CHAPTER XXII

WE LEAVE THE NORTH SEA

So Sieur Radisson must fit out a royal flotilla to carry Mistress

Hortense to the French Habitation. And gracious acts are like the gift

horse: you must not look them in the mouth. For the same flotilla that

brought Hortense brought all M. Picot's hoard of furs. Coming down the

river, lying languidly back among the peltries of the loaded canoe,

Hortense, I mind, turned to me with that honest look of hers and asked

why Sieur Radisson sent to fetch her in such royal state.

"I am but a poor beggar like your little Jack Battle," she protested.

I told her of M. Radisson's plans for entrance to the English court,

and the fire that flashed to her eyes was like his own.

"Must a woman ever be a cat's-paw to man's ambitions?" she asked, with

a gleam of the dark lights. "Oh, the wilderness is different," says

Hortense with a sigh. "In the wild land, each is for its own! Oh, I

love it!" she adds, with a sudden lighting of the depths in her eyes.

"Love--what?"

"The wilderness," says Hortense. "It is hard, but it's free and it's

pure and it's true and it's strong!"

And she sat back among the pillows.

When we shot through racing rapids--"sauter les rapides," as our French

voyageurs say--she sat up all alert and laughed as the spray splashed

athwart. Old Allemand, the pilot, who was steersman on this canoe,

forgot the ill-humour of his gin thirst, and proffered her a paddle.

"Here, pretty thing," says he, "try a stroke yourself!"

And to the old curmudgeon's surprise she took it with a joyous laugh,

and paddled half that day.

Bethink you who know what warm hearts beat inside rough buckskin

whether those voyageurs were her slaves or no! The wind was blowing;

Mistress Hortense's hair tossed in a way to make a man swear (vows, not

oaths), and Allemand said that I paddled worse than any green hand of a

first week. At the Habitation we disembarked after nightfall to

conceal our movements from the English. After her arrival, none of us

caught a glimpse of Mistress Hortense except of a Sunday at noon, but

of her presence there was proof enough. Did voices grow loud in the

mess-room? A hand was raised. Some one pointed to the far door, and

the voices fell. Did a fellow's tales slip an oath or two? There was

a hush. Some one's thumb jerked significantly shoulderwise to the

door, and the story-teller leashed his oats for a more convenient

season.

"Oh, lordy," taunts an English prisoner out on parole one day, "any

angels from kingdom come that you Frenchies keep meek as lambs?"

Allemand, not being able to explain, knocked the fellow flat.

It would scarce have been human nature had not some of the ruffians

uttered slurs on the origin of such an one as Hortense found in so

strange a case. The mind that feedeth on carrion ever goeth with the

large mouth, and for the cleansing of such natures I wot there is no

better physic than our crew gave those gossips. What the sailors did I

say not. Enough that broken heads were bound by our chirurgeon for the

rest of the week.

That same chirurgeon advised a walk outside the fort walls for Mistress

Hillary's health. By the goodness of Providence, the duty of escorting

her fell to me. Attended by the blackamoor and a soldier, with a

musket across my shoulder, I led her out of a rear sally-port and so

avoided the scenes of drunkenness among the Indians at the main gate.

We got into hiding of a thicket, but boisterous shouting came from the

Indian encampment. I glanced at Hortense. She was clad in a green

hunting-suit, and by the light of the setting sun her face shone

radiant.

"You are not afraid?"

A flush of sheer delight in life flooded her cheeks.

"Afraid?" she laughed.

"Hortense! Hortense! Do you not hear the drunken revel? Do you know

what it means? This world is full of what a maid must fear. 'Tis her

fear protects her."

"Ah?" asks Hortense.

And she opened the tight-clasped hunting-cloak. A Spanish poniard hung

against the inner folds.

"'Tis her courage must protect her. The wilderness teaches that," says

Hortense, "the wilderness and men like Picot."

Then we clasped hands and ran like children from thicket to rock and

rock to the long stretches of shingly shore. Behind came the

blackamoor and the soldier. The salt spray flew in our faces, the wind

through our hair; and in our hearts, a joy untold. Where a great

obelisk of rock thrust across the way, Hortense halted. She stood on

the lee side of the rock fanning herself with her hat.

"Now you are the old Hortense!"

"I _am_ older, hundreds of years older," laughed Hortense.

The westering sun and the gold light of the sea and the caress of a

spring wind be perilous setting for a fair face. I looked and looked

again.

"Hortense, should an oath to the dead bind the living?"

"If it was right to take the oath, yes," said Hortense.

"Hortense, I may never see you alone again. I promised to treat you as

I would treat a sister----"

"But--" interrupts Hortense.

Footsteps were approaching along the sand. I thought only of the

blackamoor and soldier.

"I promised to treat you as I would a sister--but what--Hortense?"

"But--but I didn't promise to treat you as I would a brother----"

Then a voice from the other side of the rock: "Devil sink my soul to

the bottom of the sea if that viper Frenchman hasn't all our furs

packed away in his hold!"

Then--"A pox on him for a meddlesome--" the voice fell.

Then Ben Gillam again: "Shiver my soul! Let 'im set sail, I say!

Aren't you and me to be shipped on a raft for the English fort at the

foot o' the bay?"

"We'll send 'em all to the bottom o' hell first."

"An you give the word, all my men will rise!"

"Capture the fort--risk the ships--butcher the French!"

Hortense raised her hand and pointed along the shore. Our two guards

were lumbering up and would presently betray our presence. Stealing

forward we motioned their silence. I sent both to listen behind the

rock, while Hortense and I struck into cover of the thicket to regain

the fort.

"Do not fear," said I. "M. Radisson has kept the prisoners in hand.

He will snuff this pretty conspiracy out before Brigdar and Ben get

their heads apart."

She gave that flitting look which laughs at fear and hastened on. We

could not go back as we had come without exposing ourselves to the two

conspirators, and our course lay nearer the Indian revel. About a mile

from the fort Hortense stopped short. Through the underbrush crawled

two braves with their eyes leering at us.

"Hortense," I urged, "run for the rear gate! I'll deal with these two

alone. There may be more! Run, my dear!"

"Give me your musket," she said, never taking her eyes from the savages.

Wondering not a little at the request, I handed her the weapon.

"Now run," I begged, for a sand crane flapped up where the savages had

prowled a pace nearer.

Quick as it rose Hortense aimed. There was a puff of smoke. The bird

fell shot at the savages' feet, and the miscreants scudded off in

terror.

"That was better," said Hortense, "_you_ would have killed a man."

In vain I urged her to hasten back. She walked.

"You know it may be the last time," she laughed, mocking my grave air

of the beach.

"Hortense--Hortense--how am I to keep a promise?"

But she did not answer a word till we reached the sally-port. There

she turned with a brave enough look till her eyes met mine, when all

was the confusion that men give their lives to win.

"Yes--yes--keep your promise. If you had not come, I had died; if I

had not come, you had died. Let us keep faith with truth, for that's

keeping faith with God--and--and--God bless you," she whispered

brokenly, and she darted through the gate.

* * * * * *

And the next morning we embarked, young Jean Groseillers remaining with

ten Frenchmen to hold the fort; Brigdar and Ben aboard our ship instead

of going to the English at the foot of the bay; half the prisoners

under hatches in M. Groseillers's ship; the other half sent south on

the raft--a plan which effectually stopped that conspiracy of Ben's.

Not one glimpse of our fair passenger had we on all that voyage south,

for what with Ben's oaths and Governor Brigdar's drinking, the cabin

was no place for Hortense.

At Isle Percée, entering the St. Lawrence, lay a messenger from La

Chesnaye's father with a missive that bore ill news.

M. de la Barre, the new governor, had ordered our furs confiscated

because we had gone north without a license, and La Chesnaye had

thriftily rigged up this ship to send half our cargo across to France

before the Farmers of the Revenue could get their hands upon it. It

was this gave rise to the slander that M. de Radisson ran off with half

La Chesnaye's furs--which the records de la marine will disprove, if

you search them.

On this ship with her blackamoors sailed Mistress Hortense, bearing

letters to Sir John Kirke, director of the Hudson's Bay Company and

father of M. Radisson's wife.

"Now praise be Heaven, that little ward will open the way for us in

England, Chouart," said M. de Radisson, as he moodily listened to news

of the trouble abrewing in Quebec.

And all the way up the St. Lawrence, as the rolling tide lapped our

keel, I was dreaming of a far, cold paleocrystic sea, mystic in the

frost-clouds that lay over it like smoke. Then a figure emerged from

the white darkness. I was snatched up, with the northern lights for

chariot, two blazing comets our steeds, and the north star a charioteer.

PART III

CHAPTER XXIII

A CHANGE OF PARTNERS

Old folks are wont to repeat themselves, but that is because they would

impress those garnered lessons which age no longer has strength to

drive home at one blow.

Royalist and Puritan, each had his lesson to learn, as I said before.

Each marked the pendulum swing to a wrong extreme, and the pendulum was

beating time for your younger generations to march by. And so I say to

you who are wiser by the follies of your fathers, look not back too

scornfully; for he who is ever watching to mock at the tripping of

other men's feet is like to fall over a very small stumbling-block

himself.

Already have I told you of holy men who would gouge a man's eye out for

the extraction of one small bean, and counted burnings life's highest

joy, and held the body accursed as a necessary evil for the

tabernacling of the soul. Now must I tell you of those who wantoned

"in the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of

life," who burned their lives out at a shrine of folly, and who held

that the soul and all things spiritual had gone out of fashion except

for the making of vows and pretty conceits in verse by a lover to his

lady.

For Pierre Radisson's fears of France playing false proved true. Bare

had our keels bumped through that forest of sailing craft, which ever

swung to the tide below Quebec fort, when a company of young cadets

marches down from the Castle St. Louis to escort us up to M. de la

Barre, the new governor.

"Hm," says M. Radisson, looking in his half-savage buckskins a wild

enough figure among all those young jacks-in-a-box with their gold lace

and steel breastplates. "Hm--let the governor come to us! An you will

not go to a man, a man must come to you!"

"I am indisposed," says he to the cadets. "Let the governor come to

me."

And come he did, with a company of troops fresh out from France and a

roar of cannon from the ramparts that was more for the frightening than

welcoming of us.

M. de Radisson bade us answer the salute by a firing of muskets in

mid-air. Then we all let go a cheer for the Governor of New France.

"I must thank Your Excellency for the welcome sent down by your

cadets," says M. de Radisson, meeting the governor half-way across the

gang-plank.

M. de la Barre, an iron-gray man past the prime of life, gave spare

smile in answer to that.

"I bade my cadets request you to _report_ at the castle," says he, with

a hard wrinkling of the lines round his lips.

"I bade your fellows report that I was indisposed!"

"Did the north not agree with Sieur Radisson?" asks the governor dryly.

"Pardieu!--yes--better than the air of Quebec," retorts M. Radisson.

By this the eyes of the listeners were agape, M. Radisson not budging a

pace to go ashore, the governor scarce courting rebuff in sight of his

soldiers.

"Radisson," says M. de la Barre, motioning his soldiers back and

following to our captain's cabin, "a fellow was haltered and whipped

for disrespect to the bishop yesterday!"

"Fortunately," says M. Radisson, touching the hilt of his rapier,

"gentlemen settle differences in a simpler way!"

