TEN YEARS LATER.
Ten years later. What a startlingly abrupt transition for the onlooker
from the "then" to the "now!" And yet how intimately the two are
connected, and how utterly the one is dependent on the other! Two
cities on the same broad river, the upper spreading along the stream,
set in a fruitful plain, the key to fertile regions farther up,
gathering the produce and shipping it down the current; the other
perched upon cliffs and overhanging shores, and twice each day lapped
by the turning tide from the distant sea whither everything is
tending. Yet to the voyager the transition is gradual enough, and
smooth, and natural. But for the retreating objects along the shore he
would not recognize that he was moving, save when descending a rapid,
or running on a sandbank--the events, marriages, deaths, failures, and
successes of his onward way. It is the same river still, in part the
very drops of water which tumbled over Niagara long ago, passed
through Ontario, and down the rapids to Montreal, and onward through
the broads and the deeps till it meets tide-water at Quebec, and still
with all the gathered tributes it hurries on, a river still for scores
and scores of miles between ever widening banks, on to the misty
everlasting sea, where the voyager disappears for ever from the view.
Not that my friends have moved their dwelling-place down stream to
Quebec, but there is a sadness in the thought of the slowly passing
years which makes one moralize and grow metaphoric before he is aware.
No, the people of this history are still geographically where they
were, standing on their own ground, while the big tumultuous river
rushes by--but the figure which their permanence suggests is even a
sadder one, that of the fabled maidens drawing water in their sieves,
water which will not be drawn or held, but keeps oozing through and
slipping away, just as the stream runs by and will not wait; for life
is but a sorry comedy with its stayless passing. Yet which of us would
stop it if we could, even at its best? It always seems as if a sweeter
drop were somewhere up the stream, and even if the present could be
held, we would let it pass to taste the fancied sweeter yet to come.
In ten years the American war had ended and specie payments were
resumed. In ten years Ralph Herkimer had made a fortune and a
"position"--the terms are interchangeable in the moneyed world, and
elsewhere too. No one was better liked or more respected as a good
fellow, a clear-headed business man, and a high-souled altogether
superior person. Even General Considine--who had been taken prisoner
during the war, exchanged, "paroled," withdrawn from the game like the
slaughtered pawn from a chess board--had quite forgotten having
grandly dropped his acquaintance in Natchez and the reasons for so
doing; and, on taking up his abode in Montreal, was very pleased to
renew intimacy with his young friend of _ante bellum_ times. Ralph was
happy to respond. If there ever had been an imputation on his courage,
it seemed well to support the only one who could remember, in
forgetting it; though really, as he told himself, there was nothing to
be ashamed of. He had merely shown disapproval of a bloodthirsty and
barbarous custom in a state of society already passed away; and no one
who was anybody would have the bad taste to be amused at anecdotes
told at the expense of a man so well off as himself, and who
entertained so liberally. Still, since it is wiser to humour fools
than to fight them, he would be civil to this broken-down fireater,
heap coals of fire on his head like a good Christian, and make him
thoroughly ashamed of his rudeness in former years.
Considine, too, was no very cumbrous _protégé_. He was better supplied
with money than many of his compatriots at that time, having inherited
some property in New York, which the same events which had ruined his
estate in the South had rendered four times as valuable as before, in
the paper money of the period. His deportment exhibited a fair share
of the manly pathos becoming a fallen hero, and made him an
interesting guest to the dwellers in a city at peace. It is true he
wore red studs in his shirt front, as his way of mounting his
country's colours--red and white--and would defiantly puff out his
chest so decorated whenever a Yankee uniform came in sight. But
something must be permitted to the bruised susceptibilities of the
warrior overcome, and at least he did not travesty the conspiracies of
exiled Poles and old time Jacobites by joining in absurd schemes to
capture towns on the lakes, or infect the capital with yellow fever;
in which crack-brained escapades the excitement for the plotters lay
not so much in their design, as in communicating it to one another
with infinite stage mystery of whisperings, signs, passwords, and
secret information. In those days a party of refugees on one of the
St. Lawrence steamboats would make the voyage as interesting to their
fellow-passengers as a pantomime, with their dark glances, stealings
aside, mysterious beckonings to each other, and hasty whispers,
followed by backward glances in search of spies. There may have been
real plots, but they were carried on by practical persons who showed
no sign, and it was rumour of these which impressed the rest, and
filled them with emulation. They imagined they were being watched and
reported on at Washington, though what interest their vagaries could
have for Mr. Lincoln's government it is hard to imagine. Much,
however, should be excused to people deprived by war of their fortunes
and their homes, often with but slender means of support, and no
occupation, driven to spend eight hours of their day in euchre
playing, and the other eight in unending discussions of the war news.
