A STRONG MAN IS BOWED
The whole thing was so unexpected that for one moment not a man in the
room drew breath. Then the colonel sprang up with the bellow of an
enraged bull, overturning the table in his rush, and a dozen club
members were pulling him back from Eric.
"Eric Hamilton, are you mad?" I cried. "What do you mean?"
But Hamilton stood motionless as if he saw none of us. Except that his
breath was labored, he wore precisely the same strange, distracted air
he had on entering the club.
"Hold back!" I implored; for Adderly was striking right and left to get
free from the men. "Hold back! There's a mistake! Something's wrong!"
"Reptile!" roared the colonel. "Cowardly reptile, you shall pay for
this!"
"There's a mistake," I shouted, above the clamor of exclamations.
"Glad the mistake landed where it did, all the same," whispered Uncle
Jack MacKenzie in my ear, "but get him out of this. Drunk--or a
scandal," says my uncle, who always expressed himself in explosives
when excited. "Side room--here--lead him in--drunk--by Jove--drunk!"
"Never," I returned passionately. I knew both Hamilton and his wife too
well to tolerate either insinuation. But we led him like a dazed being
into a side office, where Mr. Jack MacKenzie promptly turned the key and
took up a posture with his back against the door.
"Now, Sir," he broke out sternly, "if it's neither drink, nor a
scandal----" There, he stopped; for Hamilton, utterly unconscious of us,
moved, rather than walked, automatically across the room. Throwing his
hat down, he bowed his head over both arms above the mantel-piece.
My uncle and I looked from the silent man to each other. Raising his
brows in question, Mr. Jack MacKenzie touched his forehead and whispered
across to me--"Mad?"
At that, though the word was spoken barely above a breath, Eric turned
slowly round and faced us with blood-shot, gleaming eyes. He made as
though he would speak, sank into the armchair before the grate and
pressed both hands against his forehead.
"Mad," he repeated in a voice low as a moan, framing his words slowly
and with great effort. "By Jove, men, you should know me better than to
mouth such rot under your breath. To-night, I'd sell my soul, sell my
soul to be mad, really mad, to know that all I think has happened,
hadn't happened at all--" and his speech was broken by a sharp intake of
breath.
"Out with it, man, for the Lord's sake," shouted my uncle, now convinced
that Eric was not drunk and jumping to conclusions--as he was wont to do
when excited--regarding a possible scandal.
"Out with it, man! We'll stand by you! Has that blasted red-faced
turkey----"
"Pray, spare your histrionics, for the present," Eric cut in with the
icy self-possession bred by a lifetime's danger, dispelling my uncle's
second suspicion with a quiet scorn that revealed nothing.
"What the----" began my kinsman, "what did you strike him for?"
"Did I strike somebody?" asked Hamilton absently.
Again my uncle flashed a questioning look at me, but this time his face
showed his conviction so plainly no word was needed.
"Did I strike somebody? Wish you'd apologize----"
"Apologize!" thundered my uncle. "I'll do nothing of the kind. Served
him right. 'Twas a pretty way, a pretty way, indeed, to speak of any
man's wife----" But the word "wife" had not been uttered before Eric
threw out his hands in an imploring gesture.
"Don't!" he cried out sharply in the suffering tone of a man under the
operating knife. "Don't! It all comes back! It is true! It is true! I
can't get away from it! It is no nightmare. My God, men, how can I tell
you? There's no way of saying it! It is impossible--preposterous--some
monstrous joke--it's quite impossible I tell you--it couldn't have
happened--such things don't happen--couldn't happen--to her--of all
women! But she's gone--she's gone----"
"See here, Hamilton," cried my uncle, utterly beside himself with
excitement, "are we to understand you are talking of your wife, or--or
some other woman?"
"See here, Hamilton," I reiterated, quite heedless of the brutality of
our questions and with a thousand wild suspicions flashing into my mind.
"Is it your wife, Miriam, and your boy?"
But he heard neither of us.
"They were there--they waved to me from the garden at the edge of the
woods as I entered the forest. Only this morning, both waving to me as I
rode away--and when I returned from the city at noon, they were gone! I
looked to the window as I came back. The curtain moved and I thought my
boy was hiding, but it was only the wind. We've searched every nook from
cellar to attic. His toys were littered about and I fancied I heard his
voice everywhere, but no! No--no--and we've been hunting house and
garden for hours----"
"And the forest?" questioned Uncle Jack, the trapper instinct of former
days suddenly re-awakening.
