HUGON SPEAKS HIS MIND
MacLean sprang up from the log, and, joining her, saw indeed two
horsemen galloping toward them, their heads bent and riding cloaks
raised to shield them from the whirlwind of dust, dead leaves, and
broken twigs. He knew Haward’s powerful steed Mirza, but the other
horse was strange.
The two rode fast. A moment, and they were splashing through the
stream; another, and the horses, startled by Audrey’s cry and waving
arms and by the sudden and violent check on the part of their riders,
were rearing and curveting across the road. “What the devil!” cried one
of the horsemen. “Imp or sprite, or whatever you are, look out! Haward,
your horse will trample her!”
But Audrey, with her hand on Mirza’s bridle, had no fears. Haward
stared at her in amazement. “Child, what are you doing here? Angus, you
too!” as the storekeeper advanced. “What rendezvous is this? Mirza, be
quiet!”
Audrey left her warning to be spoken by MacLean. She was at peace,
her head against Mirza’s neck, her eyes upon Haward’s face, clear in
the flashing lightning. That gentleman heard the story with his usual
calmness; his companion first swore, and then laughed.
[Illustration: AUDREY LEFT HER WARNING TO BE SPOKEN BY MACLEAN]
“Here’s a Canterbury tale!” he cried. “Egad, Haward, are we to take
this skipping rope, vault it as though we were courtiers of Lilliput?
Neither of us is armed. I conceive that the longest way around will
prove our shortest way home.”
“My dear Colonel, I want to speak with these two gentlemen.”
“But at your leisure, my friend, at your leisure, and not in dying
tones! I like not what I hear of Monsieur Jean Hugon’s pistols. Flank
an ambush; don’t ride into it open-eyed.”
“Colonel Byrd is right,” said the storekeeper earnestly. “Ride back,
the two of you, and take the bridle path that will carry you to Fair
View by way of the upper bridge. In the mean time, I will run through
the woods to Mr. Taberer’s house, cross there, hurry to the quarters,
rouse the overseer, and with a man or two we will recross the creek by
the lower bridge, and coming upon these rogues unawares, give them a
taste of their own medicine! We’ll hale them to the great house; you
shall have speech of them in your own hall.”
Neither of the riders being able to suggest a better plan, the
storekeeper, with a wave of his hand, plunged into the forest, and was
soon lost to view amidst its serried trunks and waving branches. Haward
stooped from his saddle; Audrey set her bare foot upon his booted one,
and he swung her up behind him. “Put thine arm around me, child,” he
told her. “We will ride swiftly through the storm. Now, Colonel, to
turn our backs upon the enemy!”
The lightning was about them, and they raced to the booming of the
thunder. Heavy raindrops began to fall, and the wind was a power to
drive the riders on. Its voice shrilled above the diapason of the
thunder; the forest swung to its long cry. When the horses turned
from the wide into the narrow road, they could no longer go abreast.
Mirza took the lead, and the bay fell a length behind. The branches
now hid the sky; between the flashes there was Stygian gloom, but when
the lightning came it showed far aisles of the forest. There was the
smell of rain upon dusty earth, there was the wine of coolness after
heat, there was the sense of being borne upon the wind, there was the
leaping of life within the veins to meet the awakened life without.
Audrey closed her eyes, and wished to ride thus forever. Haward, too,
traveling fast through mist and rain a road whose end was hidden,
facing the wet wind, hearing the voices of earth and sky, felt his
spirit mount with the mounting voices. So to ride with Love to doom!
On, and on, and on! Left behind the sophist, the apologist, the lover
of the world with his tinsel that was not gold, his pebbles that were
not gems! Only the man thundering on,--the man and his mate that was
meant for him since time began! He raised his face to the strife
above, he drew his breath, his hand closed over the hand of the woman
riding with him. At the touch a thrill ran through them both; had the
lightning with a sword of flame cut the world from beneath their feet,
they had passed on, immortal in their happiness. But the bolts struck
aimlessly, and the moment fled. Haward was Haward again; he recognized
his old acquaintance with a half-humorous, half-disdainful smile. The
road was no longer a road that gleamed athwart all time and space; the
wind had lost its trumpet tone; Love spoke not in the thunder, nor
seemed so high a thing as the lit heaven. Audrey’s hand was yet within
his clasp; but it was flesh and blood that he touched, not spirit, and
he was glad that it was so. For her, her cheek burned, and she hid
her eyes. She had looked unawares, as by the lightning glare, into a
world of which she had not dreamed. Its portals had shut; she rode on
in the twilight again, and she could not clearly remember what she had
seen. But she was sure that the air of that country was sweet, she was
faint with its beauty, her heart beat with violence to its far echoes.
