FIRESIDE AND GROVE.
Ambition and not chance had brought La Salle thus far from the beaten
track. He had made it his policy to pursue the Englishmen in that land
until he should have brought about their extermination, knowing well
that any success in that direction would be rewarded by the richest
gift which his master Richelieu had to bestow. From Onawa he learnt of
Viner's departure for the south on the day following that venture
against New Windsor. The girl had discovered the young man's track and
gladly accompanied the priest, pointing out the trail, which was
imperceptible to his untrained eyes, and so bringing him to the grove
where Geoffrey tarried in the enchanted sleep.
After Madame Labroquerie had gone to find him food, La Salle
reconsidered his plans by the light of her information. It was no way
of his to hide his light beneath a bushel, and the slaying of Viner in
that lonely country would, he reasoned, bring him little fame. If,
however, he should return to lodge the information with Roussilac, all
men would know of his agency. Therefore, when Madame returned, he
impressed upon her the necessity of detaining Viner for at least three
days within the grove.
"'Tis easy," the little woman muttered. "I shall be courteous to the
young man, and praise his face and flatter his pride. Madeleine, my
daughter, shall do the rest. I warrant you he shall not stir from here
till the soldiers arrive; and then, I trust, a stake shall be prepared
and a goodly pile of faggots for the proper despatch of his heretic
soul."
"I shall see that execution be done upon him," La Salle replied grimly.
"Now get you gone, for I would be alone."
"Your holiness will remain until the morning," Madame prayed. "I would
then make my confession, and receive the peace of absolution."
"Find me here at the dawn," La Salle answered. Then, uplifting his
blood-stained hand, he bestowed upon her his benediction and sent her
away.
Not fifty yards distant Onawa stood as a guardian over the man she
loved, staring into the night, heeding every sound in the valley,
dreading the approach of some emissary from her tribe. The maid had
become an outlaw. Through her treachery the boy Richard, her own flesh
and blood, had come to his death. With her own hand she had slain a
man friendly to all her race. In the forest beyond the river a cruel
death by torture awaited her; her own father would be the first to
condemn her to the fire. She was thus compelled to stand or fall
beside the priest whom she had aided with that disregard for self which
has ever dominated a woman's actions.
As she stood watching the firelight and the grove, dim ghosts arose and
began her punishment. She seemed to hear a sound of scuffling, and to
see young Richard and his great hound, Blood, wrestling together, as
they had been wont to do among the pine barrens, to the roar of the
wind and the lost waters. Again she heard the boyish voice, gasping
and triumphant, "I have beaten him again. I am stronger than he." And
as she shivered, there came an echo of her own former words from the
line of tossing trees, "He is brave and strong. He shall make a man
before he has grown."
Beside the fire La Salle slept, lulled by the wind. He knew Onawa was
acting as a guard over him, else he had never dared to close his eyes.
Yet his rest became presently broken into by spiritual beings hovering
around in the grove, anxious to point out his future. The chafing of
boughs, the beating of leaves, the gnawing of the beavers around the
philosopher's grave, with more distant sounds from the country beyond,
were the media these beings employed. The disturbances passed into his
ear, which pressed upon the palliasse, and entered the torpid brain to
make a dream.
Through the unlighted streets of a city a way was revealed before the
sleeper by means of lightning flashes. No fellow-creatures were in
sight, and yet the tongues of a multitude shouted as he ran, bells
clashed above, and trumpets blared below. Before him a vast square
opened, empty and wind-swept, and here the shoutings of the unseen mob
became terrific, here also a mountainous building rose into the clouds,
and midway upon a flight of marble steps sat an old man in white,
crowned with the tiara, extending a red hat towards the yelling
solitude. The dreamer rushed out to seize the prize; but between the
principality and power, as represented by the scarlet blot rising in
the gale, the silent lightning cut, and between this fire and Urbano
the Eighth a figure descended, and the lightning was a sword, which his
untiring arms flashed between the aspirant and his soul's desires.
"Cardinal-Archbishop!" cried the white figure. "Bought by blood!"
outcried the man in black, and his sword turned all ways in a flame of
fire.
La Salle awoke with a shudder. That figure seemed to be upon him,
bending, holding him down with the hands of Briareus. Casting off the
terrible sleep, he started upright. A face was indeed over him, and
arms were dragging at his shoulders. The wind-tossed grove cleared,
with its fire glowing, and sparks flickering like a thousand eyes, and
the sleeper awakened recognised Onawa, who was summoning him to action
in her unknown tongue.
"Perdition!" he muttered. "The witch haunts me like an old sin."
Onawa went on pleading, pointing wildly at intervals down the wind.
