Four years later, and summer once more. Again it is in a suburban garden, not a very extensive one, but nicety kept; inclosed by tall trees and dense shrubbery on every side, and disclosing nothing of what may stand beyond, but here and there the corner of a chimney intruding its morsel of red amongst the sunny green of the tree-tops, and the golden cross on the neighbouring steeple soaring over all, and shining down its benediction on the peace below.
The grass is as short, soft, and green as constant mowing and sprinkling and warmth can make it. The flower-beds are masses of brilliant colour, and in the centre stands the house, a tin-roofed wooden cottage painted in the whitest white, relieved by vividly green Venetians; a broad verandah round the whole, windows descending to the floor, and above, small casements peering out through the shining tin, each with its Venetian thrown open to admit the breeze which comes up at the decline of day. The effect is cool, and home-like, notwithstanding the keenness of the colours, and quite other than that of the raw-toned packing-boxes in which so many an American is condemned to pass the night, and from which he is in so great a hurry to escape in the morning. It may be merely a peculiarity in the pitch of a French Canadian roof, or it may be some spiritual association which lingers about the work of these first settlers and oldest inhabitants; but there is a personality, permanence, and history about the newest and frailest of their structures which is wanting in the buildings of their English speaking neighbours, even when they give permanence to vulgar commonplace by embodying it in brick or stone.
The pillars of the verandah are garlanded with roses--pink, crimson, white, and creamy yellow--blooming profusely, but, to judge from the ruin of shed petals scattered on the ground, soon to cease. Already, however, clematis--white, purple, blue--has begun to appear and will be ready to catch up the song of the roses, though in a minor key, so soon as their colour harmonies shall fade out. Butterflies are fluttering in the scented air, and a humming bird flits here and there where the flowers are thickest.
In a garden seat is Mary--no longer Herkimer, but Selby, now--and at her feet is a child, something more than a year old, who rolls and kicks upon the grass, crowing and babbling the while in a language which only mothers understand. Mary looks no older than she did in her brother's sick-room; fresher, perhaps, and fuller of harmonious life, as well may happen where the desires were reasonable and are all fulfilled. She is mistress of her own life, and of his in whom she trusts, as well as of that other at her feet, in whom his and hers are united and bloom anew; and as for the life, she would not wish it to be other than it is, even if it were in her power to change it. She is at work upon some small matter of muslin and lace which busies her fingers, while it leaves her thoughts free to wander; and their wanderings are among pleasant places, to judge by her smile and the big full breath of utter content.
The winter which was coming on when we saw Gerald last proved more than his enfeebled system could bear up against; he died before it was out; and Mary, feeling that her duty at home was accomplished, and seeing no good reason to sacrifice herself to the family prejudices, took her fate in her own hands and married the man of her choice.
"And it has all turned out so beautifully," she was saying to herself with a well-pleased sigh, when the click of the gate latch roused her from her reverie. It was Selby with his roll of music. She rose to meet him, and they made the round of their domain together, observing what new buds had opened since yesterday, and telling each other the events of the day.
"I heard a man down town say that your nephew Ralph is succeeding most wonderfully since he dropped the law and turned broker."
"I am glad of that, George. Poor Ralph! It was hard upon him the way Gerald seemed to take him up at first--sending him down to live upon the property at Natchez, and letting him expect to inherit it--and then to recall him and drop him so suddenly. He refused to see him even, when he came home. Judith says it was Colonel Considine set him against Ralph, to make him leave everything to me. But I do not think that. I always found Colonel Considine 'very much of a gentleman,' to use his own expression--a little high-backed and tiresome, no doubt, but incapable of a shabbiness like that. What good would it have done him my getting everything, considering how little we saw or cared for each other?"
"Speak for yourself, Mary. I am not so sure that Considine's interest in you was slight. From little things you have said I suspect--Nay, never blush for that, dearest, though the crimson is infinitely becoming--Having gained the prize I am not churl enough to resent another's having wished for it. Indeed, knowing as I do now how much he has missed, I could feel sorry for him, and I cannot but respect his good taste. I really could not believe that he attempted to undermine Ralph in his uncle's favour; a thing, by-the-way, which Ralph, according to those who know him best, is well able to do for himself; he has so many crooked little ways, and is proud of them, and careless about concealment, because I suppose it does not strike him that they can shock people, or are at all out of the way--obtuseness of moral perception, I fancy, it might be called."
"And yet, George, he was the only one of the family who did not oppose our marriage, and who has not given me up utterly, even since. Surely that shows a good heart. I, at least, shall always think kindly of Ralph for that, if for nothing else."
"My good innocent darling! Do you not see that that manœuvre alone, if there were nothing else, would stamp the man as selfish and a schemer? Remember the terms of your brother's will. He names you as his heiress, but he provides against contingencies which he fears may arise. He does not leave the property to you, but to Jordan the notary, and Considine, as trustees. In case you married Considine the trust was at an end, and everything passed to you at once. If you did not, all was to be sold and the money invested in Canada bank-stock and other securities which he named. You were to have the interest while you remained single or married with the approval of Mr. Jordan, in accordance with written instructions left in his hands. If you married contrary to these instructions, however, you were to receive nothing. The interest and dividends were to be re-invested as they fell due, and at the end of twenty years from your brother's death the whole is to be divided among your children, share and share alike; and in case you have none it is to go to Ralph's boy. Everything is tied up with only an annuity of a thousand dollars each to his three sisters and his brother. Now! Do you recognize the true inwardness of Ralph's amiability?"
"And pray, sir," cried Mary, drawing back with eyes wide open, "How come you to know all this? I would have bitten my tongue out sooner than tell you. It seems so ungenerous in Gerald to have treated you so."
"It shows the generosity of Gerald's sister, and that is all I care for. But often, I will own it, my conscience has reproached me with depriving you of your splendid inheritance; only, we are so happy here; and if love can make up for money--if my love----"
"Hush, George! I have all I want--more, I think sometimes, than should fall to one woman's share--and I wonder if it can last. But who told you about the will?"
"Who but your sister Judith!"
"She? I did not think you knew her; and she spoke so unkindly when I proposed to bring and introduce you. You surprise me."