They had entered the cabin, where Radisson bade me stand guard at the

door, and at our leader's bravado M. de la Barre saw fit to throw off

all disguise.

"Radisson," he said, "those who trade without license are sent to the

galleys----"

"And those who go to the galleys get no more furs to divide with the

Governor of New France, and the governor who gets no furs goes home a

poor man."

M. de la Barre's sallow face wrinkled again in a dry laugh.

"La Chesnaye has told you?"

"La Chesnaye's son----"

"Have the ships a good cargo? They must remain here till our officer

examines them."

Which meant till the governor's minions looted both vessels for His

Excellency's profit. M. Radisson, who knew that the better part of the

furs were already crossing the ocean, nodded his assent.

"But about these English prisoners, of whom La Chesnaye sent word from

Isle Percée?" continued the governor.

"The prisoners matter nothing--'tis their ship has value----"

"She must go back," interjects M. de la Barre.

"Back?" exclaims M. Radisson.

"Why didn't you sell her to some Spanish adventurer before you came

here?"

"Spanish adventurer--Your Excellency? I am no butcher!"

"Eh--man!" says the governor, tapping the table with a document he

pulled from his greatcoat pocket and shrugging his shoulders with a

deprecating gesture of the hands, "if her crew feared sharks, they

should have defended her against capture. Now--your prize must go back

to New England and we lose the profit! Here," says he, "are orders

from the king and M. Colbert that nothing be done to offend the

subjects of King Charles of England----"

"Which means that Barillon, the French ambassador----?"

M. de la Barre laid his finger on his lips. "Walls have ears! If one

king be willing to buy and another to sell himself and his country,

loyal subjects have no comment, Radisson." [1]

"Loyal subjects!" sneers M. de Radisson.

"And that reminds me, M. Colbert orders Sieur Radisson to present

himself in Paris and report on the state of the fur-trade to the king!"

"Ramsay," said M. Radisson to me, after Governor la Barre had gone,

"this is some new gamestering!"

"Your court players are too deep for me, sir!"

"Pish!" says he impatiently, "plain as day--we must sail on the frigate

for France, or they imprison us here--in Paris we shall be kept

dangling by promises, hangers-on and do-nothings till the moneys are

all used--then----"

"Then--sir?"

"Then, active men are dangerous men, and dangerous men may lie safe and

quiet in the sponging-house!"

"Do we sail in that case?"

"Egad, yes! Why not? Keep your colours flying and you may sail into

hell, man, and conquer, too! Yes--we sail! Man or devil, don't

swerve, lad! Go your gait! Go your gait! Chouart here will look

after the ships! Paris is near London, and praise be Providence for

that little maid of thine! We shall presently have letters from

her--and," he added, "from Sir John Kirke of the Hudson's Bay Company!"

And it was even as he foretold. I find, on looking over the tattered

pages of a handbook, these notes:

_Oct. 6._--Ben Gillam and Governor Brigdar this day sent back to New

England. There will be great complaints against us in the English

court before we can reach London.

_Nov. 11._--Sailed for France in the French frigate.

_Dec. 18._--Reach Rochelle--hear of M. Colbert's death.

_Jan. 30._--Paris--all our furs seized by the French Government in

order to keep M. Radisson powerless--Lord Preston, the English

ambassador, complaining against us on the one hand, and battering our

doors down on the other, with spies offering M. Radisson safe passage

from Paris to London.

I would that I had time to tell you of that hard winter in Paris, M.

Radisson week by week, like a fort resisting siege, forced to take

cheaper and cheaper lodgings, till we were housed between an attic roof

and creaking rat-ridden floor in the Faubourg St. Antoine. But not one

jot did M. Radisson lose of his kingly bearing, though he went to some

fête in Versailles with beaded moccasins and frayed plushes and

tattered laces and hair that one of the pretty wits declared the birds

would be anesting in for hay-coils. In that Faubourg St. Antoine

house, I mind, we took grand apartments on the ground floor, but up and

up we went, till M. Radisson vowed we'd presently be under the

stars--as the French say when they are homeless--unless my Lord

Preston, the English ambassador, came to our terms.

That starving of us for surrender was only another trick of the

gamestering in which we were enmeshed. Had Captain Godey, Lord

Preston's messenger, succeeded in luring us back to England without

terms, what a pretty pickle had ours been! France would have set a

price on us. Then must we have accepted any kick-of-toe England chose

to offer--and thanked our new masters for the same, else back to France

they would have sent us.

But attic dwellers stave off many a woe with empty stomachs and stout

courage. When April came, boats for the fur-trade should have been

stirring, and my Lord Preston changes his tune. One night, when Pierre

Radisson sat spinning his yarns of captivity with Iroquois to our attic

neighbours, comes a rap at the door, and in walks Captain Godey of the

English Embassy. As soon as our neighbours had gone, he counts out one

hundred gold pieces on the table. Then he hands us a letter signed by

the Duke of York, King Charles's brother, who was Governor of the

Hudson's Bay Company, granting us all that we asked.

Thereupon, Pierre Radisson asks leave of the French court to seek

change of air; but the country air we sought was that of England in

May, not France, as the court inferred.

[1] The reference is evidently to the secret treaty by which King

Charles of England received annual payment for compliance with King

Louis's schemes for French aggression.

CHAPTER XXIV

UNDER THE AEGIS OF THE COURT

The roar of London was about us.

Sign-boards creaked and swung to every puff of wind. Great

hackney-coaches, sunk at the waist like those old gallipot boats of ours,

went ploughing past through the mud of mid-road, with bepowdered footmen

clinging behind and saucy coachmen perched in front. These flunkeys

thought it fine sport to splash us passers-by, or beguiled the time when

there was stoppage across the narrow street by lashing rival drivers with

their long whips and knocking cock-hats to the gutter. 'Prentices stood

ringing their bells and shouting their wares at every shop-door. "What

d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? What d'ye please to lack, good sirs? Walk

this way for kerseys, sayes, and perpetuanoes! Bands and ruffs and

piccadillies! Walk this way! Walk this way!"

"Pardieu, lad!" says M. Radisson, elbowing a saucy spark from the wall

for the tenth time in as many paces. "Pardieu, you can't hear yourself

think! Shut up to you!" he called to a bawling 'prentice dressed in

white velvet waistcoat like a showman's dummy to exhibit the fashion.

"Shut up to you!"

And I heard the fellow telling his comrades my strange companion with the

tangled hair was a pirate from the Barbary States. Another saucy vender

caught at the chance.

"Perukes! Perukes! Newest French periwigs!" he shouts, jangling his

bell and putting himself across M. Radisson's course. "You'd please to

lack a periwig, sir! Walk this way! Walk this way--"

"Out of my way!" orders Radisson with a hiss of his rapier round the

fellow's fat calves. "'Tis a milliner's doll the town makes of a man!

Out of my way!"

And the 'prentice went skipping. We were to meet the directors of the

Hudson's Bay Company that night, and we had come out to refurbish our

scant, wild attire. But bare had we turned the corner for the

linen-draper's shops of Fleet Street when M. Radisson's troubles began.

Idlers eyed us with strange looks. Hucksters read our necessitous state

and ran at heel shouting their wares. Shopmen saw needy customers in us

and sent their 'prentices running. Chairmen splashed us as they passed;

and impudent dandies powdered and patched and laced and bewigged like any

fizgig of a girl would have elbowed us from the wall to the gutter for

the sport of seeing M. Radisson's moccasins slimed.

"Egad," says M. Radisson, "an I spill not some sawdust out o' these

dolls, or cut their stay-strings, may the gutter take us for good and

all! Pardieu! An your wig's the latest fashion, the wits under 't don't

matter--"

"Have a care, sir," I warned, "here comes a fellow!"

'Twas a dandy in pink of fashion with a three-cornered hat coming over

his face like a waterspout, red-cheeked from carminative and with the

high look in his eyes of one who saw common folk from the top of church

steeple. His lips were parted enough to show his teeth; and I warrant

you my fine spark had posed an hour at the looking-glass ere he got his

neck at the angle that brought out the swell of his chest. He was

dressed in red plush with silk hose of the same colour and a square-cut,

tailed coat out of whose pockets stuck a roll of paper missives.

"Verse ready writ by some penny-a-liner for any wench with cheap smiles,"

says M. Radisson aloud.

But the fellow came on like a strutting peacock with his head in air.

Behind followed his page with cloak and rapier. In one hand our dandy

carried his white gloves, in the other a lace gewgaw heavy with musk,

which he fluttered in the face of every shopkeeper's daughter.

"Give the wall! Give the wall!" cries the page. "Give the wall to

Lieutenant Blood o' the Tower!"

"S'blood," says M. Radisson insolently, "let us send that snipe

sprawling!"

At that was a mighty awakening on the part of my fine gentleman.

"Blood is my name," says he. "Step aside!"

"An Blood is its name," retorts M. Radisson, "'tis bad blood; and I've a

mind to let some of it, unless the thing gets out of my way!"

With which M. Radisson whips out his sword, and my grand beau condescends

to look at us.

"Boy," he commands, "call an officer!"

"Boy," shouts M. Radisson, "call a chirurgeon to mend its toes!" and his

blade cut a swath across the dandy's shining pumps.

At that was a jump!

Whatever the beaux of King Charles's court may have been, they were not

cowards! Grasping his sword from the page, the fellow made at us. What

with the lashing of the coachmen riding post-haste to see the fray, the

jostling chairmen calling out "A fight! A fight!" and the 'prentices

yelling at the top of their voices for "A watch! A watch!" we had had it

hot enough then and there for M. Radisson's sport; but above the melee

sounded another shrill alarm, the "Gardez l'eau! Gardy loo!" of some

French kitchen wench throwing her breakfast slops to mid-road from the

dwelling overhead. [1]

Only on the instant had I jerked M. Radisson back; and down they

came--dish-water--and coffee leavings--and porridge scraps full on the

crown of my fine young gentleman, drenching his gay attire as it had been

soaked in soapsuds of a week old. Something burst from his lips a deal

stronger than the modish French oaths then in vogue. There was a shout

from the rabble. I dragged rather than led M. Radisson pell-mell into a

shop from front to rear, over a score of garden walls, and out again from

rear to front, so that we gave the slip to all those officers now running

for the scene of the broil.

"Egad's life," cried M. de Radisson, laughing and laughing, "'tis the

narrowest escape I've ever had! Pardieu--to escape the north sea and

drown in dish-water! Lord--to beat devils and be snuffed out by a wench

in petticoats! 'Tis the martyrdom of heroes! What a tale for the

court!"

And he laughed and laughed again till I must needs call a chair to get

him away from onlookers. In the shop of a draper a thought struck him.

"Egad, lad, that young blade was Blood!"

"So he told you."

"Did he? Son of the Blood who stole the crown ten years ago, and got

your own Stanhope lands in reward from the king!"

What memories were his words bringing back?--M. Picot in the hunting-room

telling me of Blood, the freebooter and swordsman. And that brings me to

the real reason for our plundering the linen-drapers' shops before

presenting ourselves at Sir John Kirke's mansion in Drury Lane, where

gentlemen with one eye cocked on the doings of the nobility in the west

and the other keen for city trade were wont to live in those days.

