"I married madame as soon as I discovered. Monsieur, you are of her family. I can a.s.sure you that I have shown your cousin all the respect and consideration in my power."
He looked at me as if I were some smirking carpet knight who prated of conventions when a man was dying.
"Where is she?"
"In my camp, monsieur."
"Take me to her."
"Monsieur, I must refuse."
He opened his mouth with a look that cursed me, but before the words came he thought twice and changed his front. He spoke calmly. "I am her guardian and her cousin. I was her intended husband. You are a gentleman. I ask you to bring me to my cousin, monsieur."
His tone of calm possession fired me, I remembered what he was, and I enumerated his t.i.tles in order.
"Yes. You are the guardian who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,--abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you?
You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her in the future, monsieur."
The great face turned yellow to the eyes. "She told you this?"
"I am no mind reader, monsieur."
And then he turned away. I took one glimpse of his face and knew it was not decent to look a second time. He had done a hideous thing, but he was having a hideous punishment. Nature had formed him for a proud man, and he had lived arrogantly, secure of homage. I wondered now that he could live at all.
And so I went to work at the canoe, and waited till he should turn to me. When he did it was with a child"s plea for pity, and the abjectness of his tone was horrible, coming from a man of his girth and power.
"You might have done the same thing yourself, monsieur."
I bowed. I could not but toss him that bone of comfort, for it was the truth. Sometimes a spring snaps suddenly in a man, and he becomes a brute. How could I boast that I would be immune?
"But I would have shot myself the moment after," I said.
He had regained his level. "Then you would have been a double coward.
I shall do better."
"You think to reinstate yourself?"
"I know that I shall reinstate myself. Monsieur, I throw myself upon your courtesy. I ask to be taken to my cousin."
"No, monsieur. I follow my wife"s wishes."
"I loved her, monsieur."
My pity of the moment before was gone like vapor. I looked up from my canoe, and took the man"s measure. "I think not. You loved something, I grant. Her wit, perhaps, her money, the pleasure she gave your epicure"s taste. But you did not love her, the woman. My G.o.d, if you loved her how could you endure to scatter her likeness broadcast among the savages as you did? To make that profile, that mouth, that chin, the jest and property of a greasy Indian! No, you shall not see my wife, monsieur."
He changed no line at my outburst. "Then I shall follow by force. I shall sit here till you move, monsieur."
I shrugged. "A rash promise. Are your provisions close at hand?"
He looked at me steadfastly. "Then you absolutely refuse to take me to her?"
"I refuse."
"Yet I shall reach her."
I took moss from my pocket and calked a seam with some precision. I did not speak.
"You think that I cannot reach her?"
I smiled. There was a womanish vein in the man that he should press me in this fashion for a useless answer. I began to see his weakness as well as his obvious strength. I waited till he asked yet again.
"You think that I shall not be able to reach your wife, monsieur?"
And then I shrugged and examined him over my pipe-bowl. "Yes, you will reach her, I think. You have a certain persistence that often wins small issues,--seldom large ones. But I shall not help you."
"I shall stay here till you go."
"Then we shall be companions for some time. May I offer you tobacco, monsieur?"
He smiled, though wryly and against his will. It was plain that we were taking a certain saturnine enjoyment out of the situation. We could hate each other well, and we were doing it, but we were both starved for men"s talk,--the talk of equals.
"It seems a pity to detain you," he mused. "You are obviously on business. When I came up behind you I thought that I had never seen a man work in such a frenzy of haste. There was sweat on your forehead."
I waved my pipe at him. I had the upper hand, and I felt cruelly jovial. "It was haste to meet you," I a.s.sured him. "I missed you in the fog, and feared you would reach camp before me."
"You feared me, monsieur?"
I felt an unreasoning impulse to be candid with him. The strange, choking terror had swept back at that instant, and again it had me by the throat. Yet here sat the cause of my terror before me, and he was in my power.
"I feared your Indians." I spoke gravely. "Handle those Hurons carefully, monsieur. It is a tricky breed."
"But I have no"---- He stopped, and looked at me strangely. "What made you think that I was near?"
"For one thing I heard your axe yesterday."
"But yesterday I was five leagues from here."
I whistled through my teeth. I hate a useless lie. "I heard your axe," I reiterated. "This morning you and your men pa.s.sed me in the fog."
He stared at me, then at the forest. "Monsieur, I have no men!"
"What?"
"I came alone."
"Monsieur, you are lying."
"It is you who are mad. Take your hands away!"