CHAPTER XIV.
WHERE THE DEAD SIT
“They need not starve us,” said Menard, trying to speak lightly. “I am hungry.”
The others made no reply.
“I will see what chance we have for a supper.”
He got up and walked along the path looking for the guards. In a short time he returned.
“They will bring us something. The sentiment is not so strong against us now, I think.”
“They change quickly,” said Father Claude.
“Yes. It is the Big Throat.”
“And yourself, M’sieu,” the maid said impulsively. “You have done it, too.”
“I cannot tell. We do not know what the council may decide. It may be morning before they will come to an agreement. The Long Arrow will fight to the last.”
“And the other, M’sieu,–the one who attacked you,–he too will fight?”
“He is nothing. When an Iroquois shows himself a coward his influence is gone forever. It may be even that they will give him a new name because of this.”
“There are times when a small accident or a careless word will change the mind of a nation,” said Father Claude. “When we left the council they were not unfriendly to us. But in an hour it may be that they will renew the torture. Until their hearts have been touched by the Faith there are but two motives behind the most of their actions, expediency and revenge. But I think we may hope. Brother de Lamberville has told of many cases of torture where the right appeal has brought a complete change.”
So they talked on, none having anything to say, and yet each dreading the silences that came so easily and hung over them so heavily. They could see the council-house some distance up the path. Its outlines were lost in the shadows of the trees, but through the crevices in the bark and logs came thin lines of light, and a glow shone through the long roof opening upon the smoke that hung in the still air above it. Sometimes they could hear indistinctly the voice of a speaker; but the words could not be distinguished. At other times there was a low buzz of voices. The children and women who had not been able to get into the building could be seen moving about outside shutting off a strip of light here and there.
Two braves came with some corn and smoked meat. Menard set it down on a corner of the blanket.
“You will eat, Mademoiselle?”
She shook her head. “I am not hungry. Thank you, M’sieu.”
“If I may ask it,–if I may insist,–it is really necessary, Mademoiselle.”
She reached out, with a weary little gesture, and took some of the corn.
“And you too, Father.”
They ate in silence, and later went together to the spring for a cool drink.
“We ought to make an effort to sleep,” Menard said; and added, “if we can. Father, you had better lie down. In a few hours, if there is no word, I will wake you.”
“You will not forget, M’sieu? You will not let me sleep too long.”
“No.” The Captain smiled. “No, Father; you shall take your turn at guard duty.”
The priest said good-night, and went to a knoll not far from the door. The maid had settled back against the logs of the hut, and was gazing at the trees. Menard sat in silence for a few moments.
“Mademoiselle,” he said at length, “I know that it will be hard for you to rest until we have heard; but–” he hesitated, but she did not help him, and he had to go on,–“I wish you would try.”
“It would be of no use, M’sieu.”
“I know,–I know. But we have much to keep in mind. It has been very hard. Any one of us is likely to break. And you have not been so used to this life as the Father and I.”
“I know it,” she said, still looking at the elm branches that bent almost to the ground before them, “but when I lie down, and close my eyes, and let my mind go, it seems as if I could not stand it. It is not bad now; I can be very cool now. You see, M’sieu?” She turned toward him with the trace of a smile. “But when I let go–perhaps you do not know how it is; the thoughts that come, and the dreams,–when I am awake and yet not awake,–and the feeling that it is not worth while, this struggle, even to what it may bring if we succeed. It makes the night a torture, and the dread of another day is even worse. It is better to stay awake; it is better even to break. Anything is better.”
Menard looked down between his knees at the ground. He did not understand what it was that lay behind her words. He started to speak, then stopped. After a little he found himself saying words that came to his lips with no effort; in fact, he did not seem able to check them.
“It is not right that I should be here near you. I gave up that right to-night. I gave it up yesterday. I have been proud, during these years of fighting, that I was a soldier. I had thought, too, that I was a man. It was hardly a week ago that I rebuked that poor boy for what I have since done myself. I promised Major Provost that I would take you safely to Frontenac. That I have failed is only a little thing. I have said to you–no, you must not stop me. We have gone already beyond that point. We understand now. I have tried to be to you more than–than I had a right to be while you were in my care. Danton did not know; Father Claude does not know. You know, because I have told you. I have shown you in a hundred ways.”
“No,” she said, in a choking voice. “It is my fault. I allowed you.”
He shook his head.