Moreover, she was dimly aware that in the moment when she had looked
there had been a baptism. She had thought of herself as a child, as a
girl; now and for evermore she was a woman.
They left the forest behind, and came to open fields where the tobacco
had been beaten to earth. The trees now stood singly or in shivering
copses. Above, the heavens were bare to their gaze, and the lightning
gave glimpses of pale castles overhanging steel-gray, fathomless
abysses. The road widened, and the bay was pushed by its rider to
Mirza’s side. Fields of corn where the long blades wildly clashed, a
wood of dripping cedars, a patch of Oronoko, tobacco house in midst,
rising ground and a vision of the river, then a swift descent to the
lower creek, and the bridge across which lay the road that ran to the
minister’s house. Audrey spoke earnestly to the master of Fair View,
and after a moment’s hesitation he drew rein. “We will not cross,
Colonel,” he declared. “My preserver will have it that she has troubled
us long enough; and indeed it is no great distance to the glebe house,
and the rain has stopped. Have down with thee, then, obstinate one!”
Audrey slipped to the earth, and pushed back her hair from her eyes.
Colonel Byrd observed her curiously. “Faith,” he exclaimed, “’tis the
Atalanta of last May Day! Well, child, I believe thou hast saved our
lives. Come, here are three gold baubles that may pass for Hippomenes’
apples!”
Audrey put her hands behind her. “I want no money, sir. What I did was
a gift; it has no price.” She was only Darden’s Audrey, but she spoke
as proudly as a princess might have spoken. Haward smiled to hear her;
and seeing the smile, she was comforted. “For he understands,” she said
to herself. “He would never hurt me so.” It did not wound her that he
said no word, but only lifted his hat, when she curtsied to them both.
There was to-morrow, and he would praise her then for her quickness of
wit and her courage in following Hugon, whom she feared so much.
The riders watched her cross the bridge and turn into the road that
led to the glebe house, then kept their own road in silence until it
brought them to the doors of Fair View.
It was an hour later, and drawing toward dusk, when the Colonel, having
changed his wet riding clothes for a suit of his friend’s, came down
the stairs and entered the Fair View drawing-room. Haward, in green,
with rich lace at throat and wrist, was there before him, walking up
and down in the cheerful light of a fire kindled against the dampness.
“No sign of our men,” he said, as the other entered. “Come to the fire.
Faith, Colonel, my russet and gold becomes you mightily! Juba took you
the aqua vitæ?”
“Ay, in one of your great silver goblets, with a forest of mint atop.
Ha, this is comfort!” He sank into an armchair, stretched his legs
before the blaze, and began to look about him. “I have ever said,
Haward, that of all the gentlemen of my acquaintance you have the most
exact taste. I told Bubb Dodington as much, last year, at Eastbury.
Damask, mirrors, paintings, china, cabinets,--all chaste and quiet,
extremely elegant, but without ostentation! It hath an air, too. I
would swear a woman had the placing of yonder painted jars!”
“You are right,” said Haward, smiling. “The wife of the minister of
this parish was good enough to come to my assistance.”
“Ah!” said the Colonel dryly. “Did Atalanta come as well? She is his
reverence’s servant, is she not?”
“No,” answered Haward shortly to the last question, and, leaning
across, stirred the fire.
The light caused to sparkle a jeweled pin worn in the lace of his
ruffles, and the toy caught the Colonel’s eye. “One of Spotswood’s
golden horseshoes!” he exclaimed. “I had them wrought for him in
London. Had they been so many stars and garters, he could have made no
greater pother! ’Tis ten years since I saw one.”
Haward detached the horseshoe-shaped bauble from the lace, and laid it
on the other’s palm. The master of Westover regarded it curiously, and
read aloud the motto engraved upon its back: “‘Sic Juvat Transcendere
Montes.’ A barren exploit! But some day I too shall please myself and
cross these sun-kissing hills. And so the maid with the eyes is not his
reverence’s servant? What is she?”
