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