"Ah! Miss Judy is a woman of surprises--a woman of energy who does not stick at trifles; and she is a diplomatist. She would not let you introduce me, that would have been yielding you a point; but she could find me out for herself when she wished to speak to me. That was on what she considered business, and did not oblige her to know me next time we met. It would have forcedmeto knowherafterwards, if she had wished it; but that is nothing. Where would be the gain in being a lady, if rules worked both ways? Miss Judy found me out, and requested a few minutes' private conversation in the most gracious way possible. She apologized profusely for the intrusion, with quite a pretty warming of the complexion and an engaging little twitter behind her glove tips. Ass that I was, I grew red like a lobster all over my face, and my heart thumped against my ribs like a smithy hammer. I imagined your family were relenting towards me--that piety and true principle had overcome in the second Miss Herkimer her disapproval of our attachment, and that she had come to tell me so. I could have knelt down and kissed her hand, so overcome was I with grateful joy. It was well I did not. The group would have been too ridiculous. Miss Judy appealed to my feelings as a gentleman and a man of honour 'not to ruin the prospects of her sweet young sister;' that was her phrase, and she rendered it in a fine adagio manner, accompanied by a tremolo of her crumpled pocket-handkerchief, which did her artistic instinct the greatest credit, and really made the little petition seem both reasonable and affecting. Judy would have succeeded on the stage, Mary, I do believe, if they had put her in training early."
"George, you are profane. It sounds ribald to speak of serious people in that way."
"Judy and the playhouse, eh? Itisa little incongruous, I admit; but which has most right to resent the juxtaposition we need not stop to inquire. Miss Judith told me you had come into a large fortune, and your family were anxious about your matrimonial prospects, so many swells were your friends, and you were so highly connected. There was at least one general officer and a captain of dragoons, besides many more; but whether they wanted to marry you, or were only your grandfather's cousins, I did not quite catch. You see my feelings were a little tumultuous, like those of the man stepping on board a steamboat to meet his sweetheart, when he misses the plank and drops into the water. I had a feeling of cold bath all over, and was cross, I dare say; at least I did not respond to Miss Judy's condescensions as she had expected. At once she changed her tone, drawing herself up and looking severely superior. It was scarcely conceivable, she told me with dignified coldness, that I could seriously have expected anything more than a little notoriety would result from my appearing in public conversing with her sister, but if I cherished any delusion on the subject, it was for my good that she should speak plainly, and as a Christian she saw it her duty to do so. It was out of the question, she told me, that you should marry a man in my position, and one who was not a gentleman. This to me, whose gentlemanly feelings she had just been appealing to! It sent the blood tingling down to my fingertips, and revived me after thedoucheof what she had been saying before. I told her these were matters I declined to discuss with a lady whom I had not the honour of being acquainted with, and that while I enjoyed the privilege of your friendship, none but yourself should dictate to me the terms. Then she pulled out a paper which she said was a copy of your brother Gerald's will, and another, the private instructions he had left with Jordan. She insisted on reading them both to me, word by word, and was especially emphatic in her rendering of the instructions in which I am mentioned by name as a person you were not to marry."
"I know, George; and I think it was cruel in Gerald to make such a stipulation. However, it does not matter. I did not want the money, and you do not grudge to earn money for us both; and what do we want which we have not got?"
"True, my darling; and after all, your dividends which fell due before you disobeyed your kinsman's commands by marrying me have bought us this cosey little home, so you did not come to me a penniless bride after all. Talking of these things, by-the-way, reminds me--Did you observe Considine's name in the war news this morning? He is a general now. Why, Mary, you might have been one of their great ladies down there, if you had chosen!"
"But I did not choose; and I question if a general's lady down there has much to congratulate herself on. Grant is in Memphis, I see, and steadily working southwards. The negroes on the plantations are in a ferment, and Mrs. Dunwiddie, the refugee who is staying with Mrs. Brown, and called here to-day, says the boxes of silver spoons and candlesticks the Yankee officers are sending home to their friends by express are more than the Express Company's car will carry, and they talk of requisitioning a gunboat to carry their loot North to Cincinnati. I should not have liked to ride with my plate and valuables in an ambulance in the rear of even a husband's column. But is it not fortunate that Gerald's property was realized, and the money received safely in Canada before these troubles began? You and I may not be the richer for it, but think of Edith, the little elf; what a sum it will be when she is old enough to receive it!"
"Over a million of dollars. Far too much for a girl to have. Let us hope she may have brothers and sisters to share it with. But where, at the same time, have you left this great heiress? I have not had a chance yet to give her a kiss."
"I called Lisette to come for her when you came in. Ah! There she is, among the raspberry bushes--ruining her white frock with berry juice, I'll be bound, for it is Cato who is carrying her. See how she clutches his curly wool while he picks fruit for her. Her tugging must be quite sore, but he seems positively to enjoy it, he is so fond of her."
"And well he may. Have you forgot Judith's and Ralph's attempt to 'realize' him when his master died?--to huddle him over to Buffalo and sell him into slavery again. Miss Judith thought she could do so much good with the money, and Ralph encouraged her, and undertook to arrange the transaction on the American side, when he would quietly have pocketed the money, I make no doubt. If you had not interfered and explained things to the poor boy he certainly would have fallen into their trap, and been disposed of for cash down. He is the only decent nigger I ever saw, and the only one who could have been so imposed on. Oh, yes! He would do anything for you or the child."
"Dinner will be on the table almost at once, George. Come in and get ready."
"Ah, yes! Dinner and something cool, after the long broiling day. By-and-by, when the candles are lit, and the moths and beetles come droning in from the darkness to singe their wings in the flame, we will have music and a little singing. Some of those dear old songs by the masters we used to revel in long ago. Haydn and the rest. Such as 'Gra-a-aceful partner.'"
"Quite so, your highness. That I may have to respond 'Spouse adorèd,' my most sovereign lord and master! Ha, ha, ha! What it is to be a lord of creation! Meanwhile, there is the bell. Hurry to your room."
