialogue was kept up between the parties.
“I didn't know, Pigeonswing, but you had started for the openings, before us,” observed le Bourdon. “That tribeless old Injin made something of a fuss about your being out of the way; I dare say he wanted you to help back the furniture down to the canoes.”
“Got squaw--what he want--better to do dat?”
“So you would put that pretty piece of work on such persons as Margery and Dolly!”
“Why not, no? Bot' squaw-bot know how. Dere business to work for warrior.”
“Did you keep out of the way, then, lest old Peter should get you at a job that is onsuitable to your manhood?”
“Keep out of way of Pottawattamie,” returned the Chippewa; “no want to lose scalp-radder take his'n.” “But Peter says the Pottawattamies are all gone, and that we have no longer any reason to fear them; and this medicine-priest tells us, that what Peter says we can depend on for truth.”
“Dat good medicine-man, eh? T'ink he know a great deal, eh?”
“That is more than I can tell you, Pigeonswing; for though I've been a medicine-man myself, so lately, it is in a different line altogether from that of Parson Amen's.”
As the bee-hunter uttered this answer, he was putting the last of his honey-kegs into the cache, and as he rose from completing the operation, he laughed heartily, like one who saw images in the occurrences of the past night, that tended to divert himself, if they had not the same effect on the other spectators.
“If you medicine-man, can tell who Peter be? Winnebagoe, Sioux, Fox, Ojebway, Six Nations all say don't know him. Medicine-man ought to know--who he be, eh?”
“I am not enough of a medicine-man to answer your question, Pigeonswing. Set me at finding a whiskey-spring, or any little job of that sort, and I'll turn my back to no other whiskey-spring finder on the whole frontier; but, as for Peter, he goes beyond my calculations, quite. Why is he called Scalping Peter in the garrisons, if he be so good an Injin, Chippewa?”
“You ask question--you answer. Don't know, 'less he take a good many scalps. Hear he do take all he can find--den hear he don't.”
“But you take all you can find, Pigeonswing; and that which is good in you, cannot be so bad in Peter.”
“Don't take scalp from friend. When you hear Pigeonswing scalp FRIEND, eh?”
“I never did hear it; and hope I never shall. But when did you hear that Peter is so wicked?”
“S'pose he don't, 'cause he got no friend among pale-face. Bes' take care of dat man?”
“I'm of your way of thinking, myself, Chippewa; though the corporal and the priest think him all in all. When I asked Parson Amen how he came to be the associate of one who went by a scalping name, even he told me it was all name; that Peter hadn't touched a hair of a human head, in the way of scalping, since his youth, and that most of his notions and ways were quite Jewish, The parson has almost as much faith in Peter, as he has in his religion; I'm not quite sure he has not even more.”
“No matter. Bes' always for pale-face to trust pale-face, and Injin to trust Injin. Dat most likely to be right.”
“Nevertheless, I trust YOU Pigeonswing; and, hitherto, you have not deceived me!”
The Chippewa cast a glance of so much meaning on the bee-hunter, that the last was troubled by it. For many a day did le Bourdon remember that look; and painful were the apprehensions to which it gave birth. Until that morning, the intercourse between the two had been of the most confidential character; but something like a fierce hatred was blended in that look. Could it be that the feelings of the Chippewa were changed? and was it possible that Peter was in any way connected with this alteration in looks and sentiments? All these suspicions passed through le Bourdon's mind, as he finished his cache; and sufficiently disagreeable did he find it to entertain them. The circumstances, however, did not admit of any change of plan; and, in a few minutes, the two were in the canoe, and on their way to join their companions.
Peter had dealt fairly enough with those who accompanied him. The Pottawattamies were nowhere to be seen, and Gershom led the corporal to the place where his household goods had been secreted, in so much confidence, that both the men left their arms behind them. Such was the state of things when le Bourdon reached the north shore. The young man was startled, when his eyes fell on the rifles; but, on looking around, there did not really appear to be any sufficient reason why they might not be laid aside for a few minutes.
The bee-hunter, having disposed of all his honey, had now a nearly empty canoe; accordingly, he received a portion of Gershom's effects; all of which were safely transported from their place of concealment to the water side. Their owner was slowly recovering the use of his body and mind, though still a little dull, from his recent debauch. The females supplied his place, however, in many respects; and two hours after the party had landed, it was ready again to proceed on its journey into the interior. The last article was stowed in one of the canoes, and Gershom announced his willingness to depart.
At this moment, Peter led the bee-hunter aside, telling his friends that he would speedily rejoin them. Our hero followed his savage leader along the foot of the declivity, in the rear of the hut, until the former stopped at the place where the first, and principal fire of the past night, had been lighted. Here Peter made a sweeping gesture of his hand, as if to invite his companion to survey the different objects around. As this characteristic gesture was made, the Indian spoke.
“My brother is a medicine-man,” he said. “He knows where whiskey grows--let him tell Peter where to find the spring.”
The recollection of the scene of the previous night came so fresh and vividly over the imagination of the bee-hunter, that, instead of answering the question of the chief, he burst into a hearty fit of laughter. Then, fearful of giving offence, he was about to apologize for a mirth so ill-timed, when the Indian smiled, with a gleam of intelligence on his swarthy face, that seemed to say, “I understand it all,” and continued-- “Good--the chief with three eyes”--in allusion to the spy--glass that le Bourdon always carried suspended from his neck--“is a very great medicine-man; he knows when to laugh, and when to look sad. The Pottawattamies were dry, and he wanted to find them some whiskey to drink, but could not--our brother, in the canoe, had drunk it all. Good.”
Again the bee-hunter laughed; and though Peter did not join in his mirth, it was quite plain that he understood its cause. With this good-natured sort of intelligence between them, the two returned to the canoes; the bee-hunter always supposing that the Indian had obtained his object, in receiving his indirect admission, that the scene of the previous night had been merely a piece of ingenious jugglery. So much of a courtier, however, was Peter, and so entire his self-command, that on no occasion, afterward, did he ever make any further allusion to the subject.
The ascent of the river was now commenced. It was not a difficult matter for le Bourdon to persuade Margery, that her brother's canoe would be too heavily loaded for such a passage, unless she consented to quit it for his own. Pigeonswing took the girl's place, and was of material assistance in forcing the light, but steady craft, up stream. The three others continued in the canoe in which they had entered the river. With this arrangement, therefore, our adventurers commenced this new journey.
Every reader will easily understand, that ascending such a stream as the Kalamazoo was a very difficult thing from descending it. The progress was slow, and at many points laborious. At several of the “rifts,” it became necessary to “track” the canoes up; and places occurred at which the only safe way of proceeding was to unload them altogether, and transport boats, cargoes, and all, on the shoulders of the men, across what are called, in the language of the country, “portages,” or “carrying-places.” In such toil as this, the corporal was found to be very serviceable; but neither of the Indians declined to lend their assistance, in work of this manly character. By this time, moreover, Gershom had come round, and was an able-bodied, vigorous assistant, once more. If the corporal was the master of any alcohol, he judiciously kept it a secret; for not a drop passed any one's lips during the whole of that toilsome journey.
Although the difficult places in the river were sufficiently numerous, most of the reaches were places having steady, but not swift currents toward the lake. In these reaches the paddles, and those not very vigorously applied, enabled the travellers to advance as fast as was desirable; and such tranquil waters were a sort of resting-places to those who managed the canoes. It was while ascending these easy channels, that conversation most occurred; each speaker yielding, as was natural, to the impulses of the thoughts uppermost in his mind. The missionary talked much of the Jews; and, as the canoes came near each other, he entered at large, with their different occupants, into the reasons he had for believing that the red men of America were the lost tribes of Israel. “The very use of the word 'tribes,'” would this simple-minded, and not very profound expounder of the word of God, say, “is one proof of the truth of what I tell you. Now, no one thinks of dividing the white men of America into 'tribes.' Who ever heard of the 'tribe' of New England, or of the 'tribe' of Virginia, or of the 'tribe' of the Middle States? [Footnote: The reader is not to infer any exaggeration in this picture. There is no end to the ignorance and folly of sects and parties, when religious or political zeal runs high. The writer well remembers to have heard a Universalist, of more zeal than learning, adduce, as an argument in favor of his doctrine, the twenty-fifth chapter and forty-sixth verse of St. Matthew, where we are told that the wicked “shall go away into ever-lasting punishment; but the righteous into Vis eternal”; by drawing a distinction between the adjectives, and this so much the more, because the Old Testament speaks of “everlasting hills,” and “everlasting valleys “; thus proving, from the Bible, a substantial difference between “everlasting” and “eternal.” Now, every Sophomore knows that the word used in Matthew is the same in both cases, being “aionion,” or “existing forever.”] Even among the blacks, there are no tribes. There is a very remarkable passage in the sixty-eighth Psalm, that has greatly struck me, since my mind has turned to this subject; 'God shall wound the head his enemies.' saith the Psalmist, 'and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his wickedness.' Here is a very obvious allusion to a well-known, and what we think, a barbarous practice of the red men; but, rely on it, friends, nothing that is permitted on earth is permitted in vain. The attentive reader of the inspired book, by gleaning here and there, can collect much authority for this new opinion about the lost tribes; and the day will come, I do not doubt, when men will marvel that the truth hath been so long hidden from them. I can scarcely open a chapter, in the Old Testament, that some passage does not strike me as going to prove this identity, between the red men and the Hebrews; and, were they all collected together, and published in a book, mankind would be astonished at their lucidity and weight. As for scalping, it is a horrid thing in our eyes, but it is honorable with the red men; and I have quoted to you the words of the Psalmist, in order to show the manner in which divine wisdom inflicts penalties on sin. Here is plain justification of the practice, provided always that the sufferer be in the bondage of transgression, and obnoxious to divine censure. Let no man, therefore, in the pride of his learning, and, perhaps, of his prosperity, disdain to believe things that are so manifestly taught and foretold; but let us all bow in humble submission to the will of a Being who, to our finite understanding, is so perfectly incomprehensible.”
We trust that no one of our readers will be disposed to deride Parson Amen's speculations on this interesting subject, although this may happen to be the first occasion on which he has ever heard the practice of taking scalps justified by Scripture. Viewed in a proper spirit, they ought merely to convey a lesson of humility, by rendering apparent the wisdom, nay the necessity, of men's keeping them-selves within the limits of the sphere of knowledge they were designed to fill, and convey, when rightly considered, as much of a lesson to the Puseyite, with abstractions that are quite as unintelligible to himself as they are to others; to the high-wrought and dogmatical Calvinist, who in the midst of his fiery zeal, forgets that love is the very essence of the relation between God and man; to the Quaker, who seems to think the cut of a coat essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other “1st,” appears to believe that the “rock” on which Christ declared he would found his church was the “Rock of Plymouth”; and to the unbeliever, who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one to substitute in their stead. Humility, in matters of this sort, is the great lesson that all should teach and learn; for it opens the way to charity, and eventually to faith, and through both of these to hope; finally, through all of these, to heaven.
The journey up the Kalamazoo lasted many days, the ascent being often so painful, and no one seeming in a hurry. Peter waited for the time set for his council to approach, and was as well content to remain in his canoe, as to “camp out” in the openings. Gershom never was in haste, while the bee-hunter would have been satisfied to pass the summer in so pleasant a manner, Margery being seated most of the time in his canoe. In his ordinary excursions, le Bourdon carried the mastiff as a companion; but, now that his place was so much better filled, Hive was suffered to roam the woods that lined most of the river-banks, joining his master from time to time at the portages or landings. As for the missionary and the corporal, impatience formed no part of their present disposition. The first had been led, by the artful Peter, to expect great results to his theory from the assembly of chiefs which was to meet in the “openings”; and the credulous parson was, in one sense, going as blindly on the path of destruction, as any sinner it had ever been his duty to warn of his fate, was proceeding in the same direction in another. The corporal, too, was the dupe of Peter's artifices. This man had heard so many stories to the Indian's prejudice, at the different posts where he had been stationed, as at first to render him exceedingly averse to making the present journey in his company. The necessity of the case, as connected with the preservation of his own life after the massacre of Fort Dearborn, and the influence of the missionary, had induced him to overlook his ancient prejudices, and to forget opinions that, it now occurred to him, had been founded in error. Once fairly within the influence of Peter's wiles, a simple-minded soldier like the corporal, was soon completely made the Indian's dupe. By the time the canoe reached the mouth of the Kalamazoo, as has been related, each of these men placed the most implicit reliance on the good faith and friendly feelings of the very being whose entire life, both sleeping and waking thoughts, were devoted, not only to his destruction, but to that of the whole white race on the American continent. So bland was the manner of this terrible savage, when it comported with his views to conceal his ruthless designs, that persons more practised and observant than either of his two companions might have been its dupes, not to say its victims. While the missionary was completely mystified by his own headlong desire to establish a theory, and to announce to the religious world where the lost tribes were to be found, the corporal had aided in deceiving himself, also, by another process. With him, Peter had privately conversed of war, and had insinuated that he was secretly laboring in behalf of his great father at Washington, and against the other great father down at Montreal. As between the two, Peter professed to lean to the interests of the first; though, had he laid bare his in-most soul, a fiery hatred of each would have been found to be its predominant feeling. But Corporal Flint fondly fancied he was making a concealed march with an ally, while he thus accompanied one of the fiercest enemies of his race.
Peter is not to be judged too harshly. It is always respectable to defend the fireside, and the land of one's nativity, although the cause connected with it may be sometimes wrong. This Indian knew nothing of the principles of colonization, and had no conception that any other than its original owners--original so far as his traditions reached--could have a right to his own hunting-grounds. Of the slow but certain steps by which an overruling Providence is extending a knowledge of the true God, and of the great atonement through the death of his blessed Son, Peter had no conception; nor would it probably have seemed right to his contracted mind, had he even seen and understood this general tendency of things. To him, the pale-face appeared only as a rapacious invader, and not a creature obeying the great law of his destiny, the end of which is doubtless to help knowledge to abound, until it shall “cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.” Hatred, inextinguishable and active hatred, appeared to be the law of this man's being; and he devoted all the means, aided by all the intelligence he possessed, to the furtherance of his narrow and short-sighted means of vengeance and redress. In all this, he acted in common with Tecumseh and his brother, though his consummate art kept him behind a veil, while the others were known and recognized as open and active foes. No publication speaks of this Peter, nor does any orator enumerate his qualities, while the other two chiefs have been the subjects of every species of descriptive talent, from that of the poet to that of the painter.
As day passed after day, the feeling of distrust in the bosom of the bee-hunter grew weaker and weaker, and Peter succeeded in gradually worming himself into his confidence also. This was done, moreover, without any apparent effort. The Indian made no professions of friendship, laid himself out for no particular attention, nor ever seemed to care how his companions regarded his deportment. His secret purposes he kept carefully smothered in his own breast, it is true; but, beyond that, no other sign of duplicity could have been discovered even by one who knew his objects and schemes. So profound was his art, that it had the aspect of nature. Pigeonswing alone was alive to the danger of this man's company; and he knew it only by means of certain semi-confidential communications received in his character of a red man. It was no part of Peter's true policy to become an ally to either of the great belligerents of the day. On the contrary, his ardent wish was to see them destroy each other, and it was the sudden occurrence of the present war that had given a new impulse to his hopes, and a new stimulus to his efforts, as a time most propitious to his purposes. He was perfectly aware of the state of the Chippewa's feelings, and he knew that this man was hostile to the Pottawattamies, as well as to most of the tribes of Michigan; but this made no difference with him. If Pigeonswing took the scalp of a white man, he cared not whether it grew on an English or an American head; in either case it was the destruction of his enemy. With such a policy constantly in view, it cannot be matter of surprise that Peter continued on just as good terms with Pigeonswing as with Crowsfeather. But one precaution was observed in his intercourse with the first. To Crowsfeather, then on the war-path in quest of Yankee scalps, he had freely communicated his designs on his own white companions, while he did not dare to confide to the Chippewa this particular secret, since that Indian's relations with the bee-hunter were so amicable as to be visible to every observer. Peter felt the necessity of especial caution in his communication with this savage, therefore; and this was the reason why the Chippewa was in so much painful uncertainty as to the other's intentions. He had learned enough to be distrustful, but not enough to act with decision.
Once, and once only, during their slow passage up the Kalamazoo, did the bee-hunter observe something about Peter to awaken his original apprehensions. The fourth day after leaving the mouth of the river, and when the whole party were resting after the toil of passing a “carrying-place,” our hero had observed the eyes of that tribeless savage roaming from one white face to another, with an expression in them so very fiendish, as actually to cause his heart to beat quicker than common. The look was such a one as le Bourdon could not remember to have ever before beheld in a human countenance. In point of fact, he had seen Peter in one of those moments when the pent fires of the volcano, that ceaselessly raged within his bosom, were becoming difficult to suppress; and when memory was busiest in recalling to his imagination scenes of oppression and wrong, that the white man is only too apt to forget amid the ease of his civilization, and the security of his power. But the look, and the impression produced by it on le Bourdon, soon passed away, and were forgotten by him to whom it might otherwise have proved to be a most useful warning.
It was a little remarkable that Margery actually grew to be attached to Peter, often manifesting toward the chief attentions and feelings such as a daughter is apt to exhibit toward a father. This arose from the high and courteous bearing of this extraordinary savage. At all times, an Indian warrior is apt to maintain the dignified and courteous bearing that has so often been remarked in the race, but it is very seldom that he goes out of his way to manifest attention to the squaws. Doubtless these men have the feelings of humanity, and love their wives and offspring like others; but it is so essential a part of their training to suppress the exhibition of such emotions, that it is seldom the mere looker-on has occasion to note them. Peter, however, had neither wife nor child; or if they existed, no one knew where either was to be found. The same mystery shrouded this part of his history as veiled all the rest. In his hunts, various opportunities occurred for exhibiting to the females manly attentions, by offering to them the choicest pieces of his game, and pointing out the most approved Indian modes of cooking the meats, so as to preserve their savory properties. This he did sparingly at first, and as a part of a system of profound deception; but day by day, and hour after hour, most especially with Margery, did his manner become sensibly less distant, and more natural. The artlessness, the gentle qualities, blended with feminine spirit as they were, and the innocent gayety of the girl, appeared to win on this nearly remorseless savage, in spite of his efforts to resist her influence. Perhaps the beauty of Margery contributed its share in exciting these novel emotions in the breast of one so stern. We do not mean that Peter yielded to feelings akin-to love; of this, he was in a manner incapable; but a man can submit to a gentle regard for woman that shall be totally free from passion. This sort of regard Peter certainly began to entertain for Margery; and like begetting like, as money produces money, it is not surprising that the confidence of the girl herself, as well as her sympathies, should continue to increase in the favor of this terrible Indian.
But the changes of feeling, and the various little incidents to which we have alluded, did not occur in a single moment of time. Day passed after day, and still the canoes were working their way up the winding channels of the Kalamazoo, placing at each setting sun longer and longer reaches of its sinuous stream between the travellers and the broad sheet of Michigan. As le Bourdon had been up and down the river often, in his various excursions, he acted as the pilot of the navigation; though all worked, even to the missionary and the Chippewa. On such an expedition, toil was not deemed to be discreditable to a warrior, and Pigeonswing used the paddle and the pole as willingly, and with as much dexterity, as any of the party.
It was only on the eleventh day after quitting the mouth of the river, that the canoes came to in the little bay where le Bourdon was in the habit of securing his light bark, when in the openings. Castle Meal was in full view, standing peacefully in its sweet solitude; and Hive, who, as he came within the range of his old hunts, had started off, and got to the spot the previous evening, now stood on the bank of the river to welcome his master and his friends to the chiente. It wanted a few minutes of sunset as the travellers landed, and the parting rays of the great luminary of our system were glancing through the various glades of the openings, imparting a mellow softness to the herbage and flowers. So far as the bee-hunter could perceive, not even a bear had visited the place in his absence. On ascending to his abode and examining the fastenings, and on entering the hut, storehouse, etc., le Bourdon became satisfied that all the property he had left behind was safe, and that the foot of man--he almost thought of beast too--had not visited the spot at all during the last fortnight.
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Hope in your mountains, and hope in your streams, Bow down in their worship, and loudly pray; Trust in your strength, and believe in your dreams, But the wind shall carry them all away. --BRAINARD.
The week which succeeded the arrival of our party at Chateau au Miel, or Castle Meal, as le Bourdon used to call his abode, was one of very active labor. It was necessary to house the adventurers, and the little habitation already built was quite insufficient for such a purpose. It was given to the females, who used it as a private apartment for themselves, while the cooking, eating, and even sleeping, so far as the males were concerned, were all done beneath the trees of the openings. But a new chiente was soon constructed, which, though wanting in the completeness and strength of Castle Meal, was sufficient for the wants of these sojourners in the wilderness. It is surprising with how little of those comforts which civilization induces us to regard as necessaries we can get along, when cast into the midst of the western wilds. The female whose foot has trodden, from infancy upward, on nothing harder than a good carpet-who has been reared amid all the appliances of abundance and art, seems at once to change her nature, along with her habits, and often proves a heroine, and an active assistant, when there was so much reason to apprehend she might turn out to be merely an encumbrance. In the course of a life that is now getting to be well stored with experience of this sort, as well as of many other varieties, we can recall a hundred cases of women, who were born and nurtured in affluence and abundance, who have cheerfully quitted the scenes of youth, their silks and satins, their china and plate, their mahogany and Brussels, to follow husbands and fathers into the wilderness, there to compete with the savage, often for food, and always for the final possession of the soil!
But in the case of Dorothy and Blossom, the change had never been of this very broad character, and habit had long been preparing them for scenes even more savage than that into which they were now cast. Both were accustomed to work, as, blessed be God! the American woman usually works; that is to say, within doors, and to render home neat, comfortable, and welcome. As housewives, they were expert and willing, considering the meagreness of their means; and le Bourdon told the half-delighted, half-blushing Margery, ere the latter had been twenty-four hours in his chiente, that nothing but the presence of such a one as herself was wanting to render it an abode fit for a prince! Then, the cooking was so much improved! Apart from cleanliness, the venison was found to be more savory; the cakes were lighter; and the pork less greasy. On this subject of grease, however, we could wish that a sense of right would enable us to announce its utter extinction in the American kitchen; or, if not absolutely its extinction, such a subjection of the unctuous properties, as to bring them within the limits of a reasonably accurate and healthful taste. To be frank, Dorothy carried a somewhat heavy hand, in this respect; but pretty Margery was much her superior. How this difference in domestic discipline occurred, is more than we can say; but of its existence there can be no doubt There are two very respectable sections of the civilized world to which we should imagine no rational being would ever think of resorting in order to acquire the art of cookery, and these are Germany and the land of the Pilgrims. One hears, and reads in those elegant specimens of the polite literature of the day, the letters from Washington, and from various travellers, who go up and down this river in steamboats, or along that railway, gratis, much in honor of the good things left behind the several writers, in the “region of the kock”; but, woe betide the wight who is silly enough to believe in all this poetical imagery, and who travels in that direction, in the expectation of finding a good table! It is extraordinary that such a marked difference does exist, on an interest of this magnitude, among such near neighbors; but, of the fact, we should think no intelligent and experienced man can doubt. Believing as we do, that no small portion of the elements of national character can be, and are, formed in the kitchen, the circumstance may appear to us of more moment than to some of our readers. The vacuum left in cookery, between Boston and Baltimore for instance, is something like that which exists between Le Verrier's new planet and the sun.
But Margery could even fry pork without causing it to swim in grease, and at a venison steak, a professed cook was not her superior. She also understood various little mysteries, in the way of converting their berries and fruits of the wilderness into pleasant dishes; and Corporal Flint soon affirmed that it was a thousand pities she did not live in a garrison, which, agreeably to his view of things, was something like placing her at the comptoir of the Cafe de Paris, or of marrying her to some second Vatel.
With the eating and drinking, the building advanced pari passu. Pigeonswing brought in his venison, his ducks, his pigeons, and his game of different varieties, daily, keeping the larder quite as well supplied as comported with the warmth of the weather; while the others worked on the new chiente. In order to obtain materials for this building, one so much larger than his old abode, Ben went up the Kalamazoo about half a mile, where he felled a sufficient number of young pines, with trunks of about a foot in diameter, cutting them into lengths of twenty and thirty feet, respectively. These lengths, or trunks, were rolled into the river, down which they slowly floated, until they arrived abreast of Castle Meal, where they were met by Peter, in a canoe, who towed each stick, as it arrived, to the place of landing. In this way, at the end of two days' work, a sufficient quantity of materials was collected to commence directly on the building itself.
Log-houses are of so common occurrence, as to require no particular description of the one now put up, from us. It was rather less than thirty feet in length, and one-third narrower than it was long. The logs were notched, and the interstices were filled by pieces of the pine, split to a convenient size. The roof was of bark, and of the simplest construction, while there was neither door nor window; though one aperture was left for the first, and two for the last. Corporal Flint, however, was resolved that not only a door should be made, as well as shutters for the windows, but that the house should, in time, be picketed. When le Bourdon remonstrated with him on the folly of taking so much unnecessary pains, it led to a discussion, in which the missionary even felt constrained to join.
“What's the use--what's the use?” exclaimed le Bourdon a little impatiently, when he found the corporal getting to be in earnest in his proposal. “Here have I lived, safely, two seasons in Castle Meal, without any pickets or palisades; and yet you want to turn this new house into a regular garrison!”
“Aye, Bourdon, that was in peaceable times; but these is war times. I've seen the fall of Fort Dearborn, and I don't want to see the fall of another post this war. The Pottawattamies is hostile, even Peter owns; and the Pottawattamies has been here once, as you say yourself, and may come ag'in.”
“The only Pottawattamie who has ever been at this spot, to my knowledge, is dead, and his bones are bleaching up yonder in the openings. No fear of him, then.”
“His body is gone,” answered the corporal; “and what is more the rifle is gone with it. I heard that his rifle had been forgotten, and went to collect the arms left on the field of battle, but found nothing. No doubt his friends have burned, or buried, the chief, and they will be apt to take another look in this quarter of the country, having l'arnt the road.”
Boden was struck with this intelligence, as well as with the reasoning, and after a moment's pause, he answered in a way that showed a wavering purpose.
“It will take a week's work, to picket or palisade the house,” he answered, “and I wish to be busy among the bees, once more.”
“Go to your bees, Bourdon, and leave me to fortify and garrison, as becomes my trade. Parson Amen, here, will tell you that the children of Israel are often bloody-minded and are not to be forgotten.”
“The corporal is right,” put in the missionary; “the corporal is quite right. The whole history of the ancient Jews gives us this character of them; and even Saul of Tarsus was bent on persecution and slaughter, until his hand was stayed by the direct manifestation of the power of God. I can see glimmerings of this spirit in Peter, and this at a moment when he is almost ready to admit that he's a descendant of Israel.”
“Is Peter ready to allow that?” asked the bee-hunter, with more interest in the answer than he would have been willing to allow.
“As good as that-yes, quite as good as that. I can see, plainly, that Peter has some heavy mystery on his mind; sooner, or later, we shall learn it. When it does come out, the world may be prepared to learn the whole history of the Ten Tribes!”
“In my judgment,” observed the corporal, “that chief could give the history of twenty, if he was so minded.”
“There were but ten of them, brother Flint--but ten; and of those ten he could give us a full and highly interesting account. One of these days, we shall hear it all; in the mean time, it may be well enough to turn one of these houses into some sort of a garrison.”
“Let it, then, be Castle Meal,” said le Bourdon; “surely, if any one is to be defended and fortified in this way, it ought to be the women. You may easily palisade that hut, which is so much stronger than this, and so much smaller.”
With this compromise, the work went on. The corporal dug a trench four feet deep, encircling the “castle,” as happy as a lord the whole time; for this was not the first time he had been at such work, which he considered to be altogether in character, and suitable to his profession. No youthful engineer, fresh from the Point, that seat of military learning to which the republic is even more indebted for its signal successes in Mexico, than to the high military character of this population-no young aspirant for glory, fresh from this useful school, could have greater delight in laying out his first bastion, or counter-scarp, or glacis, than Corporal Flint enjoyed in fortifying Castle Meal. It will be remembered that this was the first occasion he was ever actually at the head of the engineering department Hitherto, it had been his fortune to follow; but now it had become his duty to lead. As no one else, of that party, had ever been employed in such a work on any previous occasion, the corporal did not affect to conceal the superior knowledge with which he was overflowing. Gershom he found a ready and active assistant; for, by this time, the whiskey was well out of him; and he toiled with the greater willingness, as he felt that the palisades would add to the security of his wife and sister. Neither did Parson Amen disdain to use the pick and shovel; for, while the missionary had the fullest reliance in the fact that the red men of that region were the descendants of the children of Israel, he regarded them as a portion of the chosen people who were living under the ban of the divine displeasure, and as more than usually influenced by those evil spirits, whom St. Paul mentions as the powers of the air. In a word, while the good missionary had all faith in the final conversion and restoration of these children of the forests, he did not overlook the facts of their present barbarity, and great propensity to scalp. He was not quite as efficient as Gershom, at this novel employment, but a certain inborn zeal rendered him both active and useful. As for the Indians, neither of them deigned to touch a tool. Pigeonswing had little opportunity for so doing, indeed, being usually, from the rising to the setting sun, out hunting for the support of the party; while Peter passed most of his time in ruminations and solitary walks. This last paid little attention to the work about the castle, either knowing it would, at any moment, by an act of treachery, be in his power to render all these precautions of no avail; or, relying on the amount of savage force that he knew was about to collect in the openings. Whenever he cast a glance on the progress of the work, it was with an eye of great indifference; once he even carried his duplicity so far, as to make a suggestion to the corporal, by means of which, as he himself expressed it, in his imperfect English--“Injin no get inside, to use knife and tomahawk.” This seeming indifference, on the part of Peter, did not escape the observation of the bee-hunter, who became still less distrustful of that mysterious savage, as he noted his conduct in connection with the dispositions making for defence.
Le Bourdon would not allow a tree of any sort to be felled anywhere near his abode. While the corporal and his associates were busy in digging the trench, he had gone to a considerable distance, quite out of sight from Castle Meal, and near his great highway, the river, where he cut and trimmed the necessary number of burr-oaks for the palisades. Boden labored the more cheerfully at this work, for two especial reasons. One was the fact that the defences might be useful to himself, hereafter, as much against bears as against Indians; and the other, because Margery daily brought her sewing or knitting, and sat on the fallen trees, laughing and chatting, as the axe performed its duties. On three several occasions Peter was present, also, accompanying Blossom, with a kindness of manner, and an attention to her pretty little tastes in culling flowers, that would have done credit to a man of a higher school of civilization.
The reader is not to suppose, however, because the Indian pays but little outward attention to the squaws, that he is without natural feeling, or manliness of character. In some respects his chivalrous devotion to the sex is, perhaps, in no degree inferior to that of the class which makes a parade of such sentiments, and this quite as much from convention and ostentation, as from any other motive. The red man is still a savage beyond all question, but he is a savage with so many nobler and more manly qualities, when uncorrupted by communion with the worst class of whites, and not degraded by extreme poverty, as justly to render him a subject of our admiration, in self-respect, in dignity, and in simplicity of deportment. The Indian chief is usually a gentleman; and this, though he may have never heard of Revelation, and has not the smallest notion of the Atonement, and of the deep obligations it has laid on the human race.
Amid the numberless exaggerations of the day, one of particular capacity has arisen connected with the supposed character of a gentleman. Those who regard all things through the medium of religious feeling, are apt to insist that he who is a Christian, is necessarily a gentleman; while he can be no thorough gentleman, who has not most of the qualities of the Christian character. This confusion in thought and language, can lead to no really useful result, while it embarrasses the minds of many, and renders the expression of our ideas less exact and comprehensive than they would otherwise be.
We conceive that a man may be very much of a Christian, and very little of a gentleman; or very much of a gentleman, and very little of a Christian. There is, in short, not much in common between the two characters, though it is possible for them to become united in the same individual. That the finished courtesies of polished life may wear some of the aspects of that benevolence which causes the Christian “to love his neighbor as himself,” is certainly true, though the motives of the parties are so very different as to destroy all real identity between them. While the moving principle of a gentleman is self-respect, that of a Christian is humility. The first is ready to lay down his life in order to wipe away an imaginary dishonor, or to take the life of another; the last is taught to turn the other cheek, when smitten. In a word, the first keeps the world, its opinions and its estimation, ever uppermost in his thoughts; the last lives only to reverence God, and to conform to his will, in obedience to his revealed mandates. Certainly, there is that which is both grateful and useful in the refined deportment of one whose mind and manners have been polished even in the schools of the world; but it is degrading to the profoundly beautiful submission of the truly Christian temper, to imagine that anything like a moral parallel can justly be run between them.
Of course, Peter had none of the qualities of him who sees and feels his own defects, and relies only on the merits of the atonement for his place among the children of light, while he had so many of those qualities which depend on the estimate which man is so apt to place on his own merits. In this last sense, this Indian had a great many of the essentials of a gentleman; a lofty courtesy presiding over all his intercourse with others, when passion or policy did not thrust in new and sudden principles of action. Even the missionary was so much struck with the gentleness of this mysterious savage's deportment in connection with Margery, as at first to impute it to a growing desire to make a wife of that flower of the wilderness. But closer observation induced greater justice to the Indian in this respect Nothing like the uneasiness, impatience, or distrust of passion could be discerned in his demeanor; and when Parson Amen perceived that the bee-hunter's marked devotion to the beautiful Blossom rather excited a benevolent and kind interest in the feelings of Peter, so far at least as one could judge of the heart by external appearances, than anything that bore the fierce and uneasy impulses of jealousy, he was satisfied that his original impression was a mistake.
As le Bourdon flourished his axe, and Margery plied her needles, making a wholesome provision for the coming winter, the mysterious Indian would stand, a quarter of an hour at a time, immovable as a statue, his eyes riveted first on one, and then on the other. What passed at such moments in that stern breast, it exceeds the penetration of man to say: but that the emotions thus pent within barriers that none could pass or destroy, were not always ferocious and revengeful, a carefully observant spectator might possibly have suspected, had such a person been there to note all the signs of what was uppermost in the chiefs thoughts. Still, gleamings of sudden, but intense ferocity did occasionally occur; and, at such instants, the countenance of this extraordinary being was truly terrific. Fortunately, such bursts of uncontrollable feeling were transient, being of rare occurrence, and of very short duration.
By the time the corporal had his trenches dug, le Bourdon was prepared with his palisades, which were just one hundred in number, being intended to enclose a space of forty feet square. The men all united in the transportation of the timber, which was floated down the river on a raft of white pine, the burr-oak being of a specific gravity that fresh water would not sustain. A couple of days, however, sufficed for the transportation by water, and as many more for that by land, between the place of landing and Castle Meal. This much accomplished, the whole party rested from their labors, the day which succeeded being the Sabbath.
Those who dwell habitually amid the haunts of men, alone thoroughly realize the vast importance that ought to be attached to the great day of rest. Men on the ocean, and men in the forest, are only too apt to overlook the returns of the Sabbath; thus slowly, but inevitably alienating themselves more and more from the dread Being who established the festival, as much in his own honor as for the good of man. When we are told that the Almighty is jealous of his rights, and desires to be worshipped, we are not to estimate this wish by any known human standard, but are ever to bear in mind that it is exactly in proportion as we do reverence the Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth that we are nearest, or farthest, from the condition of the blessed. It is probably for his own good, that the adoration of man is pleasing in the eyes of God.
The missionary, though a visionary and an enthusiast, as respected the children of Israel, was a zealous observer of his duties. On Sundays, he never neglected to set up his tabernacle, even though it were in a howling wilderness, and went regularly through the worship of God, according to the form of the sect to which he belonged. His influence, on the present occasion, was sufficient to cause a suspension of all labor, though not without some remonstrances on the part of the corporal. The latter contended that, in military affairs, there was no Sunday known, unless it might be in peaceable times, and that he had never heard of intrenchments “resting from their labors,” on the part of either the besieger or the besieged. Work of that sort, he thought, ought to go on, day and night, by means of reliefs; and, instead of pausing to hold church, he had actually contemplated detailing fatigue parties to labor through, not only that day, but the whole of the succeeding night.
As for Peter, he never offered the slightest objection to any of Parson Amen's sermons or prayers. He listened to both with unmoved gravity, though no apparent impression was ever made on his feelings. The Chippewa hunted on the Sabbaths as much as on any other day; and it was in reference to this fact that the following little conversation took place between Margery and the missionary, as the party sat beneath the oaks, passing a tranquil eventide at midsummer.
“How happens it, Mr. Amen,” said Margery, who had insensibly adopted the missionary's sobriquet, “that no red man keeps the Sabbath-day, if they are all descended from the Jews? This is one of the most respected of all the commandments, and it does not seem natural”--Margery's use of terms was necessarily influenced by association and education-“that any of that people should wholly forget the day of rest.”
“Perhaps you are not aware, Margery, that the Jews, even in civilized countries, do not keep the same Sabbath as the Christians,” returned the missionary. “They have public worship on a Saturday, as we do on a Sunday. Now, I did think I saw some signs of Peter's privately worshipping yesterday, while we were all so busy at our garrison. You may have observed how thoughtful and silent the chief was in the middle of the afternoon.”
“I DID observe it,” said the bee-hunter, “but must own I did not suspect him of holding meeting for any purposes within himself. That was one of the times when I like the manners and behavior of this Injin the least.”
“We do not know--we do not know--perhaps his spirit struggled with the temptations of the Evil One. To me he appeared to be worshipping, and I set the fact down as a proof that the red men keep the Jewish Sabbath.”
“I did not know that the Jews keep a Sabbath different from our own, else I might have thought the same. But I never saw a Jew, to my knowledge. Did you, Margery?”
“Not to know him for one,” answered the girl; and true enough was the remark of each. Five-and-thirty years ago, America was singularly not only a Christian but a Protestant nation. Jews certainly did exist in the towns, but they were so blended with the rest of the population, and were so few in number, as scarcely to attract attention to them as a sect. As for the Romanists, they too had their churches and their dioceses; but what untravelled American had then ever seen a nun? From monks, Heaven be praised, we are yet spared; and this is said without any prejudice against the denomination to which they usually belong. He who has lived much in a country where that sect prevails, if a man of a particle of liberality, soon learns that piety and reverence for God, and a deep sense of all the Christian obligations, can just as well, nay better, exist in a state of society where a profound submission to well-established dogmas is to be found, than in a state of society where there is so much political freedom as to induce the veriest pretenders to learning to imagine that each man is a church and a hierarchy in his own person! All this is rapidly changing. Romanists abound, and spots that half a century since, appeared to be the most improbable place in the world to admit of the rites of the priests of Rome, now hear the chants and prayers of the mass-books. All this shows a tendency toward that great commingling of believers, which is doubtless to precede the final fusion of sects, and the predicted end.
On the Monday that succeeded the Sabbath mentioned, the corporal had all his men at work, early, pinning together his palisades, making them up into manageable bents, and then setting them up on their legs. As the materials were all there, and quite ready to be put together, the work advanced rapidly; and by the time the sun drew near the western horizon once more, Castle Meal was surrounded by its bristling defences. The whole was erect and stay-lathed, waiting only for the earth to be shovelled back into the trench, and to be pounded well down. As it was, the palisades offered a great increase of security to those in the chiente, and both the females expressed their obligations to their friends for having taken this important step toward protecting them from the enemy. When they retired for the night, everything was arranged, so that the different members of the party might know where to assemble within the works. Among the effects of Gershom, were a conch and a horn; the latter being one of those common instruments of tin, which are so much used in and about American farm-houses, to call the laborers from the field. The conch was given to the men, that, in case of need, they might sound the alarm from without, while the horn, or trumpet of tin, was suspended by the door of the chiente, in order that the females might have recourse to it, at need.
About midnight, long after the whole party had retired to rest, and when the stillness of the hours of deepest repose reigned over the openings, the bee-hunter was awoke from his sleep by an unwonted call. At first, he could scarce believe his senses, so plaintive, and yet so wild, was the blast. But there could be no mistake: it was the horn from the chiente, and, in a moment, he was on his feet. By this time, the corporal was afoot, and presently all the men were in motion. On this occasion, Gershom manifested a readiness and spirit that spoke equally well for his heart and his courage. He was foremost in rushing to the assistance of his wife and sister, though le Bourdon was very close on his heels.
On reaching the gate of the palisade, it was found closed, and barred within; nor did any one appear, until Dorothy was summoned, by repeated calls, in the well-known voice of her husband. When the two females came out of the chiente, great was their wonder and alarm! No horn had been blown by either of them, and there the instrument itself hung, on its peg, as quiet and mute as if a blast had never been blown into it The bee-hunter, on learning this extraordinary fact, looked around him anxiously, in order to ascertain who might be absent. Every man was present, and each person stood by his arms, no one betraying the slightest consciousness of knowing whence the unaccountable summons had proceeded!
“This has been done by you, corporal, in order to bring us together, under arms, by way of practice,” le Bourdon at length exclaimed.
“False alarms is useful, if not overdone; especially among raw troops,” answered Flint, coolly; “but I have given none to-night. I will own I did intend to have you all out in a day or two by way of practice, but I have thought it useless to attempt too much at once. When the garrison is finished, it will be time enough to drill the men to the alarm-posts.”
“What is your opinion, Peter?” continued le Bourdon. “You understand the wilderness, and its ways. To what is this extr'or'nary call owing? Why have we been brought here, at this hour?”
“Somebody blow horn, most likely,” answered Peter, in his unmoved, philosophical manner. “'Spose don't know; den can't tell. Warrior often hear 'larm on war-path.”
“This is an onaccountable thing! If I ever heard a horn, I heard one to-night; yet this is the only horn we have, and no one has touched it! It was not the conch I heard; there is no mistaking the difference in sound between a shell and a horn; and there is the conch, hanging at Gershom's neck, just where it has been the whole night.”
“No one has touched the conch--I will answer for THAT,” returned Gershom, laying a hand on the shell, as if to make certain all was right.
“This is most extr'or'nary! I heard the horn, if ears of mine ever heard such an instrument!”
Each of the white men added as much, for every one of them had distinctly heard the blast. Still neither could suggest any probable clue to the mystery. The Indians said nothing; but it was so much in conformity with their habits for red men to maintain silence, whenever any unusual events awakened feelings in others, that no one thought their deportment out of rule. As for Peter, a statue of stone could scarcely have been colder in aspect than was this chief, who seemed to be altogether raised above every exhibition of human feeling. Even the corporal gaped, though much excited, for he had been suddenly aroused from a deep sleep; but Peter was as much superior to physical, as to moral impressions, on this occasion. He made no suggestion, manifested no concern, exhibited no curiosity; and when the men withdrew, again, to their proper habitation, he walked back with them, in the same silence and calm, as those with which he had advanced. Gershom, however, entered within the palisade, and passed the remainder of the night with his family.
The bee-hunter and the Chippewa accidentally came together, as the men moved slowly toward their own hut, when the following short dialogue occurred between them.
“Is that you, Pigeonswing?” exclaimed le Bourdon, when he found his friend touching an elbow, as if by chance.
“Yes, dis me--want better friend, eh?”
“No, I'm well satisfied to have you near me, in an alarm, Chippewa. We've stood by each other once, in troublesome times; and I think we can do as much, ag'in.”
“Yes; stand by friend--dat honor. Nebber turn back on friend; dat my way.”
“Chippewa, who blew the blast on the horn? --can you tell me THAT?”
“Why don't you ask Peter? He wise chief--know eb-beryt'ing. Young Injin ask ole Injin when don't know--why not young pale-face ask ole man, too, eh?”
“Pigeonswing, if truth was said, I believe it would be found that you suspect Peter of having a hand in this business?”
This speech was rather too idiomatic for the comprehension of the Indian, who answered according to his own particular view of the matter.
“Don't blow horn wid hand,” he said--“Injin blow wid mout', just like pale-face.”
The bee-hunter did not reply; but his companion's remark had a tendency to revive in his breast certain unpleasant and distrustful feelings toward the mysterious savage, which the incidents and communications of the last two weeks had had a strong tendency to put to sleep.
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{
"id": "4215"
}
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15
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None
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None knows his lineage, age, or name; His looks are like the snows of Caucasus; his eyes Beam with the wisdom of collected ages In green, unbroken years he sees, 'tis said, The generations pass like autumn fruits, Garner'd, consumed, and springing fresh to life, Again to perish-- --HILLHOUSE No further disturbance took place that night, and the men set about filling up the trenches in the morning steadily, as if nothing had happened. They talked a little of the extraordinary occurrence, but more was THOUGHT than SAID. Le Bourdon observed, however, that Pigeonswing went earlier than usual to the hunt, and that he made his preparations as if he expected to be absent more than the customary time.
As there were just one hundred feet of ditch to fill with dirt, the task was completed, and that quite thoroughly, long ere the close of the day. The pounding down of the earth consumed more time, and was much more laborious than the mere tumbling of the earth back into its former bed; but even this portion of the work was sufficiently attended to. When all was done, the corporal himself, a very critical sort of person in what he called “garrisons,” was fain to allow that it was as “pretty a piece of palisading” as he had ever laid eyes on. The “garrison” wanted only one thing, now, to render it a formidable post--and that was water--no spring or well existing within its narrow limit; however, he procured two or three empty barrels, portions of le Bourdon's effects, placed them within the works, and had them filled with sweet water. By emptying this water two or three times a week, and refilling the barrels, it was thought that a sufficient provision of that great necessary would be made and kept up. Luckily the corporal's “garrison” did not drink, and the want was so much the more easily supplied for the moment.
In truth, the chiente was now converted into a place of some strength, when it is considered that artillery had never yet penetrated to those wilds. More than half the savages of the west fought with arrows and spears in that day, as most still do when the great prairies are reached. A rifleman so posted as to have his body in a great measure covered by the trunk of a burr-oak tree, would be reasonably secure against the missives of an Indian, and, using his own fatal instrument of death, under a sense of personal security, he would become a formidable opponent to dislodge. Nor was the smallness of the work any objection to its security. A single well-armed man might suffice to defend twenty-five feet of palisades, when he would have been insufficient to make good his position with twice the extent. Then le Bourdon had cut loops on three sides of the hut itself, in order to fire at the bears, and sometimes at the deer, which had often approached the building in its days of solitude and quiet, using the window on the fourth side for the same purpose. In a word, a sense of increased security was felt by the whole party when this work was completed, though one arrangement was still wanting to render it perfect. By separating the real garrison from the nominal garrison during the night, there always existed the danger of surprise; and the corporal, now that his fortifications were finished, soon devised a plan to obviate this last-named difficulty. His expedient was very simple, and had somewhat of barrack-life about it.
Corporal Flint raised a low platform along one side of the chiente, by placing there logs of pine that were squared on one of their sides. Above, at the height of a man's head, a roof of bark was reared on poles, and prairie grass, aided by skins, formed very comfortable barrack-beds beneath. As the men were expected to lie with their heads to the wall of the hut, and their feet outward, there was ample space for twice their number. Thither, then, were all the homely provisions for the night transported; and when Margery closed the door of the chiente, after returning the bee-hunter's cordial good night, it was with no further apprehension for the winding of the mysterious horn.
The first night that succeeded the new arrangement passed without any disturbance. Pigeonswing did not return, as usual, at sunset, and a little uneasiness was felt on his account; but, as he made his appearance quite early in the morning, this source of concern ceased. Nor did the Chippewa come in empty-handed; he had killed not only a buck, but he had knocked over a bear in his rambles, besides taking a mess of famously fine trout from a brawling stream at no great distance. The fish were eaten for breakfast, and immediately after that meal was ended, a party.
“I know no more than he has himself told me. By his account there is to be a great council of red men on the prairie, a few miles from this spot; he is waiting for the appointed day to come, in order to go and make one of the chiefs that will be there. Is not this true, Chippewa?”
“Yes, dat true--what dat council smoke round fire for, eh? You know?”
“No, I do not, and would be right glad to have you tell me, Pigeonswing. Perhaps the tribe mean to have a meetin' to determine in their own minds which side they ought to take in this war.”
“Not dat nudder. Know well 'nough which side take. Got message and wampum from Canada fadder, and most all Injin up this-a way look for Yankee scalp. Not dat nudder.”
“Then I have no notion what is at the bottom of this council. Peter seems to expect great things from it; that I can see by his way of talking and looking whenever he speaks of it.”
“Peter want to see him very much. Smoke at great many sich council fire.”
“Do you intend to be present at this council on Prairie Round?” asked the bee-hunter, innocently enough. Pigeonswing turned to look at his companion, in a way that seemed to inquire how far he was really the dupe of the mysterious Indian's wiles. Then, suddenly aware of the importance of not betraying all he himself knew, until the proper moment had arrived, he bent his eyes forward again, continuing onward and answering somewhat evasively.
“Don't know,” he replied. “Hunter nebber tell. Chief want venison, and he must hunt. Just like squaw in pale-face wigwam--work, work--sweep, sweep--cook, cook--never know when work done. So hunter hunt--hunt--hunt.”
“And for that matter, Chippewa, just like squaw in the red man's village, too. Hoe, hoe--dig, dig--carry, carry--so that she never knows when she may sit down to rest.”
“Yes,” returned Pigeonswing, coolly nodding his assent as he moved steadily forward. “Dat do right way wid squaw--juss what he good for--juss what he MADE for--work for warrior and cook his dinner. Pale-face make too much of squaw.”
“Not accordin' to your account of their manner of getting along, Injin. If the work of our squaws is never done, we can hardly make too much of them. Where does Peter keep HIS squaw?”
“Don't know,” answered the Chippewa. “Nobody know. Don't know where his tribe even.”
“This is very extraor'nary, considering the influence the man seems to enjoy. How is it that he has so completely got the ears of all the red men, far and near?”
To this question Pigeonswing gave no answer. His own mind was so far under Peter's control that he did not choose to tell more than might be prudent. He was fully aware of the mysterious chief's principal design, that of destroying the white race altogether, and of restoring the red men to their ancient rights, but several reasons prevented his entering into the plot heart and hand. In the first place, he was friendly to the “Yankees,” from whom he, personally, had received many favors and no wrongs; then, the tribe, or half-tribe, to which he belonged had been employed, more or less, by the agents of the American government as runners, and in other capacities, ever since the peace of '83; and, lastly, he himself had been left much in different garrisons, where he had not only acquired his English, but a habit of thinking of the Americans as his friends. It might also be added that Pigeonswing, though far less gifted by nature than the mysterious Peter, had formed a truer estimate of the power of the “Yankees,” and did not believe they were to be annihilated so easily. How it happened that this Indian had come to a conclusion so much safer than that of Peter's, a man of twice his capacity, is more than we can explain; though it was probably owing to the accidental circumstances of his more intimate associations with the whites.
The bee-hunter was by nature a man of observation, a faculty that his habits had both increased and stimulated. Had it not been for the manner in which he was submitting to the influence of Margery, he would long before have seen that in the deportment of the Chippewa which would have awakened his distrust; not that Margery in any way endeavored to blind him to what was passing before his face, but that he was fast getting to have eyes only for her. By this time she filled not only his waking, but many of his sleeping thoughts; and when she was not actually before him, charming him with her beauty, enlivening him with her artless gayety, and inspiring him with her innocent humor, he fancied she was there, imagination, perhaps, heightening all those advantages which we have enumerated. When a man is thoroughly in love, he is quite apt to be fit for very little else but to urge his suit. Such, in a certain way, proved to be the case with le Bourdon, who allowed things to pass unheeded directly before his eyes that previously to his acquaintance with Margery would not only have been observed, but which would have most probably led to some practical results. The conduct of Pigeonswing was among the circumstances that were thus over-looked by our hero. In point of fact, Peter was slowly but surely working on the mind of the Chippewa, changing all his opinions radically, and teaching him to regard every pale-face as an enemy. The task, in this instance, was not easy; for Pigeonswing, in addition to his general propensities in favor of the “Yankees,” the result of mere accident, had conceived a real personal regard for le Bourdon, and was very slow to admit any views that tended to his injury. The struggle in the mind of the young warrior was severe; and twenty times was he on the point of warning his friend of the danger which impended over the whole party, when a sense of good faith toward Peter, who held his word to the contrary, prevented his so doing. This conflict of feeling was now constantly active in the breast of the young savage.
Pigeonswing had another source of uneasiness, to which his companions were entirely strangers. While hunting, his keen eyes had detected the presence of warriors in the openings. It is true he had not seen even one, but he knew that the signs he had discovered could not deceive him. Not only were warriors at hand, but warriors in considerable numbers. He had found one deserted lair, from which its late occupants could not have departed many hours when it came under his own notice. By means of that attentive sagacity which forms no small portion of the education of an American Indian, Pigeonswing was enabled to ascertain that this party, of itself, numbered seventeen, all of whom were men and warriors. The first fact was easily enough to be seen, perhaps, there being just seventeen different impressions left in the grass; but that all these persons were armed men, was learned by Pigeonswing through evidence that would have been overlooked by most persons. By the length of the lairs he was satisfied none but men of full stature had been there; and he even examined sufficiently close to make out the proofs that all but four of these men carried firearms. Strange as it may seem to those who do not know how keen the senses become when whetted by the apprehensions and wants of savage life, Pigeonswing was enabled to discover signs which showed that the excepted were provided with bows and arrows, and spears.
When the bee-hunter and his companion came in sight of the carcase of the bear, which they did shortly after the last remark which we have given in the dialogue recorded, the former exclaimed with a little surprise: “How's this, Chippewa! You have killed this beast with your bow! Did you not hunt with the rifle yesterday?”
“Bad fire rifle off now-a-day,” answered Pigeonswing, sententiously. “Make noise--noise no good.”
“Noise!” repeated the perfectly unsuspecting bee-hunter. “Little good or little harm can noise do in these openings, where there is neither mountain to give back an echo, or ear to be startled. The crack of my rifle has rung through these groves a hundred times and no harm come of it.”
“Forget war-time now. Bess nebber fire, less can't help him. Pottawattamie hear great way off.”
“Oh! That's it, is it! You're afraid our old friends the Pottawattamies may find us out, and come to thank us for all that happened down at the river's mouth. Well,” continued le Bourdon, laughing, “if they wish another whiskey-spring, I have a small jug left, safely hid against a wet day; a very few drops will answer to make a tolerable spring. You redskins don't know everything, Pigeonswing, though you are so keen and quick-witted on a trail.”
“Bess not tell Pottawattamie any more 'bout springs,” answered the Chippewa, gravely; for by this time he regarded the state of things in the openings to be so serious as to feel little disposition to mirth. “Why you don't go home, eh? Why don't med'cine-man go home, too? Bess for pale-face to be wid pale-face when red man go on war-path. Color bess keep wid color.”
“I see you want to be rid of us, Pigeonswing; but the parson has no thought of quitting this part of the world until he has convinced all the red-skins that they are Jews.”
“What he mean, eh?” demanded the Chippewa, with more curiosity than it was usual for an Indian warrior to betray. “What sort of a man Jew, eh? Why call red man Jew?”
“I know very little more about it than you do yourself, Pigeonswing; but such as my poor knowledge is, you're welcome to it. You've heard of the Bible, I dare say?”
“Sartain--med'cine-man read him Sunday. Good book to read, some t'ink.”
“Yes, it's all that, and a great companion have I found my Bible, when I've been alone with the bees out here in the openings. It tells us of our God, Chippewa; and teaches us how we are to please him, and how we may offend. It's a great loss to you red-skins not to have such a book among you.”
“Med'cine-man bring him--don't do much good, yet; some day, p'r'aps, do better. How dat make red man Jew?”
“Why, this is a new idea to me, though Parson Amen seems fully possessed with it. I suppose you know what a Jew is?”
“Don't know anything 'bout him. Sort o' nigger, eh?”
“No, no, Pigeonswing, you're wide of the mark this time. But, that we may understand each other, we'll begin at the beginning like, which will let you into the whole history of the pale-face religion. As we've had a smart walk, however, and here is the bear's meat safe and sound, just as you left it, let us sit down a bit on this trunk of a tree, while I give you our tradition from beginning to end, as it might be. In the first place, Chippewa, the earth was made without creatures of any sort to live on it--not so much as a squirrel or a woodchuck.”
“Poor country to hunt in, dat,” observed the Chippewa quietly, while le Bourdon was wiping his forehead after removing his cap. “Ojebways stay in it very little time.”
“This, according to our belief, was before any Ojebway lived. At length, God made a man, out of clay, and fashioned him, as we see men fashioned and living all around us.”
“Yes,” answered the Chippewa, nodding his head in assent. “Den Manitou put plenty blood in him--dat make red warrior. Bible good book, if tell dat tradition.”
“The Bible says nothing about any colors; but we suppose the man first made to have been a pale-face. At any rate, the pale-faces have got possession of the best parts of the earth, as it might be, and I think they mean to keep them. First come, first served, you know. The pale-faces are many, and are strong.”
“Stop!” exclaimed Pigeonswing, in a way that was very unusual for an Indian to interrupt another when speaking; “want to ask question--how many pale-face you t'ink is dere? Ebber count him?”
“Count him! --Why, Chippewa, you might as well count the bees, as they buzz around a fallen tree. You saw me cut down the tree I last discovered, and saw the movement of the little animals, and may judge what success tongue or eye would have in counting THEM; now, just as true would it be to suppose that any man could count the pale-faces on this earth.”
“Don't want count ALL,” answered Pigeonswing. “Want to know how many dis side of great salt lake.”
“That's another matter, and more easily come at. I understand you now, Chippewa; you wish to know how many of us there are in the country we call America?”
“Juss so,” returned Pigeonswing, nodding in assent. “Dat juss it--juss what Injin want to know.”
“Well, we do have a count of our own people, from time to time, and I suppose come about as near to the truth as men can come in such a matter. There must be about eight millions of us altogether; that is, old and young, big and little, male and female.”
“How many warrior you got? --don't want hear about squaw and pappoose.”
“No, I see you're warlike this morning, and want to see how we are likely to come out of this struggle with your great Canada father. Counting all round, I think we might muster hard on upon a million of fighting men--good, bad, and indifferent; that is to say, there must be a million of us of proper age to go into the wars.”
Pigeonswing made no answer for near a minute. Both he and the bee-hunter had come to a halt alongside of the bear's meat, and the latter was beginning to prepare his own portion of the load for transportation, while his companion stood thus motionless, lost in thought. Suddenly, Pigeonswing recovered his recollection, and resumed the conversation, by saying: “What million mean, Bourdon? How many time so'ger at Detroit, and so'ger on lakes?”
“A million is more than the leaves on all the trees in these openings”--le Bourdon's notions were a little exaggerated, perhaps, but this was what he SAID--“yes, more than the leaves on all these oaks, far and near. A million is a countless number, and I suppose would make a row of men as long as from this spot to the shores of the great salt lake, if not farther.”
It is probable that the bee-hunter himself had no very clear notion of the distance of which he spoke, or of the number of men it would actually require to fill the space he mentioned; but his answer sufficed deeply to impress the imagination of the Indian, who now helped le Bourdon to secure his load to his back, in silence, receiving the same service in return. When the meat of the bear was securely bestowed, each resumed his rifle, and the friends commenced their march in, toward the chiente; conversing, as they went, on the matter which still occupied their minds. When the bee-hunter again took up the history of the creation, it was to speak of our common mother.
“You will remember, Chippewa,” he said, “that I told you nothing on the subject of any woman. What I have told you, as yet, consarned only the first MAN, who was made out of clay, into whom God breathed the breath of life.”
“Dat good--make warrior fuss. Juss right. When breat' in him, fit to take scalp, eh?”
“Why, as to that, it is not easy to see whom he was to scalp, seeing that he was quite alone in the world, until it pleased his Creator to give him a woman for a companion.”
“Tell 'bout dat,” returned Pigeonswing, with interest--“tell how he got squaw.”
“Accordin' to the Bible, God caused this man to fall into a deep sleep, when he took one of his ribs, and out of that he made a squaw for him. Then he put them both to live together, in a most beautiful garden, in which all things excellent and pleasant was to be found--some such place as these openings, I reckon.”
“Any bee dere?” asked the Indian, quite innocently. “Plenty honey, eh?”
“That will I answer for! It could hardly be otherwise, when it was the intention to make the first man and first woman perfectly happy. I dare say, Chippewa, if the truth was known, it would be found that bees was a sipping at every flower in that most delightful garden!”
“Why pale-face quit dat garden, eh? Why come here to drive poor Injin 'way from game? Tell me dat, Bourdon, if he can? Why pale-face ever leave DAT garden, when he so han'some, eh?”
“God turned him out of it, Chippewa--yes, he was turned OUT of it, with shame on his face, for having disobeyed the commandments of his Creator. Having left the garden, his children have scattered over the face of the earth.”
“So come here to drive off Injin! Well, dat 'e way wid pale-face I Did ever hear of red man comin' to drive off pale-face?”
“I have heard of your red warriors often coming to take our scalps, Chippewa. More or less of this has been done every year, since our people have landed in America. More than that they have not done, for we are too many to be driven very far in, by a few scattering tribes of Injins.”
“T'ink, den, more pale-face dan Injin, eh?” asked the Chippewa, with an interest so manifest that he actually stopped in his semi-trot, in order to put the question. “More pale-face warrior dan red men?”
“More! Aye, a thousand times more, Chippewa. Where you could show one warrior, we could show a thousand!”
Now, this was not strictly true, perhaps, but it answered the purpose of deeply impressing the Chippewa with the uselessness of Peter's plans, and sustained as it was by his early predilections, it served to keep him on the right side, in the crisis which was approaching. The discourse continued, much in the same strain, until the men got in with their bear's meat, having been preceded some time by the others, with the venison.
It is a little singular that neither the questions, nor the manner of Pigeonswing, awakened any distrust in the bee-hunter. So far from this, the latter regarded all that had passed as perfectly natural, and as likely to arise in conversation, in the way of pure speculation, as in any other manner. Pigeonswing intended to be guarded in what he said and did, for, as yet, he had not made up his mind which side he would really espouse, in the event of the great project coming to a head. He had the desire, natural to a red man, to avenge the wrongs committed against his race; but this desire existed in a form a good deal mitigated by his intercourse with the “Yankees,” and his regard for individuals. It had, nevertheless, strangely occurred to the savage reasoning of this young warrior that possibly some arrangement might be effected, by means of which he should take scalps from the Canadians, while Peter and his other followers were working their will on the Americans. In this confused condition was the mind of the Chippewa, when he and his companion threw down their loads, near the place where the provision of game was usually kept. This was beneath the tree, near the spring and the cook-house, in order that no inconvenience should arise from its proximity to the place where the party dwelt and slept. For a siege, should there be occasion to shut themselves up within the “garrison,” the men depended on the pickled pork, and a quantity of dried meat; of the latter of which the missionary had brought a considerable supply in his own canoe. Among these stores were a few dozen of buffaloes' or bisons' tongues, a delicacy that would honor the best table in the civilized world, though then so common among the western hunters, as scarce to be deemed food as good as the common salted pork and beef of the settlements.
The evening that followed proved to be one of singular softness and sweetness. The sun went down in a cloudless sky, and gentle airs from the southwest fanned the warm cheeks of Margery, as she sat, resting from the labors of the day, with le Bourdon at her side, speaking of the pleasures of a residence in such a spot. The youth was eloquent, for he felt all that he said, and the maiden was pleased. The young man could expatiate on bees in a way to arrest any one's attention; and Margery delighted to hear him relate his adventures with these little creatures; his successes, losses, and journeys.
“But are you not often lonely, Bourdon, living here in the openings, whole summers at a time, without a living soul to speak to?” demanded Margery, coloring to the eyes, the instant the question was asked, lest it should subject her to an imputation against which her modesty revolted, that of wishing to draw the discourse to a discussion on the means of preventing this solitude in future.
“I have not been, hitherto,” answered le Bourdon, so frankly as at once to quiet his companion's sensitiveness, “though I will not answer for the future. Now that I have so many with me, we may make some of them necessary. Mind--I say SOME, not all of my present guests. If I could have my pick, pretty Margery, the present company would give me ALL I can desire, and more too. I should not think of going to Detroit for that companion, since she is to be found so much nearer.”
Margery blushed, and looked down--then she raised her eyes, smiled, and seemed grateful as well as pleased. By this time she had become accustomed to such remarks, and she had no difficulty in discovering her lover's wishes, though he had never been more explicit. The reflections natural to her situation threw a shade of gentle seriousness over her countenance, rendering her more charming than ever, and causing the youth to plunge deeper and deeper into the meshes that female influence had cast around him, In all this, however, one of the parties was governed by a manly sincerity, and the other by girlish artlessness. Diffidence, one of the most certain attendants of a pure passion, alone kept le Bourdon from asking Margery to become his wife; while Margery herself sometimes doubted whether it were possible that any reputable man could wish to connect himself and his fortunes with a family that had sunk as low as persons could well sink, in this country, and not lose their characters altogether. With these doubts and distrusts, so naturally affecting the mind of each, these young people were rapidly becoming more and more enamored; the bee-hunter betraying his passion in the close, absorbed attentions that more properly belong to his sex, while that of Margery was to be seen in sudden blushes, the thoughtful brow, the timid glance, and a cast of tenderness that came over her whole manner, and, as it might be, her whole being.
While our young folk were thus employed, now conversing cheerfully, now appearing abstracted and lost in thought, though seated side by side, le Bourdon happened to look behind him, and saw that Peter was regarding them with one of those intense, but mysterious expressions of the countenance, that had, now, more than once attracted his attention; giving reason, each time, for a feeling in which doubt, curiosity, and apprehension were singularly mingled, even in himself.
At the customary hour, which was always early, in that party of simple habits, the whole family sought its rest; the females withdrew within the chiente, while the males arranged their skins without. Ever since the erection of the palisades, le Bourdon had been in the habit of calling Hive within the defences, leaving him at liberty to roam about inside, at pleasure. Previously to this new arrangement, the dog had been shut up in his kennel, in order to prevent his getting on the track of a deer, or in close combat with some bear, when his master was not present to profit by his efforts. As the palisades were too high for his leap, this putting him at liberty within them answered the double purpose of giving the mastiff room for healthful exercise, and of possessing a most vigilant sentinel against dangers of all sorts. On the present occasion, however, the dog was missing, and after calling and whistling for him some time, the bee-hunter was fain to bar the gate, and leave him on the outside. This done, he sought his skin, and was soon asleep.
It was midnight, when the bee-hunter felt a hand laid on his own arm. It was the corporal, making this movement, in order to awake him. In an instant the young man was on his feet, with his rifle in his hand.
“Did you not hear it, Bourdon?” demanded the corporal, in a tone so low as scarce to exceed a whisper.
“Hear what! I've been sleeping, sound as a bee in winter.”
“The horn! --The horn has been blown twice, and, I think, we shall soon hear it again.”
“The horn was hanging at the door of the chiente, and the conch, too. It will be easy to see if they are in their places.”
It was only necessary to walk around the walls of the hut, to its opposite side, in order to ascertain this fact. Le Bourdon did so, accompanied by the corporal, and just as each laid a hand on the instruments, which were suspended in their proper places, a heavy rush was made against the gate, as if to try its fastenings. These pushes were repeated several times, with a violence that menaced the bars. Of course, the two men stepped to the spot, a distance of only a few paces, the gateway of the palisades and the door of the chiente being contiguous to each other, and immediately ascertained that it was the mastiff, endeavoring to force his way in. The bee-hunter admitted the dog, which had been trained to suppress his bark, though this animal was too brave and large to throw away his breath when he had better rely on his force. Powerful animals, of this race, are seldom noisy, it being the province of the cur, both among dogs and men, to be blustering and spitting out their venom, at all hours and seasons. Hive, however, in addition to his natural disposition, had been taught, from the time he was a pup, not to betray his presence unnecessarily by a bark; and it was seldom that his deep throat opened beneath the arches of the oaks. When it did, it told like the roaring of the lion in the desert.
Hive was no sooner admitted to the “garrison,” than he manifested just as strong a desire to get out, as a moment before he had manifested to get in. This, le Bourdon well knew, indicated the presence of some thing, or creature, that did not properly belong to the vicinity. After consulting with the corporal, Pigeonswing was called; and leaving him as a sentinel at the gate, the two others made a sortie. The corporal was as brave as a lion, and loved all such movements, though he fully anticipated encountering savages, while his companion expected an interview with bears.
As this movement was made at the invitation of the dog, it was judiciously determined to let him act as pioneer, on the advance. Previously to quitting the defences, however, the two adventurers looked closely to their arms. Each examined the priming, saw that his horn and pouch were accessible, and loosened his knife in its sheath. The corporal, moreover, fixed his “baggonet,” as he called the formidable, glittering instrument that usually embellished the end of his musket--a MUSKET being the weapon he chose to carry, while the bee-hunter himself was armed with a long western RIFLE.
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The raptures of a conqueror's mood Rushed burning through his frame; The depths of that green solitude Its torrents could not tame, Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile, Round those far fountains of the Nile --MRS HEMANS.
When the bee-hunter and Corporal Flint thus went forth in midnight, from the “garrison” of Castle Meal (Chateau au Miel), as the latter would have expressed it, it was with no great apprehension of meeting any other than a four-footed enemy, notwithstanding the blast of the horn the worthy corporal supposed he had heard. The movements of the dog seemed to announce such a result rather than any other, for Hive was taken along as a sort of guide. Le Bourdon, however, did not permit his mastiff to run off wide, but, having the animal at perfect command, it was kept close to his own person.
The two men first moved toward the grove of the Kitchen, much to Hive's discontent. The dog several times halted, and he whined, and growled, and otherwise manifested his great dislike to proceed in that direction. At length so decided did his resistance become, that his master said to his companion: “It seems to me best, corporal, to let the mastiff lead us. I have never yet seen him so set on not going in one way, and on going in another. Hive has a capital nose, and we may trust him.”
“Forward,” returned the corporal, wheeling short in the direction of the dog; “one thing should be understood, however, Bourdon, which is this--you must act as light troops in this sortie, and I as the main body. If we come on the inimy, it will be your duty to skrimmage in front as long as you can, and then fall back on your resarves. I shall depend chiefly on the baggonet, which is the best tool to put an Injin up with; and as he falls back, before my charge, we must keep him under as warm a fire as possible. Having no cavalry, the dog might be made useful in movements to the front and on our flanks.”
“Pooh, pooh, corporal, you're almost as much set in the notions of your trade as Parson Amen is set in his idees about the lost tribes. In my opinion there'll be more tribes FOUND in these openings before the summer is over than we shall wish to meet. Let us follow the dog, and see what will turn up.” Hive WAS followed, and he took a direction that led to a distant point in the openings, where not only the trees were much thicker than common, but where a small tributary of the Kalamazoo ran through a ravine, from the higher lands adjacent into the main artery of all the neighboring watercourses. The bee-hunter knew the spot well, having often drank at the rivulet, and cooled his brow in the close shades of the ravine, when heated by exertions in the more open grounds. In short, the spot was one of the most eligible for concealment, coolness, and pure water, within several miles of Castle Meal. The trees formed a spacious grove around it, and, by means of the banks, their summits and leaves answered the purpose of a perfect screen to those who might descend into the ravine, or, it would be better to say, to the bottom. Le Bourdon was no sooner satisfied that his mastiff was proceeding toward the great spring which formed the rivulet at the head of the ravine mentioned, than he suspected Indians might be there. He had seen signs about the spot, which wore an appearance of its having been used as a place of encampment--or for “camping out,” as it is termed in the language of the west--and, coupling the sound of the horn with the dog's movements, his quick apprehension seized on the facts as affording reasonable grounds of distrust. Consequently he resorted to great caution, as he and the corporal entered the wood which surrounded the spring, and the small oval bit of bottom that lay spread before it, like a little lawn. Hive was kept close at his master's side, though he manifested a marked impatience to advance. “Now, corporal,” said the bee-hunter in a low tone, “I think we have lined some savages to their holes. We will go round the basin and descend to the bottom, in a close wood which grows there. Did you see that?”
“I suppose I did,” answered the corporal, who was as firm as a rock. “You meant to ask me if I saw fire?”
“I did. The red men have lighted their council fire in this spot, and have met to talk around it. Well, let 'em hearken to each other's thoughts, if they will; we shall be neither the better nor the worse for it.”
“I don't know that. When the commander-in-chief calls together his principal officers, something usually comes of it. Who knows but this very council is called in order to take opinions on the subject of besieging or of storming our new garrison? Prudent soldiers should always be ready for the worst.”
“I have no fear, so long as Peter is with us. That chief is listened to by every red-skin; and while we have him among us there will be little to care for. But we are getting near to the bottom and must work our way through these bushes with as little noise as possible. I will keep the dog quiet.”
The manner in which that sagacious animal now behaved was truly wonderful. Hive appeared to be quite as much aware of the necessity of extreme caution as either of the men, and did not once attempt to precede his master his own length. On one or two occasions he actually discovered the best passages, and led his companions through them with something like the intelligence of a human being. Neither growl nor bark escaped him; on the contrary, even the hacking breathing of an impatient dog was suppressed, precisely as if the animal knew how near he was getting to the most watchful ears in the world.
After using the greatest care, the bee-hunter and the corporal got just such a station as they desired. It was within a very few feet of the edge of the cover, but perfectly concealed, while small openings enabled them to see all that was passing in their front. A fallen tree, a relic of somewhat rare occurrence in the openings of Michigan, even furnished them with a seat, while it rendered their position less exposed. Hive placed himself at his master's side, apparently trusting to other senses than that of sight for his information, since he could see nothing of what was going on in front.
As soon as the two men had taken their stations, and began to look about them, a feeling of awe mingled with their curiosity. Truly, the scene was one so very remarkable and imposing that it might have filled more intellectual and better fortified minds with some such sensation. The fire was by no means large, nor was it particularly bright; but sufficient to cast a dim light on the objects within reach of its rays. It was in the precise centre of a bit of bottom land of about half an acre in extent, which was so formed and surrounded, as to have something of the appearance of the arena of a large amphitheatre. There was one break in the encircling rise of ground, it is true, and that was at a spot directly opposite the station of le Bourdon and his companion, where the rill which flowed from the spring found a passage out toward the more open ground. Branches shaded most of the mound, but the arena itself was totally free from all vegetation but that which covered the dense and beautiful sward with which it was carpeted. Such is a brief description of the natural accessories of this remarkable scene.
But it was from the human actors, and their aspects, occupations, movements, dress, and appearance generally, that the awe which came over both the bee-hunter and the corporal had its origin. Of these, near fifty were present, offering a startling force by their numbers alone. Each man was a warrior, and each warrior was in his paint. These were facts that the familiarity of the two white men with Indian customs rendered only too certain. What was still more striking was the fact that all present appeared to be chiefs; a circumstance which went to show that an imposing body of red men was most likely somewhere in the openings, and that too at no great distance. It was while observing and reflecting on all these things, a suspicion first crossed the mind of le Bourdon that this great council was about to be held, at that midnight hour, and so near his own abode, for the purpose of accommodating Peter, whose appearance in the dark crowd, from that instant, he began to expect.
The Indians already present were not seated. They stood in groups conversing, or stalked across the arena, resembling so many dark and stately spectres. No sound was heard among them, a circumstance that added largely to the wild and supernatural aspect of the scene. If any spoke, it was in a tone so low and gentle, as to carry the sound no farther than to the ears that were listening; two never spoke at the same time and in the same group, while the moccasin permitted no footfall to be audible. Nothing could have been more unearthly than the picture presented in that little, wood-circled arena, of velvet-like grass and rural beauty. The erect, stalking forms, half naked, if not even more; the swarthy skins; the faces fierce in the savage conceits which were intended to strike terror into the bosoms of enemies, and the glittering eyes that fairly sparkled in their midst, all contributed to the character of the scene, which le Bourdon rightly enough imagined was altogether much the most remarkable of any he had ever been in the way of witnessing.
Our two spectators might have been seated on the fallen tree half an hour, all of which time they had been gazing at what was passing before their eyes; with positively not a human sound to relieve the unearthly nature of the picture. No one spoke, coughed, laughed, or exclaimed, in all that period. Suddenly, every chief stood still, and all the faces turned in the same direction. It was toward the little gateway of the rill, which being the side of the arena most remote from the bee-hunter and the corporal, lay nearly in darkness as respected them. With the red men it must have been different, for THEY all appeared to be in intent expectation of some one from that quarter. Nor did they have to wait long; for, in half a minute, two forms came out of the obscurity, advancing with a dignified and deliberate tread to the centre of the arena. As these newcomers got more within the influence of the flickering light, le Bourdon saw that they were Peter and Parson Amen. The first led, with a slow, imposing manner, while the other followed, not a little bewildered with what he saw. It may be as well to explain here, that the Indian was coming alone to this place of meeting, when he encountered the missionary wandering among the oaks, looking for le Bourdon and the corporal, and, instead of endeavoring to throw off this unexpected companion, he quietly invited him to be of his own party.
It was evident to le Bourdon, at a glance, that Peter was expected, though it was not quite so clear that such was the fact as regarded his companion. Still, respect for the great chief prevented any manifestations of surprise or discontent, and the medicine-man of the pale-faces was received with as grave a courtesy as if he had been an invited guest. Just as the two had entered the dark circle that formed around them, a young chief threw some dry sticks on the fire, which blazing upward, cast a stronger light on a row of as terrifically looking countenances as ever gleamed on human forms. This sudden illumination, with its accompanying accessories, had the effect to startle all the white spectators, though Peter looked on the whole with a calm like that of the leafless tree, when the cold is at its height, and the currents of the wintry air are death-like still Nothing appeared to move HIM, whether expected or not; though use had probably accustomed his eye to all the aspects in which savage ingenuity could offer savage forms. He even smiled, as he made a gesture of recognition, which seemed to salute the whole group. It was just then, when the fire burned brightest, and when the chiefs pressed most within its influence, that le Bourdon perceived that his old acquaintances, the head-men of the Pottawattamies, were present, among the other chiefs so strangely and portentously assembled in these grounds, which he had so long possessed almost entirely to himself.
A few of the oldest of the chiefs now approached Peter, and a low conversation took place between them. What was said did not reach le Bourdon, of course; for it was not even heard in the dark circle of savages who surrounded the fire. The effect of this secret dialogue, however, was to cause all the chiefs to be seated, each taking his place on the grass; the whole preserving the original circle around the fire. Fortunately, for the wishes of le Bourdon, Peter and his companions took their stations directly opposite to his own seat, thus enabling him to watch every lineament of that remarkable chief's still more remarkable countenance. Unlike each and all of the red men around him, the face of Peter was not painted, except by the tints imparted by nature; which, in his case, was that of copper a little tarnished, or rendered dull by the action of the atmosphere. The bee-hunter could distinctly trace every lineament; nor was the dark roving eye beyond the reach of his own vision. Some attention was given to the fire, too, one of the younger chiefs occasionally throwing on it a few dried sticks, more to keep alive the flame, and to renew the light, than from any need of warmth. One other purpose, however, this fire DID answer; that of enabling the young chiefs to light the pipes that were now prepared; it seldom occurring that the chiefs thus assembled without SMOKING around their council-fire.
As this smoking was just then more a matter of ceremony than for any other purpose, a whiff or two suffices for each chief; the smoker passing the pipe to his neighbor as soon as he had inhaled a few puffs. The Indians are models of propriety, in their happiest moods, and every one in that dark and menacing circle was permitted to have his turn with the pipe, before any other step was taken. There were but two pipes lighted, and mouths being numerous, some time was necessary in order to complete this ceremony. Still, no sign of impatience was seen, the lowest chief having as much respect paid to his feelings, as related to his attention, as the highest. At length the pipes completed their circuit, even Parson Amen getting, and using, his turn, when a dead pause succeeded. The silence resembled that of a Quaker meeting, and was broken only by the rising of one of the principal chiefs, evidently about to speak. The language of the great Ojebway nation was used on this occasion, most of the chiefs present belonging to some one of the tribes of that stock, though several spoke other tongues, English and French included. Of the three whites present, Parson Amen alone fully comprehended all that was said, he having qualified himself in this respect, to preach to the tribes of that people; though le Bourdon understood nearly all, and even the corporal comprehended a good deal. The name of the chief who first spoke at this secret meeting, which was afterward known among the Ojebways by the name of the “Council of the Bottom Land, near to the spring of gushing water,” was Bear's Meat, an appellation that might denote a distinguished hunter, rather than an orator of much renown.
“Brothers of the many tribes of the Ojebways,” commenced this personage, “the Great Spirit has permitted us to meet in council. The Manitou of our fathers is now among these oaks, listening to our words, and looking in at our hearts. Wise Indians will be careful what they say in such a presence, and careful of what they think. All should be said and thought for the best. We are a scattered nation, and the time is come when we must stop in our tracks, or travel beyond the sound of each other's cries. If we travel beyond the hearing of our people, soon will our children learn tongues that Ojebway ears cannot understand. The mother talks to her child, and the child learns her words. But no child can hear across a great lake. Once we lived near the rising sun. Where are we now? Some of our young men say they have seen the sun go down in the lakes of sweet water. There can be no hunting-grounds beyond THAT spot; and if we would live, we must stand still in our tracks. How to do this, we have met to consider.
“Brothers, many wise chiefs and braves are seated at this council-fire. It is pleasant to my eyes to look upon them. Ottawas, Chippeways, Pottawattamies, Menominees, Hurons, and all. Our father at Quebec has dug up the hatchet against the Yankees. The war-path is open between Detroit and all the villages of the red men. The prophets are speaking to our people, and we listen. One is here; he is about to speak. The council will have but a single sense, which will be that of hearing.”
Thus concluding, Bear's Meat took his seat, in the same composed and dignified manner as that in which he had risen, and deep silence succeeded. So profound was the stillness, that, taken in connection with the dark lineaments, the lustrous eyeballs that threw back the light of the fire, the terrific paint and the armed hands of every warrior present, the picture might be described as imposing to a degree that is seldom seen in the assemblies of the civilized. In the midst of this general but portentous calm, Peter arose. The breathing of the circle grew deeper, so much so as to be audible, the only manner in which the intensity of the common expectation betrayed itself. Peter was an experienced orator, and knew how to turn every minutiae of his art to good account. His every movement was deliberate, his attitude highly dignified--even his eye seemed eloquent.
Oratory! what a power art thou, wielded, as is so often the case, as much for evil as for good. The very reasoning that might appear to be obtuse, or which would be over looked entirely when written and published, issuing from the mouth, aided by the feelings of sympathy and the impulses of the masses, seems to partake of the wisdom of divinity. Thus is it, also, with the passions, the sense of wrong, the appeals to vengeance, and all the other avenues of human emotion. Let them be addressed to the cold eye of reason and judgment, in the form of written statements, and the mind pauses to weigh the force of arguments, the justice of the appeals, the truth of facts: but let them come upon the ear aided by thy art, with a power concentrated by sympathy, and the torrent is often less destructive in its course, than that of the whirlwind that thou canst awaken!
“Chiefs of the great Ojebway nation, I wish you well,” said Peter, stretching out his arms toward the circle, as if desirous of embracing all present. “The Manitou has been good to me. He has cleared a path to this spring, and to this council-fire. I see around it the faces of many friends. Why should we not all be friendly? Why should a red man ever strike a blow against a red man? The Great Spirit made us of the same color, and placed us on the same hunting-grounds. He meant that we should hunt in company; not take each other's scalps. How many warriors have fallen in our family wars? Who has counted them? Who can say? Perhaps enough, had they not been killed, to drive the pale-faces into the sea!”
Here Peter, who as yet had spoken only in a low and barely audible voice, suddenly paused, in order to allow the idea he had just thrown out to work on the minds of his listeners. That it was producing its effect was apparent by the manner in which one stern face turned toward another, and eye seemed to search in eye some response to a query that the mind suggested, though no utterance was given to it with the tongue. As soon, however, as the orator thought time sufficient to impress that thought on the memories of the listeners had elapsed, he resumed, suffering his voice gradually to increase in volume, as he warmed with his subject.
“Yes,” he continued, “the Manitou has been very kind. Who is the Manitou? Has any Indian ever seen him? Every Indian has seen him. No one can look on the hunting-grounds, on the lakes, on the prairies, on the trees, on the game, without seeing his hand. His face is to be seen in the sun at noonday; his eyes in the stars at night. Has any Indian ever heard the Manitou? When it thunders, he speaks. When the crash is loudest, then he scolds. Some Indian has done wrong. Perhaps one red man has taken another red man's scalp!”
Another pause succeeded, briefer, and less imposing than the first, but one that sufficed to impress on the listeners anew, the great evil of an Indian's raising his hand against an Indian.
“Yes, there is no one so deaf as not to hear the voice of the Great Spirit when he is angry,” resumed Peter. “Ten thousands of buffalo bulls, roaring together, do not make as much noise as his whisper. Spread the prairies, and the openings, and the lakes, before him, and he can be heard in all, and on all, at the same time.
“Here is a medicine-priest of the pale-faces; he tells me that the voice of the Manitou reaches into the largest villages of his people, beneath the rising sun, when it is heard by the red man across the great lakes, and near the rocks of the setting sun. It is a loud voice; woe to him who does not remember it. It speaks to all colors, and to every people, and tribe, and nation.
“Brothers, that is a lying tradition which says, there is one Manitou for a Sac, and another for the Ojebway--one Manitou for the red man, and another for the pale-face. In this, we are alike. One Great Spirit made all; governs all; rewards all; punishes all. He may keep the happy hunting-grounds of an Indian separate from the white man's heaven, for he knows that their customs are different, and what would please a warrior would displease a trader; and what would please a trader would displease a warrior. He has thought of these things, and has made several places for the spirits of the good, let their colors be what they may. Is it the same with the places of the spirits of the bad? I think not. To me it would seem best to let THEM go together, that they may torment one another. A wicked Indian and a wicked pale-face would make a bad neighborhood. I think the Manitou will let THEM go together.
“Brothers, if the Manitou keeps the good Indian and the good pale-face apart in another world, what has brought them together in this? If he brings the bad spirits of all colors together in another world, why should they come together here, before their time? A place for wicked spirits should not be found on earth. This is wrong; it must be looked into.
“Brothers, I have now done; this pale-face wishes to speak, and I have said that you would hear his words. When he has spoken his mind, I may have more to tell you. Now, listen to the stranger. He is a medicine-priest of the white men, and says he has a great secret to tell our people--when he has told it, I have another for their ears too. Mine must be spoken when there is no one near but the children of red clay.”
Having thus opened the way for the missionary, Peter courteously took his seat, producing a little disappointment among his own admirers, though he awakened a lively curiosity to know what this medicine-priest might have to say on an occasion so portentous. The Indians in the regions of the great lakes had long been accustomed to missionaries, and it is probable that even some of their own traditions, so far as they related to religious topics, had been insensibly colored by, if not absolutely derived from, men of this character; for the first whites who are known to have penetrated into that portion of the continent were Jesuits, who carried the cross as their standard and emblem of peace. Blessed emblem! that any should so confound their own names and denunciatory practices with the revealed truth, as to imagine that a standard so appropriate should ever be out of season and place, when it is proper for man to use aught, at all, that is addressed to his senses, in the way of symbols, rites, and ceremonies! To the Jesuits succeeded the less ceremonious and less imposing priesthood of America, as America peculiarly was in the first years that followed the Revolution. There is reason to believe that the spirit of God, in a greater or less degree, accompanied all; for all were self-denying and zealous, though the fruits of near two centuries of labor have, as yet, amounted to little more than the promise of the harvest at some distant day. Enough, however, was known of the missionaries, and their views in general, to prepare the council, in some small degree, for the forthcoming exhibition.
Parson Amen had caught some of the habits of the Indians, in the course of years of communication and intercourse. Like them he had learned to be deliberate, calm, and dignified in his exterior; and, like them, he had acquired a sententious mode of speaking.
“My children,” he said, for he deemed it best to assume the parental character, in a scene of so great moment, “as Peter has told you, the spirit of God is among you! Christians know that such has he promised to be always with his people, and I see faces in this circle that I am ready to claim as belonging to those who have prayed with me, in days that are long past. If your souls are not touched by divine love, it does not kill the hope I entertain of your yet taking up the cross, and calling upon the Redeemer's name. But, not for this have I come with Peter, this night. I am now here to lay before you an all-important fact, that Providence has revealed to me, as the fruit of long labor in the vineyard of study and biblical inquiry. It is a tradition--and red men love traditions--it is a tradition that touches your own history, and which it will gladden your hearts to hear, for it will teach you how much your nation and tribes have been the subject of the especial care and love of the Great Spirit. When my children say, speak, I shall be ready to speak.”
Here the missionary took his seat, wisely awaiting a demonstration on the part of the council, ere he ventured to proceed any further. This was the first occasion on which he had ever attempted to broach, in a direct form, his favorite theory of the “lost tribes.” Let a man get once fairly possessed of any peculiar notion, whether it be on religion, political economy, morals, politics, arts, or anything else, and he sees little beside his beloved principle, which he is at all times ready to advance, defend, demonstrate, or expatiate on. Nothing can be simpler than the two great dogmas of Christianity, which are so plain that all can both comprehend them and feel their truth. They teach us to love God, the surest way to obey him, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Any one can understand this; all can see how just it is, and how much of moral sublimity it contains. It is Godlike, and brings us near the very essence of the Divinity, which is love, mercy, and truth. Yet how few are content to accept the teachings of the Saviour in this respect, without embarrassing them with theories that have so much of their origin in human fancies. We do not mean by this, however, that Parson Amen was so very wrong in bestowing a part of his attention on that wonderful people, who, so early set apart by the Creator as the creatures of his own especial ends, have already played so great a part in the history of nations, and who are designed, so far as we can penetrate revelation, yet to enact their share in the sublime drama of human events.
As for the council, its members were moved by more than ordinary curiosity to hear what further the missionary might have to say, though all present succeeded admirably in suppressing the exhibition of any interest that might seem weak and womanly. After a decent delay, therefore, Bear's Meat intimated to the parson that it would be agreeable to the chiefs present to listen to him further.
“My children, I have a great tradition to tell you,” the missionary resumed, as soon as on his feet again; “a very great and divine tradition; not a tradition of man's, but one that came direct from the Manitou himself. Peter has spoken truth; there is but one Great Spirit; he is the Great Spirit of all colors, and tribes, and nations. He made all men of the same clay.” Here a slight sensation was perceptible among the audience, most of whom were very decidedly of a different opinion, on this point of natural history. But the missionary was now so far warmed with his subject as to disregard any slight interruption, and proceeded as if his listeners had betrayed no feeling. “And he divided them afterward into nations and tribes. It was then he caused the color of his creatures to change. Some he kept white, as he had made them. Some he put behind a dark cloud, and they became altogether black. Our wise men think that this was done in punishment for their sins. Some he painted red, like the nations on this continent.” Here Peter raised a finger, in sign that he would ask a question; for, without permission granted, no Indian would interrupt the speaker. Indeed, no one of less claims than Peter would hardly have presumed to take the step he now did, and that because he saw a burning curiosity gleaming in the bright eyes of so many in the dark circle.
“Say on, Peter,” answered the missionary to this sign; “I will reply.”
“Let my brother say WHY the Great Spirit turned the Indian to a red color. Was he angry with him? or did he paint him so out of love?”
“This is more than I can tell you, friends. There are many colors among men, in different parts of the world, and many shades among people of the same color. There are pale-faces fair as the lily, and there are pale-faces so dark, as scarcely to be distinguished from blacks. The sun does much of this; but no sun, nor want of sun, will ever make a pale-face a red-skin, or a red skin a pale-face.”
“Good--that is what we Indians say. The Manitou has made us different; he did not mean that we should live on the same hunting-grounds,” rejoined Peter, who rarely failed to improve every opportunity in order to impress on the minds of his followers the necessity of now crushing the serpent in its shell.
“No man can say that,” answered Parson Amen. “Unless my people had come to this continent, the word of God could not have been preached by me, along the shores of these lakes. But I will now speak of our great tradition. The Great Spirit divided mankind into nations and tribes. When this was done, he picked out one for his chosen people. The pale-faces call that favorite, and for a long time much-favored people, Jews. The Manitou led them through a wilderness, and even through a salt lake, until they reached a promised land, where he permitted them to live for many hundred winters. A great triumph was to come out of that people--the triumphs of truth and of the law, over sin and death. In the course of time--” Here a young chief rose, made a sign of caution, and crossing the circle rapidly, disappeared by the passage through which the rill flowed. In about a minute he returned, showing the way into the centre of the council to one whom all present immediately recognized as a runner, by his dress and equipments. Important news was at hand; yet not a man of all that crowd either rose or spoke, in impatience to learn what it was!
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Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing Would, like the patriarch's, soothe a dying hour; With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing As e'er won maiden's lips in moonlight bower; With look like patient Job's, eschewing evil; With motions graceful as the birds in air; Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil That e'er clinched fingers in a captive's hair? --HALLECK'S Red-Jacket.
Although the arrival of the runner was so totally unexpected, it scarcely disturbed the quiet of that grave assembly. His approaching step had been heard, and he was introduced in the manner mentioned, when the young chief resumed his seat, leaving the messenger standing near the centre of the circle, and altogether within the influence of the light. He was an Ottawa, and had evidently travelled far and fast. At length he spoke; no one having put a single question to him, or betrayed the least sign of impatient curiosity.
“I come to tell the chiefs what has happened,” said the runner. “Our Great Father from Quebec has sent his young men against the Yankees. Red warriors, too, were there in hundreds--” here a murmur of interest was slightly apparent among the chiefs--“their path led them to Detroit; it is taken.”
A low murmur, expressive of satisfaction, passed round the circle, for Detroit was then the most important of all the posts held by the Americans, along the whole line of the great lakes. Eye met eye in surprise and admiration; then one of the older chiefs yielded to his interest in the subject, and inquired: “Have our young men taken many pale-face scalps?”
“So few that they are not worth counting. I did not see one pole that was such as an Indian loves to look on.”
“Did our young men keep back, and let the warriors from Quebec do all the fighting?”
“No one fought. The Yankees asked to be made prisoners, without using their rifles. Never before have so many captives been led into the villages with so little to make their enemies look on them with friendly eyes.”
A gleam of fierce delight passed athwart the dark features of Peter. It is probable that he fell into the same error, on hearing these tidings, as that which so generally prevailed for a short time among the natives of the old world, at the commencement of both of the two last wars of the republic, when the disasters with which they opened induced so many to fall into the fatal error of regarding Jonathan as merely a “shopkeeper.” A shopkeeper, in a certain sense, he may well be accounted; but among his wares are arms, that he has the head, the heart, and the hands to use, as man has very rarely been known to use them before. Even at this very instant, the brilliant success which has rendered the armed citizens of this country the wonder of Europe, is reacting on the masses of the old world, teaching them their power, and inciting them to stand up to the regularly armed bands of their rulers, with a spirit and confidence that, hitherto, has been little known in their histories. Happy, thrice happy will it be, if the conquerors use their success in moderation, and settle down into the ways of practical reason, instead of suffering their minds to be led astray in quest of the political jack-o'-lanterns, that are certain to conduct their followers into the quagmires of impracticable and visionary theories. To abolish abuses, to set in motion the car of state on the track of justice and economy, and to distinguish between that which is really essential to human happiness and human rights, and that which is merely the result of some wild and bootless proposition in political economy, are the great self-imposed tasks that the European people seem now to have assumed; and God grant that they may complete their labors with the moderation and success with which they would appear to have commenced them!
As for Peter, with the curse of ignorance weighing on his mind, it is to be presumed that he fancied his own great task of destroying the whites was so much the lighter, in consequence of the feeble defence of the Yankees at Detroit. The runner was now questioned by the different chiefs for details, which he furnished with sufficient intelligence and distinctness. The whole of that discreditable story is too prominent in history, and of too recent occurrence, to stand in need of repetition here. When the runner had told his tale, the chiefs broke the order of their circle, to converse the more easily concerning the great events which had just occurred. Some were not backward in letting their contempt for the “Yankees” be known. Here were three of their strong places taken, in quick succession, and almost without a blow. Detroit, the strongest of them all, and defended by an army, had fallen in a way to bring the blush to the American face, seemingly leaving the whole of the northwestern frontier of the country ravished from the red man, exposed to his incursions and depredations.
“What does my father think of this?” asked Bear's Meat of Peter, as the two stood apart, in a cluster of some three or four of the principal personages present. “Does the news make his heart stronger?”
“It is always strong when this business is before it. The Manitou has long looked darkly upon the red men, but now his face brightens. The cloud is passing from before his countenance, and we can begin again to see his smile. It will be with our sons as it was with our fathers. Our hunting-grounds will be our own, and the buffalo and deer will be plenty in our wigwams. The fire-water will flow after them that brought it into the country, and the red man will once more be happy, as in times past!”
The ignis fatuus of human happiness employs all minds, all faculties, all pens, and all theories, just at this particular moment. A thousand projects have been broached, will continue to be broached, and will fail, each in its time, showing the mistakes of men, without remedying the evils of which they complain. This is not because a beneficent Providence has neglected to enlighten their minds, and to show them the way to be happy, here and hereafter; but because human conceit runs, pari passu, with human woes, and we are too proud to look for our lessons of conduct, in that code in which they have been set before us by unerring wisdom and ceaseless love. If the political economists, and reformers, and revolutionists of the age, would turn from their speculations to those familiar precepts which all are taught and so few obey, they would find rules for every emergency; and, most of all, would they learn the great secret which lies so profoundly hid from them and their philosophy, in the contented mind. Nothing short of this will ever bring the mighty reform that the world needs. The press may be declared free, but a very brief experience will teach those who fancy that this one conquest will secure the victory, that they have only obtained King Stork in the lieu of King Log; a vulgar and most hideous tyrant for one of royal birth and gentle manners. They may set up the rule of patriots by profession, in place of the dominion of those who have so long pretended that the art of governing descends from male to male, according to the order of primogeniture, and live to wonder that love of country should have so many weaknesses in common with love of itself. They may rely on written charters for their liberties, instead of the divine right of kings, and come perchance to learn, that neither language, nor covenants, nor signatures, nor seals avail much, as against the necessities of nations, and the policy of rulers. Do we then regard reform as impossible, and society to be doomed to struggle on in its old sloughs of oppression and abuses? Far from it. We believe and hope, that at each effort of a sage character, something is gained, while much more than had been expected is lost; and such we think will continue to be the course of events, until men shall reach that period in their history when, possibly to their wonder, they will find that a faultless code for the government of all their affairs has been lying neglected, daily and hourly, in their very hands, for eighteen centuries and a half, without their perceiving the all-important truth. In due season this code will supersede all others, when the world will, for the first time, be happy and truly free.
There was a marked resemblance between the hopes and expectations of Peter, in reference to the overthrow of his pale-face enemies on the American continent, and those of the revolutionists of the old world in reference to the overthrow of their strong-intrenched foes on that of Europe. Each fancies success more easy of attainment than the end is likely to show; both overlook the terrible power of their adversaries; and both take the suggestions of a hope that is lively rather than enlightened, as the substitute for the lessons of wisdom.
It was some little time ere the council had so far regained its calm, as to think of inviting the missionary to resume his discourse. The last had necessarily heard the news, and was so much troubled by it, as to feel no great disposition to proceed; but Peter intimating that “the ears of his friends were open,” he was of opinion it would be wisest to go on with his traditions.
“Thus it was, my children,” Parson Amen continued, the circle being just as quiet and attentive as if no interruption had occurred--“the Great Spirit, selecting from among the nations of the earth, one to be his chosen people. I cannot stop, now, to tell you all he did for this nation, in the way of wonders and powers; but, finally, he placed them in a beautiful country, where milk and honey abounded, and made them its masters. From that people, in his earthly character, came the Christ whom we missionaries preach to you, and who is the great head of our church. Although the Jews, or Israelites, as we call that people, were thus honored and thus favored of the Manitou, they were but men, they had the weaknesses of men. On more than one occasion they displeased the Great Spirit, and that so seriously as to draw down condign punishment on themselves, and on their wives and children. In various ways were they visited for their backsliding and sins, each time repenting and receiving forgiveness. At length the Great Spirit, tired of their forgetfulness and crimes, allowed an army to come into their land, and to carry away as captives no less than ten of their twelve tribes; putting their people in strange hunting-grounds. Now, this happened many thousands of moons since, and no one can say with certainty what has become of those captives, whom Christians are accustomed to call 'the lost tribes of Israel.'”
Here the missionary paused to arrange his thoughts, and a slight murmur was heard in the circle as the chiefs communed together, in interested comments on what had just been said. The pause, however, was short, and the speaker again proceeded, safe from any ungracious interruption, among auditors so trained in self-restraint.
“Children, I shall not now say anything touching the birth of Christ, the redemption of the world, and the history of the two tribes that remained in the land where God had placed his people; for that is a part of the subject that comes properly within the scope of my ordinary teaching. At present I wish only to speak of yourselves; of the red man of America, of his probable origin and end, and of a great discovery that many of us think we have made, on this most interesting topic in the history of the good book. Does any one present know aught of the ten lost tribes of whom I have spoken?”
Eye met eye, and expectation was lively among those primitive and untaught savages. At length Crowsfeather arose to answer, the missionary standing the whole time, motionless, as if waiting for a reply.
“My brother has told us a tradition,” said the Pottawattamie. “It is a good tradition. It is a strange tradition. Red men love to hear such traditions. It is wonderful that so many as ten tribes should be LOST, at the same time, and no one know what has become of them! My brother asks us if WE know what has become of these ten tribes. How should poor red men, who live on their hunting-grounds, and who are busy when the grass grows in getting together food for their squaws and pappooses, against a time when the buffalo can find nothing to eat in this part of the world, know anything of a people that they never saw? My brother has asked a question that he only can answer. Let him tell us where these ten tribes are to be found, if he knows the place. We should like to go and look at them.”
“Here!” exclaimed the missionary, the instant Crowsfeather ceased speaking, and even before he was seated. “Here--in this council--on these prairies--in these openings--here, on the shores of the great lakes of sweet water, and throughout the land of America, are these tribes to be found. The red man is a Jew; a Jew is a red man. The Manitou has brought the scattered people of Israel to this part of the world, and I see his power in the wonderful fact. Nothing but a miracle could have done this!”
Great was the admiration of the Indians at this announcement! None of their own traditions gave this account of their origin; but there is reason to believe, on the other hand, that none of them contradict it. Nevertheless, here was a medicine-priest of the pale-faces boldly proclaiming the fact, and great was the wonder of all who heard, thereat! Having spoken, the missionary again paused, that his words might produce their effect. Bear's Meat now became his interrogator, rising respectfully, and standing during the colloquy that succeeded.
“My brother has spoken a great tradition,” said the Menominee. “Did he first hear it from his fathers?”
“In part, only. The history of the lost tribes has come down to us from our fathers; it is written in the good book of the pale-faces; the book that contains the word of the Great Spirit.”
“Does the good book of the pale-faces say that the red men are the children of the people he has mentioned?”
“I cannot say that it does. While the good book tells us so much, it also leaves very much untold. It is best that we should look for ourselves, that we may find out some of its meanings. It is in thus looking, that many Christians see the great truth which makes the Indians of America and the Jews beyond the great salt lake, one and the same people.”
“If this be so, let my brother tell us how far it is from our hunting-grounds to that distant land across the great salt lake.”
“I cannot give you this distance in miles exactly; but I suppose it may be eleven or twelve times the length of Michigan.”
“Will my brother tell us how much of this long path is water, and how much of it is dry land?”
“Perhaps one-fourth is land, as the traveller may choose; the rest must be water, if the journey be made from the rising toward the setting sun, which is the shortest path; but, let the journey be made from the setting toward the rising sun, and there is little water to cross; rivers and lakes of no great width, as is seen here, but only a small breadth of salt lake.”
“Are there, then, two roads to that far-off land, where the red men are thought to have once lived?
“Even so. The traveller may come to this spot from that land by way of the rising sun, or by way of the setting sun.”
The general movement among the members of the council denoted the surprise with which this account was received. As the Indians, until they have had much intercourse with the whites, very generally believe the earth to be flat, it was not easy for them to comprehend how a given point could be reached by directly opposite routes. Such an apparent contradiction would be very likely to extort further questions.
“My brother is a medicine-man of the pale-faces; his hairs are gray,” observed Crowsfeather. “Some of your medicine-men are good, and some wicked. It is so with the medicine-men of the red-skins. Good and bad are to be found in all nations. A medicine-man of your people cheated my young men by promising to show them where fire-water grows. He did not show them. He let them smell, but he did not let them drink. That was a wicked medicine-man. His scalp would not be safe did my young men see it again”--here the bee-hunter, insensibly to himself, felt for his rifle, making sure that he had it between his legs; the corporal being a little surprised at the sudden start he gave. “His hair does not grow on his head closer than the trees grow to the ground. Even a tree can be cut down. But all medicine-men are not alike. My brother is a GOOD medicine-man. All he says may not be just as he thinks, but he BELIEVES what he says. It is wonderful how men can look two ways; but it is more wonderful that they should go to the same place by paths that lead before and behind. This we do not understand; my brother will tell us how it can be.”
“I believe I understand what it is that my children would know. They think the earth is flat, but the pale-faces know that it is round. He who travels and travels toward the setting sun would come to this very spot, if he travelled long enough. The distance would be great, but the end of every straight path in this world is the place of starting.”
“My brother says this. He says many curious things. I have heard a medicine-man of his people say that the palefaces have seen their Great Spirit, talked with him, walked with him. It is not so with us Indians. Our Manitou speaks to us in thunder only. We are ignorant, and wish to learn more than we now know. Has my brother ever travelled on that path which ends where it begins? Once, on the prairies, I lost my way. There was snow, and glad was I to find tracks. I followed the tracks. But one traveller had passed. After walking an hour, two had passed. Another hour, and the three had passed, Then I saw the tracks were my own, and that I had been walking, as the squaws reason, round and round, but not going ahead.”