To such, conspiracy must have seemed the most delightful of pastimes,
even if barren of practical results.
When Considine approached Ralph with a most respectable sheaf of
"greenbacks" under his arm, and appealed to him as an old friend for
advice as to their conversion into specie, and their subsequent
employment, Ralph was genial, and by-and-by showed him the way to the
gold-room, where good Canadians, following the lead of New York, sold
each other stacks of foreign currency which the sellers could not
deliver and the buyers had no wish to receive. The telegraph clerk
hung up the quotations from New York at certain hours, the "operators"
took note and paid their losses--no! "held settlements" is the proper
expression, for this was _business_. Respectable gentlemen, church
members, and heads of families, brushed their hats each morning and
walked down to their offices, gloved and caned, the very pink of
respectability, and from thence went on "'Change," where the money
would change hands with astounding celerity--all in the way of
"business."
"_Faites votre jeu, Messieurs! Le jeu est fait_"? Not at all! This was
in Montreal not at Monte Carlo. Strictly "business," and thoroughly
respectable. True, many men lost, but some won. And what would you
have? How could it be otherwise? There are but a certain number of
gold pieces in the world; and, if, after an "operation," my bag
contains more, it is certain that my neighbour's must hold less.
Currency, bullion, stocks, shares, grain, cotton, what are any of them
but the tokens to win and lose money upon? But the thing is done "upon
'Change," and 'Change, like church, is a good word, and everything
belonging to it is respectable. If it were round a green-cloth table
now, how different it would be! though the outcome might be the same.
Respectability cannot tolerate the green cloth. And yet, to an
all-seeing eye, there may be less amiss when a man's money falls upon
the _black_ and the _red_. At least the play at Monte Carlo is "on the
square;" there are no misquotations or false telegrams, bogus
prospectuses, lying reports, collusive understandings, and traps for
the unwary, such as have been heard of at times in the places of
better repute.
Ralph Herkimer made a great deal of money; Considine made some; and
by-and-by, as American finance returned to a normal position, other
fields of enterprise were needed as the possibilities of gambling in
gold and greenbacks grew less; and then Considine's American
connections became a valuable introduction for Ralph to several "good
things." There were estates whose owners, stripped of all their other
property, and still encumbered by their debts, could not wring a
subsistence from the devastated acres, and were willing to part with
them for a trifle; but no one would buy--no one at hand, that is, who
had opportunity to know about the war-ravaged fields and the
intractable labourers. But at a distance, in a land of peace, where a
good title and a veracious statement of the acreage and the yielding
capacity were the data--where, in fact, a pencil and a piece of paper
were the means for judging the promise of the venture--how different
it all was. Here was a country where snows and frosts were scarcely
known, or, so it was said, where the cattle could range without
shelter all through the year, where the gardens were planted with figs
and pomegranates, and pigs fattened in the orchards on peaches too
plentiful to repay the gathering. There were minerals too, every
variety of riches, gold, coal, copper, hidden in the ground, and only
awaiting the capital and skill to dig them up; and forests of pine,
now vastly enhanced in value by the Chicago fire, waiting to be cut
down and converted into lumber if only foreign enterprise would
undertake the task. What could be better calculated to stir the
imagination of people accustomed to contend for three long months of
the year with the fiercest severities of winter, and to wring fixed
and moderate profits by patient industry from a soil which still was
five or ten times the price of these fields of endless summer? The
fevers, malaria, bad water, and general backwardness did not show on
the map, and a dense silence kept them from the knowledge of
investors.
Ralph and his friend being well-to-do, their statements and
recommendations were implicitly accepted; and, indeed, the statements
in themselves were not untruthful; it was in the counter-balancing
facts, which were left unstated, that those who afterwards considered
themselves their dupes, found the limitation and disillusion of their
hopes, which teach men in the end that Fortune is as likely to find
them out while labouring at home, as to be found by them without
exertion and experience, in distant places. But that was the buyers'
concern--knowledge which came to them later and by degrees, Ralph and
his friend had completed their share of the transaction and pocketed
their commission when the sale was made; what followed had for them no
interest.
