Part 15

She had risen, and still standing, she suddenly put both hands before her eyes.

“Oh, puir Tam Wilson!” she cried, and burst into a tumult of tears.

The irrelevance stunned him as he stood staring at her.

“But you are na Tam Wilson!” She turned upon him in a sort of fury, throwing out one hand at arm’s length with a gesture of repudiation. “Oh, you are na Tam Wilson! Oh, the leal heart _he_ had! He wad na gie ower his trust and renounce his pledges and quit his country’s wark for ony lassie alive! He could na be balked by fear, an’ he could na be bought by favor. And if God prospered him he thankit Him for his mercies! And if God denied him he thankit Him for his chastening! And when in the gude time his wife suld come to him, ’t would be as a helpmeet, as ’t was ordained,--to go hand in hand in an honorable path, to work together, building up, not throwing down, keeping faith, not breaking it,--open as the day, hiding naething and with naething to hide. And she would be dear, but his honor would be dearer! He wad na win a woman’s heart wi’ vain protestations an’ false names, and wi’ terrible secret military orders to haud him back,--and then tell her that his engagements were naught to him for _her_ sake! For she might tell him, as I tell you, an oath’s an oath, and ill to break! And I will hae naught to do wi’ a man wha wad break it for the blink o’ a lassie’s eye! _He_ wad na do that--oh, puir Tam Wilson!”

He stood aghast, arraigned, conscience-stricken. But she had leaned against the crag, her soft cheek pressed on the stern gray rock, relinquishing her reproaches and bewailing her bereavement.

“Oh, puir, puir Tam Wilson!” she cried again and again. “To think _he_ never lived! He isna you! He is naebody--naething! Puir Tam Wilson--to think he never lived!”

She would not hear remonstrances. She would not look at Laroche. He was fain presently to leave her in the closing dusk, lest the others might join them when neither could well explain her emotion. As he slipped away in the elusive gathering gray shadows, he still heard her sobs from their midst, bewailing the tenuous estate of puir Tam Wilson, quite as elusive as they.

He did not see her again till the next morning. She was pallid as the result of a sleepless night. Her eyelids, although swollen from persistent weeping, were still heavy with unshed tears. Her face was stern, hard, even sullen. She seemed averse to speech and answered her father’s expressions of alarm because of her grief-stricken manner and Callum’s eager solicitous inquiries as to her well-being with a curt explanation, “I hae had dreams.”

Laroche, who had had time for reflection, appreciated an undercurrent of a more subtle sincerity in the response than was obvious from the surface. Dreams indeed--mere dreams! Puir Tam Wilson!

He was glad of the relief which this apt reply afforded him, for he had suffered some mundane and most personal anxieties, in view of her youth and inexperience in diplomatic matters, as to her capability to guard his disclosure. Indeed he was doubtful of her disposition to shield him since her emotion had been so strongly elicited and the unexpected resultant repulsion for him had so completely offset her prepossession hitherto in his favor, on which he had relied for protection. His liberty, and even his life, were in her hands, and he could hardly contain his regret that he had confided aught to her.

There is no repentance so sharp as that which arises from a mistake made in a presumable excess of conscientiousness. He told himself now that acting in the discharge of his political and official duty he might well have left events to take their own course. If he had parted with her, revealing naught of the true identity of puir Tam Wilson, she could hardly have pined more for the man himself than for the figment of her fancy. Callum had scarcely a more definite rival in the substance than in the shadow. If the two young people could not come to an understanding with the memory of the man between them, they could hardly now have a unity of interest separated by the myth.

But the dreams that she had had, of which he was acutely conscious of being a visionary part, and her fractious, imperious temper served to account for much childish petulance in her conduct toward all who approached her. She waved away the horse on which she had hitherto ridden, when the animal was brought forward, ready saddled for her use. She would not speak, nor would she mount.

“Oh fie! oh fie!” exclaimed Jock Lesly, as in duty bound. Then in dulcet solicitude, “Winna ma poppet ride her pillion? Hey, Duncan, Dougal,--Miss Lilias’s pillion!”