For six years M. Radisson had not seen Mistress Mary Kirke--as his wife

styled herself after he broke from the English--and I had not heard one

word of Hortense for nigh as many months. Say what you will of the

dandified dolls who wasted half a day before the looking-glass in the

reign of Charles Stuart, there are times when the bravest of men had best

look twice in the glass ere he set himself to the task of conquering fair

eyes. We did not drag our linen through a scent bath nor loll all

morning in the hands of a man milliner charged with the duty of turning

us into showmen's dummies--as was the way of young sparks in that age.

But that was how I came to buy yon monstrous wig costing forty guineas

and weighing ten pounds and coming half-way to a man's waist. And you

may set it down to M. Radisson's credit that he went with his wiry hair

flying wild as a lion's mane. Nothing I could say would make him

exchange his Indian moccasins for the high-heeled pumps with a buckle at

the instep.

"I suppose," he had conceded grudgingly, "we must have a brat to carry

swords and cloaks for us, or we'll be taken for some o' your cheap-jack

hucksters parading latest fashions," and he bade our host of the Star and

Garter have some lad searched out for us by the time we should be coming

home from Sir John Kirke's that night.

A mighty personage with fat chops and ruddy cheeks and rounded waistcoat

and padded calves received us at the door of Sir John Kirke's house in

Drury Lane. Sir John was not yet back from the Exchange, this grand

fellow loftily informed us at the entrance to the house. A glance told

him that we had neither page-boy nor private carriage; and he half-shut

the door in our faces.

"Now the devil take _this thing_ for a half-baked, back-stairs,

second-hand kitchen gentleman," hissed M. Radisson, pushing in. "Here,

my fine fellow," says he with a largesse of vails his purse could ill

afford, "here, you sauce-pans, go tell Madame Radisson her husband is

here!"

I have always held that the vulgar like insolence nigh as well as silver;

and Sieur Radisson's air sent the feet of the kitchen steward pattering.

"Confound him!" muttered Radisson, as we both went stumbling over

footstools into the dark of Sir John's great drawing-room, "Confound him!

An a man treats a man as a man in these stuffed match-boxes o' towns,

looking man as a man on the level square in the eye, he only gets himself

slapped in the face for it! An there's to be any slapping in the face,

be the first to do it, boy! A man's a man by the measure of his stature

in the wilderness. Here, 'tis by the measure of his clothes----"

But a great rustling of flounced petticoats down the hallway broke in on

his speech, and a little lady had jumped at me with a cry of "Pierre,

Pierre!" when M. Radisson's long arms caught her from her feet.

"You don't even remember what your own husband looked like," said he.

"Ah, Mary, Mary--don't dear me! I'm only dear when the court takes me

up! But, egad," says he, setting her down on her feet, "you may wager

these pretty ringlets of yours, I'm mighty dear for the gilded crew this

time!"

Madame Radisson said she was glad of it; for when Pierre was rich they

could take a fine house in the West End like my Lord So-and-So; but in

the next breath she begged him not to call the Royalists a gilded crew.

"And who is this?" she asked, turning to me as the servants brought in

candles.

"Egad, and you might have asked that before you tried to kiss him! You

always did have a pretty choice, Mary! I knew it when you took me!

That," says he, pointing to me, "that is the kite's tail!"

"But for convenience' sake, perhaps the kite's tail may have a name,"

retorts Madame Radisson.

"To be sure--to be sure--Stanhope, a young Royalist kinsman of yours."

"Royalist?" reiterates Mary Kirke with a world of meaning to the

high-keyed question, "then my welcome was no mistake! Welcome waits

Royalists here," and she gave me her hand to kiss just as an elderly

woman with monster white ringlets all about her face and bejewelled

fingers and bare shoulders and flowing draperies swept into the room,

followed by a serving-maid and a page-boy. With the aid of two men, her

daughter, a serving-maid, and the page, it took her all of five minutes

by the clock to get herself seated. But when her slippered feet were on

a Persian rug and the displaced ringlets of her monster wig adjusted by

the waiting abigail and smelling-salts put on a marquetry table nearby

and the folds of the gown righted by the page-boy, Lady Kirke extended a

hand to receive our compliments. I mind she called Radisson her "dear,

sweet savage," and bade him have a care not to squeeze the stones of her

rings into the flesh of her fingers.

"As if any man would want to squeeze such a ragbag o' tawdry finery and

milliners' tinsel," said Radisson afterward to me.

I, being younger, was "a dear, bold fellow," with a tap of her fan to the

words and a look over the top of it like to have come from some saucy

jade of sixteen.

After which the serving-maid must hand the smelling-salts and the

page-boy haste to stroke out her train.

"Egad," says Radisson when my lady had informed us that Sir John would

await Sieur Radisson's coming at the Fur Company's offices, "egad,

there'll be no getting Ramsay away till he sees some one else!"

"And who is that?" simpers Lady Kirke, languishing behind her fan.

"Who, indeed, but the little maid we sent from the north sea."

"La," cries Lady Kirke with a sudden livening, "an you always do as well

for us all, we can forgive you, Pierre! The courtiers have cried her up

and cried her up, till your pretty savage of the north sea is like to

become the first lady of the land! Sir John comes home with your letter

to me--boy, the smelling-salts!--so!--and I say to him, 'Sir John, take

the story to His Royal Highness!' Good lack, Pierre, no sooner hath the

Duke of York heard the tale than off he goes with it to King Charles!

His Majesty hath an eye for a pretty baggage. Oh, I promise you, Pierre,

you have done finely for us all!"

And the lady must simper and smirk and tap Pierre Radisson with her fan,

with a glimmer of ill-meaning through her winks and nods that might have

brought the blush to a woman's cheeks in Commonwealth days.

"Madame," cried Pierre Radisson with his eyes ablaze, "that sweet child

came to no harm or wrong among our wilderness of savages! An she come to

harm in a Christian court, by Heaven, somebody'll answer me for't!"

"Lackaday! Hoighty-toighty, Pierre! How you stamp! The black-eyed

monkey hath been named maid of honour to Queen Catherine! How much

better could we have done for her?"

"Maid of honour to the lonely queen?" says Radisson. "That is well!"

"She is ward of the court till a husband be found for her," continues

Lady Kirke.

"There will be plenty willing to be found," says Pierre Radisson, looking

me wondrous straight in the eye.

"Not so sure--not so sure, Pierre! We catch no glimpse of her nowadays;

but they say young Lieutenant Blood o' the Tower shadows the court

wherever she is----"

"A well-dressed young man?" adds Radisson, winking at me.

"And carries himself with a grand air," amplifies my lady, puffing out

her chest, "but then, Pierre, when it comes to the point, your pretty

wench hath no dower--no property----"

"Heaven be praised for that!" burst from my lips.

At which there was a sudden silence, followed by sudden laughter to my

confusion.

"And so Master Stanhope came seeking the bird that had flown," twitted

Radisson's mother-in-law. "Faugh--faugh--to have had the bird in his

hand and to let it go! But--ta-ta!" she laughed, tapping my arm with her

fan, "some one else is here who keeps asking and asking for Master

Stanhope. Boy," she ordered, "tell thy master's guest to come down!"

Two seconds later entered little Rebecca of Boston Town. Blushing pink

as apple-blossoms, dressed demurely as of old, with her glances playing a

shy hide-and-seek under the downcast lids, she seemed as alien to the

artificial grandeur about her as meadow violets to the tawdry splendour

of a flower-dyer's shop.

"Fie, fie, sly ladybird," called out Sir John's wife, "here are friends

of yours!"

At sight of us, she uttered a little gasp of pleasure.

"So--so--so joysome to see Boston folk," she stammered.

"Fie, fie!" laughed Lady Kirke. "Doth Boston air bring red so quick to

all faces?"

"If they be not painted too deep," said Pierre Radisson loud and

distinct. And I doubt not the coquettish old dame blushed red, though

the depth of paint hid it from our eyes; for she held her tongue long

enough for me to lead Rebecca to an alcove window.

Some men are born to jump in sudden-made gaps. Such an one was Pierre

Radisson; for he set himself between his wife and Lady Kirke, where he

kept them achattering so fast they had no time to note little Rebecca's

unmasked confusion.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, Rebecca!"

She glanced up as if to question me.

"Your fine gallants have so many fine speeches----"

"Have you been here long?"

"A month. My father came to see about the furs that Ben Gillam lost in

the bay," explains Rebecca.

"Oh!" said I, vouching no more.

"The ship was sent back," continues Rebecca, all innocent of the nature

of her father's venture, "and my father hopes that King Charles may get

the French to return the value of the furs."

"Oh!"

There was a little silence. The other tongues prattled louder. Rebecca

leaned towards me.

"Have you seen her?" she asked.

"Who?"

She gave an impetuous little shake of her head. "You know," she said.

"Well?" I asked.

"She hath taken me through all the grand places, Ramsay; through

Whitehall and Hampton Court and the Tower! She hath come to see me every

week!"

I said nothing.

"To-morrow she goes to Oxford with the queen. She is not happy, Ramsay.

She says she feels like a caged bird. Ramsay, why did she love that

north land where the wicked Frenchman took her?"

"I don't know, Rebecca. She once said it was strong and pure and free."

"Did you see her oft, Ramsay?"

"No, Rebecca; only at dinner on Sundays."

"And--and--all the officers were there on the Sabbath?"

"All the officers were there!"

She sat silent, eyes downcast, thinking.

"Ramsay?"

"Well?"

"Hortense will be marrying some grand courtier."

"May he be worthy of her."

"I think many ask her."

"And what does Mistress Hortense say?"

"I think," answers Rebecca meditatively, "from the quantity of love-verse

writ, she must keep saying--No."

Then Lady Kirke turns to bid us all go to the Duke's Theatre, where the

king's suite would appear that night. Rebecca, of course, would not go.

Her father would be expecting her when he came home, she said. So Pierre

Radisson and I escorted Lady Kirke and her daughter to the play, riding

in one of those ponderous coaches, with four belaced footmen clinging

behind and postillions before. At the entrance to the playhouse was a

great concourse of crowding people, masked ladies, courtiers with pages

carrying torches for the return after dark, merchants with linkmen, work

folk with lanterns, noblemen elbowing tradesmen from the wall, tradesmen

elbowing mechanics; all pushing and jostling and cracking their jokes

with a freedom of speech that would have cost dear in Boston Town. The

beaux, I mind, had ready-writ love-verses sticking out of pockets thick

as bailiffs' yellow papers; so that a gallant could have stocked his own

munitions by picking up the missives dropped at the feet of disdainfuls.

Of the play, I recall nothing but that some favourite of the king, Mary

Davies, or the famous Nell, or some such an one, danced a monstrous bold

jig. Indeed, our grand people, taking their cue from the courtiers'

boxes, affected a mighty contempt for the play, except when a naughty

jade on the boards stepped high, or blew a kiss to some dandy among the

noted folk. For aught I could make out, they did not come to hear, but

to be heard; the ladies chattering and ogling; the gallants stalking from

box to box and pit to gallery, waving their scented handkerchiefs,

striking a pose where the greater part of the audience could see the

flash of beringed fingers, or taking a pinch of snuff with a snap of the

lid to call attention to its gold-work and naked goddesses.

"Drat these tradespeople, kinsman!" says Lady Kirke, as a fat townsman

and his wife pushed past us, "drat these tradespeople!" says she as we

were taking our place in one of the boxes, "'tis monstrous gracious of

the king to come among them at all!"