The hour which saw Mary Selby thus lapping herself in her simple joys, was the same which witnessed the brewing of the storm destined to wreck and scatter them. A premonition must have been upon her spirits--that impalpable tremor and exhilaration preceding a catastrophe which whets the perceptions to intenser enjoyment before the destroying assault, like advancing fire which illumines, expands, and glorifies ere it leaps on its prey and turns it into smoke and ashes. It is certain at least that her spirits overstepped the limit of their tranquil wont. She turned over the piles of music with her husband in search of something to sing, but the measured graces of the older works were all too serious for her mood.
"Your masters are prosy, George," she cried; "I could not settle down to sing them to-night. Let us have that new duet from the 'Grand Duchesse.'"
"From Bach to Offenbach," he answered. "What a leap! You really are exuberant to-night. What next?"
Five or six miles away, on the lake-like broadening of the river which stretches upward from Lachine, a canoe was drifting under the lee of the wooded islands, and in it sat Ralph Herkimer. Remaining in town through the summer to watch the fluctuations of the gold-room--it was during the American war--he betook himself each afternoon to Lachine, to exchange the dust of streets for the breezy coolness of the water. He had been fishing, and Paul, an Indian from the Indian village of Caughnawaga near by, managed the canoe. His fishing had not prospered. It seemed indifferent to him, indeed, whether he got "bites" or not, but still from time to time he made a cast of the line, with his eyes brooding on the water where the slackened current drifted lazily by, with its rhythmic ripples flickering in the reddening light. The sun went down behind heavy banks of cloud, and the grey twilight stole silently up with that listening stillness which makes audible the murmur of the stream, a sound unnoticed in the garish hurry of noon when the world is vocal with a hundred noises, but heard at eve when other things with life have sunk to sleep.
The canoe hung idly among the gathering shadows of the shore where the waters were black and oily in the shelter of the wooded islands; but Ralph took no heed of the twilight closing in. The coolness, the drowsy movement, and the murmur soothed him, and his thoughts flowed freely in their wonted channels. They were like the streams we read of which run over golden sands, for they were all about money, shares, stocks, margins, shorts, longs, bulling and bearing the market, with sunny visions of a hundred per cent. glittering remotely, like islands of the blest, and with banks of contingency drifting in between. Then his memory wandered to the fortune he had missed, and which should surely have been left to him, his father's only son, and the only male shoot of the family tree. To think of so much money being deliberately left past him!---tied up for twenty years to wait for heirs unborn at the time of Gerald's death. He snorted and moved restlessly in his seat as he thought of it, till the jerking of his limbs disturbed the unstable equilibrium of the canoe, and he only composed and controlled himself in time to avoid a ducking from the rolling over of the lightly-poised craft. Paul raised his hand and caught the water with his paddle at the same instant, relapsing into his impassive wont so soon as the accident was averted.
"Too bad!" muttered Ralph, when the disturbance of his nerves had subsided, and his thoughts fell back into their channel. "If the old man would none of me personally, there was my boy, and he bears his name and is a Herkimer--nearer to him, surely, than the music master's brat; and she a girl, too, as it turns out!" Then his thoughts grew deep again--sank into silence, as the rivers in a limestone country disappear into the ground, and thread mysterious miles through caves of night and blackness.
He whipped the waters with his line, letting it drift anon and forgetting to draw it in even when an infatuated bass caught hold and jerked and struggled till he got away again, and even the apathetic Paul looked up surprised; but then, the ways of the pale faces are not as those of the red man, so he merely grunted, and became quiescent again as before.
"Too bad!" Ralph muttered again. "Only a life between my boy and a million!--it will be nearer three millions by the end of the twenty years--just one life between my Gerald and all that; and what a life! Only a year old--incapable of knowing anything about it, or taking any satisfaction out of it. A girl, too, at that. Child of an organ-grinder. Nobody worth knowing will ever care to know her. Of what use can a million of dollars be to such as she?" Here with a groan and a snort the black waters of unwholesome thought sunk down again out of sight, and out of ken of the thinker, if that were possible, for--under the devil's guidance shall we call it?--one will sometimes avert the eyes from the working and festering of his own soul with a sense of conventional shame (hypocrisy is like the polar frosts which strike a yard or two down into the ground), and still with the back turned as it were to the evil thought, as a man must continue to do within himself if he would retain his own good opinion, there will be a furtive peering glance cast down and backward into the deeper depths, awaiting till some deeper down conscience is overcome, which is not the admitted self at all, yet the vanquishment of which will be so good an excuse for dropping the moral barriers in the upper stratum of admitted consciousness. To that wave of unstemmable temptation, a cyclone as it were to which nature in her strength succumbs, and the best of men may yield, lifting their heads again after it, like palm trees when the tempest has passed over, and saying, "A storm; a convulsion beyond human might to withstand; for yielding to that, who can be blamed? Let us spread our draggled plumage wide to dry. The gale is over, and we shall soon be as honorable as before."
Not that Ralph could be called a hypocrite in the vulgar sense. For why? He troubled himself little about morals of any kind, that not being, as he said, his particular "fad." But there is a righteousness which is not ecclesiastical. There are decencies of life for us all, and a standard of right and wrong, which it isbaseto contravene even when we put on speculative airs and question the Church's teachings. Right is always right, and wrong wrong, decency decent, and baseness contemptible, even if there were no God in heaven, and no account to render at the last day; and there are thoughts which a man must turn his back on when they pass through his mind, if he would continue to enjoy his own respect.
There is a way of seeing sidewise, however, when the eyes are averted--a policy of reconciliation between doing and eschewing, when deeds at once vile and profitable are under consideration--and I fear me much this luckless Ralph Herkimer had found out the trick of it.
His thoughts, at all events, sank down deep into those sunless channels where even he himself declined wittingly to follow them though keeping watch. He whipped the water more briskly than before, and stared intently at the end of his line; but somehow he did not lose the thread of his reflections; he kept on thinking all the time and even with more and more intentness, though still he made pretence to himself of ignoring the whole of the deep-down discussion--till it was finished, that is--then he succumbed, as who may not, under sufficient temptation? It is a question of price or number. Ralph yielded before the flashing glory ofmillions of dollars!So Danæ may have stretched her arms, erewhile so chaste and cold, to welcome Jove when drest in that disguise he sought the mercenary maid. Was not gold divine? And has it not continued ever since to be the same? Even Miss Judy can appraise to a cent the good to be achieved with part in saving souls, and still leave unexpressed the balance--the pride and finery which what remains will bring the priests and priestesses of Goody.