They made many such sales, pocketing large commissions--the larger,
indeed, the worse the property they disposed of--vast tracts in some
cases, containing untold wealth in minerals and forests, where the
buyers sunk fortunes in endeavouring to bring the riches within reach;
and at length, having exhausted their resources, had to subside into
the ranks of the ruined people around them, and wait patiently for a
generation, till the march of time should bring within reach of their
children the sums they had placed out of reach for themselves. There
were smaller farms, too, where sturdy yeomen with their blooming
children went to make rich more quickly; but somehow few appeared to
thrive in those distant migrations. Their livestock was apt to die;
too little rain, or too much, would destroy their crops, and their own
health would fail; and in a year or two they would find their way back
to Canada, with an enlarged experience but a shrunken purse; while of
the children, some would be left behind in the foreign churchyard, and
the rest, yellow and gaunt, bore small resemblance to the bright-eyed
youngsters they had been before.
In a few years the trade in southern homesteads died out, Canadian
enterprise laid down her telescope and interested herself with things
nearer home. Science, ransacking her own soil, had come on hid
treasure of many kinds, gold, copper, iron, phosphates, and plumbago,
and showed where, instead of sending her savings abroad, she might
sink them at home--her own savings and those of many a sanguine
stranger. On every side Ralph saw opportunities of money-making, and
he was ready to use them; but now his operations, he found, must be on
another footing than before. Hitherto he had been a financier; now,
his neighbours recognized him as a capitalist. The change of standing
was gratifying, but it had its dangers and its drawbacks.
Finance has been described as the art of transferring money from one
pocket to another--in a Stock Exchange sense, be it understood, not an
Old Bailey one--and the financiers are the artists who perform the
feat. Money is a volatile and also an adhesive substance--matter in a
state of unstable equilibrium, which must not be disturbed or changes
will ensue--wherefore, in the process of transferring, some of it is
certain to be spilled, and that the artist may pick up if he can; it
is his perquisite. A good deal too is apt to stick to the artist's
fingers--perquisites again--and hence the profit of handling other
people's money. If it were one's own already, whence would come the
profit? A man can scarcely gain by paying perquisites to himself;
though, to be sure, he may obviate the necessity of paying them to any
one else. But there cannot be a doubt that the financier escapes much
embarrassment when he is not a capitalist. See, for example, with what
calm unflinching pluck a "general manager" can carry on war with a
rival railway! The next half-yearly dividend may be sacrificed in the
contest, but he does not falter, he goes bravely on. _He_ is not a
shareholder; it makes no matter to _him_. To seek a parallel in the
political world capitalists and financiers stand to one another as
kings to their ministers. When things go well the minister does the
work, the king has the profit and glory; but when they miscarry,
though the minister did the mischief, it is the king who loses his
crown; the minister merely withdraws into privacy, and lives
comfortably in retirement on the emoluments of former office. Yet who,
if he could, would not be a king, to be trembled before and
worshipped? and after all, the successful revolutions are not
numerous.
Ralph recognized the new danger in his path, and regretted a little,
at times, when he found he must let a profitable opportunity go by,
merely because it was one which only an impecunious promoter durst
undertake; but he had his compensations. Like the man who becomes a
king, he got well grovelled to, and he liked it. He could _influence_,
too, if the after responsibilities of "promoting" were too onerous to
be undertaken. The use by other men of his name, unauthorizedly, as a
heavy holder of their stocks, was worth money; and, as long as he
"unloaded" in time, perfectly safe. He did not now flutter about
'Change, scattering reports and picking up news; he sat in his office,
and was waited on by those who sought his countenance in their schemes
and wished to learn its price.
Only one disappointment as yet had befallen him. He wished to become
president of a leading bank, and he knew so many of the directors that
he made sure of gaining his point. Unfortunately the directors knew
him as well, and deemed it advisable to choose some one else; but then
of course it was the general body of shareholders who must bear the
blame. The ballot leaves so many things in doubt, and covers up so
much about which there can be no doubt at all. His friends, the
directors, called on him immediately the election was over--the
traitors being probably the first to hurry in--and expressed the most
cordial regret and condolence; and Ralph was too wise not to accept
the profuse explanations with gracious condescension. Their hastening
to explain was a tribute, at any rate, to his weight, and showed that
they feared him; and as one after another he smiled them out, he
promised himself to let them feel yet that their fears had not been
groundless. He was not, therefore, in his most debonair mood, when, on
being informed by a new clerk that a rough-looking man had been
waiting some time, he permitted him to be introduced.
"Paul?"
"----day, sir."
"It seems only the other day since you were here last."
"Six months."
"How many six months do you make in a year?
"Two."