And then it became evident that on this pillion she would in no wise ride behind Callum, who was only too officious to proffer his services; nor Tam Wilson, whose proposition, despite a secret reluctance, was made with all needful show of alacrity. Therefore the pillion was strapped behind Jock Lesly’s saddle, and when mounted there Lilias leaned her head against his broad shoulder and wept silently from time to time and desisted to clasp both arms as tightly as possible around his broad girth with a childish but joyless hug, feeling, nevertheless, that here was the only stanch heart in all the world, the only one whose love was of any value. Then she would fall to weeping again, and pause to take pleasure in wiping her eyes on the gray and flaxen wisps of his plaited hair, hanging down on his shoulders within her reach. So often was his hair devoted to the sad duty of drying her tears that the locks came unplaited and escaped from the leather thong that tied them, so that she needs must plait them over again. This she did, using both hands and sustaining her weight on the pillion by holding to the hair of the suffering scalp of her father, who, much tormented lest she fall, punctuated the performance with adjurations--“Oh fie! oh fie!”

Presently he would feel her head, once more lying against his shoulder, shaken by the tumult of her sobs, and in a bewildered effort at consolation he would admonish her, “Whist--whist, hinny! Dreams are naething! but maist like sour sowens for supper. Dreams are naething!”

“Naething!” she would respond ambiguously. “Naething! Oh, that I suld say so! Dreams are naething at a’!”

She did not speak to Laroche again except upon the day of his departure, which he had expedited as far as he might without incurring comment. She was riding her own horse again, and when she pressed the animal up abreast with him in the cavalcade, he felt his heart glow within him. He had loved her, truly and purely, and with a sort of tender lenient admiration, and he warmed to the thought of bearing away with him some word of friendship that would make the remembrance of her less like a flagellation than a grief both sad and sweet and to be tenderly cherished. For she could not be aware that he had revealed his military and national status without intending to confess his love merely to stem the tide of her own.

There was a touch of pride in the poise of her head. Yet it was always carried high, in truth. Her eyes flashed. They were always at their brightest when they looked out thus, gleaming like sapphires upon the variant blue of the distant mountain ranges. The day was fair, the wind went by with a rush, and her smile was as bland as the sun on the expanse of vernal foliage in the valley beneath the verge of the path as they rode adown the rugged ravines.

“They tell me you are gaun to quit us the day,” she said suavely.

“Aye, and sorry am I,” he replied with polite alacrity.

She made a gesture as of flouting a triviality.

“Why suld mortals be glad or sorry?” she said. “Their fate is a’ fixed, whether they will or no. And they go to meet it--ane might a’most say--without mair knowledge o’ its nearness than kyloes hae o’ the shambles.”

She paused for a moment. Then quickly resumed as if she neither expected nor desired response.

“But mony folks try to speer out the future, and tak muckle heed o’ signs an’ sic-like, especial o’ ill luck. Ye hae heard us speak o’ thae strange warnin’s that appear in the likeness o’ a man’s nainsel’--but I misdoubts these are only auld wives’ clavers; I misdoubts. I want to tell you this,”--she turned upon him a casual but radiant smile,--“if e’er you hap to see a man comin’ till you that looks like yoursel’, _ye_ needna be frighted, for it winna be Tam Wilson. Tak my word for it--it winna be Tam Wilson!”

She reined in her horse and fell back among the others, while he rode on feeling his heart thrust through with the stabs of her deliberate cruelty; and these were all the farewell words that passed between them.

IX

PERHAPS no man ever lived a tragedy of thought and feeling, unrelated to the conditions and professions of his merely material life, more consciously than did Laroche. Flung back perforce on his military character, every pulse ached with the straining against those professional chains, the fragments of which, had they broken in the stress, he would with loyal perversity have hugged. Yet since they held fast, he pined for Jock Lesly, for the simple household, for the humble domestic habitudes and the hearthside atmosphere, for the chaste yet alluring presence of Lilias. Many a day after he had seen the trader’s cavalcade fare downward through the bosky ravine, becoming dim and diminishing as it went, flickering among the shadows seeming as immaterial as they, finally vanishing indistinguishably in their midst, he could behold it anew in freshest tints and near at hand whenever the wish--or alack, the unruly fancy--brought it to mind again. Long after the echoes had ceased to repeat the hearty halloo of farewell, the last of many regretful tokens of parting, he was wont to hear these voices in song or breezy talk or affectionate greeting as of yore.

Yet he had scant time for this as he rode back to Ioco Town, for it is needless to say the projected detour to Virginia was never really in contemplation. Moy Toy was obviously jealous of his self-absorption and silence, and had become captious under the enforced relinquishment of the trader’s party as his lawful prey. He was more impatient still of the necessary delays that must ensue before the Cherokees could be in case to strike a blow in revenge for all their disasters, plainly registered in the charred tenantless towns here and there on the face of the ravaged landscape. Laroche sought to divert his mind, to placate him anew, to excite his interest. In devising subjects of talk the Frenchman often attempted to sound the depths of the Cherokee character and definitely gauge the capacities of the tribe to receive and assimilate the values of civilization, that thereby he might deduce something of the force that their national traits would exert in the destinies of this great continent. For instance, he would argue with Moy Toy upon the Indian aversion to the stability and permanence of architecture.