“I understand my friend, but he is wrong. It is no matter which path the lost tribes travelled to get here. The main question is, whether they came at all. I see in the red men, in their customs, their history, their looks, and even in their traditions, proof that they are these Jews, once the favored people of the Great Spirit.”
“If the Manitou so well loves the Indians, why has he permitted the pale-faces to take away their hunting-grounds? Why has he made the red man poor, and the white man rich? Brother, I am afraid your tradition is a lying tradition, or these things would not be so.”
“It is not given to men to understand the wisdom that cometh from above. That which seemeth so strange to us may be right. The lost tribes had offended God; and their scattering, and captivity, and punishment, are but so many proofs of his displeasure. But, if lost, we have reason to believe that one day they will be found. Yes, my children, it will be the pleasure of the Great Spirit, one day, to restore you to the land of your fathers, and make you again, what you once were, a great and glorious people!”
As the well-meaning but enthusiastic missionary spoke with great fervor, the announcement of such an event, coming as it did from one whom they respected, even while they could not understand him, did not fail to produce a deep sensation. If their fortunes were really the care of the Great Spirit, and justice was to be done to them by his love and wisdom, then would the projects of Peter, and those who acted and felt with him, be unnecessary, and might lead to evil instead of to good. That sagacious savage did not fail to discover this truth; and he now believed it might be well for him to say a word, in order to lessen the influence Parson Amen might otherwise obtain among those whom it was his design to mould in a way entirely to meet his own wishes. So intense was the desire of this mysterious leader to execute vengeance on the pale-faces, that the redemption of the tribes from misery and poverty, unaccompanied by this part of his own project, would have given him pain in lieu of pleasure. His very soul had got to be absorbed in this one notion of retribution, and of annihilation for the oppressors of his race; and he regarded all things through a medium of revenge, thus created by his feelings, much as the missionary endeavored to bend every fact and circumstance, connected with the Indians, to the support of his theory touching their Jewish origin.
When Peter arose, therefore, fierce and malignant passions were at work in his bosom; such as a merciful and a benignant deity never wishes to see in the breast of man, whether civilized or savage. The self-command of the Tribeless, however, was great, and he so far succeeded in suppressing the volcano that was raging within, as to speak with his usual dignity and an entire calmness of exterior.
“My brothers have heard what the medicine-man had to say,” Peter commenced. “He has told them that which was new to them. He has told them an Indian is not an Indian. That a red man is a pale-face, and that we are not what we thought we were. It is good to learn. It makes the difference between the wise and the foolish. The palefaces learn more than the red-skins. That is the way they have learned how to get our hunting-grounds. That is the way they have learned to build their villages on the spots where our fathers killed the deer. That is the way they have learned how to come and tell us that we are not Indians, but Jews. I wish to learn. Though old, my mind craves to know more. That I may know more, I will ask this medicine-man questions, and my brothers can open their ears, and learn a little, too, by what he answers. Perhaps we shall believe that we are not red-skins, but pale-faces. Perhaps we shall believe that our true hunting-grounds are not near the great lakes of sweet water, but under the rising sun. Perhaps we shall wish to go home, and to leave these pleasant openings for the pale faces to put their cabins on them, as the small-pox that they have also given to us, puts its sores on our bodies. Brother--” turning toward the missionary--“listen. You say we are no longer Indians, but Jews: is this true of ALL red men, or only of the tribes whose chiefs are HERE?”
“Of ALL red men, as I most sincerely believe. You are now red, but once all of your people were fairer than the fairest of the pale-faces. It is climate, and hardships, and sufferings that have changed your color.”
“If suffering can do THAT,” returned Peter, with emphasis, “I wonder we are not BLACK. When ALL our hunting-grounds are covered with the farms of your people, I think we shall be BLACK.”
Signs of powerful disgust were now visible among the listeners, an Indian having much of the contempt that seems to weigh so heavily on that unfortunate class, for all of the color mentioned. At the south, as is known, the red man has already made a slave of the descendants of the children of Africa, but no man has ever yet made a slave of a son of the American forests! THAT is a result which no human power has yet been able to accomplish. Early in the settlement of the country, attempts were indeed MADE, by sending a few individuals to the islands; but so unsuccessful did the experiment turn out to be, that the design was soon abandoned. Whatever may be his degradation, and poverty, and ignorance, and savage ferocity, it would seem to be the settled purpose of the American Indians of our own territories--unlike the aborigines who are to be found farther south--to live and die free men.
“My children,” answered the missionary, “I pretend not to say what will happen, except as it has been told to us in the word of God. You know that we pale-faces have a book, in which the Great Spirit has told us his laws, and foretold to us many of the things that are to happen. Some of these things HAVE happened, while some remain TO happen. The loss of the ten tribes was foretold, and HAS happened; but their being FOUND again, has not YET happened, unless indeed I am so blessed as to be one of those who have been permitted to meet them in these openings. Here is the book--it goes where I go, and is my companion and friend, by day and by night; in good and evil; in season and out of season. To this book I cling as to my great anchor, that is to carry me through the storms in safety! Every line in it is precious; every word true!”
Perhaps half the chiefs present had seen books before, while those who now laid eyes on one for the first time, had heard of this art of the pale-faces, which enabled them to set down their traditions in a way peculiar to themselves. Even the Indians have their records, however, though resorting to the use of natural signs, and a species of hieroglyphics, in lieu of the more artistical process of using words and letters, in a systemized written language. The Bible, too, was a book of which all had heard, more or less; though not one of those present had ever been the subject of its influence. A Christian Indian, indeed--and a few of those were to be found even at that day--would hardly have attended a council convened for the objects which had caused this to be convened. Still, a strong but regulated curiosity existed, to see, and touch, and examine the great medicine-book of the pale-faces. There was a good deal of superstition blended with the Indian manner of regarding the sacred volume; some present having their doubts about touching it, even while most excited by admiration, and a desire to probe its secrets.
Peter took the little volume, which the missionary extended as if inviting any one who might so please, to examine it also. It was the first time the wary chief had ever suffered that mysterious book to touch him. Among his other speculations on the subject of the manner in which the white men were encroaching, from year to year, on the lands of the natives, it had occurred to his mind that this extraordinary volume, which the pale-faces all SEEMED to reverence, even to the drunkards of the garrisons, might contain the great elements of their power. Perhaps he was not very much out of the way in this supposition; though they who use the volume habitually, are not themselves aware, one-half the time, why it is so.
On the present occasion, Peter saw the great importance of not betraying apprehension, and he turned over the pages awkwardly, as one would be apt to handle a book for the first time, but boldly and without hesitation. Encouraged by the impunity that accompanied this hardihood, Peter shook the leaves open, and held the volume on high, in a way that told his own people that he cared not for its charms or power. There was more of seeming than of truth, however, in this bravado; for never before had this extraordinary being made so heavy a draft on his courage and self-command, as in the performance of this simple act. He did not, could not know what were the virtues of the book, and his imagination very readily suggested the worst. As the great medicine-volume of the pale-faces, it was quite likely to contain that which was hostile to the red men; and this fact, so probable to his eyes, rendered it likely that some serious evil to himself might follow from the contact. It did not, however; and a smile of grim satisfaction lighted his swarthy countenance, as, turning to the missionary, he said with point-- “Let my brother open his eyes. I have looked into his medicine-book, but do not see that the red man is anything but a red man. The Great Spirit made him; and what the Great Spirit makes, lasts. The pale-faces have made their book, and it lies.”
“No, no--Peter, Peter, thou utterest wicked words. But the Lord will pardon thee, since thou knowest not what thou sayest. Give me the sacred volume, that I may place it next my heart, where I humbly trust so many of its divine precepts are already entrenched.”
This was said in English, under the impulse of feeling, but being understood by Peter, the latter quietly relinquished the Bible, preparing to follow up the advantage he perceived he had gained, on the spot.
“My brother has his medicine-book, again,” said Peter, “and the red men live. This hand is not withered like the dead branch of the hemlock; yet it has held his word of the Great Spirit! It may be that a red-skin and a pale-face book cannot do each other harm. I looked into my brother's great charm, but did not see or hear a tradition that tells me we are Jews. There is a bee-hunter in these openings. I have talked with him. He has told me who these Jews are. He says they are people who do not go with the pale-faces, but live apart from them, like men with the small-pox. It is not right for my brother to come among the red men, and tell them that their fathers were not good enough to live, and eat, and go on the same paths as his fathers.”
“This is all a mistake, Peter--a great and dangerous mistake. The bee-hunter has heard the Jews spoken of by those who do not sufficiently read the good book. They have been, and are still, the chosen people of the Great Spirit, and will one day be received back to his favor. Would that I were one of them, only enlightened by the words of the New Testament! No real Christian ever can, or does now despise a son of Israel, whatever has been done in times past. It is an honor, and not a disgrace, to be what I have said my friends are.”
“If this be so, why do not the pale-faces let us keep out hunting-grounds to ourselves? We are content. We do not wish to be Jews. Our canoes are too small to cross the great salt lake. They are hardly large enough to cross the great lakes of sweet water. We should be tired of paddling so far. My brother says there is a rich land under the rising sun, which the Manitou gave to the red men. Is this so?”
“Beyond all doubt. It was given to the children of Israel, for a possession forever; and though you have been carried away from it for a time, there the land still is, open to receive you, and waiting the return of its ancient masters. In good season that return must come; for we have the word of God for it, in our Christian Bible.”
“Let my brother open his ears very wide, and hear what I have to say. We thank him for letting us know that we are Jews. We believe that he thinks what he says. Still, we think we are red men, and Injins, and not Jews. We never saw the place where the sun rises. We do not wish to see it. Our hunting-grounds are nearer to the place where he sets. If the pale-faces believe we have a right to that distant land, which is so rich in good things, we will give it to them, and keep these openings, and prairies, and woods. We know the game of this country, and have found out how to kill it. We do not know the game under the rising sun, which may kill us. Go to your friends and say, 'The Injins will give you that land near the rising sun, if you will let them alone on their hunting-grounds, where they have so long been. They say that your canoes are larger than their canoes, and that one can carry a whole tribe. They have seen some of your big canoes on the great lakes, and have measured them. Fill all you have got with your squaws and pappooses, put your property in them, and go back by the long path through which you came. Then will the red man thank the pale-face and be his friend. The white man is welcome to that far-off land. Let him take it, and build his villages on it, and cut down its trees. This is all the Injins ask. If the pale-faces can take away with them the small-pox and the fire-water, it will be better still. They brought both into this country, it is right that they should take them away.' Will my brother tell this to his people?”
“It would do no good. They know that the land of Judea is reserved by God for his chosen people, and they are not Jews. None but the children of Israel can restore that land to its ancient fertility. It would be useless for any other to attempt it. Armies have been there, and it was once thought that a Christian kingdom was set up on the spot; but neither the time nor the people had come. Jews alone can make Judea what it was, and what it will be again. If my people owned that land, they could not use it. There are also too many of us now, to go away in canoes.”
“Did not the fathers of the pale-faces come in canoes?” demanded Peter, a little sternly.
“They did; but since that time their increase has been so great, that canoes enough to hold them could not be found. No; the Great Spirit, for his own wise ends, has brought my people hither; and here must they remain to the end of time. It is not easy to make the pigeons fly south in the spring.”
This declaration, quietly but distinctly made, as it was the habit of the missionary to speak, had its effect. It told Peter, and those with him, as plainly as language could tell them, that there was no reason to expect the pale-faces would ever willingly abandon the country, and seemed the more distinctly, in all their uninstructed minds, to place the issue on the armed hand. It is not improbable that some manifestation of feeling would have escaped the circle, had not an interruption to the proceedings occurred, which put a stop to all other emotions but those peculiar to the lives of savages.
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Nearer the mount stood Moses; in his hand The rod which blasted with strange plagues the realm Of Misraim, and from its time-worn channels Upturned the Arabian sea. Fair was his broad High front, and forth from his soul-piercing eye Did legislation look; which full he fixed Upon the blazing panoply undazzled. --HILLHOUSE.
It often happens in the recesses of the wilderness, that, in the absence of men, the animals hunt each other. The wolves, in particular, following their instincts, are often seen in packs, pressing upon the heels of the antelope, deer, and other creatures of that family, which depend for safety more on their speed than on their horns. On the present occasion, a fine buck, with a pack of fifty wolves close after it, came bounding through the narrow gorge that contained the rill, and entered the amphitheatre of the bottom-land. Its headlong career was first checked by the sight of the fire; then arose a dark circle of men, each armed and accustomed to the chase. In much less time than it has taken to record the fact, that little piece of bottom-land was crowded with wolves, deer, and men. The headlong impetuosity of the chase and flight had prevented the scent from acting, and all were huddled together, for a single instant, in a sort of inextricable confusion. Brief as was this melee, it sufficed to allow of a young hunter's driving his arrow through the heart of the buck, and enabled others among the Indians to kill several of the wolves; some with arrows, others with knives, etc. No rifle was used, probably from a wish not to give an alarm.
The wolves were quite as much astonished at this unexpected rencontre, as the Indians. They were not a set of hungry and formidable beasts, that famine might urge to any pass of desperation; but a pack hunting, like gentlemen, for their own amusement. Their headlong speed was checked less by the crowd of men, than by the sight of fire. In their impetuosity, it is probable that they would have gone clean through five hundred men, but no wild beast will willingly encounter fire. Three or four of the chiefs, aware of this dread, seized brands, and throwing themselves, without care, into the midst of the pack, the animals went howling off, scattering in all directions. Unfortunately for its own welfare, one went directly through the circle, plunged into the thicket beyond, and made its way quite up to the fallen tree, on which the bee-hunter and the corporal had taken their stations. This was altogether too much for the training, or for the philosophy of Hive. Perceiving a recognized enemy rushing toward him, that noble mastiff met him in a small cleared spot, open-mouthed, and for a few moments a fierce combat was the consequence. Dogs and wolves do not fight in silence, and loud were the growls and yells on this occasion. In vain did le Bourdon endeavor to drag his mastiff off; the animal was on the high-road to victory, when it is ever hard to arrest the steps of the combatant. Almost as a matter of course, some of the chiefs rushed toward the spot, when the presence of the two spectators first became known to them. At the next moment the wolf lay dead at the feet of Hive; and the parties stood gazing at each other, equally taken by surprise, and equally at a loss to know what to do next.
It was perhaps fortunate for the bee-hunter, that neither Crowsfeather, nor any other of the Pottawattamies, was present at this first rencontre, or he might have fallen on the spot, a victim to their disappointed hopes of drinking at a whiskey-spring. The chiefs present were strangers to le Bourdon, and they stared at him, in a way to show that his person was equally unknown to them. But it was necessary, now, to follow the Indians back to their circle, where the whole party soon collected again, the wolves having gone off on their several routes, to put up some other animal, and run him to death.
During the whole of that excited and tumultuous scene, which would probably now be termed a “stampede” in the Mexican-Americo-English of the day, Peter had not stirred. Familiar with such occurrences, he felt the importance of manifesting an unmoved calm, as a quality most likely to impress the minds of his companions with a profound sense of his dignity and self-command. While all around him was in a tumult, he stood in his tracks, motionless as a statue. Even the fortitude of the worthy missionary was shaken by the wild tempest that momentarily prevailed; and the good man forgot the Jews in his alarm at wolves, forgot the mighty past in his apprehensions for the uncomfortable and ill-boding present time. All this, however, was soon over, and order, and quiet, and a dignified calm once more reigned in the circle. Fagots were thrown on the fire; and the two captives, or spectators, stood as near it, the observed of all observers, as the heat rendered comfortable. It was just then that Crowsfeather and his companions first recognized the magician of the whiskey-spring.
Peter saw the discovery of the two spectators with some uneasiness. The time had not come when he intended to strike his blow; and he had seen signs among those Pottawattamies, when at the mouth of the river, which had told him how little they were disposed to look with favor on one who had so grievously trifled with their hopes. His first care, therefore, was to interpose his authority and influence between le Bourdon and any project of revenge, which Crowsfeather's young men might be apt to devise, as soon as they, too, laid eyes on the offender. This was done in a characteristic and wily manner.
“Does my brother love honey?” asked the tribeless chief of the leader of the Pottawattamies present, who sat near him, gazing on le Bourdon much as the cat looks upon the mouse, ere it makes it its prey. “Some Injins are fond of that sweet food: if my brother is one of that sort, I can tell him how to fill his wigwam with honey with little trouble.”
At this suggestion, coming from such a source, Crowsfeather could not do less than express his thanks, and his readiness to hear what further might be in reserve for him. Peter then alluded to le Bourdon's art, describing him as being the most skilful bee-hunter of the West. So great was his art in that way, that no Indian had ever yet seen his equal. It was Peter's intention to make him exercise his craft soon, for the benefit of the chiefs and warriors present, who might then return to their village, carrying with them stores of honey to gladden the hearts of their squaws and pappooses. This artifice succeeded; for the Indians are not expert in taking this article of food, which so much abounds in the forests, both on account of the difficulty they find in felling the trees, and on account of the “angle-ing” part of the process, which much exceeds their skill in mathematics. On the other hand, the last is just the sort of skill a common white American would be likely to manifest, his readiness and ingenuity in all such processes almost amounting to an instinct.
Having thus thrown his mantle around le Bourdon for the moment, Peter then deemed it the better course to finish the historical investigation in which the council had been so much interested, when the strange interruption by the wolves occurred. With this view, therefore, he rose himself, and recalled the minds of all present to this interesting subject, by a short speech. This he did, especially to prevent any premature attack on the person of le Bourdon.
“Brothers,” said this mysterious chief, “it is good for Injins to learn. When they learn a thing, they know it; then they may learn another. It is in this way that the pale-faces do; it makes them wise, and puts it in their power to take away our hunting-grounds. A man that knows nothing is only a child that has grown up too fast. He may be big--may take long steps--may be strong enough to carry burdens--may love venison and buffaloes' humps; but his size is only in the way; his steps he does not know where to direct; his burdens he does not know how to choose; and he has to beg food of the squaws, instead of carrying it himself to their wigwams. He has not learned how to take game. We must all learn. It is right. When we have learned how to take game, and how to strike the enemy, and how to keep the wigwam filled, then we may learn traditions. Traditions tell us of our fathers. We have many traditions. Some are talked of, even to the squaws. Some are told around the fires of the tribes. Some are known only to the aged chiefs. This is right, too. Injins ought not to say too much, nor too little. They should say what is wise--what is best. But my brother, the medicine-man of the pale-faces, says that our traditions have not told us everything. Something has been kept back. If so, it is best to learn that too. If we are Jews, and not Injins, we ought to know it. If we are Injins, and not Jews, our brother ought to know it, and not call us by a wrong name. Let him speak. We listen.”
Here Peter slowly resumed his seat. As the missionary understood all that had been said, he next arose, and proceeded to make good, as far as he was able, and in such language as his knowledge of Indian habits suggested, his theory of the lost tribes.
“I wish my children to understand,” resumed the missionary, “that it is an honor to be a Jew. I have not come here to lessen the red men in their own eyes, but to do them honor. I see that Bear's Meat wishes to say something; my ears are open, and my tongue is still.”
“I thank my brother for the opportunity to say what is on my mind,” returned the chief mentioned. “It is true I have something to say; it is this: I wish to ask the medicine-man if the pale-faces honor and show respect to the Jews?”
This was rather an awkward question for the missionary, but he was much too honest to dissemble. With a reverence for truth that proceeded from his reverence for the Father of all that is true, he replied honestly, though not altogether without betraying how much he regretted the necessity of answering at all. Both remained standing while the dialogue proceeded; or in parliamentary language, each may be said to have had the floor at the same time.
“My brother wishes to know if the pale-faces honor the Jews,” returned the missionary. “I wish I could answer 'yes'; but the truth forces me to say 'no.' The pale-faces have traditions that make against the Jews, and the judgments of God weigh heavy on the children of Israel. But all good Christians, now, look with friendly eyes on this dispersed and persecuted people, and wish them well. It will give the white men very great pleasure to learn that I have found the lost tribes of Israel in the red men of America.”
“Will my brother tell us WHY this will give his people pleasure? Is it because they will be glad to find old enemies, poor, living on narrow hunting-grounds, off which the villages and farms of the pale-faces begin to push them still nearer to the setting sun; and toward whom the small-pox has found a path to go, but none to come from?”
“Nay, nay, Bear's Meat, think not so unkindly of us of the white race! In crossing the great salt lake, and in coming to this quarter of the world, our fathers were led by the finger of God. We do but obey the will of the Great Spirit, in pressing forward into this wilderness, directed by his wisdom how to spread the knowledge of his name among those who, as yet, have never heard it; or, having heard, have not regarded it. In all this, the wisest men are but babes; not being able to say whither they are to go, or what is to be done.”
“This is strange,” returned the unmoved Indian. “It is not so with the red men. Our squaws and pappooses do know the hunting-ground of one tribe from the hunting-ground of another. When they put their feet on strange hunting-grounds, it is because they INTENDED to go there, and to steal game. This is sometimes right. If it is right to take the scalp of an enemy, it is right to get his deer and his buffalo, too. But we never do this without knowing it. If we did, we should be unfit to go at large, unfit to sit in council. This is the first time I have heard that the pale-faces are so weak, and they have such feeble minds, too, that they do not know where they go.”
“My brother does not understand me. No man can see into the future--no man can say what will happen to-morrow. The Great Spirit only can tell. It is for him, then, to guide his children in their wanderings. When our fathers first came out of their canoes upon the land, on this side of the great salt lake, not one among them knew anything of this country between the great lakes of sweet water. They did not know that red men lived here. The Great Spirit did know, and intended then, that I should this night stand up in this council, and speak of his power and of his name, and do him reverence. It was the Great Spirit that put it into my mind to come among the Indians; and it is the Great Spirit who has led me, step by step, as warriors move toward the graves of their fathers, to make the discovery, that the Indians are, in truth, the children of Israel, a part of his own chosen and once much-favored people. Let me ask my friends one or two questions. Do not your traditions say that your fathers once came from a far-off land?”
Bear's Meat now took his seat, not choosing to answer a question of this nature, in the presence of a chief so much respected as Peter. He preferred to let the last take up the dialogue where he now saw fit to abandon it. As the other very well understood the reason of this sudden movement, he quietly assumed the office of spokesman; the whole affair proceeding much as if there had been no change.
“Our traditions DO tell us that our fathers came from a far-off land,” answered Peter, without rising.
“I thought so! --I thought so!” exclaimed the simple-minded and confiding missionary. “How wonderful are the ways of God! Yes, my brother, Judea is a far-off land, and your traditions say that your fathers came from such a distance! This, then, is something proved. Do not your traditions say, that once your tribes were more in favor with the Great Spirit than they are now?”
“Our traditions do say this: once our tribes did not see the face of the Manitou looking dark upon them, as it now does. That was before the pale-faces came in their big canoes, across the great salt lake, to drive the Indians from their hunting-grounds. It was when the small-pox had not found the path to their villages. When fire-water was unknown to them, and no Indian had ever burned his throat with it.”
“Oh, but I speak of a time much more distant than that. Of a time when your prophets stood face to face with God, and talked with the Creator. Since that day a great change has come over your people. Then your color was light, like that of the fairest and handsomest of the Circassian race; now, it has become red. When even the color is changed, it is not wonderful that men should no longer be the same in other particulars. Yes; once all the races of men were of the same color and origin.”
“This is not what our traditions say. We have heard from our fathers that the Great Spirit made men of different colors; some he made light, like the pale-faces; some red, like the Injins; some black, like the pale-faces' slaves. To some he gave high noses; to some low noses: to some flat noses. To the pale-faces he gave eyes of many colors. This is the reason why they see so many things, and in so many different ways. To the red men he gave eyes of the same color, and they always see things of the same color. To a red man there is no change. Our fathers have always been red. This we know. If them Jews, of whom my brother speaks, were ever white, they have not been our fathers. We tell this to the medicine-man, that he may know it, too. We do not wish to lead him on a crooked path, or to speak to him with a forked tongue. What we have said, is so. Now, the road is open to the wigwam of the pale-faces, and we wish them safe on their journey home. We Injins have a council to hold around this fire, and will stay longer.”
At this plain intimation that their presence was no longer desirable, it became necessary for them to depart. The missionary, filled with zeal, was reluctant to go, for, in his eyes, the present communications with the savages promised him not only the conversion of pagans, but the restoration of the Jews! Nevertheless, he was compelled to comply; and when le Bourdon and the corporal took their departure, he turned, and pronounced in solemn tone the Christian benediction on the assembly. The meaning of this last impressive office was understood by most of the chiefs, and they rose as one man, in acknowledgment.
The three white men, on retiring from the circle, held their way toward Castle Meal. Hive followed his master, having come out of the combat but little injured. As they got to a point where a last look could be had of the bottom-land of the council, each turned to see what was now in the course of proceeding. The fire glimmered just enough to show the circlet of dark faces, but not an Indian spoke or moved. There they all sat, patiently waiting for the moment when the “strangers” might “withdraw” to a sufficient distance, to permit them to proceed with their own private affairs without fear of interruption.
“This has been to me a most trying scene,” observed the missionary, as the three pursued their way toward the garrison. “How hard it is to convince men against their wishes. Now, I am as certain as a man can be, that every one of these Injins is in fact a Jew; and yet, you have seen how small has been my success in persuading them to be of the right way of thinking, on this subject.”
“I have always noticed that men stick even to their defects, when they're nat'ral,” returned the bee-hunter. “Even a nigger will stand up for his color, and why shouldn't an Injin? You began wrong, parson. Had you just told these chiefs that they were Jews, they might have stood THAT, poor creatures, for they hardly know how mankind looks upon a Jew; but you went to work to skin them, in a lump, making so many poor, wishy-washy pale-faces of all the red-skins, in a body. You and I may fancy a white face better than one of any other color; but nature colors the eye when it colors the body, and there's not a nigger in America who doesn't think black the pink of beauty.”
“Perhaps it was proceeding too fast to say anything about the change of color, Bourdon. But what can a Christian minister do, unless he tell the truth? Adam could have been but of one color; and all the races on earth, one excepted, must have changed from that one color.”
“Aye, and my life on it, that all the races on 'arth believe that one color to have been just that which has fallen to the luck of each partic'lar shade. Hang me if I should like to be persuaded out of my color, any more than these Injins. In America, color goes for a great deal; and it may count for as much with an Injin as among us whites. No, no, parson; you should have begun with persuading these savages into the notion that they're Jews; if you could get along with THAT, the rest might be all the easier.”
“You speak of the Jews, not as if you considered them a chosen people of the Lord, but as a despised and hateful race. This is not right, Bourdon. I know that Christians are thus apt to regard them; but it does not tell well for their charity or their knowledge.”
“I know very little about them, Parson Amen; not being certain of ever having seen a Jew in my life. Still, I will own that I have a sort of grudge against them, though I can hardly tell you why. Of one thing I feel certain--no man breathing should ever persuade me into the notion that I'M a Jew, lost or found; ten tribes or twenty. What say you, corporal, to this idea?”
“Just as you say, Bourdon. Jews, Turks, and infidels, I despise: so was I brought up, and so I shall remain.”
“Can either of you tell me WHY you look in this uncharitable light, on so many of your fellow-creatures? It cannot be Christianity, for such are not its teachings or feelings. Nor is either of you very remarkable for his observance of the laws of God, as they have been revealed to Christian people. MY heart yearns toward these Injins, who are infidels, instead of entertaining any of the feelings that the corporal has just expressed.”
“I wish there were fewer of them, and that them few were farther from Castle Meal,” put in le Bourdon, with point. “I have known all along that Peter meant to have a great council; but will own, now that I have seen something of it, I do not find it quite as much to my mind as I had expected it would be.”
“There's a strong force on 'em,” said the corporal, “and a hard set be they to look at. When a man's a young soldier, all this paint, and shaving of heads, and rings in noses and ears, makes some impression; but a campaign or two ag'in' the fellows soon brings all down to one color and one uniform, if their naked hides can be so called. I told 'em off, Bourdon, and reconn'itred 'em pretty well, while they was a making speeches; and, in my judgment, we can hold good the garrison ag'in' 'em all, if so be we do not run short of water. Provisions and water is what a body may call fundamentals, in a siege.”
“I hope we shall have no need of force--nay, I feel persuaded there will not be,” said Parson Amen. “Peter is our friend; and his command over these savages is wonderful! Never before have I seen red men so completely under the control of a chief. Your men at Fort Dearborn, corporal, were scarcely more under the orders of their officers, than these red-skins are under the orders of this chief!”
“I will not go to compare rig'lars with Injins, Mr. Parson,” answered the corporal, a little stiffly. “They be not of the same natur' at all, and ought not to be put on a footing, in any particular. These savages may obey their orders, after a fashion of their own; but I should like to see them manoeuvre under fire. I've fit Injins fourteen times, in my day, and have never seen a decent line, or a good, honest, manly, stand-up charge, made by the best among 'em, in any field, far or near. Trees and covers is necessary to their constitutions, just as sartain as a deer chased will take to water to throw off the scent. Put 'em up with the baggonet, and they'll not stand a minute.”
“How should they, corporal,” interrupted le Bourdon laughing, “when they've no baggonets of their own to make a stand with? You put one in mind of what my father used to say. He was a soldier in revolution times, and sarved his seven years with Washington. The English used to boast that the Americans wouldn't 'stand up to the rack,' if the baggonet was set to work; 'but this was before we got our own toothpicks,' said the old man. 'As soon as they gave US baggonets, too, there was no want of standing up to the work.' It seems to me, corporal, you overlook the fact that Injins carry no baggonets.”
“Every army uses its own weapons. If an Injin prefers his knife and his tomahawk to a baggonet, it is no affair of mine. I speak of a charge as I see it; and the soldier who relies on a tomahawk instead of a baggonet, should stand in his tracks, and give tomahawk play. No, no, Bourdon, seeing is believing. These red-skins can do nothing with our people, when our people is properly regimented, well officered, and thoroughly drilled. They're skeary to new beginners--THAT I must acknowledge--but beyond that I set them down as nothing remarkable as military men.”
“Good or bad, I wish there were fewer of them, and that they were farther off. This man Peter is a mystery to me: sometimes he seems quite friendly; then, ag'in, he appears just ready to take all our scalps. Do you know much of his past history, Mr. Amen?”
“Not as much as I wish I did,” the missionary replied. “No one can tell me aught concerning Peter, beyond the fact of his being a sort of a prophet, and a chief of commanding influence. Even his tribe is unknown; a circumstance that points us to the ancient history of the Jews for the explanation. It is my own opinion that Peter is of the race of Aaron, and that he is designed by Divine Providence to play an important part in the great events on which we touch. All that is wanting is, to persuade HIM into this belief, himself. Once persuade a man that he is intended to be something, and your work is half done to your hands. But the world is so full of ill-digested and random theories, that truth has as much as it can do to obtain a sober and patient hearing!”
Thus is it with poor human nature. Let a man get a crotchet into his head--however improbable it may be, however little supported by reason or fact, however ridiculous, indeed--and he becomes indisposed to receive any evidence but that which favors his theory; to see any truths but such as he fancies will harmonize with HIS truths; or to allow of any disturbing causes in the great workings of his particular philosophy. This notion of Parson Amen's concerning the origin of the North American savage, did not originate with that simple-minded enthusiast, by any means. In this way are notions formed and nurtured. The missionary had read somewhat concerning the probability that the American Indians were the lost tribes of Israel; and possessed with the idea, everything he saw was tortured into evidence in support of his theory. There is just as much reason for supposing that any, and all, of the heathen savages that are scattered up and down the earth have this origin, as to ascribe it to our immediate tribes; but to this truth the good parson was indifferent, simply because it did not come within the circle of his particular belief.
Thus, too, was it with the corporal. Unless courage, and other military qualities, were manifested precisely in the way in which HE had been trained, they were not courage and military qualities at all. Every virtue has its especial and conventional accessories, according to this school of morals; nothing of the sort remaining as it came from above, in the simple abstract qualities of right and wrong. On such feelings and principles as these, do men get to be dogmatical, narrow-minded, and conceited!
Our three white men pursued their way back to the “garrison,” conversing as they went, much in the manner they did in the dialogue we have just recorded. Neither Parson Amen nor the corporal seemed to apprehend anything, not-withstanding the extraordinary scene in which one had been an actor, and of which the other had been a witness. Their wonder and apprehensions, no doubt, were much mitigated by the fact, that it was understood Peter was to meet a large collection of the chiefs in the Openings, and the minds of all were, more or less, prepared to see some such assemblage as had that night got together. The free manner in which the mysterious chief led the missionary to the circle, was, of itself, some proof that HE did not desire concealment; and even le Bourdon admitted, when they came to discuss the details, that this was a circumstance that told materially in favor of the friendliness of his intentions. Still, the bee-hunter had his doubts; and most sincerely did he wish that all in Castle Meal, Blossom in particular, were safe within the limits of civilized settlements.
On reaching the “garrison,” all was safe. Whiskey Centre watched the gate--a sober man, now, perforce, if not by inclination; for being in the Openings, in this respect, is like being at sea with an empty spirit-room. He was aware that several had passed out, but was surprised to learn that Peter was of the number. That gate Peter had not passed, of a certainty; and how else he could quit the palisades was not easily understood. It was possible to climb over them, it is true; but the feat would be attended with so great an exertion, and would be so likely to lead to a noise which would expose the effort, that all had great difficulty in believing a man so dignified and reserved in manner as this mysterious chief would be apt to resort to such means of quitting the place.
As for the Chippewa, Gershom reported his return a few minutes before; and the bee-hunter entered, to look for that tried friend, as soon as he learned the fact. He found Pigeonswing laying aside his accoutrements, previously to lying down to take his rest.
“So, Chippewa, YOU have come back, have you?” exclaimed le Bourdon. “So many of your red-skin brethren are about, that I didn't expect to see you again for these two or three days.”
“No want to eat, den, eh? How you all eat, if hunter don't do he duty? S'pose squaw don't cook vittles, you no like it, eh? Juss so wid hunter--no KILL vittles, don't like it nudder.”
“This is true enough. Still, so many of your people are about, just now, that I thought it probable you might wish to remain outside with them for a day or two.”
“How know red man about, eh? You SEE him--you COUNT him eh?”
“I have seen something like fifty, and may say I counted that many. They were chiefs, however, and I take it for granted, a goodly number of common warriors are not far off. Am I right, Pigeonswing?”
“S'pose don't know--den, can't tell? Only tell what he know.”
“Sometimes an Injin GUESSES, and comes as near the truth as a white man who has seen the thing with his own Pigeonswing made no answer; though le Bourdon fancied, from his manner, that he had really something on his mind, and that, too, of importance, which he wished to communicate.
“I think you might tell me some news that I should like to hear, Chippewa, if you was so minded.”
“Why you stay here, eh?” demanded the Indian, abruptly. “Got plenty honey--bess go home, now. Always bess go home, when hunt up. Home good place, when hunter well tired.”
“My home is here, in the Openings, Pigeonswing. When I go into the settlements, I do little but loaf about among the farm-houses on the Detroit River, having neither squaw nor wigwam of my own to go to. I like this place well enough, if your red brethren will let me keep it in peace.”
“Dis bad place for pale-face, juss now. Better go home, dan stay in Openin'. If don't know short path to Detroit, I show you. Bess go, soon as can; and bess go ALONE. No good to be trouble wid squaw, when in hurry.”
The countenance of le Bourdon changed at this last intimation; though the Indian might not have observed it in the darkness. After a brief pause, the first answered in a very determined way.
“I believe I understand you, Chippewa,” he said. “I shall do nothing of the sort, however. If the squaws can't go, too, I shall not quit them. Would you desert YOUR squaws because you thought them in trouble?”
“An't your squaw yet. Bess not have squaw at all, when Openin' so full of Injin. Where you t'ink is two buck I shoot dis mornin', eh? Skin 'em, cut 'em up, hang 'em on tree, where wolf can't get 'em. Well, go on after anudder; kill HIM, too. Dere he is, inside of palisade, but no tudder two. He bot' gone, when I get back to tree. Two good buck as ever see! How you like dat, eh?”
“I care very little about it, since we have food enough, and are not likely to want. So the wolves got your venison from the trees, after all your care; ha! Pigeonswing.”
“Wolf don't touch him--wolf CAN'T touch him. Moccasin been under tree. See him mark. Bess do as I tell you; go home, soon as ever can. Short path to Detroit; an't two hundred pale-face mile.”
“I see how it is, Pigeonswing; I see how it is, and thank you for this hint, while I honor your good faith to your own people. But I cannot go to Detroit, in the first place, for that town and fort have fallen into the hands of the British. It might be possible for a canoe to get past in the night, and to work its way through into Lake Erie, but I cannot quit my friends. If you can put us ALL in the way of getting away from this spot, I shall be ready to enter into the scheme. Why can't we all get into the canoe, and go down stream, as soon as another night sets in? Before morning we could be twenty miles on our road.”
“No do any good,” returned Pigeonswing, coldly. “If can't go alone, can't go at all. Squaw no keep up when so many be on trail. No good to try canoe. Catch you in two days--p'raps one. Well, I go to sleep--can't keep eye open all night.”
Hereupon, Pigeonswing coolly repaired to his skins, lay down, and was soon fast asleep. The bee-hunter was fain to do the same, the night being now far advanced; but he lay awake a long time, thinking of the hint he had received, and pondering on the nature of the danger which menaced the security of the family. At length, sleep asserted its power over even him, and the place lay in the deep stillness of night.
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And stretching out, on either hand, O'er all that wide and unshorn land, Till weary of its gorgeousness, The aching and the dazzled eye Rests, gladdened, on the calm, blue sky. --WHITTIER.
No other disturbance occurred in the course of the night. With the dawn, le Bourdon was again stirring; and as he left the palisades to repair to the run, in order to make his ablutions, he saw Peter returning to Castle Meal. The two met; but no allusion was made to the manner in which the night had passed. The chief paid his salutations courteously; and, instead of repairing to his skins, he joined le Bourdon, seemingly as little inclined to seek for rest, as if just arisen from his lair. When the bee-hunter left the spring, this mysterious Indian, for the first time, spoke of business.
“My brother wanted to-day to show Injin how to find honey,” said Peter, as he and Bourdon walked toward the palisades, within which the whole family was now moving. “I nebber see honey find, myself, ole as I be.”
“I shall be very willing to teach your chiefs my craft,” answered the bee-hunter, “and this so much the more readily, because I do not expect to pracTYSE it much longer, myself; not in this part of the country, at least.”
“How dat happen? --expec' go away soon?” demanded Peter, whose keen, restless eye would, at one instant, seem to read his companion's soul, and then would glance off to some distant object, as if conscious of its own startling and fiery expression. “Now Br'ish got Detroit, where my broder go? Bess stay here, I t'ink.”
“I shall not be in a hurry, Peter; but my season will soon be up, and I must get ahead of the bad weather, you know, or a bark canoe will have but a poor time of it on Lake Huron. When am I to meet the chiefs, to give them a lesson in finding bees?”
“Tell by-'em-by. No hurry for dat. Want to sleep fuss. See so much better, when I open eye. So you t'ink of makin' journey on long path. If can't go to Detroit, where can go to?”
“My proper home is in Pennsylvania, on the other side of Lake Erie. It is a long path, and I'm not certain of getting safely over it in these troubled times. Perhaps it would be best for me, however, to shape at once for Ohio; if in that state I might find my way round the end of Erie, and so go the whole distance by land.”
The bee-hunter said this, by way of throwing dust into the Indian's eyes, for he had not the least intention of travelling in the direction named. It is true, it was HIS most direct course, and the one that prudence would point out to him, under all the circumstances, had he been alone. But le Bourdon was no longer alone--in heart and feelings, at least. Margery now mingled with all his views for the future; and he could no more think of abandoning her in her present situation, than he could of offering his own person to the savages for a sacrifice. It was idle to think of attempting such a journey in company with the females, and most of all to attempt it in defiance of the ingenuity, perseverance, and hostility of the Indians. The trail could not be concealed; and, as for speed, a party of the young men of the wilderness would certainly travel two miles to Margery's one.
Le Bourdon, notwithstanding Pigeonswing's remonstrances, still had his eye on the Kalamazoo. He remembered the saying, “that water leaves no trail,” and was not without hopes of reaching the lake again, where he felt he should be in comparative security; his own canoe, as well as that of Gershom, being large, well fitted, and not altogether unsuited to those waters in the summer months. As it would be of the last importance, however, to get several hours' start of the Indians, in the event of his having recourse to such a mode of flight, it was of the utmost importance also to conceal his intentions, and, if possible, to induce Peter to imagine his eyes were turned in another direction.
“Well, s'pose go dat way,” answered the chief, quietly, as if suspecting no artifice. “Set 'bout him by-'em-by. Today muss teach Injin how to find honey. Dat make him good friend; and maybe he help my pale-face broders back to deir country. Been better for ebbery body, if none come here, at all.”
Thus ended the discourse for that moment. Peter was not fond of much talking, when he had not his great object in view, but rather kept his mind occupied in observation. For the next hour, every one in and about Castle Meal was engaged in the usual morning avocations, that of breaking their fasts included; and then it was understood that all were to go forth to meet the chiefs, that le Bourdon might give a specimen of his craft.
One, ignorant of the state of political affairs on the American continent, and who was not aware of the vicinity of savages, would have seen nothing that morning, as the party proceeded on its little excursion, in and around that remote spot, but a picture of rural tranquillity and peace. A brighter day never poured its glories on the face of the earth; and the Openings, and the glades, and even the dark and denser forests, were all bathed in the sunlight, as that orb is known to illuminate objects in the softer season of the year, and in the forty-third degree of latitude. Even the birds appeared to rejoice in the beauties of the time, and sang and fluttered among the oaks, in numbers greater than common. Nature usually observes a stern fitness in her adaptation of means to ends. Birds are to be found in the forests, on the prairies, and in the still untenanted openings of the west--and often in countless numbers; more especially those birds which fly in flocks, and love the security of unoccupied regions--unoccupied by man is meant--wherein to build their nests, obey the laws of their instincts, and fulfil their destinies. Thus, myriads of pigeons, and ducks, and geese, etc., are to be found in the virgin woods, while the companionable and friendly robin, the little melodious wren, the thrush, the lark, the swallow, the marten, and all those pleasant little winged creatures, that flit about our dwellings and grounds, and seem to be sent by Providence, expressly to chant their morning and evening hymns to God in our ears, most frequent the peopled districts. It has been said by Europeans that the American birds are mute, in comparison with those of the Old World. This is true, to a certain extent, as respects those which are properly called forest birds, which do, in general, appear to partake of the sombre character that marks the solemn stillness of their native haunts. It is not true, however, with the birds which live in our fields, and grounds, and orchards, each of which sings its song of praise, and repeats its calls and its notes, as richly and as pleasantly to the ear, as the birds of other lands. One large class, indeed, possesses a faculty that enables it to repeat every note it has ever heard, even to some of the sounds of quadrupeds. Nor is this done in the discordant tones of the parrot; but in octaves, and trills, and in rich contra-altos, and all the other pleasing intonations known to the most gifted of the feathered race. Thus it is, that one American mocking-bird can outsing all the birds of Europe united.
It seemed that morning as if every bird that was accustomed to glean its food from the neighborhood of Castle Meal was on the wing, and ready to accompany the party that now sallied forth to catch the bee. This party consisted of le Bourdon, himself, as its chief and leader; of Peter, the missionary, and the corporal. Margery, too, went along; for, as yet, she had never seen an exhibition of Boden's peculiar skill. As for Gershom and his wife, they remained behind, to make ready the noontide meal; while the Chippewa took his accoutrements, and again sallied out on a hunt. The whole time of this Indian appeared to be thus taken up; though, in truth, venison and bear's meat both abounded, and there was much less necessity for those constant efforts than he wished to make it appear. In good sooth, more than half his time was spent in making those observations, which had led to the advice he had been urging on his friend, the bee-hunter, in order to induce him to fly. Had Pigeonswing better understood Peter, and had he possessed a clearer insight into the extent and magnitude of his plans of retributive vengeance, it is not probable his uneasiness, at the moment, would have been so great, or the urgency for an immediate decision on the part of le Bourdon would have appeared as urgently pressing as it now seemed to be.
The bee-hunter took his way to a spot that was at some distance from his habitation, a small prairie of circular form, that is now generally known in that region of the country by the name of Prairie Round. Three hours were necessary to reach it, and this so much the more, because Margery's shorter steps were to be considered. Margery, however, was no laggard on a path. Young, active, light of foot, and trained in exertions of this nature, her presence did not probably retard the arrival many minutes.
The extraordinary part of the proceedings was the circumstance, that the bee-hunter did not tell any one whither he was going, and that Peter did not appear to care about putting the question to him. Notwithstanding this reserve on one side, and seeming indifference on the other, when the party reached Prairie Round, every one of the chiefs who had been present at the council of the previous night, was there before it. The Indians were straggling about, but remained sufficiently near the point where the bee-hunter and his followers reached the prairie, to assemble around the group in a very few minutes after it made its appearance.
All this struck le Bourdon as fearfully singular, since it proved how many secret means of communication existed between the savages. That the inmates of the habitations were closely observed, and all their proceedings noted, he could not but suspect, even before receiving this proof of Peter's power; but he was not aware until now, how completely he and all with him were at the mercy of these formidable foes. What hope could there be for escape, when hundreds of eyes were thus watching their movements, and every thicket had its vigilant and sagacious sentinel? Yet must flight be attempted, in some way or other, or Margery and her sister would be hopelessly lost--to say nothing of himself and the three other men.
But the appearance of the remarkable little prairie that he had just reached, and the collection of chiefs, now occupied all the present thoughts of le Bourdon. As for the first, it is held in repute, even at the present hour, as a place that the traveller should see, though covered with farms, and the buildings that belong to husbandry. It is still visited as a picture of ancient civilization, placed in the setting of a new country. It is true that very little of this part of Michigan wears much, if any, of that aspect of a rough beginning, including stubs, stumps, and circled trees, that it has so often fallen to our share to describe. There are dense forests, and those of considerable extent; and wherever the axe is put into them, the progress of improvement is marked by the same steps as elsewhere; but the lovely openings form so many exceptions, as almost to compose the rule.
On Prairie Round there was even a higher stamp of seeming civilization--seeming, since it was nature, after all, that had mainly drawn the picture. In the first place, the spot had been burnt so recently, as to leave the entire expanse covered with young grasses and flowers, the same as if it were a well-kept park. This feature, at that advanced period of the summer, was in some degree accidental, the burning of the prairies depending more or less on contingencies of that sort. We have now less to do with the cause, than with its consequences. These were most agreeable to the eye, as well as comfortable to the foot, the grass nowhere being of a height to impede movement, or, what was of still more importance to le Bourdon's present pursuit, to overshadow the flowers. Aware of this fact, he had led his companions all that distance, to reach this scene of remarkable rural beauty, in order that he might make a grand display of his art, in presence of the assembled chiefs of that region. The bee-hunter had pride in his craft, the same as any other skilful workman who had gained a reputation by his cunning, and he now trod the prairie with a firmer step, and a more kindling eye, than was his wont in the commoner haunts of his calling. Men were there whom it might be an honor to surprise, and pretty Margery was there also, she who had so long desired to see this very exhibition.
But to revert once more to the prairie, ere we commence the narrative of what occurred on it. This well-known area is of no great extent, possessing a surface about equal to that of one of the larger parks of Europe. Its name was derived from its form, which, without being absolutely regular, had so near an approach to a circle as to justify the use of the appellation. The face of this charming field was neither waving, or what is called “rolling,” nor a dead flat, as often occurs with river bottoms. It had just enough of undulation to prevent too much moisture, and to impart an agreeable variety to its plain. As a whole, it was clear of the forest; quite as much so as if the axe had done its work there a thousand years before, though wood was not wanting. On the contrary, enough of the last was to be seen, in addition to that which formed the frame of this charming landscape, to relieve the view from all appearance of monotony, and to break it up into copses, thickets, trees in small clusters, and in most of the varieties that embellish native scenery. One who had been unexpectedly transferred to the spot, might well have imagined that he was looking on the site of some old and long-established settlement, from which every appliance of human industry had been suddenly and simultaneously abstracted. Of houses, out-buildings, fences, stacks, and husbandry, there were no signs; unless the even and verdant sward, that was spread like a vast carpet, sprinkled with flowers, could have been deemed a sign of the last. There were the glades, vistas, irregular lawns, and woods, shaped with the pleasing outlines of the free hand of nature, as if consummate art had been endeavoring to imitate our great mistress in one of her most graceful moods.
The Indians present served largely to embellish this scene. Of late years, horses have become so common among the western tribes, the vast natural meadows of those regions furnishing the means necessary to keep them, that one can now hardly form a picture of those savages, with-out representing them mounted, and wielding the spear; but such was not the fact with the time of which we are writing, nor was it ever the general practice to go mounted, among the Indians in the immediate vicinity of the great lakes. Not a hoof of any sort was now visible, with the exception of those which belonged to a herd of deer, that were grazing on a favorite spot, less than a league distant from the place where le Bourdon and his companions reached the prairie. All the chiefs were on foot, and very few were equipped with more than the knife and tomahawk, the side-arms of a chief; the rifles having been secreted, as it might be, in deference to the festivities and peaceful character of the occasion. As le Bourdon's party was duly provided with rifles, the missionary and Margery excepted, this was a sign that no violence was contemplated on that occasion at least. “Contemplated,” however, is a word very expressive, when used in connection with the out-breakings of human passions, as they are wont to exhibit themselves among the ignorant and excited. It matters not whether the scene be the capital of some ancient European monarchy, or the wilds of America, the workings of such impulses are much the same. Now, a throne is overturned, perhaps, before they who do it are yet fully aware of what they ought to set up in its place; and now the deadly rifle, or the murderous tomahawk is used, more in obedience to the incentives of demons, than in furtherance of justly recognized rules of conduct. Le Bourdon was aware of all this, and did not so far confide in appearances, as to overlook the watchfulness that he deemed indispensable.
The bee-hunter was not long in selecting a place to set up his apparatus. In this particular, he was mainly governed by a lovely expanse of sweet-scented flowers, among which bees in thousands were humming, sipping of their precious gifts at will. Le Bourdon had a care, also, not to go far from the forests which encircled the prairies, for among its trees he knew he had to seek the habitations of the insects. Instead of a stump, or a fallen tree, he had prepared a light framework of lath, which the corporal bore to the field for him, and on which he placed his different implements, as soon as he had selected the scene of operations.
It will not be necessary for us to repeat the process, which has already been described in our opening chapters; but we shall only touch such parts of it as have a direct connection with the events of the legend. As le Bourdon commenced his preparations, however, the circle of chiefs closed around him, in mute but close attention to every-thing that passed. Although every one of them had heard of the bee-hunters of the pale-faces, and most of them had heard of this particular individual of their number, not an Indian present had ever seen one of these men practise his craft. This may seem strange, as respects those who so much roamed the woods; but we have already remarked that it exceeded the knowledge of the red man to make the calculations that are necessary to take the bee by the process described. Usually, when he obtains honey, it is the result of some chance meeting in the forest, and not the fruits of that far-sighted and persevering industry, which enables the white man to lay in a store large enough to supply a neighborhood, in the course of a few weeks' hunting.
Never was a juggler watched with closer attention, than was le Bourdon, while setting up his stand, and spreading his implements. Every grave, dark countenance was turned toward him, and each keen, glistening eye was riveted on his movements. As the vessel with the comb was set down, the chiefs nearest recognizing the substance murmured their admiration; for to them it seemed as if the operator were about to make honey with honey. Then the glass was a subject of surprise: for half of those present had never seen such an utensil before. Though many of the chiefs present had visited the “garrisons” of the northwest, both American and English, many had not; and, of those who had, not one in ten got any clear idea of the commonest appliances of civilized life. Thus it was, then, that almost every article used by the bee-hunter, though so simple and homely, was the subject of a secret, but well-suppressed admiration.
It was not long ere le Bourdon was ready to look for his bee. The insects were numerous on the flowers, particularly on the white clover, which is indigenous in America, springing up spontaneously wherever grasses are permitted to grow. The great abundance of the bees, however, had its usual effect, and our hero was a little difficult to please. At length, a fine and already half-loaded little animal was covered by the glass and captured. This was done so near the group of Indians, that each and all noted the process. It was curious, and it was inexplicable! Could the pale-faces compel bees to reveal the secret of their hives, and was that encroaching race about to drive all the insects from the woods and seize their honey, as they drove the Indians before them and seized their lands? Such was the character of the thoughts that passed through the minds of more than one chief, that morning, though all looked on in profound stillness.
When the imprisoned bee was put over the comb, and le Bourdon's cap was placed above all, these simple-minded children of the woods and the prairies gazed, as if expecting a hive to appear beneath the covering, whenever the latter should be removed. It was not long before the bee “settled,” and not only the cap, but the tumbler was taken away. For the first time since the exhibition commenced, le Bourdon spoke, addressing himself to Peter.
“If the tribeless chief will look sharply,” he said, “he will soon see the bee take flight. It is filling itself with honey, and the moment it is loaded--look--look--it is about to rise--there, it is up--see it circling around the stand, as if to take a look that it may know it again--there it goes!”
There it did go, of a truth, and in a regular bee-line, or as straight as an arrow. Of all that crowd, the bee-hunter and Margery alone saw the insect in its flight. Most of those present lost sight of it, while circling around the stand; but the instant it darted away, to the remainder it seemed to vanish into air. Not so with le Bourdon and Margery, however. The former saw it from habit; the latter from a quick eye, intense attention, and the wish not to miss anything that le Bourdon saw fit to do, for her information or amusement. The animal flew in an air-line toward a point of wood distant fully half a mile, and on the margin of the prairie.
Many low exclamations arose among the savages. The bee was gone, but whither they knew not, or on what errand. Could it have been sent on a message by the pale-face, or had it flown off to give the alarm to its companions, in order to adopt the means of disappointing the bee-hunter? As for the last, he went coolly to work to choose another insect; and he soon had three at work on the comb--all in company, and all uncovered. Had the number anything to do with the charm, or were these three to be sent to bring back the one that had already gone away? Such was the sort of reasoning, and such the queries put to themselves, by several of the stern children of nature who were drawn up around the stand.
In the mean time le Bourdon proceeded with his operations in the utmost simplicity. He now called Peter and Bear's Meat and Crowsfeather nearer to his person, where they might share with Margery the advantage of more closely seeing all that passed. As soon as these three chiefs were near enough, Ben pointed to one bee in particular, saying in the Indian dialect: “My brothers see that bee in the centre--he is about to go away. If he go after the one that went before him, I shall soon know where to look for honey.”
“How can my brother tell which bee will first fly away?” demanded Bear's Meat.
The bee-hunter was able to foresee this, by knowing which insect had been longest on the comb; but so practised had his eye become, that he knew with tolerable accuracy, by the movements of the creatures, those that had filled themselves with honey from those that had not. As it did not suit his purpose, however, to let all the minutiae of his craft be known, his answer was evasive. Just at that moment a thought occurred to him, which it might be well to carry out in full. He had once saved his life by necromancy, or what seemed to the simple children of the woods to be necromancy, and why might he not turn the cunning of his regular art to account, and render it the means of rescuing the females, as well as himself, from the hands of their captors? This sudden impulse from that moment controlled his conduct; and his mind was constantly casting about for the means of effecting what was now his one great purpose-escape. Instead of uttering in reply to Bear's Meat's question the simple truth, therefore, he rather sought for such an answer as might make the process in which he was engaged appear imposing and mystical.
“How do the Injins know the path of the deer?” he asked, by way of reply. “They look at the deer, get to know him, and understand his ways. This middle bee will soon fly.”
“Which way will he go?” asked Peter. “Can my brother tell us THAT?”
“To his hive,” returned le Bourdon, carelessly, as if he did not fully understand the question. “All of them go to their hives, unless I tell them to go in another direction. See, the bee is up!”
The chiefs now looked with all their eyes. They saw, indeed, that the bee was making its circles above the stand. Presently they lost sight of the insect, which to them seemed to vanish; though le Bourdon distinctly traced its flight for a hundred yards. It took a direction at right angles to that of the first bee, flying off into the prairie, and shaping its course toward an island of wood, which might have been of three or four acres in extent, and distant rather less than a mile.
While le Bourdon was noting this flight, another bee arose. This creature flew toward the point of forest, already mentioned as the destination of the insect that had first risen. No sooner was this third little animal out of sight, than the fourth was up, humming around the stand. Ben pointed it out to the chiefs; and this time they succeeded in tracing the flight for, perhaps, a hundred feet from the spot where they stood. Instead of following either of its companions, this fourth bee took a course which led it off the prairie altogether, and toward the habitations.
The suddenly conceived purpose of le Bourdon, to attempt to mystify the savages, and thus get a hold upon their minds which he might turn to advantage, was much aided by the different directions taken by these several bees. Had they all gone the same way, the conclusion that all went home would be so very natural and obvious, as to deprive the discovery of a hive of any supernatural merit, at least; and to establish this was just now the great object the bee-hunter had in view. As it was, the Indians were no wiser, now all the bees were gone, than they had been before one of them had flown. On the contrary, they could not understand how the flights of so many insects, in so many different directions, should tell the bee-hunter where honey was to be found. Le Bourdon saw that the prairie was covered with bees, and well knew that, such being the fact, the inmates of perhaps a hundred different hives must be present. All this, however, was too novel and too complicated for the calculations of savages; and not one of those who crowded near, as observers, could account for so many of the bees going different ways.
Le Bourdon now intimated a wish to change his ground. He had noted two of the bees, and the only question that remained to be decided, as IT respected THEM, was whether they belonged to the precise points toward which they had flown, or to points beyond them. The reader will easily understand that this is the nature of the fact determined by taking an angle, the point of intersection between any two of the lines of flight being necessarily the spot where the hive is to be found. So far from explaining this to those around him, however, Boden kept it a secret in his own breast. Margery knew the whole process, for to HER he had often gone over it in description, finding a pleasure in instructing one so apt, and whose tender, liquid blue eyes seemed to reflect every movement of his own soul and feelings. Margery he could have taught forever, or fancied for the moment he could; which is as near the truth as men under the influence of love often get. But, as for the Indians, so far from letting them into any of his secrets, his strong desire was now to throw dust into their eyes, in all possible ways, and to make their well-established character for superstition subservient to his own projects.
Boden was far from being a scholar, even for one in his class in life. Down to this hour, the neglect of the means of public instruction is somewhat of a just ground of reproach against the venerable and respectable commonwealth of which he was properly a member, though her people have escaped a knowledge of a great deal of small philosophy and low intriguing, which it is fair to presume that evil spirits thrust in among the leaves of a more legitimate information, when the book of knowledge is opened for the instruction of those who, by circumstances, are prevented from doing more than bestowing a few hurried glances at its contents. Still, Ben had read everything about bees on which he could lay his hands. He had studied their habits personally, and he had pondered over the various accounts of their communities--a sort of limited monarchy in which the prince is deposed occasionally, or when matters go very wrong--some written by really very observant and intelligent persons, and others again not a little fanciful. Among other books that had thus fallen in le Bourdon's way, was one which somewhat minutely described the uses that were made of bees by the ancient soothsayers in their divinations. Our hero had no notion of reviving those rites, or of attempting to imitate the particular practices of which he had read and heard; but the recollection of them occurred most opportunely to strengthen and encourage the design, so suddenly entertained, of making his present operation aid in opening the way to the one great thing of the hour--an escape into Lake Michigan.
“A bee knows a great deal,” said le Bourdon, to his nearest companions, while the whole party was moving some distance to take up new ground. “A bee often knows more than a man.”
“More than pale-face?” demanded Bear's Meat, a chief who had attained his authority more by means of physical than of intellectual qualities.
“Sometimes. Pale-faces have gone to bees to ask what will happen. Let me ask our medicine-man this question. Parson Amen, have YOU any knowledge of the soothsayers of old using bees when they wished to know what was about to happen?”
Now, the missionary was not a learned man, any more than the bee-hunter; but many an unlearned man has heard of this, and he happened to be one of the number. Of Virgil, for instance, Parson Amen knew but little; though in the progress of a very loose, but industrious course of reading, he had learned that the soothsayers put great faith in bees. His answer was given in conformity with this fact, and in the most perfect good faith, for he had not the smallest suspicion of what Boden wished to establish.
“Certainly--most certainly,” answered the well-meaning missionary--“the fortune-tellers of old times often went to their bees when they wished to look into the future. It has been a subject much talked of among Christians, to account for the soothsaying, and witchcraft, and other supernatural dealings of those who lived in the times of the prophets; and most of them have held the opinion that evil spirits have been--nay, still are permitted to work their will on certain men in the flesh. But bees were in much favor with the soothsayers of old.”
This answer was given in English, and little of it was comprehended by Peter, and the others who had more or less knowledge of that language, beyond the part which asserted the agency of bees in witchcraft. Luckily, this was all le Bourdon desired, and he was well satisfied at seeing that the idea passed from one chief to another; those who did not know the English at all, being told by those who had some knowledge of the tongue, that “bees were thought to be 'medicine' among the pale-faces.”
Le Bourdon gained a great deal of ground by this fortunate corroboration of his own still more fortunate thought Matters were pretty nearly desperate with him, and with all his friends, should Peter really meditate evil; and as desperate diseases notoriously require remedies of the same character, he was ready to attempt anything that promised even the smallest chance of success.
“Yes, yes--” the bee-hunter pursued the discourse by saying--“bees know a great deal. I have sometimes thought that bees know more than bears, and my brother must be able to tell something of them?”
“Yes; my name is Bear's Meat,” answered that chief, complacently. “Injin always give name that mean somet'ing. Kill so many bear one winter, got dat name.”
“A good name it is! To kill a bear is the most honorable thing a hunter can do, as we all know. If my brother wishes to hear it, I will ask my bees when he is to kill another.”
The savage to whom this was addressed fairly started with delight. He was eagerly signifying his cheerful assent to the proposal, when Peter quietly interposed, and changed the discourse to himself, in a way that he had, and which would not easily admit of denial. It was apparent to le Bourdon that this mysterious Indian was not content that one so direct and impetuous in his feelings as Bear's Meat, and who was at the same time so little qualified to manage his portion of an intellectual conversation, should be foremost any longer. For that reason he brought himself more into the foreground, leaving to his friend the capacity of listener and observer, rather than that of a speaker and actor. What took place under this new arrangement, will appear as the narrative proceeds.
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--Therefore, go with me; I'll give the fairies to attend on thee; And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, --Peas-blossom! cobweb! moth! and mustard-seed, --Midsummer-Night's Dream As le Bourdon kept moving across the prairie, while the remarks were made that have been recorded in the preceding chapter, he soon reached the new position where he intended to again set up his stand. Here he renewed his operations; Peter keeping nearest his person, in jealous watchfulness of the least movement he made. Bees were caught, and scarce a minute elapsed ere the bee-hunter had two of them on the piece of comb, uncovered and at liberty. The circumstance that the cap was momentarily placed over the insects, struck the savages as a piece of necromancy, in particular. The reader will understand that this is done in order to darken the tumbler, and induce the bee to settle down on the honey so much the sooner. To one who understood the operation and its reason, the whole was simple enough; but it was a very different matter with men as little accustomed to prying into the habits of creatures as insignificant as bees. Had deer, or bisons, or bears, or any of the quadrupeds of those regions, been the subject of the experiment, it is highly probable that individuals could have been found in that attentive and wondering crowd, who could have enlightened the ablest naturalists on the subject of the animals under examination; but when the inquiry descended to the bee, it went below the wants and usages of savage life.
“Where you t'ink dis bee go?” demanded Peter, in English, as soon as le Bourdon raised the tumbler.
“One will go in this direction, the other in that,” answered the bee-hunter, pointing first toward the corner of the woods, then toward the island in the prairie--the two points toward which two of the other bees had flown.
The predictions might or might not prove true. If they did, the effect must be great; if they did not, the failure would soon be forgotten in matters of more interest. Our hero, therefore, risked but little, while he had the chance of gaining a very great advantage. By a fortunate coincidence, the result completely justified the prediction. A bee rose, made its circles around the stand, and away it went toward the island-like copse in the prairie; while its companion soon imitated its example, but taking the other prescribed direction. This time Peter watched the insects so closely that he was a witness of their movements, and with his own eyes he beheld the flight, as well as the direction taken by each.
“You tell bee do dis?” demanded Peter, with a surprise that was so sudden, as well as so great, that it overcame in some slight degree his habitual self-command.
“To be sure I did,” replied le Bourdon, carelessly. “If you wish to see another, you may.”
Here the young man coolly took another bee, and put it on the comb. Indifferent as he appeared, however, he used what was perhaps the highest degree of his art in selecting this insect. It was taken from the bunch of flowers whence one of his former captives had been taken, and there was every chance of its belonging to the same hive as its companion. Which direction it might take, should it prove to be a bee from either of the two hives of which the positions were now known, it altogether exceeded Boden's art to tell, so he dexterously avoided committing himself. It was enough that Peter gazed attentively, and that he saw the insect dart away, disappearing in the direction of the island. By this time more of the savages were on the alert, and now knowing how and where to look for the bee, they also saw its course.
“You tell him ag'in go dere?” asked Peter, whose interest by this time was so manifest, as to defy all attempts at concealment.
“To be sure I did. The bees obey ME, as your young men obey YOU. I am their chief, and they KNOW me. I will give you further proof of this. We will now go to that little bit of wood, when you shall all see what it contains. I have sent three of my bees there; and here, one of them is already back, to let me know what he has seen.”
Sure enough, a bee was buzzing around the head of le Bourdon, probably attracted by some fragment of comb, and he cunningly converted it into a messenger from the copse! All this was wonderful to the crowd, and it even greatly troubled Peter. This man was much less liable to the influence of superstition than most of his people; but he was very far from being altogether above it. This is the fact with very few civilized men; perhaps with no man whatever, let his philosophy and knowledge be what they may; and least of all, is it true with the ignorant. There is too much of the uncertain, of the conjectural in our condition as human beings, to raise us altogether above the distrusts, doubts, wonder, and other weaknesses of our present condition. To these simple savages, the manner in which the bees flew, seemingly at le Bourdon's bidding, to this or that thicket, was quite as much a matter of astonishment, as any of our most elaborate deceptions are wonders to our own ignorant and vulgar. Ignorant! And where is the line to be drawn that is to place men beyond the pale of ignorance? Each of us fails in some one, if not in very many of the important branches of the knowledge that is even reduced to rules Among us. Here is seen the man of books, so ignorant of the application of his own beloved theories, as to be a mere child in practice; and there, again, can be seen the expert in practice, who is totally unacquainted with a single principle of the many that lie at the root of his very handicraft. Let us not, then, deride these poor children of the forest, because that which was so entirely new to them, should also appear inexplicable and supernatural.
As for Peter, he was more confounded than convinced. His mind was so much superior to those of the other chiefs, as to render him far more difficult to mislead; though even he was not exempt from the great weaknesses of ignorance, superstition, and its concomitants--credulity, and a love of the marvellous. His mind was troubled, as was quite apparent to Ben, who watched HIM quite as narrowly as he was observed himself, in all he did. Willing to deepen the impression, our artist now determined to exhibit some of the higher fruits of his skill. The production of a considerable quantity of honey would of itself be a sort of peace-offering, and he now prepared to turn the certainty of there being a hive in the little wood to account--certainty, because three bees had taken wing for it, and a very distinct angle had been made with two of them.
“Does my brother wish any honey?” asked le Bourdon carelessly; “or shall I send a bee across Lake Michigan, to tell the Injins further west that Detroit is taken?”
“Can Bourdon find honey, NOW?” demanded Peter.
“Easily. Several hives are within a mile of us. The bees like this prairie, which is so well garnished with flowers, and I am never at a loss for work, in this neighborhood. This is my favorite bee-ground; and I have got all the little creatures so that they know me, and are ready to do everything that I tell them. As I see that the chiefs love honey, and wish to eat some, we will now go to one of my hives.”
Thus saying, le Bourdon prepared for another march. He moved with all his appliances, Margery keeping close at his side, carrying the honey-comb and honey. As the girl walked lightly, in advance of the Indians, some fifteen or twenty bees, attracted by the flavor of what she carried, kept circling around her head, and consequently around that of Boden; and Peter did not fail to observe the circumstance. To him it appeared as if these bees were so many accompanying agents, who attended their master in order to do his bidding. In a word, Peter was fast getting into that frame of mind, when all that is seen is pressed into the support of the theory we have adopted. The bee-hunter had some mysterious connection with, and control over the bees, and this was one among the many other signs of the existence of his power. All this, however, Boden himself disregarded. His mind was bent on throwing dust into the eyes of the Indians; and he was cogitating the means of so doing, on a much larger scale than any yet attempted.
“Why dem bee fly 'round young squaw?” demanded Peter--“and fly round you, too?”
“They know us, and go with us to their hive; just as Injins would come out of their villages to meet and honor visitors.”
This was a ready reply, but it scarcely satisfied the wily savage to whom it was given. Just then Crowsfeather led Peter a little aside, and began talking earnestly to that chief, both continuing on with the crowd. Le Bourdon felt persuaded that the subject of this private conference was some of his own former backslidings in the character of conjuror, and that the Pottawattamie would not deal very tenderly with his character. Nevertheless, it was too late to retrace his steps, and he saw the necessity of going on.
“I wish you had not come out with us,” the bee-hunter found an occasion to say to Margery. “I do not half like the state of things, and this conjuration about the bees may all fall through.”
“It is better that I should be here, Bourdon,” returned the spirited girl. “My being here may make them less unfriendly to you. When I am by, Peter always seems more human, and less of a savage, they all tell me, than when I am not by.”
“No one can be more willing to own your power, Margery, than I; but Injins hold the squaws too cheap, to give you much influence over this old fellow.”
“You do not know--he may have had a daughter of about my age, or size, or appearance; or with my laugh, or voice, or something else that reminds him of her, when he sees me. One thing I am sure of--Peter is no enemy of MINE!”
“I hope this may prove to be true! I do not see, after all, why an Injin should not have the feelin's you name. He is a man, and must feel for his wife and children, the same as other--” “Bourdon, what ails the dog? Look at the manner in which Hive is behaving!”
Sure enough, the appearance of Hive was sufficiently obvious to attract his master's attention. By this time the crowd had got within twenty rods of the little island-like copse of wood, the mastiff being nearly half that distance in advance. Instead of preceding the party, however, Hive had raised his form in a menacing manner, and moved cautiously from side to side, like one of his kind that scents a foe. There was no mistaking these movements; and all the principal chiefs soon had their attention also drawn to the behavior of the dog.
“Why he do so?” asked Peter. “He 'fraid of bee, eh?”
“He waits for me to come up,” answered le Bourdon. “Let my brother and two other chiefs come with me, and let the rest stay here. Bees do not like crowds. Corporal, I put Margery in your keeping, and Parson Amen will be near you. I now go to show these chiefs what a bee can tell a man.”
Thus saying, le Bourdon advanced, followed by Peter, Bear's Meat, and Crowsfeather. Our hero had made up his mind that something more than bees were to be found in the thicket; for, the place being a little marshy, bushes as well as trees were growing on it, and he fully expected a rencontre with bears, the creatures most disposed to prey on the labors of the bee--man excepted. Being well armed, and accompanied by men accustomed to such struggles, he had no apprehensions, and led the way boldly, feeling the necessity of manifesting perfect confidence in all his own acts, in order to command the respect of the observers. As soon as the bee-hunter passed the dog, the latter growled, showed his teeth fiercely, and followed, keeping closely at his side. The confidence and alacrity with which le Bourdon moved into the thicket, compelled his companions to be on the alert; though the first broke through the belt of hazels which enclosed the more open area within, a few instants before the Indians reached the place. Then it was that there arose such a yell, such screechings and cries, as reached far over the prairie, and might have appalled the stoutest heart. The picture that was soon offered to the eye was not less terrific than the sounds which assailed the ear. Hundreds of savages, in their war-paint, armed, and in a crowded maze, arose as it might be by one effort, seemingly out of the earth, and began to leap and play their antics amid the trees. The sudden spectacle of a crowd of such beings, nearly naked, frightfully painted, and tossing their arms here and there, while each yelled like a demon, was enough to overcome the nerves of a very resolute man. But le Bourdon was prepared for a conflict and even felt relieved rather than alarmed, when he saw the savages. His ready mind at once conceived the truth. This band belonged to the chiefs, and composed the whole, or a principal part of the force which he knew they must have outlying somewhere on the prairies, or in the openings. He had sufficiently understood the hints of Pigeonswing to be prepared for such a meeting, and at no time, of late, had he approached a cover, without remembering the possibility of its containing Indians.
Instead of betraying alarm, therefore, when this cloud of phantom-like beings rose before his eyes, le Bourdon stood firm, merely turning toward the chiefs behind him, to ascertain if they were taken by surprise, as well as himself. It was apparent that they were; for, understanding that a medicine-ceremony was to take place on the prairie, these young men had preceded the party from the hut, and had, ununknown to all the chiefs, got possession of this copse, as the best available cover, whence to make their observations on what was going on.
“My brother sees his young men,” said le Bourdon, quietly, the instant a dead calm had succeeded to the outcries with which he had been greeted. “I thought he might wish to say something to them, and my bees told me where to find them. Does my brother wish to know anything else?”
Great was the wonder of the three chiefs, at this exhibition of medicine power! So far from suspecting the truth, or of detecting the lucky coincidence by which le Bourdon had been led to the cover of their warriors, it all appeared to them to be pure necromancy. Such an art must be of great service; and how useful it would be to the warrior on his path, to be accompanied by one who could thus command the vigilance of the bees.
“You find enemy all same as friend?” demanded Peter, letting out the thought that was uppermost, in the question.
“To be sure. It makes no difference with a bee; he can find an enemy as easily as he can find a friend.'
“No whiskey-spring dis time?” put in Crowsfeather, a little inopportunely, and with a distrust painted in his swarthy face that le Bourdon did not like.
“Pottawattamie, you do not understand medicine-men. OUGHT I to have shown your young men where whiskey was to be had for nothing? Ask yourself that question. Did you wish to see your young men wallowing like hogs in such a spring? What would the great medicine-priest of the pale-faces, who is out yonder, have said to THAT?”
This was a coup de maitre on the part of the bee-hunter. Until that moment, the affair of the whiskey-spring had weighed heavily in the balance against him; but now, it was suddenly changed over in the scales, and told as strongly in his favor. Even a savage can understand the morality which teaches men to preserve their reason, and not to lower themselves to the level of brutes, by swallowing “fire-water”; and Crowsfeather suddenly saw a motive for regarding our hero with the eyes of favor, instead of those of distrust and dislike.
“What the pale-face says is true,” observed Peter to his companion. “Had he opened his spring, your warrior would have been weaker than women. He is a wonderful medicine-man, and we must not provoke him to anger. How COULD he know, but through his bees, that our young men were here?”
This question could not be answered; and when the chiefs, followed by the whole band of warriors, some three or four hundred in number came out upon the open prairie, all that had passed was communicated to those who awaited their return, in a few brief, but clear explanations. Le Bourdon found a moment to let Margery comprehend his position and views, while Parson Amen and the corporal were put sufficiently on their guard not to make any unfortunate blunder. The last was much more easily managed than the first. So exceedingly sensitive was the conscience of the priest, that had he clearly understood the game le Bourdon was playing, he might have revolted at the idea of necromancy, as touching on the province of evil spirits; but he was so well mystified as to suppose all that passed was regularly connected with the art of taking bees. In this respect, he and the Indians equally resembled one of those familiar pictures, in which we daily see men, in masses, contributing to their own deception and subjection, while they fondly but blindly imagine that they are not only inventors, but masters. This trade of mastery, after all, is the property of a very few minds; and no precaution of the prudent, no forethought of the wary, nor any expedient of charters, constitutions, or restrictions, will prevent the few from placing their feet on the neck of the many. We may revive the fable of King Log and King Stork, as often, and in as many forms as we will; it will ever be the fable of King Log and King Stork. We are no admirers of political aristocracies, as a thousand paragraphs from our pen will prove; and, as for monarchs, we have long thought they best enact their parts, when most responsible to opinion; but we cannot deceive ourselves on the subject of the atrocities that are daily committed by those who are ever ready to assume the places of both, making their fellow-creatures in masses their dupes, and using those that they affect to serve.
Ben Boden was now a sort of “gouvernement provisoire” among the wondering savages who surrounded him. He had got them to believe in necromancy--a very considerable step toward the exercise of despotic power. It is true, he hardly knew, himself, what was to be done next; but he saw quite distinctly that he was in a dilemma, and must manage to get out of it by some means or other. If he could only succeed in this instance, as well as he had succeeded in his former essay in the black art, all might be well, and Margery be carried in triumph into the settlements. Margery, pro haec vice, was his goddess of liberty, and he asked for no higher reward, than to be permitted to live the remainder of his days in the sunshine of her smiles. Liberty! a word that is, just now, in all men's mouths, but in how few hearts in its purity and truth! What a melancholy mistake, moreover, to suppose that, could it be enjoyed in that perfection with which the imaginations of men love to cheat their judgments, it is the great good of life! One hour spent in humble veneration for the Being that gave it, in common with all of earth, its vacillating and uncertain existence, is of more account than ages passed in its service; and he who fancies that in worshipping liberty, he answers the great end of his existence, hugs a delusion quite as weak, and infinitely more dangerous, than that which now came over the minds of Peter and his countrymen, in reference to the intelligence of the bee. It is a good thing to possess the defective and qualified freedom, which we term “liberty”; but it is a grave error to set it up as an idol to be worshipped.
“What my brother do next?” demanded Bear's Meat, who, being a somewhat vulgar-minded savage, was all for striking and wonder-working exhibitions of necromancy. “P'raps he find some honey now?”
“If you wish it, chief. What says Peter? --shall I ask my bees to tell where there is a hive?”
As Peter very readily assented, le Bourdon next set about achieving this new feat in his art. The reader will recollect that the positions of two hives were already known to the bee-hunter, by means of that very simple and every-day process by which he earned his bread. One of these hives was in the point of wood already mentioned, that lay along the margin of the prairie; while the other was in this very copse, where the savages had secreted themselves. Boden had now no thought of giving any further disturbance to this last-named colony of insects; for an insight into their existence might disturb the influence obtained by the jugglery of the late discovery, and he at once turned his attention toward the other hive indicated by his bees.
Nor did le Bourdon now deem it necessary to resort to his usual means of carrying on his trade. These were not necessary to one who knew already where the hive was to be found, while it opened the way to certain mummeries that might be made to tell well in support of his assumed character. Catching a bee, then, and keeping it confined within his tumbler, Ben held the last to his ear, as if listening to what the fluttering insect had to say. Having seemingly satisfied himself on this point, he desired the chiefs once more to follow him, having first let the bee go, with a good deal of ceremony. This set all in motion again; the party being now increased by the whole band of savages who had been “put up” from their cover.
By this time, Margery began to tremble for the consequences. She had held several short conferences with le Bourdon, as they walked together, and had penetrated far enough into his purposes to see that he was playing a ticklish game. It might succeed for a time, but she feared it must fail in the end; and there was always the risk of incurring the summary vengeance of savages. Perhaps she did not fully appreciate the power of superstition, and the sluggishness of the mind that once submits to its influence; while her woman's heart made her keenly alive to all those frightful consequences that must attend an exposure. Nevertheless, nothing could now be done to avert the consequences. It was too late to recede, and things must take their course, even at all the hazards of the case. That she might not be wholly useless, when her lover was risking so much for herself--Margery well understanding that her escape was the only serious difficulty the bee-hunter apprehended--the girl turned all her attention to Peter, in whose favor she felt that she had been daily growing, and on whose pleasure so much must depend. Changing her position a little, she now came closer to the chief than she had hitherto done.
“Squaw like medicine-man?” asked Peter, with a significance of expression that raised a blush in Margery's cheek.
“You mean to ask me if I like to SEE medicine-men perform,” answered Margery, with the readiness of her sex. “White women are always curious, they say--how is it with the women of the red men?”
“Juss so--full of cur'osity. Squaw is squaw--no matter what color.”
“I am sorry, Peter, you do not think better of squaws. Perhaps you never had a squaw--no wife, or daughter?”
A gleam of powerful feeling shot athwart the dark countenance of the Indian, resembling the glare of the electric fluid flashing on a cloud at midnight; but it passed away as quickly as it appeared, leaving in its stead the hard, condensed expression, which the intensity of a purpose so long entertained and cultivated, had imprinted there, as indelibly as if cut in stone.
“All chief have squaw--all chief have pappoose--” was the answer that came at last. “What he good for, eh?”
“It is always good to have children, Peter; especially when the children themselves are good.”
“Good for pale-face, maybe--no good for Injin. Pale-face glad when pappoose born--red-skin sorry.”
“I hope this is not so. Why should an Injin be sorry to see the laugh of his little son?”
“Laugh when he little--p'raps so; he little, and don't know what happen. But Injin don't laugh any more when he grow up. Game gone; land gone; corn-field gone. No more room for Injin--pale-face want all. Pale-face young man laugh--red-skin young man cry. Dat how it is.”
“Oh! I hope not, Peter! I should be sorry to think it was so. The red man has as good a right--nay, he has a BETTER right to this country than we whites; and God forbid that he should not always have his full share of the land!”
Margery probably owed her life to that honest, natural burst of feeling, which was uttered with a warmth and sincerity that could leave no doubt that the sentiment expressed came from the heart. Thus singularly are we constructed! A minute before, and no exemption was made in the mind of Peter, in behalf of this girl, in the plan he had formed for cutting off the whites; on the contrary, he had often be-thought him of the number of young pale-faces that might be, as it were, strangled in their cradles, by including the bee-hunter and his intended squaw in the contemplated sacrifice. All this was changed, as in the twinkling of an eye, by Margery's honest and fervent expression of her sense of right, on the great subject that occupied all of Peter's thoughts. These sudden impulses in the direction of love for our species, the second of the high lessons left by the Redeemer to his disciples, are so many proofs of the creation of man in the image of his maker. They exert their power often when least expected, and are ever stamped by the same indelible impression of their divine origin. Without these occasional glimpses at those qualities which are so apt to lie dormant, we might indeed despair of the destinies of our race. We are, however, in safe and merciful hands; and all the wonderful events that are at this moment developing themselves around us, are no other than the steps taken by Providence in the progress it is steadily making toward the great and glorious end! Some of the agencies will be corrupt; others deluded; and no one of them all, perhaps, will pursue with unerring wisdom the precise path that ought to be taken; but even the crimes, errors, and delusions, will be made instrumental in achieving that which was designed before the foundations of this world were laid!
“Does my daughter wish this?” returned Peter, when Margery had thus frankly and sincerely given vent to her feelings. “Can a pale-face squaw wish to leave an Injin any of his hunting-grounds?”
“Thousands of us wish it, Peter, and I for one. Often and often have we talked of this around our family fire, and even Gershom, when his head has not been affected by fire-water, has thought as we all have thought. I know that Bourdon thinks so, too; and I have heard him say that he thought Congress ought to pass a law to prevent white men from getting any more of the Injin's lands.”
The face of Peter would have been a remarkable study, during the few moments that his fierce will was in the process of being brought in subjugation to the influence of his better feelings. At first he appeared bewildered; then compunction had its shade; and human sympathy came last, asserting its long dormant, but inextinguishable power. Margery saw some of this, though it far exceeded her penetration to read all the workings of that stern and savage mind; yet she felt encouraged by what she did see and understand.
While an almighty and divine Providence was thus carrying out its own gracious designs in its own way, the bee-hunter continued bent on reaching a similar end by means of his own. Little did he imagine how much had been done for him within the last few moments, and how greatly all he had in view was jeoparded and put at risk by his own contrivances--contrivances which seemed to him so clever, but which were wanting in the unerring simplicity and truth that render those that come from above infallible. Still, the expedients of le Bourdon may have had their agency in bringing about events, and may have been intended to be a part of that moral machinery, which was now at work in the breast of Peter, for good.
It will be remembered that the bee-hunter habitually carried a small spy-glass, as a part of the implements of his calling. It enabled him to watch the bees, as they went in and came out of the hives, on the highest trees, and often saved him hours of fruitless search. This glass was now in his hand; for an object on a dead tree, that rose a little apart from those around it, and which stood quite near the extreme point in the forest, toward which they were all proceeding, had caught his attention. The distance was still too great to ascertain by the naked eye what that object was; but a single look with the glass showed that it was a bear. This was an old enemy of the bee-hunter, who often encountered the animal, endeavoring to get at the honey, and he had on divers occasions been obliged to deal with these plunderers, before he could succeed in his own plans of pilfering. The bear now seen continued in sight but an instant; the height to which he had clambered being so great, most probably, as to weary him with the effort, and to compel him to fall back again. All this was favorable to le Bourdon's wishes, who immediately called a halt. The first thing that Bourdon did, when all the dark eyes were gleaming on him in fierce curiosity, was to catch a bee and hold it to his ear, as it buzzed about in the tumbler.
“You t'ink dat bee talk?” Peter asked of Margery, in a tone of confidence, as if a newly-awakened principle now existed between them.
“Bourdon must think so, Peter,” the girl evasively answered, “or he would hardly listen to hear what it says.”
“It's strange, bee should talk! Almos' as strange as pale-face wish to leave Injin any land! Sartain, bee talk, eh?”
“I never heard one talk, Peter, unless it might be in its buzzing. That may be the tongue of a bee, for anything I know to the contrary.”
By this time le Bourdon seemed to be satisfied, and let the bee go; the savages murmuring their wonder and admiration.
“Do my brothers wish to hunt?” asked the bee-hunter in a voice so loud that all near might hear what he had to say.
This question produced a movement at once. Skill in hunting, next to success on the war-path, constitutes the great merit of an Indian; and it is ever his delight to show that he possesses it. No sooner did le Bourdon throw out his feeler, therefore, than a general exclamation proclaimed the readiness of all the young men, in particular, to join in the chase.
“Let my brothers come closer,” said Ben, in an authoritative manner; “I have something to put into their ears. They see that point of wood, where the dead basswood has fallen on the prairie. Near that basswood is honey, and near that honey are bears. This my bees have told me. Now, let my brothers divide, and some go into the woods, and some stay on the prairie; then they will have plenty of sweet food.”
As all this was very simple, and easily to be comprehended, not a moment was lost in the execution. With surprising order and aptitude, the chiefs led off their parties; one line of dark warriors penetrating the forest on the eastern side of the basswood, and another on its western; while a goodly number scattered themselves on the prairie itself, in its front. In less than a quarter of an hour, signals came from the forest that the battue was ready, and Peter gave the answering sign to proceed.
Down to this moment, doubts existed among the savages concerning the accuracy of le Bourdon's statement. How was it possible that his bees should tell him where he could find bears? To be sure, bears were the great enemies of bees--this every Indian knew--but could the bees have a faculty of thus arming one enemy against another? These doubts, however, were soon allayed by the sudden appearance of a drove of bears, eight or ten in number, that came waddling out of the woods, driven before the circle of shouting hunters that had been formed within.
Now commenced a scene of wild tumult and of fierce delight. The warriors on the prairie retired before their enemies until all of their associates were clear of the forest, when the circle swiftly closed again, until it had brought the bears to something like close quarters. Bear's Meat, as became his appellation, led off the dance, letting fly an arrow at the nearest animal. Astounded by the great number of their enemies, and not a little appalled by their yells, the poor quadrupeds did not know which way to turn. Occasionally, attempts were made to break through the circle, but the flight of arrows, aimed directly at their faces, invariably drove the creatures back. Fire-arms were not resorted to at all in this hunt, spears and arrows being the weapons depended on. Several ludicrous incidents occurred, but none that were tragical. One or two of the more reckless of the hunters, ambitious of shining before the representatives of so many tribes, ran rather greater risks than were required, but they escaped with a few smart scratches. In one instance, however, a young Indian had a still narrower SQUEEZE for his life. Literally a SQUEEZE it was, for, suffering himself to get within the grasp of a bear, he came near being pressed to death, ere his companions could dispatch the creature. As for the prisoner, the only means he had to prevent his being bitten, was to thrust the head of his spear into the bear's mouth, where he succeeded in holding it, spite of the animal's efforts to squeeze him into submission. By the time this combat was terminated, the field was strewn with the slain; every one of the bears having been killed by hunters so much practised in the art of destroying game.
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She was an only child--her name Ginevra, The joy, the pride of an indulgent father; And in her fifteenth year became a bride, Marrying an only son, Francesco Dona, Her playmate from her birth, and her first love. --ROGERS.
During the hunt there was little leisure for reflection on the seemingly extraordinary manner in which the bee-hunter had pointed out the spot where the bears were to be found. No one of the Indians had seen him apply the glass to his eye, for, leading the party, he had been able to do this unobserved; but, had they witnessed such a procedure, it would have been as inexplicable as all the rest. It is true, Crowsfeather and one or two of his companions had taken a look through that medicine-glass, but it rather contributed to increase the conjuror's renown, than served to explain any of the marvels he performed.
Peter was most struck with all that had just occurred. He had often heard of the skill of those who hunted bees, and had several times met with individuals who practised the art, but this was the first occasion on which he had ever been a witness, in his own person, of the exercise of a craft so wonderful! Had the process been simply that of catching a bee, filling it with honey, letting it go, and then following it to its hive, it would have been so simple as to require no explanation. But Peter was too intelligent, as well as too observant, not to have seen that a great deal more than this was necessary. On the supposition that the bee flew TOWARD the forest, as had been the fact with two of the bees taken that morning, in what part of that forest was the hunter to look for the bee-tree? It was the angle that perplexed Peter, as it did all the Indians; for that angle, to be understood, required a degree of knowledge and calculation that entirely exceeded all he had ever acquired. Thus is it with us ever. The powers, and faculties, and principles that are necessary fully to comprehend all that we see and all that surrounds us, exist and have been bestowed on man by his beneficent Creator. Still, it is only by slow degrees that he is to become their master, acquiring knowledge, step by step, as he has need of its services, and learns how to use it. Such seems to be the design of Providence, which is gradually opening to our inquiries the arcana of nature, in order that we may convert their possession into such uses as will advance its own wise intentions. Happy are they who feel this truth in their character of individuals! Thrice happy the nations which can be made to understand, that the surest progress is that which is made on the clearest principles, and with the greatest caution! The notion of setting up anything new in morals, is as fallacious in theory as it will be found to be dangerous in practice.
It has been said that a sudden change had come over the fierce purposes of Peter. For some time, the nature, artlessness, truth, feminine playfulness and kindness, not to say personal beauty of Margery, had been gradually softening the heart of this stern savage, as it respected the girl herself. Nothing of a weak nature was blended with this feeling, which was purely the growth of that divine principle that is implanted in us all. The quiet, earnest manner in which the girl had, that day, protested her desire to see the rights of the red man respected, completed her conquest; and, so far as the great chief was concerned, secured her safety. It may seem singular, however, that Peter, with all his influence, was unable to say that even one that he was so much disposed to favor, should be spared. By means of his own eloquence, and perseverance, and deep desire for vengeance, however, he had aroused a spirit among his followers that was not so easily quelled. On several occasions, he had found it difficult to prevent the younger and more impetuous of the chiefs from proceeding at once to secure the scalps of those who were in their power; and this he had done, only by promising to increase the number of the victims. How was he then to lessen that number? and that, too, when circumstances did not seem likely to throw any more immediately into his power, as he had once hoped. This council must soon be over, and it would not be in his power to send the chiefs away without enumerating the scalps of the pale-faces present among those which were to make up the sum of their race.
Taking the perplexity produced by the bee-hunter's necromancy, and adding it to his concern for Margery, Peter found ample subject for all his reflections. While the young men were dressing their bears, and making the preparations for a feast, he walked apart, like a man whose thoughts had little in common with the surrounding scene. Even the further proceedings of le Bourdon, who had discovered his bee-tree, had felled it, and was then distributing the honey among the Indians, could not draw him from his meditations. The great council of all was to be held that very day--there, on Prairie Round--and it was imperative on Peter to settle the policy he intended to pursue, previously to the hour when the fire was to be lighted, and the chiefs met in final consultation.
In the mean time, le Bourdon, by his distribution of the honey, no less than by the manner in which he had found it, was winning golden opinions of those who shared in his bounty. One would think that the idea of property is implanted in us by nature, since men in all conditions appear to entertain strong and distinct notions of this right. Natural it may not be, in the true signification of the term; but it is a right so interwoven with those that are derived from nature, and more particularly with our wants, as almost to identify it with the individual being. It is certain that all we have of civilization is dependent on a just protection of this right; for, without the assurance of enjoying his earnings, who would produce beyond the supply necessary for his own immediate wants? Among the American savages the rights of property are distinctly recognized, so far as their habits and resources extend. The hunting-ground belongs to the tribe, and occasionally the field; but the wigwam, and the arms, and the skins, both for use and for market, and often the horses, and all other movables, belong to the individual. So sacred is this right held to be, that not one of those who stood by, and saw le Bourdon fell his tree, and who witnessed the operation of bringing to light its stores of honey, appeared to dream of meddling with the delicious store, until invited so to do by its lawful owner. It was this reserve, and this respect for a recognized principle, that enabled the bee-hunter to purchase a great deal of popularity, by giving away liberally an article so much prized. None, indeed, was reserved; Boden seeing the impossibility of carrying it away. Happy would he have been, most happy, could he have felt the assurance of being able to get Margery off, without giving a second thought to any of his effects, whether present or absent.
As has been intimated, the bee-hunter was fast rising in the favor of the warriors; particularly of those who had a weakness on the score of the stomach. This is the first great avenue to the favor of man--the belly ruling all the other members, the brains included. All this Peter noted, and was now glad to perceive; for, in addition to the favor that Margery had found in his eyes, that wary chief had certain very serious misgivings on the subject of the prudence of attempting to deal harshly with a medicine man of Boden's calibre. Touching the whiskey-spring he had been doubtful, from the first; even Crowsfeather's account of the wonderful glass through which that chief had looked, and seen men reduced to children and then converted into giants, had failed to conquer his scepticism; but he was not altogether proof against what he had that day beheld with his own eyes. These marvels shook his previous opinion touching the other matters; and, altogether, the effect was to elevate the bee-hunter to a height, that it really appeared dangerous to assail.
While Peter was thus shaken with doubts--and that, too, on a point on which he had hitherto stood as firm as a rock--there was another in the crowd, who noted the growing favor of le Bourdon with deep disgust. This man could hardly be termed a chief, though he possessed a malignant power that was often wielded to the discomfiture of those who were. He went by the significant appellation of “The Weasel,” a sobriquet that had been bestowed on him for some supposed resemblance to the little pilfering, prowling quadruped after which he was thus named. In person, and in physical qualities generally, this individual was mean and ill-favored; and squalid habits contributed to render him even less attractive than he might otherwise have been. He was, moreover, particularly addicted to intemperance; lying, wallowing like a hog, for days at a time, whenever his tribe received any of the ample contribution of fire-water, which it was then more the custom than it is to-day, to send among the aborigines. A warrior of no renown, a hunter so indifferent as to compel his squaw and pappooses often to beg for food in strange lodges, of mean presence, and a drunkard, it may seem extraordinary that the Weasel should possess any influence amid so many chiefs renowned for courage, wisdom, deeds in arms, on the hunt, and for services around the council-fire. It was all due to his tongue. Ungque, or the Weasel, was eloquent in a high degree--possessing that variety of his art which most addresses itself to the passions; and, strange as it may seem, men are oftener and more easily led by those who do little else than promise, than by those who actually perform. A lying and fluent tongue becomes a power of itself, with the masses; subverting reason, looking down justice, brow-beating truth, and otherwise placing the wrong before the right. This quality the Weasel possessed in a high degree, and was ever willing to use, on occasions that seemed most likely to defeat the wishes of those he hated. Among the last was Peter, whose known ascendancy in his own particular tribe had been a source of great envy and uneasiness to this Indian. He had struggled hard to resist it, and had even dared to speak in favor of the pale-faces, and in opposition to the plan of cutting them all off, purely with a disposition to oppose this mysterious stranger. It had been in vain, however; the current running the other way, and the fiery eloquence of Peter proving too strong even for him. Now, to his surprise, from a few words dropped casually, this man ascertained that their greatest leader was disposed so far to relent, as not to destroy ALL the pale-faces in his power. Whom, and how many he meant to spare, Ungque could not tell; but his quick, practised discernment detected the general disposition, and his ruthless tendency to oppose, caused him to cast about for the means of resisting this sudden inclination to show mercy. With the Weasel, the moving principle was ever that of the demagogue; it was to flatter the mass that he might lead it; and he had an innate hostility to whatever was frank, manly, and noble.
The time had now come when the Indians wished to be alone. At this council it was their intention to come to an important decision; and even the “young men,” unless chiefs, were to be merely distant spectators. Peter sent for le Bourdon, accordingly, and communicated his wish that all the whites would return to the castle, whither he promised to join them about the setting of the sun, or early the succeeding day.
“One of you, you know--dat my wigwam,” said the grim chief, smiling on Margery with a friendly eye, and shaking hands with the bee-hunter, who thought his manner less constrained than on former similar occasions. “Get good supper for ole Injin, young squaw; dat juss what squaw good for.”
Margery laughingly promised to remember his injunction, and went her way, closely attended by her lover. The corporal followed, armed to the teeth, and keeping at just such a distance from the young people, as might enable them to converse without being overheard. As for the missionary, he was detained a moment by Peter, the others moving slowly, in order to permit him to come up, ere they had gone their first mile. Of course, the mysterious chief had not detained Parson Amen without a motive.
“My brother has told me many curious things,” said Peter, when alone with the missionary, and speaking now in the language of the Ojebways--“many very curious things. I like to listen to them. Once he told me how the pale-face young men take their squaws.”
“I remember to have told you this. We ask the Great Spirit to bless our marriages, and the ceremony is commonly performed by a priest. This is our practice, Peter; though not necessary, I think it good.”
“Yes; good alway for pale-face to do pale-face fashion, and for Injin to do Injin fashion. Don't want medicine-man to get red-skin squaw. Open wigwam door, and she come in. Dat 'nough. If she don't wish to come in, can't make her. Squaw go to warrior she likes; warrior ask squaw he likes. But it is best for pale-face to take his wife in pale-face fashion. Does not my brother see a young man of his people, and a young maiden, that he had better bring together and bless?”
“You must mean Bourdon and Margery,” answered the missionary, in English, after a moment's reflection. “The idea is a new one to me; for my mind has been much occuoccupied of late, with other and more important matters; though I now plainly see what you mean!”
“That flower of the Openings would soon fade, if the young bee-hunter should leave it alone on the prairies. This is the will of the Great Spirit. He puts it into the minds of the young squaws to see all things well that the hunters of their fancy do. Why he has made the young with this kindness for each other, perhaps my brother knows. He is wise, and has books. The poor Injins have none. They can see only with the eyes they got from Injins, like themselves. But one thing they know. What the Great Spirit has commanded, is good. Injins can't make it any better. They can do it harm, but they can do it no good. Let my brother bless the couple that the Manitou has brought together.”
“I believe I understand you. Peter, and will think of this. And now that I must leave you for a little while, let me beg you to think of this matter of the origin of your tribes, candidly, and with care. Everything depends on your people's not mistaking the truth, in this great matter. It is as necessary for a nation to know its duties, as for a single man. Promise me to think of this, Peter.”
“My brother's words have come into my ears--they are good,” returned the Indian, courteously. “We will think of them at the council, if my brother will bless his young man and young maiden, according to the law of his people.”
“I will promise to do this, Peter; or to urge Bourdon and Margery to do it, if you will promise to speak to-day, in council, of the history of your forefathers, and to take into consideration, once more, the great question of your being Hebrews.”
“I will speak as my brother wishes--let him do as I wish. Let him tell me that I can say to the chiefs before the sun has fallen the length of my arm, that the young pale-face bee-hunter has taken the young pale-face squaw into his wigwam.”
“I do not understand your motive, Peter; but that which you ask is wise, and according to God's laws, and it shall be done. Fare you well, then, for a season. When we again meet, Bourdon and Margery shall be one, if my persuasions can prevail, and you will have pressed this matter of the lost tribes, again, home to your people. Fare you well, Peter; fare you well.”
They separated; the Indian with a cold smile of courtesy, but with his ruthless intentions as respected the missionary in no degree changed. Boden and Margery alone were exempt from vengeance, according to his present designs. An unaccountable gentleness of feeling governed him, as connected with the girl; while superstition, and the dread of an unknown power, had its full influence on his determination to spare her lover. There might be some faint ray of human feeling glimmering among the fierce fires that so steadily burned in the breast of this savage; but they were so much eclipsed by the brighter light that gleamed around them, as to be barely perceptible, even to himself. The result of all these passions was, a determination in Peter to spare those whom he had advised the missionary to unite--making that union a mysterious argument in favor of Margery--and to sacrifice all the rest. The red American is so much accustomed to this species of ruthless proceeding, that the anguish he might occasion the very beings to whom he now wished to be merciful, gave the stern chief very little concern. Leaving the Indians in the exclusive possession of Prairie Round, we will return to the rest of the party.
The missionary hastened after his friends as fast as he could go. Boden and Margery had much to say to each other in that walk, which had a great deal about it to bring their thoughts within the circle of their own existence. As has been said, the fire had run through that region late, and the grasses were still young, offering but little impediment to their movements. As the day was now near its heat, le Bourdon led his spirited, but gentle companion, through the groves, where they had the benefit of a most delicious shade, a relief that was now getting to be very grateful. Twice had they stopped to drink at cool, clear springs, in which the water seemed to vie with the air in transparency. As this is not the general character of the water of that region, though marked exceptions exist, Margery insisted that the water was eastern and not western water.
“Why do we always think the things we had in childhood better than those we enjoy afterward?” asked Margery, after making one of these comparisons, somewhat to the disadvantage of the part of the country in which she then was. “I can scarce ever think of home--what I call home, and which was so long a home to me--without shedding tears. Nothing here seems as good of its kind as what I have left behind me. Do you have the same longings for Pennsylvania that I feel for the sea-coast and for the rocks about Quincy?”
“Sometimes. When I have been quite alone for two or three months, I have fancied that an apple, or a potato, or even a glass of cider that came from the spot where I was born, would be sweeter than all the honey bees ever gathered in Michigan.”
“To me it has always seemed strange, Bourdon, that one of your kind feelings should ever wish to live alone, at all; yet I have heard you say that a love of solitude first drew you to your trade.”
“It is these strong cases which get a man under, as it might be, and almost alter his nature. One man will pass his days in hunting deer; another in catching fish; my taste has been for the bees, and for such chances with other creatures as may offer. What between hunting, and hiving, and getting the honey to market, I have very little time to long for company. But my taste is altering, Margery; HAS altered.”
The girl blushed, but she also smiled, and, moreover, she looked pleased.
“I am afraid that you are not as much altered as you think,” she answered, laughingly, however. “It may seem so now; but when you come to LIVE in the settlements again, you will get tired of crowds.”
“Then I will come with you, Margery, into these Openings, and we can live TOGETHER here, surely, as well, or far better than I can live here ALONE. You and Gershom's wife have spoiled my housekeeping. I really did not know, until you came up here, how much a woman can do in a chiente.
“Why, Bourdon, you have lived long enough in the settlements to know THAT!”
“That is true; but I look upon the settlements as one thing, and on the Openings as another. What will do there isn't needed here; and what will do here won't answer there. But these last few days have so changed Castle Meal, that I hardly know it myself.”
“Perhaps the change is for the worse, and you wish it undone, Bourdon,” observed the girl, in the longing she had to hear an assurance to the contrary, at the very moment she felt certain that assurance would be given.
“No, no, Margery. Woman has taken possession of my cabin, and woman shall now always command there, unless you alter your mind, and refuse to have me. I shall speak to the missionary to marry us, as soon as I can get him alone. His mind is running so much on the Jews, that he has hardly a moment left for us Christians.”
The color on Margery's cheek was not lessened by this declaration; though, to admit the truth, she looked none the less pleased. She was a warm-hearted and generous girl, and sometimes hesitated about separating herself and her fortunes from those of Gershom and Dorothy; but the bee-hunter had persuaded her this would be unnecessary, though she did accept him for a husband. The point had been settled between them on previous occasions, and much conversation had already passed, in that very walk, which was confined to that interesting subject. But Margery was not now disposed to say more, and she adroitly improved the hint thrown out by Boden, to change the discourse.
“It is the strangest notion I ever heard of,” she cried, laughing, “to believe Injins to be Jews!”
“He tells me he is by no means the first who has fancied it. Many writers have said as much before him, and all he claims is, to have been among them, and to have seen these Hebrews with his own eyes. But here he comes, and can answer for himself.”
Just as this was said, Parson Amen joined the party, Corporal Flint closing to the front, as delicacy no longer required him to act as a rear-guard. The good missionary came up a little heated; and, in order that he might have time to cool himself, the rate of movement was slightly reduced. In the mean time the conversation did not the less proceed.
“We were talking of the lost tribes,” said Margery, half smiling as she spoke, “and of your idea, Mr. Amen, that these Injins are Jews. It seems strange to me that they should have lost so much of their ancient ways, and notions, and appearances, if they are really the people you think.”
“Lost! It is rather wonderful that, after the lapse of two thousand years and more, so much should remain. Whichever way I look, signs of these people's origin beset me. You have read your Bible, Margery--which I am sorry to say all on this frontier have not--but you have read your Bible, and one can make an allusion to you with some satisfaction. Now, let me ask you if you remember such a thing as the scape-goat of the ancient Jews. It is to be found in Leviticus, and is one of those mysterious customs with which that extraordinary book is full.”
“Leviticus is a book I never read but once, for we do not read it in our New England schools. But I do remember that the Jews were commanded to let one of two goats go, from which practice it has, I believe, been called a scape-goat.”