"The forest is waist-deep with snow! Besides we beat through the bush
everywhere, and there wasn't a track, nor broken twig, where they could
have passed." His torn clothes bore evidence to the thoroughness of that
search.
"Nonsense," my uncle burst out, beginning to bluster. "They've been
driven to town without leaving word!"
"No sleigh was at Chateau Bigot this morning," returned Hamilton.
"But the road, Eric?" I questioned, recalling how the old manor-house
stood well back in the center of a cleared plateau in the forest.
"Couldn't they have gone down the road to those Indian encampments?"
"The road is impassable for sleighs, let alone walking, and their winter
wraps are all in the house. For Heaven's sake, men, suggest something!
Don't madden me with these useless questions!"
But in spite of Eric's entreaty my excitable kinsman subjected the
frenzied man to such a fire of questions as might have sublimated
pre-natal knowledge. And I stood back listening and pieced the
distracted, broken answers into some sort of coherency till the whole
tragic scene at the Chateau on that spring day of the year 1815, became
ineffaceably stamped on my memory.
Causeless, with neither warning nor the slightest premonition of danger,
the greatest curse which can befall a man came upon my friend Eric
Hamilton. However fond a husband may be, there are things worse for his
wife than death which he may well dread, and it was one of these
tragedies which almost drove poor Hamilton out of his reason and changed
the whole course of my own life. In broad daylight, his young wife and
infant son disappeared as suddenly and completely as if blotted out of
existence.
That morning, Eric light-heartedly kissed wife and child good-by and
waved them a farewell that was to be the last. He rode down the winding
forest path to Quebec and they stood where the Chateau garden merged
into the forest of Charlesbourg Mountain. At noon, when he returned, for
him there existed neither wife nor child. For any trace of them that
could be found, both might have been supernaturally spirited away. The
great house, that had re-echoed to the boy's prattle, was deathly still;
and neither wife, nor child, answered his call. The nurse was summoned.
She was positive _Madame_ was amusing the boy across the hall, and
reassuringly bustled off to find mother and son in the next room, and
the next, and yet the next; to discover each in succession empty.
Alarm spread to the Chateau servants. The simple _habitant_ maids were
questioned, but their only response was white-faced, blank amazement.
_Madame_ not returned!
_Madame_ not back!
Mon Dieu! What had happened? And all the superstition of hillside lore
added to the fear on each anxious face. Shortly after Monsieur went to
the city, _Madame_ had taken her little son out as usual for a morning
airing, and had been seen walking up and down the paths tracked through
the garden snow. Had _Monsieur_ examined the clearing between the house
and the forest? _Monsieur_ could see for himself the snow was too deep
and crusty among the trees for _Madame_ to go twenty paces into the
woods. Besides, foot-marks could be traced from the garden to the bush.
He need not fear wild animals. They were receding into the mountains as
spring advanced. Let him take another look about the open; and Hamilton
tore out-doors, followed by the whole household; but from the Chateau in
the center of the glade to the encircling border of snow-laden
evergreens there was no trace of wife or child.
Then Eric laughed at his own growing fears. Miriam must be in the house.
So the search of the old hall, that had once resounded to the drunken
tread of gay French grandees, began again. From hidden chamber in the
vaulted cellar to attic rooms above, not a corner of the Chateau was
left unexplored. Had any one come and driven her to the city? But that
was impossible. The roads were drifted the height of a horse and there
were no marks of sleigh runners on either side of the riding path. Could
she possibly have ventured a few yards down the main road to an
encampment of Indians, whose squaws after Indian custom made much of the
white baby? Neither did that suggestion bring relief; for the Indians
had broken camp early in the morning and there was only a dirty patch of
littered snow, where the wigwams had been.
The alarm now became a panic. Hamilton, half-crazed and unable to
believe his own senses, began wondering whether he had nightmare. He
thought he might waken up presently and find the dead weight smothering
his chest had been the boy snuggling close. He was vaguely conscious it
was strange of him to continue sleeping with that noise of shouting men
and whining hounds and snapping branches going on in the forest. The
child's lightest cry generally broke the spell of a nightmare; but the
din of terrified searchers rushing through the woods and of echoes
rolling eerily back from the white hills convinced him this was no
dream-land. Then, the distinct crackle of trampled brushwood and the
scratch of spines across his face called him back to an unendurable
reality.