Millions of dollars! That was the burden and refrain which repeated itself over and over in Ralph's mind; and it ought by right to be his. Was not he grandson of the father of this childless Gerald who had made the money? The only grandson too, and the only person through whom future generations of Herkimers could connect themselves with this fortune? And Gerald to pass him over! Gerald who talked so much about Shropshire, and all the rest of it, things of which he (Ralph) knew nothing--old Uncle Gerald who would not hear, even, of Aunt Mary's marrying a music master. That the old man's money should be tied up for twenty years and then handed over to this very music master's brats. Gerald could not have meant it; notwithstanding the little unpleasantness which occurred when he (Ralph) returned from Natchez, and Gerald refused to admit him to his presence. The bequest must have been merely a threat which the imprudent old man had supposed so terrible that nobody would brave it. If he could have dreamed that Mary would defy him, and marry all the same, he would have made a different disposition of his property altogether. What he meant was to go on governing his relations after death as he had ruled them while in life.
There seemed at the moment a pathos to this hard and worldly-minded Ralph, swinging and oscillating silently in the fading light, with air and tinted greyness all around, and only the heaving, quivering reflections upon which he swung beneath; there seemed a pathos in it, and he felt a sympathy with the vanished and disappointed maker of the fortune, or rather with the straying misdirected wealth. If he had lived, how different all would have been; and Ralph looked out into the empty evening air, feeling as if he might catch some shadowy glimpse of a disembodied presence, which would look on him friendly-wise, and which he would have greeted--oh, so reverently!--the revisiting shadow of a millionaire, come back regretfully to make amends to an ill-used relative whom the glamour of life and the flesh had led him to misjudge. Ralph felt he could meet his uncle in a fitting spirit, friendly, forgiving, and open to any suggestions the other state might have enlightened him to make; for was he not doing his best to remedy the unfortunate and injudicious dispositions of the will? Had he not already taken the best advice in the province to remedy them, and been told that the will was good, sure, fast, and without flaw--that it would stand, and there was no remedy?
He peered far off into the shadows, and around on either hand. There was nothing but a gradual failing in the light--neither sound nor vision--only, over against him, let the canoe turn as it might, there sat the Indian Paul, an image brown and still, with dull, quiescent eyes, gazing into nowhere, ready at a moment to flash into fire and life, but absent until wanted; plainer than the unseen vision in his thoughts, yet less to be understood--a mute and dusky image of the unknowable. The dark unwinking eyes gleamed with no thought or intelligence; they looked out seemingly beyond, and burned, or rather smouldered, like coals abstracted from the nether fire, awaiting the gust of passion to rouse the slumbering blaze. Black like the mirrors used by necromancers, they showed back, when he looked in them, his own soul stripped of conventional trappings, looking out of them into himself, and seeming to have gathered active evil in their dusky depths--a wish to guide the dubious hand of Fate which deals the cards promiscuously as though her eyes were bandaged, and influence the falling of the aces and kings, just one place now and then to the right or left. We would all like to do that, if we could--just a little--and bring out more clearly as we think, the poetical justice of Time; but it comes right in the end, of itself, without our help, and "if it tarry," as the Prophet says, "wait for it;" it is for the best.
Ralph is impatient, however; and it is not, besides, poetic justice that he is thinking of. Nothing so abstract. It is money, good and lawful coin of the realm, and it is himself and his children, he thinks, who should have it. Gerald, too, he takes it, having attained to that clearer insight which is gained beyond the grave, must wish it likewise, and if the inheritance under that most pernicious will can be turned aside, he feels that he will be fulfilling the present and maturer wishes of the testator. The law may say otherwise; but what of the law? There is a higher law! We have all heard of it, though generally, let us hope, when the issue was unconnected with the possession of dollars. Gerald must have heard of the higher law. Here was a case involving money, and when one comes to money what is more sacred? The forger "gets twenty years" for his crime against property; the culpable homicide five.Hisfault is only against life, and by good fortune he may escape with a rebuke from the court.
Ralph had been meditating and considering, calmly, earnestly, and at length, in a way he was not accustomed to consider, and out here amid evening's impressive silence, where the brooding peace suggested presences far enough removed at other times in the common hubbub of life; and he felt--what? That he must not give in, or acquiesce in a fiddler's children getting all that money!
"The higher fitness" was he to call it?--and old Gerald himself, who must be near, he was sure, though he could not gain speech of him--must disapprove the misapplication of so many dollars. But how to remedy that ill-judged will? If Mary Herkimer, it said, should so far forget herself as to marry the organist, then the money was to remain accumulating in Jordan's hands for twenty years, and after that was to be paid to her children, secured only against the organist by the provision that in case they died unmarried it should come to the children of Ralph. And Mary had a child. But the child might die. A tremor passed through him at the idea. Or how would it be, he set himself to consider, if the child were lost? Children do get lost sometimes, and he raised himself in the canoe to shake off any oppressiveness that might attach to the idea. Suppose the child were lost--one may innocently suppose anything--suppose it could not be found, and neverwerefound. What then? After a time it would be unreasonable to keep the next in succession out of his property; and this next--his blood tingled to think of it--was his own boy Gerald, a quiet, gentle little boy, such as strangely sometimes is given to an unscrupulous father, as if to try how far he will venture to use the facile tool. If everhisGerald fell heir to property, Ralph made sure of being able to dispose of it; it seemed to him that it would be like money settled on his wife, which he could still use, though no creditor could lay hands on--a cake quite different from that in the children's proverb, which one can both eat and have at the same time.
But at present, to arrange for Mary's child getting--lost, seemed the pressing question. There would be time enough to influence his boy's plastic mind afterwards.
