That Bernard Kingswell had accepted the baronet's own estimation of his (the baronet's) character so frankly, in the heat of sentimental disclosure, did not trouble Sir Ralph by more than a pang or two. What else could he expect of even this true friend? He was a broken gamester and a criminal exile by all the signs and by the verdict of the law; but whether or not he was a blackleg was a matter of opinion and the exact definition of that word. He knew that Kingswell was well disposed toward him, and that he believed nothing vile or cowardly of him; but, best of all, he was sure that, in Kingswell's love, his daughter was fortunate beyond his hoping of the past two years. Should they get clear of the besieging natives and out of the wilderness, her future happiness, safety, and position would be assured. As Mistress Bernard Kingswell, she would live close to the colour and finer things of life again, gracing some fairhouse as a former Beatrix had done in other days—to wit, the great houses of Beverly and Randon. The mist blurred his eyes at that memory and dimmed his vision against the rough log walls around him.
Another thought came to the broken baronet, as he sat alone by the falling fire, after Kingswell's departure, and awaited his supper and the reappearance of his daughter. The thought was like a black shadow between his face and the comforting fir sticks—between his heart and the knowledge of a good man's love and protection for Beatrix. Knowing the girl as he did, he felt sure that she would never leave him, her exiled father, even at the call of a more compelling love; and, as a return to his own country meant prison or death to him, she would hold to the wilderness, thereby leaving the new-found happiness untouched. On the other hand, should death come to him soon, and in the wilderness,—by the arrows of the enemy, for choice,—his daughter's fetters would be filed for ever. He sank his face between his hands. The desire to live out one's time clings about a man's vitals against all reason. Even an exiled and broken gamester, stockaded in a nameless wilderness and hemmed in by savages, finds a certain zest in day and night and the winds of heaven.With nothing to live for—even with the scales decidedly the other way—Death still presents an uninviting face. It may be the inscrutable mask of him that fills with distrust the heart of the man who contemplates the Long Journey. In that inevitable yet mysterious figure, showing as no more than a shadow between the bed and the window, it is hard for the sinful mortal, no matter how repentant, to read clear the promise of eternal peace. What dark deed might not be perpetrated by the shrouded messenger between the death-bed and Paradise?
Sir Ralph bowed his head between his palms, and hid the commonplace, beautiful radiance of the hearth-fire from his eyes; and so, while he waited for his supper of stewed venison, he reasoned and planned for his daughter's future to the bitter end, seeing clearly that, should the chances of battle turn in favour of the little plantation, he must readjust his sentiments toward death. A man of lower breeding and commoner courage would have groaned in the travail of that thought, and cursed the alternative; but the baronet sat in silence until he heard his daughter at the door, and then stood up and hummed softly the opening bars of a Somerset hunting-song.
Beatrix tripped close to her father and raised herface to him. He bent and kissed her tenderly. For a little while they stood without speaking, hand in hand, on the great caribou skin before the hearth. Suddenly the girl pressed her cheek against his shoulder.
"What was it," she whispered, breathlessly,—"the matter that held you and Bernard in such serious converse?"
"And has your heart given you no hint of it?" he laughed.
"And why, dear father? What has my heart to do with your talk of guards and ammunition and supplies,—save that it is with you in everything?"
The baronet released her hand and, instead, placed his arm about her slender and rounded waist. "It is a story that I cannot tell you, sweet,—I, who am your father," he said. "But I think that you shall not have to wait long for the telling of it, for both youth and love are impatient. And here comes the good Maggie with the candles."
During the meal the baronet was more lively and entertaining than Beatrix had seen him for years, and Beatrix, in her turn, was unusually untalkative and preoccupied. The girl wanted to give her undivided attention to the quiet voice of her heart. The man was equally anxious to avoidintrospection as she to court it. But he, for all his laughter and gay stories of gay times spent, displayed a colourless face and haunted eyes behind the candle-light; while she, sitting in silence, glowed like a rare flower. Her dark, massed tresses, her eyes of unnamable colour, her throat and lips and brow, were all radiant with the magic fire at her heart.
Sir Ralph, after bringing a disjointed tale to a vague ending, sipped his wine, put down the glass clumsily, and suddenly turned away from the table. The bitterness of his lot had caught him by the throat. But she noticed nothing of his change of manner; and presently they left the table and moved to the fire. He busied himself with heaping faggots across the dogs. Then she filled his tobacco-pipe for him, and lit it with a coal from the hearth, puffing daintily. He had just got it in his hand when a knocking sounded on the door, and Maggie Stone opened to Kingswell.
Upon Kingswell's entrance, Sir Ralph, after greeting him cordially but quietly, donned his cloak and hat, and begged to be excused for a few minutes. "I have a word for Trigget," he said. Then he pulled on his gloves, pushed open the door, and stepped out to the dark.
Two candles burned on the table. Maggie Stonesnuffed them, surveyed the room and its inmates with a comprehensive glance, and at last forced her unwilling feet kitchenward again. Her heart was as sentimental as heroic, was Maggie Stone's, and her nature was of an inquisitive turn. She sighed plaintively as she left the presence of the young couple.
The door leading to the kitchen had no more than closed behind the servant than Bernard, without preliminaries, dropped on one knee before the lady of his adoration, and lifted both her hands to his lips. She did not move, but stood between the candles and the firelight, all a-gleam in her beauty and her fine raiment, and gazed down at the golden head. Her lips smiled, but her eyes were grave.
"Dear heart," murmured the lad, without lifting his face or altering his position,—"dear heart, can it be true?"
She bent her head a little lower. Her heart seemed as if it was about to break away from its bonds in her side. She could not speak; but, almost unconsciously, she closed her fingers upon his.
"Tell me," he cried. And again, with a note of fear in his voice: "Tell me if I may win you! Tell me if your heart has any promise?"
Before she could control her agitationsufficiently to answer him, the outer door of the cabin was swung open without ceremony, and Sir Ralph stamped in. He caught Kingswell by the wrist and wrenched it sharply.
"We are attacked," he cried. "They have piled heaps of dry brush along the palisades—and they have set the stuff on fire! It burns like mad. Lord, but it looks more like hell than ever!"