“Well,” said le Bourdon, simply, “what a thing is 'l'arnin'!' Now, this is all news to me, though I have heard of 'scape-goats,' and TALKED of 'scape-goats' a thousand times! There's a meanin' to everything, I find; and I do not look upon this idea of the lost tribes as half as strange as I did before I l'arnt this!”
Margery had not fallen in love with the bee-hunter for his biblical knowledge, else might her greater information have received a rude shock by this mark of simplicity; but instead of dwelling on this proof of le Bourdon's want of “schooling,” her active mind was more disposed to push the allusion to scape-goats to some useful conclusion.
“And what of the goat, Mr. Amen?” she asked; “and how can it belong to anything here?”
“Why were all those goats turned into the woods and deserts, in the olden time, Margery? Doubtless to provide food for the ten tribes, when these should be driven forth by conquerors and hard task-masters. Time, and climate, and a difference of food, has altered them, as they have changed the Jews themselves, though they still retain the cleft hoof, the horns, the habits, and the general characteristics of the goats of Arabia. Yes; naturalists will find in the end, that the varieties of the deer of this continent, particularly the antelope, are nothing but the scape-goats of the ancient world, altered and perhaps improved by circumstances.”
As this was much the highest flight the good missionary had ever yet taken, not trifling was the astonishment of his young friends thereat. Touching the Jews, le Bourdon did not pretend to, or in fact did not possess much knowledge; but when the question was reduced down to one of venison, or bears' meat, or bisons' humps, with the exception of the professed hunters and trappers, few knew more about them all than he did himself. That the deer, or even the antelopes of America ever had been goats, he did not believe; nor was he at all backward in letting his dissent to such a theory be known.
“I'm sorry, Parson Amen, you've brought in the deer,” he cried. “Had you stuck to the Jews, I might have believed all that you fancy, in this business; but the deer have spoiled all. As for scape-goats, since Margery seems to agree with you, I suppose you are right about THEM though my notion of such creatures has been to keep clear of them, instead of following them up, as you seem to think these Hebrews have done. But if you are no nearer right in your doctrine about the Injins than you are about their game, you'll have to change your religion.”
“Do not think that my religion depends on any thread so slight, Bourdon. A man may be mistaken in interpreting prophecy, and still be a devout Christian. There are more reasons than you may at first suppose, for believing in this theory of the gradual change of the goat into the deer, and especially into the antelope. We do not any of us believe that Noah had with him, in the ark, all the animals that are now to be found, but merely the parent-stems, in each particular case, which would be reducing the number many fold. If all men came from Adam, Bourdon, why could not all deer come from goats?”
“Why this matter about men has a good deal puzzled me, Parson, and I hardly know what answer to give. Still, men are men, wherever you find them. They may be lighter or darker, taller or shorter, with hair or wool, and yet you can see they are MEN. Perhaps food, and climate, and manner of living, may have made all the changes we see in them; but Lord, Parson, a goat has a beard!”
“What has become of the thousands of scape-goats that the ancient Hebrews must have turned loose in the wilderness? Answer me that, Bourdon?”
“You might as well ask me, sir, what has become of the thousands of Hebrews who turned them loose. I suppose all must be dead a thousand years ago. Scape-goats are creatures that even Injins would not like.”
“All this is a great mystery, Bourdon--a much greater mystery than our friend Peter, whom you have so often said was a man so unaccountable. By the way, he has given me a charge to perform an office between you and Margery, that I had almost forgotten. From what he said to me, I rather think it may have some connection with our safety. We have enemies among these savages, I feel very certain; though I believe we have also warm friends.”
“But what have you in charge that has anything to do with Bourdon and me?” asked the wondering Margery, who was quick to observe the connection, though utterly at a loss to comprehend it.
The missionary now called a halt, and finding convenient seats, he gradually opened the subject with which he had been charged by Peter to his companions. The reader is probably prepared to learn that there was no longer any reserve between le Bourdon and Margery on the subject of their future marriage. The young man had already pressed an immediate union, as the wisest and safest course to be pursued. Although the savage American is little addicted to abusing his power over female captives, and seldom takes into his lodge an unwilling squaw, the bee-hunter had experienced a good deal of uneasiness on the score of what might befall his betrothed. Margery was sufficiently beautiful to attract attention, even in a town; and more than one fierce-looking warrior had betrayed his admiration that very day, though it was in a very Indian-like fashion. Rhapsody, and gallant speeches, and sonnets, form no part of Indian courtship; but the language of admiration is so very universal, through the eyes, that it is sufficiently easy of comprehension. It was possible that some chief, whose band was too formidable to be opposed, might take it into his head to wish to see a pale-face squaw in his wigwam; and, while it was not usual to do much violence to a female's inclinations on such occasions, it was not common to offer much opposition to those of a powerful warrior. The married tie, if it could be said to exist at all, however, was much respected; and it was far less likely that Margery, a wife, would thus be appropriated, than Margery, unmarried. It is true, cases of unscrupulous exercise of power are to be found among Indians, as well as among civilized men, but they are rare, and usually are much condemned.
The bee-hunter, consequently, was well disposed to second Peter's project. As for Margery herself, she had half yielded all her objections to her lover's unaided arguments, and was partly conquered before this reinforcement was brought into the field against her. Peter's motive was much canvassed, no one of them all being able to penetrate it. Boden, however, had his private opinion on the subject, nor was it so very much out of the way. He fancied that the mysterious chief was well disposed to Margery, and wished to put her as far as possible beyond the chances of an Indian wigwam; marriage being the step of all others most likely to afford her this protection. Now this was not exactly true, but it was right enough in the main. Peter's aim was to save the life of the girl; her gentle attractions, and kind attentions to himself having wrought this much in her favor; and he believed no means of doing so as certain as forming a close connection for her with the great medicine-bee-hunter. Judging of them by himself, he did not think the Indians would dare to include so great a conjurer in their schemes of vengeance, and was willing himself that le Bourdon should escape, provided Margery could go free and unharmed with him. As for the bee-hunter's powers, he had many misgivings; they might be dangerous to the red men, and they might not. On this subject, he was in the painful doubts of ignorance, and had the wide area of conjecture open before his mind. He saw; but it was “as in a glass, darkly.”
Margery was disposed to delay the ceremony, at least until her brother and sister might be present. But to this le Bourdon himself was not much inclined. It had struck him that Gershom was opposed to an early marriage, most probably because he fancied himself more secure of the bee-hunter's ingenious and important aid in getting back to the settlements, so long as this strong inducement existed to cling to himself, than if he should release his own hold of Margery, by giving her at once to her lover. Right or wrong, such was the impression taken up by le Bourdon, and he was glad when the missionary urged his request to be permitted to pronounce the nuptial benediction on the spot.
Little ceremony is generally used in an American marriage. In a vast many cases no clergyman is employed at all; and where there is, most of the sects have no ring, no giving away, nor any of those observances which were practised in the churches of old. There existed no impediment, therefore; and after a decent interval spent in persuasions, Margery consented to plight her vows to the man of her heart before they left the spot. She would fain have had Dorothy present, for woman loves to lean on her own sex on such occasions, but submitted to the necessity of proceeding at once, as the bee-hunter and the missionary chose to term it.
A better altar could not have been selected in all that vast region. It was one of nature's own erecting; and le Bourdon and his pretty bride placed themselves before it, with feelings suited to the solemnity of the occasion. The good missionary stood within the shade of a burr oak in the centre of those park-like Openings, every object looking fresh, and smiling, and beautiful. The sward was gieen, and short as that of a well-tended lawn; the flowers were, like the bride herself, soft, modest, and sweet; while charming rural vistas stretched through the trees, much as if art had been summoned in aid of the great mistress who had designed the landscape. When the parties knelt in prayer--which all present did, not excepting the worthy corporal--it was on the verdant ground, with first the branches of the trees, and then the deep, fathomless vault of heaven for a canopy. In this manner was the marriage benediction pronounced on the bee-hunter and Margery Waring, in the venerable Oak Openings. No gothic structure, with its fretted aisles and clustered columns, could have been onehalf as appropriate for the union of such a couple.
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No shrift the gloomy savage brooks, As scowling on the priest he looks; Cowesass--cowesass--tawkich wessasseen! Let my father look on Bornazeen-- My father's heart is the heart of a squaw, But mine is so hard that it does not thaw, --WHITTIER.
Leaving the newly-married couple to pursue their way homeward, it is now our province to return to Prairie Round. One accustomed to such scenes would easily have detected the signs of divided opinions and of agitating doubts among the chiefs, though nothing like contention or dispute had yet manifested itself. Peter's control was still in the ascendant, and he had neglected none of his usual means of securing influence. Perhaps he labored so much the harder, from the circumstance that he now found himself so situated, as to be compelled to undo much that he had previously done.
On the other hand, Ungque appeared to have no particular cause of concern. His manner was as much unoccupied as usual; and to his habit of referring all his influence to sudden and powerful bursts of eloquence, if design of any sort was entertained, he left his success.
We pass over the details of assembling the council. The spot was not exactly on the prairie, but in a bit of lovely “Opening” on its margin, where the eye could roam over a wide extent of that peculiar natural meadow, while the body enjoyed the shades of the wood. The chiefs alone were in the circle, while the “braves” and the “young men” generally formed a group on the outside; near enough to hear what passed, and to profit by it, if so disposed. The pipe was smoked, and all the ordinary customs observed, when Bear's Meat arose, the first speaker on that momentous occasion.
“Brothers,” he said, “this is the great council on Prairie Round to which we have been called. We have met before, but not here. This is our first meeting here. We have travelled a long path to get here. Some of our brethren have travelled farther. They are at Detroit. They went there to meet our great Canada father, and to take Yankee scalps. How many scalps they have taken I do not know, or I would tell you. It is pleasant to me to count Yankee scalps. I would rather count them, than count the scalps of red men. There are still a great many left. The Yankees are many, and each Yankee has a scalp. There should not be so many. When the buffaloes came in the largest droves, our fathers used to go out to hunt them in the strongest parties. Their sons should do the same. We are the sons of those fathers. They say we look like them, talk like them, live like them--we should ACT like them. Let another speak, for I have done.”
After this brief address, which bore some resemblance to a chairman's calling a meeting of civilized men to order, there was more smoking. It was fully expected that Peter would next arise, but he did not. Perceiving this, and willing to allow time to that great chief to arrange his thoughts, Crowsfeather assumed the office of filling the gap. He was far more of a warrior than of an orator, and was listened to respectfully, but less for what he said, than for what he had done. A good deal of Indian boasting, quite naturally, was blended with HIS discourse.
“My brother has told you of the Yankee scalps,” he commenced. “He says they are many. He says there ought to be fewer. He did not remember who sat so near him. Perhaps he does not know that there are three less now than there were a moon since. Crowsfeather took three at Chicago. Many scalps were taken there. The Yankees must be plentier than the buffaloes on the great prairies, if they can lose so many scalps often, and send forth their warriors. I am a Pottawattamie. My brothers know that tribe. It is not a tribe of Jews, but a tribe of Injins. It is a great tribe. It never was LOST. It CANNOT be lost. No tribe better knows all the paths, and all the best routes to every point where it wishes to go. It is foolish to say you can lose a Pottawattamie. A duck would be as likely to lose itself as a Pottawattamie. I do not speak for the Ottawas: I speak for the Pottawattamies. We are not Jews. We do not wish to be Jews; and what we do not wish to be, we will not be. Our father who has come so far to tell us that we are not Injins, but Jews, is mistaken. I never heard of these Jews before. I do not wish to hear of them again. When a man has heard enough, he does not keep his ears open willingly. It is then best for the speaker to sit down. The Pottawattamies have shut their ears to the great medicine-priest of the pale-faces. What he says may be true of other tribes, but it is not true of the Pottawatttamies. We are not lost; we are not Jews. I have done.”
This speech was received with general favor. The notion that the Indians were not Indians, but Jews, was far from being agreeable to those who had heard what had been said on the subject; and the opinions of Crowsfeather possessed the great advantage of reflecting the common sentiment on this interesting subject. When this is the case, a very little eloquence or logic goes a great way; and, on the whole, the address of the last speaker was somewhat better received than that of the first.
It was now confidently believed that Peter would rise. But he did not. That mysterious chief was not yet prepared to speak, or he was judiciously exciting expectation by keeping back. There were at least ten minutes of silent smoking, ere a chief, whose name rendered into English was Bough of the Oak, arose, evidently with a desire to help the time along. Taking his cue from the success of Crows-feather, he followed up the advantage obtained by that chief, assailing the theory of the missionary from another quarter.
“I am an Injin,” said Bough of the Oak; “my father was an Injin, and my mother was the daughter of an Injin. All my fathers were red men, and all their sons. Why should I wish to be anything else? I asked my brother, the medicine-priest, and he owned that Jews are pale-faces. This he should not have owned if he wished the Injins to be Jews. My skin is red. The Manitou of my fathers so painted it, and their child will not try to wash out the color. Were the color washed out of my face, I should be a pale-face! There would not be paint enough to hide my shame. No; I was born red, and will die a red man. It is not good to have two faces. An Injin is not a snake, to cast his skin. The skin in which he was born he keeps. He plays in it when a child; he goes in it to his first hunt; the bears and the deer know him by it; he carries it with him on the warpath, and his enemies tremble at the sight of it; his squaw knows him by that skin when he comes back to his wigwam; and when he dies, he is put aside in the same skin in--which he was born. There is but one skin, and it has but one color. At first, it is little. The pappoose that wears it is little. There is not need of a large skin. But it grows with the pappoose, and the biggest warrior finds his skin around him. This is because the Great Spirit fitted it to him. Whatever the Manitou does is good.
“My brothers have squaws--they have pappooses. When the pappoose is put into their arms, do they get the paint-stones, and paint it red? They do not. It is not necessary. The Manitou painted it red before it was born. How this was done I do not know. I am nothing but a poor Injin, and only know what I see. I have seen that the pappooses are red when they are born, and that the warriors are red when they die. They are also red while living. It is enough. Their fathers could never have been pale-faces, or we should find some white spots on their children. There are none.
“Crowsfeather has spoken of the Jews as lost. I am not surprised to hear it. It seems to me that all pale-faces get lost. They wander from their own hunting-grounds into those of other people. It is not so with Injins. The Pottawattamie does not kill the deer of the Iowa, nor the Ottawa the deer of the Menomenees. Each tribe knows its own game. This is because they are not lost. My pale-face father appears to wish us well. He has come on a long and weary path to tell us about his Manitou. For this I thank him. I thank all who wish to do me good. Them that wish to do me harm I strike from behind. It is our Injin custom. I do not wish to hurt the medicine-priest, because I think he wishes to do me good, and not to do me harm. He has a strange law. It is to do good to them that do harm to you. It is not the law of the red men. It is not good law. I do not wonder that the tribes which follow such a law get lost. They cannot tell their friends from their enemies. They can have no people to scalp. What is a warrior if he cannot find someone to scalp? No; such a law would make women of the bravest braves in the Openings, or on the prairie. It may be a good law for Jews, who get lost; but it is a bad law for Injins, who know the paths they travel. Let another speak.”
This brief profession of faith, on the subject that had been so recently broached in the council, seemed to give infinite satisfaction. All present evidently preferred being red men, who knew where they were, than to be pale-faces who had lost their road. Ignorance of his path is a species of disgrace to an American savage, and not a man there would have confessed that his particular division of the great human family was in that dilemma. The idea that the Yankees were “lost,” and had got materially astray, was very grateful to most who heard it; and Bough of the Oak gained a considerable reputation as an orator, in consequence of the lucky hits made on this occasion.
Another long, ruminating pause, and much passing of the pipe of peace succeeded. It was near half an hour after the last speaker had resumed his seat, ere Peter stood erect. In that long interval expectation had time to increase, and curiosity to augment itself. Nothing but a very great event could cause this pondering, this deliberation, and this unwillingness to begin. When, however, the time did come for the mysterious chief to speak, the man of many scalps to open his mouth, profound was the attention that prevailed among all present. Even after he had arisen, the orator stood silently looking around him, as if the throes of his thoughts had to be a little suppressed before he could trust his tongue to give them utterance.
“What is the earth?” commenced Peter, in a deep, guttural tone of voice, which the death-like stillness rendered audible even to the outermost boundaries of the circle of admiring and curious countenances. “It is one plain adjoining another; river after river; lake after lake; prairie touching prairie; and pleasant woods, that seem to have no limits, all given to men to dwell in. It would seem that the Great Spirit parcelled out this rich possession into hunting-grounds for all. He colored men differently. His dearest children he painted red, which is his own color. Them that he loved less he colored less, and they had red only in spots. Them he loved least he dipped in a dark dye, and left them black. These are the colors of men. If there are more, I have not seen them. Some say there are. I shall think so, too, when I see them.
“Brothers, this talk about lost tribes is a foolish talk. We are not lost. We know where we are, and we know where the Yankees have come to seek us. My brother has well spoken. If any are lost, it is the Yankees. The Yankees are Jews; they are lost. The time is near when they will be found, and when they will again turn their eyes toward the rising sun. They have looked so long toward the setting sun, that they cannot see clearly. It is not good to look too long at the same object. The Yankees have looked at our hunting-grounds, until their eyes are dim. They see the hunting-grounds, but they do not see all the warriors that are in them. In time, they will learn to count them.
“Brothers, when the Great Spirit made man, he put him to live on the earth. Our traditions do not agree in saying of what he was made. Some say it was of clay, and that when his spirit starts for the happy hunting-grounds, his body becomes clay again. I do not say that this is so, for I do not know. It is not good to say that which we do not know to be true. I wish to speak only the truth. This we do know. If a warrior die, and we put him in the earth, and come to look for him many years afterward, nothing but bones are found. All else is gone. I have heard old men say that, in time, even these bones are not to be found. It is so with trees; it may be so with men. But it is not so with hunting-grounds. They were made to last forever.
“Brothers, you know why we have come together on this prairie. It was to count the pale-faces, and to think of the way of making their number less. Now is a good time for such a thing. They have dug up the hatchet against each other, and when we hear of scalps taken among them, it is good for the red men. I do not think our Canada father is more our friend than the great Yankee, Uncle Sam. It is true, he gives us more powder, and blankets, and tomahawks, and rifles than the Yankee, but it is to get us to fight his battles. We will fight his battles. They are our battles, too. For this reason we will fight his enemies.
“Brothers, it is time to think of our children. A wise chief once told me how many winters it is since a pale-face was first seen among red men. It was not a great while ago. Injins are living who have seen Injins, whose own fathers saw the first pale-faces. They were few. They were like little children, then; but now they are grown to be men. Medicine-men are plenty among them, and tell them how to raise children. The Injins do not understand this. Small-pox, fire-water, bad hunting, and frosts, keep us poor, and keep our children from growing as fast as the children of the pale-faces. Brothers, all this has happened within the lives of three aged chiefs. One told to another, and he told it to a third. Three chiefs have kept that tradition. They have given it to me. I have cut notches on this stick (holding up a piece of ash, neatly trimmed, as a record) for the winters they told me, and every winter since I have cut one more. See; there are not many notches. Some of our people say that the pale-faces are already plentier than leaves on the trees. I do not believe this. These notches tell us differently. It is true the pale-faces grow fast, and have many children, and small-pox does not kill many of them, and their wars are few; but look at this stick. Could a canoe-full of men become as many as they say, in so few winters? No; it is not so. The stories we have heard are not true. A crooked tongue first told them. We are strong enough still to drive these strangers into the great salt lake, and get back all our hunting-grounds. This is what I wish to have done.
“Brothers, I have taken many scalps. This stick will tell the number.” Here one of those terrible gleams of ferocity to which we have before alluded, passed athwart the dark countenance of the speaker, causing all present to feel a deeper sympathy in the thoughts he would express. “There are many. Every one has come from the head of a pale-face. It is now twenty winters since I took the scalp of a red man. I shall never take another. We want all of our own warriors, to drive back the strangers.
“Brothers, some Injins tell us of different tribes. They talk about distant tribes as strangers. I tell you we are all children of the same father. All our skins are red. I see no difference between an Ojebway, and a Sac, or a Sioux. I love even a Cherokee.” Here very decided signs of dissatisfaction were manifested by several of the listeners; parties of the tribes of the great lakes having actually marched as far as the Gulf of Mexico to make war on the Indians of that region, who were generally hated by them with the most intense hatred. “He has the blood of our fathers in him. We are brothers, and should live together as brothers. If we want scalps, the pale-faces have plenty. It is sweet to take the scalp of a pale-face. I know it. My hand has done it often, and will do it again. If every Injin had taken as many scalps as I have taken, few of these strangers would now remain.
“Brothers, one thing more I have to say. I wish to hear others, and will not tell all I know this time. One thing more I have to say, and I now say it. I have told you that we must take the scalps of all the pale-faces who are now near us. I thought there would have been more, but the rest do not come. Perhaps they are frightened. There are only six. Six scalps are not many. I am sorry they are so few. But we can go where there will be more. One of these six is a medicine-man. I do not know what to think. It may be good to take his scalp. It may be bad. Medicine-men have great power. You have seen what this bee-hunter can do. He knows how to talk with bees. Them little insects can fly into small places, and see things that Injins cannot see. The Great Spirit made them so. When we get back all the land, we shall get the bees with it, and may then hold a council to say what it is best to do with them. Until we know more, I do not wish to touch the scalp of that bee-hunter. It may do us great harm. I knew a medicine-man of the pale-faces to lose his scalp, and small-pox took off half the band that made him prisoner and killed him. It is not good to meddle with medicine-men. A few days ago, and I wanted this young man's scalp, very much. Now, I do not want it. It may do us harm to touch it. I wish to let him go, and to take his squaw with him. The rest we can scalp.”
Peter cunningly made no allusion to Margery, until just before he resumed his seat, though now deeply interested in her safety. As for le Bourdon, so profound was the impression he had made that morning, that few of the chiefs were surprised at the exemption proposed in his favor. The superstitious dread of witchcraft is very general among the American savages; and it certainly did seem to be hazardous to plot the death of a man, who had even the bees that were humming on all sides of them under his control. He might at that very moment be acquainted with all that was passing; and several of the grim-looking and veteran warriors who sat in the circle, and who appeared to be men able and willing to encounter aught human, did not fail to remember the probability of a medicine-man's knowing who were his friends, and who his enemies.
When Peter sat down, there was but one man in the circle of chiefs who was resolved to oppose his design of placing Boden and Margery without the pale of the condemned. Several were undecided, scarce knowing what to think of so sudden and strange a proposition, but could not be said to have absolutely adhered to the original scheme of cutting off all. The exception was Ungque. This man--a chief by a sort of sufferance, rather than as a right--was deadly hostile to Peter's influence, as has been said, and was inclined to oppose all his plans, though compelled by policy to be exceedingly cautious how he did it. Here, however, was an excellent opportunity to strike a blow, and he was determined not to neglect it. Still, so wily was this Indian, so much accustomed to put a restraint on his passions and wishes, that he did not immediately arise, with the impetuous ardor of frank impulses, to make his reply, but awaited his time.
An Indian is but a man, after all, and is liable to his weaknesses, notwithstanding the self-command he obtains by severe drilling. Bough of the Oak was to supply a proof of this truth. He had been so unexpectedly successful in his late attempt at eloquence, that it was not easy to keep him off his feet, now that another good occasion to exhibit his powers offered. He was accordingly the next to speak.
“My brothers,” said Bough of the Oak, “I am named after a tree. You all know that tree. It is not good for bows or arrows; it is not good for canoes; it does not make the best fire, though it will burn, and is hot when well lighted. There are many things for which the tree after which I am named is not good. It is not good to eat. It has no sap that Injins can drink, like the maple. It does not make good brooms. But it has branches like other trees, and they are tough. Tough branches are good. The boughs of the oak will not bend, like the boughs of the willow, or the boughs of the ash, or the boughs of the hickory.
“Brothers, I am a bough of the oak. I do not like to bend. When my mind is made up, I wish to keep it where it was first put. My mind has been made up to take the scalps of ALL the pale-faces who are now in the Openings. I do not want to change it. My mind can break, but it can not bend. It is tough.”
Having uttered this brief but sententious account of his view of the matter at issue, the chief resumed his seat, reasonably well satisfied with this, his second attempt to be eloquent that day. His success this time was not as unequivocal as on the former occasion, but it was respectable. Several of the chiefs saw a reasonable, if not a very logical analogy, between a man's name and his mind; and to them it appeared a tolerably fair inference that a man should act up to his name. If his name was tough, he ought to be tough, too. In this it does not strike us that they argued very differently from civilized beings, who are only too apt to do that which their better judgments really condemn, because they think they are acting “in character,” as it is termed.
Ungque was both surprised and delighted with this unexpected support from Bough of the Oak. He knew enough of human nature to understand that a new-born ambition, that of talking against the great, mysterious chief, Peter, was at the bottom of this unexpected opposition; but with this he was pleased, rather than otherwise. An opposition that is founded in reason, may always be reasoned down, if reasons exist therefor; but an opposition that has its rise in any of the passions, is usually somewhat stubborn. All this the mean-looking chief, or the Weasel, understood perfectly, and appreciated highly. He thought the moment favorable, and was disposed to “strike while the iron was hot.” Rising after a decent interval had elapsed, this wily Indian looked about him, as if awed by the presence in which he stood, and doubtful whether he could venture to utter his thoughts before so many wise chiefs. Having made an impression by this air of diffidence, he commenced his harangue.
“I am called the Weasel,” he said, modestly. “My name is not taken from the mightiest tree of the forest, like that of my brother; it is taken from a sort of rat--an animal that lives by its wits. I am well named. When my tribe gave me that name, it was just. All Injins have not names. My great brother, who told us once that we ought to take the scalp of every white man, but WHO now tells us that we ought not to take the scalp of every white man, has no name. He is called Peter, by the pale-faces. It is a good name. But it is a pale-face name. I wish we knew the real name of my brother. We do not know his nation or his tribe. Some say he is an Ottawa, some an Iowa, some even think him a Sioux. I have heard he was a Delaware, from toward the rising sun. Some, but they must be Injins with forked tongues, think and say he is a Cherokee! I do not believe this. It is a lie. It is said to do my brother harm. Wicked Injins will say such things. But we do not mind what THEY say. It is not necessary.
“My brothers, I wish we knew the tribe of this great chief, who tells us to take scalps, and then tells us not to take scalps. Then we might understand why he has told us two stories. I believe all he says, but I should like to know WHY I believe it. It is good to know why we believe things. I have heard what my brother has said about letting this bee-hunter go to his own people, but I do not know why he believes this is best. It is because I am a poor Injin, perhaps; and because I am called the Weasel. I am an animal that creeps through small holes. That is my nature. The bison jumps through open prairies, and a horse is wanted to catch him. It is not so with the weasel; he creeps through small holes. But he always looks where he goes.
“The unknown chief, who belongs to no tribe, talks of this bee-hunter's squaw. He is afraid of so great a medicine-man, and wishes him to go, and take all in his wigwam with him. He has no squaw. There is a young squaw in his lodge, but she is not HIS squaw. There is no need of letting her go, on his account. If we take her scalp, he cannot hurt us. In that, my brother is wrong. The bees have buzzed too near his ears. Weasels can hear, as well as other animals; and I have heard that this young squaw is not this bee-hunter's squaw.
“If Injins are to take the scalps of all the pale-faces, why should we not begin with these who are in our hands? When the knife is ready, and the head is ready, nothing but the hand is wanting. Plenty of hands are ready, too; and it does not seem good to the eyes of a poor, miserable weasel, who has to creep through very small holes to catch his game, to let that game go when it is taken. If my great brother, who has told us not to scalp this bee-hunter and her he calls his squaw, will tell us the name of his tribe, I shall be glad. I am an ignorant Injin, and like to learn all I can; I wish to learn that. Perhaps it will help us to understand why he gave one counsel yesterday, and another to-day. There is a reason for it. I wish to know what it is.”
Ungque now slowly seated himself. He had spoken with great moderation, as to manner; and with such an air of humility as one of our own demagogues is apt to assume, when he tells the people of their virtues, and seems to lament the whole time that he, himself, was one of the meanest of the great human family. Peter saw, at once, that he had a cunning competitor, and had a little difficulty in suppressing all exhibition of the fiery indignation he actually felt, at meeting opposition in such a quarter. Peter was artful, and practised in all the wiles of managing men, but he submitted to use his means to attain a great end. The virtual extinction of the white race was his object, and in order to effect it, there was little he would have hesitated to do. Now, however, when for the first time in many years a glimmering of human feeling was shining on the darkness of his mind, he found himself unexpectedly opposed by one of those whom he had formerly found so difficult to persuade into his own dire plans! Had that one been a chief of any renown, the circumstances would have been more tolerable; but here was a man presuming to raise his voice against him, who, so far as he knew anything of his past career, had not a single claim to open his mouth in such a council. With a volcano raging within, that such a state of things would be likely to kindle in the breast of a savage who had been for years a successful and nearly unopposed leader, the mysterious chief rose to reply.
“My brother says he is a weasel,” observed Peter, looking round at the circle of interested and grave countenances by which he was surrounded. “That is a very small animal. It creeps through very small holes, but not to do good. It is good for nothing. When it goes through a small hole, it is not to do the Injins a service, but for its own purposes. I do not like weasels.
“My brother is not afraid of a bee-hunter. Can HE tell us what a bee whispers? If he can, I wish he would tell us. Let him show our young men where there is more honey--where they can find bear's meat for another feast--where they can find warriors hid in the woods.
“My brother says the bee-hunter has no squaw. How does he know this? Has he lived in the lodge with them--paddled in the same canoe--eat of the same venison? A weasel is very small. It might steal into the bee-hunter's lodge, and see what is there, what is doing, what is eaten, who is his squaw, and who is not--has this weasel ever done so? I never saw him there.
“Brothers, the Great Spirit has his own way of doing things. He does not stop to listen to weasels. He knows there are such animals--there are snakes, and toads, and skunks. The Great Spirit knows them all, but he does not mind them. He is wise, and hearkens only to his own mind. So should it be with a council of great chiefs. It should listen to its own mind. That is wisdom. To listen to the mind of a weasel is folly.
“Brothers, you have been told that this weasel does not know the tribe of which I am born. Why should you know it? Injins once were foolish. While the pale-faces were getting one hunting-ground after another from them, they dug up the hatchet against their own friends. They took each other's scalps. Injin hated Injin--tribe hated tribe. I am of no tribe, and no one can hate me for my people. You see my skin. It is red. That is enough. I scalp, and smoke, and talk, and go on weary paths for all Injins, and not for any tribe. I am without a tribe. Some call me the Tribeless. It is better to bear that name, than to be called a weasel. I have done.”
Peter had so much success by this argumentum ad hominem, that most present fancied that the weasel would creep through some hole, and disappear. Not so, however, with Ungque. He was a demagogue, after an Indian fashion; and this is a class of men that ever “make capital” of abuses, as we Americans say, in our money-getting habits. Instead of being frightened off the ground, he arose to answer as promptly as if a practised debater, though with an air of humility so profound, that no one could take offence at his presumption.
“The unknown chief has answered,” he said, “I am glad. I love to hear his words. My ears are always open when he speaks, and my mind is stronger. I now see that it is good he should not have a tribe. He may be a Cherokee, and then our warriors would wish him ill.” This was a home-thrust, most artfully concealed; a Cherokee being the Indian of all others the most hated by the chiefs present;--the Carthaginians of those western Romans. “It is better he should not have a tribe, than be a Cherokee. He might better be a weasel.
“Brothers, we have been told to kill ALL the pale-faces. I like that advice. The land cannot have two owners. If a pale-face owns it, an Injin cannot. If an Injin owns it, a pale-face cannot. But the chief without a tribe tells us not to kill all. He tells us to kill all but the bee-hunter and his squaw. He thinks this bee-hunter is a medicine bee-hunter, and may do us Injins great harm. He wishes to let him go.
“Brothers, this is not my way of thinking. It is better to kill the bee-hunter and his squaw while we can, that there may be no more such medicine bee-hunters to frighten us Injins. If one bee-hunter can do so much harm, what would a tribe of bee-hunters do? I do not want to see any more. It is a dangerous thing to know how to talk with bees. It is best that no one should have that power. I would rather never taste honey again, than live among pale-faces that can talk with bees.
“Brothers, it is not enough that the pale-faces know so much more than the red men, but they must get the bees to tell them where to find honey, to find bears, to find warriors. No; let us take the scalp of the bee-talker, and of his squaw, that there may never be such a medicine again. I have spoken.”
Peter did not rise again. He felt that his dignity was involved in maintaining silence. Various chiefs now uttered their opinions, in brief, sententious language. For the first time since he began to preach his crusade, the current was setting against the mysterious chief. The Weasel said no more, but the hints he had thrown out were improved on by others. It is with savages as with civilized men; a torrent must find vent. Peter had the sagacity to see that by attempting further to save le Bourdon and Margery, he should only endanger his own ascendancy, without effecting his purpose. Here he completely overlaid the art of Ungque, turning his own defeat into an advantage. After the matter had been discussed for fully an hour, and this mysterious chief perceived that it was useless to adhere to his new resolution, he gave it up with as much tact as the sagacious Wellington himself could manifest in yielding Catholic emancipation, or parliamentary reform; or, just in season to preserve an appearance of floating in the current, and with a grace that disarmed his opponents.
“Brothers,” said Peter, by way of closing the debate, “I have not seen straight. Fog sometimes gets before the eyes, and we cannot see. I have been in a fog. The breath of my brother has blown it away. I now see clearly. I see that bee-hunters ought not to live. Let this one die--let his squaw die, too!”
This terminated the discussion, as a matter of course. It was solemnly decided that all the pale-faces then in the Openings should be cut off. In acquiescing in this decision, Peter had no mental reservations. He was quite sincere. When, after sitting two hours longer, in order to arrange still more important points, the council arose, it was with his entire assent to the decision. The only power he retained over the subject was that of directing the details of the contemplated massacre.
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Why is that graceful female here With yon red hunter of the deer? Of gentle mien and shape, she seems For civil halls design'd; Yet with the stately savage walks, As she were of his kind. --Pinkney.
The family at Castle Meal saw nothing of any Indian until the day that succeeded the council. Gershom and Dorothy received the tidings of their sister's marriage with very little emotion. It was an event they expected; and as for bride-cake and ceremonies, of one there was none at all, and of the other no more than has been mentioned. The relatives of Margery did not break their hearts on account of the neglect with which they had been treated, but received the young couple as if one had given her away, and the other “had pulled off her glove,” as young ladies now express it, in deference to the act that generally gives the coup de grace to youthful female friendships. On the Openings, neither time nor breath is wasted in useless compliments; and all was held to be well done on this occasion, because it was done legally. A question might have been raised, indeed, whether that marriage had taken place under the American, or under the English flag; for General Hull, in surrendering Detroit, had included the entire territory of Michigan, as well as troops present, troops absent, and troops on the march to join him. Had he been in possession of Peter's ruthless secret, which we happen to know he was not, he could not have been more anxious to throw the mantle of British authority around all of his race on that remote frontier, than he proved himself to be. Still, it is to be presumed that the marriage would have been regarded as legal; conquered territories usually preserving their laws and usages for a time, at least. A little joking passed, as a matter of course; for this is de rigueur in all marriages, except in the cases of the most cultivated; and certainly neither the corporal nor Gershom belonged to the elite of human society.
About the hour of breakfast Pigeonswing came in, as if returning from one of his ordinary hunts. He brought with him venison, as well as several wild ducks that he had killed in the Kalamazoo, and three or four prairie hens. The Chippewa never betrayed exultation at the success of his exertions, but on this occasion he actually appeared sad. Dorothy received his game, and as she took the ducks and other fowls, she spoke to him.
“Thank you, Pigeonswing,” said the young matron. “No pale-face could be a better provider, and many are not one-half as good.”
“What provider mean, eh?” demanded the literal-minded savage. “Mean good; mean bad, eh?”
“Oh! it means good, of course. I could say nothing against a hunter who takes so good care of us all.”
“What he mean, den?”
“It means a man who keeps his wife and children well supplied with food.”
“You get 'nough, eh?”
“I get enough, Pigeonswing, thanks to your industry, such as it is. Injin diet, however, is not always the best for Christian folk, though a body may live on it. I miss many things, out here in the Openings, to which I have been used all the early part of my life.”
“What squaw miss, eh? P'raps Injin find him sometime.”
“I thank you, Pigeonswing, with all my heart, and am just as grateful for your good intentions, as I should be was you to do all you wish. It is the mind that makes the marcy, and not always the deed. But you can never find the food of a pale-face kitchen out here in the Openings of Michigan. When a body comes to reckon up all the good things of Ameriky, she don't know where to begin, or where to stop. I miss tea as much as anything. And milk comes next. Then there's buckwheat and coffee--though things may be found in the woods to make coffee of, but tea has no substitute. Then, I like wheaten bread, and butter, and potatoes, and many other such articles, that I was used to all my life, until I came out here, close to sunset. As for pies and custards, I can't bear to think of 'em now!”
Pigeonswing looked intently at the woman, as she carefully enumerated her favorites among the dishes of her home-kitchen. When she had ended, he raised a finger, looked still more significantly at her, and said: “Why don't go back, get all dem good t'ings? Better for pale-face to eat pale-face food, and leave Injin Injin food.”
“For my part, Pigeonswing, I wish such had ever been the law. Venison, and prairie-fowls, and wild ducks, and trout, and bear's meat, and wild pigeons, and the fish that are to be found in these western rivers, are all good for them that was brought up on 'em, but they tire an eastern palate dreadfully. Give me roast beef any day before buffalo's hump, and a good barn-yard fowl before all the game-birds that ever flew.”
“Yes; dat de way pale-face squaw feel. Bess go back, and get what she like. Bess go quick as she can--go today.”
“I'm in no such hurry, Pigeonswing, and I like these Openings well enough to stay a while longer, and see what all these Injins, that they tell me are about 'em, mean to do. Now we are fairly among your people, and on good terms with them, it is wisest to stay where we are. These are war-times, and travelling is dangerous, they tell me. When Gershom and Bourdon are ready to start, I shall be ready.”
“Bess get ready, now,” rejoined Pigeonswing; who, having given this advice with point, as to manner, proceeded to the spring, where he knelt and slaked his thirst. The manner of the Chippewa was such as to attract the attention of the missionary, who, full of his theory, imagined that this desire to get rid of the whites was, in some way or other, connected with a reluctance in the Indians to confess themselves Jews. He had been quite as much surprised as he was disappointed, with the backwardness of the chiefs in accepting this tradition, and was now in a state of mind that predisposed him to impute everything to this one cause.
“I hope, Pigeonswing,” he said to the Chippewa, whom he had followed to the spring--“I hope, Pigeonswing, that no offence has been taken by the chiefs on account of what I told them yesterday, concerning their being Jews. It is what I think, and it is an honor to belong to God's chosen people, and in no sense a disgrace. I hope no offence has been taken on account of my telling the chief they are Jews.”
“Don't care any t'ing 'bout it,” answered the literal Indian, rising from his kneeling position, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don't care wedder Jew, or wedder Indian.”
“For my own part, gladly would I have it to say that I am descended from Israel.”
“Why don't say him, if he make you grad? Good to be grad. All Injin love to be grad.”
“Because I cannot say it with truth. No; I come of the Gentiles, and not of the Hebrews, else would I glory in saying I am a Jew, in the sense of extraction, though not now in the sense of faith. I trust the chiefs will not take offence at my telling them just what I think.”
“Tell you he don't care,” returned Pigeonswing, a little crustily. “Don't care if Jew--don't care if Injin. Know dat make no difference. Hunting-ground just same--game just same--scalps just same. Make no difference, and don't care.”
“I am glad of this--but why did you advise Dorothy to quit the Openings in the hasty manner you did, if all is right with the chiefs? It is not good to start on a journey without preparation and prayer. Why, then, did you give this advice to Dorothy to quit the Openings so soon?”
“Bess for squaw to go home, when Injin dig up hatchet. Openin' full of warrior--prairie full of warrior--wood full of warrior. When dat so, bess for squaw to go home.”
“This would be true, were the Indians our enemies. Heaven be praised, they are our friends, and will not harm us. Peter is a great chief, and can make his young men do what he tells them; and Peter is our friend. With Peter to stand by us, and a merciful Providence to direct us where, when, and how to go, we can have nothing to fear. I trust in Divine Providence.”
“Who he be?” asked Pigeonswing, innocently, for his knowledge of English did not extend far enough to comprehend a phrase so complicated, though so familiar to ourselves. “He know all paths, eh?”
“Yes; and directs us on all paths--more especially such as are for our good.”
“Bess get him to tell you path into Detroit. Dat good path, now, for all pale-faces.”
On uttering this advice, which he did also somewhat pointedly, the Chippewa left the spring, and walked toward the kennel of Hive, where the bee-hunter was busy feeding his old companion.
“You're welcome back, Pigeonswing,” the last cordially remarked, without pausing in his occupation, however. “I saw that you came in loaded, as usual. Have you left any dead game in the Openings, for me to go and back in with you?”
“You open ear, Bourdon--you know what Injin say,” returned the Chippewa, earnestly. “When dog get 'nough come wid me. Got somet'ing to tell. Bess hear it, when he CAN hear it.”
“You'll find me ready enough in a minute. There, Hive, my good fellow, that ought to satisfy any reasonable dog, and I've never found you unreasonable yet. Well, Chippewa, here I am, with my ears wide open--stop, I've a bit of news, first, for your ears. Do you know, Pigeonswing, my good fellow, that I am married?”
“Marry, eh? Got squaw, eh? Where you get him?”
“Here, to be sure--where else should I get her? There is but one girl in these Openings that I would ask to be my wife, and she has been asked, and answered, yes. Parson Amen married us, yesterday, on our way in from Prairie Round; so that puts me on a footing with yourself. When you boast of your squaw that you've left in your wigwam, I can boast of mine that I have here. Margery is a girl to boast of, too!”
“Yes; good squaw, dat. Like dat squaw pretty well. Nebber see better. Bess keep squaw alway in his own wigwam.”
“Well, mine is in my own wigwam. Castle Meal is my property, and she does it honor.”
“Dat an't what Injin mean. Mean dis. Bess have wigwam at home, dere, where pale-face lives, and bess keep squaw in DAT wigwam. Where my squaw, eh? She home, in my wigwam--take care of pappoose, hoe corn, and keep ground good. So bess wid white squaw--bess home, at work.”
“I believe I understand what you mean, Pigeon. Well, home we mean to go, before the winter sets in, and when matters have a little settled down between the English and Yankees. It isn't safe travelling, just now, in Michigan--you must own that, yourself, my good fellow.”
The Indian appeared at a loss, now, how to express himself further. On one side was his faith to his color, and his dread of Peter and the great chiefs; on the other, his strong regard for the bee-hunter. He pondered a moment, and then took his own manner of communicating that which he wished to say. The fact that his friend was married made no great difference in his advice, for the Indian was much too shrewd an observer not to have detected the bee-hunter's attachment. He had not supposed it possible to separate his friend from the family of Gershom, though he did suppose there would be less difficulty in getting him to go on a path different from that which the missionary and corporal might take. His own great purpose was to serve le Bourdon, and how many or how few might incidentally profit by it he did not care. The truth compels us to own, that even Margery's charms, and nature, and warm-hearted interest in all around her, had failed to make any impression on his marble-like feelings; while the bee-hunter's habits, skill in his craft, and close connection with himself at the mouth of the river, and more especially in liberating him from his enemies, had united him in a comrade's friendship with her husband. It was a little singular that this Chippewa did not fall into Peter's superstitious dread of the bee-hunter's necromancy, though he was aware of all that had passed the previous day on the prairie. Either on account of his greater familiarity with le Bourdon's habits, or because he was in the secret of the trick of the whiskey-spring, or from a closer knowledge of white men and their ways, this young Indian was freer from apprehensions of this nature, perhaps, than any one of the same color and origin within many miles of the spot. In a word, Pigeons-wing regarded the bee-hunter as his friend, while he looked upon the other pale-faces as so many persons thrown by accident in his company. Now that Margery had actually become his friend's squaw, his interest in her was somewhat increased; though she had never obtained that interest in his feelings that she had awakened in the breast of Peter, by her attentions to him, her gentleness, light-hearted gayety, and womanly care, and all without the least design on her own part.
“No,” answered the Chippewa, after a moment's reflection, “no very safe for Yankee, or Yankee Injin. Don't t'ink my scalp very safe, if chief know'd I'm Yankee runner. Bess alway to keep scalp safe. Dem Pottawattamie I take care not to see. Know all about 'em, too. Know what he SAY--know what he DO--b'lieve I know what he T'INK.”
“I did not see you, Pigeon, among the red young men, yesterday, out on Prairie Round.”
“Know too much to go dere. Crowsfeather and Pottawattamie out dere. Bess not go near dem when dey have eye open. Take 'em asleep. Dat bess way wid sich Injin. Catch 'em some time! But your ear open, Bourdon?”
“Wide open, my good friend--what have you to whisper in it?”
“You look hard at Peter when he come in. If he t'ink good deal, and don't say much, when he DO speak, mind what he say. If he smile, and very much friend, must hab his scalp.”
“Chippewa, Peter is my friend, lives in my cabin, and eats of my bread! The hand that touches him, touches me.”
“Which bess, eh--HIS scalp, or your'n? If he VERY much friend when he comes in, his scalp muss come off, or your'n. Yes, juss so. Dat de way. Know Injin better dan you know him, Bourdon. You good bee-hunter, but poor Injin. Ebbery body hab his way--Injin got his. Peter laugh and very much friend, when he come home, den he mean to hab YOUR scalp. If don't smile, and don't seem very much friend, but look down, and t'ink, t'ink, t'ink, den he no mean to hurt you, but try to get you out of hand of chiefs. Dat all.”
As Pigeonswing concluded, he walked coolly away, leaving his friend to ruminate on the alternative of scalp or no scalp! The bee-hunter now understood the Chippewa perfectly. He was aware that this man had means of his own to ascertain what was passing around him in the Openings, and he had the utmost confidence in his integrity and good wishes. If a red man is slow to forget an injury, he never forgets a favor. In this he was as unlike as possible to most of the pale-faces who were supplanting his race, for these last had, and have, as extraordinary a tenacity in losing sight of benefits, as they have in remembering wrongs.
By some means or other, it was now clear that Pigeonswing foresaw that a crisis was at hand. Had le Bourdon been as disconnected and solitary as he was when he first met the Chippewa, it is not probable that either the words or the manner of his friend would have produced much impression on him, so little accustomed was he to dwell on the hazards of his frontier position. But the case was now altogether changed. Margery and her claims stood foremost in his mind; and through Margery came Dolly and her husband. There was no mistaking Pigeonswing's intention. It was to give warning of some immediate danger, and a danger that, in some way, was connected with the deportment of Peter. It was easy enough to comprehend the allusions to the mysterious chief's smiles and melancholy; and the bee-hunter understood that he was to watch that Indian's manner, and take the alarm or bestow his confidence accordingly.
Le Bourdon was not left long in doubt. Peter arrived about half-an-hour after Pigeonswing had gone to seek his rest; and from the instant he came in sight, our hero discerned the thoughtful eye and melancholy manner. These signs were still more obvious when the tribeless Indian came nearer; so obvious, indeed, as to strike more than one of those who were interested observers of all that this extraordinary being said and did. Among others, Margery was the first to see this change, and the first to let it influence her own manner. This she did, notwithstanding le Bourdon had said nothing to her on the subject, and in defiance of the bashful feelings of a bride; which, under circumstances less marked, might have induced her to keep more in the background. As Peter stopped at the spring to quench his thirst, Margery was, in truth, the first to approach and to speak to him.
“You seem weary, Peter,” said the young wife, somewhat timidly as to voice and air, but with a decided and honest manifestation of interest in what she was about. Nor had Margery gone empty-handed. She took with her a savory dish, one of those that the men of the woods love--meat cooked in its own juices, and garnished with several little additions, that her skill in the arts of civilized life enabled her to supply.
“You seem tired, Peter, and if I did not fear to say it, I should tell you that you also seem sad,” said Margery, as she placed her dish on a rude table that was kept at the spot, for the convenience of those who seldom respected hours, or regularity of any sort in their meals. “Here is food that you like, which I have cooked with my own hands.”
The Indian looked intently at the timid and charming young creature, who came forward thus to contribute to his comforts, and the saddened expression of his countenance deepened. He was fatigued and hungry, and he ate for some time without speaking, beyond uttering a brief expression of his thanks. When his appetite was appeased, however, and she who had so sedulously attended to his wants was about to remove the remains of the dish, he signed with his finger for her to draw nearer, intimating that he had something to say. Margery obeyed without hesitation, though the color flitted in her face like the changes in an evening sky. But so much good will and confidence had been awakened between these two, that a daughter would not have drawn near to a father with more confidence than Margery stood before Peter.
“Medicine-man do what I tell him, young squaw, eh?” demanded Peter, smiling slightly, and for the first time since they had met.
“By medicine-man do you mean Mr. Amen, or Bourdon?” the bride asked in her turn, her whole face reflecting the confusion she felt, scarcely knowing why.
“Bot'. One medicine-man say his prayer; t'odder medicine-man take young squaw's hand, and lead her into his wigwam. Dat what I mean.”
“I am married to Bourdon,” returned Margery, dropping her eyes to the ground, “if that be what you wish to know. I hope you think I shall have a good husband, Peter.”
“Hope so, too--nebber know till time come. All good for little while--Injin good, squaw good. Juss like weadder. Sometime rain--sometime storm--sometime sunshine. Juss so wid Injin, juss so wid pale-face. No difference. All same. You see dat cloud? --he little now; but let wind blow, he grow big, and you see nuttin' but cloud. Let him have plenty of sunshine, and he go away; den all clear over head. Dat bess way to live wid husband.”
“And that is the way which Bourdon and I WILL always live together. When we get back among our own people, Peter, and are living comfortably in a pale-face wigwam, with pale-face food, and pale-face drinks, and all the other good things of pale-face housekeeping about us, then I hope you will come and see how happy we are, and pass some time with us. Every year I wish you to come and see us, and to bring us venison, and Bourdon will give you powder, and lead, and blankets, and all you may want, unless it be fire-water. Fire-water he has promised never again to give to an Injin.”
“No find any more whiskey-spring, eh?” demanded Peter, greatly interested in the young woman's natural and warm-hearted manner of proposing her hospitalities. “So bess--so bess. Great curse for Injin. Plenty honey, no fire-water. All dat good. And I come, if--” Here Peter stopped, nor could all Margery's questions induce him to complete the sentence. His gaze at the earnest countenance of the bride was such as to give her an indefinite sort of uneasiness, not to say a feeling of alarm.
Still no explanation passed between them. Margery remained near Peter for some time, administering to his wants, and otherwise demeaning herself much as a daughter might have done. At length le Bourdon joined them. The salutations were friendly, and the manner in which the mysterious chief regarded the equally mysterious bee-hunter, was not altogether without a certain degree of awe. Boden perceived this, and was not slow to comprehend that he owed this accession of influence to the scene which had occurred on the prairie.
“Is the great council ended, Peter?” asked the bee-hunter, when the little interval of silence had been observed.
“Yes, it over. No more council, now, on Prairie Round.”
“And the chiefs--have they all gone on their proper paths? What has become of my old acquaintance, Crowsfeather? and all the rest of them--Bear's Meat, in particular?”
“All gone. No more council now. Agree what to do and so go away.”
“But are red men always as good as their words? do they PERFORM always what they PROMISE?”
“Sartain. Ebbery man ought do what he say. Dat Injin law--no pale-face law, eh?”
“It may be the LAW, Peter, and a very good law it is; but we white men do not always MIND our own laws.”
“Dat bad--Great Spirit don't like dat,” returned Peter, looking grave, and slowly shaking his head. “Dat very bad. When Injin say he do it, den he do it, if he can. If can't, no help for it. Send squaw away now, Bourdon--bess not to let squaw hear what men say, or will always want to hear.”
Le Bourdon laughed, as he turned to Margery and repeated these words. The young wife colored, but she took it in good part, and ran up toward the palisaded lodge, like one who was glad to be rid of her companions. Peter waited a few moments, then turning his head slowly in all directions, to make sure of not being overheard, he began to lay open his mind.
“You been on Prairie Round, Bourdon--you see Injin dere--chief, warrior, young men, hunter, all dere.”
“I saw them all, Peter, and a goodly sight it was--what between paint, and medals, and bows and arrows and tomahawks, and all your bravery!”
“You like to see him, eh? Yes; he fine t'ing to look at. Well, dat council call togedder by ME--you know dat, too, Bourdon?”
“I have heard you say that such was your intention, and I suppose you did it, chief. They tell me you have great power among your own people, and that they do very much as you tell them to do.”
Peter looked graver than ever at this remark; and one of his startling gleams of ferocity passed over his dark countenance. Then he answered with his customary self-command.
“Sometime so,” he said; “sometime not so. Yesterday, not so. Dere is chief dat want to put Peter under his foot! He try, but he no do it! I know Peter well, and know dat chief, too.”
“This is news to me, Peter, and I am surprised to hear it. I did think that even the great Tecumthe was scarcely as big a chief as you are yourself.”
“Yes, pretty big chief; dat true. But, among Injin, ebbery man can speak, and nebber know which way council go. Sometime he go one way; sometime he go tudder. You hear Bough of Oak speak, eh? Tell me dat?”
“You will remember that I heard none of your speakers on Prairie Round, Peter. I do not remember any such orator as this Bough of Oak.”
“He great rascal,” said Peter, who had picked up some of the garrison expressions among those from whom he acquired the knowledge of English he possessed, such as it was. “Listen, Bourdon. Nebber bess stand too much in Peter's way.”
The bee-hunter laughed freely at this remark; for his own success the previous day, and the impression he had evidently made on that occasion, emboldened him to take greater liberties with the mysterious chief than had been his wont.
“I should think that, Peter,” cried the young man, gayly--“I should think all that. For one, I should choose to get out of it. The path you travel is your own, and all wise men will leave you to journey along it in your own fashion.”
“Yes; dat bess way,” answered the great chief, with admirable simplicity. “Don't like, when he says yes, to hear anudder chief say no. Dat an't good way to do business.”
These were expressions caught from the trading whites, and were often used by those who got their English from them. “I tell you one t'ing, Bourdon--dat Bough of Oak very foolish Injin if he put foot on my path.”
“This is plain enough, Peter,” rejoined le Bourdon, who was unconcernedly repairing some of the tools of his ordinary craft. “By the way, I am greatly in your debt, I learn, for one thing. They tell me I've got my squaw in my wigwam a good deal sooner, by your advice, than I might have otherwise done. Margery is now my wife, I suppose you know; and I thank you heartily, for helping me to get married so much sooner than I expected to be.”
Here Peter grasped Bourdon by the hand, and poured out his whole soul, secret hopes, fears, and wishes. On this occasion he spoke in the Indian dialect--one of those that he knew the bee-hunter understood. And we translate what he said freely into English, preserving as much of the original idiom as the change of language will permit.
“Listen, hunter of the bee, the great medicine of the pale-faces, and hear what a chief that knows the red men is about to tell you. Let my words go into your ears; let them stay in your mind. They are words that will do you good. It is not wise to let such words come out again by the hole through which they have just entered.
“My young friend knows our traditions. They do not tell us that the Injins were Jews; they tell us that the Manitou created them red men. They tell us that our fathers used these hunting-grounds ever since the earth was placed on the back of the big tortoise which upholds it. The pale-faces say the earth moves. If this be true, it moves as slowly as the tortoise walks. It cannot have gone far since the Great Spirit lifted his hand off it. If it move, the hunting-grounds move with it, and the tribes move with their own hunting-grounds. It may be that some of the pale-faces are lost, but no Injin is lost--the medicine-priest is mistaken. He has looked so often in his book, that he sees nothing but what is there. He does not see what is before his eyes, at his side, behind his back, all around him. I have known such Injins. They see but one thing; even the deer jump across their paths, and are not seen.
“Such are our traditions. They tell us that this land was given to the red men, and not to pale-faces. That none but red men have any right to hunt here. The Great Spirit has laws. He has told us these laws. They teach us to love our friends, and to hate our enemies. You don't believe this, Bourdon?” observing the bee-hunter to wince a little, as if he found the doctrine bad.
“This is not what our priests tell US,” answered le Bourdon. “They tell us that the white man's God commands us to love all alike--to do GOOD to our enemies, to LOVE them that wish us HARM, and to treat all men as we would wish men to treat us.” Peter was a good deal surprised at this doctrine, and it was nearly a minute before he resumed the discourse. He had recently heard it several times, and it was slowly working its way into his mind.
“Such are our traditions, and such are our laws. Look at me. Fifty winters have tried to turn my hair white. Time can do that. The hair is the only part of an Injin that ever turns white; all the rest of him is red. That is his color. The game knows an Injin by his color. The tribes know him. Everything knows him by his color. He knows the things which the Great Spirit has given him, in the same way. He gets used to them, and they are his acquaintances. He does not like strange things. He does not like strangers. White men are strangers, and he does not like to see them on his hunting-ground. If they come singly, to kill a few buffaloes, or to look for honey, or to catch beaver, the Injins would not complain. They love to give of their abundance. The pale-faces do not come in this fashion. They do not come as guests; they come as masters. They come and they stay. Each year of my fifty have I heard of new tribes that have been driven by them toward the setting sun.
“Bourdon, for many seasons I have thought of this. I have tried to find a way to stop them. There is but one. That way must the Injins try, or give up their hunting-grounds to the strangers. No nation likes to give up its hunting-grounds. They come from the Manitou, and one day he may ask to have them back again. What could the red men say, if they let the pale-faces take them away? No; this we cannot do. We will first try the one thing that is to be done.”
“I believe I understand you, Peter,” observed le Bourdon, finding that his companion paused. “You mean war. War, in the Injin mode of redressing all wrongs; war against man, woman, and child!”
Peter nodded in acquiescence, fixing his glowing eyes on the bee-hunter's face, as if to read his soul.
“Am I to understand, then, that you and your friends, the chiefs and their followers, that I saw on Prairie Round, mean to begin with US, half-a-dozen whites, of whom two are women, who happen to be here in your power--that OUR scalps are to be the first taken?”
“First! --no, Bourdon. Peter's hand has taken a great many, years since. He has got a name for his deeds, and no longer dare go to the white men's forts. He does not look for Yankees, he looks for pale-faces. When he meets a pale-face on the prairies, or in the woods, he tries to get his scalp. This has he done for years, and many has he taken.”
“This is a bloody account you are giving of yourself, Peter, and I would rather you should not have told it. Some such account I have heard before; but living with you, and eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and travelling in your company, I had not only hoped, but begun to think, it was not true.”
“It is true. My wish is to cut off the pale-faces. This must be done, or the pale-faces will cut off the Injins. There is no choice. One nation or the other must be destroyed. I am a red man; my heart tells me that the pale-faces should die. They are on strange hunting-grounds, not the red men. They are wrong, we are right. But, Bourdon, I have friends among the pale-faces, and it is not natural to scalp our friends. I do not understand a religion that tells us to love our enemies, and to do good to them that do harm to us--it is a strange religion. I am a poor Injin, and do not know what to think! I shall not believe that any do this, till I see it. I understand that we ought to love our friends. Your squaw is my daughter. I have called her daughter--she knows it, and my tongue is not forked, like a snake's. What it says, I mean. Once I meant to scalp your young squaw, because she was a pale-face squaw, and might be the mother of more. Now I do not mean to scalp her; my hand shall never harm her. My wisdom shall tell her to escape from the hands of red men who seek her scalp. You, too; now you are her husband, and are a great medicine-man of the bees, my hand shall not hurt you, either. Open your ears wide, for big truths must go into them.”
Peter then related in full his attempt to procure a safe passage for le Bourdon and Margery into the settlements, and its total failure. He owned that by his previous combinations he had awakened a spirit among the Indians that his present efforts could not quell. In a word, he told the whole story as it must have been made apparent to the reader, and he now came with his plans to defeat the very schemes that he had himself previously projected. One thing, however, that he did not conceal, filled the mind of his listener with horror, and created so strong an aversion to acting in concert with one who could even allude to it so coolly, that there was danger of breaking off all communications between the parties, and placing the result purely on force; a course that must have proved totally destructive to all the whites. The difficulty arose from a naive confession of Peter's, that he did not even wish to save any but le Bourdon and Margery, and that he still desired the deaths of all the others, himself!
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For thou wert born of woman! Thou didst come, O Holiest! to this world of sin and gloom, Not in thy dread omnipotent array; And not by thunders strewed Was thy tempestuous road, Nor indignation burnt before thee on thy way. But thee, a soft and naked child, Thy mother undefiled, In the rude manger laid to rest From off her virgin breast.
The blood of the bee-hunter curdled in his veins as he listened to Peter's business-like and direct manner of treating this terrible subject. Putting the most favorable view on his situation, it was frightful to look on. Admitting that this fanatical savage were sincere in all his professions of a wish to save him and Margery, and le Bourdon did not, nay, COULD not doubt this, after his calm but ferocious revelations; but, admitting all this to be true, how was he to escape with his charming bride, environed as they were by so large a band of hostile Indians? Then the thought of abandoning his other companions, and attempting, in cold selfishness, to escape with Margery alone, was more than he could bear. Never before, in his adventurous and bold life, had le Bourdon been so profoundly impressed with a sense of his danger, or so much overcome.
Still, our hero was not unmanned. He saw all the hazards, as it were, at a glance, and felt how terrible might be the result should they really fall into the hands of the warriors, excited to exercise their ingenuity in devising the means of torture; and he gazed into the frightful perspective with a manly steadiness that did him credit, even while he sickened at the prospect.
Peter had told his story in a way to add to its horrible character. There was a manner of truth, of directness, of WORK, if one may use such an expression on such a subject, that gave a graphic reality to all he said. As if his task was done, the mysterious chief now coolly arose, and moved away to a little grove, in which the missionary and the corporal had thrown themselves on the grass, where they lay speculating on the probable course that the bands in their neighborhood would next pursue. So thoroughly possessed was the clergyman with his one idea, however, that he was expressing regret at his failure in the attempt to convince the savages that they were Jews, when Peter joined them.
“You tired--you lie down in daytime, like sick squaw, eh?” asked the Indian, in a slightly satirical manner. “Bess be up, sich fine day, and go wid me to see some more chief.”
“Most gladly, Peter,” returned the missionary, springing to his feet with alacrity--“and I shall have one more opportunity to show your friends the truth of what I have told them.”
“Yes, Injin love to hear trut'--hate to hear lie. Can tell 'em all you want to say. He go too, eh?” pointing to the corporal, who rather hung back, as if he saw that in the invitation which was not agreeable to him.
“I will answer for my friend,” returned the confiding missionary, cheerfully. “Lead on, Peter, and we will follow.”
Thus pledged, the corporal no longer hesitated; but he accompanied Parson Amen, as the latter fell into the tracks of the chief, and proceeded rapidly in the direction of the spring in the piece of bottom-land, where the council first described had been held. This spot was about two miles from the palisaded house, and quite out of view, as well as out of reach of sound. As they walked side by side, taking the footsteps of the great chief for their guides, the corporal, however, expressed to his companion his dislike of the whole movement.
“We ought to stand by our garrison in times like these, Mr. Amen,” said the well-meaning soldier. “A garrison is a garrison; and Injins seldom do much on a well-built and boldly-defended spot of that natur'. They want artillery, without which their assaults are never very formidable.”
“Why talk you of warlike means, corporal, when we are in the midst of friends? Is not Peter our known and well-tried associate, one with whom you and I have travelled far; and do we not know that we have friends among these chiefs, whom we are now going to visit? The Lord has led me into these distant and savage regions, to carry his word, and to proclaim his name; and a most unworthy and unprofitable servant should I prove, were I to hesitate about approaching them I am appointed to teach. No, no; fear nothing. I will not say that you carry Caesar and his fortunes, as I have heard was once said of old, but I will say you follow one who is led of God, and who marches with the certainty of being divinely commanded.”
The corporal was ashamed to oppose so confident an enthusiasm, and he offered no further resistance. Together the two followed their leader, who, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, soon had them out of sight of the castle, and well on their way toward the spring. When about half the distance was made, the direction took the party through a little thicket, or rather along its margin, and the missionary, a good deal to his surprise, saw Pigeonswing within the cover, seemingly preparing for another hunt. This young warrior had so lately returned from one excursion of this nature, that he was not expected to go forth so soon on another. Nor was he accustomed to go out so early in the day. This was the hour in which he ordinarily slept; but there he was, beyond a question, and apparently looking at the party as it passed. So cold was his manner, however, and so indifferent did he seem, that no one would have suspected that he knew aught of what was in contemplation. Having satisfied himself that his friend, the bee-hunter, was not one of those who followed Peter, the Chippewa turned coldly away, and began to examine the flint of his rifle. The corporal noted this manner, and it gave him additional confidence to proceed; for he could not imagine that any human being would manifest so much indifference, when sinister designs existed.
Peter turned neither to the right hand nor to the left, until he had led the way down upon the little arena of bottom-land already described, and which was found well sprinkled with savages. A few stood, or sat about in groups, earnestly conversing; but most lay extended at length on the green sward, in the indolent repose that is so grateful to an Indian warrior in his hours of inaction. The arrival of Peter, however, instantly put a new face on the appearance of matters. Every man started to his feet, and additions were made to those who were found in the arena by those who came out of the adjacent thickets, until some two or three hundred of the red men were assembled in a circle around the newly-arrived pale-faces.
“There,” said Peter, sternly, fastening his eye with a hostile expression on Bough of the Oak and Ungque, in particular--“there are your captives. Do with them as you will. As for them that have dared to question my faith, let them own that they are liars!”
This was not a very amicable salutation, but savages are accustomed to plain language. Bough of the Oak appeared a little uneasy, and Ungque's countenance denoted dissatisfaction; but the last was too skilful an actor to allow many of the secrets of his plotting mind to shine through the windows of his face. As for the crowd at large, gleams of content passed over the bright red faces, illuminating them with looks of savage joy. Murmurs of approbation were heard, and Crowsfeather addressed the throng, there, where it stood, encircling the two helpless and as yet but half-alarmed victims of so fell a plot.
“My brothers and my young men can now see,” said this Pottawattamie, “that the tribeless chief has an Injin heart. His heart is NOT a pale-face heart--it is that of a red man. Some of our chiefs have thought that he had lived too much with the strangers, and that he had forgotten the traditions of our fathers, and was listening to the song of the medicine priest. Some thought that he believed himself lost, and a Jew, and not an Injin. This is not so. Peter knows the path he is on. He knows that he is a redskin, and he looks on the Yankees as enemies. The scalps he has taken are so numerous they cannot be counted. He is ready to take more. Here are two that he gives to us. When we have done with these two captives, he will bring us more. He will continue to bring them, until the pale-faces will be as few as the deer in their own clearings. Such is the will of the Manitou.”
The missionary understood all that was said, and he was not a little appalled at the aspect of things. For the first time he began to apprehend that he was in danger. So much was this devout and well-intentioned servant of his church accustomed to place his dependence on a superintending Providence, that apprehension of personal suffering seldom had any influence on his exertions. He believed himself to be an object of especial care; though he was ever ready to admit that the wisdom which human minds cannot compass, might order events that, at first sight, would seem to be opposed to that which ought to be permitted to come to pass. In this particular Parson Amen was a model of submission, firmly believing that all that happened was in furtherance of the great scheme of man's regeneration and eventual salvation.
With the corporal it was very different. Accustomed to war with red men, and most acquainted with them in their worst character, he ever suspected treachery, and had followed Peter with a degree of reluctance he had not cared to express. He now thoroughly took the alarm, however, and stood on his guard. Although he did not comprehend more than half of that which Peter had said, he understood quite enough to see that he and the missionary were surrounded by enemies, if not by executioners.
“We have fallen into a sort of ambush here, Parson Amen,” cried the corporal, rattling his arms as he looked to their condition, “and it's high time we beat the general. If there were four on us we might form a square; but being only two, the best thing we can do will be to stand back to back, and for one to keep an eye on the right flank, while he nat'rally watches all in front; and for the other to keep an eye on the left flank, while he sees to the rear. Place your back close to mine, and take the left flank into your part of the lookout. Closer, closer, my good sir; we must stand solid as rooted trees, to make anything of a stand.”
The missionary, in his surprise, permitted the corporal to assume the position described, though conscious of its uselessness in their actual condition. As for the Indians, the corporal's manner and the rattling of his arms induced the circle to recede several paces; though nothing like alarm prevailed among them. The effect, nevertheless, was to leave the two captives space for their evolutions, and a sort of breathing time. This little change had the appearance of something like success, and it greatly encouraged the corporal. He began to think it even possible to make a retreat that would be as honorable as any victory.
“Steady--keep shoulder to shoulder, Parson Amen, and take care of your flank. Our movement must be by our left flank, and everything depends on keeping that clear. I shall have to give you my baggonet, for you're entirely without arms, which leaves my rear altogether exposed.”
“Think nothing of your arms, Brother Flint--they would be useless in my hands in any case; and, were we made of muskets, they could be of no use against these odds. My means of defence come from on high; my armor is faith; and my only weapon, prayer. I shall not hesitate to use the last on this, as on all other occasions.”
The missionary then called on the circle of curious savages by whom he was surrounded, and who certainly contemplated nothing less than his death, in common with those of all his white companions, to unite with him in addressing the Throne of Grace. Accustomed to preach and pray to these people in their own dialect, the worthy parson made a strong appeal to their charities, while supplicating the favors of Divine Providence in behalf of himself and his brother captive. He asked for all the usual benedictions and blessings on his enemies, and made a very happy exposition of those sublime dogmas of Christianity, which teach us to “bless them that curse us,” and to “pray for those who despitefully use us.” Peter, for the first time in his life, was now struck with the moral beauty of such a sentiment, which seldom fails, when duly presented, of producing an effect on even the dullest minds. His curiosity was touched, and instead of turning coldly, as had been his intention, and leaving the captives in the hands of those to whom he had delivered them, he remained in the circle, and paid the closest attention to all of the proceedings. He had several times previously heard the missionary speak of this duty as a command of God's, but never before had he deemed it possible to realize such a thing in practice.
The Indians, if not absolutely awe-struck by the singular spectacle before them, seemed well disposed to let the missionary finish his appeal; some wondering, others doubting, and all more or less at a loss to know what to make of an exhibition so unusual. There stood the corporal, with his back pressed closely to that of his companion, his musket at “make ready,” and his whole mien that of a man with every nerve screwed to the sticking-point; while the missionary, the other side of the picture, with outstretched arms, was lifting his voice in prayer to the throne of the Most High. As this extraordinary scene continued, the corporal grew excited; and ere long his voice was occasionally heard, blended with that of the clergyman, in terms of advice and encouragement.
“Blaze away, Mr. Amen,” shouted the soldier. “Give 'em another volley--you're doing wonders, and their front has given ground! One more such volley as the last, and we'll make a forward movement, ourselves--attention! --prepare to march by the left flank, as soon as there is a good opening!”
That good opening, however, was never made. The savages, though astonished, were by no means frightened, and had not the smallest idea of letting their captives escape. On the contrary, Bear's Meat, who acted as commander-in-chief on this occasion, was quite self-possessed, and so far from being impressed with the missionary's prayer, he listened to it only in the hope of hearing some admission of weakness escape. But the excitement of the corporal soon produced a crisis. His attempts to make a movement “by the left flank,” caused his column of defence to be broken, and obtaining no assistance from Parson Amen, who was still pouring out his soul in prayer, while endeavoring to bring things back to their original state, he suddenly found himself surrounded and disarmed. From that instant, the corporal changed his tactics. So long as he was armed, and comparatively free, he had bethought him only of the means of resistance; now that these were denied him, he submitted, and summoned all his resolution to bear the penalties of his captivity, in a manner that might not do discredit to his regiment. This was the third time that Corporal Flint had been a prisoner among the Indians, and he was not now to learn the nature of their tender mercies. His forebodings were not of the most pleasant character; but that which could not be helped, he was disposed to bear with manly fortitude. His greatest concern, at that fearful moment, was for the honor of his corps.
All this time, Parson Amen continued his prayer. So completely was his spirit occupied with the duty of offering up his petition, that he was utterly unconscious of what else had passed; nor had he heard one of the corporal's appeals for “attention,” and to be “steady,” and to march “by the left flank.” In a word, the whole man was intent on prayer; and when thus employed, a six-pounder discharged in the circle would hardly have disconcerted him. He persevered, therefore, uninterrupted by his conquerors, until he concluded in his own way. Having thus fortified his soul, and asked for succor where he had now so long been accustomed to seek and to find it, the worthy missionary took his seat quietly on a log, on which the corporal had been previously placed by his captors.
The time had arrived for the chiefs to proceed in the execution of their purposes. Peter, profoundly struck with the prayers of the missionary in behalf of his enemies, had taken a station a little on one side, where he stood ruminating on what he had just heard. If ever precept bore the stamp of a divine origin, it is this. The more we reflect on it, the clearer do our perceptions of this truth become. The whole scheme of Christ's redemption and future existence is founded in love, and such a system would be imperfect while any were excluded from its benefits. To love those who reciprocate our feelings is so very natural, that the sympathies which engender this feeling are soonest attracted by a knowledge of their existence, love producing love, as power increases power. But to love those who hate us, and to strive to do good to those who are plotting evil against ourselves, greatly exceeds the moral strength of man, unaided from above. This was the idea that puzzled Peter, and he now actually interrupted the proceedings, in order to satisfy his mind on a subject so totally new to him. Previously, however, to taking this step, he asked the permission of the principal chiefs, awakening in their bosoms by means of his explanations some of the interest in this subject that he felt himself.
“Brother medicine-man,” said the mysterious chief, drawing nearer to the missionary, accompanied himself by Bear's Meat, Crowsfeather, and one or two more, “you have been talking to the Great Spirit o! the pale-faces. We have heard your words, and think them well. They are good words for a man about to set out on the path that leads to the unknown lands. Thither we must all go some time, and it matters little when. We may not all travel the same path. I do not think the Manitou will crowd tribes of different colors together there, as they are getting to be crowded together here.
“Brother, you are about to learn how all these things really are. If red men, and pale-faces, and black men are to live in the same land, after death, you will shortly know it. My brother is about to go there. He and his friend, this warrior of his people, will travel on that long path in company. I hope they will agree by the way, and not trouble each other. It will be convenient to my brother to have a hunter with him; the path is so long, he will be hungry before he gets to the end. This warrior knows how to use a musket, and we shall put his arms with him in his grave.
“Brother, before you start on this journey, from which no traveller ever returns, let his color be what it may, we wish to hear you speak further about loving our enemies. This is not the Indian rule. The red men hate their enemies, and love their friends. When they ask the Manitou to do anything to their enemies, it is to do them harm. This is what our fathers taught us: it is what we teach our children. Why should we love them that hate us: why should we do good to them that do us harm? Tell us now, or we may never hear the reason.”
“Tell you I will, Peter, and the Lord so bless my words that they may soften your hearts, and lead you all to the truth, and to dependence on the mediation of his blessed Son! We should do good to them that do evil to us, because the Great Spirit has commanded us so to do. Ask your own heart if this is not right. If they sound like words that are spoken by any but those who have been taught by the Manitou, himself. The devils tell us to revenge, but God commands us to forgive. It is easy to do good to them that do good to us; but it tries the heart sorely to do good to them that do us evil. I have spoken to you of the Son of the Great Spirit. He came on earth, and told us with his own mouth all these great truths. He said that next to the duty of loving the Manitou, was the duty of loving our neighbors. No matter whether friend or enemy, it was our duty to love them, and do them all the good we can. If there is no venison in their wigwams, we should take the deer off our own poles, and carry it and put on theirs. Why have I come here to tell you this? When at home, I lived under a good roof, eat of abundance, and slept in a soft and warm bed. You know how it is here. We do not know to-day what we shall eat to-morrow. Our beds are hard, and our roofs are of bark. I come, because the Son of the Manitou, he who came and lived among men, told us to do all this. His commands to his medicine-men were, to go forth, and tell all nations, and tribes, and colors, the truth--to tell them to 'love them that sought to do them harm, and to do good for evil.'”
Parson Amen pausing a moment to take breath, Ungque, who detected the wavering of Peter's mind, and who acted far more in opposition to the mysterious and tribeless chief than from any other motive, profited by the occasion thus afforded to speak. Without this pause, however, the breeding of an Indian would have prevented any interruption.
“I open my mouth to speak,” said The Weasel, in his humblest manner. “What I say is not fit for the wise chiefs to hear. It is foolish, but my mind tells me to say it. Does the medicine-man of the pale-faces tell us that the Son of the Great Spirit came upon earth, and lived among men?”
“I do; such is our belief; and the religion we believe and teach cometh directly from his mouth.”
“Let the medicine-man tell the chiefs how long the Son of the Great Spirit stayed on earth, and which way he went when he left it.”
Now, this question was put by Ungque through profound dissimulation. He had heard of the death of Christ, and had obtained some such idea of the great sacrifice as would be apt to occur to the mind of a savage. He foresaw that the effect of the answer would be very likely to destroy most of the influence that the missionary had just been building up, by means of his doctrine and his prayers. Parson Amen was a man of singular simplicity of character, but he had his misgivings touching the effect of this reply. Still he did not scruple about giving it, or attempt in any manner to mystify or to deceive.
“It is a humiliating and sad story, my brethren, and one that ought to cause all heads to be bowed to the earth in shame,” he answered. “The Son of the Great Spirit came among men; he did nothing but good; told those who heard him how to live and how to die. In return for all this, wicked and unbelieving men put him to death. After death his body was taken up into Heaven--the region of departed spirits, and the dwelling-place of his Father--where he now is, waiting for the time when he is to return to the earth, to reward the good and to punish the wicked. That time will surely come; nor do I believe the day to be very distant.”
The chiefs listened to this account with grave attention. Some of them had heard outlines of the same history before. Accounts savoring of the Christian history had got blended with some of their own traditions, most probably the fruits of the teachings of the earlier missionaries, but were so confused and altered as to be scarcely susceptible of being recognized. To most of them, however, the history of the incarnation of the Son of God was entirely new; and it struck THEM as a most extraordinary thing altogether that any man should have injured such a being! It was, perhaps, singular that no one of them all doubted the truth of the tradition itself. This they supposed to have been transmitted with the usual care, and they received it as a fact not to be disputed. The construction that was put on its circumstances will best appear in the remarks that followed.
“If the pale-faces killed the Son of the Great Spirit,” said Bough of the Oak, pointedly, “we can see why they wish to drive the red men from their lands. Evil spirits dwell in such men, and they do nothing but what is bad. I am glad that our great chief has told us to put the foot on this worm and crush it, while yet the Indian foot is large enough to do it. In a few winters they would kill us, as they killed the Spirit that did them nothing but good!”
“I am afraid that this mighty tradition hath a mystery in it that your Indian minds will scarcely be willing to receive,” resumed the missionary, earnestly. “I would not, for a thousand worlds, or to save ten thousand lives as worthless as my own, place a straw in the way of the faith of any; yet must I tell the thing as it happened. This Son of the Great Spirit was certainly killed by the Jews of that day, so far as he COULD be killed. He possessed two natures, as indeed do all men: the body and soul. In his body he was man, as we all are men; in his soul he was a part of the Great Spirit himself. This is the great mystery of our religion. We cannot tell how it can happen, but we believe it. We see around us a thousand things that we cannot understand, and this is one of them.”
Here Bear's Meat availed himself of another pause to make a remark. This he did with the keenness of one accustomed to watch words and events closely, but with a simplicity that showed no vulgar disposition to scepticism.
“We do not expect that all the Great Spirit does can be clear to us Indians,” he said. “We know very little; he knows everything. Why should we think to know all that he knows? We do not. That part of the tradition gives us no trouble. Indians can believe without seeing. They are not squaws, that wish to look behind every bush. But my brother has told too much for his own good. If the pale-faces killed their Great Spirit, they can have no Manitou, and must be in the hands of the Evil Spirit This is the reason they want our hunting-grounds. I will not let them come any nearer to the setting sun. It is time to begin to kill them, as they killed their Great Spirit. The Jews did this. My brother wishes us to think that red men are Jews! No; red men never harmed the Son of the Great Spirit, They would receive him as a friend, and treat him as a chief. Accursed be the hand that should be raised to harm him. This tradition is a wise tradition. It tells us many things. It tells us that Injins are not Jews. They never hurt the Son of the Great Spirit. It tells us that the red men have always lived on these hunting-grounds, and did not come from toward the rising sun. It tells us that pale-faces are not fit to live. They are too wicked. Let them die.”
“I would ask a question,” put in Peter. “This tradition is not new. I have heard it before. It entered but a little way into my ears. I did not think of it. It has now entered deeper, and I wish to hear more. Why did not the Son of the Great Spirit kill the Jews? --why did he let the Jews kill him? Will my brother say?”
“He came on earth to die for man, whose wickedness was so deep that the Great Spirit's justice could not be satisfied with less. WHY this is so no one knows. It is enough that it should be so. Instead of thinking of doing harm to his tormentors and murderers, he died for them, and died asking for benefits on them, and on their wives and children, for all time to come. It was he who commanded us to do good to them that do harm to us.”
Peter gave the utmost attention to this answer, and when he had received it, he walked apart, musing profoundly. It is worthy of being observed that not one of these savages raised any hollow objections to the incarnation of the Son of the Great Spirit, as would have been the case with so many civilized men. To them this appeared no more difficult and incomprehensible than most of that which they saw around them. It is when we begin to assume the airs of philosophy, and to fancy, because we know a little, that the whole book of knowledge is within our grasp, that men become sceptics. There is not a human being now in existence who does not daily, hourly see that which is just as much beyond his powers of comprehension as this account of the incarnation of the Deity, and the whole doctrine of the Trinity; and yet he acquiesces in that which is before his eyes, because it is familiar and he sees it, while he cavils at all else, though the same unknown and inexplicable cause lies behind everything. The deepest philosophy is soon lost in this general mystery, and, to the eye of a meek reason, all around us is a species of miracle, which must be referred to the power of the Deity.
While thus disposed to receive the pale-face traditions with respect, however, the red men did not lose sight of their own policy and purposes. The principal chiefs now stepped aside, and held a brief council. Though invited to do so, Peter did not join them; leaving to Bough of the Oak, Ungque, and Bear's Meat the control of the result The question was whether the original intention of including this medicine-priest among those to be cut off should, or should not, be adhered to. One or two of the chiefs had their doubts, but the opinion of the council was adverse.
“If the pale-faces killed the Son of their Great Spirit, why should we hesitate about killing them?” The Weasel asked, with malicious point, for he saw that Peter was now sorely troubled at the probability of his own design being fully carried out. “There is no difference. This is a medicine-priest--in the wigwam is a medicine-bee-hunter, and that warrior may be a medicine-warrior. We do not know. We are poor Injins that know but little. It is not so with the pale-faces; they talk with the conjurer's bees, and know much. We shall not have ground enough to take even a muskrat, soon, unless we cut off the strangers. The Manitou has given us these; let us kill them.”
As no one very strenuously opposed the scheme, the question was soon decided, and Ungque was commissioned to communicate the result to the captives. One exception, however, was to be made in favor of the missionary. His object appeared to be peaceful, and it was determined that he should be led a short distance into the surrounding thicket, and be there put to death, without any attempt to torture, or aggravate his sufferings. As a mark of singular respect, it was also decided not to scalp him.
As Ungque, and those associated with him, led the missionary to the place of execution, the former artfully invited Peter to follow. This was done simply because the Weasel saw that it would now be unpleasant to the man he hated--hated merely because he possessed an influence that he coveted for himself.
“My father will see a pleasant sight,” said the wily Weasel, as he walked at Peter's side, toward the indicated spot; “he will see a pale-face die, and know that his foot has been put upon another worm.”
No answer was made to this ironical remark, but Peter walked in silence to the place where the missionary was stationed, surrounded by a guard. Ungque now advanced and spoke.
“It is time for the medicine-priest of the pale-faces to start after the spirits of his people who have gone before him,” he said. “The path is long, and unless he walks fast, and starts soon, he may not overtake them. I hope he will see some of them that helped to kill the Son of his Great Spirit, starving, and foot-sore, on the way.”
“I understand you,” returned the missionary, after a few moments passed in recovering from the shock of this communication. “My hour is come. I have held my life in my hand ever since I first put foot in this heathen region, and if it be the Creator's will that I am now to die, I bow to the decree. Grant me a few minutes for prayer to my God.”
Ungque signed that the delay should be granted. The missionary uncovered his head, knelt, and again lifted up his voice in prayer. At first the tones were a little tremulous; but they grew firmer as he proceeded. Soon they became as serene as usual. He first asked mercy for himself, threw all his hopes on the great atonement, and confessed how far he was from that holiness which alone could fit him to see God. When this duty was performed, he prayed for his enemies. The language used was his mother tongue, but Peter comprehended most of that which was said. He heard his own people prayed for; he heard his own name mentioned, as the condemned man asked the mercy of the Manitou in his behalf. Never before was the soul of this extraordinary savage so shaken. The past seemed like a dream to him, while the future possessed a light that was still obscured by clouds. Here was an exemplification in practice of that divine spirit of love and benevolence which had struck him, already, as so very wonderful. There could be no mistake. There was the kneeling captive, and his words, clear, distinct, and imploring, ascended through the cover of the bushes to the throne of God.
As soon as the voice of the missionary was mute, the mysterious chief bowed his head and moved away. He was then powerless. No authority of his could save the captive, and the sight that so lately would have cheered his eyes was now too painful to bear. He heard the single blow of the tomahawk which brained the victim, and he shuddered from head to foot. It was the first time such a weakness had ever come over him. As for the missionary, in deference to his pursuits, his executioners dug him a grave, and buried him unmutilated on the spot where he had fallen.
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Brutal alike in deed and word, With callous heart and hand of strife. How like a fiend may man be made, Plying the foul and monstrous trade Whose harvest-field is human life. --WHITTIER.
A veil like that of oblivion dropped before the form of the missionary. The pious persons who had sent him forth to preach to the heathen, never knew his fate; a disappearance that was so common to that class of devoted men, as to produce regret rather than surprise. Even those who took his life felt a respect for him; and, strange as it may seem, it was to the eloquence of the man who now would have died to save him, that his death was alone to be attributed. Peter had awakened fires that he could not quench, and aroused a spirit that he could not quell. In this respect, he resembled most of those who, under the guise of reform, or revolution, in moments of doubt, set in motion a machine that is found impossible to control, when it is deemed expedient to check exaggeration by reason. Such is often the case with even well-intentioned leaders, who constantly are made to feel how much easier it is to light a conflagration, than to stay its flames when raging.
Corporal Flint was left seated on the log, while the bloody scene of the missionary's death was occurring. He was fully alive to all the horrors of his own situation, and comprehended the nature of his companion's movements. The savages usually manifested so much respect for missionaries, that he was in no degree surprised. Parson Amen had been taken apart for his execution, and when those who had caused his removal returned, the corporal looked anxiously for the usual but revolting token of his late companion's death. As has been said, however, the missionary was suffered to lie in his wild grave, without suffering a mutilation of his remains.
Notwithstanding this moderation, the Indians were getting to be incited by this taste of blood. The principal chiefs became sterner in their aspects, and the young men began to manifest some such impatience as that which the still untried pup betrays, when he first scents his game. All these were ominous symptoms, and were well understood by the captive.
Perhaps it would not have been possible, in the whole range of human feelings, to find two men under influences more widely opposed to each other than were the missionary and the corporal, in this, their last scene on earth. The manner of Parson Amen's death has been described. He died in humble imitation of his Divine Master, asking for blessings on those who were about to destroy him, with a heart softened by Christian graces, and a meekness that had its origin in the consciousness of his own demerits. On the other hand, the corporal thought only of vengeance. Escape he knew to be impossible, and he would fain take his departure like a soldier, or as he conceived a soldier should die, in the midst of fallen foes.
Corporal Flint had a salutary love of life, and would very gladly escape, did the means offer; but, failing of these, all his thoughts turned toward revenge. Some small impulses of ambition, or what it is usual to dignify with that term, showed themselves even at that serious moment. He had heard around the camp-fires, and in the garrisons, so many tales of heroism and of fortitude manifested by soldiers who had fallen into the hands of the Indians, that a faint desire to enroll his own name on the list of these worthies was beginning to arise in his breast. But truth compels us to add that the predominant feeling was the wish to revenge his own fate, by immolating as many of his foes as possible. To this last purpose, therefore, his thoughts were mainly directed, during that interval which his late companion had employed in prayers for those under whose blows he was about to fall. Such is the difference in man, with his heart touched, or untouched, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
It was, however, much easier for the corporal to entertain designs of the nature mentioned than to carry them out: unarmed, surrounded by watchful enemies, and totally without support of any sort, the chances of effecting his purpose were small indeed. Once, for a minute only, the veteran seriously turned his thoughts to escape. It occurred to him, that he might possibly reach the castle, could he get a little start; and should the Indians compel him to run the gauntlet, as was often their practice, he determined to make an effort for life in that mode. Agreeably to the code of frontier warfare, a successful flight of this nature was scarcely less creditable than a victory in the field.
Half an hour passed after the execution of the missionary before the chiefs commenced their proceedings with the corporal. The delay was owing to a consultation, in which The Weasel had proposed despatching a party to the castle, to bring in the family, and thus make a common destruction of the remaining pale-faces known to be in that part of the Openings. Peter did not dare to oppose this scheme, himself; but he so managed as to get Crowsfeather to do it, without bringing himself into the foreground. The influence of the Pottawattamie prevailed, and it was decided to torture this one captive, and to secure his scalp, before they proceeded to work their will on the others. Ungque, who had gained ground rapidly by his late success, was once more commissioned to state to the captive the intentions of his captors.
“Brother,” commenced The Weasel, placing himself directly in front of the corporal, “I am about to speak to you. A wise warrior opens his ears, when he hears the voice of his enemy. He may learn something it will be good for him to know. It will be good for you to know what I am about to say.
“Brother, you are a pale-face, and we are Injins. You wish to get our hunting-grounds, and we wish to keep them. To keep them, it has become necessary to take your scalp. I hope you are ready to let us have it.”
The corporal had but an indifferent knowledge of the Indian language, but he comprehended all that was uttered on this occasion. Interest quickened his faculties, and no part of what was said was lost. The gentle, slow, deliberate manner in which The Weasel delivered himself, contributed to his means of understanding. He was fortunately prepared for what her heard, and the announcement of his approaching fate did not disturb him to the degree of betraying weakness. This last was a triumph in which the Indians delighted, though they ever showed the most profound respect for such of their victims as manifested a manly fortitude. It was necessary to reply, which the corporal did in English, knowing that several present could interpret his words. With a view to render this the more easy, he spoke in fragments of sentences, and with great deliberation.
“Injins,” returned the corporal, “you surrounded me, and I have been taken prisoner--had there been a platoon on us, you mightn't have made out quite so well. It's no great victory for three hundred warriors to overcome a single man. I count Parson Amen as worse than nothing, for he looked to neither rear nor flank. If I could have half an hour's work upon you, with only half of our late company, I think we should lower your conceit. But that is impossible, and so you may do just what you please with me. I ask no favors.”
Although this answer was very imperfectly translated, it awakened a good deal of admiration. A man who could look death so closely in the face, with so much steadiness, became a sort of hero in Indian eyes; and with the North American savage, fortitude is a virtue not inferior to courage. Murmurs of approbation were heard, and Ungque was privately requested to urge the captive further, in order to see how far present appearances were likely to be maintained.
“Brother, I have said that we are Injins,” resumed The Weasel, with an air so humble, and a voice so meek, that a stranger might have supposed he was consoling, instead of endeavoring to intimidate, the prisoner. “It is true. We are nothing but poor, ignorant Injins. We can only torment our prisoners after Injin fashion. If we were pale-faces, we might do better. We did not torment the medicine-priest. We were afraid he would laugh at our mistakes. He knew a great deal. We know but little. We do as well as we know how.
“Brother, when Injins do as well as they know how, a warrior should forget their mistakes. We wish to torment you, in a way to prove that you are all over man. We wish so to torment you that you will stand up under the pain in such a way that it will make our young men think your mother was not a squaw--that there is no woman in you. We do this for our own honor, as well as for yours. It will be an honor to us to have such a captive; it will be an honor to you to be such a captive. We shall do as well as we know how.
“Brother, it is most time to begin. The tormenting will last a long time. We must not let the medicine-priest get too great a start on the path to the happy hunting-grounds of your--” Here, a most unexpected interruption occurred, that effectually put a stop to the eloquence of Ungque. In his desire to make an impression, the savage approached within reach of the captive's arm, while his own mind was intent on the words that he hoped would make the prisoner quail. The corporal kept his eye on that of the speaker, charming him, as it were, into a riveted gaze, in return. Watching his opportunity, he caught the tomahawk from The Weasel's belt, and by a single blow, felled him dead at his feet. Not content with this, the old soldier now bounded forward, striking right and left, inflicting six or eight wounds on others, before he could be again arrested, disarmed, and bound. While the last was doing, Peter withdrew, unobserved.
Many were the “hughs” and other exclamations of admiration that succeeded this display of desperate manhood! The body of The Weasel was removed, and interred, while the wounded withdrew to attend to their hurts; leaving the arena to the rest assembled there. As for the corporal, he was pretty well blown, and, in addition to being now bound hand and foot, his recent exertions, which were terrific while they lasted, effectually incapacitated him from making any move, so long as he was thus exhausted and confined.
A council was now held by the principal chiefs. Ungque had few friends. In this, he shared the fate of most demagogues, who are commonly despised even by those they lead and deceive. No one regretted him much, and some were actually glad of his fate. But the dignity of the conquerors must be vindicated. It would never do to allow a pale-face to obtain so great an advantage, and not take a signal vengeance for his deeds. After a long consultation, it was determined to subject the captive to the trial by saplings, and thus see if he could bear the torture without complaining.
As some of our readers may not understand what this fell mode of tormenting is, it may be necessary to explain.
There is scarcely a method of inflicting pain, that comes within, the compass of their means, that the North American Indians have not essayed on their enemies. When the infernal ingenuity that is exercised on these occasions fails of its effect, the captives themselves have been heard to suggest other means of torturing that THEY have known practised successfully by their own people. There is often a strange strife between the tormentors and the tormented; the one to manifest skill in inflicting pain, and the other to manifest fortitude in enduring it. As has just been said, quite as much renown is often acquired by the warrior, in setting all the devices of his conquerors at defiance, while subject to their hellish attempts, as in deeds of arms. It might be more true to say that such WAS the practice among the Indians, than to say, at the present time, that such IS; for it is certain that civilization in its approaches, while it has in many particulars even degraded the red man, has had a silent effect in changing and mitigating many of his fiercer customs--this, perhaps, among the rest. It is probable that the more distant tribes still resort to all these ancient usages; but it is both hoped and believed that those nearer to the whites do not.
The “torture by saplings” is one of those modes of inflicting pain that would naturally suggest themselves to savages. Young trees that do not stand far apart are trimmed of their branches, and brought nearer to each other by bending their bodies; the victim is then attached to both trunks, sometimes by his extended arms, at others by his legs, or by whatever part of the frame cruelty can suggest, when the saplings are released, and permitted to resume their upright positions. Of course, the sufferer is lifted from the earth, and hangs suspended by his limbs, with a strain on them that soon produces the most intense anguish. The celebrated punishment of the “knout” partakes a good deal of this same character of suffering. Bough of the Oak now approached the corporal, to let him know how high an honor was in reserve for him.
“Brother,” said this ambitious orator, “you are a brave warrior. You have done well. Not only have you killed one of our chiefs, but you have wounded several of our young men. No one but a brave could have done this. You have forced us to bind you, lest you might kill some more. It is not often that captives do this. Your courage has caused us to consult HOW we might best torture you, in a way most to manifest your manhood. After talking together, the chiefs have decided that a man of your firmness ought to be hung between two young trees. We have found the trees, and have cut off their branches. You can see them. If they were a little larger their force would be greater, and they would give you more pain--would be more worthy of you; but these are the largest saplings we could find. Had there been any larger, we would have let you have them. We wish to do you honor, for you are a bold warrior, and worthy to be well tormented.
“Brother, look at these saplings! They are tall and straight. When they are bent by many hands, they will come together. Take away the hands, and they will become straight again. Your arms must then keep them together. We wish we had some pappooses here, that they might shoot arrows into your flesh. That would help much to torment you. You cannot have this honor, for we have no pappooses. We are afraid to let our young men shoot arrows into your flesh. They are strong, and might kill you. We wish you to die between the saplings, as is your right, being so great a brave.
“Brother, we think much better of you since you killed The Weasel, and hurt our young men. If all your warriors at Chicago had been as bold as you, Black-Bird would not have taken that fort. You would have saved many scalps. This encourages us. It makes us think the Great Spirit means to help us, and that we shall kill all the pale-faces. When we get further into your settlements, we do not expect to meet many such braves as you. They tell us we shall then find men who will run, and screech like women. It will not be a pleasure to torment such men. We had rather torment a bold warrior, like you, who makes us admire him for his manliness. We love our squaws, but not in the warpath. They are best in the lodges; here we want nothing but men. You are a man--a brave--we honor you. We think, notwithstanding, we shall yet make you weak. It will not be easy, yet we hope to do it. We shall try. We may not think quite so well of you, if we do it; but we shall always call you a brave. A man is not a stone. We can all feel, and when we have done all that is in our power, no one can do more. It is so with Injins; we think it must be so with pale-faces. We mean to try and see how it is.”
The corporal understood very little of this harangue, though he perfectly comprehended the preparations of the saplings, and Bough of the Oak's allusions to THEM. He was in a cold sweat at the thought, for resolute as he was, he foresaw sufferings that human fortitude could hardly endure. In this state of the case, and in the frame of mind he was in, he had recourse to an expedient of which he had often heard, and which he thought might now be practised to some advantage. It was to open upon the savages with abuse, and to exasperate them, by taunts and sarcasm, to such a degree as might induce some of the weaker members of the tribe to dispatch him on the spot. As the corporal, with the perspective of the saplings before his eyes, manifested a good deal of ingenuity on this occasion, we shall record some of his efforts.
“D'ye call yourselves chiefs and warriors?” he began, upon a pretty high key. “I call ye squaws! There is not a man among ye. Dogs would be the best name. You are poor Injins. A long time ago, the pale-faces came here in two or three little canoes. They were but a handful, and you were plentier than prairie wolves. Your bark could be heard throughout the land. Well, what did this handful of pale-faces? It drove your fathers before them, until they got all the best of the hunting-grounds. Not an Injin of you all, now, ever get down on the shores of the great salt lake, unless to sell brooms and baskets, and then he goes sneaking like a wolf after a sheep. You have forgotten how clams and oysters taste. Your fathers had as many of them as they could eat; but not one of YOU ever tasted them. The pale-faces eat them all. If an Injin asked for one, they would throw the shell at his head, and call him a dog.
“Do you think that my chiefs would hang one of you between two such miserable saplings as these? No! They would scorn to practice such pitiful torture. They would bring the tops of two tall pines together, trees a hundred and fifty feet high, and put their prisoner on the topmost boughs, for the crows and ravens to pick his eyes out. But you are miserable Injins! You know nothing. If you know'd any better, would you act such poor torment ag'in' a great brave? I spit upon ye, and call you squaws. The pale-faces have made women of ye. They have taken out your hearts, and put pieces of dog's flesh in their places.”
Here the corporal, who delivered himself with an animation suited to his language, was obliged to pause, literally for want of breath. Singular as it may seem, this tirade excited great admiration among the savages. It is true, that very few understood what was said; perhaps no one understood ALL, but the manner was thought to be admirable. When some of the language was interpreted, a deep but smothered resentment was felt; more especially at the taunts touching the manner in which the whites had overcome the red men. Truth is hard to be borne, and the individual, or people, who will treat a thousand injurious lies with contempt, feel all their ire aroused at one reproach that has its foundation in fact. Nevertheless, the anger that the corporal's words did, in truth, awaken, was successfully repressed, and he had the disappointment of seeing that his life was spared for the torture.
“Brother,” said Bough of the Oak, again placing himself before the captive, “you have a stout heart. It is made of stone, and not of flesh. If our hearts be of dog's meat, yours is of stone. What you say is true. The pale-faces DID come at first in two or three canoes, and there were but few of them. We are ashamed, for it is true, A few pale-faces drove toward the setting sun many Injins. But we cannot be driven any further. We mean to stop here, and begin to take all the scalps we can. A great chief, who belongs to no one tribe, but belongs to all tribes, who speaks all tongues, has been sent by the Great Spirit to arouse us. He has done it. You know him. He came from the head of the lake with you, and kept his eye on your scalp. He has meant to take it from the first. He waited only for an opportunity. That opportunity has come, and we now mean to do as he has told us we ought to do. This is right. Squaws are in a hurry; warriors know how to wait. We would kill you at once, and hang your scalp on our pole, but it would not be right We wish to do what is right. If we ARE poor Injins, and know but little, we know what is right. It is right to torment so great a brave, and we mean to do it. It is only just to you to do so. An old warrior who has seen so many enemies, and who has so big a heart, ought not to be knocked in the head like a pappoose or a squaw. It is his right to be tormented. We are getting ready, and shall soon begin. If my brother can tell us a new way of tormenting, we are willing to try it. Should we not make out as well as pale-faces, my brother will remember who we are. We mean to do our best, and we hope to make his heart soft. If we do this, great will be our honor. Should we not do it, we cannot help it. We shall try.”
It was now the corporal's turn to put in a rebutter.
This he did without any failure in will or performance. By this time he was so well warmed as to think or care very little about the saplings, and to overlook the pain they might occasion.
“Dogs can do little but bark; 'specially Injin dogs,” he said. “Injins themselves are little better than their own dogs. They can bark, but they don't know how to bite. You have many great chiefs here. Some are panthers, and some bears, and some buffaloes; but where are your weasels? I have fit you now these twenty years, and never have I known ye to stand up to the baggonet. It's not Injin natur' to do THAT.”
Here the corporal, without knowing it, made some such reproach to the aboriginal warriors of America as the English used to throw into the teeth of ourselves--that of not standing up to a weapon which neither party possessed. It was matter of great triumph that the Americans would not stand the charge of the bayonet at the renowned fight on Breed's, for instance, when it is well known that not one man in five among the colonists had any such weapon at all to “stand up” with. A different story was told at Guildford, and Stony Point, and Eutaw, and Bennington, and Bemis' Heights, and fifty other places that might be named, after the troops were furnished with bayonets. THEN it was found that the Americans could use them as well as others, and so might it have proved with the red men, though their discipline, or mode of fighting, scarce admitted of such systematic charges. All this, however, the corporal overlooked, much as if he were a regular historian who was writing to make out a case.
“Harkee, brother, since you WILL call me brother; though, Heaven be praised, not a drop of nigger or Injin blood runs in my veins,” resumed the corporal. “Harkee, friend redskin, answer me one thing. Did you ever hear of such a man as Mad Anthony? He was the tickler for your infernal tribes! You pulled no saplings together for him. He put you up with 'the long-knives and leather-stockings,' and you outrun his fleetest horses. I was with him, and saw more naked backs than naked faces among your people, that day. Your Great Bear got a rap on his nose that sent him to his village yelping like a cur.”
Again was the corporal compelled to stop to take breath. The allusion to Wayne, and his defeat of the Indians, excited so much ire, that several hands grasped knives and tomahawks, and one arrow was actually drawn nearly to the head; but the frown of Bear's Meat prevented any outbreak, or actual violence. It wa's deemed prudent, however, to put an end to this scene, lest the straightforward corporal, who laid it on heavily, and who had so much to say about Indian defeats, might actually succeed in touching some festering wound that would bring him to his death at once. It was, accordingly, determined to proceed with the torture of the saplings without further delay.
The corporal was removed accordingly, and placed between the two bended trees, which were kept together by withes around their tops. An arm of the captive was bound tightly at the wrist to the top of each tree, so that his limbs were to act as the only tie between the saplings, as soon as the withes should be cut. The Indians now worked in silence, and the matter was getting to be much too serious for the corporal to indulge in any more words. The cold sweat returned, and many an anxious glance was cast by the veteran on the fell preparations. Still he maintained appearances, and when all was ready, not a man there was aware of the agony of dread which prevailed in the breast of the victim. It was not death that he feared as much as suffering. A few minutes, the corporal well knew, would make the pain intolerable, while he saw no hope of putting a speedy end to his existence. A man might live hours in such a situation. Then it was that the teachings of childhood were revived in the bosom of this hardened man, and he remembered the Being that died for HIM, in common with the rest of the human race, on the tree. The seeming similarity of his own execution struck his imagination, and brought a tardy but faint recollection of those lessons that had lost most of their efficacy in the wickedness and impiety of camps. His soul struggled for relief in that direction, but the present scene was too absorbing to admit of its lifting itself so far above his humanity.
“Warrior of the pale-faces,” said Bough of the Oak, “we are going to cut the withe. You will then be where a brave man will want all his courage. If you are firm, we will do you honor; if you faint and screech, our young men will laugh at you. This is the way with Injins. They honor braves; they point the finger at cowards.”
Here a sign was made by Bear's Meat, and a warrior raised the tomahawk that was to separate the fastenings, His hand was in the very act of descending, when the crack of a rifle was heard, and a little smoke rose out of the thicket, near the spot where the bee-hunter and the corporal, himself, had remained so long hid, on the occasion of the council first held in that place. The tomahawk fell, however, the withes were parted, and up flew the saplings, with a violence that threatened to tear the arms of the victim out of their sockets.
