Heralds of Empire Part 32

Like a light flaming from dark, the face shone through the gloom.

"Love, a phantom," laughs the mocking voice of the imperious Hortense I knew long ago; and the thrill of her laugh proves love the realest phantom life can know.

Then the child Hortense becomes of a sudden the grown woman, grave and sweet, with eyes in the dark like stars, and strange, broken thoughts I had not dared to hope s.h.i.+ning unspoken on her face.

"Life, a phantom-substance, the shadow--love, the all," the dream-face seems to be saying. "Events are G.o.d's thoughts--storms and darkness and prey are his puppets, the blind G.o.ds, his slaves-G.o.d is love; for you are here! . . . You are here! . . . You are here with me!"

When I feel through the dark this time is the grip of a living hand.

Then we lock arms and sweep through s.p.a.ce, the northern lights curtaining overhead, the stars for torches, and the blazing comets heralding a way.

"The very stars in their courses fight for us," says Hortense.

And I, with an earthy intellect groping behind the winged love of the woman, think that she refers to some of M. Picot's mystic astrologies.

"No--no," says the dream-face, with the love that divines without speech, "do you not understand? The stars fight for us--because--because----"

"Because G.o.d is love," catching the gleam of the thought; and the stars that fight in their courses for mortals sweep to a noonday splendour.

And all the while I was but a crazy dreamer lying captive, wounded and weak in a pirate cave. Oh, yes, I know very well what my fine gentlemen dabblers in the new sciences will say--the fellow was daft and delirious--he had lost grip on reality and his fevered wits mixed a mumble-jumble of ancient symbolism with his own adventures. But before you reduce all this great universe to the dimensions of a chemist's crucible, I pray you to think twice whether the mind that fas.h.i.+oned the crucible be not greater than the crucible; whether the Master-mind that shaped the laws of the universe be not greater than the universe; whether when man's mind loses grip--as you call it--of the little, nagging, insistent realities it may not leap free like the jagged lightnings from peak to peak of a consciousness that overtowers life's commoner levels!

Spite of our boastings, each knows neither more nor less than life hath taught him. For me, I know what the dream-voice spoke proved true: life, the shadow of a great reality; love, the all; the blind G.o.ds of storm and dark and prey, the puppets of the G.o.d of G.o.ds, working his will; and the G.o.d of G.o.ds a G.o.d of love, realest when love is near.

Once, I mind, the dark seemed alive with wolfish shades, sniffing, prowling, circling, creeping nearer like that monster wolf of fable set on by the powers of evil to hunt Man to his doom. A nightmare of fear bound me down. The death-frosts settled and tightened and closed--but suddenly, Hortense took cold hands in her palms, calling and calling and calling me back to life and hope and her. Then I waked.

Though I peopled the mist with many shadows, Le Borgne alone stood there.

CHAPTER XX

WHO THE PIRATES WERE

How long I lay in the pirates' cave I could not tell; for day and night were alike with the pale-blue flame quivering against the earth-wall, gusts of cold air sweeping through the door, low-whispered talks from the inner cave.

At last I surprised Le Borgne mightily by sitting bolt upright and bidding him bring me a meal of buffalo-tongue or teal. With the stolid repartee of the Indian he grunted back that I had tongue enough; but he brought the stuff with no ill grace. After that he had much ado to keep me off my feet. Finally, I promised by the soul of his grandfather neither to spy nor listen about the doors of the inner cave, and he let me up for an hour at a time to practise walking with the aid of a lance-pole. As he found that I kept my word, he trusted me alone in the cave, sitting crouched on the log-end with a buckskin sling round my shattered sword-arm, which the wolves had not helped that night at the stake.

In the food Le Borgne brought was always a flavour of simples or drugs.

One night--at least I supposed it was night from the chill of the air blowing past the bearskin--just as Le Borgne stooped to serve me, his torch flickered out. Before he could relight, I had poured the broth out and handed back an empty bowl.

