STIGMA.
Thus Geoffrey became a prisoner among his own people, owing to the
friendliness of Von Donck, the honest Dutchman having failed to reckon
with the intense suspicion of the Puritan mind. When the manner of his
guest's arrival had been explained to John Winthrop, that pious
governor raised his eyebrows in astonishment, and did not hesitate to
give instructions for the new-comer to be held in close confinement,
pending an inquiry into the movements of the Dutch. While this
investigation was being pursued, justly and in good order as the
governor directed, or, in other words, with extreme slowness, many
notable events occurred in the disordered country of the north.
The _St. Wenceslas_ had slipped from her moorings and drifted down the
St. Lawrence, bearing La Salle towards Acadie, and certain despatches
which were destined for the chief minister of France. Unwillingly
Roussilac had been compelled to record the services rendered to Church
and State by the proud departing priest.
"You have well served yourself, Sir Commandant," La Salle had said,
after insisting upon his right to peruse the detailed history of the
Iroquois defeat, which contained no word of reference to the assistance
rendered by the Algonquins. "And now, by Heaven, you shall serve me."
And Roussilac, for all his ill will, was not strong enough to dare
resist the priest.
There yet remained in that district the Kentish knight, old Penfold,
and the Puritan; and when the man of Kent came to learn of La Salle's
departure, he left his solitary cave, and buckled on his sword, and
returned to action, though the dream of his life had vanished. His
younger brother, the fool of the family, who from boyhood had spent his
days in idleness, trolling for pike or chasing with his dogs, would
continue to occupy the old mansion which the elder had abandoned, and
leave it, as he had been empowered to do failing news from the New
World, to his son, when the days of fishing and the chase should be
accomplished.
The knight came to his home beside the lost waters, and his wife, who
had visited him each day with food in the lonely cave, received him
with her proud silence and stood to hear his will. She it was who had
told him of the sailing of the ship and the going of La Salle.
"Let us also travel to this land of Acadie," the knight said. "My
Richard haunts me with reproaches. I go to make ready our canoe for
the long journey. My mind shall find no rest till I have avenged our
son."
He went out and built a fire upon the beach, and while the lumps of
pitch, prepared from native bitumen mixed with pine resin, were
melting, he peeled soft sheets of bark from the snowy birch trees and
patched the canoe, caulking every seam with pitch. About the time of
the evening shadow his work was done; but as he was returning to his
home a voice called, and the Puritan hastened to his side.
"Welcome, friend," said the knight. "How fares it with you and your
brave comrade?"
"We suffer who sojourn in Mesech," said Hough. "Old Penfold lies
grievously sick of a fever."
"Dwell you far away?" the knight asked.
"Nigh upon two miles by land and water. We have returned to the cave
which we occupied before our taking of the Dutch ship."
"My wife shall prepare a medicine. She is well skilled in the arts of
healing," said the other. "You shall bring us to your cave with all
speed."
"The disease has already taken hold upon his mind," said Hough. "One
time he is holding his mother's gown, old man though he be, and
wandering in water-meadows to pluck long purples and clovers, muttering
as he picks at his blanket. 'Here is trefoil, good for cattle, but
noisome to witches.' Another time he reaches for his sword, and
swears--the Lord forgive him--at the weakness which holds him down.
'The French are upon us, comrades,' he calls. 'Let me not lie like an
old dame with swollen legs.' Then he falls a-crying, and shouts,
'England! England!' Methinks if his mind were healed he would stand
up again."
Mary Iden being summoned, and having made her preparations, the three
set forth and came to the cave, which the adventurers had hoped to
exchange for the Dutch vessel, then lying fathoms deep beneath the
cliffs of Tadousac. There they found Penfold stretched along a heap of
grass, babbling incessantly at the cold walls and the shadows. When
the figures darkened the entrance, he screamed at them and sprang up,
only to fall back upon the rude bed, a fever-held body agitated by
stertorous breath.
"Build me here two fires," said the quiet woman, as she passed to the
sick man's side.
"Witch!" shrieked Penfold. "Flower! Woodfield! Comrades, where are
ye? Save me now from sorcery. Hough! Go bring the villagers, and bid
them fling this hag into the Thames and pelt her with stones when she
rises. To me, comrades! Leave not your old captain to perish by
witchcraft."
"Canst heal him from this madness?" muttered Hough. "Myself I dared
not let his blood, fearing lest I might do that which should hasten his
end."
"Our people let no blood," came the answer. "We bring great heat into
the body, so that the evil spirit shall come forth to seek water. Then
we strengthen the body, so that it may be able to resist his return."
Already Penfold ceased to struggle beneath her soothing hands. The
fires blazed fiercely, the smoke and hot vapours being drawn upwards
into the natural chimneys. Obeying instructions, the men placed their
sick comrade between these fires and covered him closely, while the
skilful healer moistened his brow and lips with water in which she had
steeped the young pink bark of the bitter willow, thus wringing the
fever out of his body like water from a sponge.
"I am saving the old man," she whispered in a confident voice.
At the end of another hour the limp rag of humanity was steeped in
sleep. By then the night was strong and the stars little orbs in
splendour among the clouds. The breathing which the men heard when
Mary Iden rose from her knees might have been that of a little child.
"The evil spirit has been driven forth to find water. Lift the man
quickly; for the foul creature travels faster than the moonlight."