Methought her memory of Sir John's career had been suddenly clipped

short; but Pierre Radisson only smiled solemnly. Some jokes, like

dessert, are best taken cold, not hot.

Then there was a craning of necks; and the king's party came in, His

Majesty grown sallow with years but gay and nonchalant as ever, with

Barillon, the French ambassador, on one side and Her Grace of Portsmouth

on the other. Behind came the whole court; the Duchess of Cleveland,

whom our wits were beginning to call "a perennial," because she held her

power with the king and her lovers increased with age; statesmen hanging

upon her for a look or a smile that might lead the way to the king's ear;

Sir George Jeffreys, the judge, whose name was to become England's

infamy; Queen Catherine of Braganza, keeping up hollow mirth with those

whose presence was insult; the Duke of York, soberer than his royal

brother, the king, since Monmouth's menace to the succession; and a host

of hangers-on ready to swear away England's liberties for a licking of

the crumbs that fell from royal lips.

Then the hum of the playhouse seemed as the beating of the north sea; for

Lady Kirke was whispering, "There! There! There she is!" and Hortense

was entering one of the royal boxes accompanied by a foreign-looking,

elderly woman, and that young Lieutenant Blood, whom we had encountered

earlier in the day.

"The countess from Portugal--Her Majesty's friend," murmurs Lady Kirke.

"Ah, Pierre, you have done finely for us all!"

And there oozed over my Lady Kirke's countenance as fine a satisfaction

as ever radiated from the face of a sweating cook.

"How?" asks Pierre Radisson, pursing his lips.

"Sir John hath dined twice with His Royal Highness----"

"The Duke is Governor of the Company, and Sir John is a director."

"Ta-ta, now there you go, Pierre!" smirks my lady. "An your pretty

baggage had not such a saucy way with the men--why--who can tell----"

"Madame," interrupted Pierre Radisson, "God forbid! There be many lords

amaking in strange ways, but we of the wilderness only count honour worth

when it's won honourably."

But Lady Kirke bare heard the rebuke. She was all eyes for the royal

box. "La, now, Pierre," she cries, "see! The king hath recognised you!"

She lurched forward into fuller view of onlookers as she spoke.

"Wella-day! Good lack! Pierre Radisson, I do believe!--Yes!--See!--His

Majesty is sending for you!"

And a page in royal colours appeared to say that the king commanded

Pierre Radisson to present himself in the royal box. With his wiry hair

wild as it had ever been on the north sea, off he went, all unconscious

of the contemptuous looks from courtier and dandy at his strange,

half-savage dress. And presently Pierre Radisson is seated in the king's

presence, chatting unabashed, the cynosure of all eyes. At the stir,

Hortense had turned towards us. For a moment the listless hauteur gave

place to a scarce hidden start. Then the pallid face had looked

indifferently away.

"The huzzy!" mutters Lady Kirke. "She might 'a' bowed in sight of the

whole house! Hoighty-toighty! We shall see, an the little moth so

easily blinded by court glare is not singed for its vanity! Ungrateful

baggage! See how she sits, not deigning to listen one word of all the

young lieutenant is saying! Mary?"

"Yes----"

"You mind I told her--I warned the saucy miss to give more heed to the

men--to remember what it might mean to us----"

"Yes," adds Madame Radisson, "and she said she hated the court----"

"Faugh!" laughs Lady Kirke, fussing and fuming and shifting her place

like a peacock with ruffled plumage, "pride before the fall--I'll

warrant, you men spoiled her in the north! Very fine, forsooth, when a

pauper wench from no one knows where may slight the first ladies of the

land!"

"Madame," said I, "you are missing the play!"

"Master Stanhope," said she, "the play must be marvellous moving! Where

is your colour of a moment ago?"

I had no response to her railing. It was as if that look of Hortense had

come from across the chasm that separated the old order from the new. In

the wilderness she was in distress, I her helper. Here she was of the

court and I--a common trader. Such fools does pride make of us, and so

prone are we to doubt another's faith!

"One slight was enough," Lady Kirke was vowing with a toss of her head;

and we none of us gave another look to the royal boxes that night, though

all about the wits were cracking their jokes against M. Radisson's

"Medusa locks," or "the king's idol, with feet of clay and face of

brass," thereby meaning M. Radisson's moccasins and swarth skin. At the

door we were awaiting M. Radisson's return when the royal company came

out. I turned suddenly and met Hortense's eyes blazing with a hauteur

that forbade recognition. Beside her in lover-like pose lolled that

milliners' dummy whom we had seen humbled in the morning.

Then, promising to rejoin Pierre Radisson at the Fur Company's offices, I

made my adieux to the Kirkes and flung out among those wild revellers who

scoured London streets of a dark night.

[1] The old expression which the law compelled before throwing slops in

mid-street.

CHAPTER XXV

JACK BATTLE AGAIN

The higher one's hopes mount the farther they have to fall; and I, who

had mounted to stars with Hortense, was pushed to the gutter by the

king's dragoons making way for the royal equipage. There was a

crackling of whips among the king's postillions. A yeoman thrust the

crowd back with his pike. The carriages rolled past. The flash of a

linkman's torch revealed Hortense sitting languid and scornful between

the foreign countess and that milliner's dummy of a lieutenant. Then

the royal carriages were lost in the darkness, and the streets thronged

by a rabble of singing, shouting, hilarious revellers.

Different generations have different ways of taking their pleasure, and

the youth of King Charles's day were alternately bullies on the street

and dandies at the feet of my lady disdainful. At the approach of the

shouting, night-watchmen threw down their lanterns and took to their

heels. Street-sweeps tossed their brooms in mid-road with cries of

"The Scowerers! The Scowerers!" Hucksters fled into the dark of side

lanes. Shopkeepers shot their door-bolts. Householders blew out

lights. Fruit-venders made off without their baskets, and small

urchins shrieked the alarm of "Baby-eaters! Baby-eaters!"

One sturdy watch, I mind, stood his guard, laying about with a stout

pike in a way that broke our fine revellers' heads like soft pumpkins;

but him they stood upon his crown in some goodwife's rain-barrel with

his lantern tied to his heels. At the rush of the rabble for shelves

of cakes and pies, one shopman levelled his blunderbuss. That brought

shouts of "A sweat! A sweat!" In a twinkling the rascals were about

him. A sword pricked from behind. The fellow jumped. Another prick,

and yet another, till the good man was dancing such a jig the sweat

rolled from his fat jowls and he roared out promise to feast the whole

rout. A peddler of small images had lingered to see the sport, and

enough of it he had, I promise you; for they dumped him into his wicker

basket and trundled it through the gutter till the peddler and his

little white saints were black as chimney-sweeps. Nor did our merry

blades play their pranks on poor folk alone. At Will's Coffee House,

where sat Dryden and other mighty quidnuncs spinning their poetry and

politics over full cups, before mine host got his doors barred our

fellows had charged in, seized one of the great wits and set him

singing Gammer Gurton's Needle, till the gentlemen were glad to put

down pennies for the company to drink healths.

By this I had enough of your gentleman bully's brawling, and I gave the

fellows the slip to meet Pierre Radisson at the General Council of

Hudson's Bay Adventurers to be held in John Horth's offices in Broad

Street. Our gentlemen adventurers were mighty jealous of their secrets

in those days. I think they imagined their great game-preserve a kind

of Spanish gold-mine safer hidden from public ken, and they held their

meetings with an air of mystery that pirates might have worn. For my

part, I do not believe there were French spies hanging round Horth's

office for knowledge of the Fur Company's doings, though the

doorkeeper, who gave me a chair in the anteroom, reported that a

strange-looking fellow with a wife as from foreign parts had been

asking for me all that day, and refused to leave till he had learned

the address of my lodgings.

"'Ave ye taken the hoath of hallegiance, sir?" asked the porter.

"I was born in England," said I dryly.

"Your renegade of a French savage is atakin' the hoath now," confided

the porter, jerking his thumb towards the inner door. "They do say as

'ow it is for love of Mary Kirke and not the English--"

"Your renegade of a French--who?" I asked sharply, thinking it ill omen

to hear a flunkey of the English Company speaking lightly of our leader.

But at the question the fellow went glum with a tipping and bowing and

begging of pardon. Then the councillors began to come: Arlington and

Ashley of the court, one of those Carterets, who had been on the Boston

Commission long ago and first induced M. Radisson to go to England, and

at last His Royal Highness the Duke of York, deep in conversation with

my kinsman, Sir John Kirke.

"It can do no harm to employ him for one trip," Sir John was saying.

"He hath taken the oath?" asks His Royal Highness.

"He is taking it to-night; but," laughs Sir John, "we thought he was a

good Englishman once before."

"Your company used him ill. You must keep him from going over to the

French again."

"Till he undo the evil he has done--till he capture back all that he

took from us--then," says Sir John cautiously, "then we must consider

whether it be politic to keep a gamester in the company."

"Anyway," adds His Highness, "France will not take him back."

And the door closed on the councillors while I awaited Radisson in the

anteroom. A moment later Pierre Radisson came out with eyes alight and

face elate.

"I've signed to sail in three days," he announced. "Do you go with me

or no?"

Two memories came back: one of a face between a westering sun and a

golden sea, and I hesitated; the other, of a cold, pallid, disdainful

look from the royal box.

"I go."

And entering the council chamber, I signed the papers without one

glance at the terms. Gentlemen sat all about the long table, and at

the head was the governor of the company--the Duke of York, talking

freely with M. de Radisson.

My Lord Ashley would know if anything but furs grew in that wild New

World.

"Furs?" says M. Radisson. "Sir, mark my words, 'tis a world that grows

empires--also men," with an emphasis which those court dandies could

not understand.

But the wise gentlemen only smiled at M. Radisson's warmth.

"If it grew good soldiers for our wars--" begins one military gentleman.

"Aye," flashes back M. Radisson ironically, "if it grows men for your

wars and your butchery and your shambles! Mark my words: it is a land

that grows men good for more than killing," and he smiles half in

bitterness.

"'Tis a prodigious expensive land in diplomacy when men like you are

let loose in it," remarks Arlington.

His Royal Highness rose to take his leave.

"You will present a full report to His Majesty at Oxford," he orders M.

Radisson in parting.

Then the council dispersed.

"Oxford," says M. Radisson, as we picked our way home through the dark

streets; "an I go to meet the king at Oxford, you will see a hornets'

nest of jealousy about my ears."

I did not tell him of the double work implied in Sir John's words with

the prince, for Sir John Kirke was Pierre Radisson's father-in-law. At

the door of the Star and Garter mine host calls out that a

strange-looking fellow wearing a grizzled beard and with a wife as from

foreign parts had been waiting all afternoon for me in my rooms.

"From foreign parts!" repeats M. Radisson, getting into a chair to go

to Sir John's house in Drury Lane. "If they're French spies, send them

right about, Ramsay! We've stopped gamestering!"

"We have; but perhaps the others haven't."

"Let them game," laughs M. Radisson scornfully, as the chair moved off.

Not knowing what to expect I ran up-stairs to my room. At the door I

paused. That morning I had gone from the house light-hearted. Now

interest had died from life. I had but one wish, to reach that

wilderness of swift conflict, where thought has no time for regret.

The door was ajar. A coal fire burned on the hearth. Sitting on the

floor were two figures with backs towards me, a ragged, bearded man and

a woman with a shawl over her head. What fools does hope make of us!

