Grul's Hour
Though we were in a hot haste to get away, it was absolutely necessary
first to bury the dead Indian, lest a hue and cry should be raised that
might involve and delay us. With my paddle, therefore, I dug him a
shallow grave in the soft mud at the edge of the tide, which was then
on the ebb. This meagre inhumation completed, I smoothed the surface
as best I could with my paddle; and then we set off, resting easy in
the knowledge that the next tide would smooth down all traces of the
work.
It was by this close upon sunset, and I felt a little hesitation as to
what we had best do. I had no wish to run through the settlement till
after dark, nor was I anxious to push on against the furious ebb of the
des Saumons, against which the strongest paddlers could make slow
headway. But it was necessary to get out of the creek before the water
should quite forsake us; and, moreover, Mizpah was in a fever of haste
to be gone. She kept gazing about as if she expected the savage to
rise from his muddy grave and point at her. We ran out of the creek,
therefore, and were instantly caught in the great current of the river.
I suffered it to sweep us down for half a mile, having noted on the way
up a cluster of haystacks in an angle of the dyke. Coming to these, I
pushed ashore at once, carried the canoe up, and found that the place
was one where we might rest secure. Here we ate our black bread and
drank new milk, for there were many cattle pasturing on the aftermath,
and some of the cows had not yet gone home to milking. Then, hiding
the canoe behind the dyke, and ourselves between the stacks, in great
weariness we sought our sleep.
There was no hint of dawn in the sky when I awoke with a start; but the
constellations had swung so wide an arc that I knew morning was close
at hand. There was a hissing clamour in the river-bed which told me
the tide was coming in. That, doubtless, was the change which had so
swiftly aroused me. I went to the other side of the stack, where
Mizpah lay with her cheek upon her arm, her hair fallen adorably about
her neck. Touching her forehead softly with my hand, I whispered:--
"Come, comrade, the tide has turned!" Whereupon she sat up quietly, as
if this were for her the most usual of awakenings, and began to arrange
her hair. I went out upon the shadowy marsh and soon accomplished a
second theft of new milk, driving the tranquil cow which furnished it
into the corner behind the stacks, that our dairy might be the more
conveniently at hand. Our fast broken (and though I hinted nought of
it to Mizpah, I found black bread growing monotonous), I carried the
canoe down to the edge of the tide. But Mistress Mizpah's daintiness
revolted at the mud, whereupon she took off her moccasins and stockings
before she came to it, and I caught a gleam of slim white feet at the
dewy edge of the grass. When I had carried down the paddles, pole, and
baggage, I found her standing in a quandary. She could not get into
the canoe with that sticky clay clinging to her feet, and there was no
place where she could sit down to wash them. Carelessly enough (though
my heart the while trembled within me), I stretched out my hand to her,
saying:--
"Lean on me, comrade, and then you can manage it all right."
And so it was that she managed it; and so indifferently did I cast my
eyes about, now at the breaking dawn, now at the swelling tide, that I
am sure she must have deemed that I saw not or cared not at all how
white and slender and shapely were her feet!
In few minutes we were afloat, going swiftly on the tide. The sky was
all saffron as we slipped through the settlement, and a fairy glow lay
upon the white cottages. The banks on either hand took on the
ineffable hues of polished nacre. To the door of one cottage, close by
the water, came a man yawning, and hailed us. But I flung back a mere
"_Bon jour_," and sped on. Not till the settlement was out of sight
behind us, not till the cross on the spire of the village was quite cut
off from view, did I drop to the even pace of our day-long journeying.
When at length we got beyond the influence of the tide, des Saumons was
a shallow, sparkling, singing stream, its bed aglow with ruddy-coloured
rocks. Here I laid aside my paddle and thrust the canoe onwards by
means of my long pole of white spruce, while Mizpah had nought to do
but lean back and watch the shores creep by.
At the head of tide we had stopped to drink and to breathe a little.
And there, seeing an old man working in front of a solitary cabin, I
had deemed it safe to approach him and purchase a few eggs. After this
we kept on till an hour past noon, when I stopped in a bend of the
river, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff of red rock some seventy or
eighty feet in height. Here was a thicket wherein we might hide both
the canoe and ourselves if necessary. The canoe I hid at once,
that--being a matter of the more time. Then we both set ourselves to
gathering dry sticks, for it seemed to me we might here risk the luxury
of a fire, with a dinner of roasted eggs.
We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in the
underbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah by
the hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark and
drooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff,--and
I noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that I
had forgotten to release Mizpah's hand.
The crashing noise, mingled with some sharp outcries of rage and fear,
continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw at
the brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of a
black and yellow cloak.
"Grul!" I whispered, in astonishment; and I felt an answering surprise
in the tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand.
A moment more and Grul peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upper
and lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end of
which he had made fast to a stout birch tree which leaned well out over
the edge.
"What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes.