Obedient to superior knowledge, the men reconveyed the sleeper to the
grass bed, and there the healer roused him to administer a decoction of
bruised herbs: serrated calamintha, the perfoliate eupator, later more
popularly known as the fever-wort of North America, and the white-rayed
pyrethrum, which lifted its bitter bloom upon the heights. The sick
man gasped as he swallowed the powerful tonic, and sank back into
untroubled rest.
Presently the knight and his wife departed, and Hough accompanied them
upon the first stage of their return journey; and when they reached the
lake-side, where the canoe sprawled along the shingle, the knight
acquainted his fellow-countryman with his plan of departure. Hough
listened, gazing dimly over the scintillating surface, where a silver
ribbon of moonlight led away to the Isle of Dreams.
"Where lies that land whither you go?" he asked at length.
"In the far east where Sebastian Cabot first touched," the Kentishman
replied. "There I may sight the great ocean, which we islanders love,
and scent the good brine and watch for an English sail."
"Here there is nothing we may do," said Hough, removing his eyes from
the dreamy lake. "There surely we may look for the ship which Lord
Baltimore shall send when Viner comes down to Virginia. I too would be
near the sea and smell liberty."
With that they parted, and Hough returned to his hole among the rocks
with visions of the sea. Within that cave, where Penfold slept during
his guardian's absence, the fires darted, tincturing with red the
silver of the moonbeams against the sable wall of cliff. Between the
granite and the forest of pines a stream of moonlight spread like a
glacier. A figure stole from the black belt, stepped cautiously into
the white road, and waded, as it were, through the rippling beams. It
was Onawa, who had watched the two men and her sister making west; she
knew that one of the men would return after a little interval; and she
understood that the work which she had undertaken must be done quickly.
No croaking bird aroused Penfold from his sleep to warn him of the
she-wolf. It was one of those ironies which run through life that one
sister should have cast the sick man into healthy slumber in order that
the other might stab him as he lay.
A cloud of blood-sucking insects trumpeted around Onawa. Their thin
noise seemed to her a tumult, and she stopped and looked back along the
cold white stream. A lean wolf was slinking in her direction, his
muzzle snuffling the dust. She shivered when she remembered that the
murderess was doomed to become a werewolf after death to prowl about
the scene of her former sin. The creature howled. The pale girl
started and ran into the cave.
Her belief remained constant that she might still win the love of La
Salle by destroying his enemies. She knew that he had gained renown by
her betrayal to him of the English settlement. Now he had gone in the
great ship to Acadie. She was about to follow, having neither home nor
people, being indeed hunted for her life; but first she might destroy
another of his enemies. Then she could learn to say: "I have killed
the old Englishman who stirred up my people to attack yours." And she
thought that he might welcome her at last for the sake of her good
deeds.
A frightened howl broke upon the night. The wolf, disturbed by some
enemy of its species, was hurrying for cover. The crisp snapping of
twigs, succeeded by a rattling of small stones, were caused, not by the
pads of the black loup-garou, but by a body weightier and less
cowardly. These sounds were deadened by the walls of rock, and Onawa
did not hear them. Swiftly she drew away the coverings from the
white-faced sleeper, and old Penfold smiled innocently at her in his
drugged sleep. Onawa drew in her breath, unsheathed her knife, and
felt its point; then leaned back, measuring the distance by the faint
glow, and her arm went up to strike. That next moment she screamed
with terror, turned, struck wildly at the air, and was carried back to
the granite floor with Hough's iron fingers driven round her throat.
Step by step the grim Puritan dragged the girl back to the mouth of the
cave, and there pinned her to the rock with one arm, while reaching
with the other to the corner, where he had piled a rope taken from the
deck of the privateer. He bound her hand and foot; and thus helpless
she stared up, and read her death upon his face.
For over an hour Hough paced the floor of the cave, listening to his
captain's gentle breathing, and recalling the violent death of
Athaliah, slain by order of Jehoiada, and the fate of Jezebel, cast
from an upper window at the command of Jehu; for such a man as the
Puritan regulated all the actions of his life by the light revealed to
him from the Bible. There was, he reasoned, the highest authority to
justify the act which he contemplated; only the manhood in him recoiled
from the slaying of a woman. At length his mind became fixed. He bent
and drew together the scarlet embers of the fire.
Onawa made no sign of terror, and no appeal for mercy; but her eyes
followed every movement of her stern captor, as she sought to learn her
sentence without betraying her fear.
"The witch is fair," the Puritan muttered, standing over and regarding
her fawn-coloured skin, her even features, and large dark eyes. "A
woman takes pride in her beauty. May the Lord punish me if I act now
unjustly and for vengeance alone."
He pushed a stick into the fire and watched it grow red, then turned
sharply upon his victim. The girl's eyes flashed defiance when they
met his.
"Behold!" he exclaimed, drawing a thin hand across his terrible face,
upon which the Court of Star Chamber had written its unjust judgment.
The girl saw the slit nostrils, the cropped ears, the branded cheeks,
and the scarred forehead. Her tongue became loosened at that sight,
and she prayed for instant death, because she knew it was vain to plead
for mercy.
Outside the cave the long black wolf, which if native testimony were
accepted, contained the soul of some sorcerer, or of some vile man who
had slain his friend, crept back to search for scraps of food. As a
cloud drifted over the moon the brute dropped a bone which it had
snatched, and scurried away like a human thief into the shadows,
terrified by a wild scream from within the granite cave.