CHAPTER II
A STRONG MAN IS BOWED
The whole thing was so unexpected that for one moment not a man in theroom drew breath. Then the colonel sprang up with the bellow of anenraged bull, overturning the table in his rush, and a dozen clubmembers were pulling him back from Eric.
"Eric Hamilton, are you mad?" I cried. "What do you mean?"
But Hamilton stood motionless as if he saw none of us. Except that hisbreath was labored, he wore precisely the same strange, distracted airhe had on entering the club.
"Hold back!" I implored; for Adderly was striking right and left to getfree from the men. "Hold back! There's a mistake! Something's wrong!"
"Reptile!" roared the colonel. "Cowardly reptile, you shall pay forthis!"
"There's a mistake," I shouted, above the clamor of exclamations.
"Glad the mistake landed where it did, all the same," whispered UncleJack MacKenzie in my ear, "but get him out of this. Drunk--or ascandal," says my uncle, who always expressed himself in explosiveswhen excited. "Side room--here--lead him in--drunk--by Jove--drunk!"
"Never," I returned passionately. I knew both Hamilton and his wife toowell to tolerate either insinuation. But we led him like a dazed beinginto a side office, where Mr. Jack MacKenzie promptly turned the key andtook up a posture with his back against the door.
"Now, Sir," he broke out sternly, "if it's neither drink, nor ascandal----" There, he stopped; for Hamilton, utterly unconscious of us,moved, rather than walked, automatically across the room. Throwing hishat down, he bowed his head over both arms above the mantel-piece.
My uncle and I looked from the silent man to each other. Raising hisbrows in question, Mr. Jack MacKenzie touched his forehead and whisperedacross to me--"Mad?"
At that, though the word was spoken barely above a breath, Eric turnedslowly round and faced us with blood-shot, gleaming eyes. He made asthough he would speak, sank into the armchair before the grate andpressed both hands against his forehead.
"Mad," he repeated in a voice low as a moan, framing his words slowlyand with great effort. "By Jove, men, you should know me better than tomouth such rot under your breath. To-night, I'd sell my soul, sell mysoul to be mad, really mad, to know that all I think has happened,hadn't happened at all--" and his speech was broken by a sharp intake ofbreath.
"Out with it, man, for the Lord's sake," shouted my uncle, now convincedthat Eric was not drunk and jumping to conclusions--as he was wont to dowhen excited--regarding a possible scandal.
"Out with it, man! We'll stand by you! Has that blasted red-facedturkey----"
"Pray, spare your histrionics, for the present," Eric cut in with theicy self-possession bred by a lifetime's danger, dispelling my uncle'ssecond suspicion with a quiet scorn that revealed nothing.
"What the----" began my kinsman, "what did you strike him for?"
"Did I strike somebody?" asked Hamilton absently.
Again my uncle flashed a questioning look at me, but this time his faceshowed his conviction so plainly no word was needed.
"Did I strike somebody? Wish you'd apologize----"
"Apologize!" thundered my uncle. "I'll do nothing of the kind. Servedhim right. 'Twas a pretty way, a pretty way, indeed, to speak of anyman's wife----" But the word "wife" had not been uttered before Ericthrew out his hands in an imploring gesture.
"Don't!" he cried out sharply in the suffering tone of a man under theoperating knife. "Don't! It all comes back! It is true! It is true! Ican't get away from it! It is no nightmare. My God, men, how can I tellyou? There's no way of saying it! It is impossible--preposterous--somemonstrous joke--it's quite impossible I tell you--it couldn't havehappened--such things don't happen--couldn't happen--to her--of allwomen! But she's gone--she's gone----"
"See here, Hamilton," cried my uncle, utterly beside himself withexcitement, "are we to understand you are talking of your wife, or--orsome other woman?"
"See here, Hamilton," I reiterated, quite heedless of the brutality ofour questions and with a thousand wild suspicions flashing into my mind."Is it your wife, Miriam, and your boy?"
But he heard neither of us.
"They were there--they waved to me from the garden at the edge of thewoods as I entered the forest. Only this morning, both waving to me as Irode away--and when I returned from the city at noon, they were gone! Ilooked to the window as I came back. The curtain moved and I thought myboy was hiding, but it was only the wind. We've searched every nook fromcellar to attic. His toys were littered about and I fancied I heard hisvoice everywhere, but no! No--no--and we've been hunting house andgarden for hours----"
"And the forest?" questioned Uncle Jack, the trapper instinct of formerdays suddenly re-awakening.