“That is nothing. It is not what you have done. It is not even what you think. It is what I shall think and know all my life,–that I have done the wrong thing. There are some of us, Mademoiselle, who have no home, no ties of family, no love, except for the work in which we are slowly building up a good name and a firm place. That is what I was. Do you know what it is that makes up the life of such a man? It is the little things, the acts of every day and every week; and they must be honest and loyal, or he will fail. I might have stayed in Paris, I might even have found a place in Quebec where I could wear a bright uniform, and be close in the Governor’s favour. I chose the other course. I have given a dozen years to the harder work, only to fall within the week from all that I had hoped,–had thought myself to be. And now, as I speak to you, I know that I have lost; that if you should smile at me, should put your hand in mine, everything that I have been working for would be nothing to me. You would be the only thing in the world.”
She sat motionless. He did not go on, and yet each moment seemed to bring them closer in understanding. After a little while she said huskily:–
“You cared–you cared like that?”
She was not looking toward him, and she could not see him slowly bow his head; but there was an answer in his silence.
“You cared–when you made the speech–”
“Yes.”
She looked at the stalwart, bowed figure. She was beginning to understand what he had done, that in his pledge to the chiefs he had triumphed over a love greater than she had supposed a man could bear for a woman.
“A soldier cannot always choose his way,” he was saying. “I have never chosen mine. It was the orders of my superior that brought us here, that brought this suffering to you. If it were not for these orders, the Onondagas would be my friends, and because of that, your friends. It has always been like this; I have built up that others might tear down. I thought for a few hours that something else was to come to me. I should have known better. It was when you took the daisy–” she raised her hand and touched the withered flower. “I did not reason. I knew I was breaking my trust, and I did not care. After all, perhaps even that was the best thing. It gave me strength and hope to carry on the fight. It was you, then,–not New France. Now the dream is over, and again it is New France. It must be that.”
“Yes,” she said, “it must be.”
“I have had wild thoughts. I have meant to ask you to let me hope, once this is over and you safe at Frontenac. I could not believe that what comes so easily to other men is never to come to me. I cannot ask that now.”
She looked at him, and a sudden glow came into her eyes.
“Why not?” she whispered, as if frightened.
“Why not,” he repeated, for an instant meeting her gaze. Then he rose and stood before her. “Because I have given an oath to bring Captain la Grange to punishment. You heard me. But you did not hear what I promised to Father Claude. I have sworn that what the Governor may refuse to do, I shall do myself. I have set my hand against your family.”
“You could not help it, M’sieu,–you could not help it,” she said. But the light was going out of her eyes. It had been a moment of weakness for both of them. She looked up at him, standing erect in the faint light, and the sight of his square, broad shoulders seemed to give her strength. He was the strong one; he had always been the strong one. She rose and leaned back against the logs. She found that she could face him bravely.
“He is your cousin,” he had just said in a dry voice.
“Yes, he is my cousin.”
Menard was steadily recovering himself.
“We will not give all up. You know that I love you,–I hope that you love me.” He hesitated for an instant, but she gave no sign. “We will keep the two flowers. We will always think of this day, and yesterday. I have no duty now but to get you safe to Frontenac; until you are there I must not speak again. As for the rest of it, we can only wait, and trust that some day there may be some light.”
She looked at him sadly.
“You do not know? Father Claude has not told you?”
Something in her voice brought him a step nearer.
“You know that Captain la Grange is my cousin?”
“Yes.”
“You did not know that I am to be his wife?”
They stood face to face, looking deep into each other’s eyes, while a long minute dragged by, and the rustling night sounds and the call of the crickets came to their ears.
“No,” he said, “I did not know. May I keep the flower, Mademoiselle?”
She bowed her head. She could not speak.
“Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
He walked away. She saw him stop at the knoll where the priest lay asleep on a bed of boughs, and stand for a moment gazing down at him. Then he went into the shadows. From the crackling of the twigs she knew that he was walking about among the trees. She sank to the ground and listened to the crickets. A frog bellowed in the valley; perhaps he had been calling before–she did not know.
She fell asleep, with her cheek resting against a mossy log. She did not know when Menard came back and stood for a long time looking at her. He did not awaken Father Claude until long after the time for changing the watch.
When he did, he walked up and down on the path, holding the priest’s arm, and trying to speak. They had rounded the large maple three times before he said:–
“You did not tell me, Father.”
“What, my son?”
The Captain stopped, and drawing the priest around, pointed toward the maid as she slept.
“You did not tell me–why we are taking her to Frontenac.”
“No. She asked it. We spoke of it only once, that night on the river. She was confused, and she asked me not to speak. She does not know him. She has not seen him since she was a child.”
Menard said nothing. He was gripping the priest’s arm, and gazing at the sleeping maid.
“It was her father,” added Father Claude.
Menard’s hand relaxed.
“Good-night, Father.” He walked slowly toward the bed on the knoll. And Father Claude called softly after him:–
“Good-night, M’sieu. Good-night.”
