Ralph drew back in horror. It is one thing to entertain the idea of a crime hypothetically, and even to incite to the deed. The mind busies itself in contemplating the results, and the act appears but a circumstance, a necessary one perhaps, but one on which it is unnecessary to dwell. It is another thing to confront the deed after it has been done, and can no longer be overlooked, when it has become a realized infamy, withering and dwindling the profits and results into worthless Dead Sea fruit. The bloodhound will pursue its prey for days together, eager to pull him down and bury its fangs in his flesh, but if in the heat of the chase it should encounter blood, there is an end, the scent is lost, the hunt ended. And so was Ralph staggered at what he heard. This child's life had stood in his way, and he had striven to set it aside. But to think that it had been murdered, and that his was the finger which touched the spring and set the murderous machine in motion! No! He would not think it. It was horrible. The instrument, the over-zealous instrument which had done too much, must shoulder the responsibility of his own deed; and, for himself, he would no longer compromise his respectability by having dealings with such a ruffian, now that it had become quite safe to break with him. The blood of the little innocent seemed crying out of the ground for vengeance, and at least he would wash his hands of the murderer, and not a cent of blood-money should the homicide receive from him. A virtuous glow diffused itself through Ralph's pulses as these thoughts passed through his mind in a space far shorter than it takes to write or read them; indeed there had been little more than the ordinary conversational pause between Paul's last grunt of assent and pantomimic signs, and Ralph's reply as he now looked him squarely in the face with a frown of the severest virtue, and a demeanour of dignified rebuke which an ignorant onlooker might have hoped would not be lost on the poor untaught son of the wilderness.
"And you have been drawing money from me for that child's support all these years!" He grew indignant as he thought how he had been imposed upon; and Paul, quenched the moment before, and astonished at his demeanour, began to pluck up heart again, and the dawn of a smile at his own cleverness began to re-appear on his wooden visage; but it faded again as Ralph proceeded:
"Do you know that what you have been accusing yourself of is a hanging offence? A cruel, cowardly murder of a helpless infant? But I will not be made accessory after the fact! I am done with you, Paul!--Go!--Do you hear me? Git!"
Paul looked in his face amazed. What had he meant then when he promised him money to bring news of the child's death? He was about to speak, but Ralph stopped him before, in his stupefaction, he could find words.
"Go! I say. And never let me see you again. Or----! You can guess yourself what will happen."
Confused, crestfallen and crushed, Paul withdrew. A new view of the inscrutable ways of the great white man had been given him. He could only draw a great breath in his helplessness and go his way. The white folks were too much for him, that was the one idea which penetrated his darkened mind. They would make use of him when they wanted him, and then cast him aside; but for the future he promised himself to keep out of their way.
Ralph coughed and drew on his gloves, not ill-pleased, at the last, at the turn which affairs had taken, and hurried off to catch the afternoon train for St. Euphrase, where his family were spending the summer at a smart new villa which he had built a year or two before.
CHAPTER XI.
[MAHOMET AND KADIJAH].
Ralph Herkimer reached the station as the train was about to start. M. Rouget was in the act of assisting his wife and daughter into the parlour car, and Ralph sprang in after him just as the train moved from the platform. M. Rouget owned the seigniory of La Hache, on the outskirts of St. Euphrase, an outlying fragment of which Ralph had purchased and built upon, hoping that with the other products of the soil there would spring up an intimacy with the Rouget family, and thereby an entrance to that French circle which so few English-speaking Canadians ever penetrate. Not that that circle is more wealthy, or of necessity more cultured than others on the great American continent; but language, religion, and customs make it less accessible and more exclusive, and therefore, like other things difficult, both desirable and distinguished. A certain prescriptive precedence, too, naturally attaches to the first comers everywhere, if only they are strong enough to enforce it; and it must be remembered that these Lower Canada seigniors represent the earliest settlers, and as a body are the only approach to a landed aristocracy in North America. North America, it is true, is the chosen home of democracy and equality; but democratic equality--what is it? Does it not mean, my brother, that you are on no pretext whatever to claim any sort of betterness over me, while I, if I can secure distinction or superiority am to be protected in the enjoyment of my acquisition; for is it not a free and a law-abiding country that we live in? Witness the army of the decorated in democratic France! or the shoals of colonels, generals, and judges in the United States. Such is democracy. You must have nothing which I have not, but I may take whatever I can lay my hands on; and you, sir, are to bow down to me for having it. It is the autocrat's crown cut up in slices, and placed on the head of every one self-asserting enough to wear his fraction.