The Indians listened, expecting the screeches and groans;--they gazed, hoping to witness the writhings of their captive. But they were disappointed. There hung the body, its arms distended, still holding the tops of the saplings bowed, but not a sign of life was seen. A small line of blood trickled down the forehead, and above it was the nearly imperceptible hole made by the passage of a bullet. The head itself had fallen forward, and a little on one shoulder. The corporal had escaped the torments reserved for him, by this friendly blow.
It was so much a matter of course for an Indian to revenge his own wounds--to alleviate his smarts, by retaliating on those who inflicted them--that the chiefs expressed neither surprise nor resentment at the manner of the corporal's death. There was some disappointment, it is true; but no anger was manifested, since it was supposed that some one of those whom the prisoner had wounded had seen fit, in this mode, to revenge his own hurts. In this, however, the Indians deceived themselves. The well-intentioned and deadly shot that saved the corporal from hours of agony came from the friendly hand of Pigeonswing, who had no sooner discharged his rifle than he stole away through the thicket, and was never discovered. This he did, too, at the expense of Ungque's scalp, on which he had set his heart.
As for the Indians, perceiving that their hopes of forcing a captive to confess his weakness were frustrated, they conferred together on the course of future proceedings. There was an inquiry for Peter, but Peter was not to be found. Bough of the Oak suggested that the mysterious chief must have gone to the palisaded hut, in order to get the remaining scalps, his passion for this symbol of triumphs over pale-faces being well known. It was, therefore, incumbent on the whole band to follow, with the double view of sharing in the honor of the assault, and of rendering assistance.
Abandoning the body of the corporal where it hung, away went these savages, by this time keenly alive to the scent of blood. Something like order was observed, however, each chief leading his own particular part of the band, in his own way, but on a designated route. Bear's Meat acted as commander-in-chief, the subordinate leaders following his instructions with reasonable obedience. Some went in one direction, others in another; until the verdant bottom near the sweet spring was deserted.
In less than half an hour the whole band was collected around Castle Meal, distant, however, beyond the range of a rifle. The different parties, as they arrived, announced their presence by whoops, which were intended to answer the double purpose of signals, and of striking terror to the hearts of the besieged; the North American Indians making ample use of this great auxiliary in war.
All this time no one was seen in or about the fortified hut The gate was closed, as were the doors and windows, manifesting preparations for defence; but the garrison kept close. Nor was Peter to be seen. He might be a prisoner, or he might not have come in this direction. It was just possible that he might be stealing up to the building, to get a nearer view, and a closer scout.
Indian warfare is always stealthy. It is seldom, indeed, that the aboriginal Americans venture on an open assault of any fortified place, however small and feeble it may be. Ignorant of the use of artillery, and totally without that all-important arm, their approaches to any cover, whence a bullet may be sent against them, are ever wary, slow, and well concerted. They have no idea of trenches--do not possess the means of making them, indeed--but they have such substitutes of their own as usually meet all their wants, more particularly in portions of the country that are wooded. In cases like this before our present band, they had to exercise their wits to invent new modes of effecting their purposes.
Bear's Meat collected his principal chiefs, and, after a considerable amount of consultation, it was determined, in the present instance, to try the virtue of fire. The only sign of life they could detect about the hut was an occasional bark from Hive, who had been taken within the building, most probably to protect him from the bullets and arrows of the enemy. Even this animal did not howl like a dog in distress; but he barked, as if aware of the vicinity of strangers. The keenest scrutiny could not detect an outlet of any sort about the hut. Everything was tightly closed, and it was impossible to say when, or whence, a bullet might not be sent against the unwary.
The plan was soon formed, and was quite as rapidly executed. Bough of the Oak, himself, supported by two or three other braves, undertook to set the buildings on fire. This was done by approaching the kitchen, dodging from tree to tree, making each movement with a rapidity that defeated aim, and an irregularity that defied calculation. In this way the kitchen was safely reached, where there was a log cover to conceal the party. Here also was fire, the food for dinner being left, just as it had been put over to boil, not long before. The Indians had prepared themselves with arrows and light wood, and soon they commenced sending their flaming missiles toward the roof of the hut. Arrow after arrow struck, and it was not long before the roof was on fire.
A yell now arose throughout the Openings. Far and near the Indians exulted at their success. The wood was dry, and it was of a very inflammable nature. The wind blew, and in half an hour Castle Meal was in a bright blaze. Hive now began to howl, a sign that he knew his peril. Still, no human being appeared. Presently the flaming roof fell in and the savages listened intently to hear the screeches of their victims. The howls of the dog increased, and he was soon seen, with his hair burned from his skin, leaping on the unroofed wall, and thence into the area within the palisades. A bullet terminated his sufferings as he alighted.
Bear's Meat now gave the signal, and a general rush was made. No rifle opposed them, and a hundred Indians were soon at the palisades. To the surprise of all, the gate was found unfastened. Rushing within, the door of the hut was forced, and a view obtained of the blazing furnace within. The party had arrived in sufficient season to perceive fragments of le Bourdon's rude furniture and stores yet blazing, but nowhere was a human corpse visible. Poles were got, and the brands were removed, in the expectation of finding bones beneath them; but without success. It was now certain that no pale-face had perished in that hut. Then the truth flashed on the minds of all the savages: le Bourdon and his friends had taken the alarm in time, and had escaped!
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Behold, O Lord! the heathen tread The branches of thy fruitful vine, That its luxurious tendrils spread O'er all the hills of Palestine. And now the wild boar comes to waste Even us, the greenest boughs and last. That, drinking of its choicest dew, On Zion's hill in beauty grew. --MILMAN.
The change in Peter had been gradually making itself apparent, ever since he joined the party of the bee-hunter. When he entered the Kalamazoo, in the company of the two men who had now fallen the victims of his own designs, his heart was full of the fell intention of cutting off the whole white race. Margery had first induced him to think of exceptions. He had early half-decided that she should be spared, to be carried to his own lodge, as an adopted daughter. When he became aware of the state of things between his favorite and her lover, there was a severe struggle in his breast on the subject of sparing the last. He saw how strongly the girl was attached to him, and something like human sentiments forced their way among his savage plans. The mysterious communication of le Bourdon with the bees, however, had far more influence in determining him to spare so great a medicine-man, than Margery's claims; and he had endeavored to avail himself of a marriage as a means of saving the bride, instead of saving the bridegroom. All the Indians entertained a species of awe for le Bourdon, and all hesitated about laying hands on one who appeared so gifted. It was, therefore, the expectation of this extraordinary being that the wife might be permitted to escape with the husband. The effect of The Weasel's cunning has been described. Such was the state of Peter's mind when he met the band in the scenes last described. There he had been all attention to the demeanor of the missionary. A hundred times had he seen warriors die uttering maledictions on their enemies; but this was the first occasion on which he had ever known a man to use his latest breath in asking for blessings on those “who persecuted him.” At first, Peter was astounded. Then the sublime principles had their effect, and his heart was deeply touched with what he heard. How far the Holy Spirit aided these better feelings, it might be presumptuous, on the one hand, to say; while, on the other, it will be equally presuming to think of denying the possibility--nay, the probability--that the great change which so suddenly came over the heart of Peter was produced by more than mere human agencies. We know that this blessed Spirit is often poured out, in especial cases, with affluent benevolence, and there can be no sufficient reason for supposing this savage might not have been thus signally favored, as soon as the avenues of his heart opened to the impulses of a generous humanity. The very qualities that would induce such a being to attempt the wild and visionary scheme of vengeance and retribution, that had now occupied his sleeping and waking thoughts for years, might, under a better direction, render him eminently fit to be the subject of divine grace. A latent sense of right lay behind all his seeming barbarity, and that which to us appears as a fell ferocity, was, in his own eyes, no less than a severe justice.
The words, the principles, the prayers, and, more than all, the EXAMPLE of the missionary, wrought this great change, so far as human agencies were employed; but the power of God was necessary to carry out and complete this renewal of the inner man. We do not mean that a miracle was used in the sudden conversion of this Indian to better feelings, for that which is of hourly occurrence, and which may happen to all, comes within the ordinary workings of a Divine Providence, and cannot thus be designated with propriety; but we do wish to be understood as saying, that no purely human power could have cleared the moral vision, changed all the views, and softened the heart of such a man, as was so promptly done in the case of Peter. The way had been gradually preparing, perhaps, by the means already described, but the great transformation came so suddenly and so powerfully as to render him a different being, as it might almost be, in the twinkling of an eye! Such changes often occur, and though it may suit the self-sufficiency of the worldling to deride them, he is the wisest who submits in the meekest spirit to powers that exceed his comprehension.
In this state of mind, then, Peter left the band as soon as the fate of the missionary was decided. His immediate object was to save the whites who remained, Gershom and Dorothy now having a place in his good intentions, as well as le Bourdon and Margery. Although he moved swiftly, and nearly by an air-line, his thoughts scarce kept company with his feet. During that rapid walk, he was haunted with the image of a man, dying while he pronounced benedictions on his enemies!
There was little in common between the natural objects of that placid and rural scene and the fell passions that were so actively at work among the savages. The whole of the landscape was bathed in the light of a clear, warm summer's day. These are the times when the earth truly seems a sanctuary, in spots remote from the haunts of men, and least exposed to his abuses. The bees hum around the flowers, the birds carol on the boughs and from amid their leafy arbors, while even the leaping and shining waters appear to be instinct with the life that extols the glory of God.
As for the family near the palisaded hut, happiness had not, for many a month, been so seated among them, as on this very occasion. Dorothy sympathized truly in the feelings of the youthful and charming bride, while Gershom had many of the kind and affectionate wishes of a brother in her behalf. The last was in his best attire, as indeed were the females, who were neatly though modestly clad, and Gershom had that air of decent repose and of quiet enjoyment, which is so common of a Sabbath with the men of his class, among the people from whom he sprung. The fears lately excited were momentarily forgotten. Everything around them wore an air so placid; the vault above them was so profoundly tranquil; the light of day was so soft and yet so bright; the Openings seemed so rural and so much like pictures of civilization, that apprehension had been entirely forgotten in present enjoyment. Such was the moment when Peter suddenly stood before le Bourdon and Margery, as the young couple sat beneath the shade of the oaks, near the spring. One instant the Indian regarded this picture of young wedded life with a gleam of pleasure on his dark face; then he announced his presence by speaking.
“Can't sit here lookin' at young squaw,” said this literal being. “Get up, and put thing in canoe. Time come to go on path dat lead to pale-face country.”
“What has happened, Peter?” demanded the bee-hunter, springing to his feet. “You come like a runner rushing in with his bad tidings. Has anything happened to give an alarm?”
“Up, and off, tell you. No use talkin' now. Put all he can in canoe, and paddle away fast as can.” There was no mistaking Peter's manner. The bee-hunter saw the uselessness of questioning such a man, at a time like that, and he called to Gershom to join him.
“Here is the chief, to warn us to move,” said the bee-hunter, endeavoring to appear calm, in order that he might not needlessly alarm the females, “and what he advises, we had better do. I know there is danger, by what has fallen from Pigeonswing as well as from himself; so let us lose no time, but stow the canoes, and do as he tells us.”
As Gershom assented, it was not two minutes ere all were at work. For several days, each canoe had been furnished with provisions for a hasty flight. It remained only to add such of the effects as were too valuable and necessary to be abandoned, and which had not been previously exposed without the palisades. For half an hour le Bourdon and Gershom worked as for life. No questions were asked, nor was a single moment lost, in a desire to learn more. The manner in which Peter bore himself satisfied Boden that the emergency was pressing, and it is seldom that more was done by so few hands in so short a period. Fortunately, the previous preparation greatly aided the present object, and nearly everything of any value was placed in the canoes within the brief space mentioned. It then became necessary to decide concerning the condition in which Castle Meal was to be left. Peter advised closing every aperture, shutting the gate, and leaving the dog within. There is no doubt that these expedients prevented the parties falling early into the hands of their enemies; for the time lost by the savages in making their approaches to the hut was very precious to the fugitives.
Just as the canoes were loaded, Pigeonswing came in. He announced that the whole band was in motion, and might be expected to reach the grove in ten minutes. Placing an arm around the slender waist of Margery, le Bourdon almost carried her to his own canoe, Gershom soon had Dorothy in his little bark, while Peter entered that to the ownership of which he may be said to have justly succeeded by the deaths of the corporal and the missionary. Pigeonswing remained behind, in order to act as a scout, having first communicated to Peter the course the last ought to steer. Before the Chippewa plunged into the cover in which it was his intention to conceal himself, he made a sign that the band was already in sight.
The heart of le Bourdon sunk within him, when he learned how near were the enemy. To him, escape seemed impossible; and he now regretted having abandoned the defences of his late residence. The river was sluggish for more than a mile at that spot, and then occurred a rift, which could not be passed without partly unloading the canoes, and where there must necessarily be a detention of more than an hour. Thus, it was scarcely possible for canoes descending that stream to escape from so large a band of pursuers. The sinuosities, themselves, would enable the last to gain fifty points ahead of them, where ambushes, or even open resistance, must place them altogether at the mercy of the savages.
Peter knew all this, as well as the bee-hunter, and he had no intention of trusting his new friends in a flight down the river. Pigeonswing, with the sententious brevity of an Indian, had made an important communication to him, while they were moving, for the last time, toward the canoes, and he now determined to profit by it. Taking the lead, therefore, with his own canoe, Peter paddled UP, instead of DOWN the stream, going in a direction opposite to that which it would naturally be supposed the fugitives had taken. In doing this, also, he kept close under the bank which would most conceal the canoes from those who approached it on its southern side.
It will be remembered that the trees for the palisades had been cut from a swamp, a short distance above the bee-hunter's residence. They had grown on the margin of the river, which had been found serviceable in floating the logs to their point of destination. The tops of many of these trees, resinuous, and suited by their nature to preserve their leaves for a considerable time, lay partly in the stream and partly on its banks; and Pigeonswing, foreseeing the necessity of having a place of refuge, had made so artful a disposition of several of them, that, while they preserved all the appearance of still lying where they had fallen, it was possible to haul canoes up beneath them, between the branches and the bank, in a way to form a place of perfect concealment. No Indian would have trusted to such a hiding-place, had it not been matter of notoriety that the trees had been felled for a particular purpose, or had their accidental disposition along the bank been discernibly deranged. But such was not the case, the hand of Pigeonswing having been so skilfully employed that what he had done could not be detected. He might be said to have assisted nature, instead of disturbing her.
The canoes were actually paddling close under the bank, in the Castle Meal reach of the river, when the band arrived at the grove, and commenced what might be called the investment of the place. Had not all the attention of the savages been drawn toward the hut, it is probable that some wandering eye might have caught a glimpse of some one of them, as inequalities in the bank momentarily exposed each, in succession, to view. This danger, however, passed away, and by turning a point, the fugitives were effectually concealed from all who did not actually approach the river at that particular point. Here it was, however, that the swamp commenced, and the ground being wet and difficult, no one would be likely to do this. The stream flowed through this swamp, having a dense wood on each side, though one of no great extent. The reach, moreover, was short, making a completely sheltered haven of the Kalamazoo, within its limits.
Once in this wooded reach, Peter tossed an arm, and assumed an air of greater security. He felt infinitely relieved, and knew that they were safe, for a time, unless some wanderer should have taken to the swamp--a most improbable thing of itself. When high enough, he led the way across the stream, and entering below, he soon had all the canoes in their place of concealment.
“Dis good place,” observed the great chief, as soon as all were fast; “bess take care, dough. Bess not make track too much on land; Injin got sharp eye, and see ebbery t'ing. Now, I go and talk wid chief. Come back by-'em-by. You stay here. Good-bye.”
“Stop, Peter--one word before we part. If you see Parson Amen, or the corporal, it might be well to tell THEM where we are to be found. They would be glad to know.”
Peter looked grave; even sad. He did not answer for fully a minute. When he did, it was in a low, suppressed voice, such as one is apt to use when there is a weight felt on his mind.
“Nebber know any t'ing ag'in,” returned the chief. “Both dem pale-face dead.”
“Dead!” echoed all within hearing.
“Juss so; Injin kill him. Mean to kill you, too--dat why I run away. Saw medicine-priest die. What you t'ink, Blossom? --What you t'ink, Bourdon? --Dat man die asking Great Spirit to do good to Injin!”
“I can believe it, Peter, for he was a good man, and such are our Christian laws, though few of us obey them. I can easily believe that Parson Amen was an exception, however.”
“Yes, Peter, such are our Christian laws,” put in Margery, earnestly. “When Christ, the Son of God, came on earth to redeem lost men, he commanded his followers to do good to them that did evil to us, and to pray for them that tried to harm us. We have his very words, written in our bibles.”
“You got him?” said Peter, with interest. “See you read him, of'en. Got dat book here?”
“To be sure I have--it is the last thing I should have forgotten. Dolly has one, and I have another; we read in them every day, and we hope that, before long, brother and Bourdon will read in them, too.”
“Why, I'm no great scholar, Margery,” returned her husband, scratching his full, curling head of hair, out of pure awkwardness; “to please YOU, however, I'd undertake even a harder job. It was so with the bees, when I began; I thought I should never succeed in lining the first bee to his hive; but, since that time, I think I've lined a thousand!”
“It's easy, it's easy, dear Benjamin, if you will only make a beginning,” returned the much interested young wife. “When we get to a place of safety, if it be God's will that we ever shall, I hope to have you join me in reading the good book, daily. See, Peter, I keep it in this little bag, where it is safe, and always at hand.”
“You read dem word for me, Blossom: I want to hear him, out of dis book, himself.”
Margery did as he desired. She was very familiar with the New Testament, and, turning to the well-known and God-like passage, she read several verses, in a steady, earnest voice. Perhaps the danger they were in, and the recent communication of the death of their late companions, increased her earnestness and solemnity of manner, for the effect produced on Peter was scarcely less than that he had felt when he witnessed a practical obedience to these sublime principles, in the death of the missionary. Tears actually started to this stern savage's eyes, and he looked back on his late projects and endeavors to immolate a whole race with a shudder. Taking Margery's hand, he courteously thanked her, and prepared to quit the place. Previously to leaving his friends, however, Peter gave a brief account of the manner of the missionary's death, and of the state in which he had left the corporal. Pigeonswing had told him of the fate of the last, as well as of the eagerness with which the band had set out in quest of more white scalps.
“Peter, we can count on you for a friend, I hope?” said the bee-hunter, as the two were about to part, on the bank of the river. “I fear you were, once, our enemy!”
“Bourdon,” said Peter, with dignity, and speaking in the language of his own people, “listen. There are Good Spirits, and there are Bad Spirits. Our traditions tell us this. Our own minds tell us this, too. For twenty winters a Bad Spirit has been whispering in my ear. I listened to him; and did what he told me to do. I believed what he said. His words were--'Kill your enemies--scalp all the pale-faces--do not leave a squaw, or a pappoose. Make all their hearts heavy. This is what an Injin should do.' So has the Bad Spirit been whispering to me, for twenty winters. I listened to him. What he said, I did. It was pleasant to me to take the scalps of the pale-faces. It was pleasant to think that no more scalps would be left among them, to take. I was Scalping Peter.
“Bourdon, the Good Spirit has, at last, made himself heard. His whisper is so low, that at first my ears did not hear him. They hear him now. When he spoke loudest, it was with the tongue of the medicine-priest of your people. He was about to die. When we are about to die, our voices become strong and clear. So do our eyes. We see what is before, and we see what is behind. We feel joy for what is before--we feel sorrow for what is behind. Your medicine-priest spoke well. It sounded in my ears as if the Great Spirit, himself, was talking. They say it was his Son. I believe them. Blossom has read to me out of the good book of your people, and I find it is so. I feel like a child, and could sit down, in my wigwam, and weep.
“Bourdon, you are a pale-face, and I am an Injin. You are strong, and I am weak. This is because the Son of the Great Spirit has talked with your people, and has not talked with mine. I now see why the pale-faces overrun the earth and take the hunting-grounds. They know most, and have been told to come here, and to tell what they know to the poor ignorant Injins. I hope my people will listen. What the Son of the Great Spirit says must be true. He does not know how to do wrong.
“Bourdon, once it seemed sweet to me to take the scalps of my enemies. When an Injin did me harm, I took his scalp. This was my way. I could not help it, then. The Wicked Spirit told me to do this. The Son of the Manitou has now told me better. I have lived under a cloud. The breath of the dying medicine-priest of your people has blown away that cloud. I see clearer. I hear him telling the Manitou to do me good, though I wanted his scalp. He was answered in my heart. Then my ears opened wider, and I heard what the Good Spirit whispered. The ear in which the Bad Spirit had been talking for twenty winters shut, and was deaf. I hear him no more. I do not want to hear him again. The whisper of the Son of the Manitou is very pleasant to me. It sounds like the wren singing his sweetest song. I hope he will always whisper so. My ear shall never again be shut to his words.
“Bourdon, it is pleasant to me to look forward. It is not pleasant to me to look back. I see how many things I have done in one way, that ought to have been done in another way. I feel sorry, and wish it had not been so. Then I hear the Son of the Manitou asking His Father, who liveth above the clouds, to do good to the Jews who took his life. I do not think Injins are Jews. In this, my brother was wrong. It was his own notion, and it is easy for a man to think wrong. It is not so with the Son of the Manitou. He thinketh always as His Father thinketh, which is right.
“Bourdon, I am no longer Peter--I must be another Injin. I do not feel the same. A scalp is a terrible thing in my eyes--I wish never to take another--never to see another--a scalp is a bad thing. I now LOVE the Yankees. I wish to do them good, and not to do them harm. I love most the Great Spirit, that let his own Son die for all men. The medicine-priest said he died for Injins, as well as for pale-faces. This we did not know, or we should have talked of him more in our traditions. We love to talk of good acts. But we are such ignorant Injins! The Son of the Manitou will have pity on us, and tell us oftener what we ought to do. In time, we shall learn. Now, I feel like a child: I hope I shall one day be a man.”
Having made this “confession of faith,” one that would have done credit to a Christian church, Peter shook the bee-hunter kindly by the hand, and took his departure. He did not walk into the swamp, though it was practicable with sufficient care, but he stepped into the river, and followed its margin, knowing that “water leaves no trail.” Nor did Peter follow the direct route toward the now blazing hut, the smoke from which was rising high above the trees, but he ascended the stream, until reaching a favorable spot, he threw aside all of his light dress, made it into a bundle, and swam across the Kalamazoo, holding his clothes above the element with one hand. On reaching the opposite shore, he moved on to the upper margin of the swamp, where he resumed his clothes. Then he issued into the Openings, carrying neither rifle, bow, tomahawk, nor knife. All his weapons he had left in his canoe, fearful that they might tempt him to do evil, instead of good, to his enemies. Neither Bear's Meat, nor Bough of the Oak, was yet regarded by Peter with the eye of love. He tried not to hate them, and this he found sufficiently difficult; conscious of this difficulty, he had laid aside his arms, accordingly. This mighty change had been gradually in progress, ever since the chief's close communication with Margery, but it had received its consummation in the last acts, and last words, of the missionary!
Having got out into the Openings, it was not difficult for Peter to join his late companions without attracting observation from whence he came. He kept as much under cover as was convenient, and reached the kitchen, just as the band broke into the defences, and burst open the door of the blazing and already roofless hut. Here Peter paused, unwilling to seem inactive in such a scene, yet averse to doing anything that a sensitively tender conscience might tell him was wrong. He knew there was no human being there to save, and cared little for the few effects that might be destroyed. He did not join the crowd, therefore, until it was ascertained that the bee-hunter and his companions had escaped.
“The pale-faces have fled,” said Bear's Meat to the great chief, when the last did approach him. “We have looked for their bones among the ashes, but there are none. That medicine-bee-hunter has told them that their scalps were wanted, and they have gone off!”
“Have any of the young men been down to the river, to look for their canoes?” quietly demanded Peter. “If the canoes are gone, too, they have taken the route toward the Great Lake.”
This was so obvious and probable, that a search was immediately set on foot. The report was soon made, and great was the eagerness to pursue. The Kalamazoo was so crooked, that no one there doubted of overtaking the fugitives, and parties were immediately organized for the chase. This was done with the customary intelligence and shrewdness of Indians. The canoes that belonged to Crowsfeather and his band had been brought up the river, and they lay concealed in rushes, not a mile from the hut. A party of warriors brought them to the landing, and they carried one division of the party to the opposite shore, it being the plan to follow each bank of the river, keeping close to the stream, even to its mouth, should it prove necessary. Two other parties were sent in direct lines, one on each side of the river, also, to lay in ambush at such distant points, ahead, as would be almost certain to anticipate the arrival of the fugitives. The canoes were sent down the stream, to close the net against return, while Bear's Meat, Bough of the Oak, Crowsfeather, and several others of the leading chiefs, remained near the still burning hut, with a strong party, to examine the surrounding Openings for foot-prints and trails. It was possible that the canoes had been sent adrift, in order to mislead them, while the pale-faces had fled by land.
It has been stated that the Openings had a beautiful sward, near Castle Meal, This was true of that particular spot, and was the reason why le Bourdon had selected it for his principal place of residence. The abundance of flowers drew the bees there, a reason of itself why he should like the vicinity. Lest the reader should be misled, however, it may be well to explain that an absence of sward is characteristic of these Openings, rather than the reverse, it being, to a certain degree, a cause of complaint, now that the country is settled, that the lands of the Oak Openings are apt to be so light that the grasses do not readily form as firm a turf as is desirable for meadows and pastures. We apprehend this is true, however, less as a rule than as exceptions; there being variety in the soils of these Openings, as well as in other quarters.
Nevertheless, the savages were aware that the country around the burned hut, for a considerable extent, differed, in this particular, from most of that which lay farther east, or more inland. On the last a trail would be much more easily detected than on the first, and a party, under the direction of a particularly experienced leader, was dispatched several miles to the eastward, to look for the usual signs of the passage of any toward Detroit, taking that route. This last expedient troubled Peter exceedingly, since it placed a body of enemies in the rear of the fugitives; thereby rendering their position doubly perilous. There was no help for the difficulty, however; and the great chief saw the party depart without venturing on remonstrance, advice, or any other expedient to arrest the movement. Bear's Meat now called the head chiefs, who remained, into a circle, and asked for opinions concerning the course that ought next to be taken.
“What does my brother, the tribeless chief, say?” he asked, looking at Peter, in a way to denote the expectation which all felt, that he ought to be able to give useful counsel in such a strait. “We have got but two scalps from six heads; and one of THEM is buried with the medicine-priest.”
“Scalps cannot be taken from them that get off,” returned Peter, evasively. “We must first catch these pale-faces. When they are found it will be easy to scalp them. If the canoes are gone, I think the medicine-bee-hunter and his squaws have gone in them. We may find the whole down the river.”
To this opinion most of the chiefs assented, though the course of examining for a trail farther east was still approved. The band was so strong, while the pale-faces were so few, that a distribution of their own force was of no consequence, and it was clearly the most prudent to send out young men in all directions. Every one, however, expected that the fugitives would be overtaken on, or near, the river, and Bear's Meat suggested the propriety of their moving down stream, themselves, very shortly.
“When did my brother last see the pale-faces?” asked Crowsfeather. “This bee-hunter knows the river well, and may have started yesterday; or even after he came from the Great Council of the Prairie.”
This was a new idea, but one that seemed probable enough. All eyes turned toward Peter, who saw, at once, that such a notion must greatly favor the security of the fugitives, and felt a strong desire to encourage it. He found evasion difficult, however, and well knew the danger of committing himself. Instead of giving a straightforward answer, therefore, he had recourse to circumlocution and subterfuge.
“My brother is right,” he answered. “The pale-faces HAVE had time to get far down the stream. As my brothers know, I slept among them at the Round Prairie. To-day, they know I was with them at the council of the spring of gushing waters.”
All this was true, as far as it went, although the omissions were very material. No one seemed to suspect the great chief, whose fidelity to his own principles was believed to be of a character amounting to enthusiasm. Little did any there know of the power of the unseen Spirit of God to alter the heart, producing what religionists term the new birth. We do not wish, however, to be understood that Peter had, as yet, fully experienced this vast change. It is not often the work of a moment, though well-authenticated modern instances do exist, in which we have every reason to believe that men have been made to see and feel the truth almost as miraculously as was St. Paul himself. As for this extraordinary savage, he had entered into the strait and narrow way, though he was not far advanced on its difficult path.
When men tell us of the great progress that the race is making toward perfection, and point to the acts which denote its wisdom, its power to control its own affairs, its tendencies toward good when most left to its own self-control, our minds are filled with scepticism. The every-day experience of a life now fast verging toward threescore, contradicts the theory and the facts. We believe not in the possibility of man's becoming even a strictly rational being, unaided by a power from on high; and all that we have seen and read goes to convince us that HE is most of a philosopher, the most accurate judge of his real state, the most truly learned, who most vividly sees the necessity of falling back on the precepts of revelation for all his higher principles and practice. We conceive that this mighty truth furnishes unanswerable proof of the unceasing agency of a Providence, and when we once admit this, we concede that our own powers are insufficient for our own wants.
That the world, as a whole, is advancing toward a better state of things, we as firmly believe as we do that it is by ways that have not been foreseen by man; and that, whenever the last has been made the agent of producing portions of this improvement, it has oftener been without design, or calculation, than with it. Who, for instance, supposes that the institutions of this country, of which we boast so much, could have stood as long as they have, without the conservative principles that are to be found in the Union; and who is there so vain as to ascribe the overshadowing influence of this last great power to any wisdom in man? We all know that perfectly fortuitous circumstances, or what appear to us to be such, produced the Federal Government, and that its strongest and least exceptionable features are precisely those which could not be withstood, much less invented, as parts of the theory of a polity.
A great and spasmodic political movement is, at this moment, convulsing Christendom. That good will come of it, we think is beyond a question; but we greatly doubt whether it will come in the particular form, or by the specified agencies, that human calculations would lead us to expect. It must be admitted that the previous preparations, which have induced the present effort, are rather in opposition to, than the consequences of, calculated agencies; overturning in their progress the very safeguards which the sagacity of men had interposed to the advance of those very opinions that have been silently, and by means that would perhaps baffle inquiry, preparing the way for the results that have been so suddenly and unexpectedly obtained. If the course is onward, it is more as the will of God, than from any calculations of man; and it is when the last are the most active, that there is the greatest reason to apprehend the consequences.
Of such a dispensation of the Providence of Almighty God, do we believe Peter to have been the subject. Among the thousand ways that are employed to touch the heart, he had been most affected by the sight of a dying man's asking benedictions on his enemies! It was assailing his besetting sin; attacking the very citadel of his savage character, and throwing open, at once, an approach into the deepest recesses of his habits and dispositions. It was like placing a master-key in the hands of him who would go through the whole tenement, for the purpose of purifying it.
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Thou to whom every faun and satyr flies For willing service; whether to surprise The squatted hare, while in half sleeping fits, Or upward ragged precipices flit To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewildered shepherds to their path again;-- --KEATS.
It can easily be understood that the party with the canoes were left by Peter in a state of great anxiety. The distance between the site of the hut and their place of concealment was but little more than a quarter of a mile, and the yell of the savages had often reached their ears, notwithstanding the cover of the woods. This proximity, of itself, was fearful; but the uncertainty that le Bourdon felt on the subject of Peter's real intentions added greatly to his causes of concern. Of course, he knew but little of the sudden change that had come over this mysterious chief's feelings; nor is it very likely that he would have been able to appreciate it, even had the fact been more fully stated. Our hero had very little acquaintance with the dogmas of Christianity, and would have, most probably, deemed it impossible that so great a revolution of purpose could have been so suddenly wrought in the mind of man, had the true state of the case been communicated to him. He would have been ready enough to allow that, with God, nothing is impossible; but might have been disposed to deny the influence of His Holy Spirit, as exhibited in this particular form, for a reason no better than the circumstance that he himself had never been the subject of such a power. All that Peter had said, therefore, served rather to mystify him, than to explain, in its true colors, what had actually occurred. With Margery it was different. Her schooling had been far better than that of any other of the party, and, while she admired the manly appearance, and loved the free, generous character of her husband, she had more than once felt pained at the passing thoughts of his great indifference to sacred things. This feeling in le Bourdon, however, was passive rather than active, and gave her a kind interest in his future welfare, rather than any present pain through acts and words.
But, as respects their confidence in Peter, this young couple were much farther apart than in their religious notions. The bee-hunter had never been without distrust, though his apprehensions had been occasionally so far quieted as to leave him nearly free of them altogether; while his wife had felt the utmost confidence in the chief, from the very commencement of their acquaintance. It would be useless, perhaps, to attempt to speculate on the causes; but it is certain that there are secret sources of sympathy that draw particular individuals toward each other and antipathies that keep them widely separated. Men shall meet for the first time, and feel themselves attracted toward each other, like two drops of water, or repelled, like the corks of an electric machine.
The former had been the case with Peter and Margery. They liked each other from the first, and kind orifices had soon come to increase this feeling. The girl had now seen so much of the Indians, as to regard them much as she did others, or with the discriminations, and tastes, or distastes, with which we all regard our fellow-creatures; feeling no particular cause of estrangement. It is true that Margery would not have been very likely to fall in love with a young Indian, had one come in her way of a suitable age and character; for her American notions on the subject of color might have interposed difficulties; but, apart from the tender sentiments, she could see good and bad qualities in one of the aborigines, as well as in a white man. As a consequence of this sympathy between Peter and Margery, the last had ever felt the utmost confidence in the protection and friendship of the first. This she did, even while the struggle was going on in his breast on the subject of including her in his fell designs, or of making an exception in her favor. It shows the waywardness of our feelings that Margery had never reposed confidence in Pigeonswing, who was devotedly the friend of le Bourdon, and who remained with them for no other reason than a general wish to be of use. Something BRUSQUE in his manner, which was much less courteous and polished than that of Peter, had early rendered her dissatisfied with him, and once estranged, she had never felt disposed to be on terms of intimacy sufficient to ascertain his good or bad qualities.
The great change of feeling in Peter was not very clearly understood by Margery, any more than it was by her husband; though, had her attention been drawn more strictly to it, she would have best known how to appreciate it. But this knowledge was not wanting to put HER perfectly at peace, so far as apprehension of his doing her harm was concerned. This sense of security she now manifested in a conversation with le Bourdon, that took place soon after Peter had left them.
“I wish we weren't in the hands of this red-skin, Margery,” said her husband, a little more off his guard than was his wont.
“Of Peter! You surprise me, Benjamin. I think we could not be in better hands, since we have got this risk to run with the savages. If it was Pigeonswing that you feared, I could understand it.”
“I will answer for Pigeonswing with my life.”
“I am glad to hear you say so, for _I_ do not half like HIM. Perhaps I am prejudiced against him. The scalp he took down at the mouth of the river set me against him from the first.”
“Do you not know, Margery, that your great friend goes by the name of 'Scalping Peter'?”
“Yes, I know it very well; but I do not believe he ever took a scalp in his life.”
“Did he ever tell you as much as that?”
“I can't say that he did; but he has never paraded anything of the sort before my eyes, like Pigeonswing. I do not half like that Chippewa, dear Bourdon.”
“No fear of him, Margery; nor, when I come to think it all over, do I see why Peter should have brought us here, if he means anything wrong. The man is so mysterious, that I cannot line him down to his hole.”
“My word for it, Bourdon, that when you DO, it will take you to a friendly hive. I have put almost as much faith in Peter as in you or Gershom. You heard what he said about Parson Amen and the corporal.”
“And how coolly he took it all,” answered her husband, shaking his head. “It has been a sudden departure for them, and one would think even an Injin might have felt it more.”
Margery's cheek grew pale, and her limbs trembled a little. It was a minute ere she could pursue the discourse.
“This is terrible, but I will not, cannot believe it,” she said. “I'm sure, Bourdon, we ought to be very thankful to Peter for having brought us here. Remember how earnestly he listened to the words of the Saviour.”
“If he has brought us here with a good intention, I thank him for it. But I scarce know what to think. Pigeonswing has given me many a hint, which I have understood to mean that we ought not to trust this unknown Injin too much.”
“So has he given me some of his hints, though I would sooner trust Peter than trust him, any time.”
“Our lives are in the care of Providence, I see. If we can really rely on these two Injins, all may be well; for Peter has brought us to an admirable cover, and he says that the Chippewa prepared it.”
The young husband and his wife now landed, and began to examine more particularly into the state of the swamp, near their place of concealment. Just at that spot, the bank of the river was higher than in most of the low land, and was dry, with a soil that approached sand. This was the place where the few young pines had grown. The dry ground might have covered four or five acres, and so many trees having been felled, light and air were admitted, in a way to render the place comparatively cheerful. The branches of the felled trees made a sufficient cover in all directions, though the swamp itself was more than that, almost a defence, toward the Openings. The bee-hunter found it was possible, though it was exceedingly difficult, to make his way through it. He ascertained the fact, however, since it might be important to their future movements to know it.
In a word, le Bourdon made a complete RECONNAISSANCE of his position. He cleared a spot for the females, and made a sort of hut, that would serve as a protection against rain, and in which they all might sleep at night. There was little doubt that this place must be occupied for some days, if Peter was acting in good faith, since an early movement would infallibly lead to detection. Time must be given to the Indians to precede them, or the great numbers of the savages would scarce leave a hope of escape. A greater sense of security succeeded this examination, and these arrangements. The danger was almost entirely to be apprehended on the side of the river. A canoe passing up-stream might, indeed, discover their place of concealment, but it was scarcely to be apprehended that one would wade through the mud and water of the swamp to approach them in any other direction.
Under these circumstances, le Bourdon began to feel more security in their position. Could he now be certain of Peter, his mind would be comparatively at ease, and he might turn his attention altogether to making the party comfortable. Margery, who seldom quitted his side, reasoned with him on the subject of the mysterious chief's good faith, and by means of her own deep reliance on him, she came at last to the point of instilling some of her own confidence into the mind of her husband. From that time he worked at the shelter for the females, and the other little arrangements their situation rendered necessary, with greater zest, and with far more attention to the details. So long as we are in doubt of accomplishing good, we hesitate about employing our energies; but once let hope revive within us, in the shape of favorable results, and we become new men, bracing every nerve to the task, and working with redoubled spirit; even should it be at the pump of the sinking ship, which, we believe, ranks the highest among the toils that are inflicted on the unfortunate.
For three days and nights did le Bourdon and his friends remain on that dry land of the swamp, without hearing or seeing anything of either Peter or Pigeonswing. The time was growing long, and the party anxious; though the sense of security was much increased by this apparent exemption from danger. Still, uncertainty, and the wish to ascertain the precise state of things in the Openings, were gradually getting to be painful, and it was with great satisfaction that the bee-hunter met his young wife as she came running toward him, on the morning of the fourth day, to announce that an Indian was approaching, by wading in the margin of the river, keeping always in the water so as to leave no trail. Hurrying to a point whence their visitor might be seen, le Bourdon soon perceived it was no other than Pigeonswing. In a few minutes this Indian arrived, and was gladly received by all four of the fugitives, who gathered around him, eager to hear the news.
“You are welcome, Chippewa,” cried le Bourdon, shaking his friend cordially by the hand. “We were half afraid we might never see you again. Do you bring us good or evil tidings?”
“Mustn't be squaw, and ask too much question, Bourdon,” returned the red-skin, carefully examining the priming of his rifle, in order to make sure it was not wet. “Got plenty venison, eh?”
“Not much venison is left, but we have caught a good many fish, which have helped us along. I have killed a dozen large squirrels, too, with your bow and arrows, which I find you left in your canoe. But--” “Yes, he good bow, dat--might kill hummin'-bird wid dat bow. Fish good here, eh?”
“They are eatable, when a body can get no better. But NOW, I should think, Pigeonswing, you might give us some of the news.”
“Mustn't be squaw, Bourdon--bad for warrior be squaw. Alway bess be man, and be patient, like man. What you t'ink, Bourdon? Got him at last!”
“Got WHAT my good fellow? I see nothing about you, but your arms and ammunition.”
“Got scalp of dat Weasel! Wasn't dat well done? Nebber no young warrior take more scalp home dan Pigeonswing carry dis time! Got t'ree; all hid, where Bear's Meat nebber know. Take 'em away, when he get ready to march.”
“Well, well, Chippewa--I suppose it will not be easy to reason you out of this feelin'--but what has become of the red-skins who burned my cabin, and who killed the missionary and the corporal?”
“All about--dough must go down river. Look here, Bourdon, some of dem chief fool enough to t'ink bee carry you off on his wing!”
Here the Chippewa looked his contempt for the credulity and ignorance of the others, though he did not express it after the boisterous manner in which a white man of his class might have indulged. To him le Bourdon was a good fellow, but no conjuror, and he understood the taking of the bee too well to have any doubts as to the character of that process. His friend had let him amuse himself by the hour in looking through his spy-glass, so that the mind of this one savage was particularly well fortified against the inroads of the weaknesses that had invaded those of most of the members of the great council. Consequently, he was amused with the notion taken up by some of the others, that le Bourdon had been carried off by bees, though he manifested his amusement in a very Indian-like fashion.
“So much the better,” answered le Bourdon; “and I hope they have followed to line me down to my hive in the settlements.”
“Most on 'em go--yes, dat true. But some don't go. Plenty of Injins still about dis part of Opening.”
“What are we then to do? We shall soon be in want of food. The fish do not bite as they did, and I have killed all the squirrels I can find. You know I dare not use a rifle.”
“Don't be squaw, Bourdon. When Injin get marry he grows good deal like squaw at fuss; but dat soon go away. I spose it's just so wid pale-face. Mustn't be squaw, Bourdon. Dat bad for warrior. What you do for eat? Why, see dere,” pointing to an object that was floating slowly down the river, the current of which was very sluggish just in that reach. “Dere as fat buck as ever did see, eh?”
Sure enough the Indian had killed a deer, of which the Openings were full, and having brought it to the river, he had constructed a raft of logs, and placing the carcase on it, he had set his game adrift, taking care to so far precede it as to be in readiness to tow it into port. When this last operation was performed, it was found that the Chippewa did not heedlessly vaunt the quality of his prize. What was more, so accurately had he calculated the time, and the means of subsistence in the possession of the fugitives, that his supply came in just as it was most needed. In all this he manifested no more than the care of an experienced and faithful hunter. Next to the war-path, the hunting-ground is the great field for an Indian's glory; deeds and facts so far eclipsing purely intellectual qualifications with savages, as to throw oratory, though much esteemed by them, and wisdom at the Council Fires, quite into the shade. In all this, we find the same propensity among ourselves. The common mind, ever subject to these impulses, looks rather to such exploits as address themselves to the senses and the imagination, than to those qualities which the reason alone can best appreciate; and in this, ignorance asserts its negative power over all conditions of life.
Pigeonswing now condescended to enter on such explanations as the state of the case rendered necessary. His account was sufficiently clear, and it manifested throughout the sagacity and shrewdness of a practised hunter and scout. We shall not attempt to give his words, which would require too much space, but the substance of his story was briefly this: As has been alluded to already, the principal chiefs, on a suggestion of Bear's Meat, had followed the young men down the Kalamazoo, dividing themselves by a part of their body's crossing the stream at the first favorable spot. In this way the Indians proceeded, sweeping the river before them, and examining every place that seemed capable of concealing a canoe. Runners were kept in constant motion between the several parties, in order to let the state of the search be known to all; and, feigning to be one of these very men, Pigeonswing had held communication with several whom he purposely met, and to whom he imparted such invented information as contributed essentially to send the young men forward on a false scent. In this way, the main body of the savages descended the river some sixty miles, following its windings, in the first day and a half. Here Pigeonswing left them, turning his own face up stream, in order to rejoin his friends. Of Peter he had no knowledge; neither knowing, nor otherwise learning, what had become of the great chief. On his way up stream, Pigeonswing met several more Indians; runners like himself, or as he seemed to be; or scouts kept on the lookout for the fugitives. He had no difficulty in deceiving these men. None of them had been of Crowsfeather's party, and he was a stranger to them all. Ignorant of his real character, they received his information without distrust, and the orders he pretended to convey were obeyed by them without the smallest hesitation. In this way, then, Pigeonswing contrived to send all the scouts he met away from the river, by telling them that there was reason to think the pale-faces had abandoned the stream, and that it was the wish of Bear's Meat that their trail should be looked for in the interior. This was the false direction that he gave to all, thereby succeeding better even than he had hoped in clearing the banks of the Kalamazoo of observers and foes. Nevertheless, many of those whom he knew to be out, some quite in the rear of the party, and others in its front, and at no great distance from them, he did not meet; of course he could not get his false directions to their ears. There were, in fact, so many of the Indians and so few of the whites, that it was an easy matter to cover the path with young warriors, any one party of whom would be strong enough to capture two men and as many women.
Having told the tale of his own doings, Pigeonswing next came to his proposition for the mode of future proceeding. He proposed that the family should get into the canoes that very night, and commence its flight by going down the stream directly toward its foes! This sounded strangely, but there did not seem to be any alternative. A march across the peninsula would be too much for the females, and there was the certainty that their trail would be found. It may seem strange to those who are unacquainted with the American Indian, and his habits, to imagine that, in so large an expanse, the signs of the passage of so small a party might not escape detection; but such was the case. To one unaccustomed to the vigilance and intelligence of these savages, it must appear just as probable that the vessel could be followed through the wastes of the ocean, by means of its wake, as that the footprints should be so indelible as to furnish signs that can be traced for days. Such, however, is the fact, and no one understood it better than the Chippewa. He was also aware that the country toward Ohio, whither the fugitives would naturally direct their course, now that the English were in possession of Detroit, must soon be a sort of battle-ground, to which most of the warriors of that region would eagerly repair. Under all the circumstances, therefore, he advised the flight by means of the river. Le Bourdon reasoned on all he heard, and, still entertaining some of his latent distrust of Peter, and willing to get beyond his reach, he soon acquiesced in the proposition, and came fully into the plan.
It was now necessary to reload the canoes. This was done in the course of the day, and every arrangement was made, so as to be ready for a start as soon as the darkness set in. Everybody was glad to move, though all were aware of the extent of the hazard they ran. The females, in particular, felt their hearts beat, as each, in her husband's canoe, issued out of the cover into the open river. Pigeonswing took the lead, paddling with a slow, but steady sweep of his arm, and keeping as close as was convenient to one bank. By adopting this precaution, he effectually concealed the canoes from the eyes of all on that side of the river, unless they stood directly on its margin, and had the aid of the shadows to help conceal them from any who might happen to be on the other. In this way, then, the party proceeded, passing the site of the hut, and the grove of Openings around it, undetected. As the river necessarily flowed through the lowest land, its banks were wooded much of the way, which afforded great protection to the fugitives; and this so much the more because these woods often grew in swamps where the scouts would not be likely to resort.
About midnight the canoes reached the first rift. An hour was lost in unloading and in reloading the canoes, and in passing the difficulties at that point. As soon as this was done, the party re-embarked, and resorted once more to the use of the paddle, in order to gain a particular sheltered reach of the river previously to the return of light. This was effected successfully, and the party landed.
It now appeared that Pigeonswing had chosen another swamp as a place of concealment for the fugitives to use during the day. These swamps, through which the river wound its way in short reaches, were admirably adapted to such purposes. Dark, sombre, and hardly penetrable on the side of the land, they were little likely to be entered after a first examination. Nor was it at all probable that females, in particular, would seek a refuge in such a place. But the Chippewa had found the means to obviate the natural obstacles of the low land. There were several spots where the water from the river set back into the swamp, forming so many little creeks; and into the largest of one of these he pushed his canoe, the others following where he led. By resorting to such means, the shelter now obtained was more complete, perhaps, than that previously left.
Pigeonswing forced his light boat up the shallow inlet, until he reached a bit of dry land, where he brought up, announcing THAT as the abiding-place during the day. Glad enough was every one to get on shore, in a spot that promised security, after eight hours of unremitting paddling and of painful excitement. Notwithstanding the rifts and carrying-places they had met, and been obliged to overcome, le Bourdon calculated that they had made as many as thirty miles in the course of that one night. This was a great movement, and to all appearances it had been made without detection. As for the Chippewa, he was quite content, and no sooner was his canoe secured, than he lighted his pipe and sat down to his enjoyment with an air of composure and satisfaction.
“And here, you think, Pigeonswing, that we shall be safe during the day?” demanded le Bourdon, approaching the fallen tree on which the Indian had taken his seat.
“Sartain--no Pottawattamie come here. Too wet. Don't like wet. An't duck, or goose--like dry land, juss like squaw. Dis good 'baccy, Bourdon--hope you got more for friend.”
“I have enough for us all, Pigeonswing, and you shall have a full share. Now, tell me; what will be your next move, and where do you intend to pass the morrow?”
“Juss like diss. Plenty of swamp, Bourdon, on Kekalamazoo. [Footnote: This is the true Indian word, though the whites have seen fit to omit the first syllable.] Run canoe in swamp; den safe 'nough. Injins won't look 'ere, 'cause he don't know whereabout look. Don't like swamp. Great danger down at mouth of river.”
“So it has seemed to me, Chippewa. The Injins must be there in a strong force, and we shall find it no easy matter to get through them. How do you propose to do it?”
“Go by in night. No udder way. When can't see, can't see. Dere plenty of rush dere; dat good t'ing, and, p'raps, dat help us. Rush good cover for canoe. Expec', when we get down 'ere, to get some scalp, too. Plenty of Pottawattamie about dat lodge, sartain; and it very hard if don't get some on him scalp. You mean stop, and dig up cache; eh, Bourdon?”
The cool, quiet manner in which Pigeonswing revealed his own plans, and inquired into those of his friend, had, at least, the effect to revive the confidence of le Bourdon. He could not think the danger very great so long as one so experienced as the Chippewa felt so much confidence in his own future proceedings; and, after talking a short time longer with this man, the bee-hunter went to seek Margery, in order to impart to her a due portion of his own hopes.
The sisters were preparing the breakfast. This was done without the use of fire, it being too hazardous to permit smoke to rise above the tops of the trees. Many is the camp that has been discovered by the smoke, which can be seen at a great distance; and it is a certain sign of the presence of man, when it ascends in threads, or such small columns as denote a domestic fire beneath. This is very different from the clouds that float above the burning prairies, and which all, at once, impute to their true origin. The danger of using fire had been so much guarded against by our fugitives, that the cooking of the party had been done at night; the utmost caution having been used to prevent the fire itself from being seen, and care taken to extinguish it long before the return of day. A supply of cold meat was always on hand, and had it not been, the fugitives would have known how to live on berries, or, at need, to fast; anything was preferable, being exposed to certain capture.
As soon as the party had broken their fast, arrangements were made for recruiting nature by sleep. As for Pigeonswing, Indian-like, he had eaten enormously, no reasonable quantity of venison sufficing to appease his appetite; and when he had eaten, he lay down in the bottom of his canoe and slept. Similar dispositions were made of their persons by the rest, and half an hour after the meal was ended, all there were in a profound sleep. No watch was considered necessary, and none was kept.
The rest of the weary is sweet. Long hours passed, ere any one there awoke; but no sooner did the Chippewa move than all the rest were afoot. It was now late in the day, and it was time to think of taking the meal that was to sustain them through the toil and fatigues of another arduous night. This was done; the necessary preparations being made for a start ere the sun had set. The canoes were then shoved as near the mouth of the inlet as it was safe to go, while the light remained. Here they stopped, and a consultation took place, as to the manner of proceeding.
No sooner did the shades of evening close around the place than the fugitives again put forth. The night was clouded and dark, and so much of the way now lay through forests that there was little reason to apprehend detection. The chief causes of delay were the rifts, and the portages, as had been the case the night before. Luckily, le Bourdon had been up and down the stream so often as to be a very tolerable pilot in its windings. He assumed the control, and by midnight the greatest obstacle to that evening's progress was overcome. At the approach of day, Pigeonswing pointed out another creek, in another swamp, where the party found a refuge for the succeeding day. In this manner four nights were passed on the river, and as many days in swamps, without discovery. The Chippewa had nicely calculated his time and his distances, and not the smallest mistake was made. Each morning a place of shelter was reached in sufficient season; and each night the fugitives were ready for the start as the day shut in. In this manner, most of the river was descended, until a distance that could be easily overcome in a couple of hours of paddling alone remained between the party and the mouth of the stream. Extreme caution was now necessary, for signs of Indians in the neighborhood had been detected at several points in the course of the last night's work. On one occasion, indeed, the escape was so narrow as to be worth recording.
It was at a spot where the stream flowed through a forest denser than common, that Pigeonswing heard voices on the river, ahead of him. One Indian was calling to another, asking to be set across the stream in a canoe. It was too late to retreat, and so much uncertainty existed as to the nearness, or distance, of the danger, that the Chippewa deemed it safest to bring all three of his canoes together, and to let them float past the point suspected, or rather KNOWN, to be occupied by enemies. This was done, with the utmost care. The plan succeeded, though not without running a very great risk. The canoes did float past unseen, though there was a minute of time when le Bourdon fancied by the sounds that savages were talking to each other, within a hundred feet of his ears. Additional security, however, was felt in consequence of the circumstance, since the pursuers must imagine the river below them to be free from the pursued.
The halt that morning was made earlier than had been the practice previously. This was done because the remaining distance was so small that, in continuing to advance, the party would have incurred the risk of reaching the mouth of the river by daylight. This was to be avoided on every account, but principally because it was of great importance to conceal from the savages the direction taken. Were the chiefs certain that their intended victims were on Lake Michigan, it would be possible for them to send parties across the isthmus, that should reach points on Lake Huron, days in advance of the arrival of the bee-hunter and his friends in the vicinity of Saginaw, or Pointe aux Barques, for instance, and where the canoes would be almost certain to pass near the shore, laying their ambushes to accomplish these ends. It was thought very material, therefore, to conceal the movements, even after the lake might be reached, though le Bourdon had not a doubt of his canoes much outsailing those of the savages. The Indians are not very skilful in the use of sails, while the bee-hunter knew how to manage a bark canoe in rough water, with unusual skill. In the common acceptation, he was no sailor; but, in his own peculiar craft, there was not a man living who could excel him in dexterity or judgment.
The halting-place that morning was not in a swamp, for none offered at a suitable distance from the mouth of the river. On the contrary, it was in a piece of Opening, that was tolerably well garnished with trees, however, and through which ran a small brook that poured its tribute into the Kalamazoo. The Chippewa had taken notice of this brook, which was large enough to receive the canoes, where they might be concealed in the rushes. A favorable copse, surrounded with elders, afforded a covered space on shore, and these advantages were improved for an encampment.
Instead of seeking his rest as usual, on reaching this cover, Pigeonswing left the party on a scout. He walked up the brook some distance, in order to conceal his trail, and then struck across the Opening, taking the direction westward, or toward the river's mouth. As for le Bourdon and his friends, they ate and slept as usual, undisturbed; but arose some hours before the close of day.
Thus far, a great work had been accomplished. The canoes had descended the stream with a success that was only equalled by the hardihood of the measure, conducted by an intelligence that really seemed to amount to an instinct Pigeonswing carried a map of the Kalamazoo in his head, and seemed never at a loss to know where to find the particular place he sought. It is true, he had roamed through those Openings ever since he was a child; and an Indian seldom passes a place susceptible of being made of use to his habits, that he does not take such heed of its peculiarities, as to render him the master of all its facilities.
Margery was now full of hope, while the bee-hunter was filled with apprehensions. She saw all things couleur de rose, for she was young, happy, and innocent; but he better understood that they were just approaching the most serious moment of their flight. He knew the vigilance of the American savage, and could not deceive himself on the subject of the danger they must run. The mouth of the river was just the place that, of all others, would be the closest watched, and to pass it would require not only all their skill and courage, but somewhat of the fostering care of Providence. It might be done with success, though the chances were much against.
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Yes! we have need to bid our hopes repose On some protecting influence; here confined Life hath no healing balm for mental woes; Earth is too narrow for the immortal mind. Our spirits burn to mingle with the day, As exiles panting for their native coast; Yet lured by every wild-flower from their way, And shrinking from the gulf that must be crossed. Death hovers round us--in the zephyr's sigh As in the storm he comes--and lo! Eternity! --MRS. HEMANS.
It was probably that inherent disposition to pry into unknown things, which is said to mark her sex, and which was the weakness assailed by the serpent when he deluded Eve into disobedience, that now tempted Margery to go beyond the limits which Pigeonswing had set for her, with a view to explore and ascertain what might be found without. In doing this, however, she did not neglect a certain degree of caution, and avoided exposing her person as much as possible.
Margery had got to the very verge of prudence, so far as the cover was concerned, when her steps were suddenly arrested by a most unexpected and disagreeable sight. An Indian was seated on a rock within twenty feet of the place where she stood. His back was toward her, but she was certain it could not be Pigeonswing, who had gone in a contrary direction, while the frame of this savage was much larger and heavier than that of the Chippewa. His rifle leaned against the rock, near his arm, and the tomahawk and knife were in his belt; still Margery thought, so far as she could ascertain, that he was not in his war-paint, as she knew was the fact with those whom she had seen at Prairie Round. The attitude and whole deportment of this stranger, too, struck her as remarkable. Although our heroine stood watching him for several minutes, almost breathless with terror and anxiety to learn his object, he never stirred even a limb in all that time. There he sat, motionless as the rock on which he had placed himself; a picture of solitude and reflection.
It was evident, moreover, that this stranger also sought a species of concealment, as well as the fugitives. It is true he had not buried himself in a cover of bushes; but his seat was in a hollow of the ground where no one could have seen him, from the rear or on either side, at a distance a very little greater than that at which Margery stood, while his front was guarded from view by a line of bushes that fringed the margin of the stream. Marius, pondering on the mutations of fortune, amid the ruins of Carthage, could scarcely have presented a more striking object than the immovable form of this stranger. At length the Indian slightly turned his head, when his observer, to her great surprise, saw the hard, red, but noble and expressive profile of the well-known features of Peter.
In an instant all Margery's apprehensions vanished, and her hand was soon lightly laid on the shoulder of her friend. Notwithstanding the suddenness of this touch, the great chief manifested no alarm. He turned his head slowly, and when he saw the bright countenance of the charming bride, his smile met hers in pleased recognition. There was no start, no exclamation, no appearance of surprise; on the contrary, Peter seemed to meet his pretty young friend much as a matter of course, and obviously with great satisfaction.
“How lucky this is, Peter!” exclaimed the breathless Margery. “Bourdon's mind will now be at rest, for he was afraid you had gone to join our enemies, Bear's Meat and his party.”
“Yes; go and stay wid 'em. So bess. Now dey t'ink Peter all on deir side. But never forget you, young Blossom.”
“I believe you, Peter; for I FEEL as if you are a true friend. How lucky that we should meet here!”
“No luck at all. Come a purpose. Pigeonswing tell me where you be, so come here. Juss so.”
“Then you expected to find us in this cover! and what have you to tell us of our enemies?”
“Plenty of DEM. All about mout' of river. All about woods and Openings here. More dan you count. T'ink of nuttin' but get your scalp.”
“Ah! Peter;--why is it that you red men wish so much to take our lives? --and why have you destroyed the missionary, a pious Christian, who wished for nothing but your good?”
Peter bent his eyes to the earth, and for more than a minute he made no reply. He was much moved, however, as was visible in his countenance, which plainly denoted that strong emotions were at work within.
“Blossom, listen to my words,” he, at length, answered. “They are such as a fader would speak to his da'ghter. You my da'ghter. Tell you so, once; and what Injin say once, he say alway. Poor, and don't know much, but know how to do as he say he do. Yes, you my da'ghter! Bear's Meat can't touch YOU, widout he touch ME. Bourdon your husband; you his squaw. Husband and squaw go togedder, on same path. Dat right. But, Blossom, listen. Dere is Great Spirit. Injin believe dat as well as pale-face. See dat is so. Dere is Great WICKED Spirit, too. Feel dat, too; can't help it. For twenty winter dat Great Wicked Spirit stay close to my side. He put his hand before one of my ear, and he put his mout' to tudder. Keep whisper, whisper, day and night, nebber stop whisper. Tell me to kill pale-face, wherever I find him. Bess to kill him. If didn't kill pale-face, pale-face kill Injin. No help for it. Kill ole man, kill young man; kill squaws, pappoose and all. Smash eggs and break up 'e nest. Dat what he whisper, day and night, for twenty winters. Whisper so much, was force to b'lieve him. Bad to have too much whisper of same t'ing in ear. Den I want scalp. Couldn't have too much scalp. Took much scalp. All pale-face scalp. Heart grow hard. Great pleasure was to kill pale-face. Dat feeling last, Blossom, till I see you. Feel like fader to you, and don't want your scalp. Won'er great deal why I feel so, but do feel so. Dat my natur'. Still want all udder pale-face scalp. Want Bourdon scalp, much as any.”
A slight exclamation from his companion, which could scarcely be called a scream, caused the Indian to cease speaking, when the two looked toward each other, and their eyes met. Margery, however, saw none of those passing gleams of ferocity which had so often troubled her in the first few weeks of their acquaintance; in their stead, an expression of subdued anxiety, and an earnestness of inquiry that seemed to say how much the chief's heart yearned to know more on that mighty subject toward which his thoughts had lately been turned. The mutual glance sufficed to renew the confidence our heroine was very reluctant to relinquish, while it awakened afresh all of Peter's parental concern in the welfare of the interesting young woman at his side.
“But this feeling has left you, Peter, and you no longer wish Bourdon's scalp,” said Margery, hastily. “Now he is my husband, he is your son.”
“Dat good, p'raps,” answered the Injin, “but dat not a reason, nudder, Blossom. You right, too. Don't want Bourdon scalp any longer. Dat true. But don't want ANY scalp, any more. Heart grow soft--an't hard, now.”
“I wish I could let you understand, Peter, how much I rejoice to hear this! I have never felt afraid of you, on my own account, though I will own that I have sometimes feared that the dreadful cruel stories which are told of your enmity to my color are not altogether without truth. Now, you tell me you are the white man's friend, and that you no longer wish to injure him. These are blessed words, Peter; and humbly do I thank God, through his blessed Son, that I have lived to hear them!”
“Dat Son make me feel so,” returned the Indian, earnestly. “Yes, juss so. My heart was hard, till medicinepriest tell dat tradition of Son of Great Spirit--how he die for all tribes and nations, and ask his fader to do good to dem dat take his life--dat won'erful tradition, Blossom! Sound like song of wren in my ear--sweeter dan mocking-bird when he do his bess. Yes, dat won'erful. He true, too; for medicine-priest ask his Manitou to bless Injin, juss as Injins lift tomahawk to take his life. I see'd and heard dat, myself. All, won'erful, won'erful!”
“It was the Spirit of God that enabled poor Amen to do that, Peter; and it is the Spirit of God that teaches you to see and feel the beauty of such an act. Without the aid of that Spirit, we are helpless as children; with it, strong as giants. I do not wonder, at all, that the good missionary was able to pray for his enemies with his dying breath. God gave him strength to do so.”
Margery spoke as she felt, earnestly, and with emphasis. Her cheeks flushed with the strength of her feelings, and Peter gazed on her with a species of reverence and wonder. The beauty of this charming young woman was pleasing rather than brilliant, depending much on expression for its power. A heightened color greatly increased it, and when, as in this instance, the eyes reflected the tints of the cheeks, one might have journeyed days in older regions, without finding her equal in personal attractions. Much as he admired her, however, Peter had now that on his mind which rendered her beauty but a secondary object with him. His soul had been touched by the unseen, but omnipresent, power of the Holy Spirit, and his companion's language and fervor contributed largely in keeping alive his interest in what he felt.
“Nebber know Injin do dat,” said Peter, in a slow, deliberative sort of way; “no, nebber know Injin do so. Always curse and hate his enemy, and most when about to lose his scalp. Den, feelin's hottest. Den, most want to use tomahawk on his enemy. Den, most feel dat he hate him. But not so wid medicine-priest. Pray for Injin; ask Great Spirit to do him all 'e good he can; juss as Injin was goin' to strike. Won'erful--most won'erful DAT, in my eyes. Blossom, you know Peter. He your fader. He take you, and make you his da'ghter. His heart is soft to you, Blossom. But, he nuttin' but poor Injin, dough a great chief. What he know? Pale-face pappoose know more dan Injin chief. Dat come from Great Spirit too. He wanted it so, and it is so. Our chiefs say dat Great Spirit love Injin. May be so. T'ink he love ebbery body; but he can't love Injin as much as he love pale-face, or he wouldn't let red man know so little. Don't count wigwams, and canoes, and powder, and lead, as proof of Great Spirit's love. Pale-face got more of dese dan Injin. Dat I see and know, and dat I feel. But it no matter. Injin used to be poor, and don't care. When used to be poor, den used to it. When used to be rich, den it hard not to be rich. All use. Injin don't care. But it bad not to know. I'm warrior--I'm hunter--I'm great chief. You squaw--you young--you know so much as squaw of chief. But you know most. I feel ashamed to know so little. Want to know more. Want to know most how 'e Son of Great Spirit die for all tribe, and pray to his fader to bless 'em dat kill him. Dat what Peter now want most to know!”
“I wish I was better able to teach you, Peter, from the bottom of my heart; but the little I do know you shall hear. I would not deny you for a thousand worlds, for I believe the Holy Spirit has touched your heart, and that you will become a new man. Christians believe that all must become new men, who are to live in the other world, in the presence of God.”
“How can dat be? Peter soon be ole--how can ole man grow young ag'in?”
“The meaning of this is that we must so change in feelings, as no longer to be the same persons. The things that we loved we must hate, and the things that we hated, or at least neglected, we must love. When we feel this change in our hearts, then may we hope that we love and reverence the Great Spirit, and are living under his holy care.”
Peter listened with the attention of an obedient and respectful child. If meekness, humility, a wish to learn the truth, and a devout sentiment toward the Creator, are so many indications of the “new birth,” then might this savage be said to have been truly “born again.” Certainly he was no longer the same man, in a moral point of view, and of this he was himself entirely conscious. To him the wonder was what had produced so great and so sudden a change! But the reply he made to Margery will, of itself, sufficiently express his views of his own case.
“An Injin like a child,” he said, meekly; “nebber know. Even pale-face squaw know more dan great chief, Nebber feel as do now. Heart soft as young squaw's. Don't hate any body, no more. Wish well to all tribe, and color, and nation. Don't hate Bri'sh, don't hate Yankee; don't hate Cherokee, even. Wish 'em all well. Don't know dat heart is strong enough to ask Great Spirit to do 'em all good, if dey want my scalp--p'rap dat too much for poor Injin; but don't want nobody's scalp, myself. Dat somet'in', I hope, for me.”
“It is, indeed, Peter; and if you will get down on your knees, and humble your thoughts, and pray to God to strengthen you in these good feelings, he will be sure to do it, and make you, altogether, a new man.”
Peter looked wistfully at Margery, and then turned his eyes toward the earth. After sitting in a thoughtful mood for some time, he again regarded his companion, saying, with the simplicity of a child: “Don't know how to do dat, Blossom. Hear medicine-priest of pale-faces pray, sometime, but poor Injin don't know enough to speak to Great Spirit. You speak to Great Spirit for him. He know your voice, Blossom, and listen to what you say; but he won't hear Peter, who has so long hated his enemy. P'raps he angry if he hear Peter speak.”
“In that you are mistaken, Peter. The ears of the Lord are ever open to our prayers, when put up in sincerity, as I feel certain that yours will now be. But, after I have told you the meaning of what I am about to say, I will pray with you and for you. It is best that you should begin to do this, as soon as you can.”
Margery then slowly repeated to Peter the words of the Lord's prayer. She gave him its history, and explained the meaning of several of its words that might otherwise have been unintelligible to him, notwithstanding his tolerable proficiency in English--a proficiency that had greatly increased in the last few weeks, in consequence of his constant communications with those who spoke it habitually. The word “trespasses,” in particular, was somewhat difficult for the Indian to comprehend, but Margery persevered until she succeeded in giving her scholar tolerably accurate ideas of the meaning of each term. Then she told the Indian to kneel with her, and, for the first time in his life, that man of the Openings and prairies lifted his voice in prayer to the one God. It is true that Peter had often before mentally asked favors of his Manitou; but the requests were altogether of a worldly character, and the being addressed was invested with attributes very different from those which he now understood to belong to the Lord of heaven and earth. Nor was the spirit in asking at all the same. We do not wish to be understood as saying that this Indian was already a full convert to Christianity, which contains many doctrines of which he had not the most distant idea; but his heart had undergone the first step in the great change of conversion, and he was now as humble as he had once been proud; as meek, as he had formerly been fierce; and he felt that certain proof of an incipient love of the Creator, in a similar feeling toward all the works of his hands.
When Peter arose from his knees, after repeating the prayer to Margery's slow leading, it was with the dependence of a child on the teaching of its mother. Physically, he was the man he ever had been. He was as able to endure fatigue, as sinewy in his frame, and as capable of fasting and of sustaining fatigue, as in his most warlike days; but, morally, the change was great, indeed. Instead of the obstinate confidence in himself and his traditions, which had once so much distinguished this chief, there was substituted an humble distrust of his own judgment, that rendered him singularly indisposed to rely on his personal views, in any matter of conscience, and he was truly become a child in all that pertained to his religious belief. In good hands, and under more advantageous circumstances, the moral improvement of Peter would have been great; but, situated as he was, it could not be said to amount to much more than a very excellent commencement.
All this time both Peter and Margery had been too intent on their feelings and employment, to take much heed to the precautions necessary to their concealment. The sun was setting ere they arose, and then it was that Peter made the important discovery that they were observed by two of the young men of the Pottawattamies--scouts kept out by Bear's Meat to look for the fugitives.
The time was when Peter would not have hesitated to use his rifle on these unwelcome intruders; but the better spirit that had come over him, now led him to adopt a very different course. Motioning to the young men, he ordered them to retire, while he led Margery within the cover of the bushes. Formerly, Peter would not have scrupled to resort to deception, in order to throw these two young men on a wrong scent, and get rid of them in that mode; but now he had a reluctance to deceive; and, no sooner did they fall back at his beckoning, than he followed Margery to the camp. The latter was giving her husband a hurried account of what had just happened, as Peter joined them.
“Our camp is known!” exclaimed the bee-hunter the instant he beheld the Indian.
“Juss so. Pottawattamie see squaw, and go and tell his chief. Dat sartain,” answered Peter.
“What is there to be done? --Fight for our lives, or fly?”
“Get in canoe quick as can. It take dem young men half-hour to reach place where chief be. In dat half-hour we muss go as far as we can. No good to stay here. Injin come in about one hour.”
Le Bourdon knew his position well enough to understand this. Nevertheless, there were several serious objections to an immediate flight. Pigeonswing was absent, and the bee-hunter did not like the notion of leaving him behind, for various reasons. Then it was not yet dark; and to descend the river by daylight, appeared like advancing into the jaws of the lion designedly. Nor was le Bourdon at his ease on the subject of Peter. His sudden appearance, the insufficient and far from clear account of Margery, and the extraordinary course advised, served to renew ancient distrusts, and to render him reluctant to move. But of one thing there could be no doubt. Their present position must be known, for Margery had seen the two strange Indians with her own eyes, and a search might soon be expected. Under all the circumstances, therefore, our hero reluctantly complied with Margery's reiterated solicitations, and they all got into the canoes.
“I do not like this movement, Peter,” said le Bourdon, as he shoved his own light craft down the brook, previously to entering the river. “I hope it may turn out to be better than it looks, and that you can keep us out of the hands of our enemies. Remember, it is broad daylight, and that red men are plenty two or three miles below us.”
“Yes, know dat; but muss go. Injin too plenty here, soon. Yes, muss go. Bourdon, why you can't ask bee, now, what bess t'ing for you to do, eh? Good time, now, ask bee to tell what he know.”
The bee-hunter made no reply, but his pretty wife raised her hand, involuntarily, as if to implore the Indian to forbear. Peter was a little bewildered; for as yet, he did not understand that a belief in necromancy was not exactly compatible with the notions of the Christian Providence. In his ignorance, how much was he worse off than the wisest of our race? Will any discreet man who has ever paid close attention to the power of the somnambule, deny that there is a mystery about such a person that exceeds all our means of explanation? That there are degrees in the extent of this power--that there are false, as well as true somnambules--all who have attended to the subject must allow; but, a deriding disbeliever in our own person once, we have since seen that which no laws, known to us, can explain, and which we are certain is not the subject of collusion, as we must have been a party to the fraud ourselves, were any such practised. To deny the evidence of our senses is an act of greater weakness than to believe that there are mysteries connected with our moral and physical being that human sagacity has not yet been able to penetrate; and we repudiate the want of manliness that shrinks from giving its testimony when once convinced, through an apprehension of being derided, as weaker than those who withhold their belief. We KNOW that our own thoughts have been explained and rendered, by a somnambule, under circumstances that will not admit of any information by means known to us by other principles; and whatever others may think on the subject, we are perfectly conscious that no collusion did or could exist. Why, then, are we to despise the poor Indian because he still fancied le Bourdon could hold communication with his bees? We happen to be better informed, and there may be beings who are aware of the as yet hidden laws of animal magnetism--hidden as respects ourselves, though known to them--and who fully comprehend various mistakes and misapprehensions connected with our impressions on this subject, that escape our means of detection. It is not surprising, therefore, that Peter, in his emergency, turned to those bees, in the hope that they might prove of assistance, or that Margery silently rebuked him for the weakness, in the manner mentioned.
Although it was still light, the sun was near setting when the canoes glided into the river. Fortunately for the fugitives, the banks were densely wooded, and the stream of great width--a little lake, in fact--and there was not much danger of their being seen until they got near the mouth; nor then, even, should they once get within the cover of the wild rice, and of the rushes. There was no retreat, however; and after paddling some distance, in order to get beyond the observation of any scout who might approach the place where they had last been seen, the canoes were brought close together, and suffered to float before a smart breeze, so as not to reach the mouth of the stream before the night closed around them. Everything appeared so tranquil, the solitude was so profound, and their progress so smooth and uninterrupted, that a certain amount of confidence revived in the breasts of all, and even the bee-hunter had hopes of eventual escape.
A conversation now occurred, in which Peter was questioned concerning the manner in which he had been occupied during his absence; an absence that had given le Bourdon so much concern. Had the chief been perfectly explicit, he would have confessed that fully one-half of his waking thoughts had been occupied in thinking of the death of the Son of God, of the missionary's prayer for his enemies, and of the sublime morality connected with such a religion. It is true Peter did not--could not, indeed--enter very profoundly into the consideration of these subjects; nor were his notions either very clear or orthodox; but they were sincere, and the feelings to which they gave birth were devout. Peter did not touch on these circumstances, however, confining his explanations to the purely material part of his proceedings. He had remained with Bear's Meat, Crowsfeather, and the other leading chiefs, in order to be at the fountain-head of information, and to interpose his influence should the pale-faces unhappily fall into the hands of those who were so industriously looking for them. Nothing had occurred to call his authority out, but a strange uncertainty seemed to reign among the warriors, concerning the manner in which their intended victims eluded their endeavors to overtake them. No trail had been discovered, scout after scout coming in to report a total want of success in their investigations inland. This turned the attention of the Indians still more keenly on the river's mouth, it being certain that the canoes could not have passed out into the lake previously to the arrival of the two or three first parties of their young men, who had been sent so early to watch that particular outlet.
Peter informed le Bourdon that his cache had been discovered, opened, and rifled of its stores. This was a severe loss to our hero, and one that would have been keenly felt at any other time; but just then he had interests so much more important to protect, that he thought and said little about this mishap. The circumstance which gave him the most concern was this: Peter stated that Bear's Meat had directed about a dozen of his young men to keep watch, day and night, in canoes, near the mouth of the river, lying in wait among the wild rice, like so many snakes in the grass.
The party was so much interested in this conversation that, almost insensibly to themselves, they had dropped down to the beginning of the rushes and rice, and had got rather dangerously near to the critical point of their passage. As it was still daylight, Peter now proposed pushing the canoes in among the plants, and there remaining until it might be safer to move. This was done accordingly, and in a minute or two all three of the little barks were concealed within the cover.
The question now was whether the fugitives had been observed, but suffered to advance, as every foot they descended the stream was taking them nearer to their foes. Peter did not conceal his apprehension on this point, since he deemed it improbable that any reach near the mouth of the Kalamazoo was without its lookouts, at a moment so interesting. Such was, indeed, the fact, as was afterward ascertained; but the young men who had seen Peter and Margery had given the alarm, passing the word where the fugitives were to be found, and the sentinels along this portion of the stream had deserted their stations, in order to be in at the capture. By such delicate and unforeseen means does Providence often protect those who are the subjects of its especial care, baffling the calculations of art by its own quiet control of events.
The bee-hunter had a feverish desire to be moving. After remaining in the cover about half an hour, he proposed that they should get the canoes into one of the open passages, of which there were many among the plants, and proceed. Peter had more of the patience of an Indian, and deemed the hour too early. But le Bourdon was not yet entirely free from distrust of his companion, and telling Gershom to follow, he began paddling down one of the passages mentioned. This decisive step compelled the rest to follow, or to separate from their companions. They chose to do the first.
Had le Bourdon possessed more self-command, and remained stationary a little longer, he would, in all probability, have escaped altogether from a very serious danger that he was now compelled to run. Although there were many of the open places among the plants, they did not always communicate with each other, and it became necessary to force the canoes through little thickets, in order to get out of one into another, keeping the general direction of descending the river. It was while effecting the first of these changes, that the agitation of the tops of the plants caught the eye of a lookout on the shore. By signals, understood among themselves, this man communicated his discovery to a canoe that was acting as one of the guard-boats, thus giving a general alarm along the whole line of sentinels, as well as to the chiefs down at the hut or at the mouth of the river. The fierce delight with which this news was received, after so long a delay, became ungovernable, and presently yells and cries filled the air, proceeding from both sides of the stream, as well as from the river itself.
There was not a white person in those canoes who did not conceive that their party was lost, when this clamor was heard. With Peter it was different. Instead of admitting of alarm, he turned all his faculties to use. While le Bourdon himself was nearly in despair, Peter was listening with his nice ears, to catch the points on the river whence the yells arose. For the banks he cared nothing. The danger was from the canoes. By the keenness of his faculties, the chief ascertained that there were four canoes out, and that they would have to run the gauntlet between them, or escape would be hopeless. By the sounds he also became certain that these four canoes were in the rice, two on each side of the river, and there they would probably remain, in expectation that the fugitives would be most likely to come down in the cover.
The decision of Peter was made in a moment. It was now quite dark, and those who were in canoes within the rice could not well see the middle of the stream, even by daylight. He determined, therefore, to take the very centre of the river, giving his directions to that effect with precision and clearness. The females he ordered to lie down, each in her own canoe, while their husbands alone were to remain visible. Peter hoped that, in the darkness, le Bourdon and Gershom might pass for Indians, on the lookout, and under his own immediate command.
One very important fact was ascertained by le Bourdon, as soon as these arrangements were explained and completed. The wind on the lake was blowing from the south, and of course was favorable to those who desired to proceed in the opposite direction. This he communicated to Margery in a low tone, endeavoring to encourage her by all the means in his power. In return, the young wife muttered a few encouraging words to her husband. Every measure was understood between the parties. In the event of a discovery, the canoes were to bury themselves in the rice, taking different directions, each man acting for himself. A place of rendezvous was appointed outside, at a headland known to Gershom and le Bourdon, and signals were agreed on, by which the latest arrival might know that all was safe there. These points were settled as the canoes floated slowly down the stream.
Peter took and kept the lead. The night was star-lit and clear, but there was no moon. On the water, this made but little difference, objects not being visible at any material distance. The chief governed the speed, which was moderate, but regular. At the rate he was now going, it would require about an hour to carry the canoes into the lake. But nearly all of that hour must pass in the midst of enemies!
Half of the period just mentioned elapsed, positively without an alarm of any sort. By this time, the party was abreast of the spot where Gershom and le Bourdon had secreted the canoes in the former adventure at the mouth of the river. On the shores, however, a very different scene now offered. Then, the fire burned brightly in the hut, and the savages could be seen by its light. Now, all was not only dark, but still as death. There was no longer any cry, sound, alarm, or foot-fall, audible. The very air seemed charged with uncertainty, and its offspring, apprehension.
As they approached nearer and nearer to what was conceived to be the most critical point in the passage, the canoes got closer together; so close, indeed, that le Bourdon and Gershom might communicate in very guarded tones. The utmost care was taken to avoid making any noise, since a light and careless blow from a paddle, on the side of a canoe, would be almost certain, now, to betray them. Margery and Dorothy could no longer control their feelings, and each rose in her seat, raising her body so as to bring her head above the gunwale of the canoe, if a bark canoe can be said to have a gunwale at all. They even whispered to each other, endeavoring to glean encouragement by sympathy. At this instant occurred the crisis in their attempt to escape.
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For an Indian isle she shapes her way With constant mind both night and day: She seems to hold her home in view And sails as if the path she knew, So calm and stately in her motion Across the unfathomed, trackless ocean. -- WILSON.
It has been said that Peter was in advance. When his canoe was nearly abreast of the usual landing at the hut, he saw two canoes coming out from among the rice, and distant from him not more than a hundred yards. At a greater distance, indeed, it would not have been easy to distinguish such an object on the water at all. Instead of attempting to avoid these two canoes, the chief instantly called to them, drawing the attention of those in them to himself, speaking so loud as to be easily overheard by those who followed.
“My young men are too late,” he said. “The pale-faces have been seen in the openings above by our warriors, and must soon be here. Let us land, and be ready to meet them at the wigwam.”
Peter's voice was immediately recognized. The confident, quiet, natural manner in which he spoke served to mislead those in the canoes; and when he joined them, and entered the passage among the rice that led to the landing, preceding the others, the last followed him as regularly as the colt follows its dam. Le Bourdon heard the conversation, and understood the movement, though he could not see the canoes. Peter continued talking aloud, as he went up the passage, receiving answers to all he said from his new companions, his voice serving to let the fugitives know precisely where they were. All this was understood and improved by the last, who lost no time in turning the adventure to account.
The first impulse of le Bourdon had been to turn and fly up stream. But, ascertaining that these dangerous enemies were so fully occupied by Peter as not to see the canoes behind, he merely inclined a little toward the other side of the channel, and slackened his rate of movement, in order not to come too near. The instant he was satisfied that all three of the canoes in advance had entered the passage mentioned, and were moving toward the landing, he let out, and glided down stream like an arrow. It required but half a minute to cross the opening of the passage, but Peter's conversation kept his followers looking ahead, which greatly lessened the risk. Le Bourdon's heart was in his mouth several times, while thus running the gauntlet, as it might be; but fortune favored them; or, as Margery more piously understood the circumstances, a Divine Providence led them in safety past the danger.
At the mouth of the river both le Bourdon and Gershom thought it highly probable that they should fall in with more lookouts, and each prepared his arms for a fight. But no canoe was there, and the fugitives were soon in the lake. Michigan is a large body of water, and a bark canoe is but a frail craft to put to sea in, when there is any wind or commotion. On the present occasion, there was a good deal of both; so much as greatly to terrify the females. Of all the craft known, however, one of these egg-shells is really the safest, if properly managed, among breakers or amid the combing of seas. We have ourselves ridden in them safely through a surf that would have swamped the best man-of-war cutter that ever floated; and done it, too, without taking on board as much water as would serve to wash one's hands. The light vessel floats on so little of the element, indeed, that the foam of a large sea has scarce a chance of getting above it, or aboard it; the great point in the handling being to prevent the canoe from falling broadside to. By keeping it end on to the sea, in our opinion, a smart gale might be weathered in one of these craft, provided the endurance of a man could bear up against the unceasing watchfulness and incessant labor of sweeping with the paddle, in order to prevent broaching to.
Le Bourdon, it has been said, was very skilful in the management of his craft; and Gershom, now perforce a sober and useful man, was not much behind him in this particular. The former had foreseen this very difficulty, and made all his arrangements to counteract it. No sooner, therefore, did he find the canoes in rough water than he brought them together, side by side, and lashed them there. This greatly lessened the danger of capsizing, though it increased the labor of managing the craft when disposed to turn broadside to. It only remained to get sail on the catamaran, for some such thing was it now, in order to keep ahead of the sea as much as possible. Light cotton lugs were soon spread, one in each canoe, and away they went, as sailors term it, wing and wing.
It was now much easier steering, though untiring vigilance was still necessary. A boat may appear to fly, and yet the “send of the sea” shall glance ahead of it with the velocity of a bird. Nothing that goes through, or ON, the water--and the last is the phrase best suited to the floating of a bark canoe--can ever be made to keep company with that feathery foam, which, under the several names of “white-caps”--an in-shore and lubber's term--“combs,” “breaking of the seas,” “the wash,” etc., etc., glances by a vessel in a blow, or comes on board her even when she is running before it. We have often watched these clouds of water, as they have shot ahead of us, when ploughing our own ten or eleven knot through the brine, and they have ever appeared to us as so many useful admonishers of what the power of God is, as compared to the power of man. The last shall construct his ship, fit her with all the appliances of his utmost art, sail her with the seaman's skill, and force her through her element with something like railroad speed; yet will the seas “send” their feathery crests past her, like so many dolphins, or porpoises, sporting under her fore-foot. It is this following sea which becomes so very dangerous in heavy gales, and which compels the largest ships frequently to heave to, in order that they may present their bows to its almost resistless power.
But our adventurers had no such gales as those we mean, or any such seas to withstand. The wind blew fresh from the south, and Michigan can get up a very respectable swell at need. Like the seas in all the great lakes, it was short, and all the worse for that. The larger the expanse of water over which the wind passes, the longer is the sea, and the easier is it for the ship to ride on it. Those of Lake Michigan, however, were quite long enough for a bark canoe, and glad enough were both Margery and Dorothy when they found their two little vessels lashed together, and wearing an air of more stability than was common to them. Le Bourdon's sail was first spread, and it produced an immediate relief from the washing of the waves. The drift of a bark canoe, in a smart blow, is considerable, it having no hold on the water to resist it; but our adventurers fairly flew as soon as the cotton cloth was opened. The wind being exactly south, by steering due north, or dead before it, it was found possible to carry the sail in the other canoe, borne out on the opposite side; and from the moment that was opened, all the difficulty was reduced to steering so “small,” as seamen term it, as to prevent one or the other of the lugs from jibing. Had this occurred, however, no very serious consequences would have followed, the precaution taken of lashing the craft together rendering capsizing next to impossible.
The Kalamazoo and its mouth were soon far behind, and le Bourdon no longer felt the least apprehension of the savages left in it. The Indians are not bold navigators, and he felt certain that the lake was too rough for the savages to venture out, while his own course gradually carried him off the land, and out of the track of anything that kept near the shore. A short time produced a sense of security, and the wind appearing to fall, instead of increasing in violence, it was soon arranged that one of the men should sleep, while the other looked to the safety of the canoes.
It was about nine o'clock when the fugitives made sail, off the mouth of the Kalamazoo; and, at the return of light, seven hours later, they were more than forty miles from the place of starting. The wind still stood, with symptoms of growing fresher again as the sun rose, and the land could just be seen in the eastern board, the coast in that direction having made a considerable curvature inland. This had brought the canoes farther from the land than le Bourdon wished to be, but he could not materially change his course without taking in one of his sails. As much variation was made, however, as was prudent, and by nine o'clock, or twelve hours after entering the lake, the canoes again drew near to the shore, which met them ahead. By the bee hunter's calculations, they were now about seventy miles from the mouth of the Kalamazoo, having passed the outlets of two or three of the largest streams of those regions.
The fugitives selected a favorable spot, and landed behind a headland that gave them a sufficient lee for the canoes. They had now reached a point where the coast trends a little to the eastward, which brought the wind in a slight degree off the land. This change produced no very great effect on the seas, but it enabled the canoes to keep close to the shore, making something of a lee for them. This they did about noon, after having lighted a fire, caught some fish in a small stream, killed a deer and dressed it, and cooked enough provisions to last for two or three days. The canoes were now separated again; it being easier to manage them in that state than when lashed together, besides enabling them to carry both sails. The farther north they got the more of a lee was found, though it was in no place sufficient to bring smooth water.
In this manner several more hours were passed, and six times as many more miles were made in distance. When le Bourdon again landed, which he did shortly before the sun set, he calculated his distance from the mouth of the Kalamazoo to be rather more than a hundred miles. His principal object was to ascend a bluff and to take a look at the coast, in order to examine it for canoes. This his glass enabled him to do with some accuracy, and when he rejoined the party, he was rejoiced to have it in his power to report that the coast was clear. After refreshing themselves, the canoes were again brought together, in order to divide the watches, and a new start was made for the night. In this manner did our adventurers make their way to the northward for two nights and days, landing often, to fish, hunt, rest, and cook, as well as to examine the coast. At the end of the time mentioned, the celebrated straits of the Michillimackinac, or Mackinaw, as they are almost universally termed, came in sight. The course had been gradually changing toward the eastward, and, luckily for the progress of the fugitives, the wind with it, leaving them always a favorable breeze. But it was felt to be no longer safe to use a sail, and recourse was had to the paddles, until the straits and island were passed. This caused some delay, and added a good deal to the labor; but it was deemed so dangerous to display their white cotton sails, objects that might be seen for a considerable distance, that it was thought preferable to adopt this caution. Nor was it useless. In consequence of this foresight, a fleet of canoes was passed in safety, which were crossing from the post at Mackinaw to ward the main land of Michigan. The number of the canoes in this fleet could not have been less than fifty, but getting a timely view of them, le Bourdon hid his own craft in a cove, and remained there until the danger was over.
The course now changed still more, while the wind got quite round to the westward. This made a fair wind at first, and gave the canoes a good lee as they advanced. Lake Huron, which was the water the fugitives were now on, lies nearly parallel to Michigan, and the course was southeasterly. As le Bourdon had often passed both ways on these waters, he had his favorite harbors, and knew those signs which teach navigators how to make their prognostics of the weather. On the whole, the fugitives did very well, though they lost two days between Mackinaw and Saginaw Bay; one on account of the strength of the wind, and one on account of rain. During the last, they remained in a hut that le Bourdon had himself constructed in one of his many voyages, and which he had left standing. These empty cabins, or chientes, are of frequent occurrence in new countries, being used, like the Refuges in the Alps, by every traveller as he has need of them.
The sight of the fleet of canoes, in the straits of Michillimackinac, caused the fugitives the only real trouble they had felt, between the time when they left the mouth of the Kalamazoo, and the ten days that succeeded. By the end of that period the party had crossed Saginaw, and was fast coming up with Point au Barques, a landmark for all who navigate the waters of Huron, when a canoe was seen coming out from under the land, steering as if to intercept them. This sight gave both concern and pleasure; concern, as it might lead to a hostile encounter, and pleasure, because the bee-hunter hoped for information that might be useful in governing his future course. Here his glass came in play, with good effect. By means of that instrument, it was soon ascertained that the strange canoe contained but two men, both Indians, and as that was just their own force no great danger was apprehended from the meeting. The craft, therefore, continued to approach each other, le Bourdon keeping his glass levelled on the strangers much of the time.
“As I live, yonder are Peter and Pigeonswing,” suddenly exclaimed our hero. “They have crossed the Peninsula, and have come out from the point, in that canoe, to meet us.”
“With important news, then, depend on it, Benjamin,” answered the wife. “Tell this to brother, that he and Dolly may not feel more alarm than is necessary.”
The bee-hunter called out to his friends in the other canoe, and communicated the discovery just made, the two craft keeping always within hailing distance of each other.
“Them Injins are not here for nothing,” answered Dorothy. “You will find they have something serious to say.”
“We shall soon know,” called out le Bourdon. “Ten minutes will bring us alongside of them.”
The ten minutes did that much, and before the expiration of the short space, the three canoes were fastened together, that of Peter being in the centre. The bee-hunter saw, at a glance, that the expedition of the Indians had been hurried; for their canoe, besides being of very indifferent qualities, was not provided with the implements and conveniences usual to a voyage of any length. Still, he would not ask a question, but lighting his pipe, after a few puffs, he passed it courteously over to Peter. The great chief smoked a while, and gave it to Pigeonswing, in his turn, who appeared to enjoy it quite as much as any of the party.
“My father does not believe he is a Jew?” said le Bourdon, smiling; willing to commence a discourse, though still determined not to betray a womanish curiosity.
“We are poor Injins, Bourdon; just as the Great Spirit made us. Dat bess. Can't help what Manitou do. If he don't make us Jew, can't be Jew. If he make us Injin, muss be Injin. For my part, b'lieve I'm Injin, and don't want to be pale-face. Can love pale-face, now, juss as well as love Injin.”
“Oh, I hope this is true, Peter,” exclaimed Margery, her handsome face flushing with delight, at hearing these words. “So long as your heart tells you this, be certain that the Spirit of God is in you.”
Peter made no answer, but he looked profoundly impressed with the novel feeling that had taken possession of his soul. As for the bee-hunter, he did not meddle with Margery's convictions or emotions on such subjects, resembling, in this particular, most men, who, however indifferent to religion in their own persons, are never sorry to find that their wives profoundly submit to its influence. After a short pause, a species of homage involuntarily paid to the subject, he thought he might now inquire into the circumstances that brought the Indians on their route, without incurring the imputation of a weak and impatient curiosity. In reply, Peter's story was soon told. He had rejoined the chiefs without exciting distrust, and all had waited for the young men to bring in the captives. As soon as it was ascertained that the intended victims had escaped, and by water, parties proceeded to different points, in order to intercept them. Some followed in canoes, but, being less bold in their navigation than the bee-hunter, they did not make the straits until some time after the fugitives had passed. Peter, himself, had joined Bear's Meat and some twenty warriors who had crossed the Peninsula, procured canoes at the head of Saginaw Bay, and had come out at Point au Barques, the very spot our party was now approaching, three days before its arrival.
Tired with waiting, and uncertain whether his enemies had not got the start of him, Bear's Meat had gone into the river below, intending to keep his watch there, leaving Peter at the Point, with three young men and one canoe, to have a lookout. These young men the great chief had found an excuse for sending to the head of the Bay, in quest of another canoe, which left him, of course, quite alone on the Point. Scarce had the young man got out of sight, ere Pigeonswing joined his confederate, for it seems that this faithful friend had kept on the skirts of the enemy the whole time, travelling hundreds of miles, and enduring hunger and fatigue, besides risking his life at nearly every step, in order to be of use to those whom he considered himself pledged to serve.
Of course, Peter and Pigeonswing understood each other. One hour after they joined company, the canoes of the fugitives came in sight, and were immediately recognized by their sails. They were met, as has been mentioned, and the explanations that we have given were made before the party landed at the Point.
It was something to know where the risk was to be apprehended; but le Bourdon foresaw great danger. He had brought his canoes, already, quite five hundred miles, along a hazardous coast--though a little craft, like one of those he navigated, ran less risk, perhaps, than a larger vessel, since a shelter might, at any time, be found within a reasonable distance for it. From Pointe au Barques to the outlet of the lake was less than a hundred miles more. This outlet was a river, as it is called--a strait, in fact--which communicates with the small shallow lake of St. Clair, by a passage of some thirty miles in length. Then the lake St. Clair was to be crossed about an equal distance, when the canoes would come out in what is called the Detroit River, a strait again, as its name indicates. Some six or eight miles down this passage, and on its western side, stands the city of Detroit, then a village of no great extent, with a fort better situated to repel an attack of the savages, than to withstand a siege of white men. This place was now in the possession of the British, and, according to le Bourdon's notion, it was scarcely less dangerous to him than the hostility of Bear's Meat and his companions.
Delay, however, was quite as dangerous as anything else. After cooking and eating, therefore, the canoes continued their course, Peter and Pigeonswing accompanying them, though they abandoned their own craft. Peter went with the bee-hunter and Margery, while the Chippewa took a seat and a paddle in the canoe of Gershom. This change was made in order to put a double power in each canoe, since it was possible that downright speed might become the only means of safety.
The wind still stood at the westward, and the rate of sailing was rapid. About the close of the day the party drew near to the outlet, when Peter directed the sails to be taken in. This was done to prevent their being seen, a precaution that was now aided by keeping as near to the shore as possible, where objects so small and low would be very apt to be confounded with others on the land.
It was quite dark when the canoes entered the St. Clair river. Favored by the current and the wind, their progress was rapid, and ere the day returned, changing his direction from the course ordinarily taken, Peter entered the lake by a circuitous passage; one of the many that lead from the river to the lake, among aquatic plants that form a perfect shelter. This detour saved the fugitives from falling into the hands of one party of their enemies, as was afterward ascertained by the Indians. Bear's Meat had left two canoes, each manned by five warriors, to watch the principal passages into Lake St. Clair, not anticipating that any particular caution would be used by the bee-hunter and his friends, at this great distance from the place where they had escaped from their foes. But the arrival of Peter, his sagacity, and knowledge of Indian habits, prevented the result that was expected. The canoes got into the lake unseen, and crossed it a little diagonally, so as to reach the Canada shore in the middle of the afternoon of the succeeding day, using their sails only when far from land, and not exposed to watchful eyes.
The bee-hunter and his friends landed that afternoon at the cabin of a Canadian Frenchman, on the shore of the lake, and at a safe distance from the outlet which led still farther south. Here the females were hospitably received, and treated with that kindness which marks the character of the Canadian French. It mattered little to these simple people, whether the travellers were of the hostile nation or not. It is true, they did not like the “Yankees,” as all Americans are termed by them, but they were not particularly in love with their English masters. It was well enough to be repossessed of both banks of the Detroit, for both banks were then peopled principally by their own race, the descendants of Frenchmen of the time of Louis XIV., and who still preserved much of the language, and many of the usages, of the French of that period. They spoke then, as now, only the language of their fathers.
The bee-hunter left the cottage of these simple and hospitable people, as soon as the night was fairly set in; or, rather, as soon as a young moon had gone down. Peter now took the command, steering the canoe of le Bourdon, while Gershom followed so close as to keep the bow of his little craft within reach of the Indian's arm. In less than an hour the fugitives reached the opening of the river, which is here divided into two channels by a large island. On that very island, and at that precise moment, was Bear's Meat lying in wait for their appearance, provided with three canoes, each having a crew of six men. It would have been easy for this chief to go to Detroit, and give the alarm to the savages who were then collected there in a large force, and to have made such a disposition of the canoes as would have rendered escape by water impossible; but this would have been robbing himself and his friends of all the credit of taking the scalps, and throwing away what is termed “honor” among others as well as among savages. He chose, therefore, to trust to his own ability to succeed; and supposing the fugitives would not be particularly on their guard at this point, had little doubt of intercepting them here, should they succeed in eluding those he had left above.
The bee-hunter distrusted that island, and used extra caution in passing it. In the first place, the two canoes were brought together, so as to give them, in the dark, the appearance of only one; while the four men added so much to the crew as to aid the deception. In the end it proved that one of Bear's Meat's canoes that was paddling about in the middle of the river had actually seen them, but mistook the party for a canoe of their own, which ought to have been near that spot, with precisely six persons in it, just at that time. These six warriors had landed, and gone up among the cottages of the French to obtain some fruit, of which they were very fond, and of which they got but little in their own villages. Owing to this lucky coincidence, which the pretty Margery ever regarded as another special interposition of Providence in their favor, the fugitives passed the island without molestation, and actually got below the last lookouts of Bear's Meat, though without their knowledge.
It was by no means a difficult thing to go down the river, now that so many canoes were in motion on it, at all hours. The bee-hunter knew what points were to be avoided, and took care not to approach a sentinel. The river, or strait, is less than a mile wide, and by keeping in the centre of the passage, the canoes, favored by both wind and current, drove by the town, then an inconsiderable village, without detection. As soon as far enough below, the canoes were again cast loose from each other, and sail was made on each. The water was smooth, and some time before the return of light the fugitives were abreast of Malden, but in the American channel. Had it been otherwise, the danger could not have been great. So completely were the Americans subdued by Hull's capitulation, and so numerous were the Indian allies of the British, that the passage of a bark canoe, more or less, would hardly have attracted attention. At that time, Michigan was a province of but little more than a name. The territory was wide, to be sure, but the entire population was not larger than that of a moderately sized English market town, and Detroit was then regarded as a distant and isolated point. It is true that Mackinac and Chicago were both more remote, and both more isolated, but an English force, in possession of Detroit, could be approached by the Americans on the side of the land only by overcoming the obstacles of a broad belt of difficult wilderness. This was done the succeeding year, it is true, but time is always necessary to bring out Jonathan's latent military energies. When aroused, they are not trifling, as all his enemies have been made to feel; but a good deal of miscalculation, pretending ignorance, and useless talking must be expended, before the really efficient are allowed to set about serving the country in their own way.
In this respect, thanks to West Point, a well-organized staff, and well-educated officers, matters are a little improving. Congress has not been able to destroy the army, in the present war, though it did its best to attain that end; and all because the nucleus was too powerful to be totally eclipsed by the gas of the usual legislative tail of the Great National Comet, of which neither the materials nor the orbit can any man say he knows. One day, it declares war with a hurrah; the next, it denies the legislation necessary to carry it on, as if it distrusted its own acts, and already repented of its patriotism. And this is the body, soulless, the very school of faction, as a whole of very questionable quality in the outset, that, according to certain expounders of the constitution, is to perform all the functions of a government; which is not only to pass laws, but is to interpret them; which is to command the army, aye, even to wheeling its platoons; which reads the constitution as an abbe mumbles his aves and paters, or looking at everything but his texts; and which is never to have its acts vetoed, unless in cases where the Supreme Court would spare the Executive that trouble. We never yet could see either the elements or the fruits of this great sanctity in the National Council. In our eyes it is scarcely ever in its proper place on the railway of the Union, has degenerated into a mere electioneering machine, performing the little it really does convulsively, by sudden impulses, equally without deliberation or a sense of responsibility. In a word, we deem it the power of all others in the state that needs the closest watching, and were we what is termed in this country “politicians,” we should go for the executive who is the most ready to apply the curb to these vagaries of faction and interested partisans! Vetoes. Would to Heaven we could see the days of Good Queen Bess revived for one session of Congress at least, and find that more laws were sent back for the second thoughts of their framers than were approved! Then, indeed, might the country be brought back to a knowledge of the very material constitutional facts that the legislature is not commander-in-chief, does not negotiate or make treaties, and has no right to do that which it has done so often--appoint to office by act of Congress.
As a consequence of the little apprehension entertained by the English of being soon disturbed in their new conquests, le Bourdon and his friends got out of the Detroit River, and into Lake Erie, without discovery or molestation. There still remained a long journey before them. In that day the American side of the shores of all the Great Lakes was little more than a wilderness. There were exceptions at particular points, but these were few and far asunder. The whole coast of Ohio--for Ohio has its coast as well as Bohemia [Footnote: See Shakespeare--Winter's Tale.] --was mostly in a state of nature, as was much of those of Pennsylvania and New York, on the side of the fresh water. The port which the bee-hunter had in view was Presque Isle, now known as Erie, a harbor in Pennsylvania, that has since become somewhat celebrated in consequence of its being the port out of which the American vessels sailed, about a year later than the period of which we are writing, to fight the battle that gave them the mastery of the lake. This was a little voyage of itself, of near two hundred miles, following the islands and the coast, but it was safely made in the course of the succeeding week. Once in Lake Erie and on the American side, our adventurers felt reasonably safe against all dangers but those of the elements. It is true that a renowned annalist, whose information is sustained by the collected wisdom of a State Historical Society, does tell us that the enemy possessed both shores of Lake Erie in 1814; but this was so small a mistake, compared with some others that this Nestor in history had made, that we shall not stop to explain it. Le Bourdon and his party found all the south shore of Lake Erie in possession of the Americans, so far as it was in the possession of any one, and consequently ran no risks from this blunder of the historian and his highly intelligent associates!
Peter and Pigeonswing left their friends before they reached Presque Isle. The bee-hunter gave them his own canoe, and the parting was not only friendly, but touching. In the course of their journey, and during their many stops, Margery had frequently prayed with the great chief. His constant and burning desire, now, was to learn to read, that he might peruse the word of the Great Spirit, and regulate his future life by its wisdom and tenets. Margery promised, should they ever meet again, and under circumstances favorable to such a design, to help him attain his wishes.
Pigeonswing parted from his friend with the same light-hearted vivacity as he had manifested in all their intercourse. Le Bourdon gave him his own rifle, plenty of ammunition, and various other small articles that were of value to an Indian, accepting the Chippewa's arms in return. The exchange, however, was greatly to the advantage of the savage. As for Peter, he declined all presents. He carried weapons now, indeed, merely for the purpose of hunting; but the dignity of his character and station would have placed him above such compensations, had the fact been otherwise.
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Come to the land of peace! Come where the tempest hath no longer sway, The shadow passes from the soul away-- The sounds of weeping cease.
Fear hath no dwelling there! Come to the mingling--of repose and love, Breathed by the silent spirit of the dove, Through the celestial air. --MRS. HEMANS.
It is now more than thirty-three years since the last war with the English terminated, and about thirty-six to the summer in which the events recorded in this legend occurred. This third of a century has been a period of mighty changes in America. Ages have not often brought about as many in other portions of the earth, as this short period of time has given birth to among ourselves. We had written, thus far, on the evidence of documents sent to us, when an occasion offered to verify the truth of some of our pictures, at least, by means of personal observation.
Quitting our own quiet and secluded abode in the mountains, in the pleasant month of June, and in this current year of 1848, we descended into the valley of the Mohawk, got into the cars, and went flying by rails toward the setting sun. Well could we remember the time when an entire day was required to pass between that point on the Mohawk where we got on the rails, and the little village of Utica. On the present occasion, we flew over the space in less than three hours, and dined in a town of some fifteen thousand souls.
We reached Buffalo, at the foot of Lake Erie, in about twenty hours after we had entered the cars. This journey would have been the labor of more than a week, at the time in which the scene of this tale occurred. Now, the whole of the beautiful region, teeming with its towns and villages, and rich with the fruits of a bountiful season, was almost brought into a single landscape by the rapidity of our passage.
