FATE DEALS CARDS OF BOTH COLOURS IN THE LITTLE FORT
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 hollowed to 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, and Mistress 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 intent
upon 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 seen in
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.