"A fig for Your Excellency," cries the young blackguard. "Who"s who when he"s drunk? As I was a-telling, look you, though the red spattered the bushes, when I run up he"d vanished into air with a flash o" powder from my musket! "Twas by the black arts that nigh hanged him in Boston Town----"
At that, Governor Brigdar claps his hand to the table and swears that he cares nothing for black arts if only the furs can be found.
"The furs--aye," husks Ben, "if we can only find the furs! An our men hold together, we"re two to one agen the Frenchies----"
"Ha," says M. Radisson. "Give you good-morning, gentlemen, and I hope you find yourselves in health."
The two heads flew apart like the halves of a burst cannon-sh.e.l.l.
Thereafter, Radisson kept Ben and Governor Brigdar apart.
Of G.o.defroy and Jack Battle we could learn naught. Le Borgne would never tell what he and M. Picot had seen that night they rescued me from the hill. Whether Le Borgne and the hostiles of the ma.s.sacre lied or no, they both told the same story of Jack. While the tribe was still engaged in the scalp-dance, some one had untied Jack"s bands.
When the braves went to torture their captive, he had escaped. But whither had he gone that he had not come back to us? Like the sea is the northland, full of nameless graves; and after sending scouts far and wide, we gave up all hope of finding the sailor lad.
But in the fort was another whose presence our rough fellows likened to a star flower on the stained ground of some hard-fought battle. After M. Radisson had quieted turbulent spirits by a reading of holy lessons, Mistress Hortense queened it over our table of a Sunday at noon.
Waiting upon her at either hand were the blackamoor and the negress. A soldier in red stood guard behind; and every man, officer, and commoner down the long mess-table tuned his manners to the pure grace of her fair face.
What a hushing of voices and cleansing of wits and disusing of oaths was there after my little lady came to our rough Habitation!
I mind the first Sunday M. Radisson led her out like a queen to the mess-room table. When our voyageurs went upstream for M. Picot"s hidden furs, her story had got noised about the fort. Officers, soldiers, and sailors had seated themselves at the long benches on either side the table; but M. Radisson"s place was empty and a sort of throne chair had been extemporized at the head of the table. An angry question went from group to group to know if M. Radisson designed such place of honour for the two leaders of our prisoners--under lock in the guard-room. M. de Groseillers only laughed and bade the fellows contain their souls and stomachs in patience. A moment later, the door to the quarters where Hortense lived was thrown open by a red-coated soldier, and out stepped M. Radisson leading Hortense by the tips of her dainty fingers, the ebon faces of the two blackamoors grinning delight behind.
You could have heard a pin fall among our fellows. Then there was a noise of armour clanking to the floor. Every man unconsciously took to throwing his pistol under the table, flinging sword-belt down and hiding daggers below benches. Of a sudden, the surprise went to their heads.
"Gentlemen," began M. Radisson.
But the fellows would have none of his grand speeches. With a cheer that set the rafters ringing, they were on their feet; and to Mistress Hortense"s face came a look that does more for the making of men than all New England"s laws or my uncle"s blasphemy boxes or King Charles"s dragoons. You ask what that look was? Go to, with your teasings! A lover is not to be asked his whys! I ask you in return why you like the spire of a cathedral pointing up instead of down; or why the muses lift souls heavenward? Indeed, of all the fine arts granted the human race to lead men"s thoughts above the sordid brutalities of living, methinks woman is the finest; for G.o.d"s own hand fashioned her, and she was the last crowning piece of all His week"s doings. The finest arts are the easiest spoiled, as you know very well; and if you demand how Mistress Hortense could escape harm amid all the wickedness of that wilderness, I answer it is a thing that your townsfolk cannot know.
It is of the wilderness.
The wilderness is a foster-mother that teacheth hard, strange paradoxes. The first is _the sin of being weak_; and the second is that _death is the least of life"s harms_.
Wrapped in those furs for which he had staked his life like many a gamester of the wilderness, M. Picot lay buried in that sandy stretch outside the cave door. Turning to lead Hortense away before Le Borgne and the blackamoor began filling the grave, I found her stonily silent and tearless.
But it was she who led me.
Scrambling up the hillside like a chamois of the mountains, she flitted lightly through the greening to a small open where campers had built night fires. Her quick glance ran from tree to tree. Some wood-runner had blazed a trail by notching the bark. Pausing, she turned with the frank, fearless look of the wilderness woman. She was no longer the elusive Hortense of secluded life. A change had come--the change of the hothouse plant set out to the bufferings of the four winds of heaven to perish from weakness or gather strength from hardship. Your woman of older lands must hood fair eyes, perforce, lest evil masking under other eyes give wrong intent to candour; but in the wilderness each life stands stripped of pretence, honestly good or evil, bare at what it is; and purity clear as the noonday sun needs no trick of custom to make it plainer.
"Is not this the place?" she asked.
Looking closer, from shrub to open, I recognised the ground of that night attack in the woods.
"Hortense, then it was you that I saw at the fire with the others?"
She nodded a.s.sent. She had not uttered one word to explain how she came to that wild land; nor had I asked.
"It was you who pleaded for my life in the cave below my feet?"
"I did not know you had heard! I only sent Le Borgne to bring you back!"
"I hid as he pa.s.sed."
"But I sent a message to the fort----"
"Not to be bitten by the same dog twice--I thought that meant to keep away?"
"What?" asked Hortense, pa.s.sing her hand over her eyes. "Was that the message he gave you? Then monsieur had bribed him! I sent for you to come to us. Oh, that is the reason you never came----"
"And that is the reason you have hidden from me all the year and never sent me word?"
"I thought--I thought--" She turned away. "Ben Gillam told monsieur you had left Boston on our account----"
"And you thought I wanted to avoid you----"
"I did not blame you," she said. "Indeed, indeed, I was very weak--monsieur must have bribed Le Borgne--I sent word again and again--but you never answered!"
"How could you misunderstand--O Hortense, after that night in the hunting-room, how could you believe so poorly of me!"
She gave a low laugh. "That"s what your good angel used to plead," she said.
"Good angel, indeed!" said I, memory of the vows to that miscreant adventurer fading. "That good angel was a lazy baggage! She should have compelled you to believe!"
"Oh--she did," says Hortense quickly. "The poor thing kept telling me and telling me to trust you till I--"
"Till you what, Hortense?"
She did not answer at once.
"Monsieur and the blackamoor and I had gone to the upper river watching for the expected boats----"
"Hortense, were you the white figure behind the bush that night we were spying on the Prince Rupert!"
"Yes," she said, "and you pointed your gun at me!"
I was too dumfounded for words. Then a suspicion flashed to my mind.
"Who sent Le Borgne for us in the storm, Hortense?"
"Oh," says Hortense, "that was nothing! Monsieur pretended that he thought you were caribou. He wanted to shoot. Oh," she said, "oh, how I have hated him! To think--to think that he would shoot when you helped us in Boston!"
"Hortense, who sent Le Borgne and M. Picot to save me from the wolves?"
"Oh," says Hortense bravely, with a shudder between the words, "that was--that was nothing--I mean--one would do as much for anybody--for--for--for a poor little stoat, or--or--a caribou if the wolves were after it!"
And we laughed with the tears in our eyes. And all the while that vow to the dying adventurer was ringing like a faint death toll to hope. I remember trying to speak a grat.i.tude too deep for words.
"Can--I ever--ever repay you--Hortense?" I was asking.
"Repay!" she said with a little bitter laugh. "Oh! I hate that word repay! I hate all give-and-take and so-much-given-for-so-much-got!"
Then turning to me with her face aflame: "I am--I am--oh--why can"t you understand?" she asked.