It was hard to tell, save for a certain deliberateness of speech and a
colour a little more pronounced than that of a Spanish woman, that Mrs.
Frank Armour had not been brought up in England. She had a kind of grave
sweetness and distant charm which made her notable at any table or in
any ballroom. Indeed, it soon became apparent that she was to be the
pleasant talk, the interest of the season. This was tolerably comforting
to the Armours. Again Richard’s prophecy had been fulfilled, and as he
sat alone at Greyhope and read the Morning Post, noticing Lali’s name
at distinguished gatherings, or, picking up the World, saw how the
lion-hunters talked extravagantly of her, he took some satisfaction to
himself that he had foreseen her triumph where others looked for her
downfall. Lali herself was not elated; it gratified her, but she had
been an angel, and a very unsatisfactory one, if it had not done so. As
her confidence grew (though outwardly she had never appeared to lack
it greatly), she did not hesitate to speak of herself as an Indian, her
country as a good country, and her people as a noble if dispossessed
race; all the more so if she thought reference to her nationality and
past was being rather conspicuously avoided. She had asked General
Armour for an interview with her husband’s solicitor. This was granted.
When she met the solicitor, she asked him to send no newspaper to her
husband containing any reference to herself, nor yet to mention her in
his letters.
She had never directly received a line from him but once, and that was
after she had come to know the truth about his marriage with her. She
could read in the conventional sentences, made simple as for a child,
the strained politeness, and his absolute silence as to whether or not a
child had been born to them, the utter absence of affection for her.
She had also induced General Armour and his wife to give her husband’s
solicitor no information regarding the birth of the child. There was
thus apparently no more inducement for him to hurry back to England than
there was when he had sent her off on his mission of retaliation, which
had been such an ignominious failure. For the humiliation of his family
had been short-lived, the affront to Lady Haldwell nothing at all.
The Armours had not been human if they had failed to enjoy their
daughter-in-law’s success. Although they never, perhaps, would quite
recover the disappointment concerning Lady Agnes Martling, the result
was so much better than they in their cheerfulest moments dared hope
for, that they appeared genuinely content.
To their grandchild they were devotedly attached. Marion was his
faithful slave and admirer, so much so that Captain Vidall, who now and
then was permitted to see the child, declared himself jealous. He and
Marion were to be married soon. The wedding had been delayed owing to
his enforced absence abroad. Mrs. Edward Lambert, once Mrs. Townley,
shyly regretted in Lali’s presence that the child, or one as sweet,
was not hers. Her husband evidently shared her opinion, from the
extraordinary notice he took of it when his wife was not present. Not
that Richard Joseph Armour, Jun., was always en evidence, but when asked
for by his faithful friends and admirers he was amiably produced.
Meanwhile, Frank Armour across the sea was engaged with many things. His
business concerns had not prospered prodigiously, chiefly because his
judgment, like his temper, had grown somewhat uncertain. His popularity
in the Hudson’s Bay country had been at some tension since he had
shipped his wife away to England. Even the ordinary savage mind saw
something unusual and undomestic in it, and the general hospitality
declined a little. Armour did not immediately guess the cause; but one
day, about a year after his wife had gone, he found occasion to reprove
a half-breed, by name Jacques Pontiac; and Jacques, with more honesty
than politeness, said some hard words, and asked how much he paid for
his English hired devils to kill his wife. Strange to say, he did not
resent this startling remark. It set him thinking. He began to blame
himself for not having written oftener to his people--and to his wife.
He wondered how far his revenge had succeeded. He was most ashamed of it
now. He knew that he had done a dishonourable thing. The more he thought
upon it the more angry with himself he became. Yet he dreaded to go back
to England and face it all: the reproach of his people; the amusement
of society; his wife herself. He never attempted to picture her as a
civilised being. He scarcely knew her when he married her. She knew
him much better, for primitive people are quicker in the play of their
passions, and she had come to love him before he had begun to notice her
at all.