At Buffalo, we turned aside to visit the cataract. Thither, too, we went on rails. Thirty-eight years had passed away since we had laid eyes on this wonderful fall of water. In the intervening time we had travelled much, and had visited many of the renowned falls of the old world, to say nothing of the great number which are to be found in other parts of our own land. Did this visit, then, produce disappointment?
Did time, and advancing years, and feelings that had become deadened by experience, contribute to render the view less striking, less grand, in any way less pleasing than we had hoped to find it? So far from this, all our expectations were much more than realized. In one particular, touching which we do not remember ever to have seen anything said, we were actually astonished at the surpassing glory of Niagara. It was the character of sweetness, if we can so express it, that glowed over the entire aspect of the scene. We were less struck with the grandeur of this cataract, than with its sublime softness and gentleness. To water in agitation, use had so long accustomed us, perhaps, as in some slight degree to lessen the feeling of awe that is apt to come over the novice in such scenes; but we at once felt ourselves attracted by the surpassing loveliness of Niagara. The gulf below was more imposing than we had expected to see it, but it was Italian in hue and softness, amid its wildness and grandeur. Not a drop of the water that fell down that precipice inspired terror; for everything appeared to us to be filled with attraction and love. Like Italy itself, notwithstanding so much that is grand and imposing, the character of softness, and the witchery of the gentler properties, is the power we should ascribe to Niagara, in preference to that of its majesty. We think this feeling, too, is more general than is commonly supposed, for we find those who dwell near the cataract playing around it, even to the very verge of its greatest fall, with a species of affection, as if they had the fullest confidence in its rolling waters. Thus it is that we see the little steamer, the Maid of the Mist, paddling up quite near to the green sheet of the Horse-Shoe itself, and gliding down in the current of the vortex, as it is compelled to quit the eddies, and come more in a line with the main course of the stream. Wires, too, are suspended across the gulf below, and men pass it in baskets. It is said that one of these inventions is to carry human beings over the main fall, so that the adventurer may hang suspended in the air, directly above the vortex. In this way do men, and even women, prove their love for the place, all of which we impute to its pervading character of sweetness and attraction.
At Buffalo we embarked in a boat under the English flag, which is called the Canada, This shortened our passage to Detroit, by avoiding all the stops at lateral ports, and we had every reason to be satisfied with our selection. Boat, commander, and the attendance were such as would have done credit to any portion of the civilized world. There were many passengers, a motley collection, as usual, from all parts of the country.
Our attention was early drawn to one party, by the singular beauty of its females. They seemed to us to be a grandmother, in a well-preserved, green old age; a daughter, but a matron of little less than forty; and two exceedingly pretty girls of about eighteen and sixteen, whom we took to be children of the last. The strong family likeness between these persons led us early to make this classification, which we afterward found was correct.
By occasional remarks, I gathered that the girls had been to an “Eastern” boarding-school, that particular feature in civilization not yet flourishing in the Northwestern States. It seemed to us that we could trace in the dialect of the several members of this family, the gradations and peculiarities that denote the origin and habits of individuals. Thus, the grandmother was not quite as Western in her forms of speech as her matronly daughter, while the grandchildren evidently spoke under the influence of boarding-school correction, or like girls who had been often lectured on the subject “First rate,” and “Yes, sir,” and “That's a fact,” were often in the mouth of the pleasing mother, and even the grandmother used them all, though not as often as her daughter, while the young people looked a little concerned and surprised, whenever they came out of the mouth of their frank-speaking mother. That these persons were not of a very high social class was evident enough, even in their language. There was much occasion to mention New York, we found, and they uniformly called it “the city.” By no accident did either of them happen to use the expression that she had been “in town,” as one of us would be apt to say. “He's gone to the city,” or “She's in the city,” are awkward phrases, and tant soit peu vulgar; but even our pretty young boarding-school eleves would use them. We have a horror of the expression “city,” and are a little fastidious, perhaps, touching its use.
But these little peculiarities were spots on the sun. The entire family, taken as a whole, was really charming; and long before the hour for retiring came, we had become much interested in them all. We found there was a fifth person belonging to this party, who did not make his appearance that night. From the discourse of these females, however, it was easy to glean the following leading facts: This fifth person was a male; he was indisposed, and kept his berth; and he was quite aged. Several nice little dishes were carried from the table into his state-room that evening, by one or the other of the young sisters, and each of the party appeared anxious to contribute to the invalid's comfort. All this sympathy excited our interest, and we had some curiosity to see this old man, long ere it was time to retire. As for the females, no name was mentioned among them but that of a Mrs. Osborne, who was once or twice alluded to in full. It was “grandma,” and “ma,” and “Dolly,” and “sis.” We should have liked it better had it been “mother,” and “grandmother,” and that the “sis” had been called Betsey or Molly; but we do not wish to be understood as exhibiting these amiable and good-looking strangers as models of refinement. “Ma” and “sis” did well enough, all things considered, though “mamma” would have been better if they were not sufficiently polished to say “mother.”
We had a pleasant night of it, and all the passengers appeared next morning with smiling faces. It often blows heavily on that lake, but light airs off the land were all the breezes we encountered. We were among the first to turn out, and on the upper deck forward, a place where the passengers are fond of collecting, as it enables them to look ahead, we found a single individual who immediately drew all of our attention to himself. It was an aged man, with hair already as white as snow. Still there was that in his gait, attitudes, and all his movements which indicated physical vigor, not to say the remains, at least, of great elasticity and sinewy activity. Aged as he was, and he must have long since passed his fourscore years, his form was erect as that of a youth. In stature he was of rather more than middle height, and in movements deliberate and dignified. His dress was quite plain, being black, and according to the customs of the day. The color of his face and hands, however, as well as the bold outlines of his countenance, and the still keen, restless, black eye, indicated the Indian.
Here, then, was a civilized red man, and it struck us at once, that he was an ancient child of the forest, who had been made to feel the truths of the gospel. One seldom hesitates about addressing an Indian, and we commenced a discourse with our venerable fellow-passenger, with very little circumlocution or ceremony.
“Good-morning, sir,” we observed--“a charming time we have of it, on the lake.”
“Yes--good time--” returned my red neighbor, speaking short and clipped, like an Indian, but pronouncing his words as if long accustomed to the language.
“These steamboats are great inventions for the western lakes, as are the railroads for this vast inland region. I dare say you can remember Lake Erie when it was an unusual thing to see a sail of any sort on it; and now, I should think, we might count fifty.”
“Yes--great change--great change, friend! --all change from ole time.”
“The traditions of your people, no doubt, give you reason to see and feel all this?”
The predominant expression of this red man's countenance was that of love. On everything, on every human being toward whom he turned his still expressive eyes, the looks he gave them would seem to indicate interest and affection. This expression was so decided and peculiar, that we early remarked it, and it drew us closer and closer to the old chief, the longer we remained in his company. That expression, however, slightly changed when we made this allusion to the traditions of his people, and a cloud passed before his countenance. This change, nevertheless, was as transient as it was sudden, the benevolent and gentle look returning almost as soon as it had disappeared. He seemed anxious to atone for this involuntary expression of regrets for the past, by making his communications to me as free as they could be.
“My tradition say a great deal,” was the answer, “It say some good, some bad.”
“May I ask of what tribe you are?”
The red man turned his eyes on us kindly, as if to lessen anything ungracious there might be in his refusal to answer, and with an expression of benevolence that we scarcely remember ever to have seen equalled. Indeed, we might say with truth, that the love which shone out of this old man's countenance habitually, surpassed that which we can recall as belonging to any other human face. He seemed to be at peace with himself, and with all the other children of Adam.
“Tribe make no difference,” he answered. “All children of same Great Spirit.”
“Red men and pale-faces?” I asked, not a little surprised with his reply.
“Red man and pale-face. Christ die for all, and his Fadder make all. No difference, excep' in color. Color only skin deep.”
“Do you, then, look on us pale-faces as having a right here? Do you not regard us as invaders, as enemies who have come to take away your lands?”
“Injin don't own 'arth. 'Arth belong to God, and he send whom he like to live on it. One time he send Injin; now he send pale-face. His 'arth, and he do what he please wid it. Nobody any right to complain. Bad to find fault wid Great Spirit. All he do, right; nebber do anyt'ing bad. His blessed Son die for all color, and all color muss bow down at his holy name. Dat what dis good book say,” showing a small pocket Bible, “and what dis good book say come from Great Spirit, himself.”
“You read the Holy Scriptures, then--you are an educated Indian?”
“No; can't read at all. Don't know how. Try hard, but too ole to begin. Got young eyes, however, to help me,” he added, with one of the fondest smiles I ever saw light a human face, as he turned to meet the pretty Dolly's “Good-morning, Peter,” and to shake the hand of the elder sister. “She read good book for old Injin, when he want her; and when she off at school, in 'city,' den her mudder or her gran'mudder read for him. Fuss begin wid gran'mudder; now get down to gran'da'ghter. But good book all de same, let who will read it.”
This, then, was “Scalping Peter,” the very man I was travelling into Michigan to see, but how wonderfully changed! The Spirit of the Most High God had been shed freely upon his moral being, and in lieu of the revengeful and vindictive savage, he now lived a subdued, benevolent Christian! In every human being he beheld a brother, and no longer thought of destroying races, in order to secure to his own people the quiet possession of their hunting-grounds. His very soul was love; and no doubt he felt himself strong enough to “bless those who cursed him,” and to give up his spirit, like the good missionary whose death had first turned him toward the worship of the one true God, praying for those who took his life.
The ways of Divine Providence are past the investigations of human reason. How often, in turning over the pages of history, do we find civilization, the arts, moral improvement, nay, Christianity itself, following the bloody train left by the conqueror's car, and good pouring in upon a nation by avenues that at first were teeming only with the approaches of seeming evils! In this way, there is now reason to hope that America is about to pay the debt she owes to Africa; and in this way will the invasion of the forests, and prairies and “openings,” of the red man be made to atone for itself by carrying with it the blessings of the Gospel, and a juster view of the relations which man bears to his Creator. Possibly Mexico may derive lasting benefits from the hard lesson that she has so recently been made to endure.
This, then, was Peter, changed into a civilized man and a Christian! I have found, subsequently, that glimmerings of the former being existed in his character; but they showed themselves only at long intervals, and under very peculiar circumstances. The study of these traits became a subject of great interest with us, for we now travelled in company the rest of our journey. The elder lady, or “grandma,” was the Margery of our tale; still handsome, spirited, and kind. The younger matron was her daughter and only child, and “sis,” another Margery, and Dorothy, were her grandchildren. There was also a son, or a grandson rather, Ben, who was on Prairie Round, “with the general.” The “general” was our old friend, le Bourdon, who was still as often called “General Bourdon,” as “General Boden.” This matter of “generals” at the West is a little overdone, as all ranks and titles are somewhat apt to be in new countries. It causes one often to smile, at the East; and no wonder that an Eastern habit should go down in all its glory, beneath the “setting sun.” In after-days, generals will not be quite as “plenty as blackberries.”
No sooner did Mrs. Boden, or Margery, to use her familiar name, learn that we were the very individual to whom the “general” had sent the notes relative to his early adventures, which had been prepared by the “Rev. Mr. Varse,” of Kalamazoo, than she became as friendly and communicative as we could possibly desire.
Her own life had been prosperous, and her marriage happy. Her brother, however, had fallen back into his old habits, and died ere the war of 1812 was ended. Dorothy had returned to her friends in Massachusetts, and was still living, in a comfortable condition, owing to a legacy from an uncle. The bee-hunter had taken the field in that war, and had seen some sharp fighting on the banks of the Niagara. No sooner was peace made, however, than he returned to his beloved Openings, where he had remained, “growing with the country,” as it is termed, until he was now what is deemed a rich man in Michigan. He has a plenty of land, and that which is good; a respectable dwelling, and is out of debt. He meets his obligations to an Eastern man just as promptly as he meets those contracted at home, and regards the United States, and not Michigan, as his country. All these were good traits, and we were glad to learn that they existed in one who already possessed so much of our esteem. At Detroit we found a fine flourishing town, of a healthful and natural growth, and with a population that was fast approaching twenty thousand. The shores of the beautiful strait on which it stands, and which, by a strange blending of significations and languages, is popularly called the “Detroit River,” were alive with men and their appliances, and we scarce know where to turn to find a more agreeable landscape than that which was presented to us, after passing the island of “Bobolo” (Bois Blanc), near Maiden. Altogether, it resembled a miniature picture of Constantinople, without its Eastern peculiarities.
At Detroit commenced our surprise at the rapid progress of Western civilization. It will be remembered that at the period of our tale, the environs of Detroit excepted, the whole peninsula of Michigan lay in a state of nature. Nor did the process of settlement commence actively until about twenty years since; but, owing to the character of the country, it already possesses many of the better features of a long-inhabited region. There are stumps, of course, for new fields are constantly coming into cultivation; but on the whole, the appearance is that of a middle-aged, rather than that of a new region.
We left Detroit on a railroad, rattling away toward the setting sun, at a good speed even for that mode of conveyance. It seemed to us that our route was well garnished with large villages, of which we must have passed through a dozen, in the course of a few hours' “railing,” These are places varying in size from one to three thousand inhabitants. The vegetation certainly surpassed that of even West New York, the trees alone excepted. The whole country was a wheat-field, and we now began to understand how America could feed the world. Our road lay among the “Openings” much of the way, and we found them undergoing the changes which are incident to the passage of civilized men. As the periodical fires had now ceased for many years, underbrush was growing in lieu of the natural grass, and in so much those groves are less attractive than formerly; but one easily comprehends the reason, and can picture to himself the aspect that these pleasant woods must have worn in times of old.
We left the railroad at Kalamazoo--an unusually pretty village, on the banks of the stream of that name. Those who laid out this place, some fifteen years since, had the taste to preserve most of its trees; and the houses and grounds that stand a little apart from the busiest streets--and they are numerous for a place of rather more than two thousand souls--are particularly pleasant to the eye, on account of the shade, and the rural pictures they present. Here Mrs. Boden told us we were within a mile or two of the very spot where once had stood Castle Meal (Chateau au Miel), though the “general” had finally established himself at Schoolcraft, on Prairie Ronde.
The first prairie we had ever seen was on the road between Detroit and Kalamazoo; distant from the latter place only some eight or nine miles. The axe had laid the country open in its neighborhood; but the spot was easily to be recognized by the air of cultivation and age that pervaded it. There was not a stump on it, and the fields were as smooth as any on the plains of Lombardy, and far more fertile, rich as the last are known to be. In a word, the beautiful perfection of that little natural meadow became apparent at once, though seated amid a landscape that was by no means wanting in interest of its own.
We passed the night at the village of Kalamazoo; but the party of females, with old Peter, proceeded on to Prairie Round, as that particular part of the country is called in the dialect of Michigan, it being a corruption of the old French name of la prairie ronde. The Round Meadow does not sound as well as Prairie Round, and the last being quite as clear a term as the other, though a mixture of the two languages, we prefer to use it. Indeed, the word “prairie” may now be said to be adopted into the English; meaning merely a natural instead of an artificial meadow, though one of peculiar and local characteristics. We wrote a note to General Boden, as I found our old acquaintance Ben Boden was universally termed, letting him know I should visit Schoolcraft next day; not wishing to intrude at the moment when that charming family was just reunited after so long a separation.
The next day, accordingly, we got into a “buggy” and went our way. The road was slightly sandy a good part of the twelve miles we had to travel, though it became less so as we drew near to the celebrated prairie. And celebrated, and that by an abler pen than ours, does this remarkable place deserve to be! We found all our expectations concerning it fully realized, and drove through the scene of abundance it presented with an admiration that was not entirely free from awe.
To get an idea of Prairie Round, the reader must imagine an oval plain of some five-and-twenty or thirty thousand acres in extent, of the most surpassing fertility, without an eminence of any sort--almost without an inequality. There are a few small cavities, howevers in which there are springs that form large pools of water that the cattle will drink. This plain, so far as we saw it, is now entirely fenced and cultivated. The fields are large, many containing eighty acres, and some one hundred and sixty; most of them being in wheat. We saw several of this size in that grain. Farm-houses dotted the surface, with barns, and the other accessories of rural life. In the centre of the prairie is an “island” of forest, containing some five or six hundred acres of the noblest native trees we remember ever to have seen. In the centre of this wood is a little lake, circular in shape, and exceeding a quarter of a mile in diameter. The walk in this wood-which is not an Opening, but an old-fashioned virgin forest--we found delightful of a warm summer's day. One thing that we saw in it was characteristic of the country. Some of the nearest farmers had drawn their manure into it, where it lay in large piles, in order to get it out of the way of doing any mischief. Its effect on the land, it was thought, would be to bring too much straw!
On one side of this island of wood lies the little village or large hamlet of Schoolcraft. Here we were most cordially welcomed by General Boden, and all of his fine descendants. The head of this family is approaching seventy, but is still hale and hearty. His head is as white as snow, and his face as red as a cherry. A finer old man one seldom sees. Temperance, activity, the open air, and a good conscience, have left him a noble ruin; if ruin he can yet be called. He owes the last blessing, as he told us himself, to the fact that he kept clear of the whirlwind of speculation that passed over this region some ten or fifteen years since. His means are ample; and the harvest being about to commence, he invited me to the field.
The peculiar ingenuity of the American has supplied the want of laborers, in a country where agriculture is carried on by wholesale, especially in the cereals, by an instrument of the most singular and elaborate construction. This machine is drawn by sixteen or eighteen horses, attached to it laterally, so as to work clear of the standing grain, and who move the whole fabric on a moderate but steady walk. A path is first cut with the cradle on one side of the field, when the machine is dragged into the open place. Here it enters the standing grain, cutting off its heads with the utmost accuracy as it moves. Forks beneath prepare the way, and a rapid vibratory motion of a great number of two-edged knives effect the object. The stalks of the grain can be cut as low or as high as one pleases, but it is usually thought best to take only the heads. Afterward the standing straw is burned, or fed off, upright.
The impelling power which causes the great fabric to advance also sets in motion the machinery within it As soon as the heads of the grain are severed from the stalks, they pass into a receptacle, where, by a very quick and simple process, the kernels are separated from the husks. Thence all goes into a fanning machine, where the chaff is blown away. The clean grain falls into a small bin, whence it is raised by a screw elevator to a height that enables it to pass out at an opening to which a bag is attached. Wagons follow the slow march of the machine, and the proper number of men are in attendance. Bag after bag is renewed, until a wagon is loaded, when it at once proceeds to the mill, where the grain is soon converted into flour. Generally the husbandman sells to the miller, but occasionally he pays for making the flour, and sends the latter off, by railroad, to Detroit, whence it finds its way to Europe, possibly, to help feed the millions of the old world. Such, at least, was the course of trade the past season. As respects this ingenious machine, it remains only to say that it harvests, cleans, and bags from twenty to thirty acres of heavy wheat, in the course of a single summer's day! Altogether it is a gigantic invention, well adapted to meet the necessities of a gigantic country.
Old Peter went afield with us that day. There he stood, like a striking monument of a past that was still so recent and wonderful. On that very prairie, which was now teeming with the appliances of civilization, he had hunted and held his savage councils. On that prairie had he meditated, or consented to the deaths of the young couple, whose descendants were now dwelling there, amid abundance, and happy. Nothing but the prayers of the dying missionary, in behalf of his destroyers, had prevented the dire consummation.
We were still in the field, when General Boden's attention was drawn toward the person of another guest. This, too, was an Indian, old like himself, but not clad like Peter, in the vestments of the whites. The attire of this sinewy old man was a mixture of that of the two races. He wore a hunting-shirt, moccasins, and a belt; but he also wore trousers, and otherwise had brought himself within the habits of conventional decency. It was Pigeonswing, the Chippewa, come to pay his annual visit to his friend, the bee-hunter, The meeting was cordial, and we afterward ascertained that when the old man departed, he went away loaded with gifts that would render him comfortable for a twelvemonth.
But Peter, after all, was the great centre of interest with us. We could admire the General's bee-hives, which were numerous and ingenious; could admire his still handsome Margery, and all their blooming descendants; and were glad when we discovered that our old friend--made so by means of a knowledge of his character, if not by actual acquaintance--was much improved in mind, was a sincere Christian, and had been a Senator of his own State; respected and esteemed by all who knew him. Such a career, however, has nothing peculiar in America; it is one of every-day occurrence, and shows the power of man when left free to make his own exertions; while that of the Scalping Peter indicated the power of God. There he was, living in the midst of the hated race, loving and beloved; wishing naught but blessings on all colors alike; looking back upon his traditions and superstitions with a sort of melancholy interest, as we all portray in our memories the scenes, legends, and feelings of an erring childhood.
We were walking in the garden, after dinner, and looking at the hives. There were the general, Margery, Peter, and ourselves. The first was loud in praise of his buzzing friends, for whom it was plain he still entertained a lively regard. The old Indian, at first, was sad. Then he smiled, and, turning to us, he spoke earnestly and with some of his ancient fire and eloquence.
“Tell me you make a book,” he said. “In dat book tell trut'. You see me--poor old Injin. My fadder was chief--I was great chief, but we was children. Knowed nuttin'. Like little child, dough great chief. Believe tradition. T'ink dis 'arth flat--t'ink Injin could scalp all pale-face--t'ink tomahawk, and war-path, and rifle, bess t'ings in whole world. In dat day, my heart was stone. Afraid of Great Spirit, but didn't love him. In dat time I t'ink General could talk wid bee. Yes; was very foolish den. Now, all dem cloud blow away, and I see my Fadder dat is in heaven. His face shine on me, day and night, and I never get tired of looking at it. I see him smile, I see him lookin' at poor ole Injin, as if he want him to come nearer; sometime I see him frown and dat scare me. Den I pray, and his frown go away.
“Stranger, love God. B'lieve his blessed Son, who pray for dem dat kill him. Injin don't do that. Injin not strong enough to do so good t'ing. It want de Holy Spirit to strengthen de heart, afore man can do so great t'ing. When he got de force of de Holy Spirit, de heart of stone is changed to de heart of woman, and we all be ready to bless our enemy and die. I have spoken. Let dem dat read your book understand.”
THE END.
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{
"id": "4215"
}
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1
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CHARLOTTE.
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Farewell rewards and fairies, Good housewives now may say, For now foul sluts in dairies May fare as well as they. BP. CORBET.
An ancient leafless stump of a horse-chesnut stood in the middle of a dusty field, bordered on the south side by a row of houses of some pretension. Against this stump, a pretty delicate fair girl of seventeen, whose short lilac sleeves revealed slender white arms, and her tight, plain cap tresses of flaxen hair that many a beauty might have envied, was banging a cocoa-nut mat, chanting by way of accompaniment in a sort of cadence-- 'I have found out a gift for my fur, I have found where the wood-pigeons breed; But let me the plunder forbear, She will say--' 'Hollo, I'll give you a shilling for 'em!' was the unlooked-for conclusion, causing her to start aside with a slight scream, as there stood beside her a stout, black-eyed, round-faced lad, his ruddy cheeks and loutish air showing more rusticity than agreed with his keen, saucy expression, and mechanic's dress.
'So that's what you call beating a mat,' said he, catching it from her hands, and mimicking the tender clasp of her little fingers. 'D'ye think it's alive, that you use it so gingerly? Look here! Give it him well!' as he made it resound against the tree, and emit a whirlwind of dust. 'Lay it into him with some jolly good song fit to fetch a stroke home with! Why, I heard my young Lord say, when Shakspeare was a butcher, he used to make speeches at the calves, as if they was for a sacrifice, or ever he could lift a knife to 'em.'
'Shakspeare! He as wrote Romeo and Juliet, and all that! He a butcher! Why, he was a poet!' cried the girl, indignantly.
'If you know better than Lord Fitzjocelyn, you may!' said the boy.
'I couldn't have thought it!' sighed the maiden.
'It's the best of it!' cried the lad, eagerly. 'Why, Charlotte, don't ye see, he rose hisself. Anybody may rise hisself as has a mind to it!'
'Yes, I've read that in books said Charlotte. 'You can, men can, Tom, if you would but educate yourself like Edmund! in the _Old English Baron_. But then, you know whose son you are. There can't be no catastrophe--' 'I don't want none,' said Tom. 'We are all equal by birth, so the orator proves without a doubt, and we'll show it one of these days. A rare lady I'll make of you yet, Charlotte Arnold.' ' O hush, Tom, I can never be a lady--and I can't stand dawdling here--nor you neither. 'Tisn't right to want to be out of our station, though I do wish I lived in an old castle, where the maidens worked tapestry, and heard minstrels, never had no stairs to scour. Come, give me my mats, and thank you kindly!'
'I'll take 'em in,' said Tom, shouldering them. ''Tis breakfast-hour, so I thought I'd just run up and ax you when my young Lord goes up to Oxford.
'He is gone,' said Charlotte; 'he was here yesterday to take leave of missus. Mr. James goes later--' 'Gone!' cried Tom. 'If he didn't say he'd come and see me at Mr. Smith's!'
'Did you want to speak to him?'
'I wanted to see him particular. There's a thing lays heavy on my mind. You see that place down in Ferny dell--there's a steep bank down to the water. Well, my young Lord was very keen about building a kind of steps there in the summer, and he and I settled the stones, and I was to cement 'em. By comes Mr. Frost, and finds faults, what I thought he'd no call to; so I flings down my trowel, and wouldn't go on for he! I was so mortal angry, I would not go back to the work; and I believe my Lord forgot it--and then he went back to college; and Frampton and Gervas, they put on me, and you know how 'twas I come away from Ormersfield. I was not going to say a word to one of that lot! but if I could see Lord Fitzjocelyn, I'd tell him they stones arn't fixed; and if the frost gets into 'em, there'll be a pretty go next time there's a tolerablish weight! But there--it is his own look-out! If he never thought it worth his while to keep his promise, and come and see me--' 'O Tom! that isn't right! He only forgot--I hear Mrs. Beckett telling him he'd forget his own head if it wasn't fixed on, and Mr. James is always at him.'
'Forget! Aye, there's nothing gentlefolks forget like poor folks. But I've done with he! Let him look out--I kept my promises to him long enough, but if he don't keep his'n--' 'For shame, for shame, Tom! You don't mean it!' cried Charlotte. 'But, oh!' with a different tone, 'give me the mat! There's the old Lord and Mr. Poynings riding down the terrace!'
'I ain't ashamed of nothing!' said the lad, proudly; and as Charlotte snatched away the mats, and vanished like a frightened hare, he stalked along like a village Hampden, muttering, 'The old tyrant shall see whether I'm to be trampled on!' and with both hands in his pockets, he gazed straight up into the face of the grave elderly gentleman, who never even perceived him. He could merely bandy glances with Poynings, the groom, and he was so far from indifferent that he significantly lifted up the end of his whip. Nothing could more have gratified Tom, who retorted with a grimace and murmur, 'Don't you wish you may catch me? You jealous syc--what is the word, sick of uncles or aunts, was it, that the orator called 'em? He'd say I'd a good miss of being one of that sort, and that my young Lord there opened my eyes in time. No better than the rest of 'em--' And the clock striking eight, he quickened his pace to return to his work. He had for the two or three previous years been nominally under the gardener at Ormersfield, but really a sort of follower and favourite to the young heir, Lord Fitzjocelyn--a position which had brought on him dislike from the superior servants, who were not propitiated by his independent and insubordinate temper. Faults on every side had led to his dismissal; but Lord Fitzjocelyn had placed him at an ironmonger's shop in the town of Northwold, where he had been just long enough to become accessible to the various temptations of a lad in such a situation.
Charlotte sped hastily round the end of the block of buildings, hurried down the little back garden, and flew breathlessly into her own kitchen, as a haven of refuge, but she found a tall, stiff starched, elderly woman standing just within the door, and heard her last words.
'Well! as I said, 'tis no concern of mine; only I thought it the part of a friend to give you a warning, when I seen it with my own eyes! -- Ah! here she is!' as Charlotte dropped into a chair. 'Yes, yes, Miss, you need not think to deceive me; I saw you from Miss Mercy's window--' 'Saw what?' faintly exclaimed Charlotte.
'You know well enough,' was the return. 'You may think to blind Mrs. Beckett here, but I know what over good-nature to young girls comes to. Pretty use to make of your fine scholarship, to be encouraging followers and sweethearts, at that time in the morning too!'
'Speak up, Charlotte,' said the other occupant of the room, a pleasant little brisk woman, with soft brown, eyes, a clear pale skin, and a face smooth, in spite of nearly sixty years; 'speak up, and tell Mrs. Martha the truth, that you never encouraged no one.'
The girl's face was all one flame, but she rose up, and clasping her hands together, exclaimed--'Me encourage! I never thought of what Mrs. Martha says! I don't know what it is all about!'
'Here, Jane Beckett,' cried Mrs. Martha; 'd'ye see what 'tis to vindicate her! Will you take her word against mine, that she's been gossiping this half hour with that young rogue as was turned off at Ormersfield?'
'Tom Madison! cried the girl, in utter amaze. 'Oh! Mrs. Martha!'
'Well! I can't stop!' said Martha. 'I must get Miss Faithfull's breakfast! but if you was under me, Miss Charlotte, I can tell you it would be better for you! You'll sup sorrow yet, and you'll both recollect my advice, both of you.'
Wherewith the Cassandra departed, and Charlotte, throwing her apron over her face, began to cry and sob piteously.
'My dear! what is it now? exclaimed her kind companion, pulling down her apron, and trying to draw down first one, then the other of the arms which persisted in veiling the crimson face. 'Surely you don't think missus or I would mistrust you, or think you'd take up with the likes of him!'
'How could she be so cruel--so spiteful,' sobbed Charlotte, 'when he only came to ask one question, and did a good turn for me with the mats. I never thought of such a thing. Sweetheart, indeed! So cruel of her!'
'Bless me!' said Jane, 'girls used to think it only civility to say they had a sweetheart!'
'Don't, Mrs. Beckett! I hate the word! I don't want no such thing! I won't never speak to Tom Madison again, if such constructions is to be put on it!'
'Well, after all, Charlotte dear, that will be the safest way. You are young yet, and best not to think of settling, special if you aren't sure of one that is steady and religious, and you'd better keep yourself up, and not get a name for gossiping--though there's no harm done yet, so don't make such a work. Bless me, if I don't hear his lordship's voice! He ain't never come so early!'
'Yes, he is,' said Charlotte, recovering from her sobs; 'he rode up as I came in.'
'Well, to be sure, he is come to breakfast! I hope nothin's amiss with my young Lord! I must run up with a cup and plate, and you, make the place tidy, in case Mr. Poynings comes in. You'd better run into the scullery and wash your face; 'tis all tears! You're a terrible one to cry, Charlotte!' with a kind, cheering smile and caress.
Mrs. Beckett bustled off, leaving Charlotte to restore herself to the little handy piece of household mechanism which kind, patient, motherly training had rendered her.
Charlotte Arnold had been fairly educated at a village school, and tenderly brought up at home till left an orphan, when she had been taken into her present place. She had much native refinement and imagination, which, half cultivated, produced a curious mixture of romance and simplicity. Her insatiable taste for reading was meritorious in the eyes of Mrs. Beckett, who, unlearned herself, thought any book better than 'gadding about,' and, after hearing her daily portion of the Bible, listened to the most adventurous romances, with a sense of pleasure and duty in keeping the girl to her book. She loved the little fragile orphan, taught her, and had patience with her, and trusted the true high sound principle which she recognised in Charlotte, amid much that she could not fathom, and set down alternately to the score of scholarship and youth.
Taste, modesty, and timidity were guards to Charlotte. A broad stare was terror to her, and she had many a fictitious horror, as well as better-founded ones. Truly she said, she hated the broad words Martha had used. One who craved a true knight to be twitted with a sweetheart! Martha and Tom Madison were almost equally distasteful, as connected with such a reproach; and the little maiden drew into herself, promenaded her fancy in castles and tournaments, kept under Jane's wing, and was upheld by her as a sensible, prudent girl.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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2
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AN OLD SCHOOLMISTRESS.
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I praise thee, matron, and thy due Is praise, heroic praise and true; With admiration I behold Thy gladness unsubdued and bold. Thy looks and gestures all present The picture of a life well spent; Our human nature throws away Its second twilight and looks gay. WORDSWORTH.
Unconscious of Charlotte's flight and Tom's affront, the Earl of Ormersfield rode along Dynevor Terrace--a row of houses with handsome cemented fronts, tragic and comic masks alternating over the downstairs windows, and the centre of the block adorned with a pediment and colonnade; but there was an air as if something ailed the place: the gardens were weedy, the glass doors hazy, the cement stained and scarred, and many of the windows closed and dark, like eyes wanting speculation, or with merely the dreary words 'To be let' enlivening their blank gloom. At the house where Charlotte had vanished, he drew his rein, and opened the gate--not one of the rusty ones--he entered the garden, where all was trim and fresh, the shadow of the house lying across the sward, and preserving the hoar-frost, which, in the sunshine, was melting into diamond drops on the lingering China roses.
Without ring or knock, he passed into a narrow, carpetless vestibule, unadorned except by a beautiful blue Wedgewood vase, and laying down hat and whip, mounted the bare staircase, long since divested of all paint or polish. Avoiding the door of the principal room, he opened another at the side, and stood in a flood of sunshine, pouring in from the window, which looked over all the roofs of the town, to the coppices and moorlands of Ormersfield. On the bright fire sung a kettle, a white cat purred on the hearth, a canary twittered merrily in the window, and the light smiled on a languishing Dresden shepherdess and her lover on the mantelpiece, and danced on the ceiling, reflected from a beautifully chased silver cream-jug--an inconsistent companion for the homely black teapot and willow-patterned plates, though the two cups of rare Indian porcelain were not unworthy of it. The furniture was the same mixture of the ordinary and the choice, either worn and shabby, or such as would suit a virtuoso, but the whole arranged with taste and care that made the effect bright, pleasant, and comfortable. Lord Ormersfield stood on the hearth-rug waiting. His face was that of one who had learnt to wait, more considerate than acute, and bearing the stamp both of toil and suffering, as if grief had taken away all mobility of expression, and left a stern, thoughtful steadfastness.
Presently a lady entered the room. Her hair was white as snow, and she could not have seen less than seventy-seven years; but beauty was not gone from her features--smiles were still on her lips, brightness in her clear hazel eyes, buoyancy in her tread, and alertness and dignity in her tall, slender, unbent figure. There was nothing so remarkable about her as the elasticity as well as sweetness of her whole look and bearing, as if, while she had something to love, nothing could be capable of crushing her.
'You here!' she exclaimed, holding out her hand to her guest. 'You are come to breakfast.'
'Thank you; I wished to see you without interrupting your day's work. Have you many scholars at present?'
'Only seven, and three go into school at Easter. Jem and Clara, wish me to undertake no more, but I should sorely miss the little fellows. I wish they may do me as much credit as Sydney Calcott. He wrote himself to tell me of his success.'
'I am glad to hear it. He is a very promising young man.'
'I tell him I shall come to honour, as the old dame who taught him to spell. My scholars may make a Dr. Busby of me in history.'
'I am afraid your preferment will depend chiefly on James and young Calcott.'
'Nay, Louis tells me that he is going to read wonderfully hard; and if he chooses, he can do more than even Sydney Calcott.'
'If!' said the Earl.
Jane here entered with another cup and plate, and Lord Ormersfield sat down to the breakfast-table. After some minutes' pause he said, 'Have you heard from Peru?'
'Not by this mail. Have you?'
'Yes, I have. Mary is coming home.'
'Mary!' she cried, almost springing up--'Mary Ponsonby? This is good news--unless,' as she watched his grave face, 'it is her health that brings her.'
'It is. She has consulted the surgeon of the Libra, a very able man, who tells her that there is absolute need of good advice and a colder climate; and Ponsonby has consented to let her and her daughter come home in the Libra. I expect them in February.'
'My poor Mary! But she will get better away from him. I trust he is not coming!'
'Not he,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Dear, dear Mary! I had scarcely dared to hope to see her again,' cried the old lady, with tears in her eyes. 'I hope she will be allowed to be with us, not kept in London with his sister. London does her no good.'
'The very purport of my visit,' said Lord Ormersfield, 'was to ask whether you could do me the favour to set aside your scholars, and enable me to receive Mrs. Ponsonby at home.'
'Thank you--oh, thank you. There is nothing I should like better, but I must consider--' 'Clara would find a companion in the younger Mary in the holidays, and if James would make Fitzjocelyn his charge, it would complete the obligation. It would be by far the best arrangement for Mary's comfort, and it would be the greatest satisfaction to me to see her with you at Ormersfield.'
'I believe it would indeed,' said the old lady, more touched than the outward manner of the Earl seemed to warrant. 'I would--you know I would do my very best that you and Mary should be comfortable together'--and her voice trembled--'but you see I cannot promise all at once. I must see about these little boys. I must talk to Jem. In short, you must not be disappointed'--and she put her hands before her face, trying to laugh, but almost overcome.
'Nay, I did not mean to press you,' said Lord Ormersfield, gently; 'but I thought, since James has had the fellowship and Clara has been at school, that you wished to give up your pupils.'
'So I do,' said the lady, but still not yielding absolutely.
'For the rest, I am very anxious that James should accept Fitzjocelyn as his pupil. I have always considered their friendship as the best hope, and other plans have had so little success, that--' 'I'm not going to hear Louis abused!' she exclaimed, gaily.
'Yes,' said Lord Ormersfield, with a look nearly approaching a smile, 'you are the last person I ought to invite, if I wish to keep your nephew unspoiled.'
'I wish there were any one else to spoil him!'
'For his sake, then, come and make Ormersfield cheerful. It will be far better for him.'
'And for you, to see more of Jem,' she added. 'If he were yours, what would you say to such hours?'
The last words were aimed at a young man who came briskly into the room, and as he kissed her, and shook hands with the Earl, answered in a quick, bright tone, 'Shocking, aye. All owing to sitting up till one!'
'Reading?' said the Earl.
'Reading,' he answered, with a sort of laughing satisfaction in dashing aside the approval expressed in the query, 'but not quite as you suppose. See here,' as he held up maliciously a railway novel.
'I am afraid I know where it came from,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Exactly so,' said James. 'It was Fitzjocelyn's desertion of it that excited my curiosity.'
'Indeed. I should have thought his desertions far too common to excite any curiosity.'
'By no means. He always has a reason.'
'A plausible one.'
'More than plausible,' cried James, excitement sparkling in his vivid black eyes. 'It happens that this is the very book that you would most rejoice to see distasteful to him--low morality, false principles, morbid excitement, not a line that ought to please a healthy mind.' -- 'Yet it has interest enough for you.'
'I am not Fitzjocelyn.'
'You know how to plead for him.'
'I speak simple truth,' bluntly answered James, running his hand through his black hair, to the ruin of the morning smoothness, so that it, as well as the whole of his quick, dark countenance seemed to have undergone a change from sunny south to stormy north in the few moments since his first appearance.
After a short silence, Lord Ormersfield turned to him, saying 'I have been begging a favour of my aunt, and I have another to ask of you,' and repeating his explanation, begged him to undertake the tutorship of his son.
'I shall not be at liberty at Easter,' said James, 'I have all but undertaken some men at Oxford.'
'Oh, my dear Jem!' exclaimed the old lady, 'is that settled beyond alteration?'
'I'm not going to throw them over.'
'Then I shall hope for you at Midsummer,' said the Earl.
'We shall see how things stand,' he returned, ungraciously.
'I shall write to you,' said Lord Ormersfield, still undaunted, and soon after taking his leave.
'Cool!' cried James, as soon as he was gone. 'To expect you to give up your school at his beck, to come and keep house for him as long as it may suit him!'
'Nay, Jem, he knew how few boys I have, and that I intended to give them up. You don't mean to refuse Louis?' she said, imploringly.
'I shall certainly not take him at Easter. It would be a mere farce intended to compensate to us for giving up the school, and I'll not lend myself to it while I can have real work.'
'At Midsummer, then. You know he will never let Louis spend a long vacation without a tutor.'
'I hate to be at Ormersfield,' proceeded James, vehemently, 'to see Fitzjocelyn browbeaten and contradicted every moment, and myself set up for a model. I may steal a horse, while he may not look over the wall! Did you observe the inconsistency? --angry with the poor fellow first for having the book, and then for not reading the whole, while it became amiable and praiseworthy in me to burn out a candle over it!'
'Ah! that was my concern. I tell him he would sing another note if you were his son.'
'I'd soon make him! I would not stand what Louis does. The more he is set down and sneered at, the more debonnaire he looks, till I could rave at him for taking it so easily.'
'I hoped you might have hindered them from fretting each other, as they do so often.'
'I should only be a fresh element of discord, while his lordship will persist in making me his pattern young man. It makes me hate myself, especially as Louis is such an unaccountable fellow that he won't.'
'I am sorry you dislike the plan so much.'
'Do you mean that you wish for it, grandmamma? cried he, turning full round on her with an air of extreme amazement. 'If you do, there's an end of it; but I thought you valued nothing more than an independent home.'
'Nor would I give it up on any account,' said she. 'I do not imagine this could possibly last for more than a few months, or a year at the utmost. But you know, dear Jem, I would do nothing you did not like.'
'That's nothing to the purpose,' replied James. 'Though it is to be considered whether Ormersfield is likely to be the best preparation for Clara's future life. However, I see you wish it--' 'I confess that I do, for a few months at least, which need interfere neither with Clara nor with you. I have not seen Lord Ormersfield so eager for many years, and I should be very sorry to prevent those two from being comfortably together in the old home--' 'And can't that be without a chaperon?' exclaimed James, laughing. 'Why, his lordship is fifty-five, and she can't be much less. That is a good joke.'
'It is not punctilio,' said his grandmother, looking distressed. 'It is needful to be on the safe side with such a man as Mr. Ponsonby. My fear is that he may send her home with orders not to come near us.'
'She used to be always at Ormersfield in the old times.'
'Yes, when my sister was alive. Ah! you were too young to know about those matters then. The fact was, that things had come to such a pass from Mr. Ponsonby's neglect and unkindness, that Lord Ormersfield, standing in the place of her brother, thought it right to interfere. His mother went to London with him, to bring poor Mary and her little girl back to Ormersfield, and there they were till my sister's death, when of course they could not remain. Mr. Ponsonby had just got his appointment as British envoy in Peru, and wished her to go with him. It was much against Lord Ormersfield's advice, but she thought it her duty, poor dear. I believe he positively hates Lord Ormersfield; and as if for a parting unkindness, he left his little girl at school with orders to spend her holidays with his sister, and never to be with us.'
'That accounts for it!' said James. 'I never knew all this! nor why we were so entirely cut off from Mary Ponsonby. I wonder what she is now! She was a droll sturdy child in those days! We used to call her Downright Dunstable! She was almost of the same age as Louis, and a great deal stouter, and used to fight for him and herself too. Has not she been out in Peru?'
'Yes, she went out at seventeen. I believe she is an infinite comfort to her mother.'
'Poor Mary! Well, we children lived in the middle of a tragedy, and little suspected it! By the bye, what relation are the Ponsonbys to us?'
'Mrs. Ponsonby is my niece. My dear sister, Mary--' 'Married Mr. Raymond--yes, I know! I'll make the whole lucid; I'll draw up a pedigree, and Louis shall learn it.' And with elaborate neatness he wrote as follows, filling in the dates from the first leaf of an old Bible, after his grandmother had left the room. The task, lightly undertaken, became a mournful one, and as he read over his performance, his countenance varied from the gentleness of regret to a look of sarcastic pride, as though he felt that the world had dealt hardly by him, and yet disdained to complain.
KING ARTHUR - Pendragons and Dynevors innumerable - Roland Dynevor, d. 1793 - 1. 2. 3. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - Catharine, m. James Frost Dynevor, Esq. Elizabeth, m. Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Ormersfield Mary, m. Ch. Raymond, Esq. b. 1770 b. 1765 b. 1772 b. 1760 b. 1774 d.1802 d. 1816 d. 1835 d. 1833 d. 1800 1. 2. -------------------------------------------------- Jocelyn, m. Louisa Villars, Mary, m. Robert Ponsonby Esq., Henry Roland m. Frances Preston Oliver J. Frost 4th Earl of b. 1805 b. 1796 British Envoy Frost Dynevor b. 1802 Dynevor Ormersfield d. 1826 in Peru. b. 1794 d. 1832 b. 1797 b. 1792 d. 1832 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. ------------------------------------------------------------ James Roland Frances Catharine Oliver Clara Louis Fitzjocelyn Mary Ponsonby Frost Dynevor b. 1826 b. 1827 b. 1829 b. 1831 Viscount Fitzjocelyn b. 1826 b. 1824 d. 1832 d. 1832 d. 1832 b. 1826. Fellow of St. F. College, Oxford.
'Since 1816,' muttered James, as he finished. 'Thirty years of drudgery! When shall I be able to relieve her? Ha! O. J. F. Dynevor, Esquire, if it were you who were coming from Peru, you would find a score to settle!'
He ran down stairs to assist his grandmother in the Latin lessons of her little school, the usual employment of his vacations.
Catharine Dynevor had begun life with little prospect of spending nearly half of it as mistress of a school.
Her father was the last male of the Dynevors of Cheveleigh--a family mounting up to the days of the Pendragons--and she had been made to take the place of an eldest son, inheriting the extensive landed property on condition that her name and arms should be assumed in case of her marriage. Her choice was one of the instances in which her affections had the mastery over her next strongest characteristic, family pride. She married a highly-educated and wealthy gentleman, of good family, but of mercantile connexions, such as her father, if living, would have disdained. Her married life was, however, perfectly unclouded, her ample means gave her the power of dispensing joy, and her temperament was so blithe and unselfish that no pleasure ever palled upon her. Cheveleigh was a proverb for hospitality, affording unfailing fetes for all ages, full of a graceful ease and freedom that inspired enjoyment.
Mr. Frost Dynevor was a man of refined taste, open-handed even to extravagance, liberal in all his appointments, and gratifying to the utmost his love of art and decoration, while his charities and generous actions were hearty and lavish enough to satisfy even his warm-hearted wife.
Joined with all this was a strong turn for speculations. When the mind has once become absorbed in earthly visions of wealth and prosperity, the excitement exercises such a fascination over the senses that the judgment loses balance. Bold assumptions are taken as certainties, and made the foundation of fresh fabrics--the very power of discerning between fact and possibility departs, and, in mere good-will, men, honest and honourable at heart, risk their own and their neighbours' property, and ruin their character and good name, by the very actions most foreign to to their nature, ere it had fallen under the strong delusion.
Mr. Frost Dynevor had the misfortune to live in a country rich in mineral wealth, and to have a brother-in-law easily guided, and with more love of figures than power of investigating estimates on a large scale. Mines were set on foot, companies established, and buildings commenced, and the results were only to be paralleled by those of the chalybeate springs discovered by Mr. Dynevor at the little town of Northwold, which were pronounced by his favourite hanger-on to be destined 'literally to cut the throat of Bath and Cheltenham.'
Some towns are said to have required the life of a child ere their foundations could be laid. Many a speculation has swallowed a life and fortune before its time for thriving has come. Mr. Frost Dynevor and Lord Ormersfield were the foremost victims to the Cheveleigh iron foundries and the Northwold baths. The close of the war brought a commercial crisis that their companies could not stand; and Mr. Dynevor's death spared him from the sight of the crash, which his talent and sagacity might possibly have averted. He had shown no misgivings, but, no sooner was he removed from the helm, than the vessel was found on the brink of destruction. Enormous sums had been sunk without tangible return, and the liabilities of the companies far surpassed anything that they had realized.
Lord Ormersfield was stunned and helpless. Mrs. Dynevor had but one idea--namely, to sacrifice everything to clear her husband's name. Her sons were mere boys, and the only person who proved himself able to act or judge was the heir of Ormersfield, then about four-and-twenty, who came forward with sound judgment and upright dispassionate sense of justice to cope with the difficulties and clear away the involvements.
He joined his father in mortgaging land, sacrificing timber, and reducing the establishment, so as to set the estate in the way of finally becoming free, though at the expense of rigid economy and self-denial.
Cheveleigh could not have been saved, even had the heiress not been willing to yield everything to satisfy the just claims of the creditors. She was happy when she heard that it would suffice, and that no one would be able to accuse her husband of having wronged him. But for this, she would hardly have submitted to retain what her nephew succeeded in securing for her--namely, an income of about 150 pounds per annum, and the row of houses called Dynevor Terrace, one of the building ventures at Northwold. This was the sole dependence with which she and her sons quitted the home of their forefathers. 'Never mind, mother,' said Henry, kissing her, to prevent the tears from springing, 'home is wherever we are together!' 'Never fear, mother,' echoed Oliver, with knitted brow and clenched hands, 'I will win it back.'
Oliver was a quiet lad, of diligent, methodical habits, and willingly accepted a clerkship in a mercantile house, which owed some obligations to his father. At the end of a couple of years he was sent to reside in South America; and his parting words to his mother were--'When you see me again, Cheveleigh shall be yours.'
'Oh, my boy, take care. Remember, 'They that haste to be rich shall not be innocent.''
That was the last time she had seen Oliver.
Her great object was to maintain herself independently and to complete Henry's education as a gentleman. With this view she took up her abode in the least eligible of her houses at Northwold, and, dropping the aristocratic name which alone remained of her heiress-ship, opened a school for little boys, declaring that she was rejoiced to recall the days when Henry and Oliver wore frocks and learnt to spell. If any human being could sweeten the Latin Grammar, it was Mrs. Frost, with the motherliness of a dame, and the refinement of a lady, unfailing sympathy and buoyant spirits, she loved each urchin, and each urchin loved her, till she had become a sort of adopted grandmamma to all Northwold and the neighbourhood.
Henry went to Oxford. He gained no scholarship, took no honours, but he fell neither into debt nor disgrace; he led a goodnatured easy life, and made a vast number of friends; and when he was not staying with them, he and his mother were supremely happy together. He walked with her, read to her, sang to her, and played with her pupils. He had always been brought up as the heir--petted, humoured, and waited on--a post which he filled with goodhumoured easy grace, and which he continued to fill in the same manner, though he had no one to wait on him but his mother, and her faithful servant Jane Beckett. Years passed on, and they seemed perfectly satisfied with their division of labour,--Mrs. Frost kept school, and Henry played the flute, or shot over the Ormersfield property.
If any one remonstrated, Henry was always said to be waiting for a government appointment, which was to be procured by the Ormersfield interest. More for the sake of his mother than of himself, the Ormersfield interest was at length exerted, and the appointment was conferred on him. The immediate consequence was his marriage with the first pretty girl he met, poorer than himself, and all the Ormersfield interest failed to make his mother angry with him.
The cholera of 1832 put an end to poor Henry's desultory life. His house, in a crowded part of London, was especially doomed by the deadly sickness; and out of the whole family the sole survivors were a little girl of ten months old, and a boy of seven years, the latter of whom was with his grandmother at Northwold.
Mrs. Frost was one of the women of whom affection makes unconscious heroines. She could never sink, as long as there was aught to need her love and care; and though Henry had been her darling, the very knowledge that his orphans had no one but herself to depend on, seemed to brace her energies with fresh life. They were left entirely on her hands, her son Oliver made no offers of assistance. He had risen, so as to be a prosperous merchant at Lima, and he wrote with regularity and dutifulness, but he had never proposed coming to England, and did not proffer any aid in the charge of his brother's children. If she had expected anything from him, she did not say so; she seldom spoke of him, but never without tenderness, and usually as her 'poor Oliver,' and she abstained from teaching her grandchildren either to look to their rich uncle or to mourn over their lost inheritance. Cheveleigh was a winter evening's romance with no one but Jane Beckett; and the grandmother always answered the children's inquiries by bidding them prove their ancient blood by resolute independence, and by that true dignity which wealth could neither give nor take away.
Of that dignity, Mrs. Frost was a perfect model. A singular compound of the gentle and the lofty, of tenderness and independence, she had never ceased to be the Northwold standard of the 'real lady,' too mild and gracious to be regarded as proud and poor, and yet too dignified for any liberty to be attempted, her only fault, that touch of pride, so ladylike and refined that it was kept out of sight, and never offended, and everything else so sweet and winning that there was scarcely a being who did not love, as well as honour her, for the cheerfulness and resignation that had borne her through her many trials. Her trustful spirit and warm heart had been an elixir of youth, and had preserved her freshness and elasticity long after her sister and brother-in-law at Ormersfield had grown aged and sunk into the grave, and even her nephew was fast verging upon more than middle age.
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LOUIS LE DEBONNAIRE.
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I walked by his garden and saw the wild brier, The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher. ISC WATTS.
Ormersfield Park was extensive, ranging into fine broken ground, rocky and overgrown with brushwood; but it bore the marks of retrenchment; there was hardly a large timber tree on the estate, enclosures had been begun and deserted, and the deer had been sold off to make room for farmers' cattle, which grazed up to the very front door.
The house was of the stately era of Anne, with a heavy portico and clumsy pediment on the garden side, all the windows of the suite of rooms opening on a broad stone terrace, whence steps descended to the lawn, neatly kept, but sombre, for want of openings in the surrounding evergreens.
It was early March, and a lady wrapped in a shawl was seated on the terrace, enjoying the mild gleam of spring, and the freshness of the sun-warmed air, which awoke a smile of welcome as it breathed on her faded cheek, and her eyes gazed on the scene, in fond recognition.
It had been the home of Mrs. Ponsonby's childhood; and the slopes of turf and belts of dark ilex were fraught with many a recollection of girlish musings, youthful visions, and later, intervals of tranquillity and repose. After fourteen years spent in South America, how many threads she had to take up again! She had been as a sister to her cousin, Lord Ormersfield, and had shared more of his confidence than any other person during their earlier years, but afterwards their intercourse had necessarily been confined to brief and guarded letters. She had found him unchanged in his kindness to herself, and she was the more led to ponder on the grave, stern impassiveness of his manner to others, and to try to understand the tone of mind that it indicated.
She recalled him as he had been in his first youth--reserved, sensible, thoughtful, but with the fire of ambition burning strongly within, and ever and anon flashing forth vividly, repressed at once as too demonstrative, but filling her with enthusiastic admiration. She remembered him calmly and manfully meeting the shock of the failure, that would, he knew, fetter and encumber him through life--how resolutely he had faced the difficulties, how unselfishly he had put himself out of the question, how uprightly he had dealt by the creditors, how considerately by his father and aunt, how wise and moderate his proceedings had been throughout. She recollected how she had shared his aspirations, and gloried in his consistent and prudent course, without perceiving what sorrow had since taught her-that ambition was to him what pleasure was to other young men. What had it not been to her when that ambition began to be gratified! when he had become a leading man in Parliament, and by-and-by held office.
There, a change came over the spirit of her dream; and though she sighed, she could not but smile at the fair picture that rose before her, of a young girl of radiant loveliness, her golden curls drooping over her neck, and her eyes blue as the starry veronica by the hedge side, smiling in the sunshine. She thought of the glances of proud delight that her cousin had stolen at her, to read in her face, that his Louisa was more than all he had told her. Little was needed to make her love the sweet, caressing young creature who had thrown her arms round her, and told her that she saw it was all nonsense to tell her she was such a good, grave, dreadful cousin Mary! Yet there had been some few misgivings! So short an acquaintance! Her cousin too busy for more than being bewitched by the lovely face! The Villiers family, so gay and fashionable! Might not all have been foreseen? And yet, of what use would foresight have been? The gentleman was deeply attached, and the lady's family courted the match, the distinction he had won, atoning for his encumbered fortune.
Other scenes arose on her memory--Louisa, a triumphant beauty, living on the homage she received, all brilliance, grace, and enjoyment. But there was a darkening background which grew more prominent. Poor Louisa had little wisdom by nature, and her education had been solely directed to enable her to shine in the world, not to render her fit for the companionship of a man of domestic tastes, accustomed to the society of superior women. There was nothing to fall back upon, nothing to make a home, she was listless and weary whenever gaiety failed her--and he, disappointed and baffled, too unbending to draw her out, too much occupied to watch over her, yielded to her tastes, and let her pursue her favourite enjoyments unchecked.
A time had come when childish vanity and frivolity were verging on levity and imprudence. Expostulations fell powerless on her shallowness. Painful was the remembrance of the deprecating roguish glance of the beautiful eyes, and the coaxing caresses with which she kissed away the lecture, and made promises, only to forget them. She was like the soulless Undine, with her reckless gaiety and sweetness, so loving and childish that there was no being displeased with her, so innocent and devoid of all art or guile in her wilfulness, that her faults could hardly bear a harsher name than follies.
Again, Mrs. Ponsonby thought of the days when she herself had been left to stay with her old uncle and aunt. In this very house while her husband was absent abroad, when she had assisted them to receive the poor young wife, sent home in failing health. She thought of the sad weeks, so melancholy in the impossibility of making an impression, or of leading poor Louisa from her frivolities, she recalled the sorrow of hearing her build on future schemes of pleasure, the dead blank when her prattle on them failed, the tedium of deeper subjects, and yet the bewitching sweetness overpowering all vexation at her exceeding silliness. Though full one-and-twenty years had passed, still the tears thrilled warm into Mrs. Ponsonby's eyes at the thought of Louisa's fond clinging to her, in spite of many an admonition and even exertion of authority, for she alone dared to control the spoilt child's self-will; and had far more power than the husband, who seemed to act as a check and restraint, and whose presence rendered her no longer easy and natural. One confidence had explained the whole.
'You know, Mary dear, I always was so much afraid of him! If I had had my own way, I know who it would have been; but there were mamma and Anna Maria always saying how fortunate I was, and that he would be Prime Minister, and all the rest. Oh! I was far too young and foolish for him. He should have married a sober body, such as you, Mary! Why did he not? She wished she had never teased him by going out so much, and letting people talk nonsense; he had been very kind, and she was not half good enough for him. That confession, made to him, would have been balm for ever; but she had not resolution for the effort, and the days slid away till the worst fears were fulfilled. Nay, were they the worst fears? Was there not an unavowed sense that it was safer that she should die, while innocent of all but wayward folly, than be left to perils which she was so little able to resist?
The iron expression of grief on her husband's face had forbidden all sympathy, all attempt at consolation. He had returned at once to his business in London, there to find that poor Louisa's extravagance had equalled her folly, and that he, whose pride it had been to redeem his paternal property, was thrown back by heavy debts on his own account. This had been known to Mrs. Ponsonby, but by no word from him; he had never permitted the most distant reference to his wife, and yet, with inconsistency betraying his passionate love, he had ordered one of the most beautiful and costly monuments that art could execute, for her grave at Ormersfield, and had sent brief but explicit orders that, contrary to all family precedent, his infant should bear no name but Louis.
On this boy Mrs. Ponsonby had founded all her hopes of a renewal of happiness for her cousin; but when she had left England there had been little amalgamation between the volatile animated boy, and his grave unbending father. She could not conjure up any more comfortable picture of them than the child uneasily perched on his papa's knee, looking wistfully for a way of escape, and his father with an air of having lifted him up as a duty, without knowing what to do with him or to say to him.
At her earnest advice, the little fellow had been placed as a boarder with his great aunt, Mrs. Frost, when his grandmother's death had deprived him of all that was homelike at Ormersfield, He had been with her till he was old enough for a public school, and she spoke of him as if he were no less dear to her than her own grandchildren; but she was one who saw no fault in those whom she loved, and Mrs. Ponsonby had been rendered a little anxious by a certain tone of dissatisfaction in Lord Ormersfield's curt mention of his son, and above all by his cold manner of announcing that this was the day when he would return from Oxford for the Easter vacation.
Could it be that the son was unworthy, or had the father's feelings been too much chilled ever to warm again, and all home affections lost in the strife of politics? These had ever since engaged him, whether in or out of office, leaving little time for society or for any domestic pursuit.
Her reflections were interrupted by a call of 'Mamma!' and her daughter came running up the steps. Mary Ponsonby had too wide a face for beauty, and not slightness enough for symmetry, but nothing could be more pleasing and trustworthy than the open countenance, the steady, clear, greenish-brown eyes, the kind, sensible mouth, the firm chin, broad though rather short forehead, and healthy though not highly-coloured cheek; and the voice--full, soft, and cheerful--well agreed with the expression, and always brought gladness and promise of sympathy.
'See, mamma, what we have found for you.'
'Violets! The very purple ones that used to grow on the orchard bank!'
'So they did. Mary knew exactly where to look for them,' said Mrs. Frost, who had followed her up the steps.
'And there is Gervas,' continued Mary; 'so charmed to hear of you, that we had almost brought him to see you.'
Mrs. Ponsonby declared herself so much invigorated by Ormersfield air, that she would go to see her old friend the gardener. Mary hurried to fetch her bonnet, and returned while a panegyric was going on upon her abilities as maid-of-all-work, in her mother's difficulties with male housemaids--black and brown--and washerwomen who rode on horseback in white satin shoes. She looked as if it were hardly natural that any one but herself should support her mother, when Mrs. Frost tenderly drew Mrs. Ponsonby's arm into her own; and it was indeed strange to see the younger lady so frail and broken, and the elder so strong, vigorous, and active; as they moved along in the sunshine, pausing to note each spring blossom that bordered the gravel, and entered the walled kitchen-garden, where espaliers ran parallel with the walks, dividing the vegetables from the narrow flower-beds, illuminated by crocuses opening the depths of their golden hearts to the sunbeams and the revelling bees. Old Gervas, in a patriarchal red waistcoat, welcomed Mrs. Ponsonby with more warmth than flattery. Bless me, ma'am, I'm right glad to see you; but how old you be!'
'I must come home to learn how to grow young, Gervas,' said she, smiling; 'I hear Betty is as youthful as my aunt here.'
'Ay, ma'am, Betty do fight it out tolerablish,' was the reply to this compliment.
'Why, Gervas, what's all that wilderness? Surely those used to be strawberry beds.'
'Yes, ma'am, the earliest hautboys; don't ye mind? My young Lord came and begged it of me, and, bless the lad, I can't refuse him nothing.'
'He seems to be no gardener!'
'He said he wanted to make a Botany Bay sort of garden,' said the old man; 'and sure enough 'tis a garden of weeds he's made of it, and mine into the bargain! He has a great big thistle here, and the down blows right over my beds, thick as snow, so that it is three women's work to be a match for the weeds; but speak to him of pulling it up, ye'd think 'twas the heart out of him.'
'Does he ever work here?'
'At first it was nought else; he and that young chap, Madison, always bringing docks and darnel out of the hedges, and plants from the nursery gardens, and bringing rockwork, and letting water in to make a swamp. There's no saying what's in the lad's head! But, of late, he's not done much but by times lying on the bank, reading or speaking verses out loud to himself, or getting young Madison off his work to listen to him. Once he got me to hear; but, ma'am, 'twas all about fairies and such like, putting an ass's head on an honest body as had lost his way. I told him 'twas no good for him or the boy to read such stuff, and I'd ha' none of it; but, if he chose to read me some good book, he'd be welcome--for the candles baint so good as they used, and I can't get no spectacles to suit me.'
'And did he read to you?'
'A bit or two, ma'am, if the humour took him. But he's young, you see, ma'am. I'm right glad he'll find you here. My old woman says he do want a lady about the place to make him comfortable like.'
'And who is this young Madison?' asked Mrs. Ponsonby, when they had turned from the old gardener.
'To hear Jem, you would believe that he is the most promising plant rearing for Botany Bay!' said Mrs. Frost. 'He is a boy from that wild place Marksedge, whom Louis took interest in, and made more familiar than Jem liked, or than, perhaps, was good for him. It did not answer; the servants did not like it, and it ended in his being sent to work with Smith, the ironmonger. Poor Louis! he took it sadly to heart, for he had taken great pains with the boy.'
'I like to hear the old name, Louis!'
'I can't help it,' said Mrs. Frost. 'He must be his old aunt Kitty's Louis le Debonnaire! Don't you, remember your calling him so when he was a baby?'
'Oh yes, it has exactly recalled to me the sort of gracious look that he used to have--half sly, half sweet-and so very pretty!'
'It suits him as well now. He is the kind of being who must have a pet name;' and Mrs. Frost, hoping he might be already arrived, could hardly slacken her eager step so as to keep pace with her niece's feeble movements. She was disappointed; the carriage had returned without Lord Fitzjocelyn. His hat and luggage were come, but he himself was missing. Mrs. Frost was very uneasy, but his father silenced conjectures by saying, that it was his usual way, and he would make his appearance before the evening. He would not send to meet another train, saying, that the penalty of irregularity must be borne, and the horses should not suffer for such freaks; and he would fain have been utterly indifferent, but he was evidently listening to every sound, and betrayed his anxiety by the decision with which he checked all expression of his aunt's fears.
There was no arrival all that evening, no explanation in the morning; and Betty Gervas, whom Mary went to visit in the course of the day, began to wonder whether the young Lord could be gone for a soldier--the usual fate of all missing village lads.
Mary was on her way home, through the park, along a path skirting the top of a wooded ravine, a dashing rivulet making a pleasant murmur among the rocks below, and glancing here and there through the brushwood that clothed the precipitous banks, when, with a sudden rustling and crackling, a man leaped upon the path with a stone in each hand.
Mary started, but she did not lose her presence of mind, and her next glance showed her that the apparition was not alarming, and was nearly as much amazed as herself. It was a tall slight young man, in a suit of shepherd's plaid, with a fair face and graceful agile form, recalling the word debonnaire as she had yesterday heard it applied. In instant conviction that this was the truant, she put out her hand by the same impulse that lighted his features with a smile of welcome, and the years of separation seemed annihilated as he exclaimed, 'My cousin Mary!' and grasped her hand, adding, 'I hope I did not frighten you--' 'Oh no; but where did you come from?'
'Up a hill perpendicular, like Hotspur,' he replied, in soft low quiet tones, which were a strange contrast to the words. 'No, see here,' and parting the bushes he showed some rude steps, half nature, half art, leading between the ferns and mountain-ash, and looking very inviting.
'How delightful!' cried Mary.
'I am glad you appreciate it,' he exclaimed; 'I will finish it off now, and put a rail. I did not care to go on when I had lost the poor fellow who helped me, but it saves a world of distance.'
'It must be very pretty amongst those beautiful ferns!'
'You can't conceive anything more charming,' he continued, with the same low distinct utterance, but an earnestness that almost took away her breath. 'There are nine ferns on this bank--that is, if we have the Scolopendrium Loevigatum, as I am persuaded. Do you know anything of ferns? Ah! you come from the land of tree ferns.'
'Oh! I am so glad to exchange them for our home flowers. Primroses look so friendly and natural.'
'These rocks are perfect nests for them, and they even overhang the river. This is the best bit of the stream, so rapid and foaming that I must throw a bridge across for Aunt Catharine. Which would be most appropriate? I was weighing it as I came up--a simple stone, or a rustic performance in wood?'
'I should like stone,' said Mary, amused by his eagerness.
'A rough Druidical stone! That's it! The idea of rude negligent strength accords with such places, and this is a stone country. I know the very stone! Do come down and see!'
'To-morrow, if you please,' said Mary. 'Mamma must want me, and--but I suppose they know of your return at home.'
'No, they don't. They have learnt by experience that the right time is the one never to expect me.'
Mary's eyes were all astonishment, as she said, between wonder and reproof, 'Is that on purpose?'
'Adventures are thrust on some people,' was the nonchalant reply, with shoulders depressed, and a twinkle of the eye, as if he purposed amazing his auditor.'
'I hope you have had an adventure, for nothing else could justify you,' said Mary, with some humour, but more gravity.
'Only a stray infant-errant, cast on my mercy at the junction station. Nurse, between eating and gossiping left behind--bell rings--engine squeaks--train starts--Fitzjocelyn and infant vis-a-vis.'
'You don't mean a baby?'
'A child of five years old, who soon ceased howling, and confided his history to me. He had been visiting grandmamma in London, and was going home to Illershall; so I found the best plan would be to leave the train at the next station, and take him home.'
'Oh, that was quite another thing!' exclaimed Mary, gratified at being able to like him. 'Could you find his home?'
'Yes; he knew his name and address too well to be lost or mislaid. I would have come home as soon as I had seen him in at the door; but the whole family rushed out on me, and conjured me first to dine and then to sleep. They are capital people. Dobbs is superintendent of the copper and tin works--a thoroughly right-minded man, with a nice, ladylike wife, the right sort of sound stuff that old England's heart is made of. It was worth anything to have seen it! They do incalculable good with their work-people. I saw the whole concern.'
He launched into an explanation of the process, producing from his pocket, papers of the ore, in every stage of manufacture, and twisting them up so carelessly, that they would have become a mass of confusion, had not Mary undertaken the repacking.
As they approached the house, the library window was thrown up, and Mrs. Frost came hurrying down with outstretched arms. She was met by her young nephew with an overflow of fond affection, before he looked up and beheld his father standing upright and motionless on the highest step. His excuses were made more lightly and easily than seemed to suit such rigid looks; but Lord Ormersfield bent his head as if resigning himself perforce to the explanation, and, with the softened voice in which he always spoke to Mrs. Ponsonby, said, 'Here he is--Louis, you remember your cousin.'
She was positively startled; for it was as if his mother's deep blue eyes were raised to hers, and there were the same regular delicate features, fair, transparent complexion, and glossy light-brown hair tinted with gold--the same careless yet deprecating glance, the same engaging smile that warmed her heart to him at once, in spite of an air which was not that of wisdom.
'How little altered you are!' she exclaimed. 'If you were not taller than your father, I should say you were the same Louis that I left fourteen years ago.'
'I fear that is the chief change,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'A boy that would be a boy all his life, like Sir Thomas More's son!' said Louis, coolly and simply, but with a twinkle in the corner of his eye, as if he said it on purpose to be provoking; and Mrs. Frost interposed by asking where the cousins had met, and whether they had known each other.
'I knew him by what you said yesterday,' said Mary.
'Louis le Debonnaire? asked Mrs. Frost, smiling.
'No, Mary; not that name!' he exclaimed. 'It is what Jem calls me, when he has nothing more cutting to say--' 'Aye, because it is exactly what you look when you know you deserve a scolding--with your shoulders pulled down, and your face made up!' said his aunt, patting him.
When Mrs. Ponsonby and Mary had left the room to dress, Louis exclaimed, 'And that is Mrs. Ponsonby! How ill she does look! Her very voice has broken down, though it still has the sweet sound that I could never forget! Has she had advice?'
'Dr. Hastings saw her in London,' said his father. 'He sent her into the country at once, and thinks that there is fair hope that complete rest of spirits may check the disease.'
'Will she stay here?' said Louis, eagerly. 'That would be like old times, and we could make her very comfortable. I would train those two ponies for her drives--' 'I wish she would remain here,' said his father; 'but she is bent on becoming my aunt's tenant.'
'Ha! That is next best! They could do nothing more commendable. Will they be a windfall for the House Beautiful?'
'No,' said Mrs. Frost. 'They wish to have a house of their own, in case Mr. Ponsonby should come home, or Miss Ponsonby to stay with them.'
'The respected aunt who brought Mary up! How long has she been at Lima?'
'Four years.'
'Four years! She has not made use of her opportunities! Alas for the illusion dispelled! The Spanish walk and mantilla melt away; and behold! the primitive wide-mouthed body of fourteen years since!'
Mrs. Frost laughed, but it seemed to be a serious matter with Lord Ormersfield. 'If you could appreciate sterling worth,' he said, 'you would be ashamed to speak of your cousin with such conceited disrespect.'
All the effect was to make Louis walk quietly out of the room; but his shoulder and eyebrow made a secret telegraph of amazement to Mrs. Frost.
The new arrival seemed to have put the Earl into a state of constant restless anxiety, subdued and concealed with a high hand, but still visible to one who knew him so intimately as did Mrs. Ponsonby. She saw that he watched each word and gesture, and studied her looks to judge of the opinion they might create in her. Now the process was much like weighing and balancing the down of Fitzjocelyn's own favourite thistle; the profusion, the unsubstantiality, and the volatility being far too similar; and there was something positively sad in the solicitous heed taken of such utter heedlessness.
The reigning idea was the expedition to Illershall, and the excellent condition of the work-people under his new friend the superintendent. Forgetful that mines were a tender subject, the eager speaker became certain that copper must exist in the neighbourhood, and what an employment it would afford to all the country round. 'Marksedge must be the very place, the soil promises metallic veins, the discovery would be the utmost boon to the people. It would lead to industry and civilization, and counteract all the evils we have brought on them. Mary, do you remember Marksedge, the place of exile?'
'Not that I know of.'
'No; we were too young to understand the iniquity. In the last generation, it was not the plan to stone Naboth, but to remove him. Great people could not endure little people; so, by way of kindness, our whole population of Ormersfield, except a few necessary retainers, were transported bodily from betwixt the wind and our nobility, located on a moor beyond our confines, a generous gift to the poor-rates of Bletchynden, away from church, away from work, away from superintendence, away from all amenities of the poor man's life!'
This was one of the improvements to which Mr. Dynevor had prompted the last Earl; but Louis did not know whom he was cutting, as he uttered this tirade, with a glow on his cheek and eye, but with his usual soft, modulated intonation and polished language, the distinctness and deliberation taking off all air of rattle, and rendering his words more impressive.
'Indeed! is there much distress at Marksedge?' said Mrs. Ponsonby.
'They have gifts with our own poor at Christmas,' said Lord Ormersfield, 'but they are a defiant, ungrateful set, always in distress by their own fault.'
'What cause have they for gratitude?' exclaimed his son. 'For being turned out of house and home? for the three miles' walk to their daily work! Yes, it is the fact. The dozen families left here, with edicts against lodgers, cannot suffice for the farmer's work; and all Norris's and Beecher's men have to walk six miles every day of their lives, besides the hard day's work. They are still farther from their parish, they are no one's charge, they have neither church nor school, and whom should we blame for their being lawless?'
'It used to be thought a very good thing for the parish,' said Mrs. Frost, looking at her niece. 'I remember being sorry for the poor people, but we did not see things in the light in which Louis puts it.'
'Young men like to find fault with the doings of their elders,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Nothing can make me regard it otherwise than as a wicked sin!' said Louis.
'Nay, my dear,' mildly said Aunt Catharine, 'if it were mistaken, I am sure it was not intentionally cruel.'
'What I call wicked is to sacrifice the welfare of dependents to our own selfish convenience! And you would call it cruel too, Aunt Catharine, if you could hear the poor creatures beg as a favour of Mr. Holdsworth to be buried among their kin, and know how it has preyed on the minds of the dying that they might not lie here among their own people.'
'Change the subject, Fitzjocelyn,' said his father: 'the thing is done, and cannot be undone.'
'The undoing is my daily thought,' said Louis. 'If I could have tried my plan of weaving cordage out of cotton-grass and thistle-down, I think I could have contrived for them.'
Mary looked up, and met his merry blue eye. Was he saying it so gravely to try whether he could take her in? 'If you could--' she said, and he went off into a hearty laugh, and finished by saying, so that no one could guess whether it was sport or earnest, 'Even taking into account the depredations of the goldfinches, it would be an admirable speculation, and would confer immeasurable benefits on the owners of waste lands. I mean to take out a patent when I have succeeded in the spinning.'
'A patent for a donkey,' whispered Aunt Catharine. He responded with a deferential bow, and the conversation was changed by the Earl; but copper was still the subject uppermost with Louis, and no sooner was dinner over than he followed the ladies to the library, and began searching every book on metals and minerals, till he had heaped up a pile of volumes, whence be rang the changes on oxide, pyrites, and carbonate, and octohedron crystals--names which poor Mrs. Frost had heard but too often. At last it came to certainty that he had seen the very masses containing ore; he would send one to-morrow to Illershall to be analysed, and bring his friend Dobbs down to view the spot.
'Not in my time,' interposed Lord Ormersfield. 'I would not wish for a greater misfortune than the discovery of a mine on my property.'
'No wonder,' thought Mrs. Ponsonby, as she recollected Wheal Salamanca and Wheal Catharine, and Wheal Dynevor, and all the other wheals that had wheeled away all Cheveleigh and half Ormersfield, till the last unfortunate wheal failed when the rope broke, and there were no funds to buy a new one. No wonder Lord Ormersfield trembled when he heard his son launch out into those easily-ascending conjectural calculations, freely working sums in his head, so exactly like the old Earl, his grandfather, that she could have laughed, but for sympathy with the father, and anxiety to see how the son would take the damp so vexatiously cast on his projects.
He made the gesture that Mrs. Frost called debonnaire--read on for five minutes in silence, insisted on teaching his aunt the cause of the colours in peacock ores, compared them to a pigeon's neck, and talked of old Betty Gervas's tame pigeons; whence he proceeded to memories of the days that he and Mary had spent together, and asked which of their old haunts she had revisited. Had she been into the nursery?
'Oh yes! but I wondered you had sent the old walnut press into that lumber-room.'
'Is that satire?' said Louis, starting and looking in her face.
'I don't know what you mean.'
'I have a better right to ask what you mean by stigmatizing my apartment as a lumber-room?'
'It was only what I saw from the door,' said Mary, a little confused, but rallying and answering with spirit; 'and I must maintain that, if you mean the room over the garden entrance, it is very like a lumber-room.'
'Ah, Mary! you have not outgrown the delusions of your sex. Is an Englishman's house his castle while housemaids maraud over it, ransacking his possessions, irritating poor peaceful dust that only wants to be let alone, sweeping away cherished cobwebs?'
'Oh, if you cherish cobwebs!' said Mary.
'Did not the fortunes of Scotland hang on a spider's thread? Did not a cobweb save the life of Mahomet, or Ali, or a mediaeval saint--no matter which? Was not a spider the solace of the Bastille? Have not I lain for hours on a summer morning watching the tremulous lines of the beautiful geometrical composition?'
'More shame for you!' said Mary, with a sort of dry humorous bluntness.
'The very answer you would have made in old times,' cried Louis, delighted. ' O Mary, you bring me back the days of my youth! You never would see the giant who used to live in that press!'
'I remember our great fall from the top of it.'
'Oh yes!' cried Louis; 'Jem Frost had set us up there bolt upright for sentries, and I saw the enemies too soon, when you would not allow that they were there. I was going to fire my musket at them; but you used violence to keep me steady to my duty--pulled my hair, did not you?'
'I know you scratched me, and we both rolled off together! I wonder we were not both killed!'
'That did not trouble Jem! He picked us up, and ordered us into arrest under the bed for breach of discipline.'
'I fear Jem was a martinet,' said Mrs. Frost.
'That he was! A general formed on the model of him who, not contented with assaulting a demi-lune, had taken une lune toute entiere. We had a siege of the Fort Bombadero, inaccessible, and with mortars firing double-hand grenades. They were dandelion clocks, and there were nettles to act the part of poisoned spikes on the breach.'
'I remember the nettles,' said Mary, 'and Jem's driving you to gather them; you standing with your bare legs in the nettle-bed, when he would make me dig, and I could not come to help you!'
'On duty in the trenches. Your sense of duty was exemplary. I remember your digging on, like a very Casablanca, all alone, in the midst of a thunder-storm, because Jem had forgotten to call you in, crying all the time with fear of the lightning!'
'You came to help me,' said Mary. 'You came rushing out from the nursery to my rescue!'
'I could not make you stir. We were taken prisoners by a sally from the nursery. For once in your life, you were in disgrace!'
'I quite thought I ought to mind Jem,' said Mary, 'and never knew whether it was play or earnest.'
'Only so could you transgress,' said Louis,--'you who never cried, except as my amateur Mungo Malagrowther. Poor Mary! what an amazement it was to me to find you breaking your heart over the utmost penalties of the nursery law, when to me they only afforded agreeable occasions of showing that I did not care! I must have been intolerable till you and Mrs. Ponsonby took me in hand!'
'I am glad you own your obligations,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'I own myself as much obliged to Mary for making me wise, as to Jem for making me foolish.'
'It is not the cause of gratitude I should have expected,' said his father.
'Alas! if he and Clara were but here!' sighed Louis. 'I entreated him in terms that might have moved a pyramid from its base, but the Frost was arctic. An iceberg will move, but he is past all melting!'
'I respect his steadiness of purpose,' said the Earl; 'I know no young man whom I honour more than James.'
His aunt and his son were looking towards each other with glistening eyes of triumph and congratulation, and Mrs. Frost cleared her voice to say that he was making far too much of her Jemmy; a very good boy, to be sure, but if he said so much of him, the Marys would be disappointed to see nothing but a little fiery Welshman.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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4
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THISTLE-DOWN.
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Lightly soars the thistle-down, Lightly does it float--, Lightly seeds of care are sown, Little do we note. Watch life's thistles bud and blow, Oh, 'tis pleasant folly; But when all life's paths they strew, Then comes melancholy. Poetry Past and Present.
Mary Ponsonby had led a life of change and wandering that had given her few strong local attachments. The period she had spent at Ormersfield, when she was from five to seven years old, had been the most joyous part of her life, and had given her a strong feeling for the place where she had lived with her mother, and in an atmosphere of affection, free from the shadow of that skeleton in the house, which had darkened her childhood more than she understood.
The great weakness of Mrs. Ponsonby's life had been her over-hasty acceptance of a man, whom she did not thoroughly know, because her delicacy had taken alarm at foolish gossip about herself and her cousin. It was a folly that had been severely visited. Irreligious himself, Mr. Ponsonby disliked his wife's strictness; he resented her affection for her own family, gave way to dissipated habits, and made her miserable both by violence and neglect. Born late of this unhappy marriage, little Mary was his only substantial link to his wife, and he had never been wanting in tenderness to her: but many a storm had raged over the poor child's head; and, though she did not know why the kind old Countess had come to remove her and her mother, and 'papa' was still a loved and honoured title, she was fully sensible of the calm security at Ormersfield.
When Mr. Ponsonby had recalled his wife on his appointment at Lima, Mary had been left in England for education, under the charge of his sister in London. Miss Ponsonby was good and kind, but of narrow views, thinking all titled people fashionable, and all fashionable people reprobate, jealous of her sister-in-law's love for her own family, and, though unable to believe her brother blameless, holding it as an axiom that married people could not fall out without faults on both sides, and charging a large share of their unhappiness on the house of Fitzjocelyn. Principle had prevented her from endeavouring to weaken the little girl's affection to her mother; but it had been her great object to train her up in habits of sober judgment, and freedom from all the romance, poetry, and enthusiasm which she fancied had been injurious to Mrs. Ponsonby. The soil was of the very kind that she would have chosen. Mary was intelligent, but with more sense than fancy, more practical than intellectual, and preferring the homely to the tasteful. At school, study and accomplishments were mere tasks, her recreation was found in acts of kindness to her companions, and her hopes were all fixed on the going out to Peru, to be useful to her father and mother. At seventeen she went; full of active, housewifely habits, with a clear head, sound heart, and cramped mind, her spirits even and cheerful, but not high nor mirthful, after ten years of evenings spent in needlework beside a dry maiden aunt.
Nor was the home she found at Lima likely to foster the joyousness of early girlhood. Mr. Ponsonby was excessively fond of her; but his affection to her only marked, by contrast, the gulf between him and her mother. There was no longer any open misconduct on his part, and Mrs. Ponsonby was almost tremblingly attentive to his wishes; but he was chill and sarcastic in his manner towards her, and her nervous attacks often betrayed that she had been made to suffer in private for differences of opinion. Health and spirits were breaking down; and, though she never uttered a word of complaint, the sight of her sufferings was trying for a warm-hearted young girl.
Mary's refuge was hearty affection to both parents. She would not reason nor notice where filial tact taught her that it was best to be ignorant; she charged all tracasseries on the Peruvian republic, and set herself simply to ameliorate each vexation as it arose, and divert attention from it without generalizing, even to herself, on the state of the family. The English comfort which she brought into the Limenian household was one element of peace; and her brisk, energetic habits produced an air of ease and pleasantness that did much to make home agreeable to her father, and removed many cares which oppressed her mother. To her, Mary was all the world-daughter, comforter, friend, and nurse, unfailing in deeds of love or words of cheer, and removing all sense of dreariness and solitude. And Mary had found her mother all, and more than all she remembered, and admired and loved her with a deep, quiet glow of intense affection. There was so much call for Mary's actual exertion of various kinds, that there was little opportunity for cultivating or enlarging her mind by books, though the scenes and circumstances around her could not but take some effect. Still, at twenty-one she was so much what she had been at seventeen--so staid, sensible, and practical, that Miss Ponsonby gladly pronounced her not in the least spoilt.
Fain would her aunt have kept both her and her mother as her guests; but Mrs. Ponsonby had permission to choose whatever residence best suited her, and felt that Bryanston-square and Miss Ponsonby would be fatal to her harassed spirits. She yearned after the home and companions of her youth, and Miss Ponsonby could only look severe, talk of London doctors, and take Mary aside to warn her against temptations from fashionable people.
Mary had been looking for the fashionable people ever since, and the first sign of them she had seen, was the air and figure of her cousin Fitzjocelyn. Probably good Aunt Melicent would distrust him; and yet his odd startling talk, and the arch look of mischief in the corners of his mouth and eyes, had so much likeness to the little Louis of old times, that she could not look on him as a stranger nor as a formidable being; but was always recurring to the almost monitorial sense of protection, with which she formerly used to regard him, when she shared his nursery.
Her mother had cultivated her love for Ormersfield, and she was charmed by her visits to old haunts, well remembering everything. She gladly recognised the little low-browed church, the dumpy tower, and grave-yard rising so high that it seemed to intend to bury the church itself, and permitted many a view, through the lattices, of the seats, and the Fitzjocelyn hatchments and monuments.
She lingered after church on Sunday afternoon with Mrs. Frost to look at Lady Fitzjocelyn's monument. It was in the chancel, a recumbent figure in white marble, as if newly fallen asleep, and with the lovely features chiselled from a cast taken after death had fixed and ennobled their beauty.
'It is just like Louis's profile!' said Mrs. Frost, as they came out.
'Well,' said Louis, who was nearer than she was aware, 'I hope at least no one will make me the occasion of a lion when I am dead.'
'It is very beautiful,' said Mary.
'May be so; but the sentiment is destroyed by its having been six months in the Royal Academy, number 16,136, and by seeing it down among the excursions in the Northwold Guide.'
'Louis, my dear, you should not be satirical on this,' said Mrs. Frost.
'I never meant it,' said Louis, 'but I never could love that monument. It used to oppress me with a sense of having a white marble mother! And, seriously, it fills up the chancel as if it were its show-room, according to our family tradition that the church is dedicated to the Fitzjocelyns. Living or dead, we have taken it all to ourselves.'
'It was a very fair, respectable congregation,' said his aunt.
'Exactly so. That is my complaint. Everything belonging to his lordship is respectable--except his son.'
'Take care, Louis; here is Mary looking as if she would take you at your word.'
'Pray, Mary, do they let no one who is not respectable go to church in Peru?'
'I do not think you would change your congregation for the wretched crowds of brown beggars,' said Mary.
'Would I not?' cried Louis. 'Oh! if the analogous class here in England could but feel that the church was for them! --not driven out and thrust aside, by our respectability.'
'Marksedge to wit!' said a good-humoured voice, as Mr. Holdsworth, the young Vicar, appeared at his own wicket, with a hearty greeting. 'I never hear those words without knowing where you are, Fitzjocelyn.'
'I hope to be there literally some day this week,' said Louis. 'Will you walk with me? I want to ask old Madison how his grandson goes on. I missed going to see after the boy last time I was at home.'
'I fear he has not been going on well, and have been sorry for it ever since,' said the Vicar. 'His master told me that he found him very idle and saucy.'
'People of that sort never know how to speak to a lad,' said Louis. 'It is their own rating that they ought to blame.'
'Not Tom Madison, I know,' said Mr. Holdsworth, laughing. 'But I did not come out to combat that point, but to inquire after the commissions you kindly undertook.'
'I have brought you such a set of prizes! Red rubrics, red margins; and for the apparatus, I have brought a globe with all the mountains in high relief;--yes, and an admirable physical atlas, and a box of instruments and models for applying mathematics to mechanics. We might give evening lectures, and interest the young farmers.'
'Pray,' said the Vicar, with a sound of dismay, 'where may the bill be? I thought the limits were two pounds eighteen.'
'Oh! I take all that on myself.'
'We shall see,' said Mr. Holdsworth, not gratefully. 'Was Origen sent home in time for you to bring?'
'There!' cried Louis, starting, 'Origen is lying on the very chair where I put him last January. I will write to Jem Frost to-morrow to send him to the binder.'
'Is it of any use to ask for the music?'
'I assure you, Mr. Holdsworth, I am very sorry. I'll write at once to Frost.'
'Then I am afraid the parish will not be reformed as you promised last Christmas,' said the Vicar, turning, with a smile, to Mrs. Frost. 'We were to be civilized by weekly concerts in the school.'
'What were you to play, Louis?' said Mrs. Frost, laughing.
'I was to imitate all the birds in the air at once,' said Louis, beginning to chirp like a melee of sparrows, turning it into the croak of a raven, and breaking off suddenly with, 'I beg your pardon--I forgot it was Sunday! Indeed, Mr. Holdsworth, I can say no more than that I was a wretch not to remember. Next time I'll write it all down in the top of my hat, with a pathetic entreaty that if my hat be stolen, the thief shall fulfil the commissions, and punctually send in the bill to the Rev. W. B. Holdsworth!'
'I shall hardly run the risk,' said Mr. Holdsworth, smiling, as he parted with them, and disappeared within his clipped yew hedges.
'Poor, ill-used Mr. Holdsworth!' cried Aunt Catharine.
'Yes, it was base to forget the binding of that book,' said Louis, gravely. 'I wish I knew what amends to make.'
'You owe amends far more for making a present of a commission. I used to do the like, to save myself trouble, till I came down in the world, and then I found it had been a mere air de grand seigneur.'
'I should not dare to serve you or Jem so; but I thought the school was impersonal, and could receive a favour.'
'It is no favour, unless you clearly define where the commission ended and the gift began. Careless benefits oblige no one.'
Fitzjocelyn received his aunt's scoldings very prettily. His manner to her was a becoming mixture of the chivalrous, the filial, and the playful. Mary watched it as a new and pretty picture. All his confidence, too, seemed to be hers; but who could help pouring out his heart to the ever-indulgent, sympathizing Aunt Catharine? It was evidently the greatest treat to him to have her for his guest, and his attention to her extended even to the reading a sermon to her in the evening, to spare her eyes; a measure so entirely after Aunt Melicent's heart, that Mary decided that even she would not think her cousin so hopelessly fashionable.
Goodnatured he was, without doubt; for as the three ladies were sitting down to a sociable morning of work and reading aloud, he came in to say he was going to see after Tom Madison, and to ask if there were any commands for Northwold, with his checked shooting-jacket pockets so puffed out that his aunt began patting and inquiring. 'Provisions for the House Beautiful,' he said, as forth came on the one side a long rough brown yam. 'I saw it at a shop in London,' he said, 'and thought the Faithfull sisters would like to be reminded of their West Indian feasts.' And, 'to make the balance true,' he had in the other pocket a lambswool shawl of gorgeous dyes, with wools to make the like, and the receipt, in what he called 'female algebra,' the long knitting-pins under his arm like a riding-whip. He explained that he thought it would be a winter's work for Miss Salome to imitate it, and that she would succour half-a-dozen families with the proceeds; and Mrs. Ponsonby was pleased to hear him speak so affectionately of the two old maiden sisters. They were the nieces of an old gentleman to whom the central and handsomest house of Dynevor Terrace had been let. He had an annuity which had died with him, and they inherited very little but the furniture with which they had lived on in the same house, in hopes of lodgers, and paying rent to Mrs. Frost when they had any. There was a close friendship and perfect understanding between her and them, and, as she truly assured them, full and constant rent could hardly have done her as much good as their neighbourhood. Miss Mercy was the Sister of Charity of all Northwold; Miss Salome, who was confined to her chair by a complaint in her knee, knitted and made fancy-works, the sale of which furnished funds for her charities. She was highly educated, and had a great knowledge of natural history. Fitzjocelyn had given their abode the name of the House Beautiful, as being redolent of the essence of the Pilgrim's Progress; and the title was so fully accepted by their friends, that the very postman would soon know it. He lingered, discoursing on this topic, while Mary repacked his parcels, and his aunt gave him a message to Jane Beckett, to send the carpenter to No. 5 before Mary's visit of inspection; but she prophesied that he would forget; and, in fact, it was no good augury that he left the knitting-pins behind him on the table, and Mary was only just in time to catch him with them at the front door.
'Thank you, Mary--you are the universal memory,' he said. 'What rest you must give my father's methodical spirit! I saw you pile up all those Blackwoods of mine this morning, just as he was going to fall upon them.'
'If you saw it, I should have expected you to do it yourself,' said Mary, in her quaint downright manner.
'Never expect me to do what is expected,' answered he.
'Do you do that because it is not expected?' said Mary, feeling almost as if he were beyond the pale of reason, as she saw him adjusting a plant of groundsel in his cap.
'It is for the dicky-bird at my aunt's. There's no lack of it at the Terrace; but it is an old habit, and there always was an illusion that Ormersfield groundsel is a superior article.'
'I suppose that is why you grow go much.'
'Are you a gardener? Some day we will go to work, clear the place, and separate the botanical from the intrusive!'
'I should like it, of all things!'
'I'll send the horse round to the stable, and begin at once!' exclaimed Louis, all eagerness; but Mary demurred, as she had promised to read to her mother and aunt some of their old favourites, Madame de Sevigne's letters, and his attention flew off to his restless steed, which he wanted her to admire.
'My Yeomanry charger,' he said. 'We turn out five troopers. I hope you will be here when we go out, for going round to Northwold brought me into a direful scrape when I went to exhibit myself to the dear old Terrace world. My father said it was an unworthy ambition. What would he have thought, if he had seen Jane stroking me down with the brush on the plea of dust, but really on the principle of stroking a dog! Good old Jane! Have you seen her yet? Has she talked to you about Master Oliver?'
The horse became so impatient, that Mary had no time for more than a monosyllable, before Louis was obliged to mount and ride off; and he was seen no more till just before dinner, when, with a shade of French malice, Mrs. Frost inquired about Jane and the carpenter: she had seen the cap, still decorated with groundsel, lying in the hall, and had a shrewd suspicion, but the answer went beyond her expectations--'Ah!' he said, 'it is all the effect of the Norman mania!'
'What have you been doing? What is the matter?' she cried, alarmed.
'The matter is not with me, but with the magistrates.'
'My dear Louis, don't look so very wise and capable, or I shall think it a very bad scrape indeed! Pray tell me what you have been about.'
'You know Sir Gilbert Brewster and Mr. Shoreland are rabid about the little brook between their estates, of which each wishes to arrogate to himself the exclusive fishing. Their keepers watch like the Austrian guard on the Danube, in a life of perpetual assault and battery. Last Saturday, March 3rd, 1847, one Benjamin Hodgekin, aged fifteen, had the misfortune to wash his feet in the debateable water; the belligerent powers made common cause, and haled the wretch before the Petty Sessions. His mother met me. She lived in service here till she married a man at Marksedge, now dead. This poor boy is an admirable son, the main stay of the family, who must starve if he were imprisoned, and she declared, with tears in her eyes, that she could not bear for a child of hers to be sent to gaol, and begged me to speak to the gentlemen.' He started up with kindling eyes and vehement manner. 'I went to the Justice-room!'
'My dear! with the groundsel?'
'And the knitting-needles!'
On rushed the narration, unheeding trifles. 'There was the array: Mr. Calcott in the chair, and old Freeman, and Captain Shaw, and fat Sir Gilbert, and all the rest, met to condemn this wretched widow's son for washing his feet in a gutter!'
'Pray what said the indictment?' asked Mrs. Ponsonby.
'Oh, that he had killed an infant trout of the value of three farthings! Three giant keepers made oath to it, but I had his own mother's word that he was washing his feet!'
No one could help laughing, but Fitzjocelyn was far past perceiving any such thing. 'Urge what I would, they fined him. I talked to old Brewster! I appealed to his generosity, if there be room for generosity about a trout no bigger than a gudgeon! I talked to Mr. Calcott, who, I thought, had more sense, but Justice Shallow would have been more practicable! No one took a rational view but Ramsbotham of the factory, a very sensible man, with excellent feeling. When it is recorded in history, who will believe that seven moral, well-meaning men agreed in condemning a poor lad of fifteen to a fine of five shillings, costs three-and-sixpence--a sum he could no more pay than I the National Debt, and with the alternative of three months' imprisonment, branding and contaminating for life, and destroying all self-respect? I paid the fine, so there is one act of destruction the less on the heads of the English squirearchy.'
'Act of destruction!'
'The worst destruction is to blast a man's character because the love of adventure is strong within him--!'
He was at this point when Lord Ormersfield entered, and after his daily civil ceremonious inquiries of the ladies whether they had walked or driven out, he turned to his son, saying, 'I met Mr. Calcott just now, and heard from him that he had been sorry to convict a person in whom you took interest, a lad from Marksedge. What did you know of him?'
'I was prompted by common justice and humanity,' said Louis. 'My protection was claimed for the poor boy, as the son of an old servant of ours.'
'Indeed! I think you must have been imposed on. Mr. Calcott spoke of the family as notorious poachers.'
'Find a poor fellow on the wrong side of a hedge, and not a squire but will swear that he is a hardened ruffian!'
'Usually with reason,' said the Earl. 'Pray when did this person's parents allege that they had been in my service?'
'It was his mother. Her name was Blackett, and she left us on her marriage with one of the Hodgekins.'
Lord Ormersfield rang the bell, and Frampton, the butler and confidential servant, formed on his own model, made his appearance.
'Do you know whether a woman of the name of Blackett ever lived in service here?'
'Not that I am aware of, my Lord. I will ascertain the fact.'
In a few moments Frampton returned. 'Yes, my Lord, a girl named Blackett was once engaged to help in the scullery, but was discharged for dishonesty at the end of a month.'
'Did not Frampton know that that related to me?' said Louis, sotto voce, to his aunt. 'Did he not trust that he was reducing me from a sea anemone to a lump of quaking jelly?'
So far from this consummation, Lord Fitzjocelyn looked as triumphant as Don Quixote liberating Gines de Pasamonte. He and his father might have sat for illustrations of 'Youth is full of pleasance, Age is full of care,' as they occupied the two ends of the dinner-table; the Earl concealing anxiety and vexation, under more than ordinary punctilious politeness; the Viscount doing his share of the honours with easy, winning grace and attention, and rattling on in an under-tone of lively conversation with Aunt Catharine. Mary was silently amazed at her encouraging him; but perhaps she could not help spoiling him the more, because there was a storm impending. At least, as soon as she was in the drawing-room, she became restless and nervous, and said that she wished his father could see that speaking sternly to him never did any good; besides, it was mere inconsiderateness, the excess of chivalrous compassion.
Mrs. Ponsonby said she thought young men's ardour more apt to be against than for the poacher.
'I must confess,' said Aunt Catherine, with all the reluctance of a high-spirited Dynevor,--'I must confess that Louis is no sportsman! He was eager about it once, till he had become a good shot; and then it lost all zest for him, and he prefers his own vagaries. He never takes a gun unless James drives him out; and, oddly enough, his father is quite vexed at his indifference, as if it were not manly. If his father would only understand him!'
The specimen of that day had almost made Mrs. Ponsonby fear that there was nothing to understand, and that only dear Aunt Kitty's affection could perceive anything but amiable folly, and it was not much better when the young gentleman reappeared, looking very debonnaire, and, sitting down beside Mrs. Frost, said, in a voice meant for her alone--'Henry IV; Part II., the insult to Chief Justice Gascoigne. My father will presently enter and address you: 'O that it could be proved That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged In cradle-cloths our children as they lay,-- Call'd yours Fitzjocelyn--mine, Frost Dynevor!'
'For shame, Louis! I shall have to call you Fitzjocelyn! You are behaving very ill.'
'Insulting the English constitution in the person of seven squires.'
'Don't, my dear! It was the very thing to vex your father that you should have put yourself in such a position.'
'Bearding the Northwold bench with a groundsel plume and a knitting-needle: 'With a needle for a sword, and a thimble for a hat, Wilt thou fight a traverse with the Castle cat?'
The proper champion in such a cause, since 'What cat's averse to fish?''
'No, Louis dear,' said his aunt, struggling like a girl to keep her countenance; 'this is no time for nonsense. One would think you had no feeling for your father.'
'My dear aunt, I can't go to gaol like Prince Hal. I do assure you, I did not assault the bench with the knitting-pins. What am I to do?'
'Not set at nought your father's displeasure.'
'I can't help it,' said he, almost sadly, though half smiling. 'What would become of me if I tried to support the full weight? Interfering with institutions, ruining reputation, blasting bulwarks, patronizing poachers, vituperating venerated--' 'Quite true,' cried Aunt Catherine, with spirit. 'You know you had no business there, lecturing a set of men old enough to be your grandfathers, and talking them all to death, no doubt.'
'Well, Aunt Kitty, if oppression maddens the wise, what must it do to the foolish?'
'If you only allow that it was foolish--' 'No; I had rather know whether it was wrong. I believe I was too eager, and not respectful enough to the old squire: and, on reflection, it might have been a matter of obedience to my father, not to interfere with the prejudices of true-born English magistrates. Yes, I was wrong: I would have owned it sooner, but for the shell he fired over my head. And for the rest, I don't know how to repent of having protested against tyranny.'
There was something redeeming in the conclusion, and it was a comfort, for it was impossible to retain anger with one so gently, good-humouredly polite and attentive.
A practical answer to the champion was not long in coming. He volunteered the next day to walk to Northwold with Mrs. Frost and Mary, who wanted to spend the morning in selecting a house in Dynevor Terrace, and to be fetched home by-and-by, when Mrs. Ponsonby took her airing. Two miles seemed nothing to Aunt Catharine, who accepted her nephew's arm for love, and not for need, as he discoursed of all the animals that might be naturalized in England, obtained from Mary an account of the llamas of the Andes, and rode off upon a scheme of an importation to make the fortune of Marksedge by a manufacture of Alpaca umbrellas.
Meantime, he must show the beautiful American ducks which he hoped to naturalize on the pond near the keeper's lodge: but, whistle and call as he would, nothing showed itself but screaming Canada geese. He ran round, pulled out a boat half full of water, and, with a foot on each side, paddled across to a bushy island in the centre,--but in vain. The keeper's wife, who had the charge over them, came out: 'Oh, my Lord, I am so sorry! They pretty ducks!'
'Ha! the foxes?'
'I wish it was, my Lord; but it is they poachers out at Marksedge that are so daring, they would come anywheres--and you see the ducks would roost up in the trees, and you said I was not to shut 'em up at night. My master was out up by Beech hollow; I heerd a gun, and looked out; I seen a man and a boy--I'd take my oath it was young Hodgekin. They do say Nanny Hodgekin, she as was one of the Blacketts, whose husband was transported, took in two ducks next morning to Northwold. Warren couldn't make nothing of it; but if ever he meets that Hodgekin again, he says he _shall_ catch it!'
'Well, Mrs. Warren, it can't be helped--thank you for the good care you took of the poor ducks,' said Louis, kindly; and as he walked on through the gate, he gave a long sigh, and said, 'My dainty ducks! So there's an end of them, and all their tameness!' But the smile could not but return. 'It is lucky the case does not come before the bench! but really that woman deserves a medal for coolness!'
'I suppose,' said Mary, 'she could have paid the fine with the price of the ducks.'
'Ah! the beauties! I wish Mr. Hodgekin had fallen on the pheasants instead! However, I am thankful he and Warren did not come to a collision about them. I am always expecting that, having made those Marksedge people thieves, murder will be the next consequence.'
A few seconds sufficed to bring the ludicrous back. 'How pat it comes! Mary, did you prime Mrs. Warren, or did Frampton?'
'I believe you had rather laugh at yourself than at any one else,' exclaimed his aunt, who felt baffled at having thrown away her compassion.
'Of course. One knows how much can be borne. Why, Mary, has that set you studying,--do you dissent?'
'I was thinking whether it is the best thing to be always ready to laugh at oneself,' said Mary. 'Does it always help in mending?'
''Don't care' came to a bad end,' said Louis; 'but on the other hand, care killed a cat--so there are two sides to the question.'
While Mary was feeling disappointed at his light tone, he changed it to one that was almost mournful. 'The worst of it is, that 'don't care' is my refuge. Whatever I do care about is always thwarted by Frampton or somebody, and being for ever thrown over, I have only to fall as softly as I can.'
'You know, my dear,' said Mrs. Frost, 'that your father has no command of means to gratify you.'
'There are means enough for ourselves,' said Louis; 'that is the needful duty. What merely personal indulgence did I ever ask for that was refused me?'
'If that is all you have to complain of, I can't pity you,' said Mary.
'Listen, Mary. Let me wish for a horse, there it is! Let me wish for a painted window, we can't afford it, though, after all, it would not eat; but horses are an adjunct of state and propriety. So again, the parish feasted last 18th of January, because I came of age, and it was _proper_; while if I ask that our people may be released from work on Good Friday or Ascension Day, it is thought outrageous.'
'If I remember right, my dear,' interposed his aunt, 'you wanted no work to be done on any saint's-day. Was there not a scheme that Mr. Holdsworth called the cricket cure!'
'That may yet be. No one knows the good a few free days would do the poor. But I developed my plan too rapidly! I'll try again for their church-going on Good Friday.'
'I think you ought to succeed there.'
'I know how it will be. My father will ring, propound the matter to Frampton; the answer will be, 'Quite impracticable, my Lord,' and there will be an end of it.'
'Perhaps not. At least it will have been considered,' said Mary.
'True,' said Louis; 'but you little know what it is to have a Frampton! If he be a fair sample of prime ministers, no wonder Princes of Wales go into the opposition!'
'I thought Frampton was a very valuable superior servant.'
