Ralph is impatient, however; and it is not, besides, poetic justice that he is thinking of. Nothing so abstract. It is money, good and lawful coin of the realm, and it is himself and his children, he thinks, who should have it. Gerald, too, he takes it, having attained to that clearer insight which is gained beyond the grave, must wish it likewise, and if the inheritance under that most pernicious will can be turned aside, he feels that he will be fulfilling the present and maturer wishes of the testator. The law may say otherwise; but what of the law? There is a higher law! We have all heard of it, though generally, let us hope, when the issue was unconnected with the possession of dollars. Gerald must have heard of the higher law. Here was a case involving money, and when one comes to money what is more sacred? The forger "gets twenty years" for his crime against property; the culpable homicide five. His fault is only against life, and by good fortune he may escape with a rebuke from the court.
Ralph had been meditating and considering, calmly, earnestly, and at length, in a way he was not accustomed to consider, and out here amid evening's impressive silence, where the brooding peace suggested presences far enough removed at other times in the common hubbub of life; and he felt--what? That he must not give in, or acquiesce in a fiddler's children getting all that money!
"The higher fitness" was he to call it?--and old Gerald himself, who must be near, he was sure, though he could not gain speech of him--must disapprove the misapplication of so many dollars. But how to remedy that ill-judged will? If Mary Herkimer, it said, should so far forget herself as to marry the organist, then the money was to remain accumulating in Jordan's hands for twenty years, and after that was to be paid to her children, secured only against the organist by the provision that in case they died unmarried it should come to the children of Ralph. And Mary had a child. But the child might die. A tremor passed through him at the idea. Or how would it be, he set himself to consider, if the child were lost? Children do get lost sometimes, and he raised himself in the canoe to shake off any oppressiveness that might attach to the idea. Suppose the child were lost--one may innocently suppose anything--suppose it could not be found, and never were found. What then? After a time it would be unreasonable to keep the next in succession out of his property; and this next--his blood tingled to think of it--was his own boy Gerald, a quiet, gentle little boy, such as strangely sometimes is given to an unscrupulous father, as if to try how far he will venture to use the facile tool. If ever his Gerald fell heir to property, Ralph made sure of being able to dispose of it; it seemed to him that it would be like money settled on his wife, which he could still use, though no creditor could lay hands on--a cake quite different from that in the children's proverb, which one can both eat and have at the same time.
But at present, to arrange for Mary's child getting--lost, seemed the pressing question. There would be time enough to influence his boy's plastic mind afterwards.
The infant's plastic mind need not be taken into account, the infant being only a year old. There were no impressions inscribed on it so far, and it would be some time yet before it acquired any. "Get it away now," he told himself, "and it can do nothing for its own restoration. In a week or two it will have forgotten its mother and there will be no troublesome memories in after life tempting it to suspect and try to unravel a mystery in its fate. Yet how, and through whom, to manage it?" His eyes wandered questioningly over the extent of waters, heaving with regulated swell, suggestive of life and personality and thought; but never an answer came back to him out of the sullen grey. His eye swept the horizon and the distant shore, and at last it rested on the apathetic face of his companion; Still as a mask, and showing not a sign of what might be behind, any more than the swaying tide on which they hung betrayed the mysteries of the pool beneath. The man's long straight hair, and the swarthy skin suggestive of a life apart from civilization, could not but call up the wish that the child could become of these. Wooden, hard, and cold, with his bead-like eyes half closed, were the little one in hands like his it would be as safe as if it were in another planet; thinking such thoughts as it must, in Iroquois, understanding Canadian French, and with only enough English to beg or trade with strangers. Paul he knew as restless, and in some sort a vagabond, attending those who hired him on fishing or hunting expeditions, at times joining the Governor of Hudson's Bay as a canoe-man, on his journeys to Fort William, or wandering on the Ottawa from one Indian settlement to another. If he would only undertake to superintend the fortunes of this inconvenient infant, it would become a waif indeed, and lost beyond restoration.
Ralph sighed with profound relief as the idea passed through his mind. There had been another shadowy suggestion present there all the afternoon, which he had been contemplating as it were with averted eyes, shuddering to consider or reduce to shape, yet refusing to dismiss it, harbouring it as one may an outlaw, whom it would be confusion to acknowledge as a guest. If Paul would undertake the business, the child might live out its life as a squaw among the wigwams of the upper Ottawa, without troubling any one. Exposure to the weather would bronze her to the hue of the other children of the wilderness; and if not, there are few bands now-a-days in which there are not half-breeds, proving that all men are of one blood, and that time and circumstances alone are needed to blend the races into a common stream. How infinitely more satisfactory this would be than any fatal accident which could be devised! Yes! it must be done, and Ralph looked up to his companion and in his most friendly tone said,--"Paul."
Instantly the bead-like eyes awoke and turned upon him, sharp and interrogative. The propitiatory modulation had not escaped the delicate ear, bred from infancy to catch and interpret the faintest whisper of the forest--the rustle of a leaf disturbed by passing game, or the stroke of a wing raising eddies in the stagnant air. Since Paul had grown to be a man whiskey and dollars had become the game of his eagerest pursuit, and the mood of the white man he served for the time was the hunting ground where these were to be run down. That something was wanted of him he knew by the extra friendliness of tone. What Englishman having hired him would speak so softly if he did not want something beyond the stipulated services, something of value, and something which he wished to gain cheaply?
"Ouff," was his answer, dubiously interrogative, and altogether non-committal as to whether he would be interested in what was to follow.
"Have you got children?"
"No," with a slight head-shake.