The infant's plastic mind need not be taken into account, the infant being only a year old. There were no impressions inscribed on it so far, and it would be some time yet before it acquired any. "Get it away now," he told himself, "and it can do nothing for its own restoration. In a week or two it will have forgotten its mother and there will be no troublesome memories in after life tempting it to suspect and try to unravel a mystery in its fate. Yet how, and through whom, to manage it?" His eyes wandered questioningly over the extent of waters, heaving with regulated swell, suggestive of life and personality and thought; but never an answer came back to him out of the sullen grey. His eye swept the horizon and the distant shore, and at last it rested on the apathetic face of his companion; Still as a mask, and showing not a sign of what might be behind, any more than the swaying tide on which they hung betrayed the mysteries of the pool beneath. The man's long straight hair, and the swarthy skin suggestive of a life apart from civilization, could not but call up the wish that the child could become of these. Wooden, hard, and cold, with his bead-like eyes half closed, were the little one in hands like his it would be as safe as if it were in another planet; thinking such thoughts as it must, in Iroquois, understanding Canadian French, and with only enough English to beg or trade with strangers. Paul he knew as restless, and in some sort a vagabond, attending those who hired him on fishing or hunting expeditions, at times joining the Governor of Hudson's Bay as a canoe-man, on his journeys to Fort William, or wandering on the Ottawa from one Indian settlement to another. If he would only undertake to superintend the fortunes of this inconvenient infant, it would become a waif indeed, and lost beyond restoration.
Ralph sighed with profound relief as the idea passed through his mind. There had been another shadowy suggestion present there all the afternoon, which he had been contemplating as it were with averted eyes, shuddering to consider or reduce to shape, yet refusing to dismiss it, harbouring it as one may an outlaw, whom it would be confusion to acknowledge as a guest. If Paul would undertake the business, the child might live out its life as a squaw among the wigwams of the upper Ottawa, without troubling any one. Exposure to the weather would bronze her to the hue of the other children of the wilderness; and if not, there are few bands now-a-days in which there are not half-breeds, proving that all men are of one blood, and that time and circumstances alone are needed to blend the races into a common stream. How infinitely more satisfactory this would be than any fatal accident which could be devised! Yes! it must be done, and Ralph looked up to his companion and in his most friendly tone said,--"Paul."
Instantly the bead-like eyes awoke and turned upon him, sharp and interrogative. The propitiatory modulation had not escaped the delicate ear, bred from infancy to catch and interpret the faintest whisper of the forest--the rustle of a leaf disturbed by passing game, or the stroke of a wing raising eddies in the stagnant air. Since Paul had grown to be a man whiskey and dollars had become the game of his eagerest pursuit, and the mood of the white man he served for the time was the hunting ground where these were to be run down. That something was wanted of him he knew by the extra friendliness of tone. What Englishman having hired him would speak so softly if he did not want something beyond the stipulated services, something of value, and something which he wished to gain cheaply?
"Ouff," was his answer, dubiously interrogative, and altogether non-committal as to whether he would be interested in what was to follow.
"Have you got children?"
"No," with a slight head-shake.
"Would you not like to have one?"
"Papoose come plenty soon."
"Then you have a wife."
"Got squaw;" but still he looked out impassively over the water.
"Would she like to keep a child for me? do you think?--good pay, you know."
"Pay-Ouff?" The words was clearly interrogative now, and the beady eyes returned from their wandering, and settled on the speaker.
"A healthy child twelve months old--would make a lusty squaw. She can make anything of it she likes. No questions will be asked, you know."
"Yours?"
"Not exactly. But I have an interest in the child."
"How much money?"
"Fifty dollars, as soon as she has done the job."
The beady eyes kindled into animation, and the lips grew moist, but the Indian sat motionless as before, and waited in silence for what was to come.
"She will have totakethe child, you know. It will not be hard for her to get it at this time of year, when the nurse is out of doors with it most of the time; on the steps, at the garden gate, or down the street. She can easily take it away from the nurse, a little slip of a French girl. A strong Indian woman could easily knock her down and run away with the child under her blanket. Only she must not be caught or the child brought back. You must send her to some reservation far away--up West, say--the farther West the better. I will pay as soon as she gets clear off. But you must not mix me up in the thing, mind that! That is why I offer to pay so much for the job."
"Much for job? Ouff. Le Père Théophile--the judge court--prison long time. Ouff!" and he shook his head slowly.
"You must send her where the curé's admonitions will not reach her. Send her to Brantford, or up the Ottawa; you know better than I do where. You can do a good deal with fifty dollars, you know, Paul."
"Ouff. And send 'way my squaw. Fidèle good squaw."
"Chut! Paul, you rascal! You have plenty more sweethearts you know; and they do not marry you so tight as us white men."
Paul grunted. "The Père Théophile very strict. Make squaw confess right up. Poor Fidèle go to prison--all found out. Paul sent to Isle aux Noix--you too, then."
"Stuff, man! No fear of your letting yourself be caught. Send your squaw away at once, before she has time to go near her priest."
"Police?"
"Not much fear ofthem, if you are half sharp. But, let me see. It might not be a bad idea if she changed clothes with some other girl before she started West. One squaw is so like another in white folks' eyes. It might turn pursuit in a wrong direction while she is getting away."
"Ouff," Paul grunted again, but nothing more. The two dusky shadows swung silently on the dim bosom of the waters, whitening now beneath the glimmer of the rising moon.
"See here, Paul," Ralph said at last; "I shall be better than my word after all. Here are ten dollars in hand, for you. Come round to my office as soon as the work is done and your squaw safely off, and I will pay you your fifty dollars. Now land us. We shall take first train to the city. We must not be seen together, so will take different cars. Wait for me in the shadow of the cabstand, and I will go up town with you and point out the house."
"Ouff," again was the only answer, but as Paul's long arm stretched out to snatch the money, and under a deft stroke or two of the paddle the canoe shot swiftly down stream to the landing, Ralph understood that the bargain was struck.
It was a day or two later, in the early forenoon. The air was stagnant, breathlessly awaiting the thunderstorm whose cumulus vapour masses were already drifting up from the distant horizon; though as yet the sun blazed in cloudless fervour overhead, and the world lay panting in the intolerable heat. The very light was sultry, and Mary Selby had drawn close the blinds, to shut it out where she lay on a sofa trying to stir the thick stillness into motion with her fan; but the air was heavy with heat and she felt too faint for the exertion.
