CHAPTER XIV.
FIRESIDE AND GROVE.
Ambition and not chance had brought La Salle thus far from the beatentrack. He had made it his policy to pursue the Englishmen in that landuntil he should have brought about their extermination, knowing wellthat any success in that direction would be rewarded by the richestgift which his master Richelieu had to bestow. From Onawa he learnt ofViner's departure for the south on the day following that ventureagainst New Windsor. The girl had discovered the young man's track andgladly accompanied the priest, pointing out the trail, which wasimperceptible to his untrained eyes, and so bringing him to the grovewhere Geoffrey tarried in the enchanted sleep.
After Madame Labroquerie had gone to find him food, La Sallereconsidered his plans by the light of her information. It was no wayof his to hide his light beneath a bushel, and the slaying of Viner inthat lonely country would, he reasoned, bring him little fame. If,however, he should return to lodge the information with Roussilac, allmen would know of his agency. Therefore, when Madame returned, heimpressed upon her the necessity of detaining Viner for at least threedays within the grove.
"'Tis easy," the little woman muttered. "I shall be courteous to theyoung man, and praise his face and flatter his pride. Madeleine, mydaughter, shall do the rest. I warrant you he shall not stir from heretill the soldiers arrive; and then, I trust, a stake shall be preparedand a goodly pile of faggots for the proper despatch of his hereticsoul."
"I shall see that execution be done upon him," La Salle replied grimly."Now get you gone, for I would be alone."
"Your holiness will remain until the morning," Madame prayed. "I wouldthen make my confession, and receive the peace of absolution."
"Find me here at the dawn," La Salle answered. Then, uplifting hisblood-stained hand, he bestowed upon her his benediction and sent heraway.
Not fifty yards distant Onawa stood as a guardian over the man sheloved, staring into the night, heeding every sound in the valley,dreading the approach of some emissary from her tribe. The maid hadbecome an outlaw. Through her treachery the boy Richard, her own fleshand blood, had come to his death. With her own hand she had slain aman friendly to all her race. In the forest beyond the river a crueldeath by torture awaited her; her own father would be the first tocondemn her to the fire. She was thus compelled to stand or fallbeside the priest whom she had aided with that disregard for self whichhas ever dominated a woman's actions.
As she stood watching the firelight and the grove, dim ghosts arose andbegan her punishment. She seemed to hear a sound of scuffling, and tosee young Richard and his great hound, Blood, wrestling together, asthey had been wont to do among the pine barrens, to the roar of thewind and the lost waters. Again she heard the boyish voice, gaspingand triumphant, "I have beaten him again. I am stronger than he." Andas she shivered, there came an echo of her own former words from theline of tossing trees, "He is brave and strong. He shall make a manbefore he has grown."
Beside the fire La Salle slept, lulled by the wind. He knew Onawa wasacting as a guard over him, else he had never dared to close his eyes.Yet his rest became presently broken into by spiritual beings hoveringaround in the grove, anxious to point out his future. The chafing ofboughs, the beating of leaves, the gnawing of the beavers around thephilosopher's grave, with more distant sounds from the country beyond,were the media these beings employed. The disturbances passed into hisear, which pressed upon the palliasse, and entered the torpid brain tomake a dream.
Through the unlighted streets of a city a way was revealed before thesleeper by means of lightning flashes. No fellow-creatures were insight, and yet the tongues of a multitude shouted as he ran, bellsclashed above, and trumpets blared below. Before him a vast squareopened, empty and wind-swept, and here the shoutings of the unseen mobbecame terrific, here also a mountainous building rose into the clouds,and midway upon a flight of marble steps sat an old man in white,crowned with the tiara, extending a red hat towards the yellingsolitude. The dreamer rushed out to seize the prize; but between theprincipality and power, as represented by the scarlet blot rising inthe gale, the silent lightning cut, and between this fire and Urbanothe Eighth a figure descended, and the lightning was a sword, which hisuntiring arms flashed between the aspirant and his soul's desires."Cardinal-Archbishop!" cried the white figure. "Bought by blood!"outcried the man in black, and his sword turned all ways in a flame offire.
La Salle awoke with a shudder. That figure seemed to be upon him,bending, holding him down with the hands of Briareus. Casting off theterrible sleep, he started upright. A face was indeed over him, andarms were dragging at his shoulders. The wind-tossed grove cleared,with its fire glowing, and sparks flickering like a thousand eyes, andthe sleeper awakened recognised Onawa, who was summoning him to actionin her unknown tongue.
"Perdition!" he muttered. "The witch haunts me like an old sin."
Onawa went on pleading, pointing wildly at intervals down the wind.
