 | CHAPTER XV. The King of the Hurons |  |
15. CHAPTER XV.
“What the d—l should move me to undertake the recovery of this drum; being not
ignorant of the impossibility, and knowing I had no such purpose? I must give myself
some hurts, and say I got them in exploit.”
—Parolles in “All's Well that Ends Well.”
Louis Carlton had not failed in making good his resolution to
visit Castle Montaigne, on the invitation of its proprietor, extended
to him, as has been seen, when the baron was about visiting Europe.
He had not seen fit, however, to wait for the return of the latter,
believing that if delays were ordinarily dangerous, they were peculiarly
so in the prosecution of such delicate missions as that on
which he was now bound. The baron was rich and powerful and
had an only daughter at home, whom he had fairly offered to the
count—such, at least, was Carlton's understanding of the affair, and
Governor Vaudreuil might laugh his fill at the idea of his nephew
wedding a maiden upon whose escutcheon a bow and arrow might
properly be emblazoned; yet if the heiress was at all attractive in
person, he had resolved not to be driven by ridicule from his design.
In the salons of Paris, the descendant of a Huron prince might
expect rather to derive a lustre from her ancestry than to find it a
subject of reproach; and with Wealth and Beauty for auxiliaries,
and the advantage of the count's reputation, which, although a
little shattered, was still potent in his own estimation, he did not
doubt she would win the éclat of the fashionable world. All his
fears had been that Myrtle would prove to partake too strongly of
the Indian characteristics of countenance and demeanor; but on
these points he was destined to be most agreeably disappointed.
He was welcomed at the castle, where he introduced himself as a
friend of the baron, and soon attained a degree of no little intimacy
with its inmates. His gay and pleasing manners were attractive to
Myrtle, and even won many a smile of approval from the reserved
and diffident baroness, while both were astonished to receive so
many marks of attention and kindness from a stranger of distinguished
appearance. He became the companion of the daughter in
her rambles and sports, and put his invention to task in devising
new varieties of pastime for her amusement; and instead of finding,
as he had feared, only the glimmerings of beauty and grace in her
person, he was continually compelled to accord to her unstudied
charms the tribute of admiration.
The baroness, little accustomed to deference, beheld his courtesy
towards herself with ill-disguised astonishment; but his apparent
kindness to her child entirely won the heart of the Huron mother.
Myrtle knew not how to understand the addresses of the stranger;
but artless and truthful herself, she could think no ill of a man whose
whole endeavor seemed to be to contribute to her enjoyment.
Affairs at the castle were in this position, when the baron
returned, not a little pleased to believe that Carlton's eagerness
to meet Miss Montaigne had induced him to anticipate her arrival
by his visit. He hastened, therefore, to explain to his guest the
accident which had separated himself and his daughter, and which
had left the latter almost a prisoner in New York, while the very
extremity of the count's amazement alone prevented him from
betraying his own extraordinary mistake. That there was another
daughter of Montaigne, exclusively of European origin, was a fact,
which now for the first time became known to him; and he shuddered
to think how nearly he had committed himself to the forest
maiden, while the favored child and prospective heiress, a lady of
unsullied birth, of rank, education, and perhaps even beauty, had
been indirectly offered to his alliance.
No time was to be lost in rectifying so gross an error; nor did
consequences which might ensue to her. If he had won her heart,
which the quick discernment of vanity plainly perceived, it had been
with no open profession of attachment; and he knew too well the
humility of the mother, and the timid modesty of the daughter, as
well as their ignorance of the conventional usages of civilized life, to
fear that they would ever make his conduct the subject of complaint
or reproach. He became elated with his new anticipations;
and as he contemplated in perspective the sunny path of prosperity
which seemed to stretch far away in the future, he forgot his past
reverses, and gained an augmented sense of his own importance.
But it was with little pleasure he reflected that before Miss Montaigne
could be converted into a bride she was to be rescued from
captivity; and while he waited to learn the baron's plans for effecting
this object, the latter remained in daily expectation of an offer
from his guest to engage personally in the enterprise. Carlton
was a soldier only in name; he had seen no service, yet he had not
failed to make his martial reputation indirectly the subject of boast
before the baron, in whose estimation he knew that military talents
transcended every other quality. Of Indian warfare he had an
exceeding dread, and while affecting a soldier's contempt for every
danger, he could not divest his mind of the terror inspired by the
contemplation of ambuscades, bush fights, and midnight onsets
accompanied by the usual accessaries of savage war. He was in
short a coward, with a coward's usual bravado, but he soon found
that there was no middle course of action to pursue if he would
retain for a moment the confidence of Montaigne.
The baron disclosed to him his plan for the rescue of his daughter,
and the very flashing of his eye told the alarmed count that he
expected him not only to take command of the expedition, but to
accept the post as a most distinguished favor. Hesitation would
have been as disgraceful as refusal, and Carlton, practised in dissimulation,
promptly begged the command with every appearance of
before the time for setting out he should not become satisfied that
it was really trivial.
Several weeks elapsed before the baron deemed it prudent for the
party to start, and during this interval, Carlton took every opportunity,
by indirect means, to gain a knowledge of the extent of the
perils to be encountered, resolving if they proved too alarming, to
avoid them by summoning himself suddenly back to Quebec or even
to Paris, if necessary, on business of the last importance. As such a
course, however, would be open to suspicion, and would doubtless
terminate his prospects of winning the hand of the heiress, it was
only to be resorted to in extremity, while, if the risk was but light,
he resolved to face it for the sake of the prize in view, which he
thought would be made doubly sure to him by his seeming valor.