She was dropping asleep when Lisette entered with a basket of May apples. They looked so cool in their green pith-like husks that she could not refrain from pulling one or two asunder to reach the blob of fragrant pulp within, tasting and awakening from her langour, before she asked where they had come from. The maid answered that a squaw without was offering them for sale, and the mistress had then to rise and go into an adjoining room to find her purse.
She took the basket in her lap and began to pull open the fruit, separating the small eatable portions from the pod-like rind. "What a feast for Edith!" she said, when she had done; and she called to Lisette to bring the baby.
Lisette appeared looking hot and troubled. "She had not seen Miss Edith," she said, since she brought the fruit to her mistress--"supposed Cato must have got her. She had been looking for the squaw to give her her money, but could not find her. She thought at first she might be prowling round the house looking for something to steal, but she had looked everywhere now, even in the wood shed and coal cellar, but could not see a sign."
Mary rose to join in the search, running out with the maid to question Cato. Cato was in the far-off corner of the garden, delving with a will. The sultry fervour of the air, stifling to men of another race, was like wine to him, recalling the torrid country of his birth, and he tossed the spadefuls gleefully, perspiring and singing as he worked. He had been there all the morning, and knew nothing of Edith or the vanished squaw; but he threw down his spade at once and joined the searchers. The cook came running from her kitchen to assist, and the little band now quickening each other's alarm ran hither and thither over the small domain, peering under every bush, pulling about melon frames and empty boxes, dropping stones down the well, looking under all the beds in the house and even up the chimney. By-and-by they were out of breath and began to think. Then Lisette was sent for a policeman, and Cato to fetch a cab to carry his mistress in search of her husband, and to the police-station in case he could not be found.
The policeman arrived first with grave importance and a note-book. He questioned Lisette, but being an Irishman while she was French, he soon lost himself amongst her voluble but not very lucid English, emphasized with frequent "mon Dieux," and much gesticulation. She was the only one who had seen the squaw, and the last to see the child, but what of that? "Them furreigners were of no account, and nobody could tell what they might be afther intending to mane:" so he turned to the cook, a countrywoman of his own, and from her got ample satisfaction. It is true she had seen nothing, and only knew what she had heard Lisette say, but then she had thought a great deal since; and the thoughts and the hearsay flowed in a mixed and copious, if not too coherent stream, which Paddy could readily follow, it was so much like the meanderings of his own mind. He opened his book and proceeded to write it all down--how she had just finished washing up her morning dishes, and the pan of water was in her hands to empty down the sink at that very moment "whin who should come trapezin' into moy kitchen but the gurrl, all brithless loike, an' hur hair flyin' ivery way at wanst. An' thinks oi to meself, 'whativer's the matther wid the omadhaun?' An' sorr if I was to take me boible oath this moment, thim's the very worrds that passed through me moind whin I seed hur, an' ye may safely write them down, for oi'll stand boy thim before all the judges and juries in the land."
"Oi'll wroite thim down, mum, ye may depind; an' be me troth, it's moighty remarkable them worrds are; an' they do ye credit, mum, though it's me that says it," answered the policeman, relaxing the crooks in his shoulder and elbow, and the frown on his brow, which were with him the concomitants of penmanship. He had not in truth the pen of a ready writer, and it was only by pushing his tongue into one cheek and closing an eye, that he was able to construct the letters at all. That was of little consequence, however; the notebook was solely for his own private eye, or rather for the eye of the public, which could not but respect a policeman who wrote everything down.
It impressed the cook immensely, and flattered her too, for never before had she seen her words put down on paper, and she resolved in her mind there should be a smoking hot morsel for this "supayrior" man, whenever he came round to see her of a winter's afternoon. The man perfectly understood. There were several kitchens on his beat where he was wont to visit, and the cook before him smiled so hospitably that he promised himself not to forget her.
Cato now arrived with the cab for his mistress, and the guardian of the peace, hitherto engrossed with a more important person, turned to the poor lady to favour her with a few words at parting.
"You're purfecly right, ma'am," he said, "to make ivery exurtion. An' if ye call at the station, ye'll foind the jintlemen there both poloite an' accommodatin'. An' ye may go wid an aisy mind, for well be havin' your intherests under consideration all the same as if ye was here. An' ye may rest assured that the sthrong arrum of the law will be laid on the aivil doer sooner or later. An' as for the choild, ma'am, oi'm bound to sthop ivery choild of a year old that's carried through my bait; but ye must give me marks, ye see, or they would soon be complainin' of me at head quarthers. Did the choild squint, now, maybe, ma'am, the purty angel? An' it's moighty becomin' some says that same is; an' kinvanient too, whin they gits older, an' can look both ways at wanst. No? Well, no offince, ma'am. Or maybe there was something crooked about wan of its legs, or an arrum, or who knows but there might be something wrong wid its face. A hare lip, now, would be a sure mark, and oi'd arrist the first wan I met. No? Well, no offince, ma'am. Oi cuddn't arrest all the childer I moight meet, ye see, an' bring thim here for you to oidintifee. How many teeth, thin, moight your purty darlin' have, ma'am?--though it's misdoubtin' I am if the law gives me power to open the childher's mouths an' look down their throats. But we'll do our best, ye may depind on that. An' it's wishin' ye a plisant dhroive, ma'am, an' thank ye keoindly," as Mary, driven desperate by his gabble, pushed a dollar into his hand and hurried to her cab.