"The forest is waist-deep with snow! Besides we beat through the busheverywhere, and there wasn't a track, nor broken twig, where they couldhave passed." His torn clothes bore evidence to the thoroughness of thatsearch.
"Nonsense," my uncle burst out, beginning to bluster. "They've beendriven to town without leaving word!"
"No sleigh was at Chateau Bigot this morning," returned Hamilton.
"But the road, Eric?" I questioned, recalling how the old manor-housestood well back in the center of a cleared plateau in the forest."Couldn't they have gone down the road to those Indian encampments?"
"The road is impassable for sleighs, let alone walking, and their winterwraps are all in the house. For Heaven's sake, men, suggest something!Don't madden me with these useless questions!"
But in spite of Eric's entreaty my excitable kinsman subjected thefrenzied man to such a fire of questions as might have sublimatedpre-natal knowledge. And I stood back listening and pieced thedistracted, broken answers into some sort of coherency till the wholetragic scene at the Chateau on that spring day of the year 1815, becameineffaceably stamped on my memory.
Causeless, with neither warning nor the slightest premonition of danger,the greatest curse which can befall a man came upon my friend EricHamilton. However fond a husband may be, there are things worse for hiswife than death which he may well dread, and it was one of thesetragedies which almost drove poor Hamilton out of his reason and changedthe whole course of my own life. In broad daylight, his young wife andinfant son disappeared as suddenly and completely as if blotted out ofexistence.
That morning, Eric light-heartedly kissed wife and child good-by andwaved them a farewell that was to be the last. He rode down the windingforest path to Quebec and they stood where the Chateau garden mergedinto the forest of Charlesbourg Mountain. At noon, when he returned, forhim there existed neither wife nor child. For any trace of them thatcould be found, both might have been supernaturally spirited away. Thegreat house, that had re-echoed to the boy's prattle, was deathly still;and neither wife, nor child, answered his call. The nurse was summoned.She was positive _Madame_ was amusing the boy across the hall, andreassuringly bustled off to find mother and son in the next room, andthe next, and yet the next; to discover each in succession empty.
Alarm spread to the Chateau servants. The simple _habitant_ maids werequestioned, but their only response was white-faced, blank amazement.
_Madame_ not returned!
_Madame_ not back!
Mon Dieu! What had happened? And all the superstition of hillside loreadded to the fear on each anxious face. Shortly after Monsieur went tothe city, _Madame_ had taken her little son out as usual for a morningairing, and had been seen walking up and down the paths tracked throughthe garden snow. Had _Monsieur_ examined the clearing between the houseand the forest? _Monsieur_ could see for himself the snow was too deepand crusty among the trees for _Madame_ to go twenty paces into thewoods. Besides, foot-marks could be traced from the garden to the bush.He need not fear wild animals. They were receding into the mountains asspring advanced. Let him take another look about the open; and Hamiltontore out-doors, followed by the whole household; but from the Chateau inthe center of the glade to the encircling border of snow-ladenevergreens there was no trace of w
ife or child.
Then Eric laughed at his own growing fears. Miriam must be in the house.So the search of the old hall, that had once resounded to the drunkentread of gay French grandees, began again. From hidden chamber in thevaulted cellar to attic rooms above, not a corner of the Chateau wasleft unexplored. Had any one come and driven her to the city? But thatwas impossible. The roads were drifted the height of a horse and therewere no marks of sleigh runners on either side of the riding path. Couldshe possibly have ventured a few yards down the main road to anencampment of Indians, whose squaws after Indian custom made much of thewhite baby? Neither did that suggestion bring relief; for the Indianshad broken camp early in the morning and there was only a dirty patch oflittered snow, where the wigwams had been.
The alarm now became a panic. Hamilton, half-crazed and unable tobelieve his own senses, began wondering whether he had nightmare. Hethought he might waken up presently and find the dead weight smotheringhis chest had been the boy snuggling close. He was vaguely conscious itwas strange of him to continue sleeping with that noise of shouting menand whining hounds and snapping branches going on in the forest. Thechild's lightest cry generally broke the spell of a nightmare; but thedin of terrified searchers rushing through the woods and of echoesrolling eerily back from the white hills convinced him this was nodream-land. Then, the distinct crackle of trampled brushwood and thescratch of spines across his face called him back to an unendurablereality.