Then I lay with eyes tight shut and senses wide awake. The Indian sat on the log-end watching. I did not stir. Neither did I fall asleep as usual. The Indian cautiously pa.s.sed a candle across my face. I lay motionless as I had been drugged. At that he stalked off. Voices began in the other apartment. Two or three forms went tip-toeing about the cave. Shadows pa.s.sed athwart the flame. A gust of cold; and with half-closed eyes I saw three men vanish through the outer doorway over fields no longer snow-clad.

Had spring come? How long had I lain in the cave? Before I gained strength to escape, would M. Radisson have left for Quebec? Then came a black wave of memory--thought of Jack Battle, the sailor lad, awaiting our return to rescue him. From the first Jack and I had held together as aliens in Boston Town. Should I lie like a stranded hull while he perished? Risking spies on the watch, I struggled up and staggered across the cave to that blue flame quivering so mysteriously.

As I neared, the mystery vanished, for it was nothing more than one of those northern beds of combustibles--gas, tar, or coal--set burning by the ingenious pirates. [1]

The spirit was willing enough to help Jack, but the flesh was weak.

Presently I sank on the heaped pelts all atremble. I had promised not to spy nor eavesdrop, but that did not prohibit escape. But how could one forage for food with a right arm in bands and a left unsteady as aim of a girl? Le Borgne had befriended me twice--once in the storm, again on the hill. Perhaps he might know of Jack. I would wait the Indian's return. Meanwhile I could practise my strength by walking up and down the cave.

The walls were hung with pelts. Where the dry clay crumbled, the roof had been timbered. A rivulet of spring water bubbled in one dark corner. At the same end an archway led to inner recesses. Behind the skin doorway sounded heavy breathing, as of sleepers. I had promised not to spy. Turning, I retraced the way to the outer door. Here another pelt swayed heavily in the wind. Dank, earthy smells of spring, odours of leaves water-soaked by melting snows, the faint perfume of flowers pus.h.i.+ng up through mats of verdure, blew in on the night breeze.

Pus.h.i.+ng aside the flap, I looked out. The spur of a steep declivity cut athwart the cave. Now I could guess where I was. This was the hill down which I had stumbled that night the voices had come from the ground. Here the masked man had sprung from the thicket. Not far off M. Radisson had first met the Indians. To reach the French Habitation I had but to follow the river.

That hope set me pacing again for exercise; and the faster I walked the faster raced thoughts over the events of the crowded years. Again the Prince Rupert careened seaward, bearing little Hortense to England.

Once more Ben Gillam swaggered on the water-front of Boston Town, boasting all that he would do when he had s.h.i.+p of his own. Then Jack Battle, building his castles of fortune for love of Hortense, and all unconsciously letting slip the secret of good Boston men deep involved in pirate schemes. The scene s.h.i.+fted to the far north, and a masked man had leaped from the forest dark only to throw down his weapon when the firelight shone on my face. Again the white darkness of the storm, the three shadowy figures and Le Borgne sent to guide us back to the fort. Again, to beat of drum and shriek of fife, M. Radisson was holding his own against the swarming savages that a.s.sailed the New Englanders' fort. Then I was living over the unspeakable horror of the Indian ma.s.sacre ending in that awful wait on the crest of the hill.

The memory brought a chill as of winter cold. With my back to both doors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate s.h.i.+p north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, could screen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was another partner to the venture, who could s.h.i.+eld Ben from punishment in New England. But the third partner was hiding inland to defraud the others of the furs. That was the meaning of Ben's drunken threats. Who was the third partner? Had not Eli Kirke planned trading in the north with Mr. Stocking? Were the pirates some agents of my uncle? Did that explain why my life had been three times spared? One code of morals for the church and another for the trade is the way of many a man; but would the agents of a Puritan deacon murder a rival in the dark of a forest, or lead Indians to ma.s.sacre the crew of partners, or take furs gotten at the price of a tribe's extermination?