Even as he spoke, the fragrant, biting odour of the smoke from the burning evergreen-needles invaded the room. Kingswell got quickly to his feet, still holding the girl's hands. He did not look at the baronet. For a second he paused and peered, questioning, into her wonderful eyes.
"Oh, I love you, dear heart," she cried, faintly. "I love you, Bernard."
He stooped quickly (and how eagerly every lover knows), and even while the first brief and tremulous kiss was sweet on their lips, the muskets clapped deafeningly, savage shouts rang high, and the baronet thrust sword and hat into Bernard's hands.
"Come! For God's grace, lad, come and rally the men!" he shouted.
Then the lover turned from his mistress and saw the shrewd work that awaited him. He ran to it with a leaping heart.
The heaps of brush outside the palisades burned with a long-drawn roaring, like the note of a steady wind. It was a terrifying sound. The glare of the conflagration lit the interior of the fort, staining the trampled snow of the yard to an awful hue, staining the faces of the desperate settlers as if with foreshadowing of blood, and painting the walls of the cabins as if for a carnival. The platform upon which the guns stood was a mass of flame before any use could be made of the pieces. The breastwork of faggots burned with leapings and roarings, flinging orange and crimson showers to the black dome above. The savages skirmished behind the girdle of flames, like imps along the blood-coloured snow. The settlers discharged their muskets through the singed loopholes, firing low, and taking the chances with heroic fortitude. Sir Ralph and Bernard Kingswell were here and there, with their swords in their hands andencouragement in speech and bearing. Both knew that this engagement would be a fight to the finish; and both felt reasonably sure that a shrewder and braver commander than Panounia was against them.
The ammunition was carried from the storehouse to the shed over the well, for the fire was already crackling against the log walls of the buildings. Suddenly a sharp report and a high shower of sparks and burning fragments broke from the gun-platform; and, for the moment, the warriors were scattered from that side. One of the cannon had exploded. That corner of the stockade immediately fell and settled to the snow. Next instant the second gun was fired by the flames. It sent its whole charge into the uncertain Beothics, scattering them to cover in yelling disorder. At that the Englishmen cheered, and set about fighting back the encroaching flames.
Inspiration, or a font of courage to be drawn upon at need, must have dwelt behind the shelter of the spruces; for within a very few minutes of the retreat, all the warriors, save the wounded, were about the fort again. Kingswell took note of it, and suspected the inspiration to be nothing else than Pierre d'Antons' insinuating presence and dazzling smile. A spur, too, he suspected—the spur of the mongrel Frenchman's evil sneer and blacktemper. He knew enough of the aboriginal character to feel that it would prove but a plaything for such a personality as the buccaneer's. He looked across the glowing, smoking breach in the fortifications with hard eyes. He voiced his desire to have the fellow by the throat, or at the point of his sword, in tones that rang like a curse.
Suddenly Kingswell left his post and ran to the well-house.
He knew where thePelican'spowder lay among the stores, done up in five canvas bags of about twelve pounds each. With two of these under his cloak, he returned to his place a few paces from the subsiding red barrier that still held the enemy from the interior of the fort. By this time the back of Trigget's cabin was smouldering. The roofs of the cabins, deep with snow, were safe; but the rear walls were all in a fair way of being ignited by the crackling brushwood, which the warriors of Panounia diligently piled against them.
Kingswell left the protection of the rest of the square to Sir Ralph, William Trigget, and all the men of the garrison save Tom Bent. The old boatswain was, by this time, a very active convalescent. Kingswell whispered a word or two in his ear. They kept a sharp lookout across the wreckage of the fallen corner of the stockade.They saw a party of the enemy gather ominously close to the glowing edge of the breach. Kingswell passed one of the bags of powder to his companion. "When I give the word," he said.
Suddenly the black knot of warriors dashed into the obstruction, brandishing spears and clubs, and screaming like maniacs. Kingswell uttered a low, quick cry, tossed his bag of powder into the glowing coals under the feet of the enemy, and ran for the shelter of the well-house at top speed. Tom Bent followed his movements on the instant. Together they reached the narrow shelter; and, before they could turn about, the air shook and reeled, as if a bolt of wind had broken upon them, a blinding flash seemed to consume the whole night, and a puffing, thumping report stunned their ears. They stumbled against the sides of the shed, clawed desperately, and fell to the ground.
When Bernard Kingswell and the trusty boatswain regained their senses (which had left them for only a few seconds), they crawled from the well-house and stared about them. The square was not so bright as it had been, and, save for a few huddled shapes on the snow, was empty. By the shouting and mixed tumult, they knew that the fighting was now farther away—that the settlers had sallied forth on the offensive. They could notunderstand such recklessness; but they decided, without hesitation, to take the risk. They ran to the now black gap in the palisades. Fire, coals, wreckage, and even the snow had been hurled and blown broadcast. They crossed the torn ground and headed for the tumult in the fitfully illuminated spaces beyond. Native war-whoops and English shouts mixed and clashed in the frosty air. On the very edge of the shifting conflict, the old sailor clutched his master's arm. "Hark!" he cried. "D'ye hear that now? It be the yell o' that young Ouenwa, sir, or ye can call me a Dutcher!"
At the same moment, before Kingswell could reply to Bent's statement, a club, thrown by a retreating warrior, caught the gentleman on the side of the head and felled him like a thing of wood. He moaned, as he toppled over. Then he lay still on the ruddy snow.
Beatrix had a dozen candles alight in the living-room of the baronet's cabin. Word had reached her that Ouenwa and Black Feather had arrived in time to take advantage of the rebuff dealt the enemy by the explosions of the bags of powder. When victory had seemed to be hopelessly in the hands of the determined savages, Ouenwa and hisfollowers, though spent from their journey, had made a timely and successful rear attack.
The girl was radiant. She moved up and down the room, eagerly awaiting the return of Bernard Kingswell. She questioned herself as to that, and laughed joyously. Yes, it was Bernard, beyond peradventure, whom heart, hands, and lips longed to recover and reward. A month ago, a week ago, it would have been her father—even a night ago he would have shared, equally with the lover, in her sweet and eager concern. But now she sped from hearth to door, and peered out into the blackness, with no thought of any of those brave fellows save the lad of Bristol.