Presently he ate his heart out with mortification. To be yoked for ever
to--a savage! It was horrible. And their children? It was strange he had
not thought of that before. Children? He shrugged his shoulders. There
might possibly be a child, but children--never! But he doubted
even regarding a child, for no word had come to him concerning that
possibility. He was even most puzzled at the tone and substance of their
letters. From the beginning there had been no reproaches, no excitement,
no railing, but studied kindness and conventional statements, through
which Mrs. Armour’s solicitous affection scarcely ever peeped. He had
shot his bolt, and got--consideration, almost imperturbability. They
appeared to treat the matter as though he were a wild youth who would
not yet mend his ways. He read over their infrequent letters to him; his
to them had been still more infrequent. In one there was the statement
that “she was progressing favourably with her English”; in another, that
“she was riding a good deal”; again, that “she appeared anxious to adapt
herself to her new life.”
At all these he whistled a little to himself, and smiled bitterly. Then,
all at once, he got up and straightway burned them all. He again tried
to put the matter behind him for the present, knowing that he must face
it one day, and staving off its reality as long as possible. He did his
utmost to be philosophical and say his quid refert, but it was easier
tried than done; for Jacques Pontiac’s words kept rankling in his
mind, and he found himself carrying round a vague load, which made
him abstracted occasionally, and often a little reckless in action and
speech. In hunting bear and moose he had proved himself more daring than
the oldest hunter, and proportionately successful. He paid his servants
well, but was sharp with them.
He made long, hard expeditions, defying the weather as the hardiest of
prairie and mountain men mostly hesitate to defy it; he bought up much
land, then, dissatisfied, sold it again at a loss, but subsequently
made final arrangements for establishing a very large farm. When he
once became actually interested in this he shook off something of his
moodiness and settled himself to develop the thing. He had good talent
for initiative and administration, and at last, in the time when his
wife was a feature of the London season, he found his scheme in working
order, and the necessity of going to England was forced upon him.
Actually he wished that the absolute necessity had presented itself
before. There was always the moral necessity, of course--but then! Here
now was a business need; and he must go. Yet he did not fix a day or
make definite arrangements. He could hardly have believed himself such a
coward. With liberal emphasis he called himself a sneak, and one day at
Fort Charles sat down to write to his solicitor in Montreal to say that
he would come on at once. Still he hesitated. As he sat there thinking,
Eye-of-the-Moon, his father-in-law, opened the door quietly and entered.
He had avoided the chief ever since he had come back to Fort Charles,
and practically had not spoken to him for a year. Armour flushed
slightly with annoyance. But presently, with a touch of his old humour,
he rose, held out his hand, and said ironically: “Well, father-in-law,
it’s about time we had a big talk, isn’t it? We’re not very intimate for
such close relatives.”
The old Indian did not fully understand the meaning or the tone of
Armour’s speech, but he said “How!” and, reaching out his hand for the
pipe offered him, lighted it, and sat down, smoking in silence. Armour
waited; but, seeing that the other was not yet moved to talk, he turned
to his letter again. After a time, Eye-of-the-Moon said gravely, getting
to his feet: “Brother!”
Armour looked up, then rose also. The Indian bowed to him courteously,
then sat down again. Armour threw a leg over a corner of the table and
waited.
“Brother,” said the Indian presently, “you are of the great race that
conquers us. You come and take our land and our game, and we at last
have to beg of you for food and shelter. Then you take our daughters,
and we know not where they go. They are gone like the down from the
thistle. We see them not, but you remain. And men say evil things. There
are bad words abroad. Brother, what have you done with my daughter?”
Had the Indian come and stormed, begged money of him, sponged on him,
or abused him, he had taken it very calmly--he would, in fact, have
been superior. But there was dignity in the chief’s manner; there
was solemnity in his speech; his voice conveyed resoluteness and
earnestness, which the stoic calm of his face might not have suggested;
and Armour felt that he had no advantage at all. Besides, Armour had a
conscience, though he had played some rare tricks with it of late, and
it needed more hardihood than he possessed to face this old man down.