“The white man like the Indian can live but a day--why should his house outlast him?” the chief would protest stolidly.

“For those who come after,--since houses congregate into cities, and cities erect nations, and nations continue throughout ages, and ages are aggregations of strength. What is done in a day lasts but a day,” retorted the soldier.

Thus speculatively disposed he would seek to measure the extent and divine the catastrophe of that ancient prehistoric civilization of which his keen instinct read much in the scattered fragments along the shores of Time: in the aboriginal traditions, unique and indefinitely antique; in the ceremonials, of which the significance was lost in degeneracy, retaining but the manner without the matter, the shapeless shadow of an unimagined symmetry; in the language, absolutely individual, he thought, with copious verbal forms and facile locutions, with orderly construction, with subtle shades of minutely diverse meanings, with large and sonorous adaptation to high themes; in the religion, with its elaborate theory of symbolism without the vital spark. He wondered how far this definite cult, seeming almost inherent, would deter the Cherokees from a conversion to Christianity. He doubted this result because of their earnest observance of the ritual of their ancient religion and implicit faith in its sanctities. Yet Moy Toy was himself the suavest of postulants, the most promising of catechumens. So eagerly he listened to the French officer who explained the grounds of his own belief and its revolutionizing effects upon the nations of all the world--not failing to turn and scan the number of tribesmen in the band from time to time, to make sure that none had followed with treacherous intentions the trader’s train--that many another man as discerning as Laroche yet less crafty might have been deceived.

Over the camp-fires at night especially Moy Toy seemed to delight in repeating some of the more simple and discursive details of the day’s talk, often startling Laroche by his powers of memory, the accuracy of his comprehension, and his gift of mimicry. Laroche wondered if a preference which he noted for biographical details might be ascribed to that fraternizing instinct to realize the conditions of the life of man in whatever age or country, despite the lapse of time and the barriers of distance, that attests the universal brotherhood, and if it was this which had served to invest the narrations with such reality and had so strengthened the grasp of his mind upon them. The officer found, however, a curious flavor of speculation in the fact that try as he might he could not enlist this vivid interest in the incidents of the New Testament. The sanguinary histories of the Old Testament, dealing oft with force and fraud, met with no skeptical reservations or evasions from Moy Toy. The motives they adduced were eminently comprehensible to him, the result credible, and his attitude of mind applausive. But with the gospel of love and meekness, the forgiveness of injuries and succor of enemies, the dictates of self-sacrifice and self-denial, the savage had no pulse in unison. Moy Toy listened as his obvious policy required. Sometimes he commented.

“Christianity is to make the red men good? Then tell me, why has it not made the white men good?--they have had it so long--seventeen hundred years, you say, and more!”

And the French officer, fairly routed, could only answer that the race had not lived up to its best opportunity.

The chief’s interest in the ethical phase of the subject often flagged, however, beyond the power of simulation. It was only held to a pretense of attention by the inexorable etiquette of the Cherokee, however prolix his interlocutor, and an occult intention to master certain knowledge by the ruse of surprise, as it were. But inborn subtlety is no match for the ratiocination of cultivation, and Moy Toy’s instinct was fatally at fault when with a child-like blandness and irrelevance he casually demanded, “How was it, did you say last night, that the good San Quawl made his powder when he journeyed down to the city of Damascus?” or “I have forgotten how many pounds of powder you said the brave chief Samson put under the gates of Gaza when he blew them up to carry them off.”

The trail of the earnest dominant desire to discover that seigneurial secret of civilization that made it the lord of the world, the conqueror of force, the despot of right, the annihilator of numbers,--the simple formula for the manufacture of gunpowder, the materials for which Laroche had already assured him abounded in the Cherokee country,--lay through all the devious windings of their talk, and divulged the springs of self-interest in Moy Toy’s affectations of the dawnings of faith.

On each occasion the revulsion of the officer’s feeling was so great that the betrayal of the Indian’s motive in searching the Scriptures, and his conviction that the ultimate value of the white man’s religion lay in his superior knowledge of destructive explosives, failed to excite any cynical amusement in Laroche, and roused in him a very genuine indignation. For the demonstration always came as a surprise in its devious methods, half incredulous though he was as to the eventual conversion of the Indian.

“Let it be accounted to me for righteousness that I do not instantly give you over!” Laroche would cry angrily.