The burning brush had all been trampled out, and the fires in the walls and stockade had been quenched with water. The little square was dark, save for the subdued fingers of light from windows and doors. Beatrix peered from the open door, regardless of the cold. She was outlined black against the warm radiance inside the room. Her silken garments clung about her, pressed gently by a breath of wind. She rested a hand on either upright of the doorway, and leaned forward as if, at a whim, she would fly out from the threshold. Presently shadowy figures took shape in the gloom, and she heard her father's voice, and WilliamTrigget's, and the high pipe of Ouenwa. But she caught no sound of Bernard Kingswell's clear tones. A sudden fear caught her, and she stepped out upon the trampled snow and called to Sir Ralph. In a moment he was at her side, and had an arm about her.
"Sweeting," he said, "you must stay within for a little. The night is bitterly cold, and—"
"But where is Bernard?" she whispered, staring past him.
"He is with the others," replied the baronet,—"with Ouenwa and his brave fellows, and the dauntless Trigget."
He spoke quickly and uneasily, and led her back to the cabin at the same time. He closed the door, and laid a wet sword across a stool.
"What is it?" she cried, facing him, with wide eyes and bloodless cheeks. "Tell me! Tell me!"
"The lad is hurt," admitted Sir Ralph.
"Hurt?" repeated the girl, vaguely. "Hurt? How should he be hurt?"
She shivered, and gripped her hand desperately. Could it be that the High God had been deaf to her prayers?
Sir Ralph's face went as pale as hers; for all he knew of Kingswell's condition was that he still breathed, and that his hat had saved his head frombeing cut. Whether the skull was broken or not, he did not know. He braced himself, and smiled.
"My dear," he said, "he is not seriously hurt, so do not stand like that—for God's sake!"
At the last words his voice lost its note of composure, and broke shrilly. He caught her to him. "Rip me," he cried, "but if you act so when he is simply knocked over, what will you do if he ever gets a real wound!"
The girl was comforted. Tears sprang to her eyes, and the blood returned to her cheeks. She clung to the baronet and sobbed against his shoulder. Presently she looked up.
"Take me to him," she begged, "or bring him here."
"So you love this Bernard Kingswell?" inquired her father, looking steadily into her face.
Her gleaming eyes did not waver from his gaze. "Yes," she replied, quietly.
The man turned away, took his blood-wet sword from the stool, eyed it dully, and leaned it against the wall. He was trying to imagine what the lad's death would mean to his daughter's future; but he could only see that it would mean a few more years for himself. He started guiltily, and returned to his daughter. His face was desperately grim.
"Wait for me," he said. "I'll see how the lad is doing now; and shall return immediately."
Sir Ralph crossed to the cottage that had been built for D'Antons, and which had passed on to Kingswell. He opened the door softly and stepped within. He found the wounded gentleman lying prone on his couch, half-undressed, and with bandaged head. Ouenwa, gaunt and blood-stained, was beside the still figure.
"He opened his eyes," whispered the boy; "but see, he has closed them again. His spirit waits at the spreading of the trails."
Sir Ralph bent down and examined the linen dressings on Kingswell's head. They were exceedingly well arranged. He saw that the hair had been cut away from the place of the wound.
"Your work, Ouenwa?" he inquired.
The boy nodded. The baronet felt his friend's pulse.
"It beats strong," he said. "The heart seems sure enough of the path to take."
Ouenwa's face lighted quickly. "He has chosen," he said, gravely. "He has seen the hunting-grounds shining beyond the west, but the beauty of them has not lured him along that trail."
The baronet smiled quickly into the Beothic's eyes. "You are a brave lad, and we are deepin debt to you," he exclaimed. "Your bravery and wit have saved the fort and all our lives. Watch your friend a few minutes longer; I but go to bring another nurse to help you. Then you may sleep."
From that brisk fight, in which Ouenwa and his twenty braves and the little garrison of Fort Beatrix defeated Panounia, Black Feather brought a confirmation of Pierre d'Antons' concern in the last attacks upon the settlement. It consisted of a sword-belt and an empty scabbard. He had torn them from the person of a tall antagonist during a brief hand-to-hand encounter. The owner of the gear had won free, Black Feather regretted to say. Sir Ralph, too, felt the escape of his enemy, and sincerely hoped that the defeat had ended his power over Panounia, and brought down that wolfish chief's hatred instead.
On the morning after the battle, the little plantation presented a busy though sombre appearance to those of its people who were in condition to view it. Along the woods and rising ground to the north, the snow and frozen soil were being hollowedto receive the bodies of those slain in the fight. The dead of the enemy had been carried far into the woods, and piled together with scant ceremony. The settlers had lost three of their number,—young Donnelly, Harding, and the younger Trigget. Four of the rescuing party were dead and wounded. Tom Bent was on his back again, and Kingswell's head was ringing like a sea-shell. William Trigget was cut about the face and sore all over; but he kept on his feet.
After the graves were chipped in the iron earth, and the shrouded bodies lowered therein and covered, the tribesmen, under Black Feather's orders, set about building themselves lodges outside the stockade. It had been decided that, for mutual support, the friendly Beothics should camp near the fort, at least for the remainder of the winter. With axes borrowed from the settlement, they soon had the forest ringing with the noise of their labour. Though they had travelled light, in their hurry to rescue the friends of Ouenwa and Black Feather, they had dragged along with them a few sled-loads of deerskins and birch bark, with which to cover their wigwams. So the shelters sprang up quickly about the torn and scorched palisades; for it was a small matter to trim the poles and fit the pliable roofs across the conical frames.
The dusk gathered over the wilderness, dimming the edges of white barren and black forest and round hill. The stars shone silver above, and the fires of the victorious men of the totem of the Bear glowed red below. In the outer room of the cabin that had been Pierre d'Antons', Beatrix sat alone by Kingswell's bed. Her eyes were on the leaping flames in the chimney, and his were on the fair lines of her averted face. The top of his head was so swathed in bandages that he looked like a turbaned Turk. Cheeks and chin were white as paper in the unstable light. His eyes were bright with a touch of fever brought on by his suffering. His mind was in a fitful mood, for a minute or two steady enough and concerned with the present and the room in which he lay, and then wandering abroad, exploring vague trails of remembrance and imagining. Sometimes he murmured words and sentences, but in such a gabbling style that his nurse could have made nothing of what was passing in his brain even if she had taken such advantage of his condition as to try.