"The thing is utterly impossible, Hamilton," I cried, when in short
jerky sentences, as if afraid to give thought rein, he had answered my
uncle's questioning. "Impossible! Utterly impossible!"
"I would to God it were!" he moaned.
"It was daylight, Eric?" asked Mr. Jack MacKenzie.
He nodded moodily.
"And she couldn't be lost in Charlesbourg forest?" I added, taking up
the interrogations where my uncle left off.
"No trace--not a footprint!"
"And you're quite sure she isn't in the house?" replied my relative.
"Quite!" he answered passionately.
"And there was an Indian encampment a few yards down the road?"
continued Mr. MacKenzie, undeterred.
"Oh! What has that to do with it?" he asked petulantly, springing to his
feet. "They'd moved off long before I went back. Besides, Indians don't
run off with white women. Haven't I spent my life among them? I should
know their ways!"
"But my dear fellow!" responded the elder trader, "so do I know their
ways. If she isn't in the Chateau and isn't in the woods and isn't in
the garden, can't you see, the Indian encampment is the only possible
explanation?"
The lines on his face deepened. Fire flashed from his gleaming eyes, and
if ever I have seen murder written on the countenance of man, it was on
Hamilton's.
"What tribe were they, anyway?" I asked, trying to speak indifferently,
for every question was knife-play on a wound.
"Mongrel curs, neither one thing nor the other, Iroquois canoemen,
French half-breeds intermarried with Sioux squaws! They're all connected
with the North-West Company's crews. The Nor'-Westers leave here for
Fort William when the ice breaks up. This riff-raff will follow in their
own dug-outs!"
"Know any of them?" persisted my uncle.
"No, I don't think I--Let me see! By Jove! Yes, Gillespie!" he shouted,
"Le Grand Diable was among them!"
"What about Diable?" I asked, pinning him down to the subject, for his
mind was lost in angry memories.
"What about him? He's my one enemy among the Indians," he answered in
tones thick and ominously low. "I thrashed him within an inch of his
life at Isle à la Crosse. Being a Nor'-Wester, he thought it fine game
to pillage the kit of a Hudson's Bay; so he stole a silver-mounted
fowling-piece which my grandfather had at Culloden. By Jove, Gillespie!
The Nor'-Westers have a deal of blood to answer for, stirring up those
Indians against traders; and if they've brought this on me----"
"Did you get it back?" I interrupted, referring to the fowling-piece,
neither my uncle, nor I, offering any defense for the Nor'-Westers. I
knew there were two sides to this complaint from a Hudson's Bay man.
"No! That's why I nearly finished him; but the more I clubbed, the more
he jabbered impertinence, '_Cooloo! cooloo! qu' importe!_ It doesn't
matter!' By Jove! I made it matter!"
"Is that all about Diable, Eric?" continued my uncle.
He ran his fingers distractedly back through his long, black hair, rose,
and, coming over to me, laid a trembling hand on each shoulder.
"Gillespie!" he muttered through hard-set teeth. "It isn't all. I didn't
think at the time, but the morning after the row with that red devil I
found a dagger stuck on the outside of my hut-door. The point was
through a fresh sprouted leaflet. A withered twig hung over the blade."
"Man! Are you mad?" cried Jack MacKenzie. "He must be the very devil
himself. You weren't married then--He couldn't mean----"
"I thought it was an Indian threat," interjected Hamilton, "that if I
had downed him in the fall, when the branches were bare, he meant to
have his revenge in spring when the leaves were green; but you know I
left the country that fall."
"You were wrong, Eric!" I blurted out impetuously, the terrible
significance of that threat dawning upon me. "That wasn't the meaning at
all."
Then I stopped; for Hamilton was like a palsied man, and no one asked
what those tokens of a leaflet pierced by a dagger and an old branch
hanging to the knife might mean.
Mr. Jack MacKenzie was the first to pull himself together.
"Come," he shouted. "Gather up your wits! To the camping ground!" and he
threw open the door.
Thereupon, we three flung through the club-room to the astonishment of
the gossips, who had been waiting outside for developments in the
quarrel with Colonel Adderly. At the outer porch, Hamilton laid a hand
on Mr. MacKenzie's shoulder.