"The thing is utterly impossible, Hamilton," I cried, when in shortjerky sentences, as if afraid to give thought rein, he had answered myuncle's questioning. "Impossible! Utterly impossible!"
"I would to God it were!" he moaned.
"It was daylight, Eric?" asked Mr. Jack MacKenzie.
He nodded moodily.
"And she couldn't be lost in Charlesbourg forest?" I added, taking upthe interrogations where my uncle left off.
"No trace--not a footprint!"
"And you're quite sure she isn't in the house?" replied my relative.
"Quite!" he answered passionately.
"And there was an Indian encampment a few yards down the road?"continued Mr. MacKenzie, undeterred.
"Oh! What has that to do with it?" he asked petulantly, springing to hisfeet. "They'd moved off long before I went back. Besides, Indians don'trun off with white women. Haven't I spent my life among them? I shouldknow their ways!"
"But my dear fellow!" responded the elder trader, "so do I know theirways. If she isn't in the Chateau and isn't in the woods and isn't inthe garden, can't you see, the Indian encampment is the only possibleexplanation?"
The lines on his face deepened. Fire flashed from his gleaming eyes, andif ever I have seen murder written on the countenance of man, it was onHamilton's.
"What tribe were they, anyway?" I asked, trying to speak indifferently,for every question was knife-play on a wound.
"Mongrel curs, neither one thing nor the other, Iroquois canoemen,French half-breeds intermarried with Sioux squaws! They're all connectedwith the North-West Company's crews. The Nor'-Westers leave here forFort William when the ice breaks up. This riff-raff will follow in theirown dug-outs!"
"Know any of them?" persisted my uncle.
"No, I don't think I--Let me see! By Jove! Yes, Gillespie!" he shouted,"Le Grand Diable was among them!"
"What about Diable?" I asked, pinning him down to the subject, for hismind was lost in angry memories.
"What about him? He's my one enemy among the Indians," he answered intones thick and ominously low. "I thrashed him within an inch of hislife at Isle a la Crosse. Being a Nor'-Wester, he thought it fine gameto pillage the kit of a Hudson's Bay; so he stole a silver-mountedfowling-piece which my grandfather had at Culloden. By Jove, Gillespie!The Nor'-Westers have a deal of blood to answer for, stirring up thoseIndians against traders; and if they've brought this on me----"
"Did you get it back?" I interrupted, referring to the fowling-piece,neither my uncle, nor I, offering any defense for the Nor'-Westers. Iknew there were two sides to this complaint from a Hudson's Bay man.
"No! That's why I nearly finished him; but the more I clubbed, the morehe jabbered impertinence, '_Cooloo! cooloo! qu' importe!_ It doesn'tmatter!' By Jove! I made it matter!"
"Is that all about Diable, Eric?" continued my uncle.
He ran his fingers distractedly back through his long, black hair, rose,and, coming over to me, laid a trembling hand on each shoulder.
"Gillespie!" he muttered through hard-set teeth. "It isn't all. I didn'tthink at the time, but the morning after the row with that red devil Ifound a dagger stuck on the outside of my hut-door. The point wasthrough a fresh sprouted leaflet. A withered twig hung over the blade."
"Man! Are you mad?" cried Jack MacKenzie. "He must be the very devilhimself. You weren't married then--He couldn't mean----"
"I thought it was an Indian threat," interjected Hamilton, "that if Ihad downed him in the fall, when the branches were bare, he meant tohave his revenge in spring when the leaves were green; but you know Ileft the country that fall."
"You were wrong, Eric!" I blurted out impetuously, the terriblesignificance of that threat dawning upon me. "That wasn't the meaning atall."
Then I stopped; for Hamilton was like a palsied man, and no one askedwhat those tokens of a leaflet pierced by a dagger and an old branchhanging to the knife might mean.
Mr. Jack MacKenzie was the first to pull himself together.
"Come," he shouted. "Gather up your wits! To the camping ground!" and hethrew open the door.
Thereupon, we three flung through the club-room to the astonishment ofthe gossips, who had been waiting outside for developments in thequarrel with Colonel Adderly. At the outer porch, Hamilton laid a handon Mr. MacKenzie's shoulder.