After a long spell of uneasy mutterings, followed by a profound silence, he suddenly flung out one arm. The movement startled Beatrix from her dreaming, and she turned her face back to him from the fire.
"Twenty days without water," he whispered, distinctly. "Twenty days—and that beast Trowley is laughing to see my tongue between my teeth like a squeezed rag."
The girl caught up a mug of water and held it to his lips. He drank greedily, and then took hold of her hand. His head was against the hollow of her arm; for, to give him the drink, she had knelt beside his low bed.
"Beatrix," he said, gravely, "let us pretend that you love me."
She was strangely moved at that, and bent closer to see his eyes.
"Why pretend, dear heart?" she answered. "I do love you, as you very well know. Sleep again, Bernard, with your head so—pressed close."
"I feel your heart," he said, simply as a child. The fever was as a fine haze across the mirror of his brain.
"It beats only for you," she murmured, pressing her lips to his cheek. The lad's eyes shone with a clearer light at that.
"Tell me that this is no vision of fever," he said. "Tell me, or strength will bring nothing but sorrow. Better death than to find your kisses a trick of dreaming."
"Is it not a pleasant dream?" she asked, softly, smiling a little.
"Ay; to dream so, a man would gladly have done with waking," he replied. "If it were not in life that Beatrix were mine, then would I follow the vision through eternal sleep—as God is my judge."
"Hush, dear lad," she murmured, "for the heart and the body of Beatrix are of right Somersetshire stuff, to fade not at any whim of fever—and the love she gives you will outlast life—as God is our judge and love His handiwork." And she kissed him again, blushing sweetly at her daring. And so they remained, she kneeling beside the couch, and he with his bandaged head against her lovely shoulder, until Sir Ralph entered the cabin, fumbling discreetly at the latch.
The days passed slowly in the heart of that frozen wilderness between the white river and the long graves. Stockade and wall were repaired. Fresh meat was trapped and shot in sheltered valley and rough wood. The forge rang again with the clanging of sledges, and the tracts of timber with the swinging axes. Hope reawoke in hearts long dismayed, and blood ran more redly to the stir of work and freedom. Master Kingswell gained fresh strength with the rounding of every day, andMistress Westleigh recovered all her glory of eyes and lips and hair. Ouenwa, honoured by all, carried himself like a gentleman and a warrior. Black Feather, with his wife and his surviving child in a snug lodge, felt again the zest and peace of living. Only Sir Ralph seemed to find no ray of comfort in the days of security. He brooded alone, avoiding even his daughter. His face grew thinner, and his shoulders lost something of their youthful vigour. The desolation and bitterness had, at last, dimmed his courage and his philosophy. The very relief at Panounia's defeat and D'Antons' supposed overthrow had, somehow, weakened his gallant endurance. He counted it a grievance that God had not led him to his death in the last fight, as he had prayed so earnestly. He had been eager then. Now he must plan it over again—over and over—in cold reasoning and cold blood, and alone by the fire. A foolish, causeless anger got hold upon him at times; and again he would be all repentance, telling his heart that, no matter how bitter his fate, it was fully deserved. And so, day by day, the shadows grew behind his brain, and a little seed of madness germinated and took root.
For a time Beatrix did not notice the change in her father's manner and habits. The thing disclosed itself so gradually, and she was so intentupon the nursing of her lover; and yet again, the baronet had been variable in his moods, to a certain extent, ever since the beginning of his troubles—years enough ago. It was Ouenwa who first saw that something had gone radically wrong in the broken gentleman's mind, and his knowledge had come about in this wise.
The young Beothic, though an ardent sportsman and warrior, was a still more ardent seeker after bookish wisdom. Kingswell, before his hurt, had taught him something of the art of reading. Later, Mistress Westleigh had carried it further. By the time that Kingswell was safely on the road to his old health and a mended head, Ouenwa could spell out a page of English print very creditably. His primer was one of those volumes of Master Will Shakespeare's plays, which the Frenchman had left behind him. One day Beatrix entered the cabin to take her turn at tending the invalid, and found Ouenwa with the drama in his hands, and his youthful brow painfully furrowed with thought. She took the book from him and fluttered the pages, pausing here and there to read a line or two.
"Run away," said she, "and on a shelf beside our chimney you will find a book with easier words than this contains. There is matter here, I think, that is beyond a beginner."
At that Kingswell raised himself to his elbow and nodded his sore head eagerly.
"Ay, lad, run and find yourself an easier book," he said.
Nothing loath, for his quest of learning was sincere,—as was everything about him,—Ouenwa left the presence of the lovers and ran across the snow to Sir Ralph's cabin. He told his errand to the baronet. That gentleman looked at him long and keenly, so that the boy trembled and wished himself out of the house. Then, with a sudden start and a harsh laugh, "Help yourself, lad," said Sir Ralph. Ouenwa found the shelf of books, and, kneeling before it, was soon busy looking over the divers volumes and broad-sheets with which it was piled high. He found a rhymed and pictured chap-book greatly to his liking. He was spelling out the first verses when a movement behind his back brought him to a sense of his whereabouts. He turned quickly. There stood the baronet, with a walking-cane in his hand, making lunge and thrust at a spot of resin on the log wall. The poor gentleman stamped and straddled, pinked the unseen swordsman, and parried the unseen blade, with a dashing air. There was a light in his eyes and a twist of the lips that struck Ouenwa's heart cold in his side. The light was that which, when seenin the eyes of a man of a primitive people, divides that man from the laws and responsibilities that are the portion of his fellows. It was the gleam of idiocy—that sinister sheen that cuts a man from his birthright.
The boy knelt there, motionless with fear, with his face turned over his shoulder. He watched every movement of the fantastic exhibition with fascinated eyes. He fairly held his breath, so terrible was the display in that quiet, dim-lit room. Suddenly the baronet lowered the point of the modish cane smartly to the floor, and turned upon the lad with a smile, an embarrassed flush on his thin cheeks, and sane eyes.
"'Tis a pretty art—this of the French rapier," he said, "and I make a point of keeping my wrist limber for it."