I had almost called out Hortense's name when the noise of the closing

door caught their hearing. I was in the north again; an Indian girl

was on her knees clinging to my feet, sobbing out incoherent gratitude;

a pair of arms were belabouring my shoulders; and a voice was saying

with broken gurgles of joy: "Ship ahoy, there! Ease your helm! Don't

heave all your ballast overboard!"--a clapping of hands on my

back--"Port your helm! Ease her up! All sheets in the wind and the

storms'l aflutter! Ha-ha!" with a wringing and a wringing like to

wrench my hands off--"Anchor out! Haul away! Home with her . . . !"

"Jack Battle!"

It was all I could say.

There he was, grizzled and bronzed and weather-worn, laughing with joy

and thrashing his arms about as if to belabour me again.

"But who is this, Jack?"

I lifted the Indian woman from her knees. It was the girl my blow had

saved that morning long ago.

"Who--what is this?"

"My wife," Says Jack, swinging his arms afresh and proud as a prince.

"Your wife? . . . Where . . . who married you?"

"There warn't no parson," says Jack, "that is, there warn't no parson

nearer nor three thousand leagues and more. And say," adds Jack, "I

s'pose there was marryin' afore there _could_ be parsons! She saved my

life. She hain't no folks. I hain't no folks. She got away that

morning o' the massacre--she see them take us captive--she gets a white

pelt to hide her agen the snow--she come, she do all them cold miles

and lets me loose when the braves ain't watching . . . she risks her

life to save my life--she don't belong to nobody. I don't belong to

nobody. There waren't no parson, but we're married tight . . .

and--and--let not man put asunder," says Jack.

For full five minutes there was not a word.

The east was trying to understand the west!

"Amen, Jack," said I. "God bless you--you are a man!"

"We mean to get a parson and have it done straight yet," explained

Jack, "but I wanted you to stand by me----"

"Faith, Jack, you've done it pretty thorough without any help----"

"Yes, but folks won't understand," pleaded Jack, "and--and--I'd do as

much for you--I wanted you to stand by me and tell me where to say

'yes' when the parson reads the words----"

"All right--I shall," I promised, laughing.

If only Hortense could know all this! That is the sorrow of rifted

lives--the dark between, on each side the thoughts that yearn.

"And--and," Jack was stammering on, "I thought, perhaps, Mistress

Rebecca 'd be willing to stand by Mizza," nodding to the young squaw,

"that is, if you asked Rebecca," pleaded Jack.

"We'll see," said I.

For the New England conscience was something to reckon with!

"How did you come here?" I asked.

"Mizza snared rabbits and I stole back my musket when we ran away and

did some shooting long as powder lasted----"

"And then?"

"And then we used bow and arrow. We hid in the bush till the hostiles

quit cruisin'; but the spring storms caught us when we started for the

coast. I s'pose I'm a better sailor on water than land, for split me

for a herring if my eyes didn't go blind from snow! We hove to in the

woods again, Mizza snaring rabbit and building a lodge and keepin' fire

agoin' and carin' for me as if I deserved it. There I lay

water-logged, odd's man--blind as a mole till the spring thaws came.

Then Mizza an' me built a raft; for sez I to Miz, though she didn't

understand: 'Miz,' sez I, 'water don't flow uphill! If we rig up a

craft, that river'll carry us to the bay!' But she only gets down on

the ground the way she did with you and puts my foot on her neck.

Lordy," laughs Jack, "s'pose I don't know what a foot on a neck feels

like? I sez: 'Miz, if you ever do that again, I'll throw you

overboard!' Then the backwash came so strong from the bay, we had to

wait till the floods settled. While we swung at anchorman, what d'y'

think happened? I taught Miz English. Soon as ever she knew words

enough I told her if I was a captain I'd want a mate! She didn't catch

the wind o' that, lad, till we were navigating our raft downstream agen

the ice-jam. Ship ahoy, you know, the ice was like to nip us, and

lackin' a life-belt I put me arm round her waist! Ease your helm!

Port--a little! Haul away! But she understood--when she saw me save

her from the jam before I saved myself."

And Jack Battle stood away arm's length from his Indian wife and

laughed his pride.

"And by the time we'd got to the bay you'd gone, but Jean Groseillers

sent us to the English ship that came out expecting to find Governor

Brigdar at Nelson. We shipped with the company boat, and here we be."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Oh, I get work enough on the docks to pay for Mizza's lessons--"

"Lessons?"

"Yes--she's learning sewin' and readin' from the nuns, and as soon as

she's baptized we're going to be married regular."

"Oh!" A sigh of relief escaped me. "Then you'll not need Rebecca for

six months or so?"

"No; but you'll ask her?" pleaded Jack.

"If I'm here."

As they were going out Jack slipped back from the hallway to the

fireplace, leaving Mizza outside.

"Ramsay?"

"Yes?"

"You think--it's--it's--all right?"

"What?"

"What I done about a mate?"

"Right?" I reiterated. "Here's my hand to you--blessing on the voyage,

Captain Jack Battle!"

"Ah," smiled Jack, "you've been to the wilderness--you understand!

Other folks don't! That is the way it happens out there!"

He lingered as of old when there was more to come.

"Ramsay?"

"Sail away, captain!"

"Have you seen Hortense?" he asked, looking straight at me.

"Um--yes--no--that is--I have and I haven't."

"Why haven't you?"

"Because having become a grand lady, her ladyship didn't choose to see

me."

Jack Battle turned on his heel and swore a seaman's oath.

"That--that's a lie," said he.

"Very well--it's a lie, but this is what happened," and I told him of

the scene in the theatre. Jack pulled a puzzled face, looking askance

as he listened.

"Why didn't you go round to her box, the way M. Radisson did to the

king's?"

"You forget I am only a trader!"

"Pah," says Jack, "that is nothing!"

"You forget that Lieutenant Blood might have objected to my visit," and

I told him of Blood.

"But how was Mistress Hortense to know that?"

Wounded pride hugs its misery, and I answered nothing.

At the door he stopped. "You go along with Radisson to Oxford," he

called. "The court will be there."

CHAPTER XXVI

AT OXFORD

Rioting through London streets or playing second in M. Radisson's games

of empire, it was possible to forget her, but not in Oxford with the

court retinue all about and the hedgerows abloom and spring-time in the

air. M. Radisson had gone to present his reports to the king. With a

vague belief that chance might work some miracle, I accompanied M.

Radisson till we encountered the first belaced fellow of the King's

Guard. 'Twas outside the porter's lodge of the grand house where the

king had been pleased to breakfast that morning.

"And what might this young man want?" demanded the fellow, with lordly

belligerence, letting M. Radisson pass without question.

Your colonial hero will face the desperate chance of death; but not the

smug arrogance of a beliveried flunkey.

"Wait here," says M. Radisson to me, forgetful of Hortense now that his

own end was won.

And I struck through the copse-wood, telling myself that chance makes

grim sport. Ah, well, the toughening of the wilderness is not to be

undone by fickle fingers, however dainty, nor a strong life blown out

by a girl's caprice! Riders went clanking past. I did not turn. Let

those that honoured dishonour doff hats to that company of loose women

and dissolute men! Hortense was welcome to the womanish men and the

mannish women, to her dandified lieutenant and foreign adventuresses

and grand ambassadors, who bought English honour with the smiles of

evil women. Coming to a high stone wall, I saw two riders galloping

across the open field for the copse wood.

"A very good place to break foolish necks," thought I; for the riders

were coming straight towards me, and a deep ditch ran along the other

side of the wall.

To clear the wall and then the ditch would be easy enough; but to clear

the ditch and then the wall required as pretty a piece of foolhardy

horsemanship as hunters could find. Out of sheer curiosity to see the

end I slackened my walk. A woman in green was leading the pace. The

man behind was shouting "Don't try it! Don't try it! Ride round the

end! Wait! Wait!" But the woman came on as if her horse had the bit.

Then all my mighty, cool stoicism began thumping like a smith's forge.

The woman was Hortense, with that daring look on her face I had seen

come to it in the north land; and her escort, young Lieutenant Blood,

with terror as plainly writ on his fan-shaped elbows and pounding gait

as if his horse were galloping to perdition.

"Don't jump! Head about, Mistress Hillary!" cried the lieutenant.

But Hortense's lips tightened, the rein tightened, there was that

lifting bound into air when horse and rider are one--the quick

paying-out of the rein--the long, stretching leap--the backward

brace--and the wall had been cleared. But Blood's horse balked the

jump, nigh sending him head over into the moat, and seizing the bit,

carried its cursing rider down the slope of the field. In vain the

lieutenant beat it about the head and dug the spurs deep. The beast

sidled off each time he headed it up, or plunged at the water's edge

till Mistress Hortense cried out: "Oh--please! I cannot see you risk

yourself on that beast! Oh--please won't you ride farther down where I

can get back!"

"Ho--away, then," calls Blood, mighty glad of that way out of his

predicament, "but don't try the wall here again, Mistress Hillary! I

protest 'tis not safe for you! Ho--away, then! I race you to the end

of the wall!"

And off he gallops, never looking back, keen to clear the wall and meet

my lady half-way up. Hortense sat erect, reining her horse and smiling

at me.

"And so you would go away without seeing me," she said, "and I must

needs ride you down at the risk of the lieutenant's neck."

"'Tis the way of the proud with the humble," I laughed back; but the

laugh had no mirth.

Her face went grave. She sat gazing at me with that straight, honest

look of the wilderness which neither lies nor seeks a lie.

"Your horse is champing to be off, Hortense!"

"Yes--and if you looked you might see that I am keeping him from going

off."

I smiled at the poor jest as a court conceit.

"Or perhaps, if you tried, you might help me to hold him," says

Hortense, never taking her search from my face.

"And defraud the lieutenant," said I.

"Ah!" says Hortense, looking away. "Are you jealous of anything so

small?"

I took hold of the bit and quieted the horse. Hortense laughed.

"Were you so mighty proud the other night that you could not come to

see a humble ward of the court?" she asked.

"I am only a poor trader now!"

"Ah," says Hortense, questioning my face again, "I had thought you were

only a poor trader before! Was that the only reason?"

"To be sure, Hortense, the lieutenant would not have welcomed me--he

might have told his fellow to turn me out and made confusion."

And I related M. Radisson's morning encounter with Lieutenant Blood,

whereat Mistress Hortense uttered such merry peals of laughter I had

thought the chapel-bells were chiming.

"Ramsay!" she cried impetuously, "I hate this life--why did you all

send me to it?"

"Hate it! Why----?"

"Why?" reiterated Hortense. "Why, when a king, who is too busy to sign

death-reprieves, may spend the night hunting a single moth from room to

room of the palace? Why, when ladies of the court dress in men's

clothes to run the streets with the Scowerers? Why, when a duchess

must take me every morning to a milliner's shop, where she meets her

lover, who is a rope-walker? Why, when our sailors starve unpaid and

gold enough lies on the basset-table of a Sunday night to feed the

army? Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "why do I hate this life? Why must you

and Madame Radisson and Lady Kirke all push me here?"

"Hortense," I broke in, "you were a ward of the crown! What else was

there for us to do?"

"Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "what else? You kept your promise, and a

ward of the crown must marry whom the king names--"

"Marry?"

"Or--or go to a nunnery abroad."

"A nunnery?"