Menard lay awake. He could see the priest sitting by the door. He wondered if the maid were sleeping. A late breeze came across the valley, arousing the leaves and carrying a soft whisper from tree to tree, until all the forest voices were joined. Lying on his side he could see indistinctly the council-house. There were still the lighted cracks; the Long House was still in session. Their decision did not now seem so vital a matter. The thought of the maid–that he was taking her to be the wife of another, and that other La Grange–had taken the place of all other thoughts.
Later still came the buzz of many voices. Dark forms were moving about the council-house. Menard raised himself to his elbow, and waited until he saw a group approaching on the path, then he joined Father Claude.
The Big Throat led the little band of chiefs to the hut. They stood, half a score of them, in a semicircle, their blankets drawn close, their faces, so far as could be seen in the dim light, stern and impassive. Menard and the priest stood erect and waited.
“It has pleased the Great Mountain that his voice should be heard in the Long House of the Iroquois,” said the Big Throat, in a low, calm voice. “His voice is gentle as the breeze and yet as strong as the wind. The Great Mountain has before promised many things to the Iroquois. Some of the promises he has broken, some he has kept. But the Onondagas know that there is no man who keeps all his promises. They once thought they knew such a man, but they were mistaken. White men, Indians,–all speak at night with a strong voice, in the morning with a weak voice. Each draws his words sometimes off the top of his mind, where the truth and the strong words do not lie. The Onondagas are not children. They know the friend from the enemy. And they know, though he may sometimes fail them, that the Great Mountain is their friend, their father.”
Menard bowed slowly, facing the chief with self-control as firm as his own.
“They know,” the Big Throat continued, “that the Indian has not always kept the faith with the white man. And then it is that the Great Mountain has been a kind father. If he thinks it right that our brothers, the Senecas, should meet with punishment for breaking the peace promised to the white man by the Long House, the Onondagas are not the children to say to their father, ‘We care not if our brother has done wrong; we will cut off the hand that holds the whip of punishment.’ The Onondagas are men. They say to the father, ‘We care not who it is that has done wrong. Though he be our next of blood, let him be punished.’ This is the word of the council to the Big Buffalo who speaks with his father’s voice.”
Well as he knew the Iroquois temperament, Menard could not keep an expression of admiration from his eyes. He knew what this speech meant,–that the Big Throat alone saw far into the future, saw that in the conflict between red and white, the redman must inevitably lose unless he crept close under the arm that was raised to strike him. It was no sense of justice that prompted the Big Throat’s words; it was the vision of one of the shrewdest statesmen, white or red, who had yet played a part in the struggles for possession of the New World. Greatest of all, only a master could have convinced that hot-blooded council that peace was the safest course. The chief went on:–
“The Big Buffalo has spoken well to the council. He has told the chiefs that he has not been a traitor to the brothers who have for so long believed that his words were true words. The Big Buffalo is a pine tree that took root in the lands of the Onondagas many winters ago. From these lands and these waters, and the sun and winds that give life to the corn and the trees of the Onondagas, he drew his sap and his strength. Can we then believe that this pine tree which we planted and which has grown tall and mighty before our eyes, is not a pine tree at all? When a quick-tongued young brave, who has not known the young tree as we have, comes to the council and says that this Big Buffalo, this pine tree, is not a pine but an elm with slippery bark, are we to believe him? Are we to drop from our minds what our hearts and eyes have long known, to forget what we have believed? My brothers of the Long House say no. They know that the pine tree is a pine tree. It may be that in the haze of the distance pine and elm look alike to young eyes; but what a chief has seen, he has seen; what he has known, he has known. The Big Buffalo speaks the truth to his Onondaga brothers, and with another sun he shall be free to go to his white brothers.”
“The Big Throat has a faithful heart,” said Menard, quietly. “He knows that the voice of Onontio is the voice of right and strength.”
“The chiefs of the Onondagas and Cayugas will sit quietly before their houses with their eyes turned toward the lands beyond the great lake, waiting for the whisper that shall come with the speed of the winds over forests and waters to tell them that the white man has kept his promise. When the dog who robbed our villages of a hundred brave warriors has been slain, then shall they know that the Big Buffalo is what they have believed him to be, their brother.”
“And the maid and the holy Father?”
“They are free. The chiefs are sorry that a foolish brave has captured the white man’s squaw.”
Menard and Father Claude bowed again, and the chiefs turned and strode away. The priest smiled gently after them.
“And now, M’sieu, we may rest quietly.”
“Yes. You lie down, Father; it will not be necessary to watch now, and anyway I am not likely to sleep much.” He walked back to the bed on the knoll, leaving the priest to stretch out across the doorway.