"Yes, sir," said Ouenwa.
Sir Ralph flung the walking-cane aside, and sat down despondently in the nearest chair. Ouenwa saw, at a glance, that his presence was already forgotten. With furtive movements and such haste as he could manage, he began replacing some of the books and selecting others to carry away with him.
"Sweeting," said the baronet, "a pipe of tobacco would rest me."
Ouenwa realized that the gentleman, in his strange mood, believed that Mistress Beatrix was in the room; but Ouenwa had tact enough not to point out the little mistake. He got up noiselessly and filled the bowl of a long pipe from a great jar on the chimney-piece. He took a splinter of wood from the basket by the hearth and lit it at the fire. Stepping softly to the baronet's side, he placed the pipe in his hand, and held the light to the tobacco while the baronet puffed reflectively and unseeingly. Then the lad gathered up his books and left the cabin. Fear of Sir Ralph's wild manner was cold in his veins.
And now to tell something of the movements of Pierre d'Antons, which, of late, have been carried on behind the screen of the forest and beyond the ken of the reader.
The defeat of Panounia's warriors, on that night of fire and blood, knocked the adventurer's fortunes flatter than they had ever been. You may believe that he cursed Ouenwa bitterly, and wished that he had killed him long ago, when the lad threw his followers into the battle. It was then that D'Antons himself left his post beyond the scuffle, and, with desperate efforts, tried to turn the reverse back to victory. His swordsmanship and energy availed him nothing. He missed capture only by slipping the buckle of his sword-belt. Then, a fugitive from both sides, he ran to the woods, avoiding the scattered and retreating warriors who had so lately been struggling in his behalf as fearfully as he would have avoided William Trigget or SirRalph Westleigh. One of his late comrades, trailing wounded limbs along the snow, hurled a Beothic curse after him. Another, better prepared, let fly a war-club, and missed him by an inch. He slashed on, through the underbrush, the drifts, and the dark, sure that capture by any of the defeated savages would mean death and perhaps torture.
The black captain did not run on any vague course, despite his haste. He knew where a possibility of help awaited him. He had given his wits to more than plans of revenge and kidnapping during his sojourn with Panounia. In winning the men to him, he knew that his hold upon them would not outlast defeat; but in winning the love of the Beothic maiden Miwandi, he had laid up store against an evil day. But he had not won her heart simply on a chance of defeat—far from it, for he had not dreamed of such a chance. It was a pleasant thing in itself to be the lover of that nut-brown, lithe-limbed, warm-hearted young girl—for Miwandi suspected nothing of his desire for, and plans concerning, the lady in the fort. She loved the tall foreigner quickly and surely. She was extravagantly proud of his power over the warriors of her people. He was her brave, and as such she cherished him openly, to the envy rather than the criticism of the other women of the encampment.
Miwandi was the daughter of a lesser chief of Panounia's faction. She was seventeen years of age. Her skin was ruddy brown, darker than the skins of some of her people and lighter than that of others. Her hair was brown and of a silken texture, very unlike the straight locks of the savages of the great continent to the westward. Her features were good, and her eyes were full of life and warmth. D'Antons' conquest rankled in the breasts of more than one of the young bucks of the camp.
Pierre d'Antons, fleeing from the fighting men of both parties, shaped his course for the lodge in which Miwandi dwelt. As he ran, with fear at his heels, he forgot to regret the girl in the fort; instead, a pang of honest affection for the comely young woman toward whom he was flying for help stirred in him. He stumbled into the lodge, and Miwandi caught him in her arms. In a few quick words, he told her of the defeat, and of the anger of Panounia's warriors toward him. She kissed him once, passionately, and then fell to collecting a few things—a quiver of arrows, a bow, furs, and some food. She pressed a bundle into his arms. He accepted it without a word. She bound her snow-shoes to her feet, and retied the wrenched thongs of his. Then they slipped from the darklodge to the darker woods; and his sheathless sword, damp with blood, was still in his hand. They heard the cries of the wounded behind them, and other cries that inspired them to flight.
They fled for hours, without pausing to ease their breathing. Of the two, it was the man who sometimes lagged, who often stumbled, and who cried once that he would rather be captured than strain limb and lung to another effort. D'Antons had been actively employed throughout the day, and again during the most desperate passages of the battle, and his strength was well-nigh exhausted. At last he fell and lay prone. In an instant the girl was beside him, pillowing his head and shielding his body from the cold, and revived him with brandy from the scanty supply in his flask. By that time the dawn was breaking gray under the stars, and all sounds of the chase had died away. She cut an armful of fir-branches, and with them and the skins she and D'Antons had carried, she made a rude bed and a yet ruder shelter. So they lay until high noon, fugitives in a desolate wilderness, with death, in half a dozen guises, lurking on either hand.
Behind D'Antons and Miwandi, the broken band of Panounia's followers soon gave up the hunt. Matters were not in condition to be mended bykilling a long-faced Frenchman and a pretty girl. The defeated savages had their own wounds to see to, and already too many dead to hide under the snow. A matter of sentiment, like the torturing and killing of their false leader D'Antons, would have to wait. Now, of all those valorous warriors who had menaced the little fort since the very beginning of winter, only ten remained unhurt. Panounia was dead. He had breathed his last in the edge of the woods, while the battle was still raging, and had been carried farther in by one of his men. Thus his death had remained unknown to the victors; as had also the deaths of many more of the besiegers. Wolf Slayer, that courageous savage lad who had once boasted of his deeds to Ouenwa, was desperately hurt. Painfully and hopelessly, those of the wounded who could move at all, the women, and the unhurt of the band, retreated toward farther and surer fastnesses. The wounded who could not drag themselves along were left to perish in the snow. Some were frozen stiff before morning. Some bled to death within the same time. A few lived until they were discovered by Ouenwa's men in the bright daytime,—they were reported as having been found dead.
D'Antons and Miwandi travelled, by forced marches, until they reached a wooded valley anda narrow, frozen river. Along this they journeyed inland and southward. At last they found a spot that promised shelter from the bleak winds as well as from prying eyes. There they built a wigwam of such materials as were at hand. Game was fairly plentiful in the protected coverts around. They soon had a comfortable retreat fashioned in that safe and voiceless place.