"Ah, yes!" mocks Hortense, "what else is there to do?"

And at that comes Blood crashing through the brush.

"Here, fellow, hands off that bridle!"

"The horse became restless. This gentleman held him for me till you

came."

"Gad's life!" cries the lieutenant, dismounting. "Let's see?" And he

examines the girths with a great show of concern. "A nasty tumble,"

says he, as if Hortense had been rolled on. "All sound, Mistress

Hillary! Egad! You must not ride such a wild beast! I protest, such

risks are too desperate!" And he casts up the whites of his eyes at

Mistress Hortense, laying his hand on his heart. "When did you feel

him getting away from you?"

"At the wall," says Hortense.

The lieutenant vaulted to his saddle.

"Here, fellow!"

He had tossed me a gold-piece. They were off. I lifted the coin,

balanced it on my thumb, and flipped it ringing against the wall. When

I looked up, Hortense was laughing back over her shoulder.

On May 17th we sailed from Gravesend in the Happy Return, two ships

accompanying us for Hudson Bay, and a convoy of the Royal Marine coming

as far as the north of Scotland to stand off Dutch highwaymen and

Spanish pirates.

But I made the news of Jack Battle's marriage the occasion of a letter

to one of the queen's maids of honour.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOME FROM THE BAY

'Twas as fair sailing under English colours as you could wish till

Pierre Radisson had undone all the mischief that he had worked against

the Fur Company in Hudson Bay. Pierre Radisson sits with a pipe in his

mouth and his long legs stretched clear across the cabin-table,

spinning yarns of wild doings in savage lands, and Governor Phipps, of

the Hudson's Bay Company, listens with eyes a trifle too sleepily

watchful, methinks, for the Frenchman's good. A summer sea kept us

course all the way to the northern bay, and sometimes Pierre Radisson

would fling out of the cabin, marching up and down the deck muttering,

"Pah! Tis tame adventuring! Takes a dish o' spray to salt the

freshness out o' men! Tis the roaring forties put nerve in a man's

marrow! Soft days are your Delilah's that shave away men's strength!

Toughen your fighters, Captain Gazer! Toughen your fighters!"

And once, when M. Radisson had passed beyond hearing, the governor

turns with a sleepy laugh to the captain.

"A pox on the rantipole!" says he. "May the sharks test the nerve of

his marrow after he's captured back the forts!"

In the bay great ice-drift stopped our way, and Pierre Radisson's

impatience took fire.

"What a deuce, Captain Gazer!" he cries. "How long do you intend to

squat here anchored to an ice-pan?"

A spark shot from the governor's sleepy eyes, and Captain Gazer

swallowed words twice before he answered.

"Till the ice opens a way," says he.

"Opens a way!" repeats Radisson. "Man alive, why don't you carve a

way?"

"Carve a way yourself, Radisson," says the governor contemptuously.

That was let enough for Pierre Radisson. He had the sailors lowering

jolly-boats in a jiffy; and off seven of us went, round the ice-pans,

ploughing, cutting, portaging a way till we had crossed the obstruction

and were pulling for the French fort with the spars of three Company

boats far in the offing.

I detained the English sailors at the river-front till M. Radisson had

entered the fort and won young Jean Groseillers to the change of

masters. Before the Fur Company's ships came, the English flag was

flying above the fort and Fort Bourbon had become Fort Nelson.

"I bid you welcome to the French Habitation," bows Radisson, throwing

wide the gates to the English governor.

"Hm!" returns Phipps, "how many beaver-skins are there in store?"

M. Radisson looked at the governor. "You must ask my tradespeople

that," he answers; and he stood aside for them all to pass.

"Your English mind thinks only of the gain," he said to me.

"And your French mind?" I asked.

"The game and not the winnings," said he.

No sooner were the winnings safe--twenty thousand beaver-skins stowed

away in three ships' holds--than Pierre Radisson's foes unmasked. The

morning of our departure Governor Phipps marched all our Frenchmen

aboard like captives of war.

"Sir," expostulated M. de Radisson, "before they gave up the fort I

promised these men they should remain in the bay."

Governor Phipps's sleepy eyes of a sudden waked wide.

"Aye," he taunted, "with Frenchmen holding our fort, a pretty trick you

could play us when the fancy took you!"

M. Radisson said not a word. He pulled free a gantlet and strode

forward, but the doughty governor hastily scuttled down the ship's

ladder and put a boat's length of water between him and Pierre

Radisson's challenge.

The gig-boat pulled away. Our ship had raised anchor. Radisson leaned

over the deck-rail and laughed.

"Egad, Phipps," he shouted, "a man may not fight cowards, but he can

cudgel them! An I have to wait for you on the River Styx, I'll punish

you for making me break promise to these good fellows!"

"Promise--and when did promise o' yours hold good, Pierre Radisson?"

The Frenchman turned with a bitter laugh.

"A giant is big enough to be hit--a giant is easy to fight," says he,

"but egad, these pigmies crawl all over you and sting to death before

they are visible to the naked eye!"

And as the Happy Return wore ship for open sea he stood moodily silent

with eyes towards the shore where Governor Phipps's gig-boat had moored

before Fort Nelson.

Then, speaking more to himself than to Jean and me, his lips curled

with a hard scorn.

"The Happy Return!" says he. "Pardieu! 'tis a happy return to beat

devils and then have all your own little lies come roosting home like

imps that filch the victory! They don't trust me because I won by

trickery! Egad! is a slaughter better than a game? An a man wins, who

a devil gives a rush for the winnings? 'Tis the fight and the

game--pah!--not the thing won! Storm and cold, man and beast, powers

o' darkness and devil, knaves and fools and his own sins--aye, that's

the scratch!--The man and the beast and the dark and the devil, he can

breast 'em all with a bold front! But knaves and fools and his own

sins, pah!--death grubs!--hatching and nesting in a man's bosom till

they wake to sting him! Flesh-worms--vampires--blood-suckers--spun out

o' a man's own tissue to sap his life!"

He rapped his pistol impatiently against the deck-rail, stalked past

us, then turned.

"Lads," says he, "if you don't want gall in your wine and a grub in

your victory, a' God's name keep your own counsel and play the game

fair and square and aboveboard."

And though his speech worked a pretty enough havoc with fine-spun

rhetoric to raise the wig off a pedant's head, Jean and I thought we

read some sense in his mixed metaphors.

On all that voyage home he never once crossed words with the English

officers, but took his share of hardship with the French prisoners.

"I mayn't go back to France. They think they have me cornered and in

their power," he would say, gnawing at his finger-ends and gazing into

space.

Once, after long reverie, he sprang up from a gun-waist where he had

been sitting and uttered a scornful laugh.

"Cornered? Hah! We shall see! I snap my fingers in their faces."

Thereafter his mood brightened perceptibly, and he was the first to put

foot ashore when we came to anchor in British port. There were yet

four hours before the post-chaise left for London, and the English crew

made the most of the time by flocking to the ale-houses. M. Radisson

drew Jean and me apart.

"We'll beat our detractors yet," he said. "If news of this capture be

carried to the king and the Duke of York[1] before the shareholders

spread false reports, we are safe. If His Royal Highness favour us,

the Company must fall in line or lose their charter!"

And he bade us hire three of the fleetest saddle-horses to be found.

While the English crew were yet brawling in the taverns, we were to

horse and away. Our horse's feet rang on the cobblestones with the

echo of steel and the sparks flashed from M. Radisson's eyes. A

wharfmaster rushed into mid-road to stop us, but M. Radisson rode him

down. A uniformed constable called out to know what we were about.

"Our business!" shouts M. Radisson, and we are off.

Country franklins got their wains out of our way with mighty confusion,

and coaches drew aside for us to pass, and roadside brats scampered off

with a scream of freebooters; but M. Radisson only laughed.

"This is living," said he. "Give your nag rein, Jean! Whip and spur!

Ramsay! Whip and spur! Nothing's won but at cost of a sting! Throw

off those jack-boots, Jean! They're a handicap! Loose your holsters,

lad! An any highwaymen come at us to-day I'll send him a short way to

a place where he'll stay! Whip up! Whip up!"

"What have you under your arm?" cries Jean breathlessly.

"Rare furs for the king," calls Radisson.

Then the wind is in our hair, and thatched cots race off in a blur on

either side; plodding workmen stand to stare and are gone; open fields

give place to forest, forest to village, village to bare heath; and

still we race on.

* * * * * *

Midnight found us pounding through the dark of London streets for

Cheapside, where lived Mr. Young, a director of the Hudson's Bay

Company, who was favourable to Pierre Radisson.

"Halloo! Halloo!" shouts Radisson, beating his pistol-butt on the door.

A candle and a nightcap emerge from the upper window.

"Who's there?" demands a voice.

"It's Radisson, Mr. Young!"

"Radisson! In the name o' the fiends--where from?"

"Oh, we've just run across the way from Hudson Bay!" says Radisson.

And the good man presently appears at the door with a candle in one

hand and a bludgeon in the other.

"In the name o' the fiends, when did you arrive, man?" exclaims Mr.

Young, hailing us inside.

"Two minutes ago by the clock," laughs Radisson, looking at the

timepiece in the hall. "Two minutes and a half ago," says he,

following our host to the library.

"How many beaver-skins?" asks the Englishman, setting down his candle.

The Frenchman smiles.

"Twenty thousand beaver--skins and as many more of other sorts!"

The Englishman sits down to pencil out how much that will total at ten

shillings each; and Pierre Radisson winks at us.

"The winnings again," says he.

"Twenty thousand pounds!" cries our host, springing up.

"Aye," says Pierre Radisson, "twenty thousand pounds' worth o' fur

without a pound of shot or the trade of a nail-head for them. The

French had these furs in store ready for us!"

Mr. Young lifts his candle so that the light falls on Radisson's

bronzed face. He stands staring as if to make sure we are no wraiths.

"Twenty thousand pounds," says he, slowly extending his right hand to

Pierre Radisson. "Radisson, man, welcome!"

The Frenchman bows with an ironical laugh.

"Twenty thousand pounds' worth o' welcome, sir!"

But the director of the Fur Company rambles on unheeding.

"These be great news for the king and His Royal Highness," says he.

"Aye, and as I have some rare furs for them both, why not let us bear

the news to them ourselves?" asks Radisson.

"That you shall," cries Mr. Young; and he led us up-stairs, where we

might refresh ourselves for the honour of presentation to His Majesty

next day.

[1] The Duke of York became Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company after

Prince Rupert's death, and the Company's charter was a royal favour

direct from the king.

CHAPTER XXVIII

REBECCA AND I FALL OUT

M. Radisson had carried his rare furs to the king, and I was at Sir

John Kirke's door to report the return of her husband to Madame

Radisson. The same grand personage with sleek jowls and padded calves

opened the door in the gingerly fashion of his office. This time he

ushered me quick enough into the dark reception-room.

As I entered, two figures jumped from the shadow of a tapestried alcove

with gasps of fright.

"Ramsay!"

It was Rebecca, the prim monkey, blushing a deal more than her

innocence warranted, with a solemn-countenanced gentleman of the cloth

scowling from behind.

"When--when--did you come?" she asked, all in a pretty flutter that set

her dimples atrembling; and she forgot to give me welcome.

"Now--exactly on the minute!"

"Why--why--didn't you give us warning?" stammered Rebecca, putting out

one shy hand.