The elder bushes and briers crowded close to the little clearing behind the hut, and Menard, lying on his side with his face close to the ground, watched the clusters of leaves as they gently rustled. He rolled half over and stared up at the bits of sky that showed through the trees. It seemed as if the great world were a new thing, as if these trees and bushes and reaches of tufted grass were a part of a new life. Before, they had played their part in his rugged life without asking for recognition; but to-night they came into his thoughts with their sympathy, and he wondered that all this great world of summer green and winter white, and of blue and green and lead-coloured water could for so long have influenced him without consciousness on his part. But his life had left little time for such thoughts; to-night he was unstrung.
Over the noise of the leaves and the trickle of the spring sounded a rustle. It was not loud, but it was a new sound, and his eyes sought the bushes. The noise came, and stopped; came, and stopped. Evidently someone was creeping slowly toward the hut; but the sound was on the farther side of him, so that he could reach the maid’s side before whoever was approaching could cross the clearing.
For a time the noise died altogether. Then, after a space, his eyes, sweeping back and forth along the edge of the brush, rested on a bright bit of metal that for an instant caught the light of the sky, probably a weapon or a head ornament. Menard was motionless. Finally an Indian stepped softly out and stood beside a tree. When he began to move forward the Captain recognized Tegakwita, and he spoke his name.
The Indian came rapidly over the grass with his finger at his lips.
“Do not speak loud,” he whispered. “Do not wake the holy Father.”
“Why do you come creeping upon my house at night, like a robber?”
“Tegakwita is sad for his sister. His heart will not let him go among men about the village; it will not let his feet walk on the common path.”
“Why do you come?”
“Tegakwita seeks the Big Buffalo.”
“It cannot be for an honest reason. You lay behind the bush. You saw me here and thought me asleep, but you did not approach honestly. You crept through the shadows like a Huron.”
“Tegakwita’s night eyes are not his day eyes. He could not see who the sleeping man was. When he heard the voice, he came quickly.”
Menard looked at the musket that rested in the Indian’s hand, at the hatchet and knife that hung from his belt.
“You are heavily armed, Tegakwita. Is it for the war-path or the hunt? Do Onondaga warriors carry their weapons from house to house in their own village?”
The Indian made a little gesture of impatience.
“Tegakwita has no house. His house has been dishonoured. He lives under the trees, and carries his house with him. All that he has is in his hand or his belt. The Big Buffalo speaks strangely.”
Menard said nothing for a moment. He looked up, with a keen gaze, at the erect figure of the Indian. Finally he said:–
“Sit down, Tegakwita. Tell me why you came.”
“No. Tegakwita cannot rest himself until his sister has reached the Happy Hunting-Ground.”
“Very well, do as you like. But waste no more time. What is it?”
“The Big Buffalo has been an Onondaga. He knows the city in the valley where the dead sit in their graves. It is there that my sister lies, by an open grave, waiting for the farewell word of him who alone is left to say farewell to her. Tegakwita’s Onondaga brothers will not gather at the grave of a girl who has given up her nation for a white dog. But he can ask the Big Buffalo, who brought the white dog to our village, to come to the side of the grave.”
“Your memory is bad, Tegakwita. It was not I who brought the white brave. It was you who brought him, his two hands tied with thongs.”
The Indian stood, without replying, looking down at him with brilliant, staring eyes.
Menard spoke again.
“You want me to go with you. You slip through the bushes like a snake, with your musket and your knife and your hatchet, to ask me to go with you to the grave of your sister. Do I speak rightly, Tegakwita?”
“The Big Buffalo has understood.”
Menard slowly rose and looked into the Indian’s eyes.
“I have no weapons, Tegakwita. The chiefs who have set me free have not yet returned the musket which was taken from me. It is dangerous to go at night through the forest without a weapon. Give me your hatchet and I will go with you.”
Tegakwita’s lip curled almost imperceptibly.
“The White Chief is afraid of the night?”
Menard, too, looked scornful. He coolly waited.
“The Big Buffalo cannot face the dead without a hatchet in his hand?” said Tegakwita.
Menard suddenly sprang forward and snatched the hatchet from the Indian’s belt. It was a surprise, and the struggle was brief. Tegakwita was thrown a step backward. He hesitated between struggling for the hatchet and striking with the musket; before he had fully recovered and dropped the musket, Menard had leaped back and stood facing him with the hatchet in his right hand.
“Now I will go with you to the city of the dead, Tegakwita.”
The Indian’s breath was coming quickly, and he stood with clenched fists, taken aback by the Captain’s quickness.
“Come, I am ready. Pick up your musket.”
As Tegakwita stooped, Menard glanced toward the hut. The priest lay asleep before the door. It was better to get this madman away than to leave him free to prowl about the hut.