"You shall lead me into no more death-traps!" the priest cried.
The frightened girl brought a knife from her side, and made as thoughshe would stab him. Then she pointed again, and, falling to her knees,indicated her own tracks.
La Salle peered along the glow of the fire and beyond where the sparkswere beaten back, then rose and approached the palisading, Onawaclinging to him like a shadow. There was no danger there. He advancedto the wattled door, prepared to receive an attack. When there came noresponse to his unspoken challenge he turned back, and Onawa againpointed along the way she had come.
"Would to God I had spared that child! His face is there!" the priestshivered.
"Tuschota!" cried the girl. She touched the ground, reading him withher eyes.
A smothered cry broke from the lips of the priest. Onawa followed hisgaze, which went, not along the trail, nor into the fire-lit grove, butabove where the eastern sky had almost cleared of drift.
"A portent!" moaned the priest. "'Tis the end of the world, and I amfound with the sword drawn in my hand."
There was war in heaven. Across the plane of eastern sky hung a wildpicture of forest and rockland where pigmy men rushed together withoutshock, where spectral weapons fell silently, and shadowy smoke burstand rose. Tiny figures climbed a cliff, and similar grotesques foughton high and pressed them back. The combatants appeared ant-like andridiculous objects as they swayed reflected upon the floor of heaven.
Onawa watched the spectacle unmoved. She had witnessed the miragebefore, and by this present vision merely understood that an attackupon the citadel was even then in progress. As the weird picture brokeup and scud came flying across a faint grey sky, she prayed in hertreacherous heart that the French might win.
La Salle rose with some shame when he perceived that the sky hadresumed its normal aspect, and light at length dawned upon him as hesighted a shadowy being stealing within the radius of the fire.
"Tuschota!" warned the voice at his side.
The priest knew then that Onawa had saved him from the knife whichwould have avenged the half-breed boy, who had flung himself with suchdesperate courage upon death. Casting away the arms which encompassedhim, he passed swiftly into the shadow of the grove, while Onawaadvanced boldly and met the woman she had wronged so grievously, anddared to face her without shame. For a space they stood, gazing at oneanother by the firelight, until the younger cast down her eyes andbegan to shiver with the coldness of fear.
"Approach me, sister," said the stern woman. "There is a question Iwould have you answer. Refuse you dare not, for we are flesh andblood; we are daughters of Shuswap the truthful, and the same mothergave us birth. I seek not to know what brings you here this night, buttell me now have you seen that proud priest who has slain my son?"
"I have not seen him," cried Onawa fiercely; but she was cold to theheart beneath the gaze of those colder eyes.
"'Tis well. A daughter of the Cayugas lies not, save to an enemy. Butwhy do you slink thus away? Yo
u do not fear me, sister?"
Onawa stared aside speechless.
"After I became wife to the great white man you came often to our homeamong the lost waters," Mary Iden went on. "My Richard loved you.Remember, sister, how often you played with the child, how many timesyou carried him in your arms, and told him the old stories of our race.Hast forgotten how he would laugh at your coming, how he would run downto meet you with a gift, and draw up your canoe and bring you to ourshelter by the hand? Remember when he had committed a fault how youpleaded for him, calling him _Dear child_ and _Sunlight of the camp_.Sister, I know that you grieve for the boy."
Chilled at her words Onawa passed to the fire, turning from thosepursuing eyes.
"I shall not forget how Richard loved you. When you need me, sister,come, and I will give you your former place beside the fire. So shallyou rest and forget the strangers in this land. By the love that youbore for my boy, sister, I will not forget you."
Onawa looked up and saw only the figure of La Salle emerging from thegrove. Her sister had drawn back into the night.
The gale circled the embers in whitening eddies. Onawa wildly snatcheda stick and raked the glowing fragments into a pyramid, upon which sheflung some roots of willow. A yellow fog ascended, torn hither andthither by the spirits of the wind.
She crept to La Salle's feet and fawned upon them. He spurned her andstill she struggled to approach, to cling as the weed upon a rock. Shehad made the sacrifice of her life that she might serve him. She haddischarged the arrow to slay the Englishman solely that she might winhis love. She had relied upon her fierce beauty, her youth, and herstrength to conquer the handsome Frenchman. She had staked her allupon her heart's desires.
And now he flung her from him, and strode away from the fireside andthe grove.
She followed, crying along the wind. He motioned her back and eventhreatened with his sword, but she pursued, setting her feet in themarks which his had made. When he halted for weariness she stood nearto guard him from her sister. When the grey day came she stillfollowed him, across open country, and so northward into the hills, andtowards the river, where the wind contained a breath of smoulderingbush.