"It will do until summer brings the ships," remarked D'Antons, busy with plans whereby he might give Dame Fortune's wheel another twirl. Sometimes he spent whole hours in telling Miwandi brave tales of far and beautiful countries. He spoke of white towns above green harbours, of high forests with strange, bright birds flying through their tops, and of wide savannahs, whereon roved herds of great, sharp-horned beasts of more weight than a stag caribou.
"Oh, but you do not mean to leave me, Heart-of-Life," she cried.
So he swore, by a dozen saints, that she, Miwandi, should be his queen in a palace of white stone above a tropic sea.
Day by day, Sir Ralph Westleigh's mental sickness increased. It strengthened in the dark, like a blight on corn. Very gradually, and day by day, it grew over the bright surface of his mind and spirit. The sureness of its advance was a fearful thing to watch.
By the time March was over the wilderness, with a hint of spring in the morning skies, the baronet's condition was noticeable to even the dullest inmate of the settlement. The poor gentleman spoke little—and that little was seldom to the point. It seemed as if he had forgotten how to smile, or even to make a pretence at mirth. He walked alone for hours on the frozen river and through the woods. The Beothics of the camp before the fort stood in awe of him. At times he treated Beatrix and Bernard Kingswell as strangers; but he always knew Maggie Stone, and chided her often on the scantiness of his dinners.All day, indoors and out, he wore a rapier at his side. In the cabin he spent half of the time inert by the fire, without book, or cards, or chess, and the rest of it in sword-play with an imaginary antagonist.
It was well for Beatrix that she had found Bernard's love before the fresh misfortune descended upon her. But even with that comfort and inspiration, her father's derangement affected her bitterly. They had been such friends; and now he had blank eyes and deaf ears for all her actions and words. It was twenty times harder for her than to have seen him struck down by knife or arrow. Death seemed an honest thing compared to that coldness and vagueness of spirit that gathered more thickly about him with the passing of each day. It was as if another life, another spirit, had taken possession of the familiar body and beloved features. After two weeks neither her kisses nor her tears had any potency to break through the awful estrangement. Her prayers, her fond recollections of their old companionship, brought no gleam to the dull eye.
By the end of March the busy boat-builders and smiths of the settlement—and every man save Sir Ralph was either one or the other—had two new boats all but completed. They were staunch crafts,of about the capacity and model of thePelican. They were intended for fishing on the river and the great bays and for exploration cruises.
William Trigget, who was a master shipbuilder as he was a master mariner, entertained great ideas of fishing and trading more openly than Sir Ralph had sanctioned in the past. He was for carving out a real home in the wilderness, and his wife was of the same mind.
"We couldn't bear to leave the boy's grave," he said.
Kingswell promised that, should he win back to Bristol, and find his affairs in order, he would use his influence in behalf of the settlement on Gray Goose River. Donnelly, too, was all for holding to the new land.
"It be rough, God knows," he said, "but it be sort o' hopeful, too. If they danged savages leaves us alone, an' trade's decent, I be for spendin' the balance o' my days alongside o' Skipper Trigget. There be a grave yonder the missus an' me wouldn't turn our backs on, not if we could help it."
Kingswell himself was not building any dreams of fixing his lot in that desolate place; and neither was old Tom Bent, though he spoke little on the subject. Ouenwa's ambitions continued to point overseas. Beatrix, now despondent at her father'strouble, and again happy in her love, gave little thought to the future of the settlement, or to any plans for the days to come, save vague dreamings of an English home.
March wore along, and in open spaces the snow shrank inch by inch. Then rain fell; and after that a time of tingling cold held all the wilderness in a ringing white imprisonment. A man could run over the snow-fields and the bed of the river without snow-shoes; for the surface was tough as wood, white as the shield of that sinless knight, Sir Galahad, and glistening as a thousand diamonds. The mornings lifted clear silver and pale gold along the east. The evenings faded out in crimson and saffron, and the twilights, even when the stars were lit, made of the dome of heaven a bubble of thinnest green. And back of it all, despite the frost, hung a suggestion of sap-reddened twigs and blossoming trees.
The lure of the season touched every one in the fort, and the camp beside it. It ran in Sir Ralph's blood like some fabled wine—for what vintage of France or Spain is the stuff of which the poets sing. It mounted to his head with a high, unregretting recklessness, and doubled the madness that already lurked there. Something of his old manner returned, and for a whole evening he sat withBeatrix and Kingswell and talked rationally and hopefully. Also, that same night, he played a game of chess. He spoke of the future as one who sees into it clearly and without fear. He recalled the past without any sign of embarrassment. But Kingswell, meeting his eyes by chance, caught a light of derision in them.
Very early in the morning, while the stars still glinted overhead, and the promise of day was no more than a strip of pearl along the east, Sir Ralph Westleigh unbarred the door of his cabin and slipped out. He was warmly and carefully dressed in furs and moccasins. He carried his sword free under his arm. Very cautiously he scaled the palisade and dropped to the frozen crust of snow outside. The Beothic encampment lay around the corner of the fort, so he was safe from detection from that quarter. He looked about and behind with a cunning smile. Then he ran lightly into the woods.
Sir Ralph followed his aimless course for miles, and his soft-shod feet left no mark on the hard surface of the snow. Then the sun slid up and over, and in the warmth of high noon the frozen crust of the wilderness thawed a little, and here and there the baronet's feet broke through. At that he began to feel fatigue and a disconcerting pang of doubt.He flung himself down in a little thicket of spruces, and called for Maggie Stone to bring him food and drink. He called again and again. He shouted other names than that of the old servant. In a sudden agony of fear, he jumped to his feet and plunged through the evergreens. At every third step he sank to his knee, or half-way up his thigh. He screamed the name of his daughter, "Beatrix, Beatrix"—or was it his dead wife he was calling? He cried for guidance to many great gentlemen of England who had been his boon companions in the old days, forgetting that death had taken some of them away from him, and that the rest, to a man, had turned of their own accord. Presently he ceased his foolish outcry and plodded along, with no thought of the course, sobbing the while like a lost child.