Haward took the golden horseshoe in his own hand, and fell to studying
it in the firelight. “I wore this to-night,” he said at length, with
deliberation, “in order that it might bring to your mind that sprightly
ultramontane expedition in which, my dear Colonel, had you not been
in England, you had undoubtedly borne a part. You have asked me a
question; I will answer it with a story, and so the time may pass
more rapidly until the arrival of Mr. MacLean with our friends who
set traps.” He turned the mimic horseshoe this way and that, watching
the small gems, that simulated nails, flash in the red light. “Some
days to the west of Germanna,” he said, “when about us were the lesser
mountains, and before us those that propped the sky, we came one sunny
noon upon a valley, a little valley, very peaceful below the heights.
A stream shone through it, and there were noble trees, and beside the
stream the cabin of a frontiersman.”
On went the story. The fire crackled, reflecting itself in mirrors
and polished wood and many small window panes. Outside, the rain had
ceased, but the wind and the river murmured loudly, and the shadows
of the night were gathering. When the narrative was ended, he who had
spoken and he who had listened sat staring at the fire. “A pretty
story!” said the Colonel at last. “Dick Steele should have had it;
’twould have looked vastly well over against his Inkle and Yarico.
There the maid the savior, here the man; there perfidy, here plain
honesty; there for the woman a fate most tragical, here”--
“Here?” said Haward, as the other paused.
The master of Westover took out his snuffbox. “And here the continued
kindness of a young and handsome preserver,” he said suavely, and
extended the box to his host.
“You are mistaken,” said Haward. He rose, and stood leaning against
the mantel, his eyes upon the older man’s somewhat coldly smiling
countenance. “She is as innocent, as high of soul, and as pure of heart
as--as Evelyn.”
The Colonel clicked to the lid of his box. “You will be so good as to
leave my daughter’s name out of the conversation.”
“As you please,” Haward answered, with hauteur.
Another silence, broken by the guest. “Why did you hang that kit-kat
of yourself behind the door, Haward?” he asked amiably. “’Tis too fine
a piece to be lost in shadow. I would advise a change with yonder
shepherdess.”
“I do not know why,” said Haward restlessly. “A whim. Perhaps by nature
I court shadows and dark corners.”
“That is not so,” Byrd replied quietly. He had turned in his chair,
the better to observe the distant portrait that was now lightened, now
darkened, as the flames rose and fell. “A speaking likeness,” he went
on, glancing from it to the original and back again. “I ever thought
it one of Kneller’s best. The portrait of a gentleman. Only--you have
noticed, I dare say, how in the firelight familiar objects change
aspect many times?--only just now it seemed to me that it lost that
distinction”--
“Well?” said Haward, as he paused.
The Colonel went on slowly: “Lost that distinction, and became the
portrait of”--
“Well? Of whom?” asked Haward, and, with his eyes shaded by his hand,
gazed not at the portrait, but at the connoisseur in gold and russet.
“Of a dirty tradesman,” said the master of Westover lightly. “In a
word, of an own brother to Mr. Thomas Inkle.”
A dead silence; then Haward spoke calmly: “I will not take offense,
Colonel Byrd. Perhaps I should not take it even were it not as my guest
and in my drawing-room that you have so spoken. We will, if you please,
consign my portrait to the obscurity from which it has been dragged.
In good time here comes Juba to light the candles and set the shadows
fleeing.”
Leaving the fire he moved to a window, and stood looking out upon the
windy twilight. From the back of the house came a sound of voices and
of footsteps. The Colonel put up his snuffbox and brushed a grain from
his ruffles. “Enter two murderers!” he said briskly. “Will you have
them here, Haward, or shall we go into the hall?”
“Light all the candles, Juba,” ordered the master. “Here, I think,
Colonel, where the stage will set them off. Juba, go ask Mr. MacLean
and Saunderson to bring their prisoners here.”
As he spoke, he turned from the contemplation of the night without to
the brightly lit room. “This is a murderous fellow, this Hugon,” he
said, as he took his seat in a great chair drawn before a table. “I
have heard Colonel Byrd argue in favor of imitating John Rolfe’s early
experiment, and marrying the white man to the heathen. We are about to
behold the result of such an union.”
“I would not have the practice universal,” said the Colonel coolly,
“but ’twould go far toward remedying loss of scalps in this world, and
of infidel souls hereafter. Your sprightly lover is a most prevailing
missionary. But here is our Huguenot-Monacan.”
MacLean, very wet and muddy, with one hand wrapped in a blood-stained
rag, came in first. “We found them hidden in the bushes at the turn
of the road,” he said hastily. “The schoolmaster was more peaceably
inclined than any Quaker, but Hugon fought like the wolf that he is.