"We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily.
The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappeared
close to the brink. He carried, as lightly as if it had been a bundle
of straw, the body of a man, so bound about with many cords as to
remind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of some
black and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim was
dressed in black,--and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest.
"It is the Black Abbe, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; while
Mizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies.
"Grul has come to his revenge!" I added.
In a business fashion Grul knotted the end of his coil of rope about
the prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile,
nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathed
and helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink,
governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a jutting
stump. There was something indescribably terrifying in the sight of
the fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings and
twistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied him
in spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she might
not see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in a
fascination.
For some moments Grul gazed down in silence upon his victim.
I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but this
was doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of my
vision. Suddenly the victim, his fortitude giving way with the sense
of the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition of
that gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperate
entreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it,
and Mizpah covered her ears.
"Oh, stop it! save him!" she whispered to me, with white lips. But I
shook my head. I could not reach the top of the cliff. And moreover,
I had small doubt that Grul's vengeance was just. Nevertheless, had I
been at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, I had certainly put
a stop to it.
After listening for some moments, with a sort of pleasant attention, to
the victim's ravings, Grul lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far
out over the brink, and reached down a long arm. I saw the gleam of a
knife in his darting hand; and I drew a quick breath of relief.
[Illustration: Grul lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out
over the brink, and reached down a long arm.]
"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had not
done, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming had
ceased before the knife touched him.
But I was vastly mistaken in thinking it the end.
"He has not killed him," muttered Mizpah.
And then I saw that Grul had merely cut the cord which bound his
captive's hands. The Abbe was swiftly freeing himself; and Grul,
meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When the
unhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentor
secured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shoulders
leaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.
The Abbe, with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, and
the cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the cliff
foot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, he clutched at the
smooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. It
was pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face above
looking down upon them with unimpassioned interest; till at last,
exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at his
persecutor with the silence of despair.
Presently Grul spoke,--for the first time, as far as we knew.
"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbe, I suppose," he remarked, in tone of
placid courtesy.
"I know you, Francois de Grul," came the reply, gasped from a dry mouth.
"Then further explanation, I think you will allow, is not needed. I
will bid you farewell, and a pleasant journey," went on the same civil
modulations of Grul's voice. At the same moment he reached down with
his shining blade as if to sever the rope.
"I did not do it! I did not do it!" screamed the Abbe, once more
clutching convulsively at the smooth rock. "I swear to you by all the
saints!"
Grul examined the edge of his knife. He tested it with his thumb. I
saw him glance along it critically. Then he touched it, ever so
lightly, to the rope, so that a single strand parted.
"Swear to me," he said, in the mildest voice, "swear to me, Monsieur
l'Abbe, that you had no part in it. Swear by the Holy Ghost, Monsieur
l'Abbe!"
But the Abbe was silent.
"Swear me that oath now, good Abbe," repeated the voice, with a kind of
courteous insistence.
"I will not swear!" came the ghastly whisper in reply.
At this an astonishing change passed over the face that peered down
from the brink. Its sane tranquillity became a very paroxysm of rage.
The grotesque cap was dashed aside, and Grul sprang to his feet, waving
his arms, stamping and leaping, his gaudy cloak a-flutter, his long
white hair and beard twisting as if with a sentient fury of their own.
He was so close upon the brink that I held my breath, expecting him to
be plunged headlong. But all at once the paroxysm died out as suddenly
as it had begun; and throwing himself down in his former position, Grul
once more touched the knife edge to the rope, severing fibre by fibre,
slowly, slowly.
With the first touch upon the rope rose the Abbe's voice again, but no
longer in vain entreaty and coward wailings. I listened with a great
awe, and a sob broke from Mizpah's lips. It was the prayer for the
passing soul. We heard it poured forth in steady tones but swift,
against the blank face of the cliff. And we waited to see the rope
divided at a stroke.
But to our astonishment, Grul sprang to his feet again, in another
fury, and flung aside his knife. With twitching hands he loosened the
rope and began lowering his victim rapidly, till, within some twenty
feet of the bottom, the Abbe found a footing, and stopped. Then Grul
tossed the whole rope down upon him.
"Go!" he cried in his chanting, bell-like tones. "The cup of your
iniquity is not yet full. You shall not die till your soul is so black
in every part that you will go down straight into hell!" And turning
abruptly, he vanished.
The Black Abbe, as if seized with a faintness, leaned against the rock
for some minutes. Then, freeing himself from the rope, he climbed down
to the foot of the cliff, and moved off slowly by the water's edge
toward Cobequid. We trembled lest he should see us, or the canoe,--I
having no stomach for an attack upon one who had just gone through so
dreadful a torment. But his face, neck, ears, were like a sweating
candle; and his contracted eyes seemed scarce to see the ground before
his feet.
"Seemed," I say. Yet even in this supreme moment, he tricked me.