'Exactly so. That is the worst of it. He is supreme authority, and well deserves it. When la Grande Mademoiselle stood before the gates of Orleans calling to the sentinel to open them, he never stirred a step, but replied merely with profound bows. That is my case. I make a request, am answered, 'Yes, my Lord;' find no results, repeat the process, and at the fourth time am silenced with, 'Quite impracticable my Lord.''
'Surely Frampton is respectful?'
'It is his very essence. He is a thorough aristocrat, respecting himself, and therefore respecting all others as they deserve. He respects a Viscount Fitzjocelyn as an appendage nearly as needful as the wyverns on each side of the shield; but as to the individual holding that office, he regards him much as he would one of the wyverns with a fool's-cap on.'
And with those words, Fitzjocelyn had sprung into the hedge to gather the earliest willow-catkins, and came down dilating on their silvery, downy buds and golden blossoms, and on the pleasure they would give Miss Faithfull, till Mary, who had been beginning to compassionate him, was almost vexed to think her pity wasted on grievances of mere random talk.
Warm and kindly was his greeting of his aunt's good old servant, Jane Beckett, whom Mary was well pleased to meet as one of the kind friends of her childhood. The refinement that was like an atmosphere around Mrs. Frost, seemed to have extended even to her servants; for Jane, though she could hardly read, and carried her accounts in her head, had manners of a gentle warmth and propriety that had a grace of their own, even in her racy, bad grammar; and there was no withstanding the merry smile that twitched up one side of her mouth, while her eyes twinkled in the varied moods prompted by an inexhaustible fund of good temper, sympathy, and affection, but the fulness of her love was for the distant 'Master Oliver,' whose young nursery-maid she had been. Her eyes winked between tears and smiles when she heard that Miss Mary had seen him but five months ago, and she inquired after him, gloried in his prosperity, and talked of his coming home, with far less reserve than his mother had done.
Mary was struck, also, with the pretty, modest looks of the little underling, and remarked on them as they proceeded to the inspection of the next house.
'Yes,' said Louis, 'Charlotte is something between a wood sorrel and a five-plume moth. Tom Madison, as usual, shows exquisite taste. She is a perfect Lady of Eschalott.'
'Now, Louis!' said his aunt, standing still, and really looking annoyed, 'you know I cannot encourage any such thing. Poor little Charlotte is an orphan, and I am all the more responsible for her.'
'There's a chivalry in poor Tom--' 'Nonsense!' said his aunt, as if resolved not to hear him out, because afraid of herself. 'Don't say any more about it. I wish I had never allowed of his bringing your messages.'
'Who set him down in the kitchen to drink a cup of beer?' said Louis, mischievously.
'Ah! well! one comfort is, that girls never care for boys of the same age,' replied Aunt Catharine, as she turned the key, and admitted them into No. 7; when Fitzjocelyn confused Mary's judgment with his recommendations, till Aunt Catharine pointing out the broken shutter, and asking if he would not have been better employed in fetching the carpenter, than in hectoring the magistrates, he promised to make up for it, fetched a piece of wood and James's tools, and was quickly at work, his Aunt only warning him, that if he lost Jem's tools she would not say it was her fault.
By the time Mary's imagination had portrayed what paper, paint, furniture, and habitation might make the house, and had discerned how to arrange a pretty little study in case of her father's return; he had completed the repair in a workmanlike manner, and putting two fingers to his cap, asked, 'Any other little job for me, ma'am?'
Of course, he forgot the tools, till shamed by Mary's turning back for them, and after a merry luncheon, served up in haste by Jane, they betook themselves to Number 8, where the Miss Faithfulls were seated at a dessert of hard biscuits and water, of neither of which they ever partook: they only adhered to the hereditary institution of sitting for twenty minutes after dinner with their red and purple doileys before them.
Mary seemed to herself carried back fourteen years, and to understand why her childish fancy had always believed Christiana's Mercy a living character, when she found herself in the calm, happy little household. The chief change was that she must now bend down, instead of reaching up, to receive the kind embraces. Even the garments seemed unchanged, the dark merino gowns, black silk aprons, white cap-ribbons, the soft little Indian shawl worn by the elder sister, the ribbon bow by the younger, distinctions that used to puzzle her infant speculation, not aware that the coloured bow was Miss Mercy's ensign of youth, and that its absence would have made Miss Salome feel aged indeed. The two sisters were much alike--but the younger was the more spare, shrivelled up into a cheery nonpareil, her bloom changed into something quite as fresh and healthful, and her blithe tripping step always active, except when her fingers were nimbly taking their turn. Miss Salome had become more plump, her cheek was smoother and paler, her eye more placid, her air that of a patient invalid, and her countenance more intellectual than her sister's. She said less about their extreme enjoyment of the yam, and while Mrs. Frost and Mary held counsel with Miss Mercy on servants and furniture, there was a talk on entomology going on between her and Fitzjocelyn.
It was very pretty to see him with the old ladies, so gently attentive, without patronizing, and they, though evidently doting on him, laughing at him, and treating him like a spoilt child. He insisted on Mary's seeing their ordinary sitting room, which nature had intended for a housekeeper's room, but which ladylike inhabitants had rendered what he called the very 'kernel of the House Beautiful.' There were the stands of flowers in the window; the bullfinch scolding in his cage, the rare old shells and china on the old-fashioned cabinets that Mary so well remembered; and the silk patchwork sofa-cover, the old piano, and Miss Faithfull's arm chair by the fire, her little table with her beautiful knitting, and often a flower or insect that she was copying; for she still drew nicely; and she smiled and consented, as Louis pulled out her portfolios, life-long collections of portraits of birds, flowers, or insects. Her knitting found a sale at the workshop, where the object was well known, and the proceeds were diffused by her sister, and whether she deserved her name might be guessed by the basket of poor people's stores beside her chair.
Miss Mercy was well known in every dusky Northwold lane or alley, where she always found or made a welcome for herself. The kindly counsel and ready hand were more potent than far larger means without them.
Such neighbours were in themselves a host, and Mary and her mother both felt as if they had attained a region of unwonted tranquillity and repose, when they had agreed to rent No. 5, Dynevor Terrace, from the ensuing Lady-day, and to take possession when carpenters and upholsterers should have worked their will.
Louis was half-way home when he exclaimed, 'There! I have missed Tom Madison a second time. When shall I ever remember him at the right time?'
Little did Louis guess the effect his neglect was taking! Charlotte Arnold might have told, for Mrs. Martha had brought in stories of his unsteadiness and idle habits that confirmed her in her obedience to Jane. She never went out alone in his leisure hours; never looked for him in returning from church--alas! that was not the place to look for him now. And yet she could not believe him such a very bad boy as she was told he had become.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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5
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THE TWO MINISTERS.
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'The creature's neither one nor t'other. I caught the animal last night, And viewed him o'er by candle-light; I marked him well, 'twas black as jet. You stare, but sirs, I've got him yet, And can produce him.' 'Pray, sir, do; I'll lay my life the thing is blue.' 'And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen The reptile, you'll pronounce him green.' 'Well, then, at once to end the doubt,' Replies the man, 'I'll turn him out; And when before your eyes I've set him, If you don't find him black, I'll eat him.' He said--then, full before their sight Produced the beast, and lo! 'twas white! MERRICK.
Mrs. Ponsonby had seen in the tropics birds of brilliant hues, that even, whilst the gazer pronounced them all one beaming tint of gorgeous purple, would give one flutter, and in another light would flash with golden green or fiery scarlet. No less startling and unexpected were the aspects of Lord Fitzjocelyn, 'Every thing by starts, and nothing long;' sometimes absorbed in study, sometimes equally ardent over a childish game; wild about philanthropic plans, and apparently forgetting them the instant a cold word had fallen on them; attempting everything, finishing nothing; dipping into every kind of book, and forsaking it after a cursory glance; ever busy, yet ever idle; full of desultory knowledge, ranging through all kinds of reading and natural history, and still more full of talk. This last was perhaps his most decided gift. To any one, of whatever degree, he would talk, he could hardly have been silent ten minutes with any human being, except Frampton or his father, and whether deep reflections or arrant nonsense came out of his mouth, seemed an even chance, though both alike were in the same soft low voice, and with the same air of quaint pensive simplicity. He was exceedingly provoking, and yet there was no being provoked with him!
He was so sincere, affectionate, and obliging, that not to love him was impossible, yet that love only made his faults more annoying, and Mrs. Ponsonby could well understand his father's perpetual restless anxiety, for his foibles were exactly of the sort most likely to tease such a man as the Earl, and the most positively unsatisfactory part of his character was the insouciance that he displayed when his trifling or his wild projects had given umbrage. Yet, even here, she could not but feel a hope, such as it was, that the carelessness might be the effect of want of sympathy and visible affection from his father, whose very anxiety made him the more unbending; and that, what a worse temper might have resented, rendered a good one gaily reckless and unheeding.
She often wondered whether she should try to give a hint--but Lord Ormersfield seemed to dread leading to the subject, although on all else that interested him he came to her as in old times, and seemed greatly refreshed and softened by her companionship.
An old friend and former fellow-minister had proposed spending a night at Ormersfield. He was the person whom the Earl most highly esteemed, and, in his own dignified way, he was solicitous that the household should be in more than usually perfect order, holding a long conference with the man of whom he was sure, Frampton. Would that he could have been equally sure of his son! He looked at him almost wistfully several times during breakfast, and at last, as they rose, gave an exhortation 'that he would be punctual to dinner at half-past seven, which would give him ample time, and he hoped he would be--' He paused for a word, and his son supplied it. 'On my good behaviour, I understand.' With that he walked off, leaving Lord Ormersfield telling Mrs. Ponsonby that it was the first introduction, as he had 'for various reasons' thought it undesirable to bring Fitzjocelyn early to London, and betraying his own anxiety as to the impression he might produce on Sir Miles Oakstead. His own perplexity and despondency showed themselves in his desire to view his son with the eyes of others, and he also thought the tenor of Fitzjocelyn's future life might be coloured by his friend's opinion.
Evening brought the guest. Mrs. Ponsonby was not well enough to appear at dinner, but Mary and Mrs. Frost, pleased to see an historical character, were in the drawing-room, enjoying Sir Miles's agreeable conversation, until they caught certain misgivings reflected in each other's looks, as time wore on and nothing had been seen or heard of Louis. The half-hour struck; the Earl waited five minutes, then rang the bell. 'Is Lord Fitzjocelyn come in?'
'No, my Lord.'
'Bring in the dinner.'
Mary longed to fly in search of him, and spare further vexation. She had assumed all an elder sister's feelings, and suffered for him as she used to do, when he was in disgrace and would not heed it. She heard no more of the conversation, and was insensible to the honour of going in to dinner with the late Secretary of State, as she saw the empty place at the table.
The soup was over, when she was aware of a step in the hall, and beside her stood a grey figure, bespattered with mud, shading his eyes with his hand, as if dazzled by the lights. 'I beg your pardon,' were the words, 'but I was obliged to go to Northwold. I have shot a rose-coloured pastor!'
'Shot him!' cried Mary. 'Was he much hurt?'
'Killed! I took him to Miss Faithfull, to be sketched before he is stuffed--' A clearer view of the company, a wave of the hand from the Earl, and the young gentleman was gone. Next he opened the library door, saying, 'Here's my pretty behaviour!'
'Louis! what is the matter?' cried Mrs. Ponsonby.
'I entirely forgot the right honourable, and marched into the dining-room to tell Aunt Catharine that I have killed a rose-coloured pastor.'
'Killed what?'
'A bird, hardly ever seen in England. I spied him in the fir-wood, went to Warren for a gun, brought him down, and walked on to the House Beautiful, where Miss Faithfull was enchanted. She will copy him, and send him to the bird-stuffer. I looked in to give directions, and old Jenyns was amazed; he never knew one shot here before, so early in the year too. He says we must send the account to the Ornithological--' 'Do you know how wet you are? exclaimed Mrs. Ponsonby, seeing rivulets dropping from his coat.
'I see. It rained all the way home, and was so dark, I could not see the footpath; and when I came in, my eyes were blinded by the light, and my head so full of the pastor, that the other minister never occurred to me, and remains under the impression that I have confessed a sacrilegious murder.'
'You really are incorrigible!' cried Mrs. Ponsonby. 'Why are you not dressing for dinner?'
'Because you are going to give me a cup of your tea.'
'Certainly not. I shall begin to think you purposely mortified your father, when you know he wanted you to be reasonable.'
'The lower species never show off well to strangers,' said Fitzjocelyn, coolly; but, as he lighted his candle, he added, with more candour, 'I beg your pardon--indeed I did not do this on purpose, but don't say anything about appearances--there's something in me that is sure to revolt.'
So noiselessly that the moment was unknown, the vacant chair was filled by a gentleman irreproachably attired, his face glowing with exercise, or with what made him very debonnaire and really silent, dining rapidly and unobtrusively, and never raising his eyes even to his aunt, probably intending thus to remain all the evening; but presently Sir Miles turned to him and said, 'Pray satisfy my curiosity. Who is the rose-coloured pastor?'
Louis raised his eyes, and meeting a pleasing, sensible face, out beamed his arch look of suppressed fun as he answered, 'He is not at all clerical. He is otherwise called the rose-coloured ouzel or starling.'
'Whence is that other startling name?'
'From his attending flocks of sheep, on the same mission as jackdaws fulfil here--which likewise have an ecclesiastical reputation-- 'A great frequenter of the church.''
Fearing alike nonsense and ornithology, Lord Ormersfield changed the subject, and Louis subsided, but when the gentlemen came into the drawing-room, Mrs. Ponsonby was surprised to see him taking a fair share, and no more, of the conversation. Some information had been wanted about the terms of labour in the mining districts, and Louis's visit to Illershall enabled him to throw light on the subject, with much clearness and accuracy. Sir Miles had more literature than Lord Ormersfield, and was more used to young men; and he began to draw Fitzjocelyn out, with complete success. Louis fully responded to the touch, and without a notion that he was showing himself to the best advantage, he yielded to the pleasure, and for once proved of what he was capable--revealing unawares an unusual amount of intelligence and observation, and great power of expression. Not even his aunt had ever seen him appear so much like a superior man, and the only alloy was his father's, ill-repressed dread lest he should fall on dangerous ground, and commit himself either to his wildly philanthropical or extravagantly monarchical views, whichever might happen to be in the ascendant. However, such shoals were not approached, nor did Louis ever plunge out of his depth. The whole of his manner and demeanour were proofs that, in his case, much talk sprang from exuberance of ideas, not from self-conceit.
He was equally good in the morning: he had risen early to hunt up some information which Sir Miles wanted, and the clearness and readiness with which he had found it were wonderful. The guest was delighted with him; gave him a warm invitation to Oakstead, and on being left alone with Mrs. Ponsonby, whom he had formerly known, expressed his admiration of his friend's son--as a fine, promising young man, of great ability and originality, and, what was still more remarkable, of most simple, natural manners, perfectly free from conceit. He seemed the more amazed, when he found, what he would hardly believe, that Fitzjocelyn was twenty-one, and had nearly finished his university education.
The liking was mutual. No sooner had Sir Miles departed, than Louis came to the library in a rapture, declaring that here was the refreshing sight of a man unspoilt by political life, which usually ate out the hearts of people.
Mary smiled at this, and told him that he was talking 'like an old statesman weary of the world.'
'One may be weary of the world beforehand as well as after,' said he.
'That does not seem worth while,' said Mary.
'No,' he said, 'but one's own immediate look-out may not be flattering, whatever the next turn may bring;' and he took up the newspaper, and began to turn it over. ''As butler--as single-handed man--as clerk and accountant.' There, those are the lucky men, with downright work, and some one to work for. Or, just listen to this!' and he plunged into a story of some heroic conduct during a shipwreck. While he was reading it aloud, with kindling eyes and enthusiastic interest, his father opened the door. 'Louis,' he said, 'if you are doing nothing, I should be obliged if you would make two copies of this letter.'
Louis glanced at the end of what he was reading, laid the paper down, and opened a blotting-book.
'You had better come into the study, or you will not write correctly.'
'I can write, whatever goes on.'
'I particularly wish this to be legible and accurate. You have begun too low down.'
Louis took another sheet.
'That pen is not fit to write with.'
'The pens are delusions,' said Louis, trying them round, in an easy, idle way: 'I never could mend a quill! How is this steel one? Refuses to recognise the purpose of his existence. Aunt Catherine, do you still forbid steel pens in your school? If so, it must be the solitary instance. How geese must cackle blessings on the inventor! He should have a testimonial--a silver inkstand representing the goose that laid the golden eggs,--and all writing-masters should subscribe. Ha! where did this pen come from? Mary, were you the bounteous mender! A thousand thanks.'
If Louis fretted his father by loitering and nonsense, his father was no less trying by standing over him with advice and criticisms which would have driven most youths beyond patience, but which he bore with constant good-humour, till his father returned to the study, when he exclaimed, 'Now, Mary, if you like to finish the wreck, it will not interrupt me. This is mere machine-work.'
'Thank you,' said Mary; 'I should like it better afterwards. Do you think I might do one copy for you? Or would it not suit Lord Ormersfield?'
Louis made polite demurs, but she overruled them and began.
He stretched himself, took up his Times, and skimmed the remaining incidents of the shipwreck, till he was shamed by seeing Mary half-way down the first page, when he resumed his pen, overtook her, and then relapsed into talk, till Mrs. Frost fairly left the room, to silence him.
As the two copies were completed, Lord Ormersfield returned; and Mary, with many apologies, presented her copy, and received most gracious thanks and compliments on her firm, clear writing, a vexation to her rather than otherwise, since 'Fitzjocelyn' was called to account for dubious scrawls, errors, and erasures.
He meekly took another sheet, consoling himself, however, by saying, 'I warn you that pains will only make it Miss Fanny.'
'What do you mean?'
As if glad to be instigated, he replied, 'Did you never hear of my signature being mistaken by an ingenious person, who addressed his answer to 'Miss Fanny Jocelyn? Why, Fanny has been one of Jem's regular names for me ever since! I have the envelope somewhere as a curiosity. I'll show it to you, Mary.'
'You seem to be proud of it!' exclaimed his father, nearly out of patience. 'Pray tell me whether you intend to copy this creditably or not.'
'I will endeavour, but the Fates must decide. I can scrawl, or, with pains, I can imitate Miss Fanny; but the other alternative only comes in happy moments.'
'Do you mean that you cannot write well if you choose?'
'It is like other arts--an inspiration. Dogberry was deep when he said it came by nature.'
'Then make no more attempts. No. That schoolgirl's niggle is worse than the first.'
'Fanny, as I told you,' said Louis, looking vacantly up in resigned despair, yet not without the lurking expression of amusement, 'I will try again.'
'No, I thank you. I will have no more time wasted.'
Louis passively moved to the window, where he exclaimed that he saw Aunt Catharine sunning herself in the garden, and must go and help her.
'Did you ever see anything like that?' cried Lord Ormersfield, thoroughly moved to displeasure.
'There was at least good-humour,' said Mrs. Ponsonby. 'Pardon me, there was almost as much to try his temper as yours.'
'He is insensible!'
'I think not. A word from Aunt Catharine rules him.'
'Though you counselled it, Mary, I doubt whether her training has answered. Henry Frost should have been a warning.'
Mary found herself blundering in her new copy, and retreated with it to the study, while her mother made answer: 'I do not repent of my advice. The affection between him and Aunt Catherine is the greatest blessing to him.'
'Poor boy!' said his father, forgetting his letters as he stood pondering. Mrs. Ponsonby seized the moment for reporting Sir Miles's opinion, but the Earl did not betray his gratification. 'First sight!' he said. 'Last night and this afternoon he is as unlike as these are,' and he placed before her Louis's unlucky copies, together with a letter written in a bold, manly hand. 'Three different men might have written these! And he pretends he cannot write like this, if he please!'
'I have no doubt it is to a certain extent true. Yes, absolutely true. You do not conceive the influence that mood has on some characters before they have learnt to master themselves. I do not mean temper, but the mere frame of spirits. Even sense of restraint will often take away the actual power from a child, or where there is not a strong will.'
'You are right!' said he, becoming rigid as if with pain. 'He is a child! You have not yet told me what you think of him. You need not hesitate. No one sees the likeness more plainly than I do.'
'It is strong externally,' she said; 'but I think it is more external than real, more temperament than character.'
'You are too metaphysical for me, Mary;' and he would fain have smiled.
'I want you to be hopeful. Half the object would be attained if you were, and he really deserves that you should.'
'He will not let me. If I hope at one moment, I am disappointed the next.'
'And how? By nothing worse than boyishness. You confirm what my aunt tells me, that there has never been a serious complaint of him.'
'Never. His conduct has always been blameless; but every tutor has said the same--that he has no application, and allows himself to be surpassed by any one of moderate energy!'
'Blameless conduct! How many fathers would give worlds to be able to give such a character of a son!'
'There are faults that are the very indications of a manly spirit,' began the Earl, impatiently. 'Not that I mean that I wish--he has never given me any trouble--but just look at James Frost, and you would see what I mean! There's energy in him--fire--independence; you feel there is substance in him, and like him the better for having a will and way of his own.'
'So, I think, has Louis; but it is so often thwarted, that it sinks away under the sense of duty and submission.'
'If there were any consistency or reason in his fancies, they would not give way so easily; but it is all talk, all extravagant notions--here one day, gone the next. Not a spark of ambition!'
'Ambition is not so safe a spark that we should wish to see it lighted.'
'A man must wish to see his son hold his proper station, and aim high! No one can be satisfied to see him a trifler.'
'I have been trying to find out why he trifles. As far as I can see, he has no ambition, and I do not think his turn will be for a life like yours. His bent is towards what is to do good to others. He would make an admirable country gentleman.'
'A mere farmer, idling away his time in his fields.'
'No; doing infinite good by example and influence, and coming forward whenever duty required it. Depend upon it, the benefit to others is the impulse which can work on Louis, not personal ambition. Birth has already given him more than he values.'
'You may be right,' said Lord Ormersfield, 'but it is hard to see so many advantages thrown away, and what sometimes seems like so much ability wasted. But who can tell? he is never the same for an hour together.'
'May it not be for want of a sphere of wholesome action?'
'He is not fit for it, Mary. You know I resolved that the whole burthen of our losses should fall on me; I made it my object that he should not suffer, and should freely have whatever I had at the same age. Everything is cleared at last. I could give him the same income as I started in life with; but he is so reckless of money, that I cannot feel justified in putting it into his hands. Say what I will, not a vacation occurs but he comes to tell me of some paltry debt of ten or fifteen pounds.'
'He comes to tell you! Nay, never say he has no resolution! Such debts as those, what are they compared with other young men's, of which they do not tell their fathers?'
'If he were like other youths, I should know how to deal with him. But you agree with me, he is not fit to have a larger sum in his hands.'
'Perhaps not; he is too impulsive and inexperienced. If you were to ask me how to make it conduce to his happiness, I should say, lay out more on the estate, so as to employ more men, and make improvements in which he would take interest.'
'I cannot make him care for the estate. Last winter, when he came of age, I tried to explain the state of affairs; but he was utterly indifferent--would not trouble himself to understand the papers he was to sign, and made me quite ashamed of such an exhibition before Richardson.'
'I wish I could defend him! And yet--you will think me unreasonable, but I do believe that if he had thought the welfare of others was concerned, he would have attended more.'
'Umph!'
'I am not sure that it is not his good qualities that make him so hard to deal with. The want of selfishness and vanity seem to take away two common springs of action, but I do believe that patience will bring out something much higher when you have found the way to reach it.'
'That I certainly have not, if it be there!'
'To cultivate his sympathies with you,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, hesitating, and not venturing to look into his face.
'Enough, Mary,' he said, hastily. You said the like to me once before.'
'But,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, firmly, '_here_ there is a foundation to work on. There are affections that only need to be drawn out to make you happy, and him--not, perhaps, what you now wish, but better than you wish.'
His face had become hard as he answered, 'Thank you, Mary; you have always meant the best. You have always been kind to me, and to all belonging to me.'
Her heart ached for the father and son, understanding each other so little, and paining each other so much, and she feared that the Earl's mind had been too much cramped, and his feelings too much chilled, for such softening on his part as could alone, as it seemed, prevent Louis from being estranged, and left to his naturally fickle and indolent disposition.
Mary had in the mean time completed her copies, and left them on the Earl's table; and wishing neither to be thanked nor contrasted with Louis, she put on her bonnet, to go in search of Aunt Catharine. Not finding her in the garden, she decided on visiting old Gervas and his wife, who had gladly caught at her offer of reading to them. The visit over, she returned by the favourite path above Ferny dell, gathering primroses, and meditating how to stir up Louis to finish off his rocky steps, and make one piece of work complete. She paused at the summit of them, and was much inclined to descend and examine what was wanting, when she started at hearing a rustling beneath, then a low moan and an attempt at a call. The bushes and a projecting rock cut off her view; but, in some trepidation, she called out, 'Is any one there?' Little did she expect the answer-- 'It is I--Fitzjocelyn. Come! --I have had a fall.'
'I'm coming--are you hurt?' she cried, as with shaking limbs she prepared to begin the descent.
'Not that way,' he called; 'it gave way--go to the left.'
She was almost disobeying; but, recalling herself to thought, she hurried along the top till the bank became practicable, and tore her way through brake and brier, till she could return along the side of the stream.
Horror-struck, she perceived that a heavy stone had given way and rolled down, bearing Louis with it, to the bottom, where he lay, ghastly and helpless. She called to him; and he tried to raise himself, but sank back. 'Mary! is it you? I thought I should have died here,' he said; as she knelt by him, exclaiming, 'Oh, Louis! Louis! what a dreadful fall!'
'It is my fault,' he eagerly interrupted. 'I am glad it has happened to no one else.'
'And you are terribly hurt! I must go for help! but what can I do for you? Would you like some water?
'Water! Oh! I have heard it all this time gurgling there!'
She filled his cap, and bathed his face, apparently to his great relief, and she ventured to ask if he had been long there.
'Very long!' he said. 'I must have fainted after I got the stone off my foot, so I missed Gervas going by. I thought no one else would come near. Thank God!'
Mary almost grew sick as she saw how dreadfully his left ankle had been crushed by a heavy stone; and her very turning towards it made him shudder, and say, 'Don't touch me! I am shattered all over.'
'I am afraid I should only hurt you,' she said, with difficulty controlling herself. 'I had better fetch some one.'
He did not know how to be left again; but the damp chilliness of his hands made her the more anxious to procure assistance, and, after spreading her shawl over him, she made the utmost speed out of the thicket. As she emerged, she saw Lord Ormersfield riding with his groom, and her scream and sign arrested him; but, by the time they met, she could utter nothing but 'Louis!'
'Another accident!' was the almost impatient answer.
'He is dreadfully hurt!' she said, sobbing and breathless. 'His foot is crushed! He has been there this hour!'
The alarm was indeed given. The Earl seemed about to rush away without knowing whither; and she had absolutely to withhold him, while, summoning her faculties, she gave directions to Poynings. Then she let him draw her on, too fast for speaking, until they reached the spot where Louis lay, so spent with pain and cold, that he barely opened his eyes at their voices, made no distinct answers as to his hurts, and shrank and moaned when his father would have raised him.
Mary contrived to place his head on her lap, bathed his forehead and chafed his hands, while Lord Ormersfield stood watching him with looks of misery, or paced about, anxiously looking for the servants.
They came at last, all too soon for poor Louis, who suffered terribly in the transport, and gave few tokens of consciousness, except a cry now and then extorted by a rougher movement.
None of the household, scarcely even Mrs. Frost, seemed at first to be able to believe that Lord Fitzjocelyn could really have hurt himself seriously. 'Again!' was the first word of every one, for his many slight accidents were treated like crying 'Wolf;' but Frampton himself looked perfectly pale and shocked when he perceived how the matter really stood; and neither he nor Lord Ormersfield was half so helpful as Mrs. Frost. The shock only called out her energy in behalf of her darling, and, tender as her nature was, she shrank from nothing that could soothe and alleviate his suffering; and it did infinitely comfort him, as he held her hand and looked with affection into her face, even in the extremity of pain.
Fain would others have been the same support; but his father, though not leaving him, was completely unnerved, and unable to do anything; and Mrs. Ponsonby was suffering under one of the attacks that were brought on by any sudden agitation. Mary, though giddy and throbbing in every pulse, was forced to put a resolute check on herself--brace her limbs, steady her voice, and keep her face composed, while every faculty was absorbed in listening for sounds from her cousin's room, and her heart was quivering with an anguish of prayer and suspense. Could she but hide her burning cheeks for one moment, let out one of the sobs that seemed to be rending her breast, throw herself on her knees and burst into tears, what an infinite relief it would be! But Mary had learnt to spend her life in having no self.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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6
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FAREWELLS.
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What yet is there that I should do, Lingering in this darksome vale? Proud and mighty, fair to view, Are our schemes, and yet they fail, Like the sand before the wind, That no power of man can bind. ARNDT, Lyra Germanica.
Dynevor Terrace was said to have dark, damp kitchens, but by none who had ever been in No. 5, when the little compact fire was compressed to one glowing red crater of cinders, their smile laughing ruddily back from the bright array on the dresser, the drugget laid down, the round oaken table brought forward, and Jane Beckett, in afternoon trim, tending her geraniums, the offspring of the parting Cheveleigh nosegay, or gauffreing her mistress's caps. No wonder that on raw evenings, Master James, Miss Clara, or my young Lord, had often been found gossiping with Jane, toasting their own cheeks as well as the bread, or pinching their fingers in her gauffreing machine.
Yet, poor little Charlotte Arnold learnt that the kitchen could be dreary, when Mrs. Beckett had been summoned to nurse Lord Fitzjocelyn, and she remained in sole charge, under Mrs. Martha's occasional supervision. She found herself, her household cares over all too soon, on a cold light March afternoon, with the clock ticking loud enough for midnight, the smoke-jack indulging in supernatural groans, and the whole lonely house full of undefined terrors, with an unlimited space of the like solitude before her. She would even have been glad to be sure of an evening of Mrs. Martha's good advice, and of darning stockings! She sat down by the round table to Mr. James's wristbands; but every creak or crack of the furniture made her start, and think of death-watches. She might have learnt to contemn superstition, but that did not prevent it from affecting her nerves.
She spread her favourite study, The Old English Baron, on the table before her; but the hero had some connexion in her mind with Tom Madison, for whom she had always coveted a battle-field in France. What would he feel when he heard how he had filled up his course of evil, being well-nigh the death of his benefactor! If any one ought to be haunted, it would assuredly be no other than Tom!
Chills running over her at the thought, she turned to the fire as the thing nearest life, but at the moment started at a hollow call of her own name. A face was looking in at her through the geraniums! She shrieked aloud, and clasped her hands over her eyes.
'Don't make a row. Open the door!'
It was such a relief to hear something unghostly, that she sprang to the door; but as she undid it, all her scruples seized her, and she tried to hold it, saying, 'Don't come in! You unfortunate boy, do you know what you have done?'
But Tom Madison was in a mood to which her female nature cowered. He pushed the door open, saying authoritatively, 'Tell me how he is!'
'He is as ill as he can be to be alive,' said Charlotte, actuated at once by the importance of being the repository of such tidings, and by the excitement of communicating them to one so deeply concerned. 'Mr. Poynings came in to fetch Mrs. Beckett--he would have no one else to nurse him--and he says the old Lord and Missus have never had their clothes off these two nights.'
'Then, was it along of them stones?' asked the lad, hoarsely.
'Yourself should know best!' returned Charlotte. 'Mr. Poynings says 'twas a piece of rock as big as that warming-pan as crushed his ankle! and you know--' 'I know nothing,' said Tom. 'Master kept me in all day yesterday, and I only heard just now at Little Northwold, where I've been to take home some knives of Squire Calcott's. Master may blow me up if he likes, but I couldn't come till I'd heard the rights of it. Is he so very bad?'
'They've sent up to London for a doctor,' pursued Charlotte. 'Mr. Walby don't give but little hope of him. Poor young gentleman, I'm sure he had a good word from high and low!'
'Well! I'm gone!' cried Tom, vehemently. 'Goodbye to you, Charlotte Arnold! You'll never see me in these parts more!'
'Gone! Oh, Tom! what do you mean!'
'D'ye think I'll stay here to have this here cast in my face? Such a one as won't never walk the earth again!' and he burst out into passionate tears. 'I wish I was dead!'
'Oh, hush, Tom! --that is wicked!'
'May be so! I am all that's wicked, and you all turn against me!'
'I don't turn against you,' sobbed Charlotte, moved to the bottom of her gentle heart.
'You! you turned against me long ago. You've been too proud to cast one look at me these three months; and he forgot me; and that's what drew me on, when who cared what became of me--nor I neither now.'
'Don't speak that way! Don't say 'twas pride. Oh no! but I had to behave proper, and how should I keep up acquaintance when they said you went on--unsteady--' 'Aye, aye! I know how it is,' said poor Tom, with broken-down humility: 'I was not fit for you then, and I'm next thing to a murderer now; and you're like a white dove that the very fingers of me would grime. I'll take myself out of your way; but, let what will come of me, I'll never forget you, Charlotte.'
'Oh, wait, Tom! If I could but say it right! --Oh! I know there's something about biding patiently, and getting a blessing--if you'd only stop while I recollect it.'
'I thought I heard voices!' exclaimed Mrs. Martha, suddenly descending on them. 'I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourselves, and the family in such trouble! Downright owdacious!'
'Be this your house?' said Tom, stepping before Charlotte, his dejection giving way instantly to rude independence.
'Oh, very well,' said Martha, with dignity. 'I know what to expect from such sort of people. The house and young woman is in my charge, sir; and if you don't be off, I'll call the police.'
'Never trouble your old bones!' retorted Tom.
'Good-bye to you, Charlotte;' and, as in defiance of Martha, he took her passive hand. 'You'll remember one as loved you true and faithful, but was drove desperate! Good-bye! I'll not trouble no one no more!'
The three concluding negatives with which he dashed out of the house utterly overwhelmed Charlotte, and made her perfectly insensible to Mrs. Martha's objurgations. She believed in the most horrible and desperate intentions, and sobbed herself into such violent hysterics that Miss Mercy came in to assist--imagined that the rude boy had terrified her, misunderstood her shamefaced attempts at explanation, and left her lying on her bed, crying quietly over her secret terrors, and over that first, strangely-made declaration of love. The white dove! she did not deserve it, but it was so poetical! and poor Tom was so unhappy! She had not time even to think what was become of her own character for wisdom and prudence.
The next morning, between monition and triumph, Martha announced that the good-for-nothing chap was off with a valuable parcel of Mr. Calcott's, and the police were after him; with much more about his former idle habits,--frequenting of democratic oratory, public-houses, and fondness for bad company and strolling actors. Meek and easily cowed, Charlotte only opened her lips to say she knew that he had taken home Mr. Calcott's parcel. But this brought down a storm on her for being impertinent enough to defend him, and she sat trembling till it had subsided; and Martha retreating, left her to weep unrestrainedly over her wild fancies, and the world's cruelty and injustice towards one whom, as she was now ready to declare, she loved with her whole heart.
The bell rang sharply, knocks rattled at the front door! She was sure that Tom had been just taken out of the river! But instinct to answer the bell awoke at the second furious clattering and double pealing, which allowed no time for her to compose her tear-streaked, swollen face, especially as the hasty sounds suggested 'Mr. James.'
Mr. James it was, but the expected rebuke for keeping him waiting was not spoken. As he saw her sorrowful looks, he only said, low and softly, 'Is it so, Charlotte?' In his eyes, there could be but one cause for grief, and Charlotte's heart smote her for hypocrisy, when she could barely command her voice to reply, 'No, sir; my Lord has had a little better night.'
He spoke with unusual gentleness, as he made more inquiries than she could answer; and when, after a few minutes, he turned to walk on to Ormersfield, he said, kindly, 'Good-bye, Charlotte; I'll send you word if I find him better:' and the tears rose in his eyes at the thought how every one loved the patient.
He was not wrong. There was everywhere great affection and sympathy for the bright, fantastic being whom all laughed at and liked, and Northwold and the neighbourhood felt that they could have better spared something more valuable.
The danger was hardly exaggerated even by Charlotte. The chill of the long exposure had brought on high fever; and besides the crushed ankle, there had been severe contusions, which had resulted in an acute pain in the side, hitherto untouched by remedies, and beyond the comprehension of the old Northwold surgeon, Mr. Walby. As yet, however, the idea of peril had not presented itself to Louis, though he was perfectly sensible. Severe pain and illness were new to him; and though not fretful nor impatient, he had not the stoicism either of pride or of physical indifference, put little restraint on the expression of suffering, and was to an almost childish degree absorbed in the present. He was always considerate and grateful; and his fond affection for his Aunt Catharine, and for good old Jane, never failed to show itself whenever they did anything for his relief; and they were the best of nurses.
Poor Lord Ormersfield longed to be equally effective; but he was neither handy nor ready, and could only sit hour after hour beside his son, never moving except to help the nurses, or to try to catch the slightest accent of the sufferer. Look up when Louis would, he always saw the same bowed head, and earnest eyes, which, as Mrs. Ponsonby told her daughter, looked as they did when Louisa was dying.
The coming of the London surgeon was an era to which Louis evidently looked anxiously, with the iteration of sickness, often reckoning the hours till he could arrive; and when at last he came, there was an evident effort to command attention.
When the visit was over, and the surgeon was taking leave after the consultation, Fitzjocelyn calmly desired to know his opinion, and kept his eyes steadily fixed on his face, weighing the import of each word. All depended on the subduing the inflammatory action, in the side; and there was every reason to hope that he would have strength for the severe treatment necessary. There was no reason to despond.
'I understand--thank you,' said Louis.
He shut his eyes, and lay so still that Mrs. Frost trusted that he slept; but when his father came in, they were open, and Lord Ormersfield, bending over him, hoped he was in less pain.
'Thank you, there is not much difference.' But the plaintive sound was gone, the suffering was not the sole thought.
'Walby is coming with the leeches at two o'clock,' said Lord Ormersfield: 'I reckon much on them.'
'Thank you.' Silence again, but his face spoke a wish, and his aunt Catharine said, 'What, my dear?'
'I should like to see Mr. Holdsworth,' said Louis, with eyes appealing to his father.
'He has been here to inquire every day,' said the Earl, choosing neither to refuse nor understand. 'Whenever it is not too much for you--' 'It must be quickly, before I am weaker,' said Louis. 'Let it be before Walby returns, father.'
'Whatever you wish, my dear--' and Lord Ormersfield, turning towards the table, wrote a note, which Mrs. Frost offered to despatch, thinking that her presence oppressed her elder nephew, who looked bowed down by the intensity of grief, which, unexpressed, seemed to pervade the whole man and weigh him to the earth: and perhaps this also struck Louis for the first time, for, after having lain silent for some minutes, he softly said, 'Father!'
The Earl was instantly beside him, but, instead of speaking, Louis gazed in his face, and sighed, as he murmured, 'I was meant to have been a comfort to you.'
'My dear boy--' began Lord Ormersfield, but he could not trust his voice, as he saw Louis's eyes moist with tears.
'I wish I had!' he continued; 'but I have never been anything but a care and vexation, and I see it all too late.'
'Nay, Louis,' said his father, trying to assume his usual tone of authority, as if to prove his security, 'you must not give way to feelings of illness. It is weak to despond.'
'It is best to face it,' said the young man, with slow and feeble utterance, but with no quailing of eye or voice. 'But oh, father! I did not think you would feel it so much. I am not worth it.'
For the Earl could neither speak nor breathe, as if smothered by one mighty unuttered sob, and holding his son's hand between both his own, pressed it convulsively.
'I am glad Mrs. Ponsonby is here,' said Louis; 'and you will soon find what a nice fellow Edward Fitzjocelyn is, whom you may make just what--' 'Louis, my own boy, hush! I cannot bear this,' cried his father, in an accent wrung from him by excess of grief.
'I may recover,' said Louis, finding it his turn to comfort, 'and I should like to be longer with you, to try to make up--' 'You will. The leeches must relieve you. Only keep up your spirits: you have many years before you of happiness and success.'
The words brought a look of oppression over Louis's face, but it cleared as he said, 'I am more willing to be spared those years!'
His father positively started. 'Louis, my poor boy,' he said, 'is it really so? I know I have seemed a cold, severe father.'
'Oh, do not say so!' exclaimed Louis; 'I have deserved far less-idle, ungrateful, careless of your wishes. I did not know I could pain you so much, or I would not have done it. You have forgiven often, say you forgive now.'
'You have far more to forgive than I,' said the Earl.
'If I could tell you the half-waywardness, discontent, neglect, levity, wasted time--my treatment of you only three days back. Everything purposed--nothing done! Oh! what a life to bring before the Judge!' And he covered his face, but his father heard long-drawn sobs.
'Compose yourself, my dear boy,' he exclaimed, exceedingly grieved and perplexed. 'You know there is no cause to despond; and even--even if there were, you have no reason to distress yourself. I can say, from the bottom of my heart, that you have never given me cause for real anxiety, your conduct has been exemplary, and I never saw such attention to religion in any young man. These are mere trifles--' 'Oh, hush, father!' exclaimed Louis. 'You are only making it worse; you little know what I am! If Mr. Holdsworth would come!'
'He could only tell you the same,' said his father. 'You may take every comfort in thinking how blameless you have been, keeping so clear of all the faults of your age. I may not have esteemed you as you deserved, my poor Louis; but, be assured that very few can have so little to reproach themselves with as you have.'
Louis almost smiled. 'Poor comfort that,' he said, 'even if it were true; but oh, father!' and there was a light in his eye, 'I had thought of 'He hath blotted out like a cloud thy transgressions.''
'That is right. One like you must find comfort in thinking.'
'There is comfort ineffable,' said Louis; 'but if I knew what I may dare to take home to myself! It is all so dim and confused. This pain will not let anything come connectedly. Would you give me that little manuscript book!'
It was given; and as the many loose leaves fell under Louis's weak hand, his father was amazed at the mass of copies of prayers, texts, and meditations that he had brought together; the earlier pages containing childish prayers written in Aunt Catharine's hand. Louis's cheeks coloured at the revelation of his hidden life, as his father put them together for him.
'It is of no use,' he said, sadly; 'I cannot read. Perhaps my aunt would come and read this to me.'
'Let me,' said his father; and Louis looked pleased.
Lord Ormersfield read what was pointed out. To him it was a glimpse of a very new world of contrition, faith, hope, and prayer; but he saw the uneasy expression on Louis's face give place to serenity, as one already at home in that sphere.
'Thank you,' he said. 'That was what I wanted. Mr. Holdsworth will soon come, and then I don't want to say much more. Only don't take this too much to heart--I am not worth it; and but for you and the dear Terrace home, I can be very glad. If I may hope, the hope is so bright! Here there are so many ways of going wrong, and all I do always fails; and yet I always tried to do Him service. Oh, to have all perfect! --no failure--no inconsistency--no self! Can it be?'
'I always tried to do Him service!' Sadly and dejectedly as the words were spoken--mournful as was the contrast between the will and the result, this was the true cause that there was peace with Louis. Unstable, negligent, impetuous, and weak as he had been, the one earnest purpose had been his, guarding the heart, though not yet controlling the judgment. His soul was awake to the unseen, and thus the sense of the reality of bliss ineffable, and power to take comfort in the one great Sacrifice, came with no novelty nor strangeness. It was a more solemn, more painful preparation, but such as he had habitually made, only now it was for a more perfect Festival.
His father, as much awestruck by his hopes as distressed by his penitence, still gave himself credit for having soothed him, and went to meet and forewarn the Vicar that poor Fitzjocelyn was inclined to despond, and was attaching such importance to the merest, foibles in a most innocent life, that he required the most tender and careful encouragement. He spoke in his usual tone of authoritative courtesy; and then, finding that his son wished to be left alone with Mr. Holdsworth, he went to the library to seek the only person to whom he could bear to talk.
'Mary,' he said, 'you were right. I have done so little to make that poor boy of mine happy, that he does not wish for life.'
Mrs. Ponsonby looked up surprised. 'Are you sure of what he meant?' she said. 'Was it not that this life has nothing to compare with that which is to come?'
'But what can be more unnatural?' said the Earl. 'At his age, with everything before him, nothing but what he felt as my harshness could so have checked hope and enjoyment. My poor Louis!' And, though eye and voice were steady and tearless, no words could express the anguish of his under-tone.
Mrs. Ponsonby adduced instances showing that, to early youth, with heart still untainted by the world, the joys of the Life Everlasting have often so beamed out as to efface all that earth could promise, but he could not be argued out of self-reproach for his own want of sympathy, and spoke mournfully of his cold manner, sternness to small faults, and denial of gratifications.
Mary the younger could not help rising from her corner to say, 'Indeed, Louis said the other day that you never had denied him any personal indulgence.'
'My dear, he never asked for personal indulgences,' said the Earl. His further speech was interrupted by a quick step, a slow opening of the door, and the entrance of James Frost, who grasped his outstretched hand with a breathless inquiry.
'He is very ill--' Lord Ormersfield paused, too much oppressed to say more.
'No better? What did the London surgeon say? what?'
'He says there is no time to be lost in attacking the inflammation. If we can subdue that, he may recover; but the state of the ankle weakens him severely. I believe myself that he is going fast,' said the Earl, with the same despairing calmness; and James, after gazing at him to collect his meaning, dropped into a chair, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed aloud.
Lord Ormersfield looked on as if he almost envied the relief of the outburst, but James's first movement was to turn on him, as if he were neglecting his son, sharply demanding, 'Who is with him?'
'He wished to be left with Mr. Holdsworth.'
'Is it come to this!' cried James. 'Oh, why did I not come down with him? I might have prevented all this!'
'You could not have acted otherwise,' said the Earl, kindly. 'Your engagement was already formed.'
'I could!' said James. 'I would not. I thought it one of your excuses for helping us.'
'It is vain to lament these things now,' said Lord Ormersfield. 'It is very kind in you to have come down, and it will give him great pleasure if he be able to see you.'
'If!' James stammered between consternation and anger at the doubt, and treated the Earl with a kind of implied resentment as if for injustice suffered by Louis, but it was affecting to see his petulance received with patience, almost with gratitude, as a proof of his affection for Louis. The Earl stood upright and motionless before the fire, answering steadily, but in an almost inward voice, all the detailed questions put by James, who, seated on one chair, with his hands locked on the back of the other, looked keenly up to him with his sharp black eyes, often overflowing with tears, and his voice broken by grief. When he had elicited that Louis had been much excited and distressed by the thought of his failings, he burst out, 'Whatever you may think, Lord Ormersfield, no one ever had less on his conscience!'
'I am sure of it.'
'I know of no one who would have given up his own way again and again without a murmur, only to be called fickle.'
'Yes, it has often been so,' meekly said Lord Ormersfield.
'Fickle!' repeated James, warming with the topic, and pouring out what had been boiling within for years. 'He was only fickle because his standard was too high to be reached! You thought him weak!'
'There may be weakness by nature strengthened by principle,' said Mrs. Ponsonby.
'True,' cried Jem, who, having taken no previous notice of her, had at first on her speaking bent his brows on her as if to extend to her the storm he was inflicting on poor, defenceless Lord Ormersfield, 'he is thought soft because of his easy way; but come to the point where harm displays itself, you can't move him a step farther--though he hangs back in such a quiet, careless fashion, that it seems as if he was only tired of the whole concern, and so it goes down again as changeableness.'
'You always did him justice,' said Lord Ormersfield, laying his hand on his cousin's shoulder, but James retreated ungraciously.
'I suppose, where he saw evil, he actually took a dislike,' said Mrs. Ponsonby.
'It is an absolute repugnance to anything bad. You,' turning again on the Earl, 'had an idea of his being too ready to run into all sorts of company; but I told you there was no danger.'
'You told me I might trust to his disgust to anything unrefined or dissipated. You knew him best.'
'There is that about him which men, not otherwise particular, respect as they might a woman or a child. They never show themselves in their true colours, and I have known him uphold them because he has never seen their worst side!'
'I have always thought he learnt that peculiar refinement from your grandmother.'
'I think,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, softly, 'that it is purity of heart which makes him see heaven so bright.'
'Sydney Calcott walked part of the way with me,' continued Jem, 'and showed more feeling than I thought was in him. He said just what I do, that he never saw any one to whom evil seemed so unable to cling. He spoke of him at school--said he was the friend of all the juniors, but too dreamy and uncertain for fellows of his own standing. He said, at first they did not know what to make of him, with his soft looks and cool ways--they could not make him understand bullying, for he could not be frightened nor put in a passion. Only once, one great lout tried forcing bad language on him, and then Fitzjocelyn struck him, fought him, and was thoroughly licked, to be sure: but Calcott said it was a moral victory--no one tried the like again--' James was interrupted by Mr. Holdsworth's entrance. He said a few words apart to the Earl, who answered, with alarm, 'Not now; he has gone through enough.'
'I told him so, but he is very anxious, and begged me to return in the evening.'
'Thank you. You had better join us at dinner.'
The Vicar understood Lord Ormersfield better than did James, and said, pressing his hand, 'My Lord, it is heart-breaking, but the blessedness is more than we can feel.'
Mrs. Ponsonby and Mary were left to try to pacify James, who was half mad at his exclusion from the sickroom, and very angry with every hint of resignation--abusing the treatment of the doctors, calling Mr. Walby an old woman, and vehemently bent on prophesying the well-doing of the patient. Keenly sensitive, grief and suspense made him unusually irritable; and he seemed to have no power of waiting patiently, and trusting the event to wiser Hands.
Mrs. Ponsonby dared not entertain any such ardent wishes. Life had not afforded her so much joy that she should deem it the greatest good, and all that she had heard gave her the impression that Louis was too soft and gentle for the world's hard encounter,--most pure and innocent, sincere and loving at present, but rather with the qualities of childhood than of manhood, with little strength or perseverance, so that the very dread of taint or wear made it almost a relief to think of his freshness and sweetness being secured for ever. Even when she thought of his father, and shrank from such grief for him, she could not but see a hope that this affliction might soften the heart closed up by the first and far worse sorrow, and detach it from the interests that had absorbed it too exclusively. All this was her food for silent meditation. Mary sat reading or working beside her, paler perhaps than her wont, and betraying that her ear caught every sound on the stairs, but venturing no word except the most matter-of-fact remark, quietly giving force to the more favourable symptoms.
Not till after Mr. Walby's second visit, when there was a little respite in the hard life-and-death contest between the remedies and the inflammation, could Mrs. Frost spare a few moments for her grandson. She met him on the stairs--threw her arms round his neck, called him her poor Jemmy, and hastily told him that he must not make her cry. He looked anxiously in her face, and told her that he must take her place, for she was worn out.'
'No, thank you, my dear, I can rest by-and-by.'
It sounded very hopeless.
'Come, granny, you always take the bright side.'
'Who knows which is the bright side?' she said. 'Such as he are always the first. But there, dear Jem, I told you not to make too much of granny--' and hastily withdrawing her hand, she gave a parting caress to his hair as he stood on the step below her, and returned to her charge.
It would have been an inexpressible comfort to James to have had some one to reproach. His own wretchedness was like a personal injury, and an offence that he could resent would have been a positive relief. He was forced to get out of the way of Frampton coming up with a tray of lemonade, and glared at him, as if even a station on the stairs were denied, then dashed out of doors, and paced the garden, goaded by every association the scene recalled. It seemed a mere barbarity to deprive him of what he now esteemed as the charm of his life--the cousin who had been as a brother, ever seeking his sympathy, never offended by his sharp, imperious temper, and though often slighted or tyrannized over, meeting all in his own debonnaire fashion, and never forsaking the poor, hard-working student, so that he might well feel that the world could not offer him aught like Louis Fitzjocelyn.
He stood in the midst of the botanical garden, and, with almost triumphant satisfaction, prognosticated that now there would be regret that Louis's schemes had been neglected or sneered at, and when too late, his father might feel as much sorrow as he had time for. It was the bitterness, not the softness of grief, in which he looked forth into the dull blue east-windy haze deepening in the twilight, and presently beheld something dark moving along under the orchard bank beneath. 'Hollo! who's there?' he exclaimed, and the form, rearing itself, disclosed young Madison, never a favourite with him, and though, as a persecuted protege of Louis, having claims which at another time might have softened him, coming forward at an unlucky moment, when his irritation only wanted an object on which to discharge itself. It was plain that one who came skulking in the private grounds could intend no good, and James greeted him, harshly, with 'You've no business here!'
'I'm doing no harm,' said the boy, doggedly, for his temper was as stubborn as James's was excitable.
'No harm! lurking here in that fashion in the dark! You'll not make me believe that! Let me hear what brings you here! The truth, mind!'
'I came to hear how Lord Fitzjocelyn is,' said Tom, with brief bluntness and defiance.
'A likely story! What, you came to ask the apple-trees?' and James scornfully laughed. 'There was no back-door, I suppose! I could forgive you anything but such a barefaced falsehood, when you know it was your own intolerable carelessness that was the only cause of the accident!'
'Better say 'twas yourself!' cried Tom, hoarse with passion and shaking all over.
The provocation was intense enough to bring back James's real principle and self-restraint, and he spoke with more dignity. 'You seem to be beside yourself, Madison,' he said, 'you had better go at once, before any one finds you here. Lord Fitzjocelyn cared for you so much, that I should not wish for you to meet your deserts under present circumstances. Go! I wish to have no more of your tongue!'
The boy was bounding off, while James walked slowly after to see him beyond the grounds, and finding Warren the keeper, desired him to be on the look-out. Warren replied with the tidings that Madison had run away from his place, and that the police were looking out for him on the suspicion of having stolen Mr. Calcott's parcel, moralizing further on the depravity of such doings when my young Lord was so ill, but accounting for the whole by pronouncing poaching to be bred in the bone of the Marksedge people.
This little scene had done Jem a great deal of good, both by the exhalation of bitterness and by the final exertion of forbearance. He had, indeed, been under two great fallacies on this day,--soothing Charlotte for the grief that was not caused by Fitzjocelyn's illness, and driving to extremity the lad brimming over with sorrow not inferior to his own. Little did he know what a gentle word might have done for that poor, wild, tempestuous spirit!
Yet, James's heart smote him that evening, when, according to Louis's earnest wish, Mr. Holdsworth came again, and they all were admitted to the room, and he saw the feeble sign and summons to the Vicar to bend down and listen. 'Tell poor Madison, it was wrong in me not to go to see him. Give him one of my books, and tell him to go on well!'
That day had been one of rapid change, and the remedies and suffering had so exhausted Louis that he could scarcely speak, and seemed hardly conscious who was present. All his faculties were absorbed in the one wish, which late in the evening was granted. The scene was like an epitome of his life--the large irregular room, cumbered with the disorderly apparatus of all his multifarious pursuits, while there he lay on his little narrow iron bed, his features so fair and colourless as to be strangely like his mother's marble effigy--his eyes closed, and his brows often contracted with pain, so that there was a doubt how far his attention was free, but still with a calm, pure sweetness, that settled down more and more, as if he were being lulled into a sleep.
'He is asleep,' Mrs. Frost said, as they all rose up.
They felt what that sleep might become.
'We might as well wish to detain a snow-wreath,' thought Mr. Holdsworth.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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7
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GOSSAMER.
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Chaos is come again. --Othello.
That sleep was not unto death. When James and Mary came simultaneously creeping to the door in the grey twilight of the morning, they heard that there had been less pain and more rest, and gradually throughout the day, there was a diminution of the dangerous symptoms, till the trembling hope revived that the patient might be given back again to life.
James was still sadly aggrieved at being forbidden the sick-room, and exceedingly envied Lord Ormersfield's seat there. He declared, so that Mary doubted whether it were jest or earnest, that the Earl only remained there because society expected it from their relative positions, and that it must retard poor Fitzjocelyn's recovery to be perpetually basilisked by those cold grey eyes. Mary stood up gallantly for the Earl, who had always been so kind to her, and, on her mother's authority, vouched for his strong though hidden, feelings; to which Jem replied, 'Aye! he was hiding a strong fear of being too late for the beginning of the Session.'
'I do not think it right to impute motives,' said Mary.
'I would not, Mary, if I could help it,' said James, 'but through the whole course of my life I have never seen a token that his lordship is worthy of his son. If he were an ordinary, practical, common-place block, apt to support his dignity, he might value him, but all the grace, peculiarity, and conventionality is a mere burthen and vexation, utterly wasted.'
Mary knew that she was a common-place block, and did not wonder at herself for not agreeing with James, but cherishing a strong conviction that the father and son would now leave off rubbing against each other; since no unprejudiced person could doubt of the strong affection of the father, nor of the warm gratitude of the son. In spite of the asperity with which James spoke of the Earl, she was beginning to like him almost as much as she esteemed him. This had not been the case in their childhood, when he used to be praised by the elders for his obedience to his grandmother and his progress in the Northwold Grammar School; but was terribly overbearing with his juniors, and whether he cuffed Louis or led him into mischief, equally distressed her. Grown up, he was peculiarly vif, quick and ready, unselfish in all his ways, and warmly affectionate--very agreeable companion where his sensitiveness was not wounded, and meriting high honour by his deeper qualities. Young as he was, he had already relieved his grandmother from his own maintenance: he had turned to the utmost account his education at the endowed school at Northwold; by sheer diligence, had obtained, first a scholarship and then a fellowship at Oxford; and now, by practising rigid economy, and spending his vacations in tuition, he was enabled to send his sister to a boarding-school. He had stolen a few days from his pupils on hearing of Fitzjocelyn's danger, but was forced to return as soon as the improvement became confirmed. On the previous day, he asked Mary to walk with him to the scene of the accident, and they discussed the cause with more coolness than they really felt, as they shuddered at the depth of the fall, and the size of the stones.
James declared it all the fault of that runaway scamp, young Madison, in whom Louis had always been deceived, and who had never been seen since the night of his apparition in the garden.
'Poor boy! I suppose that was the reason he ran away,' said Mary.
'A very good thing, too. He would never have been anything but a torment to Louis. I remember telling him he was setting the stones so as to break the neck of some one!'
'I think it would be of more use to build them up than to settle how they broke down,' said Mary. 'Do you think we could manage it safely?'
'A capital thought!' cried James, eagerly, and no sooner said than done. The two cousins set to work--procured some cement from the bricklayer in the village, and toiled at their masonry with right good-will as long as light and time served them, then made an appointment to meet at half-past six next morning, and finish their work.
When the rendezvous took place, they were rejoicing over Mrs. Frost's report of an excellent night, and over her own happy looks, from which James prognosticated that all her fatigue and watching had done no harm to her vigorous frame, for which gladness was always the best cordial. It was a joyous beginning on that spring morning, and seemed to add fresh sparkles to the dazzling dewdrops, and double merriment to the blackbirds and thrushes answering each other far and wide, around, as the sun drew up the grey veil of morning mist. 'They all seem holding a feast for his recovery!' exclaimed Mary, warming for once into poetry, as she trudged along, leaving green footmarks in the silver dew.
'Well they may,' said James; 'for who loves them better than he? I grudge myself this lovely morning, when he is lying there, and my poor Clara is caged up at that place--the two who would the most enjoy it.'
'Your going to see her will be as good as the spring morning.'
'Poor child! I dread it!' sighed Jem.
It was his first voluntary mention of his sister. He had always turned the conversation when Mrs. Ponsonby or Mary had tried to inquire for her, and Mary was glad to lead him on to say more.
'I remember her last when you were teaching her to run alone, and letting none of us touch her, because you said she was your child, and belonged to no one else.'
'I should not be so ungrateful, now that I am come to the sense of my responsibility in teaching her to go alone.'
'But she has Aunt Catherine,' said Mary, thinking that he was putting the natural guardian out of the question as much now as in the days referred to.
'My grandmother never had to do with any girl before, and does not profess to understand them. She let Clara be regularly a boy in school, at first learning the same lessons, and then teaching; and whatever I tried to impress in the feminine line, naturally, all went for nothing. She is as wild as a hare, and has not a particle of a girl about her!'
'But she is very young.'
'There it is again! She grows so outrageously. She is not sixteen, and there she is taller than granny already. It is getting quite absurd.'
'What advice do you want on that head?'
'Seriously, it is a disadvantage, especially to that sort of girl, who can't afford to look like a woman before her time. Well, as she must probably depend on herself, I looked out for as good a school as could be had for the means, and thought I had succeeded, and that she would be brought into some sort of shape. Granny was ready to break her heart, but thought it quite right.'
'Then, does it not answer?'
'That is just what I can't tell. You have been used to schools: I wish you could tell me whether it is a necessary evil, or Clara's own idiosyncrasy, or peculiar to the place.'
'Whether what is?'
'Her misery!'
'Misery! Why, there is nothing of that in her letters to my aunt. There is not a complaint.'
'She is a brave girl, who spares granny, when she knows it would be of no use to distress her. Judge now, there's the sort of letter that I get from her.'
Mary read.
'DEAREST JEMMY,--Write to me as quick as ever you can, and tell me how Louis is; and let me come home, or I shall run mad. It is no good telling me to command my feelings; I am sure I would if I could, for the girls are more detestable than ever; but what can one do when one cannot sleep nor eat? All the screaming and crying has got into one bump in my throat, because I can't get it out in peace. If I could only shy the inkstand at the English teacher's head! or get one moment alone and out of sight! Let me come home. I could at least run messages; and it is of no use for me to stay here, for I can't learn, and all the girls are looking at me. If they were but boys, they would have sense! or if I could but kick them! This will make you angry, but do forgive me; I can't help it, for I am so very unhappy. Louis is as much to me as you are, and no one ever was so kind; but I know he will get well--I know he will; only if I knew the pain was better, and could but hear every minute. You need not come to fetch me; only send me a telegraph, and one to Miss Brigham. I have money enough for a second-class ticket, and would come that instant. If you saw the eyes and heard the whispers of these girls, I am sure you would. I should laugh at such nonsense any other time, but now I only ask to be wretched quietly in a corner.
'Your affectionate, nearly crazy, sister, 'CLARA FROST DYNEVOR.'
Mary might well say that there was nothing more expedient than going to see Clara, and 'much,' said poor James, 'he should gain by that,' especially on the head that made him most uneasy, and on which he could only hint lightly--namely, whether the girls were 'putting nonsense in her head.'
'If they had done her any harm, she would never have written such a letter,' said Mary.
'True,' said Jem. 'She is a mere child, and never got that notion into her head for a moment; but if they put it in, we are done for! Or if the place were ever so bad, I can't remove her now, when granny is thus occupied. One reason why I made a point of her going to school was, that I thought doing everything that Fitzjocelyn did was no preparation for being a governess.'
'Oh! I hope it will not come to that! Mr. Oliver Dynevor talks of coming home in a very few years.'
'So few, that we shall be grey before he comes. No; Clara and I are not going to be bound to him for the wealth heaped up while my grandmother was left in poverty. We mean to be independent.'
Mary was glad to revert to Clara.
'I must do the best I can for her for the present,' said Jem,--'try to harden her against the girls, and leave her to bear it. Poor dear! it makes one's heart ache! And to have done it oneself, too! Then, in the holidays, perhaps, you will help me to judge. You will be her friend, Mary; there's nothing she needs so much. I thought she would have found one at school but they are not the right stamp of animal. She has been too much thrown on Louis; and though he has made a noble thing of her, that must come to an end, and the sooner the better.'
Certainly, it was a perplexity for a young elder brother; but there could not but remain some simple wonder in Mary's mind whether the obvious person, Mrs. Frost, had not better have been left to decide for her granddaughter.
The building operations gave full occupation to the powers of the two cousins, and in good time before breakfast, all was successfully completed,--a hand-rail affixed, and the passage cleared out, till it looked so creditable, as well as solid, that there was no more to wish for but that Louis should be able to see their handiwork.
James went away in the better spirits for having been allowed to shake Louis by the hand and exchange a few words with him. Mary augured that it would be the better for Clara and for the pupils.
All that further transpired from him was a cheerful letter to Mrs. Frost, speaking of Clara as perfectly well, and beginning to accommodate herself to her situation, and from this Mary gathered that he was better satisfied.
The days brought gradual improvement to the patient, under Mrs. Frost's tender nursing, and his father's constant assiduity; both of which, as he revived, seemed to afford him the greatest pleasure, and were requited with the utmost warmth and caressing sweetness towards his aunt, and towards his father with ever-fresh gratitude and delight. Lord Ormersfield was like another man, in the sick-room, whence he never willingly absented himself for an hour.
One day, however, when he was forced to go to Northwold on business, Louis put on a fit of coaxing importunity. Nothing would serve him but some of Jane Beckett's choice dried pears, in the corner of the oaken cupboard, the key of which was in Aunt Kitty's pocket, and no one must fetch them for him but Aunt Kitty herself, he was so absurdly earnest and grave about them, that Jane scolded him, and Mrs. Frost saw recovery in his arch eyes; understanding all the time that it was all an excuse for complimenting Jane, and sending her to air herself, visit the Faithfull sisters, and inspect the Lady of Eschalott. So she consented to accompany Lord Ormersfield, and leave their charge to Mrs. Ponsonby, who found Louis quite elated at the success of his manoeuvre--so much disposed to talk, and so solicitous for the good of his nurses, that she ventured on a bold stroke.
His chamber was nearly as much like a lumber-room as ever; for any attempt to clear away or disturb his possessions had seemed, in his half-conscious condition, to excite and tease him so much, that it had been at once relinquished. Although the room was large, it was always too much crowded with his goods; and the tables and chairs that had been brought in during his illness, had added to the accumulation which was the despair of Mrs. Beckett and Mr. Frampton. Mrs. Ponsonby thought it was time for Louis to make a sacrifice in his turn, and ventured to suggest that he was well enough to say where some of his things might be bestowed; and though he winced, she persevered in representing how unpleasant it must be to his father to live in the midst of so much confusion. The debonnaire expression passed over his face, as he glanced around, saying, 'You are right. I never reflected on the stretch of kindness it must have been. It shall be done. If I lose everything, it will not be soon that I find it out.'
It evidently cost him a good deal, and Mrs. Ponsonby proposed that Mary should come and deal with his treasures; a plan at which he caught so eagerly, that it was decided that no time was like the present, and Mary was called. He could move nothing but his hands; but they were eagerly held out in welcome: and his eyes glittered with the bright smile that once she had feared never to see again. She felt a moisture in her own which made her glad to turn aside to her task even while he complimented her with an allusion to the labours of Hercules. It did not seem uncalled-for, when she began by raising a huge sheet of paper that had been thrown in desperation to veil the confusion upon the table, and which proved to be the Ordnance map of the county, embellished with numerous streaks of paint. 'The outlines of the old Saxon wappentakes,' said Louis: 'I was trying to make them out in blue, and the Roman roads in red. That mark is spontaneous; it has been against some paint.'
Which paint was found in dried swamps in saucers, while cakes of lake and Prussian blue adhered to the drawing-board.
'The colour-box is probably in the walnut-press; but I advise you not to irritate that yet. Let me see that drawing, the design for the cottages that Frampton nipped in the bud--' 'How pretty and comfortable they do look!' exclaimed Mary, pleased to come to something that was within her sphere of comprehension. 'If they were but finished!'
'Ah! I thought of them when I was lying there in the dell! Had they been allowed to stand where I wanted them, there would have been no lack of people going home from work; but, 'Quite impracticable' came in my way, and I had no heart to finish the drawing.'
'What a pity!' exclaimed Mary.
'This was Richardson's veto, two degrees worse than Frampton's; and I shall never be able to abuse Frampton again. I have seen him in his true light now, and never was any one more kind and considerate. Ha, Mary, what's that?'
'It looks like a rainbow in convulsions.'
'Now, Mary, did not I tell you that I could not laugh? It is a diagram to illustrate the theory of light for Clara.'
'Does she understand _that_?' cried Mary.
'Clara? She understands anything but going to school--poor child! Yes, burn that map of the strata,--not that--it is to be a painted window whenever I can afford one, but I never could make money stay with me. I never could think why--' The _why_ was evident enough in the heterogeneous mass--crumpled prints, blank drawing-paper, and maps heaped ruinously over and under books, stuffed birds, geological specimens, dislocated microscopes, pieces of Roman pavement, curiosities innumerable and indescribable; among which roamed blotting-books, memorandum-books, four pieces of Indian rubber, three pair of compasses, seven paper-knives, ten knives, thirteen odd gloves, fifteen pencils, pens beyond reckoning, a purse, a key, half a poem on the Siege of Granada, three parts of an essay upon Spade Husbandry, the dramatis personae of a tragedy on Queen Brunehault, scores of old letters, and the dust of three years and a half.
Louis owned that the arrangements conduced to finding rather than losing, and rejoiced at the disinterment of his long-lost treasures; but either he grew weary, or the many fragments, the ghosts of departed fancies, made him thoughtful; for he became silent, and only watched and smiled as Mary quietly and noiselessly completed her reforms, and arranged table and chairs for the comfort of his father and aunt. He thanked her warmly, and hoped that she would pursue her kind task another day,--a permission which she justly esteemed a great testimony to her having avoided annoying him. It was a great amusement to him to watch the surprised and pleased looks of his various nurses as each came in, and a real gratification to see his father settle himself with an air of comfort, observing that 'they were under great obligations to Mary.' Still, the sight of the arrangements had left a dreary, dissatisfied feeling with Louis: it might have been caught from Mary's involuntary look of disappointment at each incomplete commencement that she encountered,--the multitude of undertakings hastily begun, laid aside and neglected--nothing properly carried out. It seemed a mere waste of life, and dwelt on his spirits, with a weariness of himself and his own want of steadfastness--a sense of having disappointed her and disappointed himself, and he sighed so heavily several times, that his aunt anxiously asked whether he were in pain. He was, however, so much better, that no one was to sit up with him at night--only his father would sleep on a bed on the floor. As he bade him good night, Louis, for the first time, made the request that he might have his Bible given to him, as well as his little book; and on his father advising him not to attempt the effort of reading, he said, 'Thank you; I think I can read my two verses: I want to take up my old habits.'
'Have you really kept up this habit constantly?' asked his father, with wonder that Louis did not understand.
'Aunt Catharine taught it to us, he said. 'I neglected it one half-year at school; but I grew so uncomfortable, that I began again.'
The Earl gave the little worn volume, saying, 'Yes, Louis, there has been a thread running through your life.'
'Has there been one thread?' sadly mused Louis, as he found the weight of the thick book too much for his weak hands, and his eyes and head too dizzy and confused for more than one verse:-- 'I am come that they might have life, And that they might have it more abundantly.''
The Bible sank in his hands, and he fell into a slumber so sound and refreshing, that when he opened his eyes in early morning, he did not at first realize that he was not awakening to health and activity, nor why he had an instinctive dread of moving. He turned his eyes towards the window, uncurtained, so that he could see the breaking dawn. The sky, deep blue above, faded and glowed towards the horizon into gold, redder and more radiant below; and in the midst, fast becoming merged in the increasing light, shone the planet Venus, in her pale, calm brilliance.
There was repose and delight in dwelling on that fair morning sky, and Louis lay dreamily gazing, while thoughts passed over his mind, more defined and connected than pain and weakness had as yet permitted. Since those hours in which he had roused his faculties to meet with approaching death, he had been seldom awake to aught but the sensations of the moment, and had only just become either strong enough, or sufficiently at leisure for anything like reflection. As he watched the eastern reddening, he could not but revert to the feelings with which he had believed himself at the gate of the City that needs neither sun nor moon to lighten it, and, for the first time, he consciously realized that he was restored to this world of life.
The sensation was not unmixed. His youthful spirit bounded at the prospect of returning vigour, his warm heart clung round those whom he loved, and the perception of his numerous faults made him grateful for a longer probation; but still he had a sense of having been at the borders of the glorious Land, and thence turned back to a tedious, doubtful pilgrimage.
There was much to occasion this state of mind. His life had been without great troubles, but with many mortifications; he had never been long satisfied with himself or his pursuits, his ardour had only been the prelude to vexation and self-abasement, and in his station in the world there was little incentive to exertion. He had a strong sense of responsibility, with a temperament made up of tenderness, refinement, and inertness, such as shrank from the career set before him. He had seen just enough of political life to destroy any romance of patriotism, and to make him regard it as little more than party spirit, and dread the hardening and deadening process on the mind. He had a dismal experience of his own philanthropy; and he had a conscience that would not sit down satisfied with selfish ease, pleasure, or intellectual pursuits. His smooth, bright, loving temper had made him happy; but the past was all melancholy, neglect, and futile enterprise; he had no attaching home--no future visions; and, on the outskirts of manhood, he shrank back from the turmoil, the temptations, and the roughness that awaited him--nay, from the mere effort of perseverance, and could almost have sighed to think how nearly the death-pang had been over, and the home of Love, Life, and Light had been won for ever:-- 'I am come that they might have life, And that they might have it more abundantly.'
The words returned on him, and with them what his father had said, 'You have had a thread running through your life.' He was in a state between sleeping and waking, when the confines of reflection and dreaming came very near together, and when vague impressions, hardly noticed at the time they were made, began to tell on him without his own conscious volition. It was to him as if from that brightening eastern heaven, multitudes of threads of light were floating hither and thither, as he had often watched the gossamer undulating in the sunshine. Some were firm, purely white, and glistening here and there with rainbow tints as they tended straight upwards, shining more and more into the perfect day; but for the most part they were tangled together in inextricable confusion, intermingled with many a broken end, like fleeces of cobweb driven together by the autumn wind,--some sailing aimlessly, or with shattered tangled strands-some white, some dark, some anchored to mere leaves or sprays, some tending down to the abyss, but all in such a perplexed maze that the eye could seldom trace which were directed up, which downwards, which were of pure texture, which defiled and stained.
In the abortive, unsatisfactory attempt to follow out one fluctuating clue, not without whiteness, and heaving often upwards, but frail, wavering, ravelled, and tangled, so that scarcely could he find one line that held together, Louis awoke to find his father wondering that he could sleep with the sun shining full on his face.
'It was hardly quite a dream,' said Louis, as he related it to Mrs. Frost.
'It would make a very pretty allegory.'
'It is too real for that just now,' he said. 'It was the moral of all my broken strands that Mary held up to me yesterday.'
'I hope you are going to do more than point your moral, my dear. You always were good at that.'
'I mean it,' said Louis, earnestly. 'I do not believe such an illness--ay, or such a dream--can come for nothing.'
So back went his thoughts to the flaws in his own course; and chiefly he bewailed his want of sympathy for his father. Material obedience and submission had been yielded, but, having little cause to believe himself beloved, his heart had never been called into action so as to soften the clashings of two essentially dissimilar characters. Instead of rebelling, or even of murmuring, he had hid disappointment in indifference, taken refuge in levity and versatility, and even consoled himself by sporting with what he regarded as prejudice or unjust displeasure. All this cost him much regret and self-reproach at each proof of the affection so long veiled by reserve. Never would he have given pain, had he guessed that his father could feel; but he had grown up to imagine the whole man made up of politics and conventionalities, and his new discoveries gave him at least as much contrition as pleasure.
After long study of the debates, that morning, his father prepared to write. Louis asked for the paper, saying his senses would just serve for the advertisements, but presently he made an exclamation of surprise at beholding, in full progress, the measure which had brought Sir Miles Oakstead to Ormersfield, one of peculiar interest to the Earl. His blank look of wonder amused Mrs. Ponsonby, but seemed somewhat to hurt his father.
'You did not suppose I could attend to such matters now?' he said.
'But I am so much better!'
Fearing that the habit of reserve would check any exchange of feeling, Mrs. Ponsonby said, 'Did you fancy your father could not think of you except upon compulsion?'
'I beg your pardon, father,' said Louis, smiling, while a tear rose to his eyes, 'I little thought I was obstructing the business of the nation. What will Sir Miles do to me?'
'Sir Miles has written a most kind and gratifying letter,' said Lord Ormersfield, 'expressing great anxiety for you, and a high opinion of your powers.'
Louis had never heard of his own powers, except for mischief, and the colour returned to his cheeks, as he listened to the kind and cordial letter, written in the first shock of the tidings of the accident. He enjoyed the pleasure it gave his father far more than the commendation to himself; for he well knew, as he said, that 'there is something embellishing in a catastrophe,' and he supposed 'that had driven out the rose-coloured pastor.'
'There is always indulgence at your age,' said the Earl. 'You have created an impression which may be of great importance to you by-and-by.'
Louis recurred to politics. The measure was one which approved itself to his mind, and he showed all the interest which was usually stifled, by such subjects being forced on him. He was distressed at detaining his father when his presence might be essential to the success of his party, and the Earl could not bear to leave him while still confined to his bed. The little scene, so calm, and apparently so cold, seemed to cement the attachment of father and son, by convincing Louis of the full extent of his father's love; and his enthusiasm began to invest the Earl's grey head with a perfect halo of wisdom slighted and affection injured; and the tenor of his thread of life shone out bright and silvery before him, spun out of projects of devoting heart and soul to his father's happiness, and meriting his fondness.
The grave Earl was looking through a magnifying-glass no less powerful. He had not been so happy since his marriage; the consciousness of his own cold manner made him grateful for any demonstration from his son, and the many little graces of look and manner which Louis had inherited from his mother added to the charm. The sense of previous injustice enhanced all his good qualities, and it was easy to believe him perfect, while nothing was required of him but to lie still. Day and night did Lord Ormersfield wait upon him, grudging every moment spent away from him, and trying to forestall each wish, till he became almost afraid to express a desire, on account of the trouble it would cause. Mary found the Earl one day wandering among the vines in the old hothouse, in search of a flower, when, to her amusement, he selected a stiff pert double hyacinth, the special aversion of his son, who nevertheless received it most graciously, and would fain have concealed the headache caused by the scent, until Mrs. Frost privately abstracted it. Another day, he went, unasked, to hasten the birdstuffer in finishing the rose-coloured pastor; and when it came, himself brought it up-stairs, unpacked it, and set it up where Louis could best admire its black nodding crest and pink wings; unaware that to his son it seemed a memento of his own misdeeds--a perpetual lesson against wayward carelessness.
'It is like a new love,' said Mrs. Ponsonby; 'but oh! how much depends upon Louis after his recovery!'
'You don't mistrust his goodness now, mamma!'
'I could not bear to do so. I believe I was thinking of his father more than of himself. After having been so much struck by his religious feeling, I dread nothing so much as his father finding him deficient in manliness or strength of character.'
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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8
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A TRUANT DISPOSITION.
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Gathering up each broken thread. WHYTEHEAD.
'Tom Madison is come back,' said the Vicar, as he sat beside Fitzjocelyn's couch, a day or two after Lord Ormersfield had gone to London.
'Come back--where has he been?' exclaimed Louis.
'There!' said the Vicar, with a gesture of dismay; 'I forgot that you were to hear nothing of it! However, I should think you were well enough to support the communication.'
'What is it?' cried Louis, the blood rushing into his cheeks so suddenly, that Mr. Holdsworth felt guilty of having disregarded the precautions that he had fancied exaggerated by the fond aunt. 'Poor fellow--he has not--' but, checking himself, he added, 'I am particularly anxious to hear of him.'
'I wish there were anything more gratifying to tell you; but he took the opportunity of the height of your illness to run away from his place, and has just been passed home to his parish. After all your pains, it is very mortifying, but--' 'Pains! Don't you know how I neglected him latterly!' said Louis. 'Poor fellow--then--' but he stopped himself again, and added, 'You heard nothing of the grounds?'
'They were not difficult to find,' said Mr. Holdsworth. 'It is the old story. He was, as Mrs. Smith told me, 'a great trial'--more and more disposed to be saucy and disobedient, taking up with the most good-for-nothing boys in the town, haunting those Chartist lectures, and never coming home in proper time at night. The very last evening, he had come in at eleven o'clock, and when his master rebuked him, came out with something about the rights of man. He was sent to Little Northwold, about the middle of the day, to carry home some silver-handled knives of Mr. Calcott's, and returned no more. Smith fancied, at first, that he had made off with the plate, and set the police after him, but that proved to be an overhasty measure, for the parcel had been safely left. However, Miss Faithfull's servant found him frightening Mrs. Frost's poor little kitchen-maid into fits, and the next day James Frost detected him lurking suspiciously about the garden here, and set Warren to warn him off--' Louis gave a kind of groan, and struck his hand against the couch in despair, then said, anxiously, 'What then?'
'No more was heard of him, till yesterday the police passed him home to the Union as a vagabond. He looks very ill and ragged; but he is in one of those sullen moods, when no one can get a word out of him. Smith declines prosecuting for running away, being only too glad of the riddance on any terms; so there he is at his grandfather's, ready for any sort of mischief.'
'Mr. Holdsworth,' said Louis, raising himself on his elbow, 'you are judging, like every one else, from appearances. If I were at liberty to tell the whole, you would see what a noble nature it was that I trifled with; and they have been hounding--Poor Tom! would it have been better for him that I had never seen him? It is a fearful thing, this blind treading about among souls, not knowing whether one does good or harm!'
'If you feel so,' said Mr. Holdsworth, hoping to lead him from the unfortunate subject, 'what must _we_ do?'
'My position, if I live, seems to have as much power for evil, without the supernatural power for good. Doing hastily, or leaving undone, are equally fatal!'
'Nay, what hope can there be but in fear, and sense of responsibility?'
'I think not. I do more mischief than those who do not go out of their way to think of the matter at all!'
'Do you!' said the Vicar, smiling. 'At least, I know, for my own part, I prefer all the trouble and perplexity you give me, to a squire who would let me and my parish jog on our own way.'
'I dare say young Brewster never spoilt a Tom Madison.'
'The sight of self indulgence spoils more than injudicious care does. Besides, I look on these experiments as giving experience.'
'Nice experience of my best efforts!'
'Pardon me, Fitzjocelyn, have we seen your best?'
'I hope you will!' said Louis, vigorously. 'And to begin, will you tell this poor boy to come to me?'
Mr. Holdsworth had an unmitigated sense of his own indiscretion, and not such a high one of Fitzjocelyn's discretion as to make him think the interview sufficiently desirable for the culprit, to justify the possible mischief to the adviser, whose wisdom and folly were equally perplexing, and who would surely be either disappointed or deceived. Dissuasions and arguments, however, failed; and Mrs. Frost, who was appealed to as a last resource, no sooner found that her patient's heart was set on the meeting, than she consented, and persuaded Mr. Holdsworth that no harm would ensue equal to the evil of her boy lying there distressing himself.
Accordingly, in due time, Mr. Holdsworth admitted the lad, and, on a sign from Louis, shut himself out, leaving the runaway standing within the door, a monument of surly embarrassment. Raising himself, Louis said, affectionately, 'Never mind, Tom, don't you see how fast I am getting over it?'
The lad looked up, but apparently saw little such assurance in the thin pale cheeks, and feeble, recumbent form; for his face twitched all over, resumed the same sullen stolidity, and was bent down again.
'Come near, Tom,' continued Louis, with unabated kindness--'come and sit down here. I am afraid you have suffered a great deal,' as the boy shambled with an awkward footsore gait. 'It was a great pity you ran away.'
'I couldn't stay!' burst out Tom, half crying.
'Why not?'
'Not to have that there cast in my teeth!' he exclaimed, with blunt incivility.
'Did any one reproach you?' said Louis, anxiously. 'I thought no one knew it but ourselves.'
'You knew it, then, my Lord?' asked Tom, staring.
'I found out directly that there was no cement,' said Louis. 'I had suspected it before, and intended to examine whenever I had time.'
'Well! I thought, when I came back, no one did seem to guess as 'twas all along of me!' cried Tom. 'So sure I thought you hadn't known it, my Lord. And you never said nothing, my Lord!'
'I trust not. I would not consciously have accused you of what was quite as much my fault as yours. That would not have been fair play.'
'If I won't give it to Bill Bettesworth!' cried Tom.
'What has he done?'
'Always telling me that gentlefolks hadn't got no notion of fair play with the like of us, but held us like the dirt to be trampled on! But there--I'll let him know--' 'Who is he?'
'A young man what works with Mr. Smith,' returned Tom, his sullenness having given place to a frank, open manner, such as any one but Louis would have deemed too free and ready.
'Was he your great friend at Northwold?'
'A chap must speak to some one,' was Tom's answer.
'And what kind of a some one was he?'
'Why, he comes down Illershall way. He knows a thing or two, and can go on like an orator or a play-book--or like yourself, my Lord.'
'Thank you. I hope the thing or two were of the right sort.'
Tom looked sheepish.
'I heard something about bad companions. I hope he was not one. I ought to have come and visited you, Tom; I have been very sorry I did not. You'd better let me hear all about it, for I fear there must have been worse scrapes than this of the stones.'
'Worse!' cried Tom--'sure nothing could be worserer!'
'I wish there were no evils worse than careless forgetfulness,' said Louis.
'I didn't forget!' said Tom. 'I meant to have told you whenever you came to see me, but'--his eyes filled and his voice began to alter--'you never came, and she at the Terrace wouldn't look at me! And Bill and the rest of them was always at me, asking when I expected my aristocrat, and jeering me 'cause I'd said you wasn't like the rest of 'em. So then I thought I'd have my liberty too, and show I didn't care no more than they, and spite you all.'
'How little one thinks of the grievous harm a little selfish heedlessness may do!' sighed Louis, half aloud. 'If you had only looked to something better than me, Tom! And so you ran into mischief?'
Half confession, half vindication ensued, and the poor fellow's story was manifest enough. His faults had been unsteadiness and misplaced independence rather than any of the more degrading stamp of evils. The public-house had not been sought for liquor's sake, but for that of the orator who inflamed the crude imaginations and aspirations that effervesced in the youth's mind; and the rudely-exercised authority of master and foreman had only driven his fierce temper further astray. With sense of right sufficient to be dissatisfied with himself, and taste and principle just enough developed to loathe the evils round him, hardened and soured by Louis's neglect, and rendered discontented by Chartist preachers, he had come to long for any sort of change or break; and the tidings of the accident, coupled with the hard words which he knew himself to deserve but too well, had put the finishing stroke.
Hearing that the police were in pursuit of him, he had fancied it was on account of the harm done by his negligence. 'I hid about for a day,' he said: 'somehow I felt as if I could not go far off, till I heard how you were, my Lord, and I'd made up my mind that as soon as ever I heard the first stroke of the bell, I'd go and find the police, and his Lordship might hang me, and glad!'
Louis was nearer a tear than a smile.
'Then Mr. Frost finds me, and was mad at me. Nothing wasn't bad enough for me, and he sets Mr. Warren to see me off, so I had nothing for it but to cut.'
'What did you think of doing?' sighed Louis.
'I made for the sea. If I could have got to them places in the Indies, such as that Philip went to, as you reads about in the verse-book--he as killed his wife and lost his son, and made friends with that there big rascal, and had the chest of gold--' 'Philip Mortham! Were you going in search of buccaneers?'
'I don't know, my Lord. Once you told me of some English Sir, as kills the pirates, and is some sort of a king. I thought, may be, now you'd tell me where they goes to dig for gold.'
'Oh, Tom, Tom, what a mess I have made of your notions!'
'Isn't there no such place?'
'It's a bad business, and what can you want of it?'
'I want to get shut of them as orders one about here and there, with never a civil word. Besides,' looking down, 'there's one I'd like to see live like a lady.'
'Would that make her happier?'
'I'll never see her put about, and slave and drudge, as poor mother did!' exclaimed Tom.
'That's a better spirit than the mere dislike to a master,' said Louis. 'What is life but obedience?'
'I'd obey fast enough, if folk would only speak like you do--not drive one about like a dog, when one knows one is every bit as good as they.'
'I'm sure I never knew that!'
Tom stared broadly.
'I never saw the person who was not my superior,' repeated Louis, quietly, and in full earnest. 'Not that this would make rough words pleasanter, I suppose. The only cure I could ever see for the ills of the world is, that each should heartily respect his neighbour.'
Paradoxes musingly uttered, and flying over his head, wore to Tom a natural and comfortable atmosphere; and the conversation proceeded. Louis found that geography had been as much at fault as chronology, and that the runaway had found himself not at the sea, but at Illershall, where he had applied for work, and had taken a great fancy to Mr. Dobbs, but had been rejected for want of a character, since the good superintendent made it his rule to keep up a high standard among his men. Wandering had succeeded, in which, moneyless, forlorn, and unable to find employment, he had been obliged to part with portions of his clothing to procure food; his strength began to give way, and he had been found by the police sleeping under a hedge; he was questioned, and sent home, crestfallen, sullen, and miserable, unwilling to stay at Marksedge, yet not knowing where to go.
His hankering was for Illershall, and Louis, thinking of the judicious care, the evening school, and the openings for promotion, decided at once that the experiment should be tried without loss of time. He desired Tom to bring him ink and paper, and hastily wrote: 'DEAR MR. DOBBS,--You would do me a great kindness by employing this poor fellow, and bearing with him. I have managed him very ill, but he would reward any care. Have an eye to him, and put him in communication with the chaplain. If you can take him, I will write more at length. If you have heard of my accident, you will excuse more at present.
'Yours very truly, 'FITZJOCELYN.'
Then arose the question, how Tom was to get to Illershall. He did not know; and Louis directed his search into the places where the loose money in his pocket might have been put. When it was found, Tom scrupled at the proposed half-sovereign. Three-and-fourpence would pay for his ticket. 'You will want a supper and a bed. Go respectably, Tom, and keep so. It will be some consolation for the mischief I have done you!'
'You done me harm!' cried Tom. 'Why, 'tis all along of you that I ain't a regularly-built scamp!'
'Very irregularly built, whatever you are!' said Louis. But I'll tell you what you shall do for me,' continued he, with anxious earnestness. 'Do you know the hollow ash-tree that shades over Inglewood stile? It has a stout sucker, with a honeysuckle grown into it--coming up among the moss, where the great white vase-shaped funguses grew up in the autumn.'
'I know him, my Lord,' said Tom, brightening at the detail, given with all a sick man's vivid remembrance of the out-of-doors world.
'I have fixed my mind on that stick! I think it has a bend at the root. Will you cut it for me, and trim it up for a walking-stick?'
'That I will, my Lord!'
'Thank you. Bring it up to me between seven and eight in the morning, if you please; and so I shall see you again--' Mr. Holdsworth was already entering to close the conversation, which had been already over-long and exciting, for Louis, sinking back, mournfully exclaimed, 'The medley of that poor boy's mind is the worst of my pieces of work. I have made him too refined for one class, and left him too rough for another--discontented with his station, and too desultory and insubordinate to rise, nobleness of nature turning to arrogance, fact and fiction all mixed up together. It would be a study, if one was not so sorry!'
Nevertheless, Mr. Holdsworth could not understand how even Fitzjocelyn could have given the lad a recommendation, and he would have remonstrated, but that the long interview had already been sufficiently trying; so he did his best to have faith in his eccentric friend's good intentions.
In the early morning, Tom Madison made his appearance, in his best clothes, erect and open-faced, a strong contrast to the jaded, downcast being who had yesterday presented himself. The stick was prepared to perfection, and Louis acknowledged it with gratitude proportioned to the fancies that he had spent on it, poising it, feeling the cool grey bark, and raising himself in bed to try how he should lean on it. 'Hang it up there, Tom, within my reach. It seems like a beginning of independence.'
'I wish, my Lord,' blurted out Tom, in agitation, 'you'd tell me if you're to go lame for life, and then I should know the worst of it.'
'I suspect no one knows either the worst or the best,' said Louis, kindly. 'Since the pain has gone off, I have been content, and asked no questions. Mr. Walby says my ankle is going on so well, that it is a real picture, and a pleasure to touch it; and though I can't say the pleasure is mutual, I ought to be satisfied.'
'You'll only laugh at me!' half sobbed Tom, 'and if there was but anything I could do! I've wished my own legs was cut off--and serve me right--ever since I seen you lying there.'
'Thank you; I'm afraid they would have been no use to me! But, seriously, if I had been moderately prudent, it would not have happened. And as it is, I hope I shall be glad of that roll in Ferny dell to the end of my life.'
'I did go to see after mending them stones!' cried Tom, as if injured by losing this one compensation; 'but they are all done up, and there ain't nothing to do to them.'
'Look here, Tom: if you want to do anything for me, it is easily told, what would be the greatest boon to me. They tell me I've spoilt you, and I partly believe it, for I put more of my own fancies into you than of real good, and the way I treated you made you impatient of control: and then, because I could not keep you on as I should have wished,--as, unluckily, you and I were not made to live together on a desert island,--I left you without the little help I might have given. Now, Tom, if you go to the bad, I shall know it is all my fault--' 'That it ain't,' the boy tried to say, eagerly, but Louis went on.
'Don't let my bad management be the ruin of you. Take a turn from this moment. You know Who can help you, and Who, if you had thought of Him, would have kept you straight when I forgot. Put all the stuff out of your head about one man being equal to another. Equal they are; but some have the trial of ruling, others of obeying, and the last are the lucky ones. If we could only see their souls, we should know it. You'll find evening schools and lectures at Illershall; you'd better take to them, for you've more real liking for that sort of thing than for mischief; and if you finished up your education, you'd get into a line that would make you happier, and where you might do much good. There--promise me that you'll think of these things, and take heed to your Sundays.'
'I promise,' said Tom.
'And mind you write to me, Tom, and tell how you get on. I'll write, and let you know about your grandfather, and Marksedge news and all--' The 'Thank you, my Lord,' came with great pleasure and alacrity.
'Some day, when you are a foreman, perhaps I may bring Miss Clara to see copper-smelting. Only mind, that you'll never go on soundly, nor even be fit to make your pretty tidy nest for any gentle bird, unless you mind one thing most of all; and that is, that we have had a new Life given us, and we have to begin now, and live it for ever and ever.'
As he raised himself, holding out his pale, slender hand from his white sleeve, his clear blue eyes earnestly fixed on the sky, his face all one onward look, something of that sense of the unseen passed into the confused, turbulent spirit of the boy, very susceptible of poetical impressions, and his young lord's countenance connected itself with all the floating notions left in his mind by parable or allegory. He did not speak, as Louis heartily shook his hardy red hand, and bade him good speed, but his bow and pulled forelock at the door had in them more of real reverence than of conventional courtesy.
Of tastes and perceptions above his breeding, the very sense of his own deficiencies had made him still more rugged and clownish, and removed him from the sympathies of his own class, while he almost idolized the two most refined beings whom he knew, Lord Fitzjocelyn and Charlotte Arnold. On an interview with her, his heart was set. He had taken leave of his half-childish grandfather, made up his bundle, and marched into Northwold, with three hours still to spare ere the starting of the parliamentary train. Sympathy, hope, resolution, and the sense of respectability had made another man of him; and, above all, he dwelt on the prospect held out of repairing the deficiencies of his learning. The consciousness of ignorance and awkwardness was very painful, and he longed to rub it off, and take the place for which he felt his powers. 'I will work!' thought he; 'I have a will to it, and, please God, when I come back next, it won't be as a rough, ignorant lout that I'll stand before Charlotte!'
'Louis,' said Mary Ponsonby, as she sat at work beside him that afternoon, after an expedition to the new house at Dynevor Terrace, 'I want to know, if you please, how you have been acting like a gentleman.'
'I did not know that I had been acting at all of late.'
'I could not help hearing something in Aunt Catharine's garden that has made me very curious.'
'Ha!' cried Louis, eagerly.
'I was sowing some annuals in our back garden, and heard voices through the trellis. Presently I heard, quite loud, 'My young Lord has behaved like a real gentleman, as he is, and no mistake, or I'd never have been here now.' And, presently, 'I've promised him, and I promise you, Charlotte, to keep my Church, and have no more to do with them things. I'll keep it as sacred as they keeps the Temperance pledge; for sure I'm bound to him, as he forgave me, and kept my secret as if I'd been his own brother: and when I've proved it, won't that satisfy you, Charlotte?'
'And what did Charlotte say?'
'I think she was crying; but I thought listening any more would be unfair, so I ran upstairs and threw up the drawing-room window to warn them.'
'Oh, Mary, how unfeeling!'
'I thought it could be doing no good!'
'That is so like prudent people, who can allow no true love under five hundred pounds a year! Did you see them? How did they look?'
'Charlotte was standing in an attitude, her hands clasped over her broom. The gentleman was a country-looking boy--' 'Bearing himself like a sensible, pugnacious cock-robin? Poor fellow, so you marred their parting.'
'Charlotte flew into the house, and the boy walked off up the garden. Was he your Madison, Louis? for I thought my aunt did not think it right to encourage him about her house.'
'And so he is to be thwarted in what would best raise and refine him. That great, bright leading star of a well-placed affection is not to be allowed to help him through all the storms and quicksands in his way.'
Good Mary might well open her eyes, but, pondering a little, she said, 'He need not leave off liking Charlotte, if that is to do him good; but I suppose the question is, what is safest for her?'
'Well, he is safe enough. He is gone to Illershall to earn her.'
'Oh! then I don't care! But you have not answered me, and I think I can guess the boy's secret that you have been keeping. Did you not once tell me that you trusted those stones in Ferny dell to him?'
'Now, Mary, you must keep his secret!'
'But why was it made one? Did you think it unkind to say that it was his fault?'
'Of course I did. When I thought it was all over with me, I could not go and charge the poor fellow with it, so as to make him a marked man. I was only afraid that thinking so often of stopping myself, I should bring it out by mistake.'
Mary looked down, and thought; then raised her eyes suddenly, and said, as if surprised, 'That was really very noble in you, Louis!' Then, thinking on, she said, 'But how few people would think it worth while!'
'Yes,' said Louis; 'but I had a real regard for this poor fellow, and an instinct, perhaps perverse, of shielding him; so I could not accuse him on my own account. Besides, I believe I am far more guilty towards him. His neglect only hurt my ankle--my neglect left him to fall into temptation.'
'Yet, by the way he talks of you--' 'Yes, he has the sort of generous disposition on which a little delicacy makes a thousand times more impression than a whole pile of benefits I hope and trust that he is going to repair all that is past. I wish I could make out whether good intentions overrule errors in detail, or only make them more fatal.'
Mary was glad to reason out the question. Abstract practical views interested her, and she had much depth and observation, more original than if she had read more and thought less. Of course, no conclusion was arrived at; but the two cousins had an argument of much enjoyment and some advantage to both.
Affairs glided on quietly till the Saturday, when Lord Ormersfield returned. Never had he so truly known what it was to come home as when he mounted the stairs, with steps unlike his usual measured tread, and beheld his son's look of animated welcome, and eager, outstretched hands.
'I was afraid,' said the Earl, presently, 'that you had not felt so well,' and he touched his own upper lip to indicate that the same feature in his son was covered with down like a young bird.
Louis blushed a little, but spoke indifferently. 'I thought it a pity not to leave it for the regulation moustache for the Yeomanry.'
'I wish I could think you likely to be fit to go out with the Yeomanry.'
'Every effort must be made!' cried Louis. 'What do they say in London about the invasion?'
It was the year 1847, when a French invasion was in every one's mouth, and Sydney Calcott had been retailing all sorts of facts about war-steamers and artillery, in a visit to Fitzjocelyn, whose patriotism had forthwith run mad, so that he looked quite baffled when his father coolly set the whole down as 'the regular ten years' panic.' There was a fervid glow within him of awe, courage, and enterprise, the outward symbol of which was that infant yellow moustache. He was obliged, however, to allow the subject to be dismissed, while his father told him of Sir Miles Oakstead's kind inquiries, and gave a message of greeting from his aunt Lady Conway, delivering himself of it as an unpleasant duty, and adding, as he turned to Mrs. Ponsonby, 'She desired to be remembered to you, Mary.'
'I have not seen her for many years. Is Sir Walter alive?'
'No; he died about three years ago.'
'I suppose her daughters are not come out yet?'
'Her own are in the school-room; but there is a step-daughter who is much admired.'
'Those cousins of mine,' exclaimed Louis, 'it is strange that I have never seen them. I think I had better employ some of my spare time this summer in making their acquaintance.'
Mrs. Ponsonby perceived that the Earl had become inspired with a deadly terror of the handsome stepdaughter; for he turned aside and began to unpack a parcel. It was M'Culloch's Natural Theology, into which Louis had once dipped at Mr. Calcott's, and had expressed a wish to read it. His father had taken some pains to procure this too-scarce book for him, and he seized on it with delighted and surprised gratitude, plunging at once into the middle, and reading aloud a most eloquent passage upon electricity. No beauty, however, could atone to Lord Ormersfield for the outrage upon method. 'If you would oblige me, Louis,' he said, 'you would read that book consecutively.'
'To oblige you, certainly,' said Louis, smiling, and turning to the first page, but his vivacious eagerness was extinguished.
M'Culloch is not an author to be thoroughly read without a strong effort. His gems are of the purest ray, but they lie embedded in a hard crust of reasoning and disquisition; and on the first morning, Louis, barely strong enough yet for a battle with his own volatility, looked, and owned himself, dead beat by the first chapter.
Mary took pity on him. She had been much interested by his account of the work, and would be delighted if he would read it with her. He brightened at once, and the regular habit began, greatly to their mutual enjoyment. Mary liked the argument, Louis liked explaining it; and the flood of allusions was delightful to both, with his richness of illustration, and Mary's actual experience of ocean and mountains. She brought him whatever books he wanted, and from the benevolent view of entertaining him while a prisoner, came to be more interested than her mother had ever expected to see her in anything literary. It was amusing to see the two cousins unconsciously educating each other--the one learning expansion, the other concentration, of mind. Mary could now thoroughly trust Louis's goodness, and therefore began by bearing with his vagaries, and gradually tracing the grain of wisdom that was usually at their root; and her eyes were opened to new worlds, where all was not evil or uninteresting that Aunt Melicent distrusted. Louis made her teach him Spanish; and his insight into grammar and keen delight in the majestic language and rich literature infected her, while he was amused by her positive distaste to anything incomplete, and playfully, though half murmuringly, submitted to his 'good governess,' and let her keep him in excellent order. She knew where all his property was, and, in her quaint, straightforward way, would refuse to give him whatever 'was not good for him.'
It was all to oblige Mary that, when he could sit up and use pen and pencil, he set to work to finish his cottage plans, and soon drew and talked himself into a vehement condition about Marksedge. Mary's patronage drew on the work, even to hasty learning of perspective enough for a pretty elevation intelligible to the unlearned, and a hopeless calculation of the expense.
The plans lay on the table when next his father came home, and their interest was explained.
'Did you draw all these yourself?' exclaimed the Earl. 'Where did you learn architectural drawing? I should have thought them done by a professional hand.'
'It is easy enough to get it up from books,' said Louis; 'and Mary kept me to the point, in case you should be willing to consider the matter. I would have written out the estimate; but this book allows for bricks, and we could use the stone at Inglewood more cheaply, to say nothing of beauty.'
'Well,' said Lord Ormersfield, considering, 'you have every right to have a voice in the management of the property. I should like to hear your views with regard to these cottages.'
Colouring deeply, and with earnest thanks, Fitzjocelyn stated the injury both to labourers and employers, caused by their distance from their work; he explained where he thought the buildings ought to stand, and was even guarded enough to show that the rents would justify the outlay. He had considered the matter so much, that he could even have encountered Richardson; and his father was only afraid that what was so plausible _must_ be insecure. Caution contended with a real desire to gratify his son, and to find him in the right. He must know the wishes of the farmer, be sure of the cost, and be certain of the spot intended. His crippled means had estranged him from duties that he could not fulfil according to his wishes, and, though not a hard landlord, he had no intercourse with his tenants, took little interest in his estate, and was such a stranger to the localities, that Louis could not make him understand the nook selected for the buildings. He had seen the arable field called 'Great Courtiers,' and the farm called 'Small Profits,' on the map, but did not know their ups and downs much better than the coast of China.
'Mary knows them!' said Louis. 'She made all my measurements there, before I planned the gardens.'
'Mary seems to be a good friend to your designs,' said the Earl, looking kindly at her.
'The best!' said Louis. 'I begin to have some hope of my doings when I see her take them in hand.'
Lord Ormersfield thanked Mary, and asked whether it would be trespassing too much on her kindness to ask her to show him the place in question. She was delighted, and they set out at once, the Earl almost overpowering her by his exceeding graciousness, so that she was nearly ready to laugh when he complimented her on knowing her way through the bye-paths of his own park so much better than he did. 'It is a great pleasure to me that you can feel it something like home,' he said.
'I was so happy here as a child,' said Mary, heartily, 'that it must seem to me more of a home than any other place.'
'I hope it may always be so, my dear.'
He checked himself, as if he had been about to speak even more warmly; and Mary did the honours of the proposed site for the cottages, a waste strip fronting a parish lane, open to the south, and looking full of capabilities, all of which she pointed out after Louis's well-learned lesson, as eagerly as if it had been her own affair.
Lord Ormersfield gave due force to all, but still was prudent. 'I must find out,' he said, 'whether this place be in my hands, or included in Morris's lease. You see, Mary, this is an encumbered property, with every disadvantage, so that I cannot always act as you and Louis would wish; but we so far see our way out of our difficulties, that, if guided by good sense, he will be able to effect far more than I have ever done.'
'I believe,' was Mary's answer, 'this green is in the farmer's hands, but that he has no use for it.'
'I should like to be certain of his wishes. Farmers are so unwilling to increase the rates, that I should not like to consent till I know that it would be really a convenience to him.'
Mary suggested that there stood the farmhouse; and the Earl apologetically asked if she would dislike their proceeding thither, as he would not detain her long. She eagerly declared that Louis would be 'so glad,' and Lord Ormersfield turned his steps to the door, where he had only been once in his life, when he was a very young man, trying to like shooting.
