The Mississippi Bubble Part 27

"Madame--Mademoiselle!"

"'Tis true. We have been far in the West, and I could not escape. Good Providence has now brought my rescue--and you, Monsieur! Oh! tell me that it has brought me safety, and also a friend--that it has brought me you!"

With every pulse a-tingle, every vein afire, what could the young gallant do? What but yield, but promise, but swear, but rage?

"Hush!" said Mary Connynge, her own eyes gleaming. "Wait! The time will come. So soon as we reach the settlements, I leave him, and forever!

Then--" Their hands met swiftly. "He has abandoned me," murmured Mary Connynge. "He has not spoken to me for weeks, other than words of 'Yes,'

or 'No,' 'Do this,' or 'Do that!' Wait! Wait! How soon shall we be at Montreal?"

"Less than a month. 'Twill seem an age, I swear!"

"Madam," interrupted Law, "pardon, but Monsieur Joncaire bids us be ready. Come, help me arrange the packs for our journey. Perhaps Lieutenant de Ligny--for so I think they name you, sir--will pardon us, and will consent to resume his conversation later."

"a.s.suredly," said De Ligny. "I shall wait, Monsieur."

"So, Madam," said Law to Mary Connynge, as they at last found themselves alone in the lodge, arranging their few belongings for transport, "we are at last to regain the settlements, and for a time, at least, must forego our home in the farther West. In time--"

"Oh, in time! What mean you?"

"Why, we may return."

"Never! I have had my fill of savaging. That we are left alive is mighty merciful. To go thither again--never!"

"And if I go?"

"As you like."

"Meaning, Madam--?"

"What you like."

Law seated himself on the corded pack, bringing the tips of his fingers together.

"Then my late sweetheart has somewhat changed her fancy?"

"I have no fancy left. What I was once to you I shall not recall more than I can avoid in my own mind. As to what you heard from that lying man, Sir Arthur--"

"Listen! Stop! Neither must you insult the dead nor the absent. I have never told you what I learned from Sir Arthur, though it was enough to set me well distraught."

"I doubt not that he told you 'twas I who befooled Lady Catharine; that 'twas I who took the letter which you sent--"

"Stay! No. He told me not so much as that. But he and you together have told me enough to show me that I was the basest wretch on earth, the most gullible, the most unspeakably false and cruel. How could I have doubted the faith of Lady Catharine--how, but for you? Oh, Mary Connynge, Mary Connynge! Would G.o.d a man were so fashioned he might better withstand the argument of soft flesh and shining eyes! I admit, I believed the disloyal one, and doubted her who was loyalty itself."

"And you would go back into the wilderness with one who was as false as you say."

"Never!" replied John Law, swiftly. "'Tis as you yourself say. 'Tis all over. h.e.l.l itself hath followed me. Now let it all go, one with the other, little with big. I did not forget, nor should I though I tried again. Back to Europe, back to the gaming tables, to the wheels and cards I go again, and plunge into it madder than ever did man before.

Let us see if chance can bring John Law anything worse than what he has already known. But, Madam, doubt not. So long as you claim my protection, here or anywhere on earth--in the West, in France, in England--it is yours; for I pay for my folly like a man, be a.s.sured of that. The child is ours, and it must be considered. But once let me find you in unfaithfulness--once let me know that you resign me--then John Law is free! I shall sometime see Catharine Knollys again. I shall give her my heart's anguish, and I shall have her heart's scorn in return.

And then, Mary Connynge, the cards, dice, perhaps drink--perhaps gold, and the end. Madam, remember! And now come!"

CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT PEACE

Of the long and bitter journey from the Iroquois towns to Lake St.

George, down the Richelieu and thence through the deep snows of the Canadian winter, it boots little to make mention; neither to tell of that devotion of Raoul de Ligny to the newly-rescued lady, already reputed in camp rumor to be of n.o.ble English family.

"That _sous-lieutenant_; he is _tete montee_ regarding madame," said Pierre Noir one evening to Jean Breboeuf. "As to that--well, you know Monsieur L'as. Pouf! So much for yon monkey, _par comparaison_."

"He is a great _capitaine_, Monsieur L'as," said Jean Breboeuf. "Never a better went beyond the Straits."

"But very sad of late."

"Oh, _oui_, since the death of his friend, Monsieur _le Capitaine_ Pembroke--may Mary aid his spirit!"

"Monsieur L'as goes not on the trail again," said Pierre Noir. "At least not while this look is in his eye."

"The more the loss, Pierre Noir; but some day the woods will call to him again. I know not how long it may be, yet some day Mother Messasebe will raise her finger and beckon to Monsieur L'as, and say: 'Come, my son!'

'Tis thus, as you know, Pierre Noir."

Yet at length the straggling settlements at Montreal were reached, and here, after the fashion of the frontier, some sort of _menage_ was inaugurated for Law and his party. Here they lived through the rest of the winter and through the long, slow spring.

And then set on again the heats of summer, and there came apace the time agreed upon, in the month of August, for the widely heralded a.s.sembling of the tribes for the Great Peace; one of the most picturesque, as it was one of the most remarkable and significant meetings of widely diverse human beings, that ever took place within the ken of history.