Can’t you hang him out of hand, Haward? Give me a land where the
chief does justice while the king looks the other way!” He turned and
beckoned. “Bring them in, Saunderson.”
There was no discomposure in the schoolmaster’s dress, and as little in
his face or manner. He bowed to the two gentlemen, then shambled across
to the fire, and as best he could held out his bound hands to the
grateful blaze. “May I ask, sir,” he said, in his lifeless voice, “why
it is that this youth and I, resting in all peace and quietness beside
a public road, should be set upon by your servants, overpowered, bound,
and haled to your house as to a judgment bar?”
Haward, to whom this speech was addressed, gave it no attention. His
gaze was upon Hugon, who in his turn glared at him alone. Haward had
a subtle power of forcing and fixing the attention of a company; in
crowded rooms, without undue utterance or moving from his place, he
was apt to achieve the centre of the stage, the head of the table.
Now, the half-breed, by very virtue of the passion which, false to his
Indian blood, shook him like a leaf, of a rage which overmastered and
transformed, reached at a bound the Englishman’s plane of distinction.
His great wig, of a fashion years gone by, was pulled grotesquely
aside, showing the high forehead and shaven crown beneath; his laced
coat and tawdry waistcoat and ruffled shirt were torn and foul with
mud and mould, but the man himself made to be forgotten the absurdity
of his trappings. Gone, for him, were his captors, his accomplice, the
spectator in gold and russet; to Haward, also, sitting very cold, very
quiet, with narrowed eyes, they were gone. He was angered, and in the
mood to give rein after his own fashion to that anger. MacLean and the
master of Westover, the overseer and the schoolmaster, were forgotten,
and he and Hugon met alone as they might have met in the forest.
Between them, and without a spoken word, the two made this fact to be
recognized by the other occupants of the drawing-room. Colonel Byrd,
who had been standing with his hand upon the table, moved backward
until he joined MacLean beside the closed door: Saunderson drew near to
the schoolmaster: and the centre of the room was left to the would-be
murderer and the victim that had escaped him.
“Monsieur le Monacan,” said Haward.
Hugon snarled like an angry wolf, and strained at the rope which bound
his arms.
Haward went on evenly: “Your tribe has smoked the peace pipe with the
white man. I was not told it by singing birds, but by the great white
father at Williamsburgh. They buried the hatchet very deep; the dead
leaves of many moons of Cohonks lie thick upon the place where they
buried it. Why have you made a warpath, treading it alone of your
color?”
“Diable!” cried Hugon. “Pig of an Englishman! I will kill you for”--
“For an handful of blue beads,” said Haward, with a cold smile. “And I,
dog of an Indian! I will send a Nottoway to teach the Monacans how to
lay a snare and hide a trail.”
The trader, gasping with passion, leaned across the table until his
eyes were within a foot of Haward’s unmoved face. “Who showed you the
trail and told you of the snare?” he whispered. “Tell me that, you
Englishman,--tell me that!”
“A storm bird,” said Haward calmly. “Okee is perhaps angry with his
Monacans, and sent it.”
“Was it Audrey?”
Haward laughed. “No, it was not Audrey. And so, Monacan, you have
yourself fallen into the pit which you digged.”
From the fireplace came the schoolmaster’s slow voice: “Dear sir, can
you show the pit? Why should this youth desire to harm you? Where is
the storm bird? Can you whistle it before a justice of the peace or
into a court room?”
If Haward heard, it did not appear. He was leaning back in his chair,
his eyes fixed upon the trader’s twitching face in a cold and smiling
regard. “Well, Monacan?” he demanded.
The half-breed straightened himself, and with a mighty effort
strove in vain for a composure that should match the other’s cold
self-command,--a command which taunted and stung now at this point,
now at that. “I am a Frenchman!” he cried, in a voice that broke with
passion. “I am of the noblesse of the land of France, which is a
country that is much grander than Virginia! Old Pierre at Monacan-Town
told me these things. My father changed his name when he came across
the sea, so I bear not the _de_ which is a sign of a great man. Listen,
you Englishman! I trade, I prosper, I buy me land, I begin to build me
a house. There is a girl that I see every hour, every minute, while I
am building it. She says she loves me not, but nevertheless I shall wed
her. Now I see her in this room, now in that; she comes down the stair,
she smiles at the window, she stands on the doorstep to welcome me when
I come home from my hunting and trading in the woods so far away. I
bring her fine skins of the otter, the beaver, and the fawn; beadwork
also from the villages and bracelets of copper and pearl. The flowers
bloom around her, and my heart sings to see her upon my doorstep....