The round-eyed little maid would say nothing but 'Walk in, sir,' in answer to inquiries if Mr. Norris were at home; and they walked into a parlour, chill with closed windows, and as stiff and fine as the lilac streamers of the cap that Mrs. Norris had just put on for their reception. Nevertheless, she was a sensible, well-mannered woman, and after explaining that her husband was close at hand, showed genuine warmth and interest in inquiring for Lord Fitzjocelyn. As the conversation began to flag, Mary had recourse to admiring a handsome silver tankard on a side table. It was the prize of a ploughing-match eight years ago, and brought out a story that evidently always went with it, how Mrs. Norris had been unwell and stayed at home, and had first heard of her husband's triumph by seeing the young Lord galloping headlong up the homefield, hurraing, and waving his cap. He had taken his pony the instant he heard the decision, and rushed off to be the first to bring the news to Mrs. Norris, wild with the honour of Small Profits. 'And,' said the farmer's wife, 'I always say Norris was as pleased with what I told him, as I was with the tankard!'
Norris here came in, an unpretending, quiet man, of the modern, intelligent race of farmers. There was anxiety at first in his eye, but it cleared off as he heard the cause of his landlord's visit, and he was as propitious as any cautious farmer could be. He was strong on the present inconveniences, and agreed that it would be a great boon to have a _few_ families brought back, such as were steady, and would not burden the rates; but the _few_ recurred so often as to show that he was afraid of a general migration of Marksedge. Lord Ormersfield thereupon promised that he should be consulted as to the individuals.
'Thank you, my Lord. There are some families at Marksedge that one would not wish to see nearer here; and I'll not say but I should like to have a voice in the matter, for they are apt to take advantage of Lord Fitzjocelyn's kindness.'
'I quite understand you. Nothing can be more reasonable. I only acted because my son was persuaded it was your wish.'
'It is so, my Lord. I am greatly obliged. He has often talked of it with me, and I had mentioned the matter to Mr. Richardson, but he thought your lordship would be averse to doing anything.'
'I have not been able to do all I could have wished,' said the Earl. 'My son will have it in his power to turn more attention to the property.'
And he _is_ a thorough farmer's friend, as they all say,' earnestly exclaimed Norris, with warmth breaking through the civil formal manner.
'True,' said Lord Ormersfield, gratified; 'he is very much attached to the place, and all connected with it.'
'I'm sure they're the same to him,' replied the farmer. 'As an instance, my Lord, you'll excuse it--do you see that boy driving in the cows? You would not look for much from him. Well, the morning the doctor from London came down, that boy came to his work, crying so that I thought he was ill. 'No, master,' said he, 'but what'll ever become of us when we've lost my young Lord?' And he burst out again, fit to break his heart. I told him I was sorry enough myself, but to go to his work, for crying would do no good. 'I can't help it, master,' says he, 'when I looks at the pigs. Didn't he find 'em all in the park, and me nutting--and helped me his own self to drive 'em out before Mr. Warren see 'em, and lifted the little pigs over the gap as tender as if they were Christians?'
'Yes, that's the way with them all,' interposed Mrs. Norris: 'he has the good word of high and low.'
Lord Ormersfield smiled: he smiled better than he used to do, and took leave.
'Fitzjocelyn will be a popular man,' he said.
Mary could not help being diverted at this moral deduced from the pig-story. 'Every one is fond of him,' was all she said.
'Talent and popularity,' continued the Earl. 'He will have great influence. The free, prepossessing manner is a great advantage, where it is so natural and devoid of effort.'
'It comes of his loving every one,' said Mary, almost indignantly.
'It is a decided advantage,' continued the Earl, complacently. 'I have no doubt but that he has every endowment requisite for success. You and your mother have done much in developing his character, my dear; and I see every reason to hope that the same influence continued will produce the most beneficial results.'
Mary thought this a magnificent compliment, even considering that no one but her mamma had succeeded in teaching Louis to read when a little boy, or in making him persevere in anything now: but then, when Lord Ormersfield did pay a compliment, it was always in the style of Louis XIV.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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9
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THE FAMILY COMPACT.
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Who, nurst with tender care, And to domestic bounds confined, Was still a wild Jack-hare COWPER.
'Mary,' said Mrs. Frost.
Mrs. Ponsonby was sitting by the open window of the library, inhaling the pleasant scents of July. Raising her eyes, she saw her aunt gazing at her with a look somewhat perplexed, but brim full of mischievous frolic. However, the question was only--'Where is that boy?'
'He is gone down with Mary to his cottage-building.'
'Oh! if Mary is with him, I don't care,' said Aunt Catharine, sitting down to her knitting; but her ball seemed restless, and while she pursued it, she broke out into a little laugh, and exclaimed, 'I beg your pardon, my dear, but I cannot help it. I never heard anything so funny!'
'As this scheme,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, with a little hesitation.
'Then you have the other side of it in your letter,' cried Mrs. Frost, giving way to her merriment. 'The Arabian Nights themselves, the two viziers laying their heads together, and sending home orders to us to make up the match!'
'My letter does not go so far,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, amused, but anxious.
'Yours is the lady's side. My orders are precise. Oliver has talked it over with Mr. Ponsonby, and finds the connexion would be agreeable; so he issues a decree that his nephew, Roland Dynevor--(poor Jem--he would not know himself!) --should enter on no profession, but forthwith pay his addresses to Miss Ponsonby, since he will shortly be in a position befitting the heir of our family!'
'You leave Prince Roland in happy ignorance,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, blushing a little.
'Certainly--or he would fly off like a sky-rocket at the first symptom of the princess.'
'Then I think we need not alter our plans. All that Mary's father tells me is, that he does not intend to return home as yet, though his successor is appointed, since he is much occupied by this new partnership with Oliver, and expects that the investment will be successful. He quite approves of our living at the Terrace, especially as he thinks I ought to be informed that Oliver has declared his intentions with regard to his nephew, and so if anything should arise between the young people, I am not to discourage it.'
'Mary is in request,' said Mrs. Frost, slyly, and as she met Mrs. Ponsonby's eyes full of uneasy inquiry. 'You don't mean that you have not observed at least his elder lordship's most decided courtship? Don't be too innocent, my dear.'
'Pray don't say so, Aunt Kitty, or you will make me uncomfortable in staying here. If the like ever crossed his mind, he must perceive that the two are just what we were together ourselves.'
'That might make him wish it the more,' Aunt Catharine had almost said, but she restrained it halfway, and said, 'Louis is hardly come to the time of life for a grande passion.'
'True. He is wonderfully young, and Mary not only seems much older, but is by no means the girl to attract a mere youth. I rather suspect she will have no courtship but from the elders.'
'In spite of her opportunities. What would some mammas--Lord Ormersfield's bugbear, for instance, Lady Conway--give for such a chance! Three months of a lame young Lord, and such a lame young Lord as my Louis!'
'I might have feared,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, 'if Mary were not so perfectly simple. Aunt Melicent managed to abstract all romance, and I never regretted it so little. She has looked after him merely because it came in her way as a form of kindness, and is too much his governess for anything of the other sort.'
'So you really do not wish for the other sort?' said Mrs. Frost, half mortified, as if it were a slight to her boy.
'I don't know how her father might take it,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, eager to disarm, her. 'With his grand expectations, and his view of the state of this property, he might make difficulties. He is fond of expressing his contempt for needy nobility, and I am afraid, after all that has passed, that this would be the last case in which he would make an exception.'
'Yet you say he is fond of Mary.'
'Very fond. If anything would triumph over his dislike, it would be his affection for her, but I had rather my poor Mary had not to put it to the proof. And, after all, I don't think it the safest way for a marriage, that the man should be the most attractive, and the woman the most--' 'Sensible! Say it, Mary--that is the charm in my nephew's eyes.'
'Your great-nephew is the point! No, no, Aunt Kitty; you are under a delusion. The kindness to Mary is no more than 'auld lang-syne,' and because he thinks her too impossible. He cannot afford for his son to marry anything but a grand unquestionable heiress. Mary's fortune, besides, depending on speculations, would be nothing to what Lady Fitzjocelyn ought to have.'
'For shame! I think better of him. I believe he would be unworldly when Louis's happiness was concerned.'
'To return to James,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, decidedly: 'I am glad that his uncle should have declared his intentions.'
'Oh, my dear, we are quite used to that. I am only glad that Jem takes no heed. We have had enough of that! --for my own part,' and the tears arose, 'I never expect that poor Oliver will think he has done enough in my lifetime. These things do so grow on a man! If I had but kept him at home!'
'It might have been the same.'
'There would have been something to divide his attention. His brother used to be a sort of idol; he seemed to love him the more for his quiet, easy ways, and to delight in waiting on him. I do believe he delays, because he cannot bear to come home without Henry!'
Mrs. Ponsonby preferred most topics to that of Mrs. Frost's sons, and was relieved by the sight of the young people returning across the lawn--Fitzjocelyn with his ash stick, but owing a good deal of support to Mary's firm, well-knit arm. They showed well together: even lameness could not disfigure the grace of his leisurely movements; and the bright changefulness and delicacy of his face contrasted well with the placid nobleness of her composed expression, while her complexion was heightened and her eyes lighted by exercise, so that she was almost handsome. She certainly had been looking uncommonly well lately. Was this the way they were to walk together through life?
But Mrs. Ponsonby had known little of married life save the troubles, and she was doubly anxious for her daughter's sake. She exceedingly feared unformed characters, and natures that had no root in themselves. Mary's husband must not lean on her for strength.
She was glad, as with new meaning, she watched their proceedings, to see how easily, and as a matter of course, Louis let Mary bring his footstool and his slipper, fetch his books, each at the proper time, read Spanish with him, and make him look out the words in the dictionary when he knew them by intuition, remind him of orders to be written for his buildings, and manage him as her pupil. If she ruled, it was with perfect calmness and simplicity, and the playfulness was that of brother and sister, not even with the coquettish intimacy of cousinhood.
The field was decidedly open to Roland Dynevor, alias James Frost.
Mrs. Ponsonby was loth to contemplate that contingency, though in all obedience, she exposed her daughter to the infection. He was expected on that afternoon, bringing his sister with him, for he had not withstood the united voices that entreated him to become Fitzjocelyn's tutor during the vacation, and the whole party had promised to remain for the present as guests at Ormersfield.
Louis, in high spirits, offered to drive Mrs. Ponsonby to meet the travellers at the station; and much did he inflict on her poor shattered nerves by the way. He took no servant, that there might be the more room, and perched aloft on the driving seat, he could only use his indefatigable tongue by leaning back with his head turned round to her. She kept a sharp lookout ahead; but all her warnings of coming perils only caused him to give a moment's attention to the horses and the reins, before he again turned backwards to resume his discourse. In the town, his head was more in the right direction, for he was nodding and returning greetings every moment; he seemed to have a bowing acquaintance with all the world, and when he drew up at the station, reached down several times to shake hands with figures whom his father would barely have acknowledged; exchanging good-humoured inquiries or congratulations with almost every third person.
Scarcely had the train dashed up before Mrs. Ponsonby was startled by a shout of 'He's there himself! Louis! Louis!' and felt, as well as saw, the springing ascent to the box of a tall apparition, in a scanty lilac cotton dress, an outgrown black mantle, and a brown straw bonnet, scarcely confining an overprofusion of fair hair. Louis let go the reins to catch hold of both hands, and cry, 'Well, old Giraffe! what have you done with Jem?'
'Seeing to the luggage! You won't let him turn me out! I must sit here!'
'You must have manners,' said Louis; 'look round, and speak rationally to Mrs. Ponsonby.'
'I never saw she was there!' and slightly colouring, the 'Giraffe' erected her length, turned round a small insignificant face slightly freckled, with hazel eyes, as light as if they had been grey; and stretched down a hand to be shaken by her new relation, but she was chiefly bent on retaining her elevation.
'There, Jem!' she cried exultingly, as he came forth, followed by the trunks and portmanteaus.
'Madcap!' he said; 'but I suppose the first day of the holidays must be privileged. Ha! Fitzjocelyn, you're the right man in the right place, whatever Clara is.'
So they drove off, James sitting by Mrs. Ponsonby, and taking care to inform her that, in spite of her preposterous height, Clara was only sixteen, he began to ask anxious questions as to Fitzjocelyn's recovery, while she looked up at the pair in front, and thought, from the appearance of things, that even Louis's tongue was more than rivalled, for the newcomer seemed to say a sentence in the time he took in saying a word. Poor Mrs. Ponsonby! she would not have been happier had she known in which pair of hands the reins were!
'And Louis! how are you?' cried Clara, as soon as this point had been gained; 'are you able to walk?'
'After a fashion.'
'And does your ankle hurt you?'
'Only if I work it too hard. One would think that lounging had become a virtue instead of a vice, to hear the way I am treated.'
'You look--' began Clara. 'But oh, Louis!' cried she, in a sort of hesitating wonder, 'what! a moustache?'
'Don't say a word:' he lowered his voice. 'Riding is against orders, but I cannot miss the Yeomanry, under the present aspect of affairs.'
'The invasion! A man in the train was talking of the war steamers, but Jem laughed. Do you believe in it?'
'It is a time when a display of loyalty and national spirit may turn the scale. I am resolved to let no trifle prevent me from doing my part,' he said, colouring with enthusiasm.
'You are quite right,' cried Clara. 'You ought to take your vassals, like a feudal chief! I am sure the defence of one's country ought to outweigh everything.'
'Exactly so. Our volunteer forces are our strength and glory, and are a happy meeting of all classes in the common cause. But say nothing, Clara, or granny will take alarm, and get an edict from Walby against me.'
'Dear granny! But I wish we were going home to the Terrace.'
'Thank you. How flattering!'
'You would be always in and out, and it would be so much more comfortable. Is Lord Ormersfield at home?'
'No, he will not come till legislation can bear London no longer.'
'Oh!' --with a sound of great relief.
'You don't know how kind he has been,' said Louis, eagerly. 'You will find it out when you are in the house with him.'
Clara laughed, but sighed. 'I think we should have had more fun at home.'
'What! than with me for your host? Try what I can do. Besides, you overlook Mary.'
'But she has been at school!'
'Well!'
'I didn't bargain for school-girls at home!'
'I should not have classed Mary in that category.'
'Don't ask me to endure any one who has been at school! Oh, Louis! if you could only guess--if you would only speak to Jem not to send me back to that place--' 'Aunt Kitty will not consent, I am sure, if you are really unhappy there, my poor Clara.'
'No! no! I am ordered not to tell granny. It would only vex her, and Jem says it must be. I don't want her to be vexed, and if I tell you, I may be able to keep it in!'
Out poured the whole flood of troubles, unequal in magnitude, but most trying to the high-spirited girl. Formal walks, silent meals, set manners, perpetual French, were a severe trial, but far worse was the companionship. Petty vanities, small disputes, fretful jealousies, insincere tricks, and sentimental secrets, seemed to Clara a great deal more contemptible than the ignorance, indolence, abrupt manners and boyish tastes which brought her into constant disgrace--and there seemed to be one perpetual chafing and contradiction, which made her miserable. And a further confidence could not help following, though with a warning that Jem must not hear it, for she did not mind, and he spent every farthing on her that he could afford. She had been teased about her dress, told that her friends were mean and shabby, and rejected as a walking companion, because she had no parasol, and that was vulgar.
'I am sure I wanted to walk with none of them,' said Clara, 'and when our English governess advised me to get one, I told her I would give in to no such nonsense, for only vulgar people cared about them. Such a scrape I got into! Well, then Miss Salter, whose father is a knight, and who thinks herself the great lady of the school, always bridled whenever she saw me, and, at last, Lucy Raynor came whispering up, to beg that I would contradict that my grandmamma kept a school, for Miss Salter was so very particular.'
'I should like to have heard your contradiction.'
'I never would whisper, least of all to Lucy Raynor, so I stood up in the midst, and said, as clear as I could, that my grandmother had always earned an honest livelihood by teaching little boys, and that I meant to do the same, for nothing would ever make me have anything to do with girls.'
'That spoilt it,' said Louis--'the first half was dignified.'
'What was the second?'
'Human nature,' said Louis.
'I see,' said Clara. 'Well, they were famously scandalized, and that was all very nice, for they let me alone. But you brought far worse on me, Louis.'
'I!'
'Ay! 'Twas my own fault, though, but I couldn't help it. You must know, they all are ready to bow down to the ninety-ninth part of a Lord's little finger; and Miss Brown--that's the teacher--always reads all the fashionable intelligence as if it were the Arabian Nights, and imparts little bits to Miss Salter and her pets; and so it was that I heard, whispered across the table, the dreadful accident to Viscount Fitzjocelyn!'
'Did nobody write to you?'
'Yes--I had a letter from granny, and another from Jem by the next morning's post, or I don't know what I should have done. Granny was too busy to write at first; I didn't three parts believe it before, but there was no keeping in at that first moment.'
'What did you do?'
'I gave one great scream, and flew at the newspaper. The worst was, that I had to explain, and then--oh! it was enough to make one sick. Why had I not said I was Lord Ormersfield's cousin? I turned into a fine aristocratic-looking girl on the spot! Miss Salter came and fondled, and wanted me to walk with her!'
'Of course; she had compassion on your distress--amiable feeling!'
'She only wanted to ask ridiculous questions, whether you were handsome.'
'What did you reply?'
'I told them not a word, except that my brother was going to be your tutor. When I saw Miss Salter setting off by this line, I made Jem take second-class tickets, that she might be ashamed of me.'
'My dear Giraffe, bend down your neck, and don't take such a commonplace, conventional view of your schoolfellows.'
'Conventional! ay, all agree because they know it by experience,' said Clara--'I'm sure I do!'
'Then take the other side--see the best.'
'Jem says you go too far, and are unreasonable with your theory of making the best of every one.'
'By no means. I always made the worst of Frampton, and now I know what injustice I did him. I never saw greater kindness and unselfishness than he has shown me.'
'I should like to know what best you would make of these girls!'
'You have to try that!'
'Can I get any possible good by staying?'
'A vast deal.'
'I'm sure Italian, and music, and drawing, are not a good compared with truth, and honour, and kindness.'
'All those things only grow by staying wherever we may happen to be, unless it is by our own fault.'
'Tell me what good you mean!'
'Learning not to hate, learning to mend your gloves. Don't jerk the reins, Clara, or you'll get me into a scrape.'
Clara could extract no more, nor did she wish it, for having relieved her mind by the overflow, she only wanted to forget her misfortunes. Her cousin Louis was her chief companion, they had always felt themselves on the same level of nonsense, and had unreservedly shared each other's confidences and projects; and ten thousand bits of intelligence were discussed with mutual ardour, while Clara's ecstasy became uncontrollable as she felt herself coming nearer to her grandmother. She finally descended with a bound almost as distressing to her brother as her ascent had been, and leapt at once to the embrace of Mrs. Frost, who stood there, petting, kissing her, and playfully threatening all sorts of means to stop her growth. Clara reared up her giraffe figure, boasting of having overtopped all the world present, except Louis! She made but a cold, abrupt response to her cousin Mary's greeting, and presently rushed upstairs in search of dear old Jane, with an impetus that made Mrs. Frost sigh, and say, 'Poor child! how happy she is;' and follow her, smiling, while James looked annoyed.
'Never mind, Jem,' said Louis, who had thrown himself at full length on the sofa, 'she deserves compensation. Let it fizz.'
'And undo everything! What do you say to that, Mary?'
'Mary is to say nothing,' said Louis, 'I mean that poor child to have her swing.'
'I shall leave you and James to settle that,' said Mary, quitting them.
'I am very anxious that Clara should form a friendship with Mary,' said James, gravely.
'Friendships can't be crammed down people's throats,' said Louis, in a weary indifferent tone.
'You who have been three months with Mary--!'
'Mary and I did not meet with labels round our necks that here were a pair of friends. Pray do you mean to send that victim of yours back to school?'
'Don't set her against it. I have been telling her of the necessity all the way home.'
'Is it not to be taken into consideration that a bad--not to say a base-style of girl seems to prevail there?'
'I can't help it, Fitzjocelyn,' cried Jem, ruffling up his hair, as he always did when vexed. 'Girls fit to be her companions don't go to school--or to no school within my means. This place has sound superiors, and she _must_ be provided with a marketable stock of accomplishments, so there's no choice. I can trust her not to forget that she is a Dynevor.'
'Query as to the benefit of that recollection.'
'What do you mean?'
'That I never saw evils lessened by private self-exaltation.'
'Very philosophical! but as a matter of fact, what was it but the sense of my birth that kept me out of all the mischief I was exposed to at the Grammar School!'
'I always thought it had been something more respectable,' said Louis, his voice growing more sleepy.
'Pshaw! Primary motives being understood, secondary stand common wear the best.'
'As long as they don't eat into the primary.'
'The long and short of it is,' exclaimed James, impatiently, 'that we must have no nonsense about Clara. It is pain enough to me to inflict all this on her, but I would not do it, if I thought it were more than mere discomfort. Her principles are fixed, she is above these trumperies. But you have the sense to see that her whole welfare may depend on whether she gets fitted to be a valuable accomplished governess or a mere bonne, tossed about among nursery-maids. There's where poverty galls! Don't go and set my grandmother on! If she grew wretched and took Clara away, it would be mere condemning of her to rudeness and struggling!'
'Very well,' said Louis, as James concluded the brief sentences, uttered in the bitterness of his heart, 'one bargain I make. If I am to hold my tongue about school, I will have my own way with her in the holidays.'
'I tell you, Louis, that it is time to have done with childishness. Clara is growing up--I _won't_ have you encourage her in all that wild flightiness--I didn't want to have had her here at all! If she is ever to be a reasonable, conformable woman, it is high time to begin. I can't have you undoing the work of six months! when Mary might make some hand of her, too--' James stopped. Louis's eyes were shut, and he appeared to be completely asleep. If silence were acquiescence, it was at least gained; and so he went away, and on returning, intended to impress his lessons of reserve on Clara and her grandmother, but was prevented by finding Mrs. Ponsonby and her daughter already in the library, consulting over some letters, while Clara sat at her grandmother's knee in the full felicity of hearing all the Northwold news.
The tea was brought in, and there was an inquiry for Louis. He came slowly forward from the sofa at the dark end of the room, but disclaimed, of course, the accusation of fatigue.
'A very bad sign,' said James, 'that you have been there all this time without our finding it out. Decidedly, you have taken me in. You don't look half as well as you promised. You are not the same colour ten minutes together, just now white, and now--how you redden!'
'Don't, Jem!' cried Louis, as each observation renewed the tide of burning crimson in his cheek. 'It is like whistling to a turkey-cock. If I had but the blue variety, it might be more comfortable, as well as more interesting.'
Clara went into a choking paroxysm of laughter, which her brother tried to moderate by a look, and Louis rendered more convulsive by quoting 'Marked you his cheek of heavenly blue,' and looked with a mischievous amusement at James's ill-suppressed displeasure at the merriment that knew no bounds, till even Mrs. Frost, who had laughed at first as much at James's distress as at Louis's travestie or Clara's fun, thought it time to check it by saying, 'You are right, Jem, he is not half so strong as he thinks himself. You must keep him in good order.'
'Take care, Aunt Kitty,' said Louis; 'you'll make me restive. A tutor and governess both! I appeal! Shall we endure it, Clara?'
'Britons never shall be slaves!' was the eager response.
'Worthy of the daughter of the Pendragons,' said Louis; 'but it lost half its effect from being stifled with laughing. You should command yourself, Clara, when you utter a sentiment. I beg to repeat Miss Frost Dynevor's novel and striking speech, and declare my adhesion, 'Britons never shall be slaves!' Liberty, fraternity, and equality! Tyrants, beware!'
'You ungrateful boy!' said Mrs. Frost; 'that's the way you use your good governess!'
'Only the way the nineteenth century treats all its good governesses,' said Louis.
'When it gets past them,' said Mary, smiling. 'I hope you did not think I was not ready to give you up to your tutor?'
Mary found the renunciation more complete than perhaps she had expected. The return of his cousins had made Fitzjocelyn a different creature. He did indeed read with James for two hours every morning, but this was his whole concession to discipline; otherwise he was more wayward and desultory than ever, and seemed bent on teazing James, and amusing himself by making Clara extravagantly wild and idle. Tired of his long confinement, he threw off all prudence with regard to health, as well as all struggle with his volatile habits; and the more he was scolded, the more he seemed to delight in making meekly ridiculous answers and going his own way. Sometimes he and Clara would make an appointment, at some unearthly hour, to see Mrs. Morris make cheese, or to find the sun-dew blossom open, or to sketch some effect of morning sun. Louis would afterwards be tired and unhinged the whole day, but never convinced, only capable of promoting Clara's chatter; and ready the next day to stand about with her in the sun at the cottages, to the increase of her freckles, and the detriment of his ankle. Their frolics would have been more comprehensible had she been more attractive; but her boisterous spirits were not engaging to any one but Louis, who seemed to enjoy them in proportion to her brother's annoyance, and to let himself down into nearly equal folly.
He gave some slight explanation to Mary, one day when he had been reminded of one of their former occupations--'Ah! I have no time for that now. You see there's nobody else to protect that poor Giraffe from being too rational.'
'Is that her great danger?' said Mary.
'Take my advice, Mary, let her alone. Follow your own judgment, and not poor Jem's fidgets. He wants to be 'father, mother both, and uncle, all in one,' and so he misses his natural vocation of elder brother. He wants to make a woman of her before her time; and now he has his way with her at school, he shall let her have a little compensation at home.'
'Is this good for her? Is it the only way she can be happy?'
'It is her way, at least; and if you knew the penance she undergoes at school, you would not grudge it to her. She is under his orders not to disclose the secrets of her prison-house, lest they should disquiet Aunt Catharine; and she will not turn to you, because--I beg your pardon, Mary--she has imbibed a distrust of all school-girls; and besides, Jem has gone and insisted on your being her friend more than human nature can stand.'
'It is a great pity,' said Mary, smiling, but grieved; 'I should not have been able to do her much good--but if I could only try!'
'I'll tell you,' said Louis, coming near, with a look between confidence and embarrassment; 'is it in the power of woman to make her dress look rather more like other people's without inflaming the blood of the Dynevors--cautiously, you know? Even my father does not dare to give her half-a-sovereign for pocket-money; but do ask your mother if she could not be made such that those girls should not make her their laughingstock.'
'You don't mean it!'
'Aye, I do; and she has not even told James, lest he should wish to spend more upon her. She glories in it, but that is hardly wholesome.'
'Then she told you?'
'Oh, yes! We always were brothers! It is great fun to have her here! I always wished it, and I'm glad it has come before they have made her get out of the boy. He will be father to the woman some day; and that will be soon enough, without teasing her.'
Mary wished to ask whether all this were for Clara's good, but she could not very well put such a question to him; and, after all, it was noticeable that, noisy and unguarded as Clara's chatter was, there never was anything that in itself should not have been said: though her manner with Louis was unceremonious, it was never flirting; and refinement of mind was as evident in her rough-and-ready manner as in his high-bred quietness. This seemed to account for Mrs. Frost's non-interference, which at first amazed her niece; but Aunt Catharine's element was chiefly with boys, and her love for Clara, though very great, showed itself chiefly in still regarding her as a mere child, petting her to atone for the privations of school, and while she might assent to the propriety of James's restrictions, always laughing or looking aside when they were eluded.
James argued and remonstrated. He said a great deal, always had the advantage in vehemence, and appeared to reduce Louis to a condition of quaint debonnaire indifference; and warfare seemed the normal state of the cousins, the one fiery and sensitive, the other cool and impassive, and yet as appropriate to each other as the pepper and the cucumber, to borrow a bon mot from their neighbour, Sydney Calcott.
If Jem came to Mary brimful of annoyance with Louis's folly, a mild word of assent was sufficient to make him turn round and do battle with the imaginary enemy who was always depreciating Fitzjocelyn. To make up for Clara's avoidance of Mary, he rendered her his prime counsellor, and many an hour was spent in pacing up and down the garden in the summer twilight; while she did her best to pacify him by suggesting that thorough relaxation would give spirits and patience for Clara's next half year, and that it might be wiser not to overstrain his own undefined authority, while the lawful power, Aunt Catharine, did not interfere. Surely she might safely be trusted to watch over her own granddaughter; and while Clara was so perfectly simple, and Louis such as he was, more evil than good might result from inculcating reserve. At any rate, it was hard to meddle with the poor child's few weeks of happiness, and to this James always agreed; and then he came the next day to relieve himself by fighting the battle over again. So constantly did this occur, that Aunt Kitty, in her love of mischief, whispered to Mrs. Ponsonby that she only hoped the two viziers would not quarrel about the three thousand sequins, three landed estates, and three slaves.
Still, Louis's desertion had left unoccupied so many of the hours of Mary's time that he had previously absorbed, that her mother watched anxiously to see whether she would feel the blank. But she treated it as a matter of course. She had attended to her cousin when he needed her, and now that he had regained his former companion, Clara, she resigned him without effort or mortification, as far as could be seen. She was forced to fall back on other duties, furnishing the house, working for every one, and reading some books that Louis had brought before her. The impulse of self-improvement had not expired with his attention, and without any shadow of pique she was always ready to play the friend and elder sister whenever he needed her, and to be grateful when he shared her interests or pursuits. So the world went till Lord Ormersfield's return caused Clara's noise to subside so entirely, that her brother was sufficiently at ease to be exceedingly vivacious and entertaining, and Mrs. Ponsonby hoped for a great improvement in the state of affairs.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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10
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THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR.
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For who is he, whose chin is but enriched With one appearing hair, that will not follow These culled and choice-drawn cavaliers 'gainst France? Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege. King Henry V.
The next forenoon, Mary met James in the park, wandering in search of his pupil, whom he had not seen since they had finished their morning's work in the study. Some wild freak with Clara was apprehended, but while they were conferring, Mary exclaimed, 'What's that?' as a clatter and clank met her ear.
'Only the men going out to join old Brewster's ridiculous yeomanry,' said Jem.
'Oh, I should like to see them,' cried Mary, running to the top of a bank, whence she could see into the hollow road leading from the stables to the lodge. Four horsemen, the sun glancing on their helmets, were descending the road, and a fifth, at some distance ahead, was nearly out of sight. 'Ah,' she said, 'Louis must have been seeing them off. How disappointed he must be not to go!'
'I wish I was sure--' said James, with a start. 'I declare his folly is capable of anything! Why did I not think of it sooner?'
Clara here rushed upon them with her cameleopard gallop, sending her voice before her, 'Can you see them?'
'Scarcely,' said Mary, making room for her.
'Where's Louis'!' hastily demanded her brother.
'Gone to the yeomanry meeting,' said Clara, looking in their faces in the exultation of producing a sensation.
James was setting off with a run to intercept him, but it was too late; and Clara loudly laughed as she said, 'You can't catch him.'
'I've done with him!' cried James. 'Can madness go further?'
'James! I am ashamed of you,' cried the Giraffe, with great stateliness. 'Here are the enemy threatening our coasts, and our towns full of disaffection and sedition; and when our yeomanry are lukewarm enough to go off grouse-shooting instead of attending to their duty, what is to become of the whole country if somebody does not make an exertion? The tranquillity of all England may depend on the face our yeomanry show.'
'On Lieutenant Fitzjocelyn's yellow moustache! Pray how long have you been in the secret of these heroic intentions?'
'Ever since I came home.'
'We all knew that he meant to go out if he could,' said Mary, in a tone calculated to soothe Jem, and diminish Clara's glory in being sole confidante, 'but we did not think him well enough. I hope it will do him no harm.'
'Exertions in a good cause can do no harm!' boldly declared Clara; then, with sudden loss of confidence, 'do you really think it will?'
'Just cripple him for life,' said James.
'Mr. Walby wished him not to attempt riding,' said Mary. 'He thinks any strain on the ankle just now might hurt him very much; but it may be over caution.'
'Mr. Walby is an old woman,' said Clara. 'Now, Jem, you said so yourself. Besides, it is all for his duty! Of course, he would risk anything for the good of his country.'
'Don't say another word, Clara,' exclaimed James, 'or you will drive me distracted with your folly. One grain of sense, and even you would have stopped it; but neither you nor he could miss a chance of his figuring in that masquerade dress! Look at the sun, exactly like a red-hot oven! We shall have him come home as ill as ever!'
Clara had another milder and more sorrowful version of the scolding from her grandmother, but Lord Ormersfield escaped the day's anxiety by being so busy with Richardson, that he never emerged from the study, and did not miss his son.
It was an exceedingly sultry day, and the hopeful trusted that Louis would be forced to give in, before much harm could be done; but it was not till five o'clock that the hoofs were heard on the gravel; and Jem went out to revenge himself with irony for his uneasiness.
'I hope you are satisfied,' he said, 'dulce est pro patria mori.'
Louis was slowly dismounting, and as he touched the ground gave a slight cry of pain, and caught at the servant's arm for support.
'No more than I expected,' said James, coming to help him; and at the same moment Lord Ormersfield was heard exclaiming-- 'Fitzjocelyn--! what imprudence!'
'Take care,' hastily interrupted James, finding Louis leaning helplessly against him, unable to speak or stand, and his flushed cheek rapidly changing to deadly white.
They lifted him up the steps into the hall, where he signed to be laid down on the seat of the cool north window, and trying to smile, said 'it was only the hot sun, and his foot aching _rather_; it would soon go off.' And when, with much pain and difficulty, Frampton had released his swollen foot from the regulation-boot, into which he had foolishly thrust it, he went on more fluently. 'He had thought it his duty, especially when Mr. Shaw, the captain of his troop, had chosen to go away--he had believed it could do no harm--he was sure it was only a little present discomfort, and in the present crisis--' He addressed his aunt, but his eyes were on his father; and when he heard not a single word from him, he suddenly ceased, and presently, laying his head down on the window-sill, he begged that no one would stand and watch him, he should come into the library in a few minutes.
The few minutes lasted, however, till near dinnertime, when he called to Mary, as she was coming downstairs, and asked her to help him into the library; he could remain no longer exposed to Frampton's pity, as dinner went in.
He dragged himself along with more difficulty than he had found for weeks, and sank down on the sofa with a sigh of exhaustion; while Clara, who was alone in the room, reared herself up from an easy-chair, where she had been sitting in an attitude that would have been despair to her mistress.
'Ha, Clara!' said Louis, presently; 'you look as if you had been the object of invective?'
'I don't care,' exclaimed Clara, 'I know you were in the good old cause.'
'Conde at Jarnac, Charles XII. at Pultowa--which?' said Louis. 'I thought of both myself--only, unluckily, I made such frightful blunders. I was thankful to my men for bringing me off, like other great commanders.'
'Oh, Louis! but at least you were in your place--you set the example.'
'Unluckily, these things descend from the sublime to the other thing, when one is done up, and beginning to doubt whether self-will cannot sometimes wear a mask.'
'I'm sure they are all quite cross enough to you already, without your being cross to yourself.'
'An ingenious and elegant impersonal,' said Louis.
Clara rushed out into the garden to tell the stiff old rose-trees that if Lord Ormersfield were savage now, he would be more horrid than ever.
Meanwhile, Louis drew a long sigh, murmuring, 'Have I gone and vexed him again? Mary, have I been very silly?'
The half-piteous doubt and compunction had something childish, which made her smile as she answered: 'You had better have done as you were told.'
'The surest road to silliness,' said Louis, whose tendency was to moralize the more, the more tired he was, 'is to think one is going to do something fine! It is dismal work to come out at the other end of an illusion.'
'With a foot aching as, I am afraid, yours does.'
'I should not mind that, but that I made such horrid mistakes!'
These weighed upon his mind so much, that he went on, half aloud, rehearsing the manoeuvres and orders in which he had failed, from the difficulty of taking the command of his troop for the first time, when bewildered with pain and discomfort. The others came in, and James looked rabid; Louis stole a glance now and then at his father, who preserved a grave silence, while Clara stood aloof, comparing the prostrate figure in blue and silver to all the wounded knights in history or fiction.
He was past going in to dinner, and the party were 'civil and melancholy,' Mrs. Frost casting beseeching looks at her grandson, who sat visibly chafing at the gloom that rested on the Earl's brow, and which increased at each message of refusal of everything but iced water. At last Mrs. Frost carried off some grapes from the dessert to tempt him, and as she passed through the open window--her readiest way to the library--the Earl's thanks concluded with a disconsolate murmur 'quite ill,' and 'abominable folly;' a mere soliloquy and nearly inaudible, but sufficient spark to produce the explosion.
'Fitzjocelyn's motives deserve no such name as folly,' James cried, with stammering eagerness.
'I know you did not encourage him,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'I did,' said a young, clear voice, raised in alarm at her own boldness; 'Jem knew nothing of it, but I thought it right.'
Lord Ormersfield made a little courteous inclination with his head, which annihilated Clara upon the spot.
'I doubt whether I should have done right in striving to prevent him,' said James. 'Who can appreciate the moral effect of heroism?'
'Heroism in the cause of a silver jacket!'
'Now, that is the most unfair thing in the world!' cried James, always most violent when he launched out with his majestic cousin. 'There is not a man living more careless of his appearance. You do him justice, Mrs. Ponsonby?'
'Yes, I do not believe that vanity had anything to do with it. A man who would bear what he has done to-day would do far more.'
'If it had been for any reasonable cause,' said the Earl.
'You may not understand it, Lord Ormersfield,' exclaimed James, 'but I do. In these times of disaffection, a sound heart, and whole spirit, in our volunteer corps may be the saving of the country; and who can tell what may be the benefit of such an exhibition of self-sacrificing zeal. The time demands every man's utmost, and neither risk nor suffering can make him flinch from his duty.'
'My dear Jem,' said a voice behind him at the window, 'I never see my follies so plainly as when you are defending them. Come and help me up stairs; Granny is ordering me up; a night's rest will set all smooth.'
It was not a night's rest, neither did it set things smooth. In vain did Louis assume a sprightly countenance, and hold his head and shoulders erect and stately; there was no concealing that he was very pale, and winced at every step. His ankle had been much hurt by the pressure of the stirrup, and he was not strong enough to bear with impunity severe pain, exertion, and fatigue on a burning summer day. It was evident that his recovery had been thrown back for weeks.
His father made no reproaches, but was grievously disappointed. His exaggerated estimate of his son's discretion had given place to a no less misplaced despondency, quite inaccessible to Mrs. Ponsonby's consolations as to the spirit that had prompted the performance. He could have better understood a youth being unable to forego the exhibition of a handsome person and dress, than imagine that any one of moderate sense could either expect the invasion, or use these means of averting it. If imagination was to be allowed for, so much the worse. A certain resemblance to the childish wilfulness with which his wife had trifled with her health, occurred to him, increasing his vexation by gloomy shadows of the past.
His silent mortification and kind anxiety went to his son's heart. Louis was no less disappointed in himself, in finding his own judgment as untrustworthy as ever, since the exploit that had been a perpetual feast to his chivalrous fancy had turned out a mere piece of self-willed imprudence, destroying all the newly-bestowed and highly-valued good opinion of his father; and even in itself, incompetently executed. 'He had made a fool of himself every way.' That had been James's first dictum, and he adopted it from conviction.
In the course of the day, goodnatured, fat Sir Gilbert Brewster, the colonel of the yeomanry, who had been seriously uneasy at his looks, and had tried to send him home, rode over to inquire for him, complimenting him on being 'thorough game to the last.' Louis relieved his mind by apologies for his blunders, whereupon he learnt that his good colonel had never discovered them, and now only laughed at them, and declared that they were mere trifles to what the whole corps, officers and men, committed whenever they met, and no one cared except one old sergeant who had been in the Light Dragoons. Louis's very repentance for them was another piece of absurdity. He smiled, indeed, but seemed to give himself up as a hopeless subject. His spirits flagged as they had not done throughout his illness, and, unwell, languid, and depressed, he spent his days without an attempt to rally. He was only too conscious of his own inconsistency, but he had not energy enough to resume any of the habits that Mary had so diligently nursed, neglected even his cottage-building, would not trouble himself to consider the carpenter's questions, forgot messages, put off engagements, and seemed to have only just vigour enough to be desultory, tease James, and spoil Clara.
Lord Ormersfield became alarmed, and called in doctors, who recommended sea air, and James suggested a secluded village on the Yorkshire coast, where some friends had been reading in the last long vacation. This was to be the break-up of the party; Mrs. Frost and the two Marys would resort to Dynevor Terrace, Clara would return to school, and James undertook the charge of Louis, who took such exceedingly little heed to the arrangements, that Jem indignantly told him that he cared neither for himself nor anybody else.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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11
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A HALTING PROPOSAL.
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Shallow. Will you upon good dowry, marry her? Slender. I will do a greater thing than that, upon your request. Merry Wives of Windsor.
The first thing that Louis did appear to care for was a letter that arrived about three days previous to their departure, addressed to 'Lord Fitsgosling, Hawmsfield Park, Northwold.' Rather too personal, as he observed, he must tell his correspondent that it hurt his feelings. The correspondent was Tom Madison, whose orthography lagged behind his other attainments, if his account might be trusted of 'they lectures on Kemistry.' His penmanship was much improved, and he was prospering, with hopes of promotion and higher wages, when he should have learnt to keep accounts. He liked Mr. Dobbs and the chaplain, and wished to know how to send a crown per post to 'old granfer up at Marksedge; because he is too ignorant to get a border sinned. Please, my lord, give my duty to him and all enquiring friends, and to Schirlt, up at the Teras.'
Highly amused, Louis lay on the uppermost step from the library window, in the cool summer evening, laughing over the letter. 'There, Aunt Kitty, he said, 'I commit that tender greeting to your charge,' and as she looked doubtful, 'Yes, do, there's a good aunt and mistress.'
'I am afraid I should not be a good mistress; I ought not to sanction it.'
'Better sanction it above board than let it go on by stealth,' said Louis. 'You are her natural protector.'
'So much the more reason against it! I ought to wish her to forget this poor boy of yours.'
'Ay, and light Hymen's torch with some thriving tallow chandler, who would marry a domestic slave as a good speculation, without one spark of the respectful chivalrous love that--' 'Hush! you absurd boy.'
'Well, then, if you won't, I shall go to Jane. The young ladies are all too cold and too prudent, but Jane has a soft spot in her heart, and will not think true love is confined within the rank that keeps a gig. I did think Aunt Kitty had been above vulgar prejudices.'
'Not above being coaxed by you, you gosling, you,' said Aunt Kitty; 'only you must come out of the dew, the sun is quite gone.'
'Presently,' said Louis, as she retreated by the window.
'I would not have been too cold or too prudent!' said Clara.
'I well believe it!'
'You will be one if you are not the other,' said Mary, gathering her work up, with the dread of one used to tropical dews. 'Are not you coming in?'
'When I can persuade myself to write a letter of good advice, a thing I hate.'
'Which,' asked Mary; 'giving or receiving it?'
'Receiving, of course.' --'Giving, of course,' said Clara and Louis at the same instant.
'Take mine, then,' said Mary, 'and come out of the damp.'
'Mary is so tiresome about these things!' cried Clara, as their cousin retreated. 'Such fidgetting nonsense.'
'I once argued it with her,' said Louis, without stirring; 'and she had the right side, that it is often more self-denying to take care of one's health, than to risk it for mere pleasure or heedlessness.'
'There's no dew!' said Clara; 'and if there was, it would not hurt, and if it did, I should be too glad to catch a cold, or something to keep me at home. Oh, if I could only get into a nice precarious state of health!'
'You would soon wish yourself at school, or anywhere else, so that you could feel some life in your limbs,' half sighed Louis.
'I've more than enough! Oh! how my feet ache to run! and my throat feels stifled for want of making a noise, and the hatefulness of always sitting upright, with my shoulders even! Come, you might pity me a little this one night, Louis: I know you do, for Jem is always telling me not to let you set me against it.'
'No, I don't pity you. Pity is next akin to contempt.'
'Nonsense, Louis. Do be in earnest.'
'I have seldom seen the human being whom I could presume to pity: certainly not you, bravely resisting folly and temptation, and with so dear and noble a cause for working.'
'You mean, the hope of helping to maintain grandmamma.'
'Which you will never be able to do, unless you pass through this ordeal, and qualify yourself for skilled labour.'
'I know that,' said Clara; 'but the atmosphere there seems to poison, and take the vigour out of all they teach. Oh, so different from granny teaching me my notes, or Jem teaching me French--' 'Growling at you--' 'He never growled half as much as, I deserved. I cared to learn of him; but I don't care for anything now,--no, not for drawing, which you taught me! There's no heart in it! The whole purpose is to get amazing numbers of marks and pass each other. All dates and words, and gabble gabble!'
'Ay! there's an epitome of the whole world: all ambition, and vanity, and gabble gabble,' said Louis, sadly. 'And what is a gosling, that he should complain?'
'You don't mean that in reality. You are always merry.
'Some mirth is because one does not always think, Clara; and when one does think deeply enough, there is better cheerfulness.'
'Deeply enough,' said Clara. 'Ah! I see. Knowing that the world of gabble is not what we belong to, only a preparation? Is that it!'
'It is what I meant.'
'Ah I but how to make that knowledge help us.'
'There's the point. Now and then, I think I see; but then I go off on a wrong tack: I get a silly fit, and a hopeless one, and lose my clue. And yet, after all, there is a highway; and wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein,' murmured Louis, as he gazed on the first star of evening.
'Oh! tell me how to see my highway at school!'
'If I only kept my own at home, I might. But you have the advantage--you have a fixed duty, and you always have kept hold of your purposes much better than I.' 'My purpose!' said Clara. 'I suppose that is to learn as fast as I can, that I may get away from that place, and not be a burthen to granny and Jem. Perhaps Jem will marry and be poor, and then I shall send his sons to school and college.'
'And pray what are your social duties till that time comes?'
'That's plain enough,' said Clara: 'to keep my tone from being deteriorated by these girls. Why, Louis, what's that for?' as, with a bow and air of alarm, he hastily moved aside from her.
'If you are so much afraid of being deteriorated--' 'Nonsense! If you only once saw their trumpery cabals, and vanities, and mean equivocations, you would understand that the only thing to be done is to keep clear of them; take the learning I am sent for, but avoid them!'
'And where is the golden rule all this time?' said Louis, very low.
'But ought not one to keep out of what is wrong?'
'Yes, but not to stand aloof from what is not wrong. Look out, not for what is inferior to yourself, but what is superior. Ah! you despair; but, my Giraffe, will you promise me this? Tell me, next Christmas, a good quality for every bad one you have found in them. You shake your head. Nay, you must, for the credit of your sex. I never found the man in whom there was not something to admire, and I had rather not suppose that women are not better than men. Will you promise?'
'I'll try, but--' 'But, mind, it takes kind offices to bring the blossoms out. There--that's pretty well, considering our mutual sentiments as to good advice.'
'Have you been giving me good advice?'
'Not bad, I hope.'
'I thought only people like--like Mary--could give advice.'
'Ah! your blindness about Mary invalidates your opinion of your schoolfellows. It shows that you do not deserve a good friend.'
'I've got you; I want no other.'
'Quite wrong. Not only is she full of clear, kind, solid sense, like a pillar to lean on, but she could go into detail with you in your troubles. You have thrown away a great opportunity, and I am afraid I helped you. I shall hold you in some esteem when you are--to conclude sententiously--worthy of her friendship.'
Clara's laugh was loud enough to bring out the Earl, to summon them authoritatively out of the dew. Louis sat apart, writing his letter; Clara, now and then, hovering near, curious to hear how he had corrected Tom's spelling. He had not finished, when the ladies bade him good-night; and, as he proceeded with it, his father said, 'What is that engrossing correspondence, Louis?'
'Such a sensible letter, that I am quite ashamed of it,' said Louis.
'I wonder at the time you chose for writing, when you are so soon to part with our guests.'
'I have no excuse, if you think it uncivil. I never have spirit to set about anything till the sun is down.'
His father began at once to speak softly: 'No, I intended no blame; I only cannot but wonder to see you so much engrossed with Clara Dynevor.'
'Poor child! she wants some compensation.'
'I have no doubt of your kind intentions; but it would be safer to consider what construction may be placed on attentions so exclusive.'
Louis looked up in blank, incredulous amazement, and then almost laughingly exclaimed, 'Is that what you mean? Why, she is an infant, a baby--' 'Not in appearance--' 'You don't know her, father,' said Louis. 'I love her with all my heart, and could not do more. Why, she is, and always has been, my she-younger-brother!'
'I am aware,' said the Earl, without acknowledging this peculiar relationship, 'that this may appear very ridiculous, but experience has shown the need of caution. I should be concerned that your heedless good-nature should be misconstrued, so as to cause pain and disappointment to her, or to lead you to neglect one who has every claim to your esteem and gratitude.'
Louis was bewildered. 'I have been a wretch lately,' he said, 'but I did not know I had been a bear.'
'I did not mean that you could be deficient in ordinary courtesy; but I had hoped for more than mere indifferent civility towards one eminently calculated--' Lord Ormersfield for once failed in his period.
'Are we talking at cross purposes?' exclaimed Fitzjocelyn. 'What have I been doing, or not doing?'
'If my meaning require explanation, it is needless to attempt any. -- Is your ankle painful to-night?'
Not a word more, except about his health, could Louis extract, and he went to his room in extreme perplexity. Again and again did he revolve those words. Quick as were his perceptions on most points, they were slow where self-consciousness or personal vanity might have sharpened them; and it was new light to him that he had come to a time of life that could attach meaning to his attentions.
Whom had he been neglecting? What had his father been hoping? Who was eminently calculated, and for what?
It flashed upon him all at once. 'I see! I see!' he cried, and burst into a laugh.
Then came consternation, or something very like it. He did not want to feel embarked in manhood. And then his far-away dream of a lady-love had been so transcendently fair, so unequalled in grace, so perfect in accomplishments, so enthusiastic in self-devoted charity, all undefined, floating on his imagination in misty tints of glory! That all this should be suddenly brought down from cloudland, to sink into Mary Ponsonby, with the honest face and downright manner for whom romance and rapture would be positively ridiculous!
Yet the notion would not be at once dismissed. His declaration that he would do anything to gratify his father had been too sincere for him lightly to turn from his suggestion, especially at a moment when he was full of shame at his own folly, and eagerness to retain the ground he had lost in his father's opinion, and, above all, to make him happy. His heart thrilled and glowed as he thought of giving his father real joy, and permanently brightening and enlivening that lonely, solitary life. Besides, who could so well keep the peace between him and his father, and save him by hints and by helpfulness from giving annoyance? He had already learnt to depend on her; she entered into all his interests, and was a most pleasant companion--so wise and good, that the most satisfactory days of his life had been passed under her management, and he had only broken from it to 'play the fool.' He was sick of his own volatile Quixotism, and could believe it a relief to be kept in order without trusting to his own judgment. She had every right to his esteem and affection, and the warm feeling he had for her could only be strengthened by closer ties. The unworldliness of the project likewise weighed with him. Had she been a millionaire or a Duke's daughter, he would not have spent one thought on the matter; but he was touched by seeing how his father's better feelings had conquered all desire for fortune or connexion.
And then Mary could always find everything he wanted!
'I will do it!' he determined. 'Never was son more bound to consider his father. Of course, she will make a much better wife than I deserve. Most likely, my fancies would never have been fulfilled. She will save me from my own foolishness. What ought a man to wish for more than a person sure to make him good? And--well, after all, it cannot be for a long time. They must write to Lima. Perhaps they will wait till her father's return, or at least till I have taken my degree.'
This last encouraging reflection always wound up the series that perpetually recurred throughout that night of broken sleep; and when he rose in the morning, he felt as if each waking had added a year to his life, and looked at the glass to see whether he had not grown quite elderly.
'No, indeed! I am ridiculously youthful, especially since I shaved off my moustache in my rage at the Yeomanry mania! I must systematically burn my cheeks, to look anything near her age!' And he laughed at himself, but ended with a long-drawn sigh.
He was in no state of mind to pause: he was tired of self-debate, and was in haste to render the step irrevocable, and then fit himself to it; and he betook himself at once to the study, where he astonished his father by his commencement, with crimson cheeks--'I wished to speak to you. Last night I did not catch your meaning at once.'
'We will say no more about it,' was the kind answer. 'If you cannot turn your thoughts in that direction, there is an end of the matter.'
'I think,' said Louis, 'that I could.'
'My dear boy,' said the Earl, with more eagerness than he could quite control, 'you must not imagine that I wish to influence your inclinations unduly; but I must confess that what I have seen for the last few months, has convinced me that nothing could better secure your happiness.'
'I believe so,' said Louis, gazing from the window.
'Right,' cried the Earl, with more gladness and warmth than his son had ever seen in him; 'I am delighted that you appreciate such sterling excellence! Yes, Louis,' and his voice grew thick, 'there is nothing else to trust to.'
'I know it,' said Louis. 'She is very good. She made me very happy when I was ill.'
'You have seen her under the most favourable circumstances. It is the only sort of acquaintance to be relied on. You have consulted your own happiness far more than if you had allowed yourself to be attracted by mere showy gifts.'
'I am sure she will do me a great deal of good,' said Louis, still keeping his eyes fixed on the evergreens.
'You could have done nothing to give me more pleasure!' said the Earl, with heartfelt earnestness. 'I know what she is, and what her mother has been to me. That aunt of hers is a stiff, wrongheaded person, but she has brought her up well--very well, and her mother has done the rest. As to her father, that is a disadvantage; but, from what I hear, he is never likely to come home; and that is not to be weighed against what she is herself. Poor Mary! how rejoiced she will be, that her daughter at least should no longer be under that man's power! It is well you have not been extravagant, like some young men, Louis. If you had been running into debt, I should not have been able to gratify your wishes now; but the property is so nearly disencumbered, that you can perfectly afford to marry her, with the very fair fortune she must have, unless her father should gamble it away in Peru.'
This was for Lord Ormersfield the incoherency of joy, and Louis was quite carried along by his delight. The breakfast-bell rang, and the Earl rising and drawing his son's arm within his own, pressed it, saying, 'Bless you, Louis!' It was extreme surprise and pleasure to Fitzjocelyn, and yet the next moment he recollected that he stood committed.
How silent he was--how unusually gentle and gracious his father to the whole party! quite affectionate to Mary, and not awful even to Clara. There was far too much meaning in it, and Louis feared Mrs. Ponsonby was seeing through all.
'A morning of Greek would be insupportable,' thought he; and yet he felt as if the fetters of fate were being fast bound around him, when he heard his father inviting James to ride with him.
He wandered and he watched, he spoke absently to Clara, but felt as if robbed of a protector, when she was summoned up-stairs to attend to her packing, and Mary remained alone, writing one of her long letters to Lima.
'Now or never,' thought he, 'before my courage cools. I never saw my father in such spirits!'
He sat down on an ottoman opposite to her, and turned over some newspapers with a restless rustling.
'Can I fetch anything for you?' asked Mary, looking up.
'No, thank you. You are a great deal too good to me, Mary.'
'I am glad,' said Mary, absently, anxious to go on with her letter; but, looking up again at him--'I am sure you want something.'
'No--nothing--but that you should be still more good to me.'
'What is the matter?' said Mary, suspecting that he was beginning to repent of his lazy fit, and wanted her to hear his confession.
'I mean, Mary,' said he, rising, and speaking faster, 'if you--if you would take charge of me altogether. If you would have me, I would do all I could to make you happy, and it would be such joy to my father, and--'(rather like an after-thought)'to me.'
Her clear, sensible eyes were raised, and her colour deepened, but the confusion was on the gentleman's side--she was too much amazed to feel embarrassment, and there was a pause, till he added, 'I know better than to think myself worthy of you; but you will take me in hand--and, indeed, Mary, there is no one whom I like half so well.'
Poor Louis! was this his romantic and poetical wooing!
'Stop, if you please, Louis!' exclaimed Mary. 'This is so very strange!' And she seemed ready to laugh.
'And--what do you say, Mary?'
'I do not know. I cannot tell what I ought to say,' she returned, rising. 'Will you let me go to mamma?'
She went; and Louis roamed about restlessly, till, on the stairs, he encountered Mrs. Frost, who instantly exclaimed, 'Why, my dear, what is the matter with you?'
'I have been proposing to Mary,' said he, in a very low murmur, his eyes downcast, but raised the next moment, to see the effect, as if it had been a piece of mischief.
'Well--proposing what?'
'Myself;' most innocently whispered.
'You! --you! --Mary! --And--' Aunt Catharine was scarcely able to speak, in the extremity of her astonishment. 'You are not in earnest!'
'She is gone to her mother,' said Louis, hanging over the baluster, so as to look straight down into the hall; and both were silent, till Mrs. Frost exclaimed, 'My dear, dear child, it is an excellent choice! You must be very happy with her!'
'Yes, I found my father was bent on it.'
'That was clear enough,' said his aunt, laughing, but resuming a tone of some perplexity. 'Yet it takes me by surprise: I had not guessed that you were so much attracted.'
'I do like her better than any one. No one is so thoroughly good, no one is likely to make me so good, nor my father so happy.'
There was some misgiving in Mrs. Frost's tone, as she said, 'Dear Louis, you are acting on the best of motives, but--' 'Don't, pray don't, Aunt Kitty,' cried Louis, rearing himself for an instant to look her in the face, but again throwing half his body over the rail, and speaking low. 'I could not meet any one half so good, or whom I know as well. I look up to her, and--yes--I do love her heartily--I would not have done it otherwise. I don't care for beauty and trash, and my father has set his heart on it.'
'Yes, but--' she hesitated. 'My dear, I don't think it safe to marry, because one's father has set his heart on it.'
'Indeed,' said Louis, straightening himself, 'I do think I am giving myself the best chance of being made rational and consistent. I never did so well as when I was under her.'
'N--n--no--but--' 'And think how my father will unbend in a homelike home, where all should be made up to him,' he continued, deep emotion swelling his voice.
'My dear boy! And you are sure of your own feeling?'
'Quite sure. Why, I never saw any one,' said he, smiling--'I never cared for any one half so much, except you, Aunt Kitty, no, I didn't. Won't that do?'
'I know I should not have liked your grandpapa--your uncle, I mean-to make such comparisons.'
'Perhaps he had not got an Aunt Kitty,' said Louis.
'No, no! I can't have you so like a novel. No, don't be anxious. It can't be for ever so long, and, of course, the more I am with her, the better I must like her. It will be all right.'
'I don't think you know anything about it,' said Mrs. Frost, 'but there, that's the last I shall say. You'll forgive your old aunt.'
He smiled, and playfully pressed her hand, adding, 'But we don't know whether she will have me.'
Mary had meantime entered her mother's room, with a look that revealed the whole to Mrs. Ponsonby, who had already been somewhat startled by the demeanour of the father and son at breakfast.
'Oh, mamma, what is to be done?'
'What do you wish, my child?' asked her mother, putting her arm round her waist.
'I don't know yet,' said Mary. 'It is so odd!' And the disposition to laugh returned for a moment.
'You were not at all prepared.'
'Oh no! He seems so young. And,' she added, blushing, 'I cannot tell, but I should not have thought his ways were like the kind of thing.'
'Nor I, and the less since Clara has been here.'
'Oh,' said Mary, without a shade on her calm, sincere brow, 'he has Clara so much with him because he is her only friend.'
The total absence of jealousy convinced Mrs. Ponsonby that the heart could hardly have been deeply touched, but Mary continued, in a slightly trembling voice, 'I do not see why he should have done this, unless--' 'Unless that his father wished it.'
'Oh,' said Mary, somewhat disappointed, 'but how could Lord Ormersfield possibly--' 'He has an exceeding dread of Louis's making as great a mistake as he did,' said Mrs. Ponsonby; 'and perhaps he thinks you the best security.'
'And you think Louis only meant to please him?'
'My dear, I am afraid it may be so. Louis is very fond of him, and easily led by a strong character.'
She pressed her daughter closer, and felt rather than heard a little sigh; but all that Mary said was, 'Then I had better not think about it.'
'Nay, my dear, tell me first what you think of his manner.'
'It was strange, and a little debonnaire, I think,' said Mary, smiling, but tears gathering in her eyes. 'He said I was too good for him. He said he would make me happy, and that he and his father would be very happy.' A great tear fell. 'Something about not being worthy.' Mary shed a few more tears, while her mother silently caressed her; and, recovering her composure, she firmly said, 'Yes, mamma, I see it is not the real thing. It will be kinder to him to tell him to put it out of his head.'
'And you, my dear?'
'Oh, mamma, you know you could not spare me.'
'If this were the real thing, dearest--' 'No,' whispered Mary, 'I could not leave you alone with papa.'
Mrs. Ponsonby went on as if she had not heard: 'As it is, I own I am relieved that you should not wish to accept him. I cannot be sure it would be for your happiness.'
'I do not think it would be right,' said Mary, as if that were her strength.
'He is a dear, noble fellow, and has the highest, purest principles and feelings. I can't but love him almost as if he were my own child: I never saw so much sweetness and prettiness about any one, except his mother; and, oh! how far superior he is to her! But then, he is boyish, he is weak--I am afraid he is changeable.'
'Not in his affections,' said Mary, reproachfully.
'No, but in purposes. An impulse leads him he does not know where, and now, I think, he is acting on excellent motives, without knowing what he is doing. There's no security that he might not meet the person who--' 'Oh, mamma!'
'He would strive against temptation, but we have no right to expose him to it. To accept him now, it seems to me, would be taking too much advantage of his having been left so long to our mercy, and it might be, that he would become restless and discontented, find out that he had not chosen for himself--regret--and have his tone of mind lowered--' 'Oh, stop, mamma, I would not let it be, on any account.'
'No, my dear, I could not part with you where we were not sure the 'real thing' was felt for you. If he had been strongly bent on it, he would have conducted matters differently; but he knows no better.'
'You and I don't part,' said Mary.
Neither spoke till she renewed her first question, 'What is to be done?'
'Shall I go and speak to him, my dear?'
'Perhaps I had better, if you will come with me.'
Then, hesitating--'I will go to my room for a moment, and then I shall be able to do it more steadily.'
Mrs. Ponsonby's thoughts were anxious during the five minutes of Mary's absence; but she returned composed, according to her promise, whatever might be the throbbings beneath. As Mrs. Ponsonby opened the door, she saw Louis and his aunt together, and was almost amused at their conscious start, the youthful speed with which the one darted into the further end of the corridor, and the undignified haste with which the other hopped down stairs.
By the time they reached the drawing-room, he had recovered himself so as to come forward in a very suitable, simple manner, and Mary said, at once, 'Louis, thank you; but we think it would be better not--' 'Not!' exclaimed Fitzjocelyn.
'Not,' repeated Mary; 'I do not think there is that between us which would make it right.'
'There would be!' cried Louis, gaining ardour by the difficulty, 'if you would only try. Mrs. Ponsonby, tell her we would make her happy.'
'You would try,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, kindly; 'but I think she is right. Indeed, Louis, you must forgive me for saying that you are hardly old enough to make up your mind--' 'Madison is younger,' said Louis, boyishly enough to make her smile, but earnestly proceeding, 'Won't you try me? Will you not say that if I can be steady and persevering--' 'No,' said Mrs. Ponsonby; 'it would not be fair towards either of you to make any conditions.'
'But if without them, I should do better--Mary, will you say nothing?'
'We had better not think of it,' said Mary, her eyes on the ground.
'Why? is it that I am too foolish, too unworthy?'
She made a great effort. 'Not that, Louis. Do not ask any more; it is better not; you have done as your father wished--now let us be as we were before.'
'My father will be very much disappointed,' said Louis, with chagrin.
'I will take care of your father,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, and as Mary took the moment for escaping, she proceeded to say some affectionate words of her own tender feeling towards Louis; to which he only replied by saying, sadly, and with some mortification, 'Never mind; I know it is quite right. I am not worthy of her.'
'That is not the point; but I do not think you understand your own feelings, or how far you were actuated by the wish to gratify your father.'
'I assure you,' cried Louis, 'you do not guess how I look up to Mary; her unfailing kindness, her entering into all my nonsense--her firm, sound judgment, that would keep me right--and all she did for me when I was laid up. Oh! why cannot you believe how dear she is to me?' ' _How dear_ is just what I do believe; but still this is not enough.'
'Just what Aunt Kitty says,' said Louis, perplexed, yet amused at his own perplexity.
'You will know better by-and-by,' she answered, smiling: 'in the meantime, believe that you are our very dear cousin, as ever.' And she shook hands with him, detecting in his answering smile a little relief, although a great deal of disappointment.
Mary had taken refuge in her room, where a great shower of tears would have their course, though she scolded herself all the time. 'Have done! have done! It is best as it is. He does not really wish it, and I could not leave mamma. We will never think of it again, and we will be as happy as we were before.'
Her mother, meanwhile, was waiting below-stairs, thinking that she should spare Louis something, by taking the initiative in speaking to his father; and she was sorry to see the alacrity with which the Earl came up to her, with a congratulatory 'Well, Mary!' She could hardly make him comprehend the real state of the case; and then his resignation was far more trying than that of the party chiefly concerned. Her praise of Fitzjocelyn had little power to comfort. 'I see how it is,' he said, calmly: 'do not try to explain it away; I acquiesce--I have no doubt you acted wisely for your daughter.'
'Nothing would have delighted me more, if he were but a few years older.'
'You need not tell me the poor boy's failings,' said his father, sadly.
'It is on account of no failing; but would it not be a great mistake to risk their happiness to fulfil our own scheme?'
'I hoped to secure their happiness.'
'Ay, but is there not something too capricious to find happiness without its own free will and choice? Did you never hear of the heart?'
'Oh! if she be attached elsewhere'--and he seemed so much relieved, that Mrs. Ponsonby was sorry to be obliged to contradict him in haste, and explain that she did not believe Fitzjocelyn's heart to be yet developed; whereupon he was again greatly vexed. 'So he has offered himself without attachment. I beg your pardon, Mary; I am sorry your daughter should have been so treated.'
'Do not misunderstand me. He is strangely youthful and simple, bent on pleasing you, and fancying his warm, brotherly feeling to be what you desire.'
'It would be the safest foundation.'
'Yes, if he were ten years older, and had seen the world; but in these things he is like a child, and it would be dangerous to influence him. Do not take it to heart; you ought to be contented, for I saw nothing so plainly as that he loves nobody half so well as you. Only be patient with him.'
'You are the same Mary as ever,' he said, softened; and she left him, hoping that she had secured a favourable audience for his son, who soon appeared at the window, somewhat like a culprit.
'I could not help it!' he said.
'No; but you may set a noble aim before you--you may render yourself worthy of her esteem and confidence, and in so doing you will fulfil my fondest hopes.'
'I asked her to try me, but they would make no conditions. I am sorry this could not be, since you wished it.'
'If you are not sorry on your own account, there are no regrets to be wasted on mine.'
'Candidly, father,' said Louis, 'much as I like her, I cannot be sorry to keep my youth and liberty a little longer.'
'Then you should never have entered on the subject at all,' said Lord Ormersfield, beginning to write a letter; and poor Louis, in his praiseworthy effort not to be reserved with him, found he had been confessing that he had not only been again making a fool of himself, but, what was less frequent and less pardonable, of his father likewise. He limped out at the window, and was presently found by his great-aunt, reading what he called a raving novel, to see how he ought to have done it. She shook her head at him, and told him that he was not even decently concerned.
'Indeed I am,' he replied. 'I wished my father to have had some peace of mind about me, and it does not flatter one's vanity.'
Dear, soft-hearted Aunt Kitty, with all her stores of comfort ready prepared, and unable to forgive, or even credit, the rejection of her Louis, without a prior attachment, gave a hint that this might be his consolation. He caught eagerly at the idea. 'I had never once thought of that! It can't be any Spaniard out in Peru--she has too much sense. What are you looking so funny about? What! is it nearer home? That's it, then! Famous! It would be a capital arrangement, if that terrible old father is conformable. What an escape I have had of him! I am sure it is a most natural and proper preference--' 'Stop! stop, Louis, you are going too fast. I know nothing. Don't say a word to Jem, on any account: indeed, you must not. It is all going on very well now; but the least notion that he was observed, or that it was his Uncle Oliver's particular wish, and there would be an end of it.'
She was just wise enough to keep back the wishes of the other vizier, but she had said enough to set Louis quite at his ease, and put him in the highest spirits. He seemed to have taken out a new lease of boyishness, and, though constrained before Mary, laughed, talked, and played pranks, so as unconsciously to fret his father exceedingly.
Clara's alert wits perceived that so many private interviews had some signification; and Mrs. Frost found her talking it over with her brother, and conjecturing so much, that granny thought it best to supply the key, thinking, perhaps, that a little jealousy would do Jem no harm. But the effect on him was to produce a fit of hearty laughter, as he remembered poor Lord Ormersfield's unaccountable urbanity and suppressed exultation in the morning's ride. 'I honour the Ponsonbys,' he said, 'for not choosing to second his lordship's endeavours to tyrannize over that poor fellow, body and soul. Poor Louis! he is fabulously dutiful.'
But Clara, recovering from her first stupor of wonder, began scolding him for presuming to laugh at anything so cruel to Louis. It was not the part of a friend! And with tears of indignation and sympathy starting from her eyes, she was pathetically certain that, though granny and Jem were so unfeeling as to laugh, his high spirits were only assumed to hide his suffering. 'Poor Louis! what had he not said to her about Mary last night! Now she knew what he meant! And as to Mary, she was glad she had never liked her, she had no patience with her: of course, she was far too prosy and stupid to care for anything like Louis, it was a great escape for him. It would serve her right to marry a horrid little crooked clerk in her father's office; and poor dear, dear Louis must get over it, and have the most beautiful wife in the world. Don't you remember, Jem, the lady with the splendid dark eyes on the platform at Euston Square, when you so nearly made us miss the train, with the brow that you said--' 'Hush, Clara, don't talk nonsense.'
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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12
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CHILDE ROLAND.
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A house there is, and that's enough, From whence one fatal morning issues A brace of warriors, not in buff, But rustling in their silks and tissues. The heroines undertook the task; Thro' lanes unknown, o'er stiles they ventured,-- Rapped at the door, nor stayed to ask, But bounce into the parlour entered. Gray's Long Story.
'No carmine? Nor scarlet lake in powder?'
'Could procure some, my Lord.'
'Thank you, the actinia would not live. I must take what I can find. A lump of gamboge--' 'If you stay much longer, he will not retain his senses,' muttered James Frost, who was leaning backwards against the counter, where the bewildered bookseller of the little coast-town of Bickleypool was bustling, in the vain endeavour to understand and fulfil the demands of that perplexing customer, Lord Fitzjocelyn.
'Some drawing-paper. This is hardly absorbent enough. If you have any block sketch-books? --' 'Could procure some, my Lord.'
James looked at his watch, while the man dived into his innermost recesses. 'The tide!' he said.
'Never mind, we shall only stick in the mud.'
'How could you expect to find anything here? A half-crown paint-box is their wildest dream.'
'Keep quiet, Jem, go and look out some of those library books, like a wise man.'
'A wise man would be at a loss here,' said James, casting his eye along the battered purple backs of the circulating-library books.
'Wisdom won't condescend! Ah! thank you, this will do nicely. Those colours--yes; and the Seaside Book. I'll choose one or two. What is most popular here?'
James began to whistle; but Louis, taking up a volume, became engrossed beyond the power of hints, and hardly stepped aside to make way for some ladies who entered the shop. A peremptory touch of the arm at length roused him, and holding up the book to the shopman, he put it into his pocket, seized his ash-stick, put his arm into his cousin's, and hastened into the street.
'Did you ever see--' began Jem.
'Most striking. I did not know you had met with her. What an idea--the false self conjuring up phantoms--' 'What are you talking of? Did you not see her?'
'Elizabeth Barrett. Was she there?'
'Is that her name? Do you know her?'
'I had heard of her, but never--' 'How? --where? Who is she?'
'I only saw her name in the title-page.'
'What's all this? You did not see her?'
'Who? Did not some ladies come into the shop?'
'Some ladies! Is it possible? Why, I touched you to make you look.'
'I thought it was your frenzy about the tide. What now? --' James made a gesture of despair. 'The loveliest creature I ever saw. You may see her yet, as she comes out. Come back!'
'Don't be so absurd,' said Fitzjocelyn, laughing, and, with instinctive dislike of staring, resisting his cousin's effort to wheel him round. 'What, you will?' withdrawing his arm. 'I shall put off without you, if you don't take care.'
And, laughing, he watched Jem hurry up the sloping street and turn the corner, then turned to pursue his own way, his steps much less lame and his looks far more healthful than they had been a month before. He reached the quay--narrow, slippery, and fishy, but not without beauty, as the green water lapped against the hewn stones, and rocked the little boats moored in the wide bay, sheltered by a richly-wooded promontory. 'Jem in a fit of romance! Well, whose fault will it be if we miss the tide? I'll sit in the boat, and read that poem again. -- Oh! here he comes, out of breath. Well, Jem, did the heroine drop glove or handkerchief? Or, on a second view, was she minus an eye?'
'You were,' said James, hurrying breathlessly to unmoor the boat.
'Let me row,' said Louis; 'your breath and senses are both lost in the fair vision.'
'It is of no use to talk to you--' 'I shall ask no questions till we are out of the harbour, or you will be running foul of one of those colliers--a tribute with which the Fair Unknown may dispense.'
The numerous black colliers and lighters showed that precautions were needful till they had pushed out far enough to make the little fishy town look graceful and romantic; and the tide was ebbing so fast, that Louis deemed it prudent to spend his strength on rowing rather than on talking.
James first broke silence by exclaiming--'Do you know where Beauchastel is?'
'On the other side of the promontory. Don't you remember the spire rising among the trees, as we see it from the water?'
'That church must be worth seeing. I declare I'll go there next Sunday.'
Another silence, and Louis said--'I am curious to know whether you saw her.'
'She was getting into the carriage as I turned the corner; so I went back and asked Bull who they were.'
'I hope she was the greengrocer's third cousin.'
'Pshaw! I tell you it was Mrs. Mansell and her visitors.'
'Oho! No wonder Beauchastel architecture is so grand. What an impudent fellow you are, Jem!'
'The odd thing is,' said James, a little ashamed of Louis having put Mansell and Beauchastel together, as he had not intended, 'that it seems they asked Bull who we were. I thought one old lady was staring hard at you, as if she meant to claim acquaintance, but you shot out of the shop like a sky-rocket.'
'Luckily there's no danger of that. No one will come to molest us here.'
'Depend on it, they are meditating a descent on his lordship.'
'You shall appear in my name, then.'
'Too like a bad novel: besides, you don't look respectable enough for my tutor. And, now I think of it, no doubt she was asking Bull how he came to let such a disreputable old shooting-jacket into his shop.'
The young men worked up an absurd romance between them, as merrily they crossed the estuary, and rowed up a narrow creek, with a whitewashed village on one side, and on the other a solitary house, the garden sloping to the water, and very nautical--the vane, a union-jack waved by a brilliant little sailor on the top of a mast, and the arbour, half a boat set on end; whence, as James steered up to the stone steps that were one by one appearing, there emerged an old, grizzly, weather-beaten sailor, who took his pipe from his mouth, and caught hold of the boat.
'Thank you, Captain!' cried Fitzjocelyn. 'I've brought home the boat safe, you see, by my own superhuman exertions--no thanks to Mr. Frost, there!'
'That's his way, Captain,' retorted Jem, leaping out, and helping his cousin: 'you may thank me for getting him home at all! But for me, he would have his back against the counter, and his head in a book, this very moment.'
'Ask him what he was after,' returned Louis.
'Which of us d'ye think most likely to lag, Captain Hannaford?' cried Jem, preventing the question.
'Which would you choose to have on board?'
'Ye'd both of ye make more mischief than work,' said the old seaman, who had been looking from one to the other of the young men, as if they were performing a comedy for his special diversion.
'So you would not enter us on board the Eliza Priscilla?' cried Louis.
'No, no,' said the old man, shrewdly, and with an air of holding something back; whereupon they both pressed him, and obtained for answer, 'No, no, I wouldn't sail with you'--signing towards Fitzjocelyn--'in my crew: ye'd be more trouble than ye're worth. And as to you, sir, if I wouldn't sail with ye, I'd like still less to sail under you.'
He finished with a droll, deprecating glance, and Louis laughed heartily; but James was silent, and as soon as they had entered the little parlour, declared that it would not do to encourage that old skipper--he was waylaying them like the Ancient Mariner, and was actually growing impudent.
'An old man's opinion of two youngsters is not what I call impudence,' began Louis, with an emphasis that made Jem divert his attack.
Those two cousins had never spent a happier month than in these small lodgings, built by the old retired merchant-seaman evidently on the model of that pride of his heart, the Eliza Priscilla, his little coasting trader, now the charge of his only surviving son; for this was a family where drowning was like a natural death, and old Captain Hannaford looked on the probability of sleeping in Ebbscreek churchyard, much as Bayard did at the prospect of dying in his bed. His old deaf wife kept the little cabin-like rooms most exquisitely neat; and the twelve-years-old Priscilla, the orphan of one of the lost sons, waited on the gentlemen with an old-fashioned, womanly deportment and staid countenance that, in the absence of all other grounds of distress, Louis declared was quite a pain to him.
The novelty of the place, the absence of restraint, the easy life, and, above all, the freshness of returning health, rendered his spirits exceedingly high, and he had never been more light-hearted and full of mirth. James, elated at his rapid improvement, was scarcely less full of liveliness and frolic, enjoying to the utmost the holiday, which perhaps both secretly felt might be the farewell to the perfect carelessness of boyish relaxation. Bathing, boating, fishing, dabbling, were the order of the day, and withal just enough quarrelling and teasing to add a little spice to their pleasures. Louis was over head and ears in maritime natural history; but Jem, backed by Mrs. Hannaford, prohibited his 'messes' from making a permanent settlement in the parlour; though festoons of seaweed trellised the porch, ammonites heaped the grass-plat, tubs of sea-water flanked the approach to the front door; and more than one bowl, with inmates of a suspicious nature, was often deposited even on the parlour table.
On the afternoon following the expedition to Bickleypool, Louis was seated, with an earthenware pan before him, coaxing an actinia with raw beef to expand her blossom, to be copied for Miss Faithfull. Another bowl stood near, containing some feathery serpulas; and the weeds were heaped on the locker of the window behind him, and on the back of the chair which supported his lame foot. The third and only remaining chair accommodated James, with a book placed on the table; and a semicircle swept round it, within which nothing marine might extend.
Louis was by turns drawing, enticing his refractory sitter, exhorting her to bloom, and complimenting her delicate beauty, until James, with a groan, exclaimed, 'Is silence impossible to you, Fitzjocelyn? I would go into the garden, but that I should be beset by the intolerable old skipper!'
'I beg your pardon--I thought you never heard nor heeded me.'
'I don't in general, but this requires attention; and it is past all bearing to hear how you go on to that Jelly!'
'Read aloud, then: it will answer two purposes.
'This is Divinity--Hooker,' said James, sighing wearily.
'So much the better. I read some once; I wish I had been obliged to go on.'
'You are the oddest fellow! --After all, I believe you have a craving after my profession.'
'Is that a discovery?' said Louis, washing the colour out of his brush. 'The only person I envy is a country curate--except a town one.'
'Don't talk like affectation!' growled James.
'Do you know, Jem,' said Louis, leaning back, and drawing the brush between his lips, 'I am persuaded that something will turn up to prevent it from being your profession.'
'Your persuasions are wrong, then!'
'That fabulous uncle in the Indies--' 'You know I am determined to accept nothing from my uncle, were he to lay it at my feet--which he never will.'
'Literally or metaphorically?' asked Louis, softly.
'Pshaw!'
'You Dynevors don't resemble my sea-pink. See how she stretches her elegant fringes for this very unpleasant bit of meat! There! I won't torment you any more; read, and stop my mouth!'
'You are in earnest?'
'You seem to think that if a man cannot be a clergyman, he is not to be a Christian.'
'Then don't break in with your actinias and stuff!'
'Certainly not,' said Louis, gravely.
The first interruption came from James himself. Leaping to his feet with a sudden bound, he exclaimed, 'There they are!' and stood transfixed in a gaze of ecstasy.
'You have made me smudge my lake,' said Louis, in the mild tone of 'Diamond, Diamond!'
'I tell you, there they are!' cried James, rushing into wild activity.
'One would think it the Fair Unknown,' said Louis, not troubling himself to look round, nor desisting from washing out his smudge.
'It is! it is! --it is all of them! Here they come, I tell you, and the place is a very merman's cave!'
'Take care--the serpula--don't!' as James hurriedly opened the door leading to the stairs--disposed of the raw meat on one step and the serpulas on another, and hurled after them the heap of seaweed, all but one trailing festoon of 'Luckie Minnie's lines,' which, while his back was turned, Louis by one dexterous motion wreathed round the crown of his straw hat; otherwise never stirring, but washing quietly on, until he rose as little Priscilla opened the door, and stood aside, mutely overawed at the stream of flounced ladies that flowed past, and seemed to fill up the entire room. It was almost a surprise to find that, after all, there were only three of them!
'I knew I was not mistaken,' said a very engaging, affectionate voice. 'It is quite shocking to have to introduce myself to you--Lady Conway--' 'My aunt!' cried Louis, with eager delight--'and my cousin!' he added, turning with a slight blush towards the maiden, whom he felt, rather than saw, to be the worthy object of yesterday's rapture.
'Not quite,' she answered, not avoiding the grasp of his hand, but returning it with calm, distant politeness.
'Not quite,' repeated Lady Conway. 'Your real cousins are no farther off than Beauchastel--' 'Where you must come and see them,' added the third lady--a portly, cordial, goodnatured dame, whom Lady Conway introduced as Mrs. Mansell, who had known his mother well; and Louis making a kind of presentation of his cousin James, the two elder ladies were located on two of the chairs: the younger one, as if trying to be out of the way, placed herself on the locker. Jem stood leaning on the back of the other chair; and Louis stood over his aunt, in an ecstasy at the meeting--at the kind, warm manner and pleasant face of his aunt--and above all, at the indescribable pleasure imparted by the mere presence of the beautiful girl, though he hardly dared even to look at her; and she was the only person whose voice was silent in the chorus of congratulation, on the wonderful chance that had brought the aunt and nephew together. The one had been a fortnight at Beauchastel, the other a month at Ebbscreek, without guessing at each other's neighbourhood, until Lady Conway's attention had been attracted at the library by Louis's remarkable resemblance to her sister, and making inquiries, she had learnt that he was no other than Lord Fitzjocelyn. She was enchanted with the likeness, declaring that all she wished was to see him look less delicate, and adding her entreaties to those of Mrs. Mansell, that the two young men would come at once to Beauchastel.
Louis looked with wistful doubt at James, who, he knew, could not brook going to fine places in the character of tutor; but, to his surprise and pleasure, James was willing and eager, and made no demur, except that Fitzjocelyn could not walk so far, and the boat was gone out. Mrs. Mansell then proposed the ensuing Monday, when, she said, she and Mr. Mansell should be delighted to have them to meet a party of shooting gentlemen--of course they were sportsmen. Louis answered at once for James; but for himself, he could not walk, nor even ride the offered shooting-pony; and thereupon ensued more minute questions whether his ankle were still painful.
'Not more than so as to be a useful barometer. I have been testing it by the sea-weeds. If I am good for nothing else, I shall be a walking weather-glass, as well as a standing warning against man-traps.'
'You don't mean that you fell into a man-trap!' exclaimed Mrs. Mansell, in horror. 'That will be a warning for Mr. Mansell! I have such a dread of the frightful things!'
'A trap ingeniously set by myself,' said Louis. 'I was only too glad no poor poacher fell into it.'
'Your father told me that it was a fall down a steep bank,' exclaimed Lady Conway.
'Exactly so; but I suppose he thought it for my credit to conceal that my trap consisted of a flight of stone stops, very solid and permanent, with the trifling exception of cement.'
'If the truth were known,' said James, 'I believe that a certain scamp of a boy was at the bottom of those steps.'
'I'm the last person to deny it,' said Louis, quietly, though not without rising colour, 'there was a scamp of a boy at the bottom of the steps, and very unpleasant he found it--though not without the best consequences, and among them the present--' And he turned to Lady Conway with a pretty mixture of gracefulness and affection, enough to win the heart of any aunt.
Mrs. Mansell presently fell into raptures at the sight of the drawing materials, which must, she was sure, delight Isabel, but she was rather discomfited by the sight of the 'subject,'--called it an odious creature, then good-humouredly laughed at herself, but would not sit down again, evidently wishing to escape from close quarters with such monsters. Lady Conway likewise rose, and looked into the basin, exclaiming, in her turn, 'Ah! I see you understand these things! Yes, they are very interesting! Virginia will be delighted; she has been begging me for an aquarium wherever we go. You must tell her how to manage it. Look, Isabel, would not she be in ecstasies?'
Miss Conway looked, but did not seem to partake in the admiration. 'I am perverse enough never to like what is the fashion,' she said.
'I tried to disgust Fitzjocelyn with his pets on that very ground,' said James; 'but their charms were too strong for him.'
'Fashion is the very testimony to them,' said Louis. 'I think I could convince you.'
He would perhaps have produced his lovely serpula blossoms, but he was forced to pass on to his aunt and Mrs. Mansell, who had found something safer for their admiration, in the shape of a great Cornu ammonis in the garden.
'He can throw himself into any pursuit,' said James, as he paused at the door with Miss Conway; but suddenly becoming aware of the slimy entanglement round his hat, he exclaimed, 'Absurd fellow!' and pulled it off rather petulantly, adding, with a little constraint, 'Recovery does put people into mad spirits! I fancy the honest folks here look on in amaze.'
Miss Conway gave a very pretty smile of sympathy and consolation, that shone like a sunbeam on her beautiful pensive features and dark, soft eyes. Then she began to admire the view, as they stood on the turf, beside Captain Hannaford's two small cannon, overlooking the water towards Bickleypool, with a purple hill rising behind it. A yacht was sailing into the harbour, and James ran indoors to fetch a spy-glass, while Lady Conway seized the occasion of asking her nephew his tutor's name.
Louis, who had fancied she must necessarily understand all his kindred, was glad to guard against shocks to Jem's sensitive pride, and eagerly explained the disproportion between his birth and fortune, and his gallant efforts to relieve his grandmother from her burthens. He was pleased to find that he had touched all his auditors, and to hear kind-hearted Mrs. Mansell repeat her special invitation to Mr. Frost Dynevor with double cordiality.
'If you must play practical jokes,' said James, as they watched the carriage drive off, 'I wish you would choose better moments for them.'
'I thought you would be more in character as a merman brave,' said Louis.
'I wonder what character you thought you appeared in?'
'I never meant you to discover it while they were here, nor would you, if you were not so careful of your complexion. Come, throw it at my head now, as you would have done naturally, and we shall have fair weather again!'
'I am only concerned at the impression you have made.'
'Too late now, is it? You don't mean to be bad company for the rest of the day. It is too bad, after such a presence as has been here. She is a poem in herself. It is like a vision to see her move in that calm, gliding way. Such eyes, so deep, so tranquil, revealing the sphere apart where she dwells! An ideal! How can you be savage after sitting in the same room, and hearing that sweet, low voice?'
Meantime the young lady sat back in the carriage, dreamily hearing, and sometimes answering, the conversation of her two elders, as they returned through pretty forest-drives into the park of Beauchastel, and up to the handsome, well-kept house; where, after a few words from Mrs. Mansell, she ascended the stairs.
'Isabel!' cried a bright voice, and a girl of fourteen came skating along the polished oak corridor. 'Come and have some tea in the school-room, and tell us your adventures!' And so saying, she dragged the dignified Isabel into an old-fashioned sitting-room, where a little pale child, two years younger, sprang up, and, with a cry of joy, clung round the elder sister.
'My white bind-weed,' said Isabel, fondly caressing her, 'have you been out on the pony?'
'Oh I yes, we wanted only you. Sit down there.'
And as Isabel obeyed, the little Louisa placed herself on her lap, with one arm round her neck, and looked with proud glee at the kind, sensible-faced governess who was pouring out the tea.
'The reconnoitring party!' eagerly cried Virginia.
'Did you find the cousin?'
'Yes, we did.'
'Oh! Then what is he like?'
'You will see when he comes on Monday.'
'Coming--oh! And is he so very handsome?'
'I can see how pretty a woman your Aunt Louisa must have been.'
'News!' laughed Virginia; 'when mamma is always preaching to me to be like her!'
'Is he goodnatured?' asked Louisa.
'I had not full means of judging,' said Isabel, more thoughtfully than seemed justified by the childish question. 'His cousin is coming too,' she added; 'Mr. Frost Dynevor.'
'Another cousin!' exclaimed Virginia.
'No; a relation of Lord Ormersfield--a person to be much respected. He is heir to a lost estate, and of a very grand old family. Lord Fitzjocelyn says that he is exerting himself to the very utmost for his grandmother and orphan sister; denying himself everything. He is to be a clergyman. There was a book of divinity open on the table.'
'He must be very good!' said Louisa, in a low, impressed voice, and fondling her sister's hand. 'Will he be as good as Sir Roland?'
'Oh! I am glad he is coming!' cried Virginia. 'We have so wished to see somebody very good!'
A bell rang--a signal that Lady Conway would be in her room, where she liked her two girls to come to her while she was dressing. Louisa reluctantly detached herself from her sister, and Virginia lingered to say, 'Dress quickly, please, please, Isabel. I know there is a new bit of Sir Roland done! Oh! I hope Mr. Dynevor is like him!'
'Not quite,' said Isabel, smiling as they ran away. 'Poor children, I am afraid they will be disappointed; but long may their craving be to see 'somebody very good!'
'I am very glad they should meet any one answering the description,' said the governess. 'I don't gather that you are much delighted with the object of the expedition.'
'A pretty boy--very pretty. It quite explains all I have ever heard of his mother.'
'As you told the children.'
'More than I told the children. Their aunt never by description seemed to me my ideal, as you know. I would rather have seen a likeness to Lord Ormersfield, who--though I don't like him--has something striking in the curt, dry, melancholy dignity of his manner.'
'And how has Lord Fitzjocelyn displeased you?'
'Perhaps there is no harm in him--he may not have character enough for that; but talk, attitudes, everything betrays that he is used to be worshipped--takes it as a matter of course, and believes nothing so interesting as himself.'
'Don't you think you may have gone with your mind made up?'
'If you mean that I thought myself uncalled for, and heartily detested the expedition, you are right; but I saw what I did not expect.'
'Was it very bad?'
'A very idle practical joke, such as I dislike particularly. A quantity of wet sea-weed wound round Mr. Dynevor's hat.'
Miss King laughed. 'Really, my dear, I don't think you know what young men like from each other.'
'Mr. Dynevor did not like it,' said Isabel, 'though he tried to pass it off lightly as the spirits of recovery. Those spirits--I am afraid he has too much to suffer from them. There is something so ungenerous in practical wit, especially from a prosperous man to one unprosperous!'
'Well, Isabel, I won't contradict, but I should imagine that such things often showed people to be on the best of terms.'
Isabel shook her head, and left the room, to have her dark hair braided, with little heed from herself, as she sat dreamily over a book. Before the last bracelet was clasped, she was claimed by her two little sisters, who gave her no peace till her desk was opened, and a manuscript drawn forth, that they might hear the two new pages of her morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, that thus all wrongs might be redressed. They had learnt to love, when Sir Roland discovered that the lands in dispute had been won by sacrilege. He met Adeline at a chapel in a little valley, to tell the whole. They agreed to sacrifice themselves, that restitution should be made; the knight to go as a crusader to the Holy Land; the lady, after waiting awhile to tend her aged father, to enter a convent, and restore her dower to the church. Twice had Isabel written that parting, pouring out her heart in the high-souled tender devotion of Roland and his Adeline; and both feeling and description were beautiful and poetical, though unequal. Louisa used to cry whenever she heard it, yet only wished to hear it again and again, and when Virginia insisted on reading it to Miss King, tears had actually been surprised in the governess's eyes. Yet she liked still better Adeline's meek and patient temper, where breathed the feeling Isabel herself would fain cherish--the deep, earnest, spiritual life and high consecrated purpose that were with the Provencal maiden through all her enforced round of gay festivals, light minstrelsy, tourneys, and Courts of Love. Thus far had the story gone. Isabel had been writing a wild, mysterious ballad, reverting to that higher love and the true spirit of self-sacrifice, which was to thrill strangely on the ears of the thoughtless at a contention for the Golden Violet, and which she had adapted to a favourite air, to the extreme delight of the two girls. To them the Chapel in the valley, Roland and his Adeline, were very nearly real, and were the hidden joy of their hearts,--all the more because their existence was a precious secret between the three sisters and Miss King, who viewed it as such an influence on the young ones, that, with more meaning than she could have explained, she called it their Telemaque. The following-up of the teaching of Isabel and Miss King might lead to results as little suspected by Lady Conway as Fenelon's philosophy was by Louis XIV.
Lady Conway was several years older than her beautiful sister, and had married much later. Perhaps she had aimed too high, and had met with disappointments unavowed; for she had finally contented herself with becoming the second wife of Sir Walter Conway, and was now his serene, goodnatured, prosperous widow. Disliking his estate and neighbourhood, and thinking the daughters wanted London society and London masters, she shut up the house until her son should be of age, and spent the season in Lowndes-square, the autumn either abroad, in visits, or at watering-places.
Beauchastel was an annual resort of the family. Isabel was more slenderly portioned than her half-sisters; and she was one of the nearest surviving relations of her mother's cousin, Mr. Mansell, whose large comfortable house was always hospitable; and whose wife, a great dealer in goodnatured confidential gossip, used to throw out hints to her great friend Lady Conway, that much depended on Isabel's marriage--that Mr. Mansell had been annoyed at connexions formed by others of his relations--but though he had decided on nothing, the dear girl's choice might make a great difference.
Nothing could be more passive than Miss Conway. She could not remember her mother, but her childhood had been passed under an admirable governess; and though her own Miss Longman had left her, Miss King, the successor, was a person worthy of her chief confidence. At two-and-twenty, the school-room was still the home of her affections, and her ardent love was lavished on her little sisters and her brother Walter.
Going out with Lady Conway was mere matter of duty and submission. She had not such high animal spirits as to find enjoyment in her gaieties, and her grave, pensive character only attained to walking through her part; she had seen little but the more frivolous samples of society, scorned and disliked all that was worldly and manoeuvring, and hung back from levity and coquetry with utter distaste. Removed from her natural home, where she would have found duties and seen various aspects of life, she had little to interest or occupy her in her unsettled wanderings; and to her the sap of life was in books, in dreams, in the love of her brother and sisters, and in discussions with Miss King; her favourite vision for the future, the going to live with Walter at Thornton Conway when he should be of age. But Walter was younger than Louisa, and it was a very distant prospect.
Her characteristic was a calm, serene indifference, in which her stepmother acquiesced, as lovers of peace do in what they cannot help; and the more willingly, that her tranquil dignity and pensive grace exactly suited the style of her tall queenly figure, delicate features, dark soft languid eyes, and clear olive complexion, just tinged with rosebud pink.
What Louis said of her to his tutor on the Monday night of their arrival was beyond the bounds of all reason; and it was even more memorable that Jem was neither satirical nor disputatious, assented to all, and if he sighed, it was after his door was shut.
A felicitous day ensued, spent by James in shooting, by Fitzjocelyn, in the drawing-room; whither Mrs. Mansell had requested Isabel's presence, as a favour to herself. The young lady sat at work, seldom raising her eyes, but this was enough for him; his intense admiration and pleasure in her presence so exhilarated him, that he rattled away to the utmost. Louisa was at first the excuse. In no further doubt of his good-nature, she spent an hour in the morning in giving him anagrams to guess; and after she had repaired to the schoolroom, he went on inventing fresh ones, and transposing the ivory letters, rambling on in his usual style of pensive drollery. Happiness never set him off to advantage, and either there was more froth than ordinary, or it appeared unusually ridiculous to an audience who did not detect the under-current of reflection. His father would have been in despair, Mrs. Ponsonby or Mary would have interposed; but the ladies of Beauchastel laughed and encouraged him,--all but Isabel, who sat in the window, and thought of Adeline, 'spighted and angered both,' by a Navarrese coxcomb, with sleeves down to his heels, and shoes turned up to his knees. She gave herself great credit for having already created him a Viscount.
In the afternoon, Louis drove out lionizing with his aunt; but though the ponies stopped of themselves at all the notable views; sea, hill, and river were lost on him. Lady Conway could have drawn out a far less accessible person, and her outpouring of his own sentiments made him regard her as perfect.
She consulted him about her winter's resort. Louisa required peculiar care, and she had thought of trying mineral baths--what was thought of Northwold? what kind of houses were there? The Northwold faculty themselves might have taken a lesson from Fitzjocelyn's eloquent analysis of the chemical properties of the waters, and all old Mr. Frost's spirit would seem to have descended on him when he dilated on the House Beautiful. Lodgers for Miss Faithfull! what jubilee they would cause! And such lodgers! No wonder he was in ecstasy. All the evening the sound of his low, deliberate voice was unceasing, and his calm announcements to his two little cousins were each one more startling than the last; while James, to whom it was likewise all sunshine, was full of vivacity, and a shrewd piquancy of manner that gave zest to all he said, and wonderfully enlivened the often rather dull circle at Beauchastel.
Morning came; and when the ladies descended to breakfast, it was found that Lord Fitzjocelyn had gone out with the sportsmen. The children lamented, and their elders pronounced a young gentleman's passion for shooting to be quite incalculable. When, late in the day, the party returned, it was reported that he did not appear to care much for the sport; but had walked beside Mr. Mansell's shooting-pony, and had finally gone with him to see his model farm. This was a sure road to the old squire's heart, and no one was more delighted with the guest. For Aunt Catharine's sake, Louis was always attracted by old age, and his attentive manners had won Mr. Mansell's heart, even before his inquiries about his hobby had completed the charm. To expound and to listen to histories of agricultural experiments that really answered, was highly satisfactory to both, and all the evening they were eager over the great account-book which was the pride of the squire's heart; while Virginia and Louisa grumbled or looked imploring, and Isabel marvelled at there being any interest for any one in old Mr. Mansell's conversation.
'What is the meaning of this?' asked James, as they went up stairs.
Louis shrugged like a Frenchman, looked debonnaire, and said 'Good-night.'
Again he came down; prepared for shooting, though both pale and lame; but he quietly put aside all expostulations, walking on until, about fifty yards from the house, a pebble, turning under the injured foot, caused such severe pain that he could but just stagger to a tree and sit down.
There was much battling before Mr. Mansell would consent to leave him, or he to allow James to help him back to the house, before going on to overtake the party.
Very irate was Jem, at folly that seemed to have undone the benefits of the last month, and at changeableness that was a desertion of the queen to whom all homage was due. He was astonished that Louis turned into the study, a room little inhabited in general, and said, 'Make haste--you will catch the others; don't fall in with the ladies.'
'I mean to send your aunt to you.'
'Pray don't. Can't you suppose that peace is grateful after having counted every mortal hour last night?'
'Was that the reason you were going to walk ten miles without a leg to stand upon? Fitzjocelyn! is this systematic?'
'What is?' said Louis, wearily.
'Your treatment of--your aunt.'
'On what system should aunts be treated?'
'Of all moments to choose for caprice! Exactly when I thought even you were fixed!'
'Pur troppo,' sighed Louis.
'Ha!' cried Jem, 'you have not gone and precipitated matters! I thought you could never amaze me again; but even you might have felt she was a being to merit rather more time and respect!'
'Even I am not devoid of the organ of veneration.'
His meek tone was a further provocation; and with uplifted chin, hair ruffled like the crest of a Shetland pony, flashing eyes, and distinct enunciation, James exclaimed, 'You will excuse me for not understanding you. You come here; you devote yourself to your aunt and cousins--you seem strongly attracted; then, all on a sudden, you rush out shooting--an exercise for which you don't care, and when you can't walk: you show the most pointed neglect. And after being done-up yesterday, you repeat the experiment to-day, as if for the mere object of laming yourself for life. I could understand pique or temper, but you have not the--' 'The sense,' said Louis; 'no, nor anything to be piqued at.'
'If there be a motive,' said James, 'I have a right to demand not to be trifled with any longer.'
'I wish you could be content to shoot your birds, and leave me in peace: you will only have your fun spoilt, like mine, and go into a fury. The fact is, that my father writes in a state of perturbation. He says, I might have understood, from the tenor of his conduct, that he did not wish me to be intimate with my aunt's family! He cannot know anything about them, for it is all one warning against fashion and frivolity. He does not blame us--especially not you.'
'I wish he did.'
'But he desires that our intercourse should be no more than propriety demands, and plunges into a discourse against first impressions, beauty, and the like.'
'So that's the counterblast!'
'You ought to help me, Jem,' said Louis, dejectedly.
'I'll help you with all my heart to combat your father's prejudices.'
'An hour's unrestrained intercourse with these people would best destroy them,' said Louis; 'but, in the mean time--I wonder what he means.'
'He means that he is in terror for his darling scheme.'
'Mrs. Ponsonby was very right,' sighed Louis.
'Ay! A pretty condition you would be in, if she had not had too much principle to let you be a victim to submission. That's what you'll come to, though! You will never know the meaning of passion; you will escape something by it, though you will be twisted round his lordship's finger, and marry his choice. I hope she will have red hair!'
'Negative and positive obedience stand on different grounds,' said Louis, with such calmness as often fretted James, but saved their friendship. 'Besides, till I had this letter, I had no notion of any such thing.'
James's indignation resulted in fierce stammering; while Louis deliberately continued a viva voce self-examination, with his own quaint naivete, betraying emotion only by the burning colour of cheek and brow.
'No; I had no such notion. I only felt that her presence had the gladdening, inspiriting, calming effect of moonlight or starlight. I reverenced her as a dream of poetry walking the earth. Ha! now one hears the sound of it--that is like it! I did not think it was such a confirmed case. I should have gone on in peace but for this letter, and never thought about it at all.'
'So much the better for you!'
'My father is too just and candid not to own his error, and be thankful.'
'And you expect her to bear with your alternations in the mean time?'
'Towards her I have not alternated. When I have made giggle with Clara under the influence of the starry sky, did you suppose me giggling with Lyra or the Pleiades! I should dread to see the statue descend; it seemed irreverence even to gaze. The lofty serenity keeps me aloof. I like to believe in a creature too bright and good for human nature's daily food. Our profane squinting through telescopes at the Lady Moon reveals nothing but worn-out volcanoes and dry oceans, black gulfs and scorched desolation; but verily that may not be Lady Moon's fault--only that of our base inventions. So I would be content to mark her--Isabel, I mean--queenly, moonlike name! --walk in beauty and tranquillity unruffled, without distorting my vision by personal aims at bringing her down to my level. There--don't laugh at me, Jem.'
'No, I am too sorry for you.'
'Why!' he exclaimed, impatient of compassion; 'do you think it desperate?'
'I see your affection given to a most worthy object, and I know what your notions of submission will end in.'
'Once for all, Jem,' said Fitzjocelyn, 'do you know how you are using my father? No; Isabel Conway may be the happiness or the disappointment of my life--I cannot tell. I am sure my father is mistaken, and I believe he may be convinced; but I am bound not to fly in the face of his direct commands, and, till we can come to an understanding, I must do the best I can, and trust to--' The last word was lost, as he turned to nurse his ankle, and presently to entreat James to join the sportsmen; but Jem was in a mood to do nothing pleasing to himself nor to any one else. A sacrifice is usually irritating to the spectators, who remonstrate rather than listen to self-reproach; and Louis had been guilty of three great offences--being in the right, making himself ridiculous, and submitting tamely--besides the high-treason to Isabel's beauty. It was well that the Earl was safe out of the way of the son of the Pendragons!
Fitzjocelyn was in pain and discomfort enough to make James unwilling to leave him; though his good-will did not prevent him from keeping up such a stream of earplugs and sinister auguries, that it was almost the climax of good-temper that enabled Louis to lie still, trying to read a great quarto Park's Travels, and abstaining from any reply that could aggravate matters. As the one would not go to luncheon, the other would not; and after watching the sound of the ladies' setting out for their drive, Louis said that he would go and lie on the turf; but at that moment the door was thrown open, and in ran Virginia. Explanations were quickly exchanged--how she had come to find Vertot's Malta for Isabel, and how he had been sent in by hurting his foot.
'Were you going to stay in all day?' said Virginia. 'Oh, come with us! We have the pony-carriage; and we are going to a dear old ruin, walking and driving by turns. Do, pray, come; there's plenty of room.'
There could be no objection to the school-room party, and it was no small relief to escape from James and hope he was amused; so Fitzjocelyn allowed himself to be dragged off in triumph, and James was acceding to his entreaty that he would go in search of the shooting-party, when, as they reached the hall-door, they beheld Miss Conway waiting on the steps.
There was no receding for her any more than for Louis, so she could only make a private resolution against the pony-carriage, and dedicate herself to the unexceptionable company of little sister, governess and tutor; for James had resigned the shooting, and attached himself to the expedition. It was an excellent opportunity of smoothing his cousin's way, and showing that all was not caprice that might so appear: so he began to tell of his most advantageous traits of character, and to explain away his whimsical conduct, with great ardour and ingenuity. He thought he should be perfectly satisfied if he could win but one smile of approbation from that gravely beautiful mouth; and it came at last, when he told of Fitzjocelyn's devoted affection to Mrs. Frost and his unceasing kindness to the old ladies of Dynevor Terrace. Thus gratified, he let himself be led into abstract questions of principle,--a style of discussion frequent between Miss King and Isabel, but on which the latter had never seen the light of a man's mind thrown except through books. The gentlemen whom she had met were seldom either deep or earnest, except those too much beyond her reach; and she had avoided anything like confidence or intimacy: but Mr. Dynevor could enlighten and vivify her perplexed reflections, answer her inquiries, confirm her opinion of books, and enter into all that she ventured with diffidence to express. He was enchanted to find that no closer approach could dim the lustre of Louis's moon, and honoured her doubly for what she had made herself in frivolous society. He felt sure that his testimony would gain credit where Fitzjocelyn's would be regarded as love-blinded, and already beheld himself forcing full proof of her merits on the reluctant Earl, beholding Louis happy, and Isabel emancipated from constraint.