It was essentially the pulse of the church militant which animated the soldier. His patience was scant, his summons imperative. “Become a Christian, or I’ll be the death of you!” might be a just translation of his urgency.

And in good sooth his easily excited anger was so obviously genuine on each recurrent presentation of the lure to entrap him into the disclosure of the secret which he had promised in his own good time to communicate, that Moy Toy experienced a very definite alarm lest by his precipitancy the precious knowledge that gave the white man his supremacy might be snatched from the Indian forever. With his naturally keen faculties thus whetted, Moy Toy evolved with countercraft a diversion that appealed irresistibly to the speculative phase of Laroche’s intellect and for a time led him captive, although he appreciated fully the trickery of the intention and the treachery of the heart of his interlocutor.

This was the recital of the Cherokee traditions of the more ancient Scriptural events,--the creation, the flood, the exodus,--knowledge of which the earliest travelers in this region found already implanted among that singular people, and, with certain analogous customs, serving to add so much plausibility to the theory of its Hebraic origin--even yet to be accounted for by vague hypotheses such as the teachings of Cabeza de Vaca among the more southern tribes, thence transmitted northward. If this be the source of these traditions, it is singular, to say the least, that there should be among them none of the essential truths of the new dispensation nor Roman Catholic legends of the saints. Laroche could but lend heedful attention to the variant details of the Cherokee version of the Patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, and now and again pointed out to Moy Toy their divergencies from the true and only word, and much he meditated upon this strange disclosure as he rode along the woodland ways, listening in his turn.

Sometimes he sought to modify or adjust the sacred writings of the old dispensation to the interpretative temper of the new, always held in check by the Cherokee version which Moy Toy would repeat with controversial relish, keeping pace _haud possibles æquis_. For the savage, obdurate to the wile of civilization, was yet more steeled against the advance of the Christian religion; and indeed modern instances are not wanting, sufficiently dispiriting to the student of human progress, in which after a lifetime of the profession of Christianity the Cherokee in his dying hours openly discards the religion of his adoption and departs to the happy hunting-grounds in the faith of his fathers, going out of the world the pagan that he entered it.

Serious as was the subject that absorbed Laroche’s thoughts, the deep significance of his speculations, comprising the origin of this race, its perverted destiny, the intentions of the Deity, this strange glimpse into the mystic past, the darker mystery of the veiled future,--these mighty interests could not suffice to sustain that human heart of his when they passed once more the trading-house, silent and deserted at Ioco Town, and the cottage hard by, where he had lived out the sweets of the little romance snatched from untoward conditions. He smiled sadly and tenderly at the thoughts conjured up by the evening glow so red on the gable against the blue sky. Never again would the fire flash forth from that deserted hearthstone to lure the wanderer home. Never again would the gleam of the candle rejoice the hospitable board that welcomed the stranger. The ingleside was cold and bleak, and would soon be a wreck, for the Indians were now giving the roof to the torch, and he watched the blaze with many a sentimental pang, but did not offer remonstrance. Better thus! Far better thus! It was well that Jock Lesly should not be tempted back by the knowledge that his old nest still awaited him here, for the stout heart of the Scotch trader would credit no less definite a portent of continued danger than charred timbers and sacked dwelling. And Laroche honestly believed that the day of the great British trade on the Tennessee and its neighboring streams was over-past now and forever.

He did not hesitate when once more at Tellico Great to inaugurate the scheme, the progress of which had been delayed months ago by the defection of Mingo Push-koosh. For it was here on the banks of the Tennessee that he at last recovered his old identity, lost in that sweet and soft thrall of a hopeless love. He felt again a free man, albeit the glamours of the evening star in the saffron west moved him strangely. He threw himself ardently into all those plans so long in abeyance of equipping an army of the confederated tribes,--the Choctaw, the Muscogee, the Cherokee, and many minor bands,--and the problems of securing munitions of war, of the transmission of supplies, and of the apportionment of forces absorbed his every faculty. Continually his messengers were going to and fro in the Indian country, and his pettiaugres dared the currents of those swift difficult rivers, now and again running the gauntlet of the musketry of the inimical Chickasaws from some high bluff. Secretly, silently, the preparations went on like the gathering mute menace of a sullen storm whose ferocity must burst with an added fury from its long repression. All unsuspected it might have been, although the expectation was so widely extended, save for the arrogant boastfulness of some far-away Indian, drunk perhaps, in a British trading-house or the bloody culmination of an individual feud between a warrior and a white settler, the savage unable to restrain his vengeful anticipation and abide the accepted time.