Turning that question over, I heard the inner door-flap lift. There was no time to regain the couch, but a quick swerve took me out of the firelight in the shadow of a great wolfskin against the wall. You will laugh at the old idea of honour, but I had promised not to spy, and I never raised my eyes from the floor. There was no sound but the gurgling of the spring in the dark and the sharp crackle of the flame.

Thinking the wind had blown the flap, I stepped from hiding. Something vague as mist held back in shadow. The lines of a white-clad figure etched themselves against the cave wall. It floated out, paused, moved forward.

Then I remember clutching at the wolfskin like one clinching a death-grip of reality, praying G.o.d not to let go a soul's anchor-hold of reason.

For when the figure glided into the slant blue rays of the shafted flame it was Hortense--the Hortense of the dreams, sweet as the child, grave as the grown woman-Hortense with closed eyes and moving lips and hands feeling out in the dark as if playing invisible keys.

She was asleep.

Then came the flash that lighted the clouds of the past.

The interloper, the pirate, the leader of Indian marauders, the defrauder of his partners, was M. Picot, the French doctor, whom Boston had outlawed, and who was now outlawing their outlawry. We do not reason out our conclusions, as I said before. At our supremest moments we do not _think_. Consciousness leaps from summit to summit like the forked lightnings across the mountain-peaks; and the mysteries of life are illumined as a spread-out scroll. In that moment of joy and fear and horror, as I crouched back to the wall, I did not _think_. I _knew_--knew the meaning of all M. Picot's questionings on the fur trade; of that murderous attack in the dark when an antagonist flung down his weapon; of the spying through the frosted woods; of the figures in the white darkness; of the attempt to destroy Ben Gillam's fort; of the rescue from the crest of the hill; and of all those strange delirious dreams.

It was as if the past focused itself to one flaming point, and the flash of that point illumined life, as deity must feel to whom past and present and future are one.

And all the while, with temples pounding like surf on rock and the roar of the sea in my ears, I was not _thinking_, only _knowing_ that Hortense was standing in the blue-shafted light with tremulous lips and white face and a radiance on her brow not of this life.

Her hands ran lightly over imaginary keys. The blue flame darted and quivered through the gloom. The hushed purr of the spring broke the stillness in metallic tinklings. A smile flitted across the sleeper's face. Her lips parted. The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tick of clock in death-room.

"To get the memory of it," she said.

And there stole out of the past mocking memories of that last night in the hunting-room, filling the cave with tuneless melodies like thoughts creeping into thoughts or odour of flowers in dark.

But what was she saying in her sleep?

"Blind G.o.ds of chance"--the words that had haunted my delirium, then quick-spoken s.n.a.t.c.hes too low for me to hear--"no-no"--then more that was incoherent, and she was gliding back to the cave.

She had lifted the curtain door--she was whispering--she paused as if for answer-then with face alight, "The stars fight for us--" she said; and she had disappeared.

The flame set the shadows flickering. The rivulet gurgled loud in the dark. And I came from concealment as from a spirit world.

Then Hortense was no dream, and love was no phantom, and G.o.d--was what?

There I halted. The powers of darkness yet pressed too close for me to see through to the G.o.d that was love. I only knew that He who throned the universe was neither the fool that ignorant bigots painted, nor the blind power, making wanton war of storm and dark and cold. For had not the blind forces brought Hortense to me, and me to Hortense?

Consciousness was leaping from summit to summit like the forked lightnings, and the light that burned was the light that transfigures life for each soul.

The spell of a presence was there.

Then it came home to me what a desperate game the French doctor had played. That sword-thrust in the dark meant death; so did the attack on Ben Gillam's fort; and was it not Le Borgne, M. Picot's Indian ally, who had counselled the ma.s.sacre of the sleeping tribe? You must not think that M. Picot was worse than other traders of those days! The north is a desolate land, and though blood cry aloud from stones, there is no man to hear.