At that I laughed outright; but it was as much the fashion for

gentlemen of the cloth to affect a mighty solemnity in those days as it

was for the laity to let out an oath at every other word, and the young

divine only frowned sourly at my levity.

"If--if--if you'd only given us warning," interrupts Rebecca.

"Faith, Rebecca, an you talk of warning, I'll begin to think you needed

it----"

"To give you welcome," explains Rebecca. Then recovering herself, she

begs, with a pretty bobbing courtesy, to make me known to the Reverend

Adam Kittridge.

The Reverend Kittridge shakes hands with an air as he would sound my

doctrine on the spot, and Rebecca hastens to add that I am "a

very--_old--old_ friend."

"Not so _very_ old, Rebecca, not so very long ago since you and I read

over the same lesson-books. Do you mind the copy-heads on the

writing-books?

"'_Heaven to find. The Bible mind. In Adam's fall we sinn'ed all.

Adam lived a lonely life until he got himself a wife._'"

But at that last, which was not to be found among the head-lines of

Boston's old copy-books, little Rebecca looked like to drop, and with a

frightened gesture begged us to be seated, which we all accomplished

with a perceptible stiffening of the young gentleman's joints.

"Is M. Radisson back?" she asks.

"He reached England yesterday. He bade me say that he will be here

after he meets the shareholders. He goes to present furs to the king

this morning."

"That will please Lady Kirke," says the young gentleman.

"Some one else is back in England," exclaims Rebecca, with the air of

news. "Ben Gillam is here."

"O-ho! Has he seen the Company?"

"He and Governor Brigdar have been among M. Radisson's enemies. Young

Captain Gillam says there's a sailor-lad working on the docks here can

give evidence against M. Radisson."

"Can you guess who that sailor-lad is, Rebecca?"

"It is not--no--it is not Jack?" she asks.

"Jack it is, Rebecca. That reminds me, Jack sent a message to you!"

"A message to me?"

"Yes--you know he's married--he married last year when he was in the

north."

"Married?" cries Rebecca, throwing up her hands and like to faint from

surprise. "Married in the north? Why--who--who married him, Ramsay?"

"A woman, of course!"

"But--" Rebecca was blushing furiously, "but--I mean--was there a

chaplain? Had you a preacher? And--and was not Mistress Hortense the

only woman----?"

"No--child--there were thousands of women--native women----"

"Squaws!" exclaims the prim little Puritan maid, with a red spot

burning on each cheek. "Do you mean that Jack Battle has married a

squaw?" and she rose indignantly.

"No--I mean a woman! Now, Rebecca, will you sit down till I tell you

all about it?"

"Sir," interjects the young gentleman of the cloth, "I protest there

are things that a maid ought not to hear!"

"Then, sir, have a care that you say none of them under cloak of

religion! _Honi soit qui mal y pense_! The mind that thinketh no evil

taketh no evil."

Then I turned to Rebecca, standing with a startled look in her eyes.

"Rebecca, Madame Radisson has told you how Jack was left to be tortured

by the Indians?"

"Hortense has told me."

"And how he risked his life to save an Indian girl's life?"

"Yes," says Rebecca, with downcast lids.

"That Indian girl came and untied Jack's bonds the night of the

massacre. They escaped together. When he went snow-blind, Mizza

hunted and snared for him and kept him. Her people were all dead; she

could not go back to her tribe--if Jack had left her in the north, the

hostiles would have killed her. Jack brought her home with him----"

"He ought to have put her in a house of correction," snapped Rebecca.

"Rebecca! Why would he put her in a house of correction? What had she

done that she ought not to have done? She had saved his life. He had

saved hers, and he married her."

"There was no minister," said Rebecca, with a tightening of her

childish dimpled mouth and a reddening of her cheeks and a little

indignant toss of the chin.

"Rebecca! How could they get a minister a thousand leagues away from

any church? They will get one now----"

Rebecca rose stiffly, her little lily face all aflame.

"My father saith much evil cometh of this--it is sin--he ought not to

have married her; and--and--it is very wrong of you to be telling me

this--" she stammered angrily, with her little hands clasped tight

across the white stomacher.

"Very unfit," comes from that young gentleman of the cloth.

We were all three standing, and I make no doubt my own face went as red

as theirs, for the taunt bit home. That inference of evil where no

evil was, made an angrier man than was my wont. The two moved towards

the door. I put myself across their way.

"Rebecca, you do yourself wrong! You are measuring other people's

deeds with too short a yardstick, little woman, and the wrong is in

your own mind, not theirs."

"I--I--don't know what you mean!" cried Rebecca obstinately, with a

break in her voice that ought to have warned; but her next words

provoked afresh. "It was wicked!--it was sinful!"--with an angry

stamp--"it was shameful of Jack Battle to marry an Indian girl----"

There I cut in.

"Was it?" I asked. "Young woman, let me tell you a bald truth! When a

white man marries an Indian, the union is as honourable as your own

would be. It is when the white man does _not_ marry the Indian that

there is shame; and the shame is to the white man, not the Indian----!"

Sure, one might let an innocent bundle of swans' down and baby cheeks

have its foibles without laying rough hands upon them!

The next,--little Rebecca cries out that I've insulted her, is in

floods of tears, and marches off on the young gentleman's arm.

Comes a clatter of slippered heels on the hall floor and in bustles my

Lady Kirke, bejewelled and befrilled and beflounced till I had thought

no mortal might bend in such massive casings of starch.

"La," she pants, "good lack!--Wellaway! My fine savage! Welladay!

What a pretty mischief have you been working? Proposals are amaking at

the foot of the stairs. O--lud! The preacher was akissing that little

Puritan maid as I came by! Good lack, what will Sir John say?"

And my lady laughs and laughs till I look to see the tears stain the

rouge of her cheeks.

"O-lud," she laughs, "I'm like to die! He tried to kiss the baggage!

And the little saint jumps back so quick that he hit her ear by

mistake! La," she laughs, "I'm like to die!"

I'd a mind to tell her ladyship that a loosening of her stays might

prolong life, but I didn't. Instead, I delivered the message from

Pierre Radisson and took myself off a mighty mad man; for youth can be

angry, indeed. And the cause of the anger was the same as fretteth the

Old World and New to-day. Rebecca was measuring Jack by old standards.

I was measuring Rebecca by new standards. And the measuring of the old

by the new and the new by the old teareth love to tatters.

Pierre Radisson I met at the entrance to the Fur Company's offices in

Broad Street. His steps were of one on steel springs and his eyes

afire with victory.

"We've beaten them," he muttered to me. "His Majesty favours us! His

Majesty accepted the furs and would have us at Whitehall to-morrow

night to give account of our doings. An they try to trick me out of

reward I'll have them to the foot o' the throne!"

But of Pierre Radisson's intrigue against his detractors I was not

thinking at all.

"Were the courtiers about?" I asked.

"Egad! yes; Palmer and Buckingham and Ashley leering at Her Grace of

Portsmouth, with Cleveland looking daggers at the new favourite, and

the French ambassador shaking his sides with laughter to see the women

at battle. His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, got us access to

present the furs. Egad, Ramsay, I am a rough man, but it seemed

prodigious strange to see a king giving audience in the apartments of

the French woman, and great men leering for a smile from that huzzy!

The king lolls on a Persian couch with a litter of spaniel puppies on

one side and the French woman on the other. And what do you think that

black-eyed jade asks when I present the furs and tell of our captured

Frenchmen? To have her own countrymen sold to the Barbadoes so that

she may have the money for her gaming-table! Egad, I spiked that

pretty plan by saying the Frenchmen were sending her a present of furs,

too! To-morrow night we go to Whitehall to entertain His Majesty with

our doings! We need not fear enemies in the Company now!"

"I'm not so sure of that," said I. "The Gillams have been working

against you here, and so has Brigdar."

"Hah--let them work!"

"Did you see _her_?" I asked.

"_Her_?" questions Radisson absently. "Pardieu, there are so many

_hers_ about the court now with no she-saint among them! Which do you

mean?"

The naming of Hortense after such speech was impossible. Without more

mention of the court, we entered the Company's office, where sat the

councillors in session around a long table. No one rose to welcome him

who had brought such wealth on the Happy Return; and the reason was not

far to seek. The post-chaise had arrived with Pierre Radisson's

detractors, and allied with them were the Gillams and Governor Brigdar.

Pierre Radisson advanced undaunted and sat down. Black looks greeted

his coming, and the deputy-governor, who was taking the Duke of York's

place, rose to suggest that "Mr. Brigdar, wrongfully dispossessed of

the fort on the bay by one Frenchman known as Radisson, be restored as

governor of those parts."

A grim smile went from face to face at Pierre Radisson's expense.

"Better withdraw, man, better withdraw," whispers Sir John Kirke, his

father-in-law.

But Radisson only laughs.

Then one rises to ask by what authority the Frenchman, Radisson, had

gone to report matters to the king instead of leaving that to the

shareholders.

M. de Radisson utters another loud laugh.

Comes a knocking, and there appears at the door Colonel Blood, father

of the young lieutenant, with a message from the king.

"Gentlemen," announces the freebooter, "His Majesty hath bespoke dinner

for the Fur Company at the Lion. His Royal Highness, the Duke of York,

hath ordered Madeira for the councillors' refreshment, and now awaits

your coming!"

For the third time M. Radisson laughs aloud with a triumph of insolence.

"Come, gentlemen," says he, "I've countered. Let us be going. His

Royal Highness awaits us across the way."

Blood stood twirling his mustaches and tapping his sword-handle

impatiently. He was as swarth and straight and dauntless as Pierre

Radisson, with a sinister daring in his eyes that might have put the

seal to any act.

"Egad's life!" he exclaimed, "do fur-traders keep royalty awaiting?"

And our irate gentleman must needs haste across to the Lion, where

awaited the Company Governor, the Duke of York, with all the merry

young blades of the court. King Charles's reign was a time of license,

you have been told. What that meant you would have known if you had

seen the Fur Company at dinner. Blood, Senior, I mind, had a

drinking-match against Sir George Jeffreys, the judge; and I risk not

my word on how much those two rascals put away. The judge it was who

went under mahogany first, though Colonel Blood scarce had wit enough

left to count the winnings of his wager. Young Lieutenant Blood stood

up on his chair and bawled out some monstrous bad-writ verse to "a

fair-dark lady"--whatever that meant--"who was as cold as ice and

combustible as gunpowder." Healths were drunk to His Majesty King

Charles, to His Royal Highness the Duke of York, to our councillors of

the Company, to our governors of the fur-posts, and to the captains.

Then the Duke of York himself lifted the cup to Pierre Radisson's

honour; whereat the young courtiers raised such a cheering, the grim

silence of Pierre Radisson's detractors passed unnoticed. After the

Duke of York had withdrawn, our riotous sparks threw off all restraint.

On bended knee they drank to that fair evil woman whom King Louis had

sent to ensnare King Charles. Odds were offered on how long her power

with the king would last. Then followed toasts to a list of

second-rate names, dancing girls and French milliners, who kept place

of assignation for the dissolute crew, and maids of honour, who were no

maids of honour, but adventuresses in the pay of great men to advance

their interest with the king, and riffraff women whose names history

hath done well to forget. To these toasts Colonel Blood and Pierre

Radisson and I sat with inverted glasses.