They came, these savages, now first owning the strength of the invading white men, from all the far and unknown corners of the Western wilderness. They came afoot, and with little trains of dogs, in single canoes, in little groups and growing flotillas and vast fleets of canoes, pushing on and on, down stream, following the tide of the furs down this pathway of more than a thousand miles. The Iroquois, for once mindful of a promise, came in a compact fleet, a hundred canoes strong, and they stalked about the island for days, naked, stark, gigantic, contemptuous of white and red men, of friend and foe alike. The scattered Algonquins, whose villages had been razed by these same savage warriors, came down by scores out of the Northern woods, along little, unknown streams, and over paths with which none but themselves were acquainted. From the North, group joined group, and village added itself to village, until a vast body of people had a.s.sembled, whose numbers would have been hard to estimate, and who proved difficult enough to accommodate. Yet from the farther West, adding their numbers to those already gathered, came the fleets of the driven Hurons, and the Ojibways, and the Miamis, and the Outagamies, and the Ottawas, the Menominies and the Mascoutins--even the Illini, late objects of the wrath of the Five Nations. The whole Western wilderness poured forth its savage population, till all the sh.o.r.es of the St. Lawrence seemed one vast aboriginal encampment. These ma.s.sed at the rendezvous about the puny settlement of Montreal in such numbers that, in comparison, the white population seemed insignificant. Then, had there been a Pontiac or a Tec.u.mseh, had there been one leader of the tribes able to teach the strength of unity, the white settlements of upper America had indeed been utterly destroyed. Naught but ancient tribal jealousies held the savages apart.

With these tribesmen were many prisoners, captives taken in raids all along the thin and straggling frontier; farmers and artisans, peasants and soldiers, women raped from the farms of the Richelieu _censitaires_, and wood-rangers now grown savage as their captors and loth to leave the wild life into which they had so naturally grown. It was the first reflex of the wave, and even now the bits of flotsam and jetsam of wild life were fain to cling to the Western sh.o.r.e whither they had been carried by the advancing flood. This was the meeting of the ebb with the sea that sent it forward, the meeting of civilized and savage; and strange enough was the nature of those confluent tides. Whether the red men were yielding to civilization, or the whites all turning savage--this question might well have arisen to an observer of this tremendous spectacle. The wigwams of the different tribes and clans and families were grouped apart, scattered along all the narrow sh.o.r.e back of the great hill, and over the Convent gardens; and among these stalked the native French, clad in coa.r.s.e cloth of blue, with gaudy belt and buckskins, and cap of fur and moccasins of hide, mingling fraternally with their tufted and bepainted visitors, as well as with those rangers, both envied and hated, the savage _coureurs de bois_ of the far Northern fur trade; men bearded, silent, stern, clad in breech-clout and leggings like any savage, as silent, as stoical, as hardy on the trail as on the narrow thwart of the canoe.

Savage feastings, riotings and drunkenness, and long debaucheries came with the Great Peace, when once the word had gone out that the fur trade was to be resumed. Henceforth there was to be peace. The French were no longer to raid the little cabins along the Kennebec and the Pen.o.bscot.

The river Richelieu was to be no longer a red war trail. The English were no longer to offer arms and blankets for the beaver, belonging by right of prior discovery to those who offered French brandy and French beads. The Iroquois were no longer to pursue a timid foe across the great prairies of the valley of the Messasebe. The Ojibways were not to ambush the scattered parties of the Iroquois. The unambitious colonists of New England and New York were to be left to till their stony farms in quiet. Meantime, the fur trade, wasteful, licentious, unprofitable, was to extend onward and outward in all the marches of the West. From one end of the Great River of the West to the other the insignia of France and of France's king were to be erected, and France's posts were to hold all the ancient trails. Even at the mouth of the Great River, forestalling these sullen English and these sluggish English colonists, far to the south in the somber forests and miasmatic marshes, there was to be established one more ruling point for the arms of Louis the Grand.

It was a great game this, for which the continent of America was in preparation. It was a mighty thing, this gathering of the Great Peace, this time when colonists and their king were seeing the first breaking of the wave on the sh.o.r.e of an empire alluring, wonderful, unparalleled.

Into this wild rabble of savages and citizens, of priest and soldier and _coureur_, Law's friends, Pierre Noir and Jean Breboeuf, swiftly disappeared, naturally, fitly and unavoidably. "The West is calling to us, Monsieur," said Pierre Noir one morning, as he stood looking out across the river. "I hear once more the spirits of the Messasebe.

Monsieur, will you come?"

Law shook his head. Yet two days later, as he stood at that very point, there came to him the silent feet of two _coureurs_ instead of one. Once more he heard in his ear the question: "Monsieur L'as, will you come?"

At this voice he started. In an instant his arms were about the neck of Du Mesne, and tears were falling from the eyes of both in the welcome of that brotherhood which is admitted only by those who have known together arms and danger and hardship, the touch of the hard ground and the sight of the wide blue sky.

"Du Mesne, my friend!"

"Monsieur L'as!"

"It is as though you came from the depths of the sea, Du Mesne!" said Law.

"And as though you yourself arose from the grave, Monsieur!"