"Don't come," he begged hurriedly. "There's a storm blowing. It's roughweather, and a rough road, full of drifts! Make my peace with the man Istruck."
Then Eric and I whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windynight. A moment later, our horses were dashing over iced cobble-stoneswith the clatter of pistol-shots.
"It will snow," said I, feeling a few flakes driven through the darknessagainst my face; but to this remark Hamilton was heedless.
"It will snow, Eric," I repeated. "The wind's veered north. We must getout to the camp before all traces are covered. How far by the Beauportroad?"
"Five miles," said he, and I knew by the sudden scream and plunge of hishorse that spurs were dug into raw sides. We turned down that steep,break-neck, tortuous street leading from Upper Town to the valley of theSt. Charles. The wet thaw of mid-day had frozen and the road wasslippery as a toboggan slide. We reined our horses in tightly, toprevent a perilous stumbling of fore-feet, and by zigzagging from sideto side managed to reach the foot of the hill without a single fall.Here, we again gave them the bit; and we were presently thunderingacross the bridge in a way that brought the keeper out cursing andyelling for his toll. I tossed a coin over my shoulder and we gallopedup the elm-lined avenue leading to that Charlesbourg retreat, whereFrench Bacchanalians caroused before the British conquest, passed thethatch-roofed cots of _habitants_ and, turning suddenly to the right,followed a seldom frequented road, where snow was drifted heavily. Herewe had to slacken pace, our beasts sinking to their haunches andsnorting through the white billows like a modern snow-plow.
Hamilton had spoken not a word.
Clouds were massing on the north. Overhead a few stars glittered againstthe black, and the angry wind had the most mournful wail I have everheard. How the weird undertones came like the cries of a tortured child,and the loud gusts with the shriek of demons!
"Gillespie," called Eric's voice tremulous with anguish,"listen--Rufus--listen! Do you hear anything? Do you hear any onecalling for help? Is that a child crying?"
"No, Eric, old man," said I, shivering in my saddle. "I hear--I hearnothing at all but the wind."
But my hesitancy belied the truth of that answer; for we both heardsounds, which no on
e can interpret but he whose well beloved is lost inthe storm.
And the wind burst upon us again, catching my empty denial and tossingthe words to upper air with eldritch laughter. Then there was a lull,and I felt rather than heard the choking back of stifled moans and knewthat the man by my side, who had held iron grip of himself before othereyes, was now giving vent to grief in the blackness of night.
At last a red light gleamed from the window of a low cot. That was thesignal for us to turn abruptly to the left, entering the forest by anarrow bridle-path that twisted among the cedars. As if to look down inpity, the moon shone for a moment above the ragged edge of a stormcloud, and all the snow-laden evergreens stood out stately, shadowy andspectral, like mourners for the dead.
Again the road took to right-about at a sharp angle and the broadChateau, with its noble portico and numerous windows all alight,suddenly loomed up in the center of a forest-clearing on the mountainside. Where the path to the garden crossed a frozen stream was a smallopen space. Here the Indians had been encamped. We hallooed for servantsand by lantern light examined every square inch of the smoked snow andrubbish heaps. Bits of tin in profusion, stones for the fire, tentcanvas, ends of ropes and tattered rags lay everywhere over the blackpatch. Snow was beginning to fall heavily in great flakes that obscuredearth and air. Not a thing had we found to indicate any trace of thelost woman and child, until I caught sight of a tiny, blue stringbeneath a piece of rusty metal. Kicking the tin aside, I caught theribbon up. When I saw on the lower end a child's finely beaded moccasin,I confess I had rather felt the point of Le Grand Diable's dagger at myown heart than have shown that simple thing to Hamilton.
Then the snow-storm broke upon us in white billows blotting outeverything. We spread a sheet on the ground to preserve any marks ofthe campers, but the drifting wind drove us indoors and we werecompelled to cease searching. All night long Eric and I sat before theroaring grate fire of the hunting-room, he leaning forward with chin inhis palms and saying few words, I offering futile suggestions anduttering mad threats, but both utterly at a loss what to do. We knewenough of Indian character to know what not to do. That was, raise anoutcry, which might hasten the cruelty of Le Grand Diable.
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