"You shall lead me into no more death-traps!" the priest cried.
The frightened girl brought a knife from her side, and made as though
she would stab him. Then she pointed again, and, falling to her knees,
indicated her own tracks.
La Salle peered along the glow of the fire and beyond where the sparks
were beaten back, then rose and approached the palisading, Onawa
clinging to him like a shadow. There was no danger there. He advanced
to the wattled door, prepared to receive an attack. When there came no
response to his unspoken challenge he turned back, and Onawa again
pointed along the way she had come.
"Would to God I had spared that child! His face is there!" the priest
shivered.
"Tuschota!" cried the girl. She touched the ground, reading him with
her eyes.
A smothered cry broke from the lips of the priest. Onawa followed his
gaze, which went, not along the trail, nor into the fire-lit grove, but
above where the eastern sky had almost cleared of drift.
"A portent!" moaned the priest. "'Tis the end of the world, and I am
found with the sword drawn in my hand."
There was war in heaven. Across the plane of eastern sky hung a wild
picture of forest and rockland where pigmy men rushed together without
shock, where spectral weapons fell silently, and shadowy smoke burst
and rose. Tiny figures climbed a cliff, and similar grotesques fought
on high and pressed them back. The combatants appeared ant-like and
ridiculous objects as they swayed reflected upon the floor of heaven.
Onawa watched the spectacle unmoved. She had witnessed the mirage
before, and by this present vision merely understood that an attack
upon the citadel was even then in progress. As the weird picture broke
up and scud came flying across a faint grey sky, she prayed in her
treacherous heart that the French might win.
La Salle rose with some shame when he perceived that the sky had
resumed its normal aspect, and light at length dawned upon him as he
sighted a shadowy being stealing within the radius of the fire.
"Tuschota!" warned the voice at his side.
The priest knew then that Onawa had saved him from the knife which
would have avenged the half-breed boy, who had flung himself with such
desperate courage upon death. Casting away the arms which encompassed
him, he passed swiftly into the shadow of the grove, while Onawa
advanced boldly and met the woman she had wronged so grievously, and
dared to face her without shame. For a space they stood, gazing at one
another by the firelight, until the younger cast down her eyes and
began to shiver with the coldness of fear.
"Approach me, sister," said the stern woman. "There is a question I
would have you answer. Refuse you dare not, for we are flesh and
blood; we are daughters of Shuswap the truthful, and the same mother
gave us birth. I seek not to know what brings you here this night, but
tell me now have you seen that proud priest who has slain my son?"
"I have not seen him," cried Onawa fiercely; but she was cold to the
heart beneath the gaze of those colder eyes.
"'Tis well. A daughter of the Cayugas lies not, save to an enemy. But
why do you slink thus away? You do not fear me, sister?"
Onawa stared aside speechless.
"After I became wife to the great white man you came often to our home
among the lost waters," Mary Iden went on. "My Richard loved you.
Remember, sister, how often you played with the child, how many times
you carried him in your arms, and told him the old stories of our race.
Hast forgotten how he would laugh at your coming, how he would run down
to meet you with a gift, and draw up your canoe and bring you to our
shelter by the hand? Remember when he had committed a fault how you
pleaded for him, calling him _Dear child_ and _Sunlight of the camp_.
Sister, I know that you grieve for the boy."
Chilled at her words Onawa passed to the fire, turning from those
pursuing eyes.
"I shall not forget how Richard loved you. When you need me, sister,
come, and I will give you your former place beside the fire. So shall
you rest and forget the strangers in this land. By the love that you
bore for my boy, sister, I will not forget you."
Onawa looked up and saw only the figure of La Salle emerging from the
grove. Her sister had drawn back into the night.
The gale circled the embers in whitening eddies. Onawa wildly snatched
a stick and raked the glowing fragments into a pyramid, upon which she
flung some roots of willow. A yellow fog ascended, torn hither and
thither by the spirits of the wind.
She crept to La Salle's feet and fawned upon them. He spurned her and
still she struggled to approach, to cling as the weed upon a rock. She
had made the sacrifice of her life that she might serve him. She had
discharged the arrow to slay the Englishman solely that she might win
his love. She had relied upon her fierce beauty, her youth, and her
strength to conquer the handsome Frenchman. She had staked her all
upon her heart's desires.
And now he flung her from him, and strode away from the fireside and
the grove.
She followed, crying along the wind. He motioned her back and even
threatened with his sword, but she pursued, setting her feet in the
marks which his had made. When he halted for weariness she stood near
to guard him from her sister. When the grey day came she still
followed him, across open country, and so northward into the hills, and
towards the river, where the wind contained a breath of smouldering
bush.