The Lynx, with whom his opportunity to converse was not infrequent,
and who was to occupy a command second to himself in the party,
spoke with unfeigned contempt of the danger, and the soldiers, who
were detailed for this duty, not lacking the spirit of gasconade incident,
at that day, to their profession, were equally boastful of the
safety with which their object was to be accomplished.
The ultimate choice of the count has been seen, but the details of
his ill-disguised pusillanimity, during the descent to New York, as
they are not directly connected with the narrative, need not be
described. It was sufficient to win for him the scorn of the Huron
chief, but the spirit of discipline, which had been sedulously inculcated
by Montaigne among his Indian allies, had induced the former
not only to forbear comment upon the conduct of his superior, but to
yield to him such a ready obedience as the count imagined could
only proceed from the utmost confidence in his own judgment and
military skill. His movements had, notwithstanding, been silently
influenced to a great extent by the Lynx, and it was owing to this
circumstance that he had succeeded in reaching the island of Manhattan
views of his own prowess and wisdom.
Whatever Count Carlton was in conceit and vanity at Castle Montaigne,
that he was in a quadrupled degree in his little cavernous
camp on the bank of the Hudson, where he became impatient of no
inconvenience more than of the deprivation of a fitting auditory for
the story of his achievements. Yet the prolonged absence of the
Huron gradually awakened his alarm, and when the shades of the
second evening were setting in without the return of the messenger,
his approhensions became extreme. If the Lynx was a prisoner, not
only was his whole design frustrated, but his own position could not
long be safe, for however incapable the Indian might be of betraying
his friends, the letter which he carried would reveal the fact that he
had coadjutors somewhere in the vicinity of the city.
But he would not entertain so unwelcome a belief, and having
sought counsel of no one, he little dreamed how great was the probability
of such an event having occurred. He stood looking
gloomily from his sheltered retreat upon the adjacent river, and the
Algonquin, with quick watchful eye, loitered at his side, evidently
courting some encouragement to speak, when Carlton, forgetting his
self-sufficiency in his uneasiness, addressed him with seeming carelessness.
“The Lynx is slow of foot,” he said, “or he has lost his way;
what think you, Anak?”
“The Lynx is a prisoner,” replied the Indian, calmly.
“A prisoner!” responded the count, now thoroughly alarmed;
“how can you know this? surely you do but guess—the Huron
would not easily be taken.”
“The sun has twice gone down since our brother left the camp,”
the Algonquin answered, pointing to the west; “he is switt as the
roe, the path of the bee is not straighter than his—yet he comes
not back.”
“But he waits for the ladies, Anak; they are not ready.”
“Is there no night in the English city? does not the wind come
and go? why has his voice not been heard among us to say that all
is well? The Lynx has been taken—yesterday—I have said.”
Carlton turned pale at this confident assertion, which his opinion
of Indian sagacity would not permit him to disregard. With childish
eagerness he turned to the soldiers, hoping to find something
in their suggestions which would weaken the force of the other's
suspicions, but in this he was disappointed.
“If Anak, there, says the Lynx is caught,” answered the most
voluble of the party, a tall, stout man, whose good-natured face
was scamed with long wound-like traces of the small-pox—“if Anak
says he is caught, then good bye to the Lynx, sir; I've known that
Algonquin five years, have fought by his side in twenty battles with
the Iroquois, have hunted with him, eaten with him, slept with him,
and never knew him out of his reckoning, but once, sir; he talks
but little, and gives fewer opinions, perhaps, than a lawyer, but when
he does speak, it is to the point.”
“And do you yourself think it probable that the Huron is a
prisoner?” asked the count.
“I do, if it please your honor,” replied the soldier,—“the city is
close at hand, and the Lynx, if at liberty, would not have allowed a
night to pass without returning to camp, successful or otherwise—
besides, sir, there is a sort of freemasonry among these savages, and
the Algonquin there—”
“I know his views sufficiently already,” said Carlton, nervously,
and turning to his other followers, he proceeded to canvass their sentiments
on the subject with an earnestness quite disproportionate to
the value of the counsel received, for being entirely unused to such
an honor, they were chiefly solicitous how to acquit themselves in
speaking, and did not dare to dissent from the opinions already
delivered.
Carlton's grief at the failure of his expedition would have been
extreme had it not been merged in alarm for his personal safety. If
letter, he thought, was doubtless in the hands of the English government,
and a detachment must be already on their way from the city
in pursuit of himself and his party. So great was his trepidation
that he even fancied, momentarily, as the wind came sighing through
the forests, that he heard the rustling of an armed body, approaching
his quarters. Dissembling his fears as best he could, he
announced with much gravity to his men that their views of the
fate of the Huron were entirely accordant with his own, but that he
had seen fit to consult them, instead of acting exclusively upon his
own convictions in a matter of so much moment, and concluded by
giving orders to get ready the boats for immediate departure.
Although accustomed to implicit obedience, the soldiers exchanged
looks of surprise for a moment, at this mandate. Their position was
so secure, and the prospect of any immediate attack so improbable,
that they could not understand the motives which prompted flight,
and the desertion of an ally, who might possibly yet return. Francis,
venturing to speak, with many apologies, and much circumlocution,
disclaimed intending to advise a departure, and the Indian,
emboldened by his example, offered to go in pursuit of his companion;
but Carlton, thoroughly panic-stricken, refused to listen to
any proposition. The boats were prepared, and the party embarked
at about ten in the evening, little imagining that their colleague,
completely successful in his quest, was at that moment less than two
leagues distant from them and rapidly approaching.
| CHAPTER XV. The King of the Hurons | |