A five miles' walk gave full time for such blissful discoveries; for Miss Conway was resolute against entering the pony-carriage, and walked on, protesting against ever being fatigued; while Louis was obliged to occupy his seat in the carriage, with a constant change of companions.
'I think, my dear,' said Miss King, when the younger girls had gone to their mother's toilette, 'that you will have to forgive me.'
'Meaning,' said Isabel, 'that you are bitten too! Ah! Miss King, you could not withstand the smile with which he handed you in!'
'Could you withstand such an affectionate account of your cruel, tyrannical practical joker?'
'Facts are stubborn things. Do you know what Mr. Dynevor is doing at this moment? I met him in the gallery, hurrying off to Ebbscreek for some lotion for Lord Fitzjocelyn's ankle. I begged him to let Mrs. Mansell send; but no-no one but himself could find it, and his cousin could not bear strangers to disarrange his room. If anything were wanting, it would be enough to see how simply and earnestly such a man has been brought to pamper--nay, to justify, almost to adore, the whims and follies of this youth.'
'If anything were wanting to what? To your dislike.'
'It would not be so active as dislike, unless--' Isabel spoke with drooping head, and Miss King did not ask her to finish, but said, 'He has not given you much cause for alarm.'
'So; he is at least a thorough gentleman. It may be conceit, or wrong self-consciousness, but from the moment the poor boy was spied in the shop, I had a perception that mamma and Mrs. Mansell marked him down. Personally he would be innocent, but, through all his chatter, I cannot shake off the fancy that I am watched, or that decided indifference is not needed to keep him at a distance.'
'I wish you could have seen him without knowing him!'
'In vain, dear Miss King! I can't bear handsome men. I see his frivolity and shallowness; and for amiability, what do you think of keeping his cousin all the morning from shooting for such a mere nothing, and then sending him off for a ten miles' walk?
'For my part, I confess that I was struck with the good sense and kindness he showed in our tete-a-tete--I thought it justified Mr. Dynevor's description.'
'Yes, I have no doubt that there is some good in him. He might have done very well, if he had not always been an idol.'
Isabel was the more provoked with Lord Fitzjocelyn, when, by-and-by, he appeared in the drawing-room, and related the result of his cousin's mission. Jem, who would know better than himself where to find his property, had not chosen to believe his description of the spot where he had left the lotion, and, in the twilight, Louis had found his foot coiled about by the feelers and claws of a formidable monster--no other than a bottled scorpion, a recent present from Captain Hannaford. He did not say how emblematic the scorpion lotion was of that which Jem had been administering to his wounded spirit all the morning, but he put the story in so ludicrous a light that Isabel decided that Mr. Dynevor was ungenerously and ungratefully treated as a butt; and she turned away in displeasure from the group whom the recital was amusing, to offer her sympathy to the tutor, and renew the morning's conversation.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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13
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FROSTY, BUT KINDLY.
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Go not eastward, go not westward, For a stranger whom we know not. Like a fire upon the hearthstone, Is a neighbour's homely daughter; Like the moonlight or the starlight, Is the handsomest of strangers. Legend of Hiawatha.
'What a laboured production had the letter been! How many copies had the statesman written! how late had he sat over it at night! how much more consideration had he spent on it than on papers involving the success of his life! A word too much or too little might precipitate the catastrophe, and the bare notion of his son's marriage with a pupil of Lady Conway renewed and gave fresh poignancy to the past.
At first his anxieties were past mention; but he grew restless under them, and the instinct of going to Mrs. Ponsonby prevailed. At least, she would know what had transpired from James, or from Fitzjocelyn to Mrs. Frost.
She had heard of ecstatic letters from both the cousins, and Mary had been delighted to identify Miss Conway with the Isabel of whom one of her school friends spoke rapturously, but the last letter had beenfrom James to his grandmother, declaring that Lord Ormersfield was destroying the happiness of the most dutiful of sons, who was obedient even to tameness, and so absurd that there was no bearing him. His lordship must hear reason, and learn that he was rejecting the most admirable creature in existence, her superiority of mind exceeding even her loveliness of person. He had better beware of tyranny; it was possible to abuse submission, and who could answer for the consequences of thwarting strong affections? All the ground Fitzjocelyn had gained in the last six weeks had been lost; and for the future, James would not predict.
'An uncomfortable matter,' said Mrs. Ponsonby, chiefly for the sake of reading her daughter's feelings. 'If it were not in poor Louis's mind already, his father and James would plant it there by their contrary efforts.'
'Oh! I hope it will come right,' said Mary. 'Louis is too good, and his father too kind, for it not to end well. And then, mamma, he will be able to prove, what nobody will believe--that he is constant.'
'You think so, do you?' said her mother, smiling.
Mary blushed, but answered, 'where he really cared, he would be constant. His fancy might be taken, and he might rave, but he would never really like what was not good. --If he does think about Miss Conway, we may trust she is worthy of him. Oh! I should like to see her!'
Mary's eyes lighted up with an enthusiasm that used to be a stranger to them. It was not the over-acted indifference nor the tender generosity of disappointment: it seemed more to partake of the fond, unselfish, elder-sisterly affection that she had always shown towards Louis, and it set her mother quite at ease.
Seeing Lord Ormersfield riding into the terrace, Mary set out for a walk, that he might have his tete-a-tete freely with her mother. On coming home, she met him on the stairs; and he spoke with a sad softness and tone of pardon that alarmed her so much, that she hastened to ask her mother whether Louis had really avowed an attachment.
'Oh no,' said Mrs. Ponsonby; 'he has written a very right-minded letter, on the whole, poor boy! though he is sure the Conways have only to be known to be appreciated. Rather too true! It is in his Miss Fanny hand, stiff and dispirited; and his father has worked himself into such a state of uneasiness, that I think it will end in his going to Ebbscreek at once.' ' O mamma, you won't let him go and torment Louis?'
'Why, Mary, have you been learning of James? Perhaps he would torment him more from a distance; and besides, I doubt what sort of counsellor James is likely to make in his present mood.'
'I never could see that James made any difference to Louis,' said Mary. 'I know people think he does, because Louis gives up wishes and plans to him; but he is not led in opinions or principles, as far as I can see.'
'Not unless his own wishes went the same way.'
'At least, Lord Ormersfield will see Miss Conway!'
'I am afraid that will do no good. It will not be for the first time. Lady Conway has been his dread from the time of his own marriage; and if she should come to Northwold, he will be in despair. I do think he must be right; she must be making a dead set at Louis.'
'Not Miss Conway,' said Mary. 'I know she must be good, or he would not endure her for a moment.'
'Mary, you do not know the power of beauty.'
'I have heard of it,' said Mary; 'I have seen how Dona Guadalupe was followed. But those people were not like Louis. No, mamma; I think James might be taken in, I don't think Louis could be--unless he had a very grand dream of his own before his eyes; and then it would be his own dream, not the lady that he saw; and by-and-by he would find it out, and be so vexed!'
'And, I trust, before he had committed himself!'
'Mamma, I won't have you think Miss Conway anything but up to his dreams! I know she is. Only think what Jane Drummond says of her!'
When the idea of going to see how matters stood had once occurred to the Earl, he could not stay at home: the ankle and the affections preyed on him by turns, and he wrote to Sir Miles Oakstead to fix an earlier day for the promised visit, as well as to his son, to announce his speedy arrival. Then he forgot the tardiness of cross-country posts, and outran his letter, so that he found no one to meet him at Bickleypool; and on driving up to the gate at Ebbscreek, found all looking deserted. After much knocking, Priscilla appeared, round-eyed and gasping, and verified his worst fears with 'Gone to Bochattle.' However, she explained that only one gentleman was gone to dine there; the other was rowing him round the point, with grandfather;--they would soon be back--indeed they ought, for the tide was so low, they would have to land down by the shingle bar.
She pointed out where the boat must come in; and thither the Earl directed his steps, feeling as if he were going to place himself under a nutmeg-grater, as he thought how James Frost would receive the implied distrust of his guardianship.
The sunset gleam was fading on the sleepy waves that made but a feint of breaking, along the shining expanse of moist uncovered sand, when two figures were seen progressing from the projecting rocks, casting long shadows before them. Lord Ormersfield began to prepare a mollifying address--but, behold! Was it the effect of light so much to lengthen Jem's form? nay, was it making him walk with a stick? A sudden, unlooked-for hope seized the Earl. The next minute he had been recognised; and in the grasping hands and meeting eyes, all was forgotten, save the true, fond affection of father and son.
'I did not expect this pleasure. They told me you were dining out.'
'Only rowing Jem to the landing-place. I told him to make my excuses. It is a dinner to half the neighbourhood, and my foot is always troublesome if I do not lay it up in the evening.'
'I am glad you are prudent,' said his father, dismissing his fears in his gratification, and proceeding to lay his coming to the score of his foot.
Fitzjocelyn did not wish to see through the plea--he was much too happy in his father's unusual warmth and tenderness, and in the delights of hospitality. Mrs. Hannaford was gone out, and eatables were scarce; but a tea-dinner was prepared merrily between Priscilla, the Captain, and Louis, who gloried in displaying his school-fagging accomplishments with toast, eggs, and rashers--hobbled between parlour and kitchen, helping Priscilla, joking with the Captain, and waiting on his father so eagerly and joyously as to awaken a sense of adventure and enjoyment in the Earl himself. No meal, with Frampton behind his chair, had ever equalled Fitzjocelyn's cookery or attendance; and Louis's reminiscences of the penalties he had suffered from his seniors for burnt toast, awoke like recollections of schoolboy days, hitherto in utter oblivion, and instead of the intended delicate conversation, father and son found themselves laughing over a 'tirocinium or review of schools.'
Still, the subject must be entered on; and when Lord Ormersfield had mentioned the engagement to go to Oakstead, he added, 'All is well, since I have found you here. Let me tell you that I never felt more grateful nor more relieved than by this instance of regard for my wishes.'
Though knowing the fitful nature of Louis's colour, he would have been better satisfied not to have called up such an intensity of red, and to have had some other answer than, 'I wish you saw more of them.'
'I see them every year in London.'
'London gives so little scope for real acquaintance,' ventured Louis again, with downcast eyes.
'You forget that Lady Conway is my sister-in-law.' Louis would have spoken, but his father added, 'Before you were born, I had full experience of her. You must take it on trust that her soft, prepossessing manners belong to her as a woman of the world who cannot see you without designs on you.'
'Of course,' said Louis, 'I yield to your expressed wishes; but my aunt has been very kind to me: and,' he added, after trying to mould the words to their gentlest form, 'you could not see my cousins without being convinced that it is the utmost injustice--' 'I do not censure them,' said his father, as he hesitated between indignation and respect, 'I only tell you, Louis, that nothing could grieve me more than to see your happiness in the keeping of a pupil of Lady Conway.'
He met a look full of consternation, and of struggles between filial deference and the sense of injustice. All Louis allowed himself to say was, however, 'Surely, when I am her own nephew! when our poverty is a flagrant fact--she may be acquitted of anything but caring for me for--for my mother's sake.'
There was a silence that alarmed Louis, who had never before named his mother to the Earl. At last, Lord Ormersfield spoke clearly and sternly, in characteristic succinct sentences, but taking breath between each. 'You shall have no reason to think me prejudiced. I will tell you facts. There was a match which she desired for such causes as lead her to seek you. The poverty was greater, and she knew it. On one side there was strong affection; on that which she influenced there was--none whatever. If there were scruples, she smothered them. She worked on a young innocent mind to act out her deceit, and without a misgiving on--on his part that his feelings wore not returned, the marriage took place.'
'It could not have been all her own fault,' cried Louis. 'It must have been a willing instrument--much to blame--' His father cut him short with sudden severity, such as startled him. 'Never say so, Louis. She was a mere child, educated for that sole purpose, her most sweet and docile nature wasted and perverted.'
'And you know this of your own knowledge?' said Fitzjocelyn, still striving to find some loophole to escape from such testimony.
The Earl paused, as if to collect himself, then repeated the words, slowly and decidedly, 'Of my own knowledge. I could not have spoken thus otherwise.'
'May I ask how it ended?'
'As those who marry for beauty alone have a right to expect. There was neither confidence nor sympathy. She died early. I--we--those who loved her as their own life--were thankful.'
Louis perceived the strong effort and great distress with which these words were uttered, and ventured no answer, glancing hastily through all his connexions to guess whose history could thus deeply affect his father; but he was entirely at a loss; and Lord Ormersfield, recovering himself, added, 'Say no more of this; but, believe me, it was to spare you from her manoeuvres that I kept you apart from that family.'
'The Northwold baths have been recommended for Louisa,' said Fitzjocelyn. 'Before we knew of your objections, we mentioned Miss Faithfull's lodgings.'
What the Earl was about to utter, he suppressed.
'You cannot look at those girls and name manoeuvring!' cried Louis.
'Poor things.'
After a silence, Lord Ormersfield added, with more anxiety than prudence, 'Set my mind at rest, Louis. There can have been no harm done yet, in so short a time.'
'I--don't--know--' said Louis, slowly. 'I have seldom spoken to her, to be sure. She actually makes me shy! I never saw anything half so lovely. I cannot help her reigning over my thoughts. I shall never believe a word against her, though I cannot dispute what you say of my aunt. She is of another mould, I wish you could let me hope that--' A gesture of despair from his father cut him short.
'I will do whatever you please,' he concluded.
'You will find that time conquers the fancy,' said the Earl, quickly. 'I am relieved to find that you have at least not committed yourself: it would be no compliment to Mary Ponsonby.'
Louis's lip curled somewhat; but he said no more, and made no objections to the arrangements which his father proceeded to detail. Doubtful of the accommodations of Ebbscreek, Lord Ormersfield had prudently retained his fly, and though Louis, intending to sleep on the floor, protested that there was plenty of room, he chose to return to the inn at Bickleypool. He would call for Louis to-morrow, to take him for a formal call at Beauchastel; and the day after they would go together to Oakstead, leaving James to return home, about ten days sooner than had been previously concerted.
Lord Ormersfield had not been gone ten minutes, before James's quick bounding tread was heard far along the dry woodland paths. He vaulted over the gate, and entered by the open window, exclaiming, as he did so, 'Hurrah! The deed is done; the letter is off to engage the House Beautiful.'
'Doom is doom!' were the first words that occurred to Louis. 'The lion and the prince.'
'What's that?'
'There was once a king,' began Louis, as if the tale were the newest in the world, 'whose son was predestined to be killed by a lion. After much consideration, his majesty enclosed his royal highness in a tower, warranted wild-beast proof, and forbade the chase to be mentioned in his hearing. The result was, that the locked-up prince died of look-jaw in consequence of tearing his hand with a nail in the picture of the lion.'
'I shall send that apologue straight to Ormersfield.'
'You may spare that trouble. My father has been with me all the evening.'
'Oh! his double-ganger visits you. That accounts for your freaks.'
'Double-gangers seldom come in yellow-bodied flys.'
'His lordship in propria persona. You don't mean it.'
'He is sleeping at the 'George' at Bickleypool. There is a letter coming to-morrow by the post, to say he is coming to-day, with every imaginable civility to you; but I am to go to the rose-coloured pastor's with him on Wednesday.'
'So there's an end of our peace and comfort!'
'I am afraid we have sadly discomposed his peace.'
'Did you discover whether his warnings have the slightest foundation?'
'He told me a history that somewhat accounts for his distrust of my aunt. I think there must be another side to it, and nothing can be more unjust than to condemn all the family, but it affected him so exceedingly that I do not wonder at his doing so. He gave no names, but I am sure it touched him very nearly. Can you tell who it could have been?' And he narrated enough to make James exclaim, 'It ought to touch him nearly. He was talking of himself.'
'Impossible! --my mother!' cried Louis, leaping up.
'Yes--his own version of his married life.'
'How do you know? You cannot remember it,' said Louis, though too well convinced, as he recollected the suppressed anguish, and the horror with which all blame of the young wife had been silenced.
'I have heard of it again and again. It was an unhappy, ill-assorted marriage: she was gay, he was cold.'
'My Aunt Catharine says so?'
'As far as she can blame anything. Your mother was a sweet blossom in a cold wind. She loved and pitied her with all her heart. Your aunt was talking, this very evening, of your father having carried her sister to Ormersfield, away from all her family, and one reason of her desire to go to Northwold is to see those who were with her at last.'
Louis was confounded. 'Yes! I see,' he said. 'How obtuse not to read it in his own manner! How much it explains!' and he silently rested his brow on his hands.
'Depend upon it, there are two sides to the story. I would not be a pretty, petted, admired girl in his keeping.'
'Do you think it mends matters with me to fasten blame on either?' said Louis, sadly. 'No; I was realizing the perception of such a thread of misery woven into his life, and thinking how little I have felt for him.'
'Endowing him with your own feelings, and then feeling for him!'
'No. I cannot estimate his feeling. He is of harder, firmer stuff than I; and for that very reason, I suspect, suffering is a more terrific thing. I heard the doctors saying, when I bore pain badly, that it would probably do the less future harm: a bad moral, but I believe it is true of the mental as of the physical constitution.' Answering something between a look and a shrug of James, he mused on, aloud--'I understand better what the wreck of affection must have been.'
'For my part,' said James, 'I do not believe in the affection that can tyrannize over and blight a woman.'
'Nay, James! I cannot doubt. My very name--my having been called by it, are the more striking in one so fond of usage and precedent. Things that passed between him and Mrs. Ponsonby while I was ill--much that I little regarded and ill requited--show what force of love and grief there must have been. The cold, grave manner, is the broken, inaccessible edge of the cliff rent asunder.'
'If romance softens the rough edge, you are welcome to it! I may as well go to bed!'
'Not romance--the sad reality of my poor father's history. I trust I shall never treat his wishes so lightly--' Impatient of one-sided sympathy, James exclaimed, 'As if you did not give way to him like a slave!'
'Yes, like a slave,' said Louis, gravely. 'I wish to give way like a son who would try to comfort him for what he has undergone.'
'Now, I should have thought your feeling would have been for your mother!'
'If my mother could speak to me,' said Louis, with trembling lips, 'she would surely bid me to try my utmost, as far as in me lies, to bring peace and happiness to my father. I cannot tell where the errors may have been, and I will never ask. If she was as like to me as they say, I could understand some of them! At least, I know that I am doubly bound to give as little vexation to him as possible, and I trust that you will not make it harder to me. You lost your father so early, that you can hardly estimate--' 'The trial?' said James, willing to give what had passed the air of a joke.
'Exactly so--Good night.'
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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14
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NEW INHABITANTS.
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Sometimes a troop of damsels glad-- Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-haired page in crimson clad, Goes by to towered Camelot; And sometimes, through the mirror blue, The knights come riding two and two. She hath no loyal knight and true-- The Lady of Shalott. TENNYSON.
'Oakstead, Oct. 14th, 1847.
'My Dear Aunt,--I find that Fitzjocelyn is writing to you, but I think you will wish for a fuller account of him than can be obtained from his own letters. Indeed, I should be much obliged if you would kindly exercise your influence to persuade him that he is not in a condition to be imprudent with impunity. Sir Miles Oakstead was absolutely shocked to see the alteration in his appearance, as well as in his spirits; and although both our kind host and hostess are most solicitous on his account, it happens unfortunately that they are at this juncture quite alone, so that he is without companions of his own age. I must not, however, alarm you. The fact is, that circumstances have occurred which, though he has acted in the most exemplary manner, have harassed and distressed him a good deal, and his health suffers from the difficulty of taking sufficient exercise. James will triumph when he hears that I regret having shortened his stay by the sea-side; for neither the place nor the weather seems to agree with him: he has had a recurrence of wakeful nights, and is very languid. Poor boy! yesterday he wandered out alone in the rain, lost his way, and came home so fatigued that he slept for three hours on the sofa, but to-day he seems better--has more colour, and has been less silent. We go to Leffingham Castle from Monday till Thursday, when I shall take him to London for Hastings to decide whether it be fit for him to return to Christchurch after the vacation, according to his own most anxious wish. With my love to Mary Ponsonby and her daughter, and best remembrances to James, 'Your affectionate nephew, 'ORMERSFIELD.'
The same envelope contained another letter of many sheets, beginning in a scrawl:-- 'Scene--Rose-coloured Pastor's Nest. Tables, chairs, books, papers, despatch-boxes. The two ex-ministers writing and consulting. Viscount F. looking on like a colt running beside its parent at plough, thinking that harness leaves deep marks, and that he does not like the furrow.
'October 13th, 1847. --That correct date must be a sign that he is getting into harness.
'Well, dear Aunt Kitty, to make a transition from the third to the first person, like Mrs. Norris, you have in this short scene an epitome of the last fortnight. Lady Oakstead is an honourable matron, whom I pity for having me in her way; a man unable to be got rid of by the lawful exercises of shooting and riding, and with a father always consulting her about him, and watching every look and movement, till the blood comes throbbing to my temples by the mere attraction of his eyes. To be watched into a sense of impatience and ingratitude, is a trial of life for which one is not prepared. My father and Sir Miles are very busy; I hang here an anomaly, sitting with them as being less in their way than in Lady Oakstead's, and wondering what I shall be twenty years hence. I am sick of the only course of life that will content my father, and I can see no sunshine likely to brighten it. But, at least, no one's happiness is at stake but my own. Here is a kind, cordial letter from Lady Conway, pressing me to join her at Scarborough, make expeditions, &c. My father is in such a state about me, that I believe I could get his consent to anything, but I suppose it would not be fair, and I have said nothing to him as yet. On Monday we go to Leffingham, which, I hear, is formality itself. After that, more state visits, unless I can escape to Oxford. My father fancies me not well enough; but pray unite all the forces of the Terrace to impress that nothing else will do me any good. Dragging about in this dreary, heartless way is all that ails me, and reading for my degree would be the best cure. I mean to work hard for honours, and, if possible, delude myself with hopes of success. Work is the need. Here, there is this one comfort. There is no one to talk to, no birds in last year's nest, sons absent, daughters disposed of, but, unluckily, the Pastoress, under a mistaken sense of kindness, has asked the Vicar's son to walk with me, and he is always lying in wait,--an Ensign in a transition state between the sheepish schoolboy and the fast man, with an experience of three months of depot. Having roused him from the pristine form, I regret the alternative.
'Did I ever write so savage a letter? Don't let it vex you, or I won't send it. What a bull! There is such a delectable Scotch mist, that no one will suspect me of going out; and I shall actually cheat the Ensign, and get a walk in solitude to hearten me for the dismal state dinner party of the evening.
'October 14th. --Is it in the book of fate that I should always treat this rose-coloured pastor like a carrion crow? I have done it again! And it has but brought out more of my father's marvellous kindness and patience.
'I plunged into the Scotch mist unsuspected and unpursued. The visible ebullition of discontent had so much disgusted me that I must needs see whether anything could be done with it, and fairly face the matter, as I can only do in a walk. Pillow counsel is feverish and tumultuous; one is hardly master of oneself. The soft, cool, mist-laden air, heavy but incense-breathing, was a far more friendly adjunct in the quiet decay of nature--mournful, but not foul nor corrupt, because man had not spoilt it. It suited me better than a sunny, glaring day, such as I used to revel in, and the brightness of which, last spring, made me pine to be in the free air. Such days are past with me; I had better know that they are, and not strive after them. Personal happiness is the lure, not the object, in this world. I have my Northwold home, and I am beginning to see that my father's comfort depends on me as I little imagined, and sufficiently to sweeten any sacrifice. So I have written to refuse Scarborough, for there is no use in trying to combine two things, pleasing my father and myself. I wish the determination may last; but mine have never been good for much, and you must help me.
'Neither thinking nor fog conduced to seeing where I was going; and when my ankle began to give out, and I was going to turn, I ran into a hedge, which, looming through the mist, I had been taking for a fine range of distant mountains--rather my way of dealing with other objects. Being without a horse on whose neck to lay the reins, I could only coast the hedge, hoping it might lead me back to Oakstead Park, which I had abandoned in my craving for space and dread of being dogged by the Ensign. But the treacherous hedge led me nowhere but to a horsepond; and when I had struggled out of the adjacent mire, and attained a rising ground, I could only see about four yards square of bare down, all the rest being grey fog. Altogether, the scene was worth something. I heard what I thought the tinkling of a sheep bell through the cloud, which dulled the sound like cotton wool; I pursued the call, when anon, the veil began to grow thin, and revealed, looking just like a transparency, a glimpse of a little village in a valley almost under my feet, trees, river, church-spire and all, and the bell became clearer, and showed me what kind of flock it was meant for. I turned that way, and had just found a path leading down the steep, when down closed the cloud--a natural dissolving view--leaving me wondering whether it had been mirage or imagination, till presently, the curtain drew up in earnest. Out came, not merely form, but colour, as I have seen a camera clear itself--blue sky, purple hills, russet and orange woods, a great elm green picked out with yellow, a mass of brown oaks, a scarlet maple, a beech grove, skirting a brilliant water meadow, with a most reflective stream running through it, and giving occasion for a single arched bridge, and a water mill, with a wheel draperied with white foam; two swans disporting on the water (I would not declare they were not geese), a few cottony flakes of mist hanging over damp corners, the hill rising green, with the bright whitewashed cottages of this district, on the side a rich, red, sandstone-coloured church, late architecture, tower rather mouldering--all the more picturesque; churchyard, all white headstones and ochreous sheep, surmounted by a mushroom-shaped dark yew tree, railed in with intensely white rails, the whole glowing in the parting coup-de-soleil of a wet day, every tear of every leaf glistening, and everything indescribably lustrous. It is a picture that one's mental photograph ought to stamp for life, and the cheering and interest it gave, no one but you can understand. I wished for you, I know. It looks so poor in words.
'After the service, I laid hold of the urchin whose hearty stare had most reminded me of Tom Madison, and gave him a shilling to guide me back to Oakstead, a wise measure, for down came the cloud, blotting all out like the Castle of St. John, and by the time I came home, it was pitch dark and raining hard, and my poor father was imagining me at the foot of another precipice. I was hoping to creep up in secret, but they all came out, fell upon me, Lady Oakstead sent me tea, and ordered me to rest; and so handsomely did I obey, that when next I opened my eyes, and saw my father waiting, as I thought, for me to go down to dinner with him, I found he had just come up after the ladies had quitted the dining-room. So kind and so little annoyed did he seem, that I shook myself, to be certified that I had broken no more bones, but it was all sheer forbearance and consideration--enough to go to one's heart--when it was the very thing to vex him most. With great penitence, I went down, and the first person I encountered was the very curate I had seen in my _mist_erious village, much as if he had walked out of a story book. On fraternizing, I found him to be a friend of Holdsworth. Lady Oakstead is going to take me, this afternoon, to see his church, &c., thoroughly; and behold, I learn from him that she is a notable woman for doing good in her parish, never so happy as in trotting to cottages, though her good deeds are always in the background. Thereupon, I ventured to attack her this morning on cottage garniture, and obtained the very counsel I wanted about ovens and piggeries, we began to get on together, and she is to put me up to all manner of information that I want particularly. I must go now, not to keep her waiting, never mind the first half of my letter--I have no time to cancel it now. I find my father wants to put in a note: don't believe a word that he says, for I am much better to-day, body and mind.
Goosey, goosey gander, Where shall we wander, Anywhere, everywhere, to remain still 'Your most affectionate, 'FITS GOSLING.'
Dear Aunt Kitty! One of her failings was never to be able to keep a letter to herself. She fairly cried over her boy's troubles; and Mrs. Ponsonby would not have known whether to laugh or cry but for James's doleful predictions, which were so sentimental as to turn even his grandmother to the laughing party, and left him no sympathizer but Mary, who thought it very hard and cruel to deride Louis when he was trying so earnestly to be good and suffering so much. Why should they all--Aunt Catharine herself--be merry over his thinking the spring-days of his life past away, and trying so nobly and patiently to resign himself?
'It is the way of the world, Mary,' said James. 'People think they are laughing at the mistaking a flock of sheep for the army of Pentapolin of the naked arm, when they are really sneering at the lofty spirit taking the weaker side. They involve the sublime temper in the ridiculous accident, and laugh both alike to scorn.'
'Not mamma and Aunt Catharine,' said Mary. 'Besides, is not half the harm in the world done by not seeing where the sublime is invaded by the ridiculous?'
'I see nothing ridiculous in the matter,' said James. 'His father has demanded an unjustifiable sacrifice. Fitzjocelyn yields and suffers.'
'I do believe Lord Ormersfield must relent; you see how pleased he is, saying that Louis's conduct is exemplary.'
'He would sacrifice a dozen sons to one prejudice!'
'Perhaps Miss Conway will overcome the prejudice. I am sure, if he thinks Louis's conduct exemplary, Louis must have the sort of happiness he used to wish for most, and his father would do his very best to gratify him.'
That sentence was Mary's cheval de bataille in her discussions with James, who could never be alone with her without broaching the subject. The two cousins often walked together during James's month at Northwold. The town church was not very efficiently served, and was only opened in the morning and late evening on Sundays, without any afternoon prayers, and James was often in the habit of walking to Ormersfield church for the three o'clock service, and asking Mary to join him. Their return was almost always occupied in descriptions of Miss Conway's perfections, and Mary learnt to believe that two beings, evidently compounded of every creature's best, must be destined for each other.
'How well it is,' she thought, 'that I did not stand in the way. Oh! how unhappy and puzzled I should be now. How thankful I am that dear mamma understood all for us so well! How glad I am that Louis is waiting patiently, not doing anything self-willed. As long as his father says he is exemplary, it must make one happy, and mamma will convince Lord Ormersfield. It will all turn out well; and how delightful it will be to see him quite happy and settled!'
Mary and her mother had by this time taken root at Dynevor Terrace, and formed an integral part of the inhabitants. Their newspaper went the round of the houses, their name was sent to the Northwold book-club and enrolled among the subscribers to local charities, and Miss Mercy Faithfull found that their purse and kitchen would bear deeper hauls than she could in general venture upon. Mary was very happy, working under her, and was a welcome and cheerful visitor to the many sick, aged, and sorrowful to whom she introduced her.
If Mary could only have induced Aunt Melicent to come and see with her own eyes, to know Mrs. Frost and the Faithfull sisters, and, above all, to see mamma in her own house, she thought one of her most eager wishes would have been fulfilled. But invite as she and her mother might, they could not move Miss Ponsonby from Bryanstone Square. Railroads and country were both her dread; and she was not inclined, to overcome her fears on behalf of a sister-in-law whom she forgave, but could not love.
'You must give it up, my dear,' said Mrs. Ponsonby. 'I let the time for our amalgamation pass. Melicent and I were not tolerant of each other. Since she has given you back to me, I can love and respect her as I never did before; but a little breach in youth becomes too wide in age for either repentance or your affection, my dear, to be able to span it.'
Mary saw what a relief it was that the invitations were not accepted, and though she was disappointed, she blamed herself for having wished otherwise. Tranquillity was such a boon to that wearied spirit, each day was so much gain that went by without the painful, fluttered look of distress, and never had Mrs. Ponsonby had so much quiet enjoyment with her daughter and her aunt. Mary was perfectly contented in seeing her better, and had no aims beyond the present trivial, commonplace life, with so many to help by little ordinary services, and her mother serene and comfortable. Placid, and yet active, she went busily through the day, and did not forget the new pleasures to which Louis had opened her mind. She took up his books without a pang, and would say, briskly and unblushingly, to her mother, how strange it was that before she had been with him, she had never liked at all, what she now cared for so much.
The winter portended no lack of excitement. Miss Faithfull's rooms were engaged. When Miss Mercy ran in breathless to Mrs. Frost with the tidings, she little knew what feelings were excited; the hope and fear, the doubt and curiosity; the sense of guilt towards the elder nephew, in not preventing what she could not prevent, the rejoicing on behalf of the younger nephew; the ladylike scorn of the motives that brought the lodgers; yet the warm feeling towards what was dear to Louis and admired by Jem.
What a flapping and battering of carpets on the much-enduring stump! What furious activity of Martha! What eager help of little Charlotte, who was in a perfect trepidation of delight at the rumour that a real beauty, fit for a heroine, was coming! What trotting hither and thither of Miss Mercy! What netting of blinds and stitching of chintz by Miss Salome! What envy and contempt on the part of other landladies on hearing that Miss Faithfull's apartments were engaged for the whole winter! What an anxious progress was Miss Mercy's, when she conducted Mrs. Frost and Mary to a final inspection! and what was her triumph when Mary, sitting down on the well-stuffed arm-chair, pronounced that people who would not come there did not understand what comfort was.
Every living creature gazed--Mrs. Frost through her blind, Mary behind her hydrangea in the balcony, Charlotte from her attic window,--when the lodgers disembarked in full force--two ladies, two children, one governess, three maids, two men, two horses, one King Charles's spaniel! Let it be what it might, it was a grand windfall for the Miss Faithfulls.
Mary's heart throbbed as the first carriage thundered upon the gravel, and a sudden swelling checked her voice as she was about to exclaim 'There she is!' when the second lady emerged, and moved up the garden path. She was veiled and mantled; but accustomed as was Mary's eye to the Spanish figure and walk, the wonderful grace of movement and deportment struck her as the very thing her eye had missed ever since she left Peru. What the rest of the strangers were like, she knew not; she had only eyes for the creature who had won Louis's affection, and doubtless deserved it, as all else that was precious.
'So they are come, Charlotte,' said Mrs. Frost, as the maiden demurely brought in the kettle.
'Yes, ma'am;' and stooping to put the kettle on, and growing carnation-coloured over the fire. 'Oh, ma'am, I never saw such a young lady. She is all one as the king's sister in The Lord of the Isles!'
While the object of all this enthusiasm was arriving at the Terrace, she was chiefly conscious that Sir Roland was sinking down on the ramparts of Acre, desperately wounded in the last terrible siege; and she was considering whether palmer or minstrel should carry the tidings of his death to Adeline. It was her refuge from the unpleasant feelings, with which she viewed the experiment of the Northwold baths upon Louisa's health. As the carriage stopped, she cast one glance at the row of houses, they struck her as dreary and dilapidated; she drew her mantle closer, shivered, and walked into the house. 'Small rooms, dingy furniture-that is mamma's affair,' passed through her mind, as she made a courteous acknowledgment of Miss Mercy's greeting, and stood by the drawing-room fire. 'Roland slowly awoke from his swoon; a white-robed old man, with a red eight-pointed cross on his breast, was bending over him. He knew himself to be in--I can't remember which tower the Hospitallers defended. I wonder whether Marianne can find the volume of Vertot.'
'Isabel, Isabel!' shrieked Virginia, who, with Louisa, had been roaming everywhere, 'here is a discovery in the school-room! Come!'
It was an old framed print of a large house, as much of a sham castle as the nature of things would permit; and beneath were the words 'Cheveleigh, the seat of Roland Dynevor, Esquire.'
'There!' cried Virginia; 'you see it is a castle, a dear old feudal castle! Think of that, Isabel! Why, it is as good as seeing Sir Roland himself, to have seen Mr. Dynevor Frost disinherited. Oh! if his name were only Roland, instead of that horrid James!'
'His initials are J. R.,' said Isabel. 'It is a curious coincidence.'
'It only wants an Adeline to have the castle now,' said Louisa. 'Oh! there shall be an heiress, and she shall be beautiful, and he shan't go crusading--he shall marry her.'
The sisters had not been aware that the school-room maid, who had been sent on to prepare, was busy unpacking in a corner of the room. 'They say, Miss Louisa,' she interposed, 'that Mr. Frost is going to be married to a great heiress--his cousin, Miss Ponsonby, at No. 7.'
Isabel requited the forwardness by silently leaving the room with the sisters, and Virginia apologized for not having been more cautious than to lead to such subjects. 'It is all gossip,' she said, angrily; 'Mr. Dynevor would never marry for money.'
'Nay, let us find in her an Adeline,' said Isabel.
The next day, Miss Mercy had hurried into No. 7, to declare that the ladies were all that was charming, but that their servants gave themselves airs beyond credence, especially the butler, who played the guitar, and insisted on a second table; when there was a peal of the bell, and Mary from her post of observation 'really believed it was Lady Conway herself;' whereupon Miss Mercy, without listening to persuasions, popped into the back drawing room to effect her retreat.
Lady Conway was all eagerness and cordiality, enchanted to renew her acquaintance, venturing so early a call in hopes of prevailing on Mrs. Ponsonby to come out with her to take a drive. She conjured up recollections of Mary's childhood, declared that she looked to her for drawing Isabel out, and was extremely kind and agreeable. Mary thought her delightful, with something of Louis's charm of manner; and Mrs. Ponsonby believed it no acting, for Lady Conway was sincerely affable and affectionate, with great warmth and kindness, and might have been all that was excellent, had she started into life with a different code of duty.
So there was to be an intimacy. For Fitzjocelyn's sake, as well as for the real good-nature of the advances, Mrs. Ponsonby would not shrink back more than befitted her self-respect. Of that quality she had less than Mrs. Frost, who, with her innate punctilious spirit, avoided all favours or patronage. It was curious to see the gentle old lady fire up with all the dignity of the Pendragons, at the least peril of incurring an obligation, and, though perfectly courteous, easy, and obliging, she contrived to keep at a greater distance than if she had been mistress of Cheveleigh. There, she would have remembered that both she and Lady Conway were aunts to Louis; at Northwold, her care was to become beholden for nothing that she could not repay.
Lady Conway did her best, when driving out with Mrs. Ponsonby, to draw her into confidence. There were tender reminiscences from her heart of poor sweet Louisa, tearful inquiries respecting her last weeks, certainties that Mrs. Ponsonby had been of great use to her; for, poor darling, she had been thoughtless--so much to turn her head. There was cause for regret in their own education--there was then so much less attention to essentials. Lady Conway could not have borne to bring up her own girls as she herself and her sisters had grown up; she had chosen a governess who made religion the first object, and she was delighted to see them all so attached to her; she had never had any fears of their being too serious--people had learnt to be reasonable now, did not insist on the impracticable, did not denounce moderate gaieties, as had once been done to the alarm of poor Louisa.
Sweetest Louisa's son! She could not speak too warmly of him, and she declared herself highly gratified by Mr. Mansell's opinion of his modesty, attention, and good sense. Mr. Mansell was an excellent judge, he had such as opinion of Lord Ormersfield's public character.
And, at a safe interval, she mentioned the probability that Beauchastel might be settled on Isabel, if she should marry so as to please Mr. Mansell: he cared for connexion more than for wealth; if he had a weakness, it was for rank.
Mrs. Ponsonby thought it fair that the Earl should be aware of these facts. He smiled ironically.
He left his card with his sister-in-law, and, to have it over while Louis was safe at Oxford, invited the party to spend a day at Ormersfield, with Mrs. Frost to entertain them. He was far too considerate of the feelings that he attributed to the Ponsonbys to ask them to come; and as three out of the six in company were more or less in a state of haughtiness and coolness, Lady Conway's graces failed entirely; and poor innocent Virginia and Louisa protested that they had never spent so dull a day, and that they could not believe their cousin Fitzjocelyn could belong to such a tiresome place.
Isabel, who had undergone more dull days than they had, contrived to get through it by torturing Adeline with utter silence of all tidings from the East, and by a swarm of suitors, with the fantastic Viscount foremost. She never was awake from her dream until Mr. Holdsworth came to dinner, and was so straightforward and easy that he thawed every one.
Afterwards, he never failed to return an enthusiastic reply to the question that all the neighbourhood were asking each other--namely, whether they had seen Miss Conway.
No one was a more devoted admirer than the Lady of Eschalott, whose webs had a bad chance when there was one glimpse of Miss Conway to be obtained from the window, and the vision of whose heart was that Mrs. Martha might some day let her stand in the housemaid's closet, to behold her idol issue forth in the full glory of an evening dress--a thing Charlotte had read of, but never seen anything nearer to it than Miss Walby coming to tea, and her own Miss Clara in the scantiest of all white muslins.
But Mrs. Martha was in an unexampled state of vixenish crossness, and snapped venomously at mild Mrs. Beckett for the kindest offers of sparing Charlotte to assist her in her multiplied labours. She seemed to be running after time all day long, with five dinners and teas upon her hands, poor woman, and allowing herself not the slightest relaxation, except to rush in for a few seconds to No. 7, to indulge herself by inveighing against the whole of the fine servants; and yet she was so proud of having lodgers at all, that she hated them for nothing so much as for threatening to go away.
The object of her bitterest invectives was the fastidious butler, Mr. Delaford, who by her account could do nothing for himself, grudged her mistresses their very sitting-room, drank wine with the ladies' maids like a gentleman, and ordered fish for the second table; talked of having quitted a duke, and submitting to live with Lady Conway because he compassionated unprotected females, and my Lady was dependent on him for the care of Sir Walter in the holidays. To crown his offences, he never cleaned his own plate, but drew sketches and played the guitar! Moreover, Mrs. Martha had her notions that he was making that sickly Frenchified maid of Miss Conway's much too fond of him; and as to his calling himself Mr. Delaford--why, Mrs. Martha had a shrewd suspicion that he was some kin to her first cousin's brother-in-law's shopman's wife in Tottenham-court-road, whose name she knew was Ford, and who had been picked out of a gutter! The establishment of such a fact appeared as if it would be the triumph of Mrs. Martha's life. In the meantime, she more than hinted that she would wear herself to the bone rather than let Charlotte Arnold into the house; and Jane, generally assenting, though seldom going all lengths, used to divert the conversation by comparisons with Mr. Frampton's politeness and consideration. He never came to No. 5 to give trouble, only to help.
The invectives produced on Charlotte's mind an effect the reverse of what was intended. Mr. Delaford, a finer gentleman than Mr. Frampton and Mr. Poynings, must be a wonder of nature. The guitar--redolent of serenades and Spanish cloaks--oh! but once to see and hear it! The very rudeness of Mrs. Martha's words, so often repeated, gave her a feeling in favour of their object. She had known Mrs. Martha unjust before. Poor Tom! if he had only been a Spaniard, he would have sung about the white dove--his pretty thought--in a serenade, but then he might have poignarded Mr. James in his passion, which would have been less agreeable--she supposed he had forgotten her long ago--and so much the better!
It was a Sunday evening. Every one was gone to church except Charlotte, who was left to keep house. Though November, it was not cold, the day had been warm and showery, and the full moon had risen in the most glorious brightness, riding in a sky the blue of which looked almost black by contrast with her brilliancy. Charlotte stood at the back door, gazing at the moon walking in brightness, and wandered into the garden, to enjoy what to her was beyond all other delights, reading Gessner's Death of Abel by moonlight. There was quite sufficient light, even if she had not known the idyll almost by heart; and in a trance of dreamy, undefined delight, she stood beside the dark ivy-covered wall, each leaf glistening in the moonbeams, which shed a subdued pearliness over her white apron and collar, paled but gave a shadowy refinement to her features, and imparted a peculiar soft golden gloss to the fair braids of hair on her modest brow.
A sound of opening the back gate made her give one of her violent starts; but before she could spring into the shelter of the house, she was checked by the civil words, 'I beg your pardon, I was mistaken--I took this for No. 8.'
'Three doors off--' began Charlotte, discovering, with a shy thrill of surprise and pleasure, that she had been actually accosted by the great Mr. Delaford; and the moonlight, quite as becoming to him as to her, made him an absolute Italian count, tall, dark, pale, and whiskered. He did not go away at once, he lingered, and said softly, 'I perceive that you partake my own predilection for the moonlight hour.'
Charlotte would have been delighted, had it not been a great deal harder to find an answer than if the old Lord had asked her a question; but she simpered and blushed, which probably did just as well. Mr. Delaford supposed she knew the poet's lines-- 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps on yonder bank--' 'Oh yes, sir--so sweet!' exclaimed the Lady of Eschalott, under her breath, though yonder bank was only represented by the chequer-work of Mrs. Ponsonby's latticed trellis; and Mr. Delaford proceeded to quote the whole passage, in a deep mellow voice, but with a great deal of affectation; and Charlotte gasped, 'So beautiful!'
'I perceive that you have a fine taste for poetry,' said Mr. Delaford, so graciously, that Charlotte presumed to say, 'Oh, sir! is it true that you can play the guitar?'
He smiled upon her tone of veneration, and replied, 'a trifle--a little instrumental melody was a great resource. If his poor performance would afford her any gratification, he would fetch his guitar.'
'Oh, sir--thank you--a psalm-tune, perhaps. It is Sunday--if you would be so kind.'
He smiled superciliously as he regretted that his music was not of that description, and Charlotte felt ready to sink into the earth at the indignity she had done the guitar in forgetting that it could accompany anything but such songs as Valancourt sang to Emily. She begged his pardon humbly; and he declared that he had a great respect for a lady's scruples, and should be happy to meet her another evening. 'If Mrs. Beckett would allow her,' said Charlotte, overpowered with gratitude: 'there would be the moon full to-morrow--how delightful!' He could spare a short interval between the dinner and the tea; and with this promise he took leave.
Honest little Charlotte told Mrs. Beckett the whole story, and all her eager wishes for to-morrow evening; and Jane sighed and puzzled herself, and knew it would make Martha very angry, but could not help being goodnatured. Jane had a great deference for Martha's strong, rough character; but then Martha had never lived in a great house, and did not know 'what was what,' nor the difference between 'low people' and upper servants. So Jane acted chaperon as far as her easy discretion went, and had it to say to her own conscience, and to the angry Martha, that he never said one word that need offend any young woman.
There was a terrible storm below-stairs in the House Beautiful at the idea of Delaford taking up with Mrs. Frost's little kitchen-maid--Delaford, the lady's-maid killer par excellence, wherever Lady Conway went, and whose coquetries whitened the cheeks of Miss Conway's poor Marianne, the object of his attentions whenever he had no one else in view. He had not known Charlotte to be a kitchen-maid when he first beheld her, and her fair beauty and retiring grace had had full scope, assisted by her veneration for himself; and now the scorn of the grand Mrs. Fanshawe, and the amusement of teasing Marianne, only made him the more bent on patronizing 'the little rustic,' as he called her. He was deferential to Mrs. Beckett, who felt herself in her element in discussing plate, china, and large establishments with him; and he lent books, talked poetry, and played the guitar to Charlotte, and even began to take her portrait, with her mouth all on one side.
Delaford was an admirable servant, said the whole Conway family; he was trusted as entirely as he represented, and Lady Conway often gave him charge over her son in sports and expeditions beyond ladies' management: he was, in effect, nearly the ruler of the household, and never allowed his lady to go anywhere if he did not approve. If it had not been for the 'little rustic's' attractions, perhaps he might have made strong demonstrations against the House Beautiful. Little did Miss Faithfull know the real cause of her receiving or retaining her lodgers.
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{
"id": "4235"
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15
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MOTLEY THE ONLY WEAR.
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For better far than passion's glow, Or aught of worldly choice, To listen His own will to know, And, listening, hear his voice. The Angel of Marriage--REV. I. WILLIAMS.
The friendships that grew up out of sight were far more effective than anything that Lady Conway could accomplish on the stage. Miss King and the Miss Faithfulls found each other out at once, and the governess was entreated to knock at the door at the bottom of the stairs whenever her pupils could spare her.
Then came eager wishes from her pupils to be admitted to the snuggery, and they were invited to see the curiosities. Isabel believed the 'very good' was found, and came with her sisters. She begged to be allowed to help in their parish work, under Miss Mercy Faithfull's guidance; and Sir Roland stood still, while she fancied she was learning to make little frocks, but really listening to their revelations of so new a world. She went out with Miss Mercy--she undertook a class and a district, and began to be happier than ever before; though how much of the absolute harder toil devolved on Miss King, neither she nor the governess understood.
This led to intercourse with Mary Ponsonby; and Isabel was a very different person in that homely, friendly parlour, from the lofty, frigid Miss Conway of the drawing-room. Cold hauteur melted before Mary's frank simplicity, and they became friends as fast as two ladies could beyond the age of romantic plunges, where on one side there was good-will without enthusiasm, on the other enthusiasm and reserve. They called each other 'Miss Conway' and 'Miss Ponsonby,' and exchanged no family secrets; but they were, for all that, faster friends than young ladies under twenty might imagine.
One winter's day, the crisp, exhilarating frost had lured them far along the high road beyond Mr. Calcott's park palings, talking over Isabel's favourite theme, what to wish for her little brother, when the sound of a large clock striking three made Isabel ask where she was.
'It was the stable clock at Ormersfield,' said Mary, 'did you not know we were on that road?'
'No, I did not.' And Isabel would have turned, but Mary begged her to take a few steps up the lane, that they might see how Lord Fitzjocelyn's new cottages looked. Isabel complied, and added, after a pause, 'Are you one of Lord Fitzjocelyn's worshippers?'
'I should not like to worship any one,' said Mary, looking straightforward. 'I am very fond of him, because I have known him all my life. And he is so good!'
'Then I think I may consider you exempt! It is the only fault I have to find with Northwold. You are the only person who does not rave about him--the only person who has not mentioned his name.'
'Have I not? I think that was very unkind of me--' 'Very kind to me,' said Isabel.
'I meant, to him,' said Mary, blushing; 'if you thought that I did not think most highly of him--' 'Don't go on! I was just going to trust to you for a calm, dispassionate statement of his merits, and I shall soon lose all my faith in you.'
'My mother--' began Mary; but just then Lord Ormersfield came forth from one of the cottages, and encountered the young ladies. He explained that Fitzjocelyn was coming home next week, and he had come to see how his last orders had been executed, since Frampton and the carpenter had sometimes chosen to think for themselves. He was very anxious that all should be right, and, after a few words, revealed a perplexity about ovens and boilers, in which Mary's counsel would be invaluable. So, with apologies and ceremonies to Miss Conway, they entered, and Isabel stood waiting in the dull kitchen, smelling of raw plaster, wondering at the extreme eagerness of the discussion with the mason over the yawning boiler, the Earl referring to his son's letter, holding it half-a-yard off, and at last giving it to Mary to decipher by the waning light.
So far had it waned, that when the fixtures had all been inspected, Lord Ormersfield declared that the young ladies must not return alone, and insisted on escorting them home. Every five minutes some one thought of something to say: there was an answer, and by good luck a rejoinder; then all died away, and Mary pondered how her mother would in her place have done something to draw the two together, but she could not. She feared the walk had made Isabel more adverse to all connected with Ormersfield than even previously; for the Ormersfield road was avoided, and the question as to Fitzjocelyn's merits was never renewed.
Mary thought his cause would be safest in the hands of his great champion, who was coming home from Oxford with him, and was to occupy his vacation in acting tutor to little Sir Walter Conway. Louis came, the day after his return, with his father, to make visits in the Terrace, and was as well-behaved and uninteresting as morning calling could make him. He was looking very well--his general health quite restored, and his ankle much better; though he was still forbidden to ride, and could not walk far.
'You must come and see me, Aunt Kitty,' he said; 'I am not available for coming in to see you. I'm reading, and I've made a resignation of myself,' he added, with a slight blush, and debonnaire shrug, glancing to see that his father was occupied with James.
They were to dine with Lady Conway on the following Tuesday. In the interim, no one beheld them except Jem, who walked to Ormersfield once or twice for some skating for his little pupil Walter, and came back reporting that Louis had sold himself, body and soul, to his father.
Clara came home, a degree more civilized, and burning to confide to Louis that she had thought of his advice, had been the less miserable for it, and had much more on which to consult him. She could not conceive why even grandmamma would not consent to her accompanying the skaters; though she was giving herself credit for protesting that she was not going on the ice, only to keep poor Louis company, while the others were skating.
She was obliged to defer her hopes of seeing him until Tuesday, when she had been asked to drink tea in the school-room, and appear in the evening. Mrs. Frost had consented, as a means of exempting herself from the party. And Clara's incipient feminine nature began to flutter at her first gaiety. The event was magnified by a present from Jem, of a broad rose-coloured sash and white muslin dress, with a caution that she was not to consider the tucks up to the waist as a provision for future growth.
She flew to exhibit the finery to the Miss Faithfulls, and to consult on the making-up, and, to her consternation, was caught by Miss Conway kneeling on the floor, being measured by Miss Salome. To Isabel, there was a sort of touching novelty in the simplicity that could glory in pink ribbon when embellished by being a brother's gift; she looked on with calm pleasure at such homely excitement, and even fetched some bows of her own, for examples, and offered to send Marianne down with patterns.
Clara was enchanted to recognise in Miss Conway the vision of the Euston-square platform. The grand, quiet style of beauty was exactly fitted to impress a mind like hers, so strongly imbued with sentiments like those of Louis, and regarding Isabel as necessarily Louis's destiny, she began to adore her accordingly, with a girl-reverence, quite as profound, far more unselfish, and little less ardent than that of man for woman. That a female vision of perfection should engross Clara's imagination, was a step towards softening her; but, poor child! the dawn of womanhood was to come in a painful burst.
Surprised at her own aspect, with her light hair dressed by Jane and wreathed with ivy leaves by grandmamma, and her skirts so full that she could not refrain from making a gigantic cheese, she was inspected and admired by granny and Jane, almost approved by Jem himself; and, exalted by the consciousness of being well-dressed, she repaired to the school-room tea at the House Beautiful.
Virginia and Louisa were, she thought, very poor imitations of Louis's countenance--the one too round, the other too thin and sallow; but both they, their brother, and Miss King were so utterly unlike anything at school, that she was at once at ease, and began talking with Walter over schoolboy fun, in which he could not be a greater proficient than herself. Walter struck up a violent friendship for her on the spot, and took to calling her 'a fellow,' in oblivion of her sex; and Virginia and Louisa fell into ecstasies of laughter, which encouraged Clara and Walter to compote with each other which should most astonish their weak minds.
In the drawing-room, Lady Conway spoke so graciously, that Clara, was quite distressed at looking over her head. Mary looked somewhat oppressed, saying her mother had not been so well that day; and she was disposed to keep in the background, and occupy herself with Clara; but it was quite contrary to the Giraffe's notions to be engrossed by any one when Louis was coming. As if she had divined Mary's intentions of keeping her from importuning him, she was continually gazing at the door, ready at once to claim his attention.
At first, the gentlemen only appeared in a black herd at the door, where Mr. Calcott had stopped Lord Ormersfield short, in his eagerness to impress on him the views of the county on a police-bill in course of preparation for the next session. The other magistrates congregated round; but James Frost and Sydney Calcott had slipped past, to the piano where Lady Conway had sent Miss Calcott and Isabel. 'Why did not Fitzjocelyn, come too?' was murmured by the young group in the recess opposite the door; and when at last he became visible, leaning against the wall, listening to the Squire, Virginia declared he was going to serve them just as he used at Beauchastel.
'Oh, no! he shan't--I'll rescue him!' exclaimed Clara; and leaping up to her cameleopard attitude, she sprang forward, and, with a voice audible in an unlucky lull of the music, she exclaimed, 'Louis! Louis! don't you see that I am here?'
As he turned, with a look of surprise and almost rebuke, her own words came back to her ears as they must have sounded to others; her face became poppy-coloured, nothing light but her flaxen eyebrows; and she scarcely gave her hand to be shaken. 'No, I did not know you were coming,' he said; and almost partaking her confusion, as he felt all eyes upon her, he looked in vain for a refuge for her.
How welcome was Mary's kind face and quiet gesture, covering poor Clara's retreat as she sank into a dark nook, sheltered by the old black cabinet! Louis thanked Mary by a look, as much as to say, 'Just like you,' and was glad to perceive that James had not been present. He had gone to ask Miss Faithfull to supply the missing stanzas of a Jacobite song, and just then returned, saying that she knew them, but could not remember them.
Fitzjocelyn, however, capped the fragment, and illustrated it with some anecdotes that interested Miss Conway. James had great hopes that she was going to see him to the best advantage, but still there was a great drawback in the presence of Sydney Calcott. Idolized at home, successful abroad, young Calcott had enough of the prig to be a perpetual irritation to Jem Frost, all the more because he could never make Louis resent, nor accept, as other than natural, the goodnatured supercilious patronage of the steady distinguished senior towards the idle junior.
Jacobite legends and Stuart relics would have made Miss Conway oblivious of everything else; but Sydney Calcott must needs divert the conversation from that channel by saying, 'Ah! there Fitzjocelyn is in his element. He is a perfect handbook to the byways of history.'
'For the diffusion of useless knowledge?' said Louis.
'Illustrated by the examination, when the only fact you could adduce about the Argonauts was that Charles V. founded the order of the Golden Fleece.'
'I beg your pardon; it was his great-grandfather. I had read my Quentin Durward too well for that.'
'I suspect,' said Isabel, 'that we had all rather be examined in our Quentin Durward than our Charles V. 'Ah!' said young Calcott, 'I had all my dates at my fingers' ends when I went up for the modern history prize. Now my sister could beat me.'
'A proof of what I always say,' observed Louis, 'that it is lost labour to read for an examination.'
'From personal experience?' asked Sydney.
'A Strasburg goose nailed down and crammed before a fire, becomes a Strasburg pie,' said Louis.
Never did Isabel look more bewildered, and Sydney did not seem at once to catch the meaning. James added, 'A goose destined to fulfil the term of existence is not crammed, but the pie stimulus is not required to prevent it from starving.'
'Is your curious and complimentary culinary fable aimed against reading or against examinations?' asked Sydney.
'Against neither; only against the connecting preposition.'
'Then you mean to find a superhuman set of students?'
'No; I'm past that. Men and examinations will go on as they are; the goose will run wild, the requirements will be increased, he will nail himself down in his despair; and he who crams hardest, and has the hottest place will gain.'
'Then how is the labour lost?' asked Isabel.
'You are new to Fitzjocelyn's paradoxes,' said Sydney; as if glorying in having made Louis contradict himself.
'The question is, what is lost labour?' said Louis.
Both Sydney Calcott and Miss Conway looked as if they thought he was arguing on after a defeat. 'Calcott is teaching her his own obtuseness!' thought James, in a pet; and he exclaimed, 'Is the aim to make men or winners of prizes?'
'The aim of prizes is commonly supposed to be to make men,' loftily observed Sydney.
'Exactly so; and, therefore, I would not make them too analogous to the Strasburg system,' said Louis. 'I would have them close, searching, but not admitting of immediate cramming.'
'Pray how would you bring that about?'
'By having no subject on which superficial knowledge could make a show.'
'Oh! I see whither you are working round! That won't do now, my dear fellow; we must enlarge our field, or we shall lay ourselves open to the charge of being narrow-minded.'
'You have not strength of mind to be narrow-minded!' said Louis, shaking his head. 'Ah! well, I have no more to say; my trust is in the narrow mind, the only expansive one--' He was at that moment called away; Lord Ormersfield's carriage had been announced, and his son was not in a quarter of the room where he wished to detain him. James could willingly have bitten Sydney Calcott for the observation, 'Poor Fitzjocelyn! he came out strong to-night.'
'Very clever,' said Isabel, wishing to gratify James.
'Oh yes, very; if he had ever taken pains,' said Sydney. 'There is often something in his paradoxes. After all, I believe he is reading hard for his degree, is he not, Jem? His feelings would not be hurt by the question, for he never piqued himself upon his consistency.'
Luckily for the general peace, the Calcott household was on the move, and Jem solaced himself on their departure by exclaiming, 'Well done, Strasburg system! A high-power Greek-imbibing machine, he may be, but as to comprehending Fitzjocelyn--' 'Nay,' said Isabel, 'I think Lord Fitzjocelyn ought to carry about a pocket expositor, if he will be so very startling. He did not stay to tell us what to understand by narrow minds.'
'Did you ever hear of any one good for anything, that was not accused of a narrow mind?' exclaimed James.
'If that were what he meant,' said Isabel,--'but he said his trust was in the narrow mind--' 'In what is popularly so called,' said James.
'I think,' said Mary, leaning forward, and speaking low, 'that he did not mean it to be explained away. I think he was going to say that the heart may be wide, but the mind must be so far narrow, that it will accept only the one right, not the many wrong.'
'I thought narrowness of mind consisted in thinking your own way the only right one,' said Isabel.
'Every one says so,' said Mary, 'and that is why he says it takes strength of mind to be narrow-minded. Is not the real evil, the judging people harshly, because their ways are not the same; not the being sure that the one way is the only right! Others may be better than ourselves, and may be led right in spite of their error, but surely we are not to think all paths alike-- 'And is that Lord Fitzjocelyn's definition of a narrow mind?' said Isabel. 'It sounds like faith and love. Are you sure you did not make it yourself, Miss Ponsonby?'
'I could not,' said Mary, blushing, as she remembered one Sunday evening when he had said something to that effect, which had insensibly overthrown the theory in which she had been bred up, namely, that all the sincere were right, and yet that, practically every one was to be censured, who did not act exactly like Aunt Melicent.
She rose to take leave, and Clara clung to her, emerging from the shade of her cabinet with colour little mitigated since her disappearance. James would have come with them, but was detained by Lady Conway for a few moments longer than it took them to put on their shawls; and Clara would not wait. She dragged Mary down the steps into the darkness, and groaned out, 'O Mary, he can never speak to me again!'
'My dear! he will not recollect it. It was very awkward, but new places and new people often do make us forget ourselves.'
'Everybody saw, everybody heard! O, I shall never bear to meet one of them again!'
'I think very few saw or heard--' began Mary.
'He did! I did! That's enough! The rest is nothing! I have been as bad as any one at school! I shall never hold up my head there again as I have done, and Louis! Oh!'
'Dear child, it will not be remembered. You only forgot how tall you were, and that you were not at home. He knows you too well to care.'
James shouted from behind to know why they had not been let into the house; and as Clara rushed in at the door and he walked on with Mary to leave her at home and fetch his grandmother, who had been spending the evening with Mrs. Ponsonby, he muttered, 'I don't know which is most intolerable! He neglects her, talks what, if it be not nonsense, might as well be; and as if she were not ready enough to misunderstand, Sydney Calcott must needs thrust in his wits to embroil her understanding. Mary! can't you get her to see the stuff he is made of?'
'If she cannot do that for herself, no persuasion of mine will make her,' said Mary.
'No! you do not half appreciate him either! No one does! And yet you could, if you tried, do something with her! I see she does not think you prejudiced. You made an impression to-night.'
Mary felt some consternation. Could it depend on her? She could speak naturally, and from her heart in defence of Louis when occasion served; but something within her forbade the thought of doing so on a system. Was that something wrong! She could not answer; but contented herself with the womanly intuition that showed her that anything of persuasion in the present state of affairs would be ineffectual and unbecoming.
Meantime, Clara had fled to her little room, to bid her childhood farewell in a flood of bitter tears.
Exaggerated shame, past disdain of the foibles of others, the fancy that she was publicly disgraced and had forfeited Louis's good opinion, each thought renewed her sobs; but the true pang was the perception that old times were passed for ever. He might forgive, he would still be friend and cousin; but womanhood had broken on her, and shown that perfect freedom was at an end. Happy for her that she wept but for the parting from a playfellow! Happy that her feelings were young and undeveloped, free from all the cruel permanence that earlier vanity or self-consciousness might have given; happy that it could be so freely washed away! When she had spent her sobs, she could resolve to be wise and steady, so as to be a fit governess to his children; and the tears flowed at the notion of being so distant and respectful to his lordship. But what stories she could tell them of his boyhood! And in the midst of--'Now, my dears, I will tell you about your papa when he was a little boy,' she fell asleep.
That party was a thing to be remembered with tingling cheeks for life, and Clara dreaded her next meeting with Louis; but the days passed on without his coming to the Terrace, and the terror began to wear off, especially as she did not find that any one else remembered her outbreak. Mary guarded against any unfavourable impression by a few simple words to Isabel and Miss King as to the brotherly terms that had hitherto prevailed, and poor Clara's subsequent distress. Clara came in for some of the bright tints in which her brother was viewed at the House Beautiful; Walter was very fond of her, and she had been drawn into a friendship for Virginia, cemented in the course of long walks, when the schoolroom party always begged for Mr. and Miss Dynevor, because no one else could keep Walter from disturbing Louisa's nerves by teasing her pony or sliding on dubious ice.
As Mrs. Ponsonby often joined in Lady Conway's drive, Mary and Isabel were generally among the walkers; and Mary was considered by Louisa as an inestimable pony-leader, and an inexhaustible magazine of stories about sharks, earthquakes, llamas, and icebergs.
James and Miss Conway generally had either book or principle to discuss, and were usually to be found somewhat in the rear, either with or without Miss King. One day, however, James gave notice that he should not be at their service that afternoon; and as soon as Walter's lessons had been despatched, he set out with rapid steps for Ormersfield Park, clenching his teeth together every now and then with his determinate resolution that he would make Louis know his own mind, and would 'stand no nonsense.'
'Ah! James, good morning,' said the Earl, as he presented himself in the study. 'You will find Louis in his room. I wish you would make him come out with you. He is working harder than is good for him.'
He spoke of his son far differently from former times; but Jem only returned a judiciously intoned 'Poor fellow.'
Lord Ormersfield looked at him anxiously, and, hesitating, said, 'You do not think him out of spirits?'
'Oh, he carries it off very well. I know no one with so strong a sense of duty,' replied Jem, never compassionate to the father.
Again the Earl paused, then said, 'He may probably speak more unreservedly to you than to me.'
'He shuns the topic. He says there is no use in aggravating the feelings by discussion. He would fain submit in heart as well as in will.'
Lord Ormersfield sighed, but did not appear disposed to say more; and, charitably hoping that a dagger had been implanted in him, Jem ran up-stairs, and found Louis sitting writing at a table, which looked as if Mary had never been near it.
'Jem! That's right! I've not seen you this age.'
'What are you about?'
'I wanted particularly some one to listen. It is an essay on the Police--' 'Is this earnest?'
'Sober earnest. Sir Miles and all that set are anxious to bring the matter forward, and my father has been getting it up, as he does whatever he may have to speak upon. His eyes are rather failing for candle-light work, so I have been helping him in the evening, till it struck me that it was a curious subject to trace in history,--the Censors, the attempts in Germany and Spain, to supply the defective law, the Spanish and Italian dread of justice. I became enamoured of the notion, and when I have thrown all the hints together, I shall try to take in my father by reading them to him as an article in the Quarterly.'
'Oh, very well. If your soul is there, that is an end of the matter.'
'Of what matter?'
'Things cannot run on in this way. It is not a thing to lay upon me to go on working in your cause with her when you will not stir a step in your own behalf.'
'I am very much obliged to you, but I never asked you to work in my cause. I beg your pardon, Jem, don't fly into a Welsh explosion. No one ever meant more kindly and generously--' He checked himself in amaze at the demonstration he had elicited; but, as it was not accompanied with words, he continued, 'No one can be more grateful to you than I; but, as far as I can see, there is nothing for it but to be thankful that no more harm has been done, and to let the matter drop;' and he dropped his hand with just so much despondency as to make Jem think him worth storming at, instead of giving him up; and he went over the old ground of Louis being incapable of true passion and unworthy of such a being if he could yield her without an effort, merely for the sake of peace.
'I say, Jem,' said Louis, quietly, 'all this was bad enough on neutral ground; it is mere treason under my father's own roof, and I will have no more of it.'
'Then,' cried James, with a strange light in his eyes, 'you henceforth renounce all hopes--all pretensions?'
'I never had either hope or pretension. I do not cease to think her, as I always did, the loveliest creature I ever beheld. I cannot help that; and the state I fell into after being with her on Tuesday, convinced me that it is safest to stay here and fill up time and thought as best I may.'
'For once, Fitzjocelyn,' said James, with a gravity not natural to him, 'I think better of your father than you do. I would neither treat him as so tyrannical nor so prejudiced as your conduct supposes him.'
'How? He is as kind as possible. We never had so much in common.'
'Yes. Your submission so far, and the united testimony of the Terrace, will soften him. Show your true sentiments. A little steadiness and perseverance, and you will prevail.'
'Don't make me feverish, Jem.'
A summons to Lord Fitzjocelyn to come down to a visitor in the library cut short the discussion, and James took leave at once, neither cousin wishing to resume the conversation.
The darts had not been injudiciously aimed. The father and son were both rendered uneasy. They had hitherto been unusually comfortable together, and though the life was unexciting, Louis's desire to be useful to his father, and the pressing need of working for his degree, kept his mind fairly occupied. Though wistful looks might sometimes be turned along the Northwold road, when he sallied forth in the twilight for his constitutional walk, he did not analyse which number of the Terrace was the magnet, and he avoided testing to the utmost the powers of his foot. The affection and solicitude shown for him at home claimed a full return; nor had James been greatly mistaken in ascribing something to the facility of nature that yielded to force of character. But Jem had stirred up much that Louis would have been contented to leave dormant; and the hope that he had striven to excite came almost teazingly to interfere with the passive acquiescence of an indolent will. Perturbed and doubtful, he was going to seek counsel as usual of the open air, as soon as the visitor was gone, but his father followed him into the hall, asking whither he was going.
'I do not know. I had been thinking of trying whether I can get as far as Marksedge.'
Marksedge would be fatal to the ankle, solitude to the spirits, thought the Earl; and he at once declared his intention of walking with his son as far as he should let him go.
Louis was half vexed, half flattered, and they proceeded in silence, till conscious of being ruffled, and afraid of being ungracious, he made a remark on the farm that they were approaching, and learnt in return that the lease was nearly out, the tenant did not want a renewal, and that Richardson intended to advertise.
He breathed a wish that it were in their own hands, and this led to a statement of the condition of affairs, the same to which a year before he had been wilfully deaf, and to which he now attended chiefly for the sake of gratifying his father, though he better understood what depended on it. At least, it was making the Earl insensible to the space they were traversing, and the black outlines of Marksedge were rising on him before he was aware. Then he would have turned, but Louis pleaded that having come so far, he should be glad to speak to Madison's grandfather, and one or two other old people, and he prevailed.
Lord Ormersfield was not prepared for the real aspect of the hamlet.
'Richardson always declared that the cottages were kept in repair,' he said.
'Richardson never sees them. He trusts to Reeves.'
'The people might do something themselves to keep the place decent.'
'They might; but they lose heart out of sight of respectability. I will just knock at this door--I will not detain you a moment.'
The dark smoky room, damp, ill-paved floor, and cracked walls produced their effect; and the name and voice of the inmate did more. Lord Ormersfield recognised a man who had once worked in the garden, and came forward and spoke, astonished and shocked to find him prematurely old. The story was soon told; there had been a seasoning fever as a welcome to the half-reclaimed moorland; ague and typhus were frequent visitors, and disabling rheumatism a more permanent companion to labourers exhausted by long wet walks in addition to the daily toil. At an age less than that of the Earl himself, he beheld a bowed and broken cripple.
Fitzjocelyn perceived his victory, and forebore to press it too hastily, lest he should hurt his father's feelings; and walked on silently, thinking how glad Mary would be to hear of this expedition, and what a pity it was that the unlucky passage of last August should have interfered with their comfortable friendship. At last the Earl broke silence by saying, 'It is very unfortunate;' and Louis echoed, 'Very.'
'My poor Uncle Dynevor! He was, without exception, the most wrong-headed person I ever came in contact with, yet so excessively plausible and eager that he carried my poor father entirely along with him. Louis! nothing is so ruinous as to surrender the judgment.'
Fully assenting, Louis wondered whether Marksedge would serve no purpose save the elucidation of this truism, and presently another ensued.
'Mischief is sooner done than repaired. As I have been allowing you, there has never been ready money at command.'
'I thought there were no more mortgages to be paid off. The rents of the Fitzjocelyn estate and the houses in the lower town must come to something.'
He was then told how these, with his mother's fortune, had been set apart to form a fund for his establishment, and for the first time he was shown the object of arrangements against which he had often in heart rebelled. His first impulse was to exclaim that it was a great pity, and that he could not bear that his father should have denied himself on his account.
'Do you think these things are sacrifices to me?' said the Earl. 'My habits were formed long ago.'
'Mine have been formed on yours,' said Louis. 'I should be encumbered by such an income as you propose unless you would let me lay it out in making work for the men and improving the estate, and that I had rather you undertook, for I should be certain to do something preposterous, and then be sorry.'
'Mrs. Ponsonby judged rightly. It was her very advice.'
'Then!' cried Louis, as if the deed were done.
'You would not find the income too large in the event of your marriage.'
'A most unlikely event!'
His father glanced towards him. If there had been a symptom of unhappiness, relenting was near, but it so chanced that Marksedge was reigning supreme, and he was chiefly concerned to set aside the supposition as an obstacle to his views. The same notion as James Frost's occurred to the Earl, that it could not be a tenacious character which could so easily set aside an attachment apparently so fervent, but the resignation was too much in accordance with his desires to render him otherwise than gratified, and he listened with complacency to Louis's plans. Nothing was fixed, but there was an understanding that all should have due consideration.
This settled, Louis's mind recurred to the hint which his father had thrown out, and he wondered whether it meant that the present compliance might be further stretched, but he thought it more likely to be merely a reference to ordinary contingencies. Things were far too comfortable between him and his father to be disturbed by discussion, and he might ultimately succeed better by submitting, and leaving facts and candour to remove prejudice.
To forget perplexity in the amusement of a mystification, he brought down his essay, concealing it ingeniously within a review flanked by blue-books, and, when Lord Ormersfield was taking out a pair of spectacles with the reluctance of a man not yet accustomed to them, he asked him if he would like to hear an article on the Police question.
At first the Earl showed signs of nodding, and said there was nothing to the purpose in all the historical curiosities at the outset, so that Louis, alarmed lest he should absolutely drop asleep, skipped all his favourite passages, and came at once to the results of the recent inquiries. The Earl was roused. Who could have learnt those facts? That was telling--well put, but how did he get hold of it. The very thing he had said himself--What Quarterly was it? Surely the Christmas number was not out. Hitherto Louis had kept his countenance and voice, but in an hiatus, where he was trying to extemporize, his father came to look over his shoulder to see what ailed the book, and, glancing upwards with a merry debonnaire face, he made a gesture as if convicted.
'Do you mean that this is your own composition?'
'I beg your pardon for the pious fraud!'
'It is very good! Excellently done!' said Lord Ormersfield. 'There are redundancies--much to betray an unpractised hand--but--stay, let me hear the rest--' Very differently did he listen now, broad awake, attacking the logic of every third sentence, or else double shotting it with some ponderous word, and shaking his head at Utopian views of crime to be dried up at the fountain head. Next, he must hear the beginning, and ruthlessly picked it to pieces, demolishing all the Vehme Gericht and Santissima Hermandad as irrelevant, and, when he had made Louis ashamed and vexed with the whole production, astonishing him by declaring that it would tell, and advising him to copy it out fair with these _little_ alterations.
These _little_ alterations would, as he was well aware, evaporate all the spirit, and though glad to have pleased his father, his perseverance quailed before the task; but he said no more than thank you. The next day, before he had settled to anything, Lord Ormersfield came to his room, saying, 'You will be engaged with your more important studies for the next few hours. Can you spare the paper you read to me last night?'
'I can spare it better than you can read it, I fear,' said Louis, producing a mass of blotted MS in all his varieties of penmanship, and feeling a sort of despair at the prospect of being brought to book on all his details.
His father carried it off, and they did not meet again till late in the day, when the first thing Louis heard was, 'I thought it worth while to have another opinion on your manuscript before re-writing it. I tried to read it to Mrs. Ponsonby, but we were interrupted, and I left it with her.'
Presently after. 'I have made an engagement for you. Lady Conway wishes that you should go to luncheon with her to-morrow. I believe she wants to consult you about some birth-day celebration.'
Louis was much surprised, and somewhat entertained.
'When will you have the carriage?' pursued the Earl.
'Will not you come?'
'No, I am not wanted. In fact, I do not see how you can be required, but anything will serve as an excuse. In justice, however, I should add that our friends at the Terrace are disposed to think well of the younger part of the family.'
Except for the cold constraint of the tone, Louis could have thought much ground gained, but he was sure that his holiday would be damped by knowing that it was conceded at the cost of much distress and uneasiness.
Going to Northwold early enough for a call at No. 5, he was greeted by Mrs. Frost with, 'My dear! what have you been about? I never saw your father so much pleased in his life! He came in on purpose to tell me, and I thought it exceedingly kind. So you took him in completely. What an impudent rogue you always were!'
'I never meant it to go beyond the study. I was obliged to write it down in self-defence, that I might know what he was talking of.'
'I believe he expects you to be even with Sydney Calcott after all. It is really very clever. Where did you get all those funny stories?'
'What! you have gone and read it!'
'Ah, ha! Mrs. Ponsonby gave us a pretty little literary soiree. Don't be too proud, it was only ourselves, except that Mary brought in Miss Conway. Jem tried to read it, but after he had made that Spanish Society into 'Hammer men dead,' Mary got it away from him, and read through as if it had been in print.'
'What an infliction!'
'It is very disrespectful to think us so frivolous. We only wished all reviews were as entertaining.'
'It is too bad, when I only wanted to mystify my father.'
'It serves you right for playing tricks. What have you been doing to him, Louis? You will turn him into a doting father before long.'
'What have you done with Clara?'
'She goes every day to read Italian with Miss Conway, and the governess is so kind as to give her drawing lessons. She is learning far more than at school, and they are so kind! I should hardly know how to accept it, but Jem does not object, and he is really very useful there, spends a great deal of time on the boy, and is teaching the young ladies Latin.'
'They are leaving you lonely in the holidays! You ought to come to Ormersfield, your nephews would take better care of you.'
'Ah! I have my Marys. If I were only better satisfied about the dear old one. She is far less well than when she came.'
'Indeed! Is Mary uneasy?'
'She says nothing, but you know how her eye is always on her, and she never seems to have her out of her thoughts. I am afraid they are worried about Lima. From what Oliver says, I fear Mr. Ponsonby goes on worse than ever without either his family or his appointment to be a restraint.'
'I hope they do not know all! Mary would not believe it, that is one comfort!'
'Ah, Louis! there are things that the heart will not believe, but which cut it deeply! However, if that could be any comfort to them, he wishes them to spare nothing here. He tells them they may live at the rate of five thousand pounds a-year, poor dears. Indeed, he and Oliver are in such glory over their Equatorial steam navigation, that I expect next to hear of a crash.'
'You don't look as if it would be a very dreadful sound.'
'If it would only bring my poor Oliver back to me!'
'Yes--nothing would make Jem so civil to him as his coming floated in on a plank, wet through, with a little bundle in one hand and a parrot in the other.'
Mrs. Frost gave one of her tender laughs, and filled up the picture. 'Jane would open the door, Jane would know Master Oliver's black eyes in a moment--'No, no. _I_ must see him first! If he once looked up I could not miss him, whatever colour he may have turned. I wonder whether he would know me!'
'Don't you know that you grow handsomer every year, Aunt Kitty?'
'Don't flatter, sir.'
'Well, I most go to my aunt.'
He tarried to hear the welcome recital of all the kind deeds of the house of Conway. He presently found Lady Conway awaiting him in the drawing-room, and was greeted with great joy. 'That is well! I hoped to work on your father by telling him I did not approve of young men carrying industry too far--' 'That is not my habit.'
'Then it is your excuse for avoiding troublesome relations! No, not a word! I know nothing about the secret that occupied Isabel at Mrs. Ponsonby's select party. But I really wanted you. You are more au fait as to the society here than the Ponsonbys and Dynevors. Ah! when does that come off?'
'What is to come off?'
'Miss Ponsonby and Mr. Dynevor. What a good creature he is!'
'I cannot see much likelihood of it, but you are more on the scene of action.'
'She could do much better, with such expectations, but on his account I could not be sorry. It is shocking to think of that nice young sister being a governess. I think it a duty to give her every advantage that may tend to form her. With her connexions and education, I can have no objection to her as a companion to your cousins, and with a few advantages, though she will never be handsome, she might marry well. They are a most interesting family. Isabel and I are most anxious to do all in our power for them.'
'Clara is obliged,' said Louis, with undetected irony, but secret wonder at the dexterity with which the patronage must have been administered so as not to have made the interesting family fly off at a tangent.
Isabel made her appearance in her almost constant morning dress of soft dove-coloured merino entirely unadorned, and looking more like a maiden in a romance than ever. She had just left Adeline standing on the steps of a stone cross, exhorting the Provencals to arm against a descent of Moorish corsairs, and she held out her hand to Fitzjocelyn much as Adeline did, when the fantastic Viscount professed his intention of flying instead of fighting, and wanted her to sit behind him on his courser.
Lady Conway pronounced her council complete, and propounded the fete which she wished to give on the 12th of January in honour of Louisa's birthday. Isabel took up a pencil, and was lost in sketching wayside crosses, and vessels with lateen sails, only throwing in a word or two here and there when necessary. Dancing was still, Lady Conway feared, out of the question with Fitzjocelyn.
'And always will be, I suspect. So much for my bargain with Clara to dance with her at her first ball!'
'You like dancing?' exclaimed Isabel, rejoiced to find another resemblance to the fantastic Viscount.
'Last year's Yeomanry ball was the best fun in the world!'
'There, Isabel,' said Lady Conway, 'you ought to be gratified to find a young man candid enough to allow that he likes it! But since that cannot be, I must find some other plan--' 'What cannot be?' exclaimed Louis. 'You don't mean to omit the dancing--' 'It could not be enjoyed without you. Your cousins and friends could not bear to see you sitting down--' Isabel's lips were compressed, and the foam of her waves laughed scornfully under her pencil.
'They must get accustomed to the melancholy spectacle,' said Louis. 'I do not mean to intermit the Yeomanry ball, if it take place while I am at home. The chaperons are the best company, after all. Reconsider it, my dear aunt, or you will keep me from coming at all.'
Lady Conway was only considering of tableaux, and Louis took fire at the notion: he already beheld Waverley in his beloved Yeomanry suit, Isabel as Flora, Clara as Davie Gellatley--the character she would most appreciate. Isabel roused herself to say that tableaux were very dull work to all save the actors, and soon were mere weariness to them. Her stepmother told her she had once been of a different mind, when she had been Isabel Bruce, kneeling in her cell, the ring before her. 'I was young enough then to think myself Isabel,' was her answer, and she drew the more diligently because Fitzjocelyn could not restrain an interjection, and a look which meant, 'What an Isabel she must have been!'
She sat passive while Lady Conway and Louis decked up a scene for Flora MacIvor; but presently it appeared that the Waverley of the piece was to be, according to Louis, not the proper owner of the Yeomanry uniform, but James Frost. His aunt exclaimed, and the rehearsals were strong temptation; but he made answer, 'No--you must not reckon on me: my father would not like it.'
The manful childishness, the childish manfulness of such a reply, were impenetrable. If his two-and-twenty years did not make him ashamed of saying so, nothing else could, and it covered a good deal. He knew that his father's fastidious pride would dislike his making a spectacle of himself, and thought that it would be presuming unkindly on to-day's liberty to involve himself in what would necessitate terms more intimate than were desired.
The luncheon silenced the consultation, which was to be a great secret from the children; but afterwards, when it was resumed, with the addition of James Frost, Fitzjocelyn was vexed to find the tableaux discarded; not avowedly because he excluded himself from a share, but because the style of people might not understand them. The entertainment was to be a Christmas-tree--not so hackneyed a spectacle in the year 1848 as in 1857--and Louis launched into a world of couplets for mottoes. Next came the question of guests, when Lady Conway read out names from the card-basket, and Fitzjocelyn was in favour of everybody, till Jem, after many counter-statements, assured Lady Conway that he was trying to fill her rooms with the most intolerable people in the world.
'My aunt said she wanted to give pleasure.'
'Ah! there's nothing so inconvenient to one's friends as good nature. Who cares for what is shared indiscriminately?'
'I don't think I can trust Fitzjocelyn with my visiting-list just yet,' said Lady Conway. 'You are too far above to be sensible of the grades beneath, with your place made for you.'
'Not at all,' said Louis. 'Northwold tea-parties were my earliest, most natural dissipation; and I spoke for these good people for my own personal gratification.'
'Nay, I can't consent to your deluding Lady Conway into Mrs. Walby.'
'If there be any one you wish me to ask, my dear Fitzjocelyn--' began Lady Conway.
'Oh no, thank you; Jem is quite right. I might have been playing on your unguarded innocence; but I am the worst person in the world to consult; for all the county and all the town are so kind to me, that I don't know whom I could leave out. Now, the Pendragon there will help you to the degree of gentility that may safely be set to consort together.'
'What an unkind fling!' thought Isabel.
Louis took leave, exclaiming to himself on the stairs, 'There! if comporting oneself like a donkey before the object be a token, I've done it effectually. Didn't I know the exclusiveness of the woman? Yet, how could I help saying a word for the poor little Walbys? and, after all, if they were there, no one would speak to them but Aunt Kitty and I. And Isabel, I am sure she scorned the fastidious nonsense; I saw it in her eye and lip.'
After a quarter of an hour spent in hearing her praises from Miss Faithfull, he betook himself to Mrs. Ponsonby's, not quite without embarrassment, for he had not been alone with the mother and daughter since August.
'I am glad you did not come before,' said Mary, heartily; 'I have just done:' and she returned to her writing-table, while her mother was saying, 'We like it very much.'
'You have not been copying that wretched concern!' exclaimed Louis. 'Why, Mary, you must have been at it all night. It is a week's work.'
'Copying is not composing,' said Mary.
'But you have mended it, made it consecutive! If I had guessed that my father meant to trouble any one with it!'
'If you take pains with it, it may be very valuable,' said Mrs. Ponsonby. 'We have marked a few things that you had better revise before it goes to Oakstead.'
'Goes to Oakstead!' said Louis, faintly.
'Your father talks of sending it, to see if Sir Miles does not think it might tell well in one of the Reviews.'
'I hope not. I should lose all my faith in anonymous criticism, if they admitted such a crude undergraduate's omnium gatherum! Besides, what an immense task to make it presentable!'
'Is that the root of your humility?'
'Possibly. But for very shame I must doctor it, if Mary has wasted so much time over it. It does not look so bad in your hand!'
'It struck me whether you had rendered this Spanish story right.'
'Of course not. I never stuck to my dictionary.'
A sound dose of criticism ensued, tempered by repetitions of his father's pleasure, and next came some sympathy and discussion about the farm and Marksedge, in which the ladies took their usual earnest part, and Mary was as happy as ever in hearing of his progress. He said no word of their neighbours; but he could not help colouring when Mary said, as he wished her good-bye, 'We like the party in the House Beautiful so much! Miss Conway is such an acquisition to me! and they are doing all you could ever have wished for Clara.'
Mary was glad that she had said it. Louis was not so glad. He thought it must have been an effort, then derided his vanity for the supposition.
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{
"id": "4235"
}
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16
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THE FRUIT OF THE CHRISTMAS-TREE
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Age, twine thy brows with fresh spring flowers, And call a train of laughing hours; And bid them dance, and bid them sing: And thou, too, mingle in the ring. WORDSWORTH The 12th of January was the last day before James and Louis meant to return to Oxford, Jem taking Clara on from thence to school. It was to be the farewell to Christmas--one much enjoyed in Dynevor Terrace. Fitzjocelyn's absence was almost a relief to Clara; she could not make up her mind to see him till she could hope their last encounter had been forgotten; and in the mean time, her anticipations were fixed on the great 12th. She was aware of what the entertainment would consist, but was in honour bound to conceal her knowledge from Virginia and Louisa, who on their side affected great excitement and curiosity, and made every ostentation of guessing and peeping. Gifts were smuggled into the house from every quarter--some to take their chance, some directed with mottoes droll or affectionate. Clara prepared a few trifles, in which she showed that school had done something for her fingers, and committed her little parcels to her brother's care; and Miss Mercy was the happiest of all, continually knocking at the locked door of the back drawing-room with gilded fir cones, painted banners, or moss birds'-nests, from Miss Salome.
Miss King and Isabel had undertaken the main business. When roused from her pensive stillness, Isabel could be very eager, active, and animated; and she worked with the exhilaration that she could freely enjoy when unrestrained by perceiving that she was wanted to produce an effect. What woman's height and hand could not perform fell to the share of James, who, with his step-ladder and dexterous hands, was invaluable. Merrily, merrily did the three work, laughing over their suspended bonbons, their droll contrivances, or predicting the adaptations of their gifts; and more and more gay was the laugh, the tutor more piquant, the governess more keen and clever, the young lady more vivacious, as the twilight darkened, and the tree became more laden, and the streamers and glass balls produced a more brilliant effect.
Proudly, when the task was accomplished, did they contemplate their work, and predict the aspect of their tinsel and frippery when duly lighted up. Then, as they dispersed to dress, James ran home, and hastily tapped at his sister's door.
'What is the matter?' she cried. 'Have the tassels come off my purse?'
'Nothing of the kind, but--' he came quite in, and looked round restlessly, then hastily said, 'You gave me nothing for Miss Conway.'
'I wished it very much,' said Clara, 'but I could not bear to do anything trumpery for her. Oh, if one could give her anything worth having!'
'Clara, I had thought--but I did not know if you would like to part with it--' 'I had thought of it too,' said Clara; 'but I thought you would not like it to be given away.'
Pulling out a drawer, she opened an odd little box of queer curiosities, whence she took a case containing an exquisite ivory carving, a copy of the 'Madonna della Sedia,' so fine that a magnifier alone could fully reveal the delicacy and accuracy of the features and expression. It was mounted as a bracelet clasp, and was a remnant of poor Mr. Dynevor's treasures. It had been given to Mrs. Henry Frost, and had descended to her daughter.
'Should you be willing?' wistfully asked James.
'That I should! I have longed to give her what she would really care for. She has been so very kind--and her kindness is so very sweet in its graciousness! I shall always be the happier for the very thinking of it.'
'I am glad--' began Jem, warmly; but, breaking off, he added--'This would make us all more comfortable. It would lessen the weight of obligation, and that would be satisfactory to you.'
'I don't know. I like people to be so kind, that I can't feel as if I would pay them off, but as if I could do nothing but love them.'
'You did not imagine that I rate this as repayment!'
'Oh! no, no!'
'No! it is rather that nothing can be too precious--' then pausing--'You are sure you are willing, Clary?'
'Only too glad. I like it to be something valuable to us as well as in itself. If I only had a bit of black velvet, I could set it up.'
In ten minutes, Jem had speeded to a shop and back again, and stood by as Clara stitched the clasp to the ribbon velvet; while there was an amicable dispute, he insisting that the envelope should bear only the initials of the true donor, and she maintaining that 'he gave the black velvet.' She had her way, and wrote, 'From her grateful C. F. D. and J. R. F. D.;' and as James took the little packet, he thanked her with an affectionate kiss--a thing so unprecedented at an irregular hour, that Clara's heart leapt up, and she felt rewarded for any semblance of sacrifice.
He told his grandmother that he had agreed with his sister that they could do no otherwise than present the ivory clasp; and Mrs. Frost, who had no specially tender associations with it, was satisfied to find that they had anything worth offering on equal terms.
She was to be of the party, and setting forth, they, found the House Beautiful upside down--even the Faithfull parlour devoted to shawls and bonnets, and the two good old sisters in the drawing-room; Miss Salome, under the protection of little Louisa, in an easy chair, opposite the folding doors. Small children were clustered in shy groups round their respective keepers. Lady Conway was receiving her guests with the smile so engaging at first sight, Isabel moving from one to the other with stately grace and courtesy, Virginia watching for Clara, and both becoming merged in a mass of white skirts and glossy heads, occupying a wide area. Mrs. Frost was rapturously surrounded by half-a-dozen young men, Sydney Calcott foremost, former pupils enchanted to see her, and keeping possession of her all the rest of the evening. She was a dangerous person to invite, for the Northwold youth had no eyes but for her.
The children were presently taken down to tea in the dining-room by Miss King and Miss Mercy; and presently a chorus of little voices and peals of laughter broke out, confirming the fact, whispered by Delaford to his lady, that Lord Fitzjocelyn had arrived, and had joined the downstairs party.
While coffee went round in the drawing-room, Isabel glided out to perform the lighting process.
'Oh, Mr. Dynevor!' she exclaimed, finding him at her side, 'I did not mean to call you away.'
'Mere unreason to think of the performance alone,' said James, setting up his trusty ladder. 'What would become of that black lace?'
'Thank you, it may be safer and quicker.'
'So far the evening is most successful,' said Jem, lighting above as she lighted below.
'That it is! I like Northwold better than any place I have been in since I left Thornton Conway. There is so much more heartiness and friendliness here than in ordinary society.
'I think Fitzjocelyn's open sympathies have conduced--' Isabel laughed, and he checked himself, disconcerted.
'I beg your pardon,' she said; 'I was amused at the force of habit. If I were to say the Terrace chimneys did not smoke, you would say it was Lord Fitzjocelyn's doing.'
'Do not bid me do otherwise than keep him in mind.'
Down fell the highest candle: the hot wax dropping on Isabel's arm caused her to exclaim, bringing Jem down in horror, crying, 'I have hurt you! you are burnt!'
'Oh no, only startled. There is no harm done, you see,' as she cracked away the cooled wax--'not even a mark to remind me of this happy Christmas.'
'And it has been a happy Christmas to you,' he said, remounting.
'Most happy. Nothing has been so peaceful or satisfactory in my wandering life.'
'Shall I find you here at Easter?'
'I fear not. Mamma likes to be in London early; but perhaps she may leave the school-room party here, as Louisa is gaining so much ground, and that would be a pledge of our return.'
'Too much joy,' said James, almost inaudibly.
'I hope Walter may spend his holidays here,' she pursued. 'It is a great thing for him to be with any one who can put a few right notions into his head.'
Jem abstained from, as usual, proposing Fitzjocelyn for his example, but only said that Walter was very susceptible of good impressions.
'And most heartily we thank you for all you have done for him,' said Isabel, doubting whether Walter's mother appreciated the full extent of it; 'indeed, we have all a great deal to thank you for. I hope my sisters and I may be the better all our lives for the helps and explanations you have given to us. Is that the last candle? How beautiful! We must open.'
'Miss Conway--' 'Yes'--she paused with her hand on the key.
'No, no--do not wait,' taking the key himself. 'Yet--yes, I must--I must thank you for such words--' 'My words?' said Isabel, smiling. 'For thanking you, or being happy here?'
'Both! both! Those words will be my never-failing charm. You little guess how I shall live on the remembrance. Oh, if I could only convey to you what feelings you have excited--' The words broke from him as if beyond his control, and under the pressing need of not wasting the tapers, he instinctively unlocked the door as he spoke, and cut himself short by turning the handle, perhaps without knowing what he was about.
Instantly Lady Conway and Miss King each pushed a folding leaf, Isabel and James drew back on either side, and the spectators beheld the tall glistening evergreen, illuminated with countless little spires of light, glancing out among the dark leaves, and reflected from the gilt fir-cones, glass balls, and brilliant toys.
'Sister! sister!' cried Miss Mercy, standing by Miss Faithfull's chair, in the rear of the throng, and seizing her hand in ecstasy; 'it is like a dream! like what we have read of! Oh, the dear little children! So very kind of Lady Conway! Could you have imagined--?' She quite gasped.
'It is very pretty, but it was a nicer Christmas-tree last year at Lady Runnymede's,' said Louisa, with the air of a critic. 'There we had coloured lamps.'
'Little fastidious puss!' said Louis, 'I thought you keeping in the background out of politeness; but I see you are only blasee with Christmas-trees. I pity you! I could no more be critical at such a moment than I could analyse the jewels in Aladdin's cave.'
'Oh, if you and Miss Faithfull talk, Cousin Fitzjocelyn, you will make it seem quite new.'
'You will deride the freshness of our simplicity,' said Louis, but presently added, 'Miss Salome, have we not awakened to the enchanted land? Did ever mortal tree bear stars of living flame? Here are realized the fabled apples of gold--nay, the fir-cones of Nineveh, the jewel-fruits of Eastern story, depend from the same bough. Yonder lamps shine by fairy spell.'
'Now, Cousin Fitzjocelyn, do you think I suppose you so silly--' 'Soft! The Dryad of the Enchanted Bower advances. Her floating robes, her holly crown, beseem her queenly charms.'
'As if you did not know that it is only Isabel!'
'Only! May the word be forgiven to a sister! Isabel! The name is all-expressive.'
'She is looking even more lovely than usual,' said Miss Faithfull. 'I never saw such a countenance.'
'She has a colour to-night,' added Miss Mercy, 'which does, as you say, make her handsomer than ever. Dear! dear! I hope she is not tired. I am so sorry I did not help her to light the tree!'
'I do not think it is fatigue,' said her sister. 'I hope it is animation and enjoyment--all I have ever thought wanting to that sweet face.'
'You are as bad as my prosaic cousin,' said Louis, 'disenchanting the magic bower and the wood-nymph into fir, wax, and modern young ladyhood.'
'There, cousin, it is you who have called her a modern young lady.'
Before Louisa had expressed her indignation, there was a call for her.
'The Sovereign of the Bower beckons,' said Louis. 'Favoured damsel, know how to deserve her smiles. Fairy gifts remain not with the unworthy.'
As he put her forward, some one made way for her. It was Mary, and he blushed at perceiving that she must have heard all his rhodomontade. As if to make amends, he paused, and asked for Mrs. Ponsonby.
'Much more comfortable to-night, thank you;' and the pleasant, honest look of her friendly eyes relieved him by not reproaching him.
'I wish she were here. It is a prettier, more visionary sight than I could have conceived.'
'I wish she could see it; but she feared the crowd. Many people in a room seem to stifle her. Is Lord Ormersfield here?'
'No, it would not be his element. But imagine his having taken to walking with me! I really think he will miss me.'
'Really?' said Mary, amused.
'It is presumptuous; but he does not see well at night, and is not quite broken in to his spectacles. Mary, I hope you will walk over to see after him. Nothing would be so good for him as walking you back, and staying to dinner with you. Go right into the library; he would be greatly pleased. Can't you make some book excuse? And you have the cottages to see. The people inaugurated the boilers with Christmas puddings.'
'Mr. Holdsworth told us how pleased they were. And the Norrises?'
'Mrs. Norris is delighted; she has found a woman to wash, and says it will save her a maid. The people can get milk now: I assure you they look more wholesome already! And Beecher has actually asked for two more houses in emulation. And Richardson found himself turned over to me!'
'Oh, that's right.'
'I've been at the plans all the afternoon. I see how to contrive the fireplace in the back room, that we could not have in the first set, and make them cheaper, too. My father has really made a point of that old decrepit Hailes being moved from Marksedge; and Mary, he, and Richardson mean Inglewood to be made over to me for good. I am to put in a bailiff, and do as I can with it--have the profits or bear the losses. I think I have an idea--' In spite of her willingness to hear the idea, Mary could not help asking, 'Have you sent off the Police article?'
'Hush, Mary; it is my prime object to have it well forgotten.'
'Oh! did not Sir Miles like it?'
'He said it wanted liveliness and anecdote. So the Santissima Hermandad, and all the extraneous history, were sent to him; and then he was well content, and only wanted me to leave out all the Christian chivalry--all I cared to say--' 'You don't mean not to finish? Your father was so pleased, Isabel so much struck! It is a pity--' 'No, no; you may forgive me, Mary--it is not pure laziness. It was mere rubbish, without the point, which was too strong for the two politicians; rubbish, any way. Don't tell me to go on with it; it was a mere trial, much better let it die away. I really have no time; if I don't mind my own business, I shall be a plucked gosling; and that would go to his, lordship's heart. Besides, I must get these plans done. Do you remember where we got the fire-bricks for the ovens?'
Mary was answering, when Walter came bursting through the crowd. 'Where is he? Fitzjocelyn, it is your turn.'
'Here is a curious specimen for our great naturalist,' said Mrs. Frost, a glow in her cheeks, and her voice all stifled mirth and mischief.
It was a large nest of moss and horsehair, partly concealed under the lower branches, and containing two huge eggs streaked and spotted with azure and vermilion, and a purple and yellow feather, labelled, 'Dropped by the parent animal in her flight, on the discovery of the nest by the crew of H.M.S. Flying Dutchman. North Greenland, April 1st, 1847. Qu. ? Female of Equus Pegasus. Respectfully dedicated to the Right Honourable Viscount Fitzjocelyn.'
'A fine specimen,' said the Viscount at once, with the air of a connoisseur, by no means taken by surprise. 'They are not very uncommon; I found one myself about the same date in the justice-room. I dare say Mr. Calcott recollects the circumstance.'
'Oh, my dear fellow,' exclaimed Sydney, instead of his father; 'you need not particularize. You always were a discoverer in that line.'
'True,' said Louis, 'but this is unique. North Greenland--ah! I thought it was from a Frosty country. Ha, Clara?'
'Not I; I know nothing of it,' cried Clara, in hurry and confusion, not yet able to be suspected of taking liberties with him.
'No?' said Louis, turning about his acquisition; 'I thought I knew the female that laid these eggs. The proper name is, I fancy, Glacies Dynevorensis--var. Catharina--perhaps--' Walter and Louisa had brought their mother to see the nest, the point of which she comprehended as little as they; and not understanding how much amusement was betokened by her nephew's gravity, she protested that none of her party had devised it, nor even been privy to it, and that Mr. Dynevor must bear the blame, but he was very busy detaching the prizes from the tree, and hastily denied any concern with it. Aunt Catharine was obliged to console Lady Conway, and enchant Louis by owning herself the sole culprit, with no aid but Miss Mercy's. Together they had disposed the nest in its right locality, as soon as the Earl's absence was secure.
'I had not courage for it before him,' she laughed. 'As for this fellow, I knew he would esteem it a compliment.'
'As a tribute to his imagination?' said Isabel, who, in her mood of benevolence, could be struck with the happy understanding between aunt and nephew revealed by such a joke, so received.
'It would be a curious research,' said Louis, 'whether more of these nidifications result from over-imagination or the want of it.'
'Often from want of imagination, and no want of cowardice,' said Isabel.
'That sort of nest has not illuminated eggs like these,' said Louis. 'They are generally extremely full of gunpowder, and might be painted with a skull and crossbones. I say, Clara, has Aunt Kitty considered the consequences? She has sacrificed her ostrich eggs! I can never part with these original productions of her genius.'
He exhibited his mare's nest with his own gay bonhommie to all who were curious, and presently, when every one's attention had been again recalled to the wonders which Isabel was distributing, and he had turned aside to dispose of his treasure, he heard a sound of soliloquy half aloud, 'I wonder whether she has it!' from Clara, who stood a little apart.
'What?' asked Louia.
'My ivory clasp with the Madonna,' said Clara. 'Jem and I thought it the only thing worthy of Miss Conway.'
'Hem!' said Louis; 'it is not your fault, Clara; but it would be graceful to learn to receive a favour.'
'A favour, but not a grand thing like this,' said Clara, showing a beautiful little case of working implements.
'Hardly worth, even intrinsically, your mother's bracelet,' said Louis. 'But I am not going to talk treason to the family doctrine, though it is very inconvenient to your friends.'
'Then you think we ought not to have done it?'
'That depends on what I can't decide.'
'What's that?'
'Whether you give it out of love or out of pride.'
'I think we gave it out of one, and excused it by the other.'
'Very satisfactory. To reward you, here is something for you to do. I shall never get at Aunt Kitty to-night. I see the midshipman, young Brewster, will not relinquish her; so will you or will she administer this letter to the Lady of Eachalott?'
'You don't mean that is Tom Madison!' exclaimed Clara. 'Why, it is like copper-plate. No more Fitsgoslings!'
'No, indeed! Is he not a clever fellow? He has just reached the stage of civilization that breaks out in dictionary words. I have been, in return, telling him the story of the Irish schoolmaster who puzzled the magistrate's bench by a petition about a small cornuted animal, meaning a kid. But I should think it would be very edifying to Charlotte to see herself commemorated as the individual at the Terrace, and his grandfather as his aged relative. He sends the old man ten shillings this time, for he is promoted. Don't you think I may be proud of him? Is Mary gone home? She must hear about him.'
As he turned away in search of Mary, Clara felt a soft hand on her shoulder, and Isabel beckoned her to follow into the back drawing-room, where the tree was burnt out and deserted.
'I may thank _you_,' said Isabel, in a low, sweet voice, pressing her hand.
'And Jem,' said Clara; 'he thought of it first.'
'It is the most beautiful Christmas gift; but I do not like for you to part with it, my dear.'
'We both wished it, and grandmamma gave leave. We longed for you to have something we prized like this, for it belonged to my mamma. It is Jem's present too, for he went out and bought the black velvet.'
'Clasp it on for me, dear Clara. There!' and Isabel kissed the fingers which obeyed. 'It shall never leave my arm.'
Clara's face burnt with surprise and pleasure amounting to embarrassment, as Isabel expressed hopes of meeting again, and engaged her to write from school. She looked for her brother to take his share of thanks; but he was determinately doing his duty in cutting chicken and cake for those who desired supper, and he did not come in their way again till all the guests were gone, and good-night and good-bye were to be said at once.
Lady Conway was warm in expressing her hopes that Walter would enjoy the same advantages another holidays, and told Mr. Dynevor she should write to him. But Jem made little answer, nothing like a promise. Clara thought he had become stiff from some unknown affront, perhaps some oppressive present, for he seemed to intend to include all the young ladies in one farewell bow. But Isabel advanced with outstretched hand and flushing cheek, and her murmured 'Thank you' and confiding pressure drew from him such a grasp as could not easily be forgotten.
Clara's heart was all the lighter because she was sure that Fitzjocelyn had forgiven, and, what was more, forgotten. She had spoken naturally to him once more, and was ready for anything now--even though they had missed all confidential discussions upon school.
She gave Charlotte Tom Madison's letter. The little maiden took it, and twirled it about rather superciliously. 'What business had my young Lord,' she thought, 'to fancy she cared for that poor fellow? Very likely he was improved, and she was glad of it, but she knew what was genteel now. Yes, she would read it at once; there was no fear that it would make her soft and foolish--she had got above that!'
|
{
"id": "4235"
}
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