Heralds of Empire

  CHAPTER XIX

  AFTERWARD

  A long shudder, and I had awakened in stifling darkness. Was I dreaming,or were there voices, English voices, talking about me?

  "It was too late! He will die!"

  "Draw back the curtain! Give him plenty of air!"

  In the daze of a misty dream, M. Picot was there with the foils in hishands; and Hortense had cried out as she did that night when the buttontouched home. A sweet, fresh gust blew across my face with a faint odourof the pungent flames that used to flicker under the crucibles of thedispensary. How came I to be lying in Boston Town? Was M. Radisson amyth? Was the northland a dream?

  I tried to rise, but whelming shadows pushed me down; and through thedark shifted phantom faces.

  Now it was M. Radisson quelling mutiny, tossed on plunging ice-drift,scouring before the hurricane, leaping through red flame over the fortwall, while wind and sea crooned a chorus like the hum of soldierssinging and marching to battle. "Storm and cold, man and beast, powersof darkness and devil--he must fight them all," sang the gale. "Who?"asked a voice. In the dark was a lone figure clinging to the spars of awreck. "The victor," shrieked the wind. Then the waves washed over thecast-away, leaving naught but the screaming gale and the pounding seasand the eternal dark.

  Or it was M. Picot, fencing in mid-room. Of a sudden, foils turn toswords, M. Picot to a masked man, and Boston to the northland forest. Ifall, and when I awaken M. Picot is standing, candle in hand, tincturingmy wounds.

  Or the dark is filled with a multitude--men and beasts; and the beastswear a crown of victory and the men are drunk with the blood of the slain.

  Or stealthy, crouching, wolfish forms steal through the frost mist,closer and closer till there comes a shout--a groan--a rip as ofteeth--then I am up, struggling with Le Borgne, the one-eyed, who pushesme back to a couch in the dark.

  Like the faces that hover above battle in soldiers' dreams was a whiteface framed in curls with lustrous eyes full of lights. Always when thedarkness thickened and I began slipping--slipping into the folds ofbottomless deeps--always the face came from the gloom, like a star ofhope; and the hope drew me back.

  "There is nothing--nothing--nothing at all to fear," says the face.

  And I laugh at the absurdity of the dream.

  "To think of dreaming that Hortense would be here--would be in thenorthland--Hortense, the little queen, who never would let me tellher----"

  "Tell her what?" asks the face.

  "Hah! What a question! There is only one thing in all this world totell her!"

  And I laughed again till I thought there must be some elf scramblingamong the rafters of that smothery ceiling. It seemed so absurd to bethrilled with love of Hortense with the breath of the wolves yet hot inone's face!

  "The wolves got Godefroy," I would reason, "how didn't they get me? Howdid I get away? What was that smell of fur--"

  Then some one was throwing fur robes from the couch. The phantomHortense kneeled at the pillow.

  "There are no wolves--it was only the robe," she says.

  "And I suppose you will be telling me there are no Indians up there amongthe rafters?"

  "Give me the candle. Go away, Le Borgne! Leave me alone with him," saysthe face in the gloom. "Look," says the shadow, "I am Hortense!"

  A torch was in her hand and the light fell on her face. I was as certainthat she knelt beside me as I was that I lay helpless to rise. But thetrouble was, I was equally certain there were wolves skulking through thedark and Indians skipping among the rafters.

  "Ghosts haven't hands," says Hortense, touching mine lightly; and thetouch brought the memory of those old mocking airs from the spinet.

  Was it flood of memory or a sick man's dream? The presence seemed soreal that mustering all strength, I turned--turned to see Le Borgne, theone-eyed, sitting on a log-end with a stolid, watchful, unreadable lookon his crafty face.

  Bluish shafts of light struck athwart the dark. A fire burned againstthe far wall. The smoke had the pungent bark smell of the flame thatused to burn in M. Picot's dispensary. This, then, had brought thedreams of Hortense, now so far away. Skins hung everywhere; but inplaces the earth showed through. Like a gleam of sunlight through darkcame the thought--this was a cave, the cave of the pirates whose voices Ihad heard from the ground that night in the forest, one pleading to saveme, the other sending Le Borgne to trap me.