In this way "the law's delays" left the coast clear for the escape of the kidnapper. It was an hour or two before the police throughout the city became aware that a squaw had run away with an infant, and by the time they had begun to be on the alert, the thief had made good her retreat. Wrapped in her bright blue blanket and broad-leafed straw hat, she passed swiftly along, as might any of her fellows who hawk their beadwork and like wares about the streets. A lump of fat, rubbed in the juice of some narcotic herb, pushed into the little mouth had stilled the child's cries and made it sleep as though in its nurse's arms--evidence of the practical wisdom of the wilderness still lingering among its erewhile people, as yet but partially elevated to our higher plane of life. Our women may become doctors of divinity, law, or physic; they can play the piano, or stand in the front rank of culture; but can they handle a baby like the artless daughters of the North-West, whose charges, packed in moss and fur, strapped upon a board and suspended from a branch, sway gently in the breeze, watching and growing silently, like the plants, for hours together, with never a cry to disturb the resting sire or the laborious mother? In the march of improvement some useful knowledge has been dropped by the way, and there are regrettable losses to set off against the manifest gains.
The thunder which had been threatening all the morning began to rumble, the sky darkened, and soon the rain came down in torrents. The ferry-boat between Lachine and Caughnawaga had whistled, and was throwing loose from the wharf, when a squaw--it was Fidèle, Paul's squaw, of course--rain-soaked and draggled, leaped on board. She squatted on the deck beside the three or four others who were the only passengers, cowering over the bundle under her blanket, but not uncovering its face as did the mothers near her.
"She has stolen something," the purser observed to the mate, "and is passing it off for a child. She don't behave to it as the others do. If there is a constable on the pier, I'll give her in charge. But there won't be in this heavy rain, and there would be a row if we attempted to stop her. Best take no notice, I guess; 'taint no business of ours."
On reaching the pier, Fidèle was the first to land and flit away through the village. "I told you so," said the purser, looking wise. "You just see if we don't hear more about that one. Blue blanket, with a tear in one corner; straw hat--brim badly broken; face, like they all have--broad and brown as a butternut; red cheeks--must be young--and real spry on the pins. Guess I'd know her again--know the clothes, any way. Injuns are as like one another as copper cents."
Fidèle reached a cabin in the outskirts, of square logs, whitewashed, one window and a door, with a "lean-to" addition of boards in the rear, where the cooking-stove stood in the warm weather. Entering, she found her sister Thérèse awaiting her, who with very few words proceeded to strip off her own brightly printed cotton gown. Fidèle carried the child into the room behind, and returning, removed her blanket and dripping headgear.
"Ouff," said Thérèse, undoing the gay handkerchief from her head and picking up the hat in evident disgust. "No good."
There was a small silver cross hanging from her neck by a black riband, to which Fidèle stretched out her hand expecting it to be taken off likewise. But no. Thérèse drew back with a head-shake, explaining that that belonged to the ladies of the Convent school, adding, that it was bad enough to give up the smart frock and kerchief in exchange for such a hat and a damp blanket. Fidèle reminded her of the new ones she was to receive from Paul, after she had worn the blanket for a week, and again snatched at the nuns' silver badge of merit. Thérèse caught the hand and bit it. Fidèle screamed, and a battle was imminent, when Paul's growl from the back room, threatening violence, restored calm, and Thérèse sulkily took up the blanket and drew it over her head. Presently, Paul looked out to bid her begone, and Thérèse, through the open door, saw enough to silence remonstrance, and send her trembling away.
Paul entered as Thérèse went out, and stood before his squaw. He spoke in Iroquois, briefly, and in the conclusive tone which admits neither of question nor reply. Another, Messieurs the Benedicts, of those natural gifts dropped by the way in the march of improvement. The squaw never "speaks back," but the "last word" belongs of right to every self-respecting Christian woman, and she takes it. Ask the ladies!
"To work at once," was the purport of Paul's orders, "then sweep up. Put on your sister's gown, and that black blanket over all. Go out by the back, into the bush. Hide in the old roothouse by the corner of the clearing till sundown; then away, across the reservation. Take care you are not seen. Travel all night, going west. Stay in the woods to-morrow till dusk. Travel your quickest till you reach Ogdensburg. Cross the river there, and go west to Brantford, taking your own time. Go to your brother, and tell him to expect me next winter." And so saying, he went out by the front of the house, locking the door behind him.
Fidèle set her teeth and proceeded to obey. It was a repulsive sight which she beheld on entering the inner room, and the work set her to do was horrible. A board or two of the flooring had been pulled up, and there was a sack filled with the earth brought up through the opening. The hole was a foot or two deep, and it was shaped like a grave. Paul must have been terribly in earnest to have it rightly done, seeing he had dug it himself. There was a box--a soap-box seemingly, from the village store--hammer and nails, a bundle of withered grass, and the baby asleep lying on it. The sight of the baby must have been too much for Paul, for part of an old buffalo robe had been thrown over it. He had his design fixed and firm, but having also a squaw why should he likewise discompose himself? Civilization had at least eaten so far into his nature that to extinguish a helpless and unresisting life was no longer delightful enough to compensate the risk--and he had the squaw.
Fidèle sat down on the ground with the poor little thing in her lap. How peacefully it slept! Was it angels whispering in those little ears which made it smile in its sleep, as the ladies of the Convent had said? Could viewless spirits be hovering around, seeing and noting all that passed? Involuntarily she looked over her shoulder expecting almost to behold a presence. Then she shook herself and snorted. Why should she call up shadowy fears to make harder for herself the work she had to do? If she failed to do it she knew full surely the terrors would be all too real--bruises, wounds, possibly death by violence; assuredly violence in any less degree.
The child lay sleeping on her lap, so fair and soft of skin, rounded and dainty in every joint. She could not but recall the picture in the church, of the Holy Mother with her ever Blessed Son, high up above the altar, amid the star-like twinkling of the tapers and the cloudy incense ascending before it in solemn fragrance, while holy nuns and innocent choristers sang hymns of adoration; and all she had learned to think of blessedness beyond the grave, attainable only by more than common goodness, was that it would be like that. The little rings of hair that framed the face were bright and shining like burnished gold, a glory like the gilded halos about the heads in that sacred picture; and the long eyelashes laid peacefully upon the reddening cheeks, like clouds at daybreak, promising so enhanced a brightness at the awakening. Fidèle laid her fingers on the little neck. How dark and evil they looked upon its creamy whiteness! How could she ever grasp it hard and cruelly, till the heaving bosom grew convulsed to bursting at the interrupted breath, and the sweet face grew black and distorted in fruitless gaspings? Her fingers lay more heavily as she thought, and the slight pressure disturbed the sleeper. The plump round shoulder and cheek were drawn together as if tickling were the subject of her dreams; the lips parted in a smile, the eyes unclosed, and the child awoke with a low and merry laugh. She looked so fearless and trustful out of her blue eyes and crowed so gleefully, caressing with her own tiny palms the dusky fingers so near her throat, and with such fell intent, that surely a fiend must have abandoned the thought of doing her harm. And Fidèle was no fiend at all. Ignorance and a narrow horizon had left her sympathies to slumber, but, so far as she could see or know, she was true and good. To serve her man had seemed the chief if not the only end of her being, and she had done it blindly hitherto; but it appeared to her now that to do this thing was more than she ought, or could.