And why face him down? Lali was his daughter, blood of his blood, the
chieftainess of one branch of his people, honoured at least among these
poor savages, and the old man had a right to ask, as asked another more
famous, “Where is my daughter?”
His hands in his pockets, Armour sat silent for a minute, eyeing
his boot, as he swung his leg to and fro. Presently he said:
“Eye-of-the-Moon, I don’t think I can talk as poetically as you, even in
my own language, and I shall not try. But I should like to ask you this:
Do you believe any harm has come to your daughter--to my wife?”
The old Indian forgot to blow the tobacco-smoke from his mouth, and,
as he sat debating, lips slightly apart, it came leaking out in little
trailing clouds and gave a strange appearance to his iron-featured face.
He looked steadily at Armour, and said: “You are of those who rule in
your land,”--here Armour protested,--“you have much gold to buy and
sell. I am a chief,” he drew himself up,--“I am poor: we speak with the
straight tongue; it is cowards who lie. Speak deep as from the heart, my
brother, and tell me where my daughter is.”
Armour could not but respect the chief for the way this request was put,
but still it galled him to think that he was under suspicion of having
done any bodily injury to his wife, so he quietly persisted: “Do you
think I have done Lali any harm?”
“The thing is strange,” replied the other. “You are of those who are
great among your people. You married a daughter of a red man. Then she
was yours for less than one moon, and you sent her far away, and you
stayed. Her father was as a dog in your sight. Do men whose hearts are
clear act so? They have said strange things of you. I have not believed;
but it is good I know all, that I may say to the tale-bearers, ‘You have
crooked tongues.’”
Armour sat for a moment longer, his face turned to the open window. He
was perfectly still, but he had become grave. He was about to reply to
the chief, when the trader entered the room hurriedly with a newspaper
in his hand. He paused abruptly when he saw Eye-of-the-Moon. Armour felt
that the trader had something important to communicate. He guessed it
was in the paper. He mutely held out his hand for it. The trader handed
it to him hesitatingly, at the same time pointing to a paragraph, and
saying: “It is nearly two years old, as you see. I chanced upon it by
accident to-day.”
It was a copy of a London evening paper, containing a somewhat
sensational account of Lali’s accident. It said that she was in a
critical condition. This time Armour did not ask for brandy, but the
trader put it out beside him. He shook his head. “Gordon,” he said
presently, “I shall leave here in the morning. Please send my men to
me.”
The trader whispered to him: “She was all right, of course, long ago,
Mr. Armour, or you would have heard.”
Armour looked at the date of the paper. He had several letters from
England of a later date, and these said nothing of her illness. It
bewildered him, made him uneasy. Perhaps the first real sense of his
duty as a husband came home to him there. For the first time he was
anxious about the woman for her own sake. The trader had left the room.
“What a scoundrel I’ve been!” said Armour between his teeth, oblivious,
for the moment, of Eye-of-the-Moon’s presence. Presently, bethinking
himself, he turned to the Indian. “I’ve been debating,” he said.
“Eye-of-the-Moon, my wife is in England, at my father’s home. I am
going to her. Men have lied in thinking I would do her any injury,
but--but--never mind, the harm was of another kind. It isn’t wise for a
white man and an Indian to marry, but when they are married--well, they
must live as man and wife should live, and, as I said, I am going to my
wife.”
To say all this to a common Indian, whose only property was a dozen
ponies and a couple of tepees, required something very like moral
courage; but then Armour had not been exercising moral courage during
the last year or so, and its exercise was profitable to him. The next
morning he was on his way to Montreal, and Eye-of-the-Moon was the
richest chief in British North America, at that moment, by five thousand
dollars or so.