  Leaning on my elbow, I looked from the Indian to a bearskin partitionhiding another apartment. Le Borgne had carried the stolen pelts of themassacred tribe to the inland pirates. The pirates had sent him back forme.

  And Hortense was a dream. Ah, well, men in their senses might have doneworse than dream of a Hortense!

  But the voice and the hand were real.

  "Le Borgne," I ask, "was any one here?"

  Le Borgne's cheeks corrugate in wrinkles of bronze that leer an evillaugh, and he pretends not to understand.

  "Le Borgne, was any one here with you?"

  Le Borgne shifts his spread feet, mutters a guttural grunt, and puffs outhis torch; but the shafted flame reveals his shadow. I can still hearhim beside me in the dark.

  "Le Borgne is the great white chief's friend," I say; "and the white-manis the great white chief's friend. Where are we, Le Borgne?"

  Le Borgne grunts out a low huff-huff of a laugh.

  "Here; white-man is here," says Le Borgne; and he shuffles away to thebearskin partition hiding another apartment.

  Ah well as I said, one might do worse than dream of Hortense. But inspite of all your philosophers say about there being no world but theworld we spin in our brains, I could not woo my lady back to it. Likethe wind that bloweth where it listeth was my love. Try as I might tocall up that pretty deceit of a Hortense about me in spirit, my perverselady came not to the call.

  Then, thoughts would race back to the mutiny on the stormy sea, to theroar of the breakers crashing over decks, to M. Radisson leaping up fromdripping wreckage, muttering between his teeth--"Blind god o' chance,they may crush, but they shall not conquer; they may kill, but I snap myfingers in their faces to the death!"

  Then, uncalled, through the darkness comes her face.

  "God is love," says she.

  If I lie there like a log, never moving, she seems to stay; but if I feelout through the darkness for the grip of a living hand, for the substanceof a reality on which souls anchor, like the shadow of a dream she isgone.

  I mind once in the misty region between delirium and consciousness, whenthe face slipped from me like a fading light, I called out eagerly thatlove was a phantom; for her God of love had left me to the blind godsthat crush, to the storm and the dark and the ravening wolves.

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

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

  Then the child Hortense becomes of a sudden the grown woman, grave andsweet, with eyes in the dark like stars, and strange, broken thoughts Ihad not dared to hope shining unspoken on her face.

  "Life, a phantom-substance, the shadow--love, the all," the dream-faceseems to be saying. "Events are God's thoughts--storms and darkness andprey are his puppets, the blind gods, his slaves-God is love; for you arehere! . . . 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 space, the northern lights curtainingoverhead, 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 thewoman, 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 God is love," catching the gleam of the thought; and the starsthat fight in their courses for mortals sweep to a noonday splendour.

  And all the while I was but a crazy dreamer lying captive, wounded andweak in a pirate cave. Oh, yes, I know very well what my fine gentlemendabblers in the new sciences will say--the fellow was daft anddelirious--he had lost grip on reality and his fevered wits mixed amumble-jumble of ancient symbolism with his own adventures. But beforeyou reduce all this great universe to the dimensions of a chemist'scrucible, I pray you to think twice whether the mind that fashioned thecrucible be not greater than the crucible; whether the Master-mind thatshaped the laws of the universe be not greater than the universe; whetherwhen man's mind loses grip--as you call it--of the little, nagging,insistent realities it may not leap free like the jagged lightnings frompeak to peak of a consciousness that overtowers life's commoner levels!Spite of our boastings, each knows neither more nor less than life hathtaught him. For me, I know what the dream-voice spoke proved true: life,the shadow of a great reality; love, the all; the blind gods of storm anddark and prey, the puppets of the God of gods, working his will; and theGod of gods a God 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 seton by the powers of evil to hunt Man to his doom. A nightmare of fearbound me down. The death-frosts settled and tightened and closed--butsuddenly, Hortense took cold hands in her palms, calling and calling andcalling me back to life and hope and her. Then I waked.

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