While the inn was ringing to the shouts of the revellers, the

freebooter leaned across to Pierre Radisson.

"Gad's name if they like you," he mumbled drunkenly.

"Who?" asked Radisson.

"Fur Company," explained Blood. "They hate you! So they do me! But

if the king favours you, they've got to have you," and he laughed to

himself.

"That's the way with me," he whispered in drunken confidence to M.

Radisson. "What a deuce?" he asked, turning drowsily to the table.

"What's my boy doing?"

Young Lieutenant Blood was to his feet holding a reaming glass high as

his head.

"Gentlemen, I give you the sweet savage!" he cried, "the Diana of the

snows--a thistle like a rose--ice that burns--a pauper that spurns--"

"Curse me if he doesn't mean that saucy wench late come from your north

fort," interrupted the father.

My hands were itching to throw a glass in the face of father or son,

but Pierre Radisson restrained me.

"More to be done sometimes by doing nothing," he whispered.

The young fellows were on their knees draining bumpers; but Colonel

Blood was rambling again.

"He gives 'em that saucy brat, does he? Gad's me, I'd give her to

perdition for twopenny-worth o' rat poison! Look you, Radisson, 'tis

what I did once; but she's come back! Curse me, I could 'a' done it

neater and cheaper myself--twopenny-worth o' poison would do it, Picot

said; but gad's me, I paid him a hundred guineas, and here she's come

back again!"

"Blood . . . Colonel Blood," M. Picot had repeated at his death.

I had sprung up. Again M. Radisson held me back.

"How long ago was that, Colonel Blood?" he asked softly.

"Come twenty year this day s'ennight," mutters the freebooter. "'Twas

before I entered court service. Her father had four o' my fellows

gibbeted at Charing Cross, Gad's me, I swore he'd sweat for it! She

was Osmond's only child--squalling brat coming with nurse over Hounslow

Heath. 'Sdeath--I see it yet! Postillions yelled like stuck pigs,

nurses kicked over in coach dead away. When they waked up, curse me,

but the French poisoner had the brat! Curse me, I'd done better to

finish her myself. Picot ran away and wrote letters--letters--letters,

till I had to threaten to slit his throat, 'pon my soul, I had! And

now she must marry the boy----"

"Why?" put in Radisson, with cold indifference and half-listening air.

"Gad's life, can't you see?" asked the knave. "Osmond's dead, the

boy's lands are hers--the French doctor may 'a' told somebody," and

Colonel Blood of His Majesty's service slid under the table with the

judge.

M. Radisson rose and led the way out.

"You'd like to cudgel him," he said. "Come with me to Whitehall

instead!"

CHAPTER XXIX

THE KING'S PLEASURE

My Lady Kirke was all agog.

Pierre Radisson was her "dear sweet savage," and "naughty spark," and

"bold, bad beau," and "devilish fellow," and "lovely wretch!"

"La, Pierre," she cries, with a tap of her fan, "anybody can go to the

king's _levee_! But, dear heart!" she trills, with a sidelong ogle.

"Ta!--ta! naughty devil!--to think of our sweet savage going to

Whitehall of an evening! Lud, Mary, I'll wager you, Her Grace of

Portsmouth hath laid eyes on him----"

"The Lord forbid!" ejaculates Pierre Radisson.

"Hoighty-toighty! Now! there you go, my saucy spark! Good lack! An

the king's women laid eyes on any other man, 'twould turn his head and

be his fortune! Naughty fellow!" she warns, with a flirt of her fan.

"We shall watch you! Ta-ta, don't tell me no! Oh, we know this _gâité

de coeur_! You'll presently be _intime_ o' Portsmouth and Cleveland

and all o' them!"

"Madame," groans Pierre Radisson, "swear, if you will! But as you love

me, don't abuse the French tongue!"

At which she gave him a slap with her fan.

"An I were not so young," she simpers, "I'd cuff your ears, you saucy

Pierre!"

"So young!" mutters Pierre Radisson, with grim looks at her powdered

locks. "Egad's life, so is the bud on a century plant young," and he

turns to his wife.

But my Lady Kirke was blush-proof.

"Don't forget to pay special compliments to the favourites," she calls,

as we set out for Whitehall; and she must run to the door in a flutter

and ask if Pierre Radisson has any love-verse ready writ, in case of an

_amour_ with one of the court ladies.

"No," says Radisson, "but here are unpaid tailor bills! 'Tis as good

as your _billets-doux_! I'll kiss 'em just as hard!"

"So!" cries Lady Kirke, bobbing a courtesy and blowing a kiss from her

finger-tips as we rolled away in Sir John's coach.

"The old flirt-o'-tail," blurted Radisson, "you could pack her brains

in a hazel-nut; but 'twould turn the stomach of a grub!"

* * * * * *

'Twas not the Whitehall you know to-day, which is but a remnant of the

grand old pile that stretched all the way from the river front to the

inner park. Before the fires, Whitehall was a city of palaces reaching

far into St. James, with a fleet of royal barges at float below the

river stairs. From Scotland Yard to Bridge Street the royal ensign

blew to the wind above tower and parapet and battlement. I mind under

the archway that spanned little Whitehall Street M. Radisson dismissed

our coachman.

"How shall we bring up the matter of Hortense?" I asked.

"Trust me," said Radisson. "The gods of chance!"

"Will you petition the king direct?"

"Egad--no! Never petition a selfish man direct, or you'll get a No!

Bring him round to the generous, so that he may take all credit for it

himself! Do you hold back among the on-lookers till I've told our

story o' the north! 'Tis not a state occasion! Egad, there'll be

court wenches aplenty ready to take up with a likely looking man! Have

a word with Hortense if you can! Let me but get the king's ear--" And

Radisson laughed with a confidence, methought, nothing on earth could

shake.

Then we were passed from the sentinel doing duty at the gate to the

king's guards, and from the guards to orderlies, and from orderlies to

fellows in royal colours, who led us from an ante-room to that glorious

gallery of art where it pleased the king to take his pleasure that

night.

It was not a state occasion, as Radisson said; but for a moment I think

the glitter in which those jaded voluptuaries burned out their

moth-lives blinded even the clear vision of Pierre Radisson. The great

gallery was thronged with graceful courtiers and stately dowagers and

gaily attired page-boys and fair ladies with a beauty of youth on their

features and the satiety of age in their look. My Lord Preston, I

mind, was costumed in purple velvet with trimming of pearls such as a

girl might wear. Young Blood moved from group to group to show his

white velvets sparkling with diamonds. One of the Sidneys was there

playing at hazard with my Lady Castlemaine for a monstrous pile of gold

on the table, which some onlookers whispered made up three thousand

guineas. As I watched my lady lost; but in spite of that, she coiled

her bare arm around the gold as if to hold the winnings back.

"And indeed," I heard her say, with a pout, "I've a mind to prove your

love! I've a mind not to pay!"

At which young Sidney kisses her finger-tips and bids her pay the debt

in favours; for the way to the king was through the influence of

Castlemaine or Portsmouth or other of the dissolute crew.

Round other tables sat men and women, old and young, playing away

estate and fortune and honour at tick-tack or ombre or basset. One

noble lord was so old that he could not see to game, and must needs

have his valet by to tell him how the dice came up. On the walls hung

the works of Vandyke and Correggio and Raphael and Rubens; but the pure

faces of art's creation looked down on statesmen bending low to the

beck of adventuresses, old men pawning a noble name for the leer of a

Portsmouth, and women vying for the glance of a jaded king.

At the far end of the apartment was a page-boy dressed as Cupid,

singing love-songs. In the group of listeners lolled the languid king.

Portsmouth sat near, fanning the passion of a poor young fool, who hung

about her like a moth; but Charles was not a lover to be spurred. As

Portsmouth played her ruse the more openly a contemptuous smile flitted

over the proud, dark face of the king, and he only fondled his lap-dog

with indifferent heed for all those flatterers and foot-lickers and

curry-favours hovering round royalty.

Barillon, the French ambassador, pricked up his ears, I can tell you,

when Chaffinch, the king's man, came back with word that His Majesty

was ready to hear M. Radisson.

"Now, lad, move about and keep your eyes open and your mouth shut!"

whispers M. Radisson as he left me.

Barillon would have followed to the king's group, but His Majesty

looked up with a quiet insolence that sent the ambassador to another

circle. Then a page-boy touched my arm.

"Master Stanhope?" he questioned.

"Yes," said I.

"Come this way," and he led to a tapestried corner, where sat the queen

and her ladies.

Mistress Hortense stood behind the royal chair.

Queen Catherine extended her hand for my salute.

"Her Majesty is pleased to ask what has become of the sailor-lad and

his bride," said Hortense.

"Hath the little Puritan helped to get them married right?" asked the

queen, with the soft trill of a foreign tongue.

"Your Majesty," said I, "the little Puritan holds back."

"It is as you thought," said Queen Catherine, looking over her shoulder

to Hortense.

"Would another bridesmaid do?" asked the queen.

Laughing looks passed among the ladies.

"If the bridesmaid were Mistress Hillary, Your Majesty," I began.

"Hortense hath been to see them."

I might have guessed. It was like Hortense to seek the lonely pair.

"Here is the king. We must ask his advice," said the queen.

At the king's entrance all fell back and I managed to whisper to

Hortense what we had learned the night before.

"Here are news," smiled His Majesty. "Your maid of the north is

Osmond's daughter! The lands young Lieutenant Blood wants are hers!"

At that were more looks among the ladies.

"And faith, the lieutenant asks for her as well as the lands," said the

king.

Hortense had turned very white and moved a little forward.

"We may not disturb our loyal subject's possession. What does Osmond's

daughter say?" questioned the king.

Then Hortense took her fate in her hands.

"Your Majesty," she said, "if Osmond's daughter did not want the lands,

it would not be necessary to disturb the lieutenant."

"And who would find a husband for a portionless bride?" asked King

Charles.

"May it please Your Majesty," began Hortense; but the words trembled

unspoken on her lips.

There was a flutter among the ladies. The queen turned and rose. A

half-startled look of comprehension came to her face. And out stepped

Mistress Hortense from the group behind.

"Your Majesties," she stammered, "I do not want the lands----"

"Nor the lieutenant," laughed the king.

"Your Majesties," she said. She could say no more.

But with the swift intuition of the lonely woman's loveless heart,

Queen Catherine read in my face what a poor trader might not speak.

She reached her hand to me, and when I would have saluted it like any

dutiful subject, she took my hand in hers and placed Hortense's hand in

mine.

Then there was a great laughing and hand-shaking and protesting, with

the courtiers thronging round.

"Ha, Radisson," Barillon was saying, "you not only steal our forts--you

must rifle the court and run off with the queen's maid!"

"And there will be two marriages at the sailor's wedding," said the

queen.

It was Hortense's caprice that both marriages be deferred till we

reached Boston Town, where she must needs seek out the old Puritan

divine whom I had helped to escape so many years ago.

Before I lay down my pen, I would that I could leave with you a picture

of M. Radisson, the indomitable, the victorious, the dauntless, living

in opulence and peace!

But my last memory of him, as our ship sheered away for Boston Town, is

of a grave man standing on the quay denouncing princes' promises and

gazing into space.

M. Radisson lived to serve the Fur Company for many a year as history

tells; but his service was as the flight of a great eagle, harried by a

multitude of meaner birds.