The Plowshare and the Sword Part 11

Here Onawa became an obstacle, because he could not explain to her his intentions. He did his best by signs and broken English, but the girl misunderstood him. She believed that he was telling her that he had taken the settlement, and she was expected to instruct the Englishmen that their property had pa.s.sed away from them.

The white moon ascended the sky. The wooden bars sprawled where the Englishmen had left them. La Salle felt confident that he would be able to strike down the owners of the place as they pa.s.sed singly into the fort.

Suddenly a great hound came out of the forest, sniffed his way to the palisade, and stopped before the entry, growling and las.h.i.+ng his tail.

Onawa recognised the hound, and called to him. He heard her voice and turned his leonine head to snarl fiercely. Then he headed for the forest, giving tongue as he ran. Onawa sprang to the palisade, and struggled to replace the bars. For a moment she pulled her blanket over her face, leaving none of it visible except the eyes and forehead, and the priest s.h.i.+vered. He remembered the mysterious swordsman who had wounded him upon the Rue des Pecheurs. He a.s.sisted Onawa to put up the bars.

They heard voices in the forest. La Salle knew that he would require his full skill in sword-play to save himself that night.

CHAPTER X.

PILLARS OF THE HOUSE.

The moonlight fell softly upon a clearing where a small fire smouldered, where the lord of the isles and his son sat in silence, and between them the great hound full-stretched in sleep. They were resting before returning home to their island among the lost waters.

Only the cracking of the fiery wood, the overhead boughs chafing fitfully, and the snapping of twigs too brittle to survive disturbed the silence of the night.

The little group made a stern picture in the light of the moon. The hound bitten and blemished by many a conquering fight; the lean man scarred by sword wounds; the boy scarce out of childhood, hungry to learn--even the boy wore his scars. He was developing in a hard school. He could not know that the work which his father pointed out would receive, if accomplished, neither thanks nor reward. The pioneers of empire might be compared with the insects of the coral reef, insignificant atoms who have planted a foundation for the sea to build upon.

"Father," said the boy at length, "shall we not be returning to our home?"

There was another interval before the stern man looked up.

"Methinks when you spoke that word I saw another home," he said, raising a hand to his eyes as though he would dispel the vision. "I saw methinks a grey house, its chimneys wreathed with ivy. Lawns spread far, divided by paths, bound with close-cropped hedges of yew and lined with flowers, where peac.o.c.ks lift their feathers to the sun.

Down a green slope to the little river I see orchards of cherry, snowy with blossom. A road ends at a church where I may read your name and mine upon many a stone slab. There lies your grandfather, there my mother. It is peaceful in that garden of Kent, our home at the other side of the world."

Young Richard leaned forward over his knees. His father was speaking in parables. He had seen only the primaeval forest, the river torrents, the lakes with their land-locked fish, the icefields. He had supposed the world to be made of such. He had heard the clash of swords, the shouts of war. He had supposed it was so the world over. A place of peace had never entered into the scheme of his boyish calculation.

"It is a dream of which you speak, father?"

"Ay, my lad, for me a dream. You perchance shall see England with your own eyes, for when I am gone you shall be the head of a family which has for its motto, 'Let traitors beware.' Son, have you never wished to learn your name?"

"My name is Sir Richard," answered the proud boy.

"I, your father, was called once Sir Thomas Iden. Formerly we were a famous family, but now we wane, wielding an influence only over the Kentish village which has been ours for centuries. Two hundred years past the then head of our family, holding the office of sheriff of his county at the time, slew a traitor named John Cade, who had openly rebelled against the crown, and for this King Henry the Sixth conferred upon him the honour of knighthood, presenting him also with a coat-of-arms. In return for other services his Majesty bestowed upon our house an unique privilege: right was granted to the head of the family in each generation to confer knighthood upon his eldest son, if that son should be deserving of the distinction. My father knighted me, when I returned from an exploit against the Irish; and I handed the honour on to you, when I found in you the hereditary longing for the sword."

The boy looked steadily across the fire, with wonder in his eyes.

"This then is not our home," he said, weighing his words with strange gravity. "Should we not be in England, fighting for the king?"

"G.o.d knows he needs the pillars of our house to help support his throne," said Sir Thomas. "But no man can serve in two countries. I have made myself a colonist, have married a daughter of the land, here I can serve England if not my king, and here shall I die like a man of Kent, with my face to the foe. I was the first Englishman to make a home upon this bitter land. I resolved to build about me a colony, to do for the north what John Winthrop and the papist Lord Baltimore are doing in the south. I have appealed. I have sent for help. But England will not hear."