The sun began its downward journey, and still the baronet, with his sheathed sword under his arm, staggered across the voiceless wilderness. Toward mid-afternoon the thawing crust froze again, and he travelled with less difficulty. Ever and anon his poor eyes pictured a running figure in an edge of blue shadow before him. At times it was the figure of the nobleman he had killed in England, in the dispute at the gaming-table, and again it was a friend,—Kingswell or Trigget, or anotherof the fort,—and yet again it was Pierre d'Antons. But no matter how he strove to run down the lurker, he lost him every time. Thirst plagued him, and he ate the clear ice and snow off the fronds of the spruces. Hunger gnawed him awhile, but passed gradually. The west took on the flame and glory of sunset. The east darkened. The stars pricked through the high shell of the sky. Night gathered her cloudless darkness over the wilderness; and still the demented baronet followed his aimless quest.
Toward evening of the day following Sir Ralph Westleigh's departure from Fort Beatrix, Pierre d'Antons and Miwandi were startled by the sudden and noiseless appearance of a gaunt and wild-eyed person in the doorway of their lodge. The woman cried out, and ran to the farthest corner of the wigwam. D'Antons staggered back, and his face turned gray as the ashes around the fire-stone. The unexpected visitor drew his blade, flung the sheath behind him on the snow, and advanced upon the fugitive adventurer. D'Antons sprang back and caught up his own sword from where it lay on a couch of branches and skins. He swore, more in wonder than anger.
"Westleigh!" he cried. "What brings you here, you fool—and how many follow you?"
The baronet halted and glanced quickly over his shoulder. He reeled a little, but his eyes changed in their light and colour.
"I am alone," he said. "Yes, I am alone." His voice was quiet. He seemed sorely puzzled. D'Antons' face regained its swarthy tints, and he laughed harshly.
"So you have hunted me down, old cock," he said, smiling. "You'll find that the quarry has fangs—in his own den."
The red of madness returned to Sir Ralph's eyes. He advanced his rapier. In a second the fight was on. For a few minutes the strength of insanity supported the baronet's starving muscles and reeling brain. Then his thrusts began to go wide, and his guard to waver. A clean lunge dropped him in the door of the lodge without a cry. The life-blood of the last baronet of Beverly and Randon made a vivid circle of red on the snow of that nameless wilderness.
It was Beatrix who first discovered her father's flight; but that was four hours after its occurrence. The fort was soon astir with the news. Men set out in all directions, in search of the missing one. Half a dozen of the friendly Beothics joined in the hunt. They went east and west, north and south. The sharpest eyes could detect no trail of the madman's feet. Beatrix insisted upon accompanying Bernard and Ouenwa. She tried to show a brave face; but something in her heart told her to expect the worst. The three travelled southward, and shortly before sunset returned to the fort, unsuccessful. They found that all the other searchers had got back, save Black Feather and a young brave named Kakatoc, who had set out together.
By the merest chance Black Feather and his companion happened upon the place where the baronet had first broken through the melting crust. With but little effort they found where he had restedand taken up his journey again. Farther on, the faintness of the trail put an edge to their determination to find the unfortunate gentleman. It was a challenge to their woodcraft, and they accepted it eagerly. But within two hours of finding the marks, they lost them again. They ranged wide; and at last Black Feather discovered a footprint in a little pad of snow beside a stunted spruce. In several places the branches of the tree showed where the snow had been broken away, as if by a man's hand. It was enough to keep them to the quest.
Not in the next day, but in the early morning after that, the two Beothics happened upon a sheltered valley and a snow-cleared space, with a fire-stone in the middle of it, where a lodge had lately stood. As for signs of blood, there were none. Snow had been deftly spread and trampled over it. All around the so evident site of a human habitation the hard crust gleamed unbroken, save for a little path that ran down to a hole in the ice of the stream. After considering the place, and shaking their heads, the two ate the last of the food they had in their pouches and turned their feet back to the fort. They passed within a few paces of a dense thicket, in the heart of which the baronet's body lay uncovered. But how were they to knowit, when even the prowling foxes had not yet found it out!
For several days the search was continued by the settlers and their allies, but all in vain. It was not even suspected that the deserted camping-place which Black Feather and Kakatoc had seen had so lately been warmed by the feet of Pierre d'Antons and the blood of the lost baronet. For a few days longer the business of the settlement lagged, and the place wore an air of mourning, despite the ever-brightening and mellowing season. Then the axes struck up their chant again, and the little duties of the common day erased the forebodings of Eternity from the minds of the pioneers. Only Mistress Beatrix could see nothing of the reawakening of life and hope for the sorrow in her heart and the mist across her eyes. She had loved her father deeply and faithfully, with a love that had been strengthened by his misfortunes. She had felt toward him the combined affections of daughter and sister and friend. She had made allowances for the weaknesses of his later years that equalled the ever charitable devotion of a parent for a best-loved child. She had not been, and was not now, blind to the passion of gaming that had forced him to exile and an unknown death; but she had forgiven it long ago. As to the alleged murderthat had made such an evil odour in London, she believed—and rightly—that hot blood and overmuch wine had been to blame, and that her father's sword had been drawn after the victim's.
Bernard Kingswell did all in his power to comfort the bereaved girl. He urged her to spend much of her time out-of-doors. He told his plans for their future, and to cheer her he built them even more hopefully than he felt; for he realized that many difficulties were yet to be overcome before Bristol was safely reached. With Ouenwa, the two often went on long tramps through the woods. Their evenings were always spent together. Sometimes he read aloud to her, and sometimes they played at chess. One evening she got her violin, and played as wonderfully as she had on that other occasion; but instead of leaving him afterward without a word, as she had done, she laid the fiddle aside and nestled into his arms. He held her tenderly, patting the bright hair against his shoulder, and murmuring broken assurances of his love and sympathy. She wept quietly for a little while; but when she kissed him at the door, her face and eyes shone with something of their old light.
By mid-April knobs of rock and moss pierced through the shrinking snow in the open places; but in the woods the drifts continued to withstand thewasting breath of the spring winds. Gray Goose River was no longer a broad path of spotless white. Its surface was mottled with patches of sodden gray; and an attentive listener on the bank might hear a myriad of tiny voices, some sibilant and some tinkling and liquid, in and under the enfeebled ice. Up and down the valley, between the knolls and wooded hills, the little streams were already snarling and roaring, and here and there flashing brown shoulders to the sunlight. Through all the wilderness ran a tingling whisper; and twilight, midnight, and dawn were stirred by the falling cries of wild-fowl on the wing. A faint, alluring fragrance was in the air—the scent of millions of swelling buds and crimson willow-stems.