"Hm--I am not so sure of that. Seems to me you have managed to pack
three into this last year. However--Here, Stinson!" he called to the
clerk appointed to wait without and attend his private behests, while
he scribbled a cheque. "Ask the cashier to cash that. Quick!" he added
as he raised his eyes and saw the stolid figure of his visitor
standing before him, a statue in copper-coloured flesh, motionless and
unregarding, unimpressed by his grandeur or the trembling
assiduousness of his clerk; an embodiment of still impassible waiting,
like the image carved on the granite door-post of an Egyptian temple.
Paul did not even glance about him, he simply stood, and with
unwinking eye gazed into space, inscrutible and indifferent to all
around.
Ralph threw himself back in his chair, fidgetted impatiently, and
coughed and snorted. So impressive is that which cannot be gauged or
looked into, even if it contain nothing. This was the instrument, too,
and the reminder of a crime, who stood before him; a crime of so long
ago, and which yet, so long as the Indian lives may come to light--may
even be remedied, and leave him unprofited by the deed, as well as
disgraced by its discovery. With wonder he asked himself how he could
have ventured to do what he had done, the chances of failure being
so many, the consequences of detection so ruinous, that to think of
them even now sent a cold thrill through him. Since it was done,
however--and he felt no remorse at the deed--he was content enough to
enjoy the fruits, although his successes since had made him in a
measure independent of them; still his uncle's millions when they
came--came to his boy that is, but he ere then would be his
partner--would, added to his own, gain him a position above rivalry;
and even now in expectancy they enhanced his importance.
Stinson returned with the proceeds of the cheque, and Ralph counted
over two hundred dollars to hand to Paul. His fingers lingered
lovingly over the bits of paper, touching each dollar with a dainty
caress as though he loved it and was sad to part.
It is strange how a rich man hates to part with money, while the poor
are free and even lavish so far as their little "pile" will go; but
perhaps we only invert the statement of what is a truism, that they
who dislike to part with their money keep it and grow rich, while they
who spend it lavishly grow poor. At any rate, Ralph lingered while he
counted the two hundred dollars, and the thought occurred to him "how
many times more would this have to be done?" Eight years still before
Gerald's money became payable! Sixteen more half-yearly payments of
two hundred dollars each! Thirty-two hundred dollars in all, besides
interest! It seemed monstrous. Could nothing be done? Could he not be
made to take a round sum down, and be bound to keep silence for ever?
No! That had been tried already, and so soon as the money was spent he
came back for more, saying he must live, and if Ralph would not pay,
assuredly the bereaved parents would. And so it had come about that
Paul was grown an annuitant, and came to claim his little income every
six months.
"Here you are, Paul," growled Ralph, handing over the money with a
sigh; and Paul with a gleam in his eye laid hands upon the roll of
bills which vanished from view forthwith.
"Say, Paul," speaking in a more insinuating voice, "would it not suit
you better to get a good big lump of money once for all, than to be
coming here so often drawing it by dribs and drabs? If I were to give
you a thousand dollars now, all at once, see how many things you could
do with it! You could open a tavern up the Ottawa and make your
fortune right away, and you would save all the money you spend for
drink besides."
"Ah!" said Paul, his face lighting up at the inviting picture, and
bending forward with extended palm to receive the largess at once.
"I con-sent!"
"Consent to what?"
"Take ze money."
"Of course you will, my fine fellow; I know that. And after you have
got rid of it all you will come back to me for more."
"Promise to come no more."
"Of course you do! But you will come all the same. The promise don't
count after the money is spent. I have not forgot last time."
Paul smiled like a man who receives a compliment. Veracity was not his
point of honour. Rather, it was smartness; and to have "done" this
rich and masterful white man seemed an achievement to be proud of. He
stroked his beardless cheeks with a simper of gratified vanity, and
fairly laughed at last, so tickled was he by the recollection of his
cleverness.
"No! my fine fellow, you don't come it over me again like that!--no
use supposing it. But I'll tell you what I _will_ do, for I like you,
you see, Paul; though I know you're a rascal. I have been thinking
that if that child were to die it would be bad for you. You could not
try it on with me any more by threatening to carry the kid home to its
people, and so your pension would come to an end, and you'd have to go
to work. How would you like that, Paul, you idle dog, after all these
years? So I have been thinking that if that were to happen--the kid's
death, you know--and you could bring me some proof, I would give you a
lump sum and have done with you."
"If the papoose die?"
"Yes."
"You give thousand dollars?--dollars down?"
"Down on the nail, if you bring proof."
"How make sure?"
"You will tell me how it all happened, and I shall know how to verify
the fact."
"No, no! Make _me_ sure. Thousand dollars."
"Ha! I see. You want some assurance that I will pay what I say? Don't
see what more assurance I can give than to say so, or what more you
should want. Have I not kept my word with you before?"