The little hands were stretched up now to her face and the lips strained up to kiss her, and the clear blue light of the eyes penetrated the blackness of her own with a cooling purifying influence which made evil intent like a shadow slink away. She stooped and pressed the little pink lips to her own, and to her forehead and to her breast, and then with a big breath of resolution she got up and set the little one down in a corner while she fulfilled in seeming the orders she had received. She took the dried grass and laid it in the box which she then closed and placed in the bottom of the little grave. The grave she then filled up with earth from the sack, tramping it down tightly, and making the top level with the adjacent soil, and strewing what earth was left in the rain pools outside the house. She then nailed down the flooring as before, and swept the house, making it appear again as it had always been. No one could now suspect that there was a grave beneath his feet, nor could Paul that that grave was empty. Then concealing the child under her blanket she stole into the bush as she had been instructed to do, an instance of how the scrupulously obedient wife, even while obeying, may contrive to effect the exact opposite of her instructions; and showing, perhaps, that the equality and sympathy of the civilized home may secure a man the fulfilment of his wishes no less, at least, than the despotism of the barbarian plan.
In the twilight Fidèle left her place of concealment and stole away under the dripping-trees. The storm was over, and as the light died out of the heavens the stars came twinkling forth, awaiting the rising moon. It was a long and toilsome tramp across the reservation, through wet and tangled herbage, with many a slough and flooded brook, for she had been bidden to avoid observation and dared not avail herself of such paths and rude bridges as suffice the Indians on their own domain. At length when night had fully come, and home-going stragglers were no longer likely to be met, she reached a country road. The march of the stars pointed her way and further she knew not, for she had never been there before. She hurried along clasping her burden, which grew heavier as she went, for she had been travelling for hours. It was late and she had spent a long and a busy day, a day of hard work and much excitement. The child grew heavier, and as her own strength grew less, she clasped it the more tightly. Since she had saved the little one's life, something of a mother's feeling for it had stolen into her heart. It seemed dependent on her, and her very own; and were not the tiny fingers even then spreading themselves against her breast to gather warmth? The night seemed very long, and yet she feared to stop and rest. A pursuer might be on her track even now to seize her for child-stealing. And the child in her arms! She could not but be taken and punished, and the child given back. And even when her punishment was over, and she let out of jail, there would still be Paul to reckon with. And what mighthenot do? Her heart died within her at the thought, her limbs grew feeble, and the child heavier than lead. She staggered along looking behind her and before, but all was still, no one to be seen. And now she was approaching a village. The moonlight glittered on the tin belfry of the church, and there were houses, low-browedhabitanthouses, with deep projecting eaves and great black shadows lurking under the stoops and porches. Not a soul was stirring, but from those coverts of obscurity what or who might not rush forth on her as she went by? The law in some mysterious way might be lying in wait for her among the dusky shadows, or Paul himself might be in hiding to watch her pass, and see that he was obeyed. It would be bad for her if she were to meet him now, and bad for the child as well. She stopped, faltering as she thought of it, unable to go on. Ah! there stood one small house at a forking of the road, where one branch ran uphill through well-fenced woods, surrounding a mansion, doubtless, for the moonlight glistened on the tin of the roof; and the other branch ran downward to the village and the church, and there was a broad river beyond, with perhaps no bridge, and she might have to wait for morning to be ferried across. There might be a magistrate in the mansion, she would avoid that, and down in the village the child might be seen. No! she dared not carry it in either direction, but here in the corner of the ways stood the littlehabitanthouse, a good half-mile from both. Yet there was no light visible in the window; the house might be uninhabited; not a dog or pig was to be seen around. But then it was late. The voiceless stars and the silent sailing moon were whitening the slumbering world with dim and hazy dreams. Nothing was awake or moving but the vagrant breeze which rustled drowsily among the poplar leaves; and--yes, that decided her--the loose casement of the one window in the roof swaying back and forth against the flapping curtains within. There must be people in the house, people asleep, who would not awake till she had time to escape. She stepped on the little porch, laid down her burden, knocked, and fled into a neighbouring bank of shadow, where her dark blanketed figure was swallowed up in the gloom and she could wait and watch. Her moccasined feet made no sound, but the knock awoke a dog within. The dog barked, and presently a head looked out of the open casement. The baby, uncovered to the night air and laid on the hard boards, began to cry, and the head--it was a woman's and a mother's--recognized the voice of abébé. The door was opened, the woman came out and took up the child.
"Holy Madaleine!--it is a child! And whose? Another, when there are already six, and the loaf so small, and thesousso hard to come by!"
Fidèle saw, and she may have heard; but she could not understand or enter into the white woman's troubled feelings.Sousscarce and loaves small were just as she knew them, when she knew them at all, which was not always. At least it was better, both for herself and the child, that it should not be withher. She waited till the woman had carried it indoors, and then, like a wandering shadow, she went her way, westward, with the stars and moon. Her friends, her home, her man, were all behind her, and she must not return to them. She must go forward and westward to Upper Canada, a wanderer and alone, with nothing but the stolid patience of her unawakened mind to bear her up. But at least her hands were untainted with the stain of blood, and she could look forward to the long dark winter nights and their howling winds without fear. There would be no voices in them to make her tremble, no cry of a murdered child--no image in the darkness of gasping lips and eyes rolled back in the death-struggle. She could sleep in peace and still ask God and His saints to shelter her.