About that time three warriors of the following of the dead Panounia arrived at the fort, with prayers for peace on their lips and gifts in their hands. They were received by Kingswell, William Trigget, and Ouenwa from the fort, and Black Feather and two of his chiefs from the camp. A lengthy business was gone through with, and much strong Virginian tobacco was burned. Documents were written in English and in the picture-writing of the natives, and read aloud, by Ouenwa, in both languages. Then they were solemnly signed by all present, and peace was restored to the great tribeof the North, and protection, trade, and lands were granted for all time to the inhabitants of Fort Beatrix and their descendants. The three visitors went back to their people with rolls of red cloth and packets of glass beads, pot-metal knives, and other useless trinkets on their shoulders.
Shortly after their departure from the fort, a storm of rain blew up from the sou'east. All day the great drops thumped on the roofs of the cabins, on the skies of the lodges, and spattered on the sodden snow. The firs and spruces gleamed clean and black under the drenching showers. A veil of smoke-gray mist lay above the farther woods and along the black tangles of alders and gray fringes of willows. All night the warm rain continued to fall and drift. When morning lifted along the pearly east, a cry rang from the camp to the fort that the ice in the river was moving. The settlers hastened to the flat before the stockade. Beatrix was with them.
"See how the torn edge of ice overtops the bank," said Kingswell, pointing eagerly. "And there is an open space. Ah, it has closed again! How slowly it grinds along!"
"It will run faster before night," replied the girl, and Ouenwa, who was versed in the ways of his northern rivers, nodded silently.
While they watched, admiring the swelling, swinging, ponderous advance of the great surface, and harkening to the booming thunder of its agony that filled the air, a breathless runner joined the group and spoke a few quick words to Black Feather. That chief approached Ouenwa and whispered in his ear. The boy glanced quickly at Beatrix and Kingswell, and then questioned Black Feather anxiously. Presently he turned back to the lovers.
"The ice is stuck down-stream," he said. "Blue Cloud has seen it. He fears that the water will rise over the flat—and the fort."
The river continued to rise until evening. After that the waters subsided a little, great cakes of rotten ice hung stranded along the crest of the bank, and the main body ceased to run downward. But from up the valley the thunder of a hidden disturbance still boomed across the windless air.
"The jam had broken down-stream," said Ouenwa.
Kingswell, unused to the ways of running ice, was satisfied, and retired to his couch with an easy mind. He slept soundly until, in the gray of the dawn, Ouenwa shook him roughly, and all but dragged him to the floor.
"Wake up, wake up," cried the boy. "Damn,but you sleep like a bear! The fort is in danger! We must run for higher land."
"Rip me!" exclaimed Kingswell, springing to his feet, "but what is the trouble? Are we attacked?"
"The river is all but empty of water," replied Ouenwa. "The ice sags in the channel, like an empty garment. The water hangs above, behind the third point where we cut the timber for the boats."
Kingswell, all the while, was busily employed pulling on his heavy clothes. Though he did not fully understand the threatening danger, he felt that it was real enough. While he tied the thongs of his deerhide leggins, Ouenwa told him that warning had reached the fort but a few minutes before.
"How?" inquired Kingswell, hurriedly bestowing a wallet of gold coins and some other valuables about his person.
Ouenwa, already loaded down with his friend's possessions, threw open the door and stepped out.
"Wolf Slayer brought it," he said, over his shoulder. "And I do not understand," he added, "for Wolf Slayer hates us all."
The other, close at his heels, made no comment on that intelligence. He scarcely heard it, so anxious was he for the safety of Mistress Beatrix.The whole fort was astir; but Kingswell ran straight to his sweetheart's door. It was opened by the maiden herself. She and the old servant were all ready to leave.
An hour passed; load after load of stores and household goods was carried to the low hills behind the fort; and still the river lay empty, with its marred sheet of ice sagging between the banks; and still the unseen jam held back the gathering freshet. The women wept at the thought that their little homes were in danger of being broken and torn and whirled away. But Beatrix was dry-eyed.
"It will be no great matter for them to build new cabins in a safer place," she said to Kingswell.
He was looking at the natives dragging their rolled-up lodges to higher ground. He turned, smiling gravely.
"You have no love for the wilderness?" he asked, "and yet but for this forsaken place, you and I might never have met."
She laid her hand on his arm, and lifted a flushed face to his tender regard.
"So it has served my turn," she said. "Now that I have you, I could well spare these wastes of black wood and empty barren."
Kingswell had been waiting patiently and in silence for that confession ever since their betrothal.Hitherto she had not once spoken with any assurance of their future together. She had treated the subject vaguely, as if her thoughts were all with the past and with the tragedy of her father's death.
"Would you face the homeward voyage in one of the little boats?" he asked, softly.
"Ay, with you at the tiller," she replied.
"Dear girl," he said, "I think that a stout ship called theHeart of the Westwill be setting sail from Bristol, for this wilderness, before many days."
"Would the fellow dare return?" she asked; for she had heard the story of Trowley's treachery.
"He will think himself safe enough," replied Kingswell. "No doubt he owns the ship now—has bought it from my mother for the price of a skiff, after telling her how recklessly he battled with the savages to save her son's life."
He laughed softly. "The old rogue will be surprised when I step aboard," he added.
Before she could answer him a booming report shook the sunlit air. It was followed, in a second, by a long-drawn tumult—a grinding and crashing and roaring—as if the firmament had fallen and overthrown the everlasting hills. The sagging ice below them reared, domed upward, and split with clapping thunders. It broke its plunging masses,which were hurled down the stream and over the flats. A thing of brown water and sodden gray lumps tore the alders and swung across the meadow where the Beothic encampment had stood an hour before. The eastern stockade of the fort went down beneath its inevitable, crushing onslaught.
All day cakes and pans of sodden ice and snow raced down the river, and the air hummed and vibrated with their clamour. But the weight of the released waters had passed; and the fort had suffered by no more than an exposed side.