“I come to the scandal slowly. The woman? She was a young girl travelling from the far East, to search for a man who had—spoiled her. She was found by me and another. Ah, you start so!... Will you not listen?... Well, she died to-night.”
Here the missionary gasped, and caught with both hands at the table.
“But before she died she gave two things into my hands: a packet of letters—a man is a fool to write such letters—and a small bottle of poison—laudanum, old-fashioned but sure. The letters were from the man at Fort Anne—the man, you hear! The other was for her death, if he would not take her to his arms again. Women are mad when they love. And so she came to Fort Anne, but not in time. The scandal is great, because the man is holy—sit down!”
The half-breed said the last two words sharply, but not loudly. They both sat down slowly again, looking each other in the eyes. Then Pierre drew from his pocket a small bottle and a packet of letters, and held them before him. “I have this to say: there are citizens of Fort Anne who stand for justice more than law; who have no love for the ways of St. Anthony. There is a Pagan, too, an outlaw, who knows when it is time to give blow for blow with the holy man. Well, we understand each other, ‘hein?’”
The elusive, sinister look in the missionary’s face was etched in strong lines now. A dogged sullenness hung about his lips. He noticed that one hand only of Pretty Pierre was occupied with the relics of the dead girl; the other was free to act suddenly on a hip pocket. “What do you want me to do”? he said, not whiningly, for beneath the selfish flesh and shallow outworks there were the elements of a warrior—all pulpy now, but they were there.
“This,” was the reply: “for you to make one more outlaw at Fort Anne by drinking what is in this bottle—sit down, quick, by God!” He placed the bottle within reach of the other. “Then you shall have these letters; and there is the fire. After? Well, you will have a great sleep, the good people will find you, they will bury you, weeping much, and no one knows here but me. Refuse that, and there is the other, the Law—ah, the poor girl was so very young!—and the wild Justice which is sometimes quicker than Law. Well? well?”
The missionary sat as if paralysed, his face all grey, his eyes fixed on the half-breed. “Are you man or devil”? he groaned at length.
With a slight, fantastic gesture Pierre replied: “It was said that a devil entered into me at birth, but that was mere scandal—‘peut-etre.’ You shall think as you will.”
There was silence. The sullenness about the missionary’s lips became charged with a contempt more animal than human. The Reverend Ezra Badgley knew that the man before him was absolute in his determination, and that the Pagans of Fort Anne would show him little mercy, while his flock would leave him to his fate. He looked at the bottle. The silence grew, so that the ticking of the watch in the missionary’s pocket could be heard plainly, having for its background of sound the continuous swish of the river. Pretty Pierre’s eyes were never taken off the other, whose gaze, again, was fixed upon the bottle with a terrible fascination. An hour, two hours, passed. The fire burned lower. It was midnight; and now the watch no longer ticked; it had fulfilled its day’s work. The missionary shuddered slightly at this. He looked up to see the resolute gloom of the half-breed’s eyes, and that sneering smile, fixed upon him still. Then he turned once more to the bottle.... His heavy hand moved slowly towards it. His stubby fingers perspired and showed sickly in the light.... They closed about the bottle. Then suddenly he raised it, and drained it at a draught. He sighed once heavily and as if a great inward pain was over. Rising he took the letters silently pushed towards him, and dropped them into the fire. He went to the window, raised it, and threw the bottle into the river. The cork was left: Pierre pointed to it. He took it up with a strange smile and thrust it into the coals. Then he sat down by the table, leaning his arms upon it, his eyes staring painfully before him, and the forgotten napkin still about his neck. Soon the eyes closed, and, with a moan on his lips, his head dropped forward on his arms.... Pierre rose, and, looking at the figure soon to be breathless as the baked meats about it, said: “‘Bien,’ he was not all coward. No.”
Then he turned and went out into the night.