The flowers are dead, and you have stolen the girl away.... There was
a stream, and the sun shone upon it, and you and she were in a boat. I
walked alone upon the bank, and in my heart I left building my house
and fell to other work. You laughed; one day you will laugh no more.
That was many suns ago. I have watched”--
Foam was upon his lips, and he strained without ceasing at his bonds.
Already pulled far awry, his great peruke, a cataract of hair streaming
over his shoulders, shading and softening the swarthy features between
its curled waves, now slipped from his head and fell to the floor. The
change which its absence wrought was startling. Of the man the moiety
that was white disappeared. The shaven head, its poise, its features,
were Indian; the soul was Indian, and looked from Indian eyes.
Suddenly, for the last transforming touch, came a torrent of words in a
strange tongue, the tongue of his mother. Of what he was speaking, what
he was threatening, no one of them could tell; he was a savage giving
voice to madness and hate.
Haward pushed back his chair from the table, and, rising, walked across
the room to the window. Hugon followed him, straining at the rope about
his arms and speaking thickly. His eyes were glaring, his teeth bared.
When he was so close that the Virginian could feel his hot breath,
the latter turned, and uttering an oath of disgust struck the back of
his hand across his lips. With the cry of an animal, Hugon, bound as
he was, threw himself bodily upon his foe, who in his turn flung the
trader from him with a violence that sent him reeling against the wall.
Here Saunderson, a man of powerful build, seized him by the shoulders,
holding him fast; MacLean, too, hurriedly crossed from the door. There
was no need, for the half-breed’s frenzy was spent. He stood with
glittering eyes following Haward’s every motion, but quite silent, his
frame rigid in the overseer’s grasp.
Colonel Byrd went up to Haward and spoke in a low voice: “Best send
them at once to Williamsburgh.”
Haward shook his head. “I cannot,” he said, with a gesture of
impatience. “There is no proof.”
“No proof!” exclaimed his guest sharply. “You mean”--
The other met his stare of surprise with an imperturbable countenance.
“What I say,” he answered quietly. “My servants find two men lurking
beside a road that I am traveling. Being somewhat over-zealous, they
take them up upon suspicion of meaning mischief and bring them before
me. It is all guesswork why they were at the turn of the road, and what
they wanted there. There is no proof, no witness”--
“I see that there is no witness that you care to call,” said the
Colonel coldly.
Haward waved his hand. “There is no witness,” he said, without change
of tone. “And therefore, Colonel, I am about to dismiss the case.”
With a slight bow to his guest he left the window, and advanced to the
group in the centre of the room. “Saunderson,” he said abruptly, “take
these two men to the quarter and cut their bonds. Give them a start of
fifty yards, then loose the dogs and hunt them from the plantation. You
have men outside to help you? Very well; go! Mr. MacLean, will you see
this chase fairly started?”
The Highlander, who had become very thoughtful of aspect since entering
the room, and who had not shared Saunderson’s start of surprise at
the master’s latest orders, nodded assent. Haward stood for a moment
gazing steadily at Hugon, but with no notice to bestow upon the bowing
schoolmaster; then walked over to the harpsichord, and, sitting down,
began to play an old tune, soft and slow, with pauses between the
notes. When he came to the final chord he looked over his shoulder
at the Colonel, standing before the mantel, with his eyes upon the
fire. “So they have gone,” he said. “Good riddance! A pretty brace of
villains!”
“I should be loath to have Monsieur Jean Hugon for my enemy,” said the
Colonel gravely.
Haward laughed. “I was told at Williamsburgh that a party of traders go
to the Southern Indians to-morrow, and he with them. Perhaps a month or
two of the woods will work a cure.”
He fell to playing again, a quiet, plaintive air. When it was ended, he
rose and went over to the fire to keep his guest company; but finding
him in a mood for silence, presently fell silent himself, and took
to viewing structures of his own building in the red hollows between
the logs. This mutual taciturnity lasted until the announcement of
supper, and was relapsed into at intervals during the meal; but when
they had returned to the drawing-room the two talked until it was late,
and the fire had sunken to ash and embers. Before they parted for the
night it was agreed that the master of Westover should remain with
the master of Fair View for a day or so, at the end of which time the
latter gentleman would accompany the former to Westover for a visit of
indefinite length.