"Ouff"--and Paul plunged into thought where he stood, while Ralph,
impatient to be rid of him, collected his papers and locked them in
his desk, rose, and took his hat and gloves, as if about to go home.
This brought Paul's reflections to a point. He turned to Ralph with a
grin and a grunt, and held out his hand.
"Thousand dollars!" he said with another grunt; and when Ralph,
supposing it a fashion of leave-taking, laid some of his fingers
rather gingerly on the extended palm, he caught and shook them
eagerly, saying:
"Pay down! Pay down! Papoose dead."
Ralph drew back.
"Dead! When? Where? Tell me all about it."
"Dead at Caughnawaga."
"How long ago?"
"Ten year--Day 'twas took. Come, see, if you will. _Au-dessous du
plancher_ at my _cabane_--Thousand dollars!" and he held out his hand
again.
"Ten years ago! And you have been drawing money from me for that
child's support all this time? And never told!"
Paul looked gratified, and drew himself up like modest genius when at
length its merit is brought to light. Then he chuckled and moved his
fingers as if to poke Ralph in the ribs. The idea of Ralph's having
been so completely fooled was too delicious.
"But how could it have happened? You cannot mean that you--murdered
the child?"
"Ouff," grunted Paul, from whose face the grin was fading. His sly
escapade appeared not to be appreciated as it deserved. He placed his
fingers on his throat now, and let his tongue protrude, to describe
the process of strangulation.
Ralph drew back in horror. It is one thing to entertain the idea of a
crime hypothetically, and even to incite to the deed. The mind busies
itself in contemplating the results, and the act appears but a
circumstance, a necessary one perhaps, but one on which it is
unnecessary to dwell. It is another thing to confront the deed after
it has been done, and can no longer be overlooked, when it has become
a realized infamy, withering and dwindling the profits and results
into worthless Dead Sea fruit. The bloodhound will pursue its prey for
days together, eager to pull him down and bury its fangs in his flesh,
but if in the heat of the chase it should encounter blood, there is an
end, the scent is lost, the hunt ended. And so was Ralph staggered at
what he heard. This child's life had stood in his way, and he had
striven to set it aside. But to think that it had been murdered, and
that his was the finger which touched the spring and set the murderous
machine in motion! No! He _would_ not think it. It was horrible. The
instrument, the over-zealous instrument which had done too much, must
shoulder the responsibility of his own deed; and, for himself, he
would no longer compromise his respectability by having dealings with
such a ruffian, now that it had become quite safe to break with him.
The blood of the little innocent seemed crying out of the ground for
vengeance, and at least he would wash his hands of the murderer, and
not a cent of blood-money should the homicide receive from him. A
virtuous glow diffused itself through Ralph's pulses as these thoughts
passed through his mind in a space far shorter than it takes to write
or read them; indeed there had been little more than the ordinary
conversational pause between Paul's last grunt of assent and
pantomimic signs, and Ralph's reply as he now looked him squarely in
the face with a frown of the severest virtue, and a demeanour of
dignified rebuke which an ignorant onlooker might have hoped would not
be lost on the poor untaught son of the wilderness.
"And you have been drawing money from me for that child's support all
these years!" He grew indignant as he thought how he had been imposed
upon; and Paul, quenched the moment before, and astonished at his
demeanour, began to pluck up heart again, and the dawn of a smile at
his own cleverness began to re-appear on his wooden visage; but it
faded again as Ralph proceeded:
"Do you know that what you have been accusing yourself of is a hanging
offence? A cruel, cowardly murder of a helpless infant? But I will not
be made accessory after the fact! I am done with you, Paul!--Go!--Do
you hear me? Git!"
Paul looked in his face amazed. What had he meant then when he
promised him money to bring news of the child's death? He was about to
speak, but Ralph stopped him before, in his stupefaction, he could
find words.
"Go! I say. And never let me see you again. Or----! You can guess
yourself what will happen."
Confused, crestfallen and crushed, Paul withdrew. A new view of the
inscrutable ways of the great white man had been given him. He could
only draw a great breath in his helplessness and go his way. The white
folks were too much for him, that was the one idea which penetrated
his darkened mind. They would make use of him when they wanted him,
and then cast him aside; but for the future he promised himself to
keep out of their way.
Ralph coughed and drew on his gloves, not ill-pleased, at the last, at
the turn which affairs had taken, and hurried off to catch the
afternoon train for St. Euphrase, where his family were spending the
summer at a smart new villa which he had built a year or two before.