He paced through the wet gra.s.s, his hands clenched behind.

"Is the cry of the colonies nothing to them? A handful of good men may only sell their lives dearly in the trust that their example may fire better men to deeds of conquest. Here we shall die in exile, and be sent to haunt the great oblivion of these forests. Two such s.h.i.+ps-of-war as sailed from Devon in the golden days of Elizabeth, two such s.h.i.+ps as the merchant traders of Cheapside could send us without loss, with another Hawkins to command, manned by our brave sailors of the east country, would sweep the French out of their forts and clear the land of them for ever. The Dutch hold the seas. France extends her arms. England is again divided, the b.l.o.o.d.y rivalry between the houses of York and Lancaster having taught her no wisdom. The Parliament is against the king, and the country must bleed for it. We are abandoned."

The boy knew nothing of the politics of Europe, neither could he enter into his father's dream of empire. He hated the French merely because they were enemies, and because they had betrayed the Iroquois. To go out and fight against them was more exciting, because more dangerous, than to engage with the beasts of the forest; but the struggle between the Powers of Europe for the owners.h.i.+p of North America had injected no venom into his soul.

"Shall I not live here always?" he asked. "Am I not to choose a maid from the Cayugas, and settle upon the isles beside you, my father?"

"Talk not of the future, son. Life is to-day, not hereafter. That lies in the hand of G.o.d to give or to withhold. You shall return when I am gone--return, did I say? You shall go to England with letters to a notary in Maidstone, and he shall see that you come into your own.

You are dark of face, but English in heart, my Richard."

The boy lifted his head with a sudden sharp movement. "Perchance that day shall never come."

The hound also lifted his head, and as his eyes sought the haunt of shadows his jaw dropped in a wild howl.

"Spirits sweep across my burying-place," whispered the youth.

The hound lowered his head and howled again.

"Frenchmen," muttered the boy.

The brute slouched a few feet, broke into a trot, and disappeared.

"He goes in the direction of New Windsor," said the knight. "Hast heard any sound in the forest?"

"There is no stir," replied the boy, holding his well-trained ear to the ground. "The smoke from our fire carries. Let us go aside into the shadow of the bush and watch."

They retreated, flas.h.i.+ng glances to right and left. The snap of a twig, the very crus.h.i.+ng of pine needles, sufficed to disturb that calm.

There was no premonitory s.h.i.+ver of the moon-rays, no suggestion of any human presence upon the chilled air. Their feet sank audibly into the white moss. Their breath made the semblance of a whisper between father and son, the lion ready, the cub longing. The rim of the deep shadow ran behind as they turned to face the clearing they had abandoned.

"The wind blows from New Windsor," said the knight. "The wind off Couchicing."

"If Blood takes hold of a man he shall die," went on the boy. "He will hold at the back of the neck, and there hang until his fangs meet. Ha!

Didst hear that?"

A branch had broken with a dry report. The trees moaned, and a few distended cones struck the ground like spent bullets.

"The breeze freshens. Methinks I hear the waves breaking upon the beach."

A raven pa.s.sed before the moon, knelling violently.

"He smells carrion," whispered the boy. "Already he smells blood upon my sword."

"Peace, boy," said his father; adding, compa.s.sionately, "He is but a child."

"Nay, father," said Richard, his blood rising. "I am no child. See the mark of my wounds! Remember that glorious day when we captured the Dutch privateer. I have prayed for such another day. Did I there acquit myself as a child? Or did you call, 'Richard, come back! You are too bold.' Hast forgotten, Sir Thomas?"

His father pa.s.sed the sword into his left hand, and threw his right arm about his son's shoulder, drawing him upon his own thin body, and kissed his cheek. Silence came between them. It was the first time that the man had kissed the boy, and both for a moment were ashamed; then young Richard's heart swelled with the pride of having won his father's love.

As they stood they moved, and their swords clashed. They remembered their other bond of relations.h.i.+p, the brotherhood of the sword, and each drew back.

The raven had gone, but his note came upon the wind.

The boy stood leaning forward, his ears drinking in the shuddering noises of the bush, his face sharp with cold. The smoke stood upright in the clearing like a swathed mummy. Now and again a spark drifted, or a flurry of white wood-ash circled. There was yet no voice from the lungs of the forest.

"Blood smelt no animal," said the resolute Richard. "He does but tongue softly when he follows a bear. That howl he gives when he runs on the track of a man."