"Don't come," he begged hurriedly. "There's a storm blowing. It's rough
weather, and a rough road, full of drifts! Make my peace with the man I
struck."
Then Eric and I whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windy
night. A moment later, our horses were dashing over iced cobble-stones
with the clatter of pistol-shots.
"It will snow," said I, feeling a few flakes driven through the darkness
against my face; but to this remark Hamilton was heedless.
"It will snow, Eric," I repeated. "The wind's veered north. We must get
out to the camp before all traces are covered. How far by the Beauport
road?"
"Five miles," said he, and I knew by the sudden scream and plunge of his
horse that spurs were dug into raw sides. We turned down that steep,
break-neck, tortuous street leading from Upper Town to the valley of the
St. Charles. The wet thaw of mid-day had frozen and the road was
slippery as a toboggan slide. We reined our horses in tightly, to
prevent a perilous stumbling of fore-feet, and by zigzagging from side
to side managed to reach the foot of the hill without a single fall.
Here, we again gave them the bit; and we were presently thundering
across the bridge in a way that brought the keeper out cursing and
yelling for his toll. I tossed a coin over my shoulder and we galloped
up the elm-lined avenue leading to that Charlesbourg retreat, where
French Bacchanalians caroused before the British conquest, passed the
thatch-roofed cots of _habitants_ and, turning suddenly to the right,
followed a seldom frequented road, where snow was drifted heavily. Here
we had to slacken pace, our beasts sinking to their haunches and
snorting through the white billows like a modern snow-plow.
Hamilton had spoken not a word.
Clouds were massing on the north. Overhead a few stars glittered against
the black, and the angry wind had the most mournful wail I have ever
heard. How the weird undertones came like the cries of a tortured child,
and the loud gusts with the shriek of demons!
"Gillespie," called Eric's voice tremulous with anguish,
"listen--Rufus--listen! Do you hear anything? Do you hear any one
calling for help? Is that a child crying?"
"No, Eric, old man," said I, shivering in my saddle. "I hear--I hear
nothing at all but the wind."
But my hesitancy belied the truth of that answer; for we both heard
sounds, which no one can interpret but he whose well beloved is lost in
the storm.
And the wind burst upon us again, catching my empty denial and tossing
the words to upper air with eldritch laughter. Then there was a lull,
and I felt rather than heard the choking back of stifled moans and knew
that the man by my side, who had held iron grip of himself before other
eyes, was now giving vent to grief in the blackness of night.
At last a red light gleamed from the window of a low cot. That was the
signal for us to turn abruptly to the left, entering the forest by a
narrow bridle-path that twisted among the cedars. As if to look down in
pity, the moon shone for a moment above the ragged edge of a storm
cloud, and all the snow-laden evergreens stood out stately, shadowy and
spectral, like mourners for the dead.
Again the road took to right-about at a sharp angle and the broad
Chateau, with its noble portico and numerous windows all alight,
suddenly loomed up in the center of a forest-clearing on the mountain
side. Where the path to the garden crossed a frozen stream was a small
open space. Here the Indians had been encamped. We hallooed for servants
and by lantern light examined every square inch of the smoked snow and
rubbish heaps. Bits of tin in profusion, stones for the fire, tent
canvas, ends of ropes and tattered rags lay everywhere over the black
patch. Snow was beginning to fall heavily in great flakes that obscured
earth and air. Not a thing had we found to indicate any trace of the
lost woman and child, until I caught sight of a tiny, blue string
beneath a piece of rusty metal. Kicking the tin aside, I caught the
ribbon up. When I saw on the lower end a child's finely beaded moccasin,
I confess I had rather felt the point of Le Grand Diable's dagger at my
own heart than have shown that simple thing to Hamilton.
Then the snow-storm broke upon us in white billows blotting out
everything. We spread a sheet on the ground to preserve any marks of
the campers, but the drifting wind drove us indoors and we were
compelled to cease searching. All night long Eric and I sat before the
roaring grate fire of the hunting-room, he leaning forward with chin in
his palms and saying few words, I offering futile suggestions and
uttering mad threats, but both utterly at a loss what to do. We knew
enough of Indian character to know what not to do. That was, raise an
outcry, which might hasten the cruelty of Le Grand Diable.