 | CHAPTER XXI. The King of the Hurons |  |
21. CHAPTER XXI.
That in alliance, amity, and oaths
There should be found such false dissembling guile?”
—First part of King Henry VI.
Candor is ever the victim of guile. Suspicious of no artifice,
Henrich had placed himself unreservedly in the power of an enemy,
to whose frigid heart relentings were as unwont as thaws amidst
polar ice. Making no attempt to overtake the barge, which maintained
its advanced position of about half a mile, the count proceeded
slowly and cautiously on his way, following the Lynx's route, and
hugging the eastern shore as he approached the English settlement.
He spoke but seldom, and not at all to Huntington, who attributed
his reserve less to uncooled wrath than to the desire of maintaining
the silence necessary to their situation.
They passed Albany a little after midnight, slightly accelerating
their progress, as it was a vicinity of unusual danger; and this
might have been a sufficient reason for the count's proceeding yet
five weary hours longer without a halt, and without any communication
with the forward boat. Yet it was thought strange, when at
sunrise he ordered the Algonquin to steer for the land, that no
word or signal was passed to the barge, nay, that the distance
between the vessels had been allowed materially to widen, and that
a time was chosen for stopping when the other boat was entirely out
of view. It was strange in seeming; but when Henrich caught the
eye of Carlton as they drew near the shore he read a picture of
fearful secret. The grating of the keel upon the pebbled beach was
accompanied by the harsh, quick voice of the Frenchman, into which
a tone of defiant determination was thrown.
“We leave you at last, Mr. Huntington,” he said, “and we shall
see whether my authority to control my own party is still to be
disputed.”
“It is impossible,” exclaimed Henrich, in accents husky with
horror and wrath, “that you can contemplate such an atrocity. I
am here at your bidding; your faith is pledged for my security;
reposing on that, I have parted with my attendant, and also with
the only means of safety in this wilderness, my boat.”
“It would be safe to leave so valorous a man in possession of neither,”
replied Carlton; “it is untrue that I have given you any
pledge; my little stratagem, indeed, was almost of your own suggestion.
I said that you were welcome to a seat in this boat; and,
indeed, so you were, most heartily; but I did not say, I believe, how
far your voyage in it should extend.”
“Count Carlton, this is —”
“Enough,—enough, sir; I have no disposition to argue the matter,”
said Carlton, taking snuff with an air of perfect nonchalance;
“you will have ample time for vituperation on shore; he may rail,
you know, who loses. Joseph, assist the gentleman to the beach.”
The man who was addressed seized the portmanteau of Huntington,
and bore it to the shore; and while the latter was again about
to remonstrate, the low voice of the Algonquin, who sat nearest him,
reached his ears; but scarcely a few rapid words of the Indian were
uttered, when he was interrupted by the stern glance of the officer.
Anak, however, undertook to intercede for the young man, but was
at once silenced by the count. “I will hear nothing,” he said; “and
the man who speaks for him shall be put under arrest,—we have
had words enough. Now, sir, are you ready?”
“Count Carlton,” exclaimed Henrich, still unwilling to abandon a
“I may not descend to entreaty, but let me appeal once more to
your sense of honor. You are —”
“Young man,” said Carlton, not unwilling to add the sting of
taunts, to his act, “I have said that all words are useless; your conduct
would justify me in far harsher measures, which I forbear in
consideration of some slight assistance you are said to have given the
Lynx in rescuing Miss Montaigne; but your presumption has more
than cancelled your services, and your actual mutiny, since being
attached to my company, is deserving of death; go, therefore, and
remember that you owe your life to my clemency.”
“I could commit no mutiny in disobeying orders to which I was
never subject; I claimed but the right to navigate this highway of
nature with my own boat and by my own hands. What are the
means by which you seek to prevent me? Let me say, that the
extreme resort to which you have alluded would have been far more
becoming an officer of the French army.”
“If you prefer such an alternative, you may, perhaps, even yet
succeed in procuring it,” said the count; “but I spare you. And
now, sir, once more I must remind you that I have no time for argument;
you can continue your remarks, if you please, upon the shore,
and will pardon us, I hope, if we should not feel ourselves at leisure
to remain your auditors.”
Further expostulation was evidently useless, and Henrich passed
to the bow of the boat for the purpose of landing. In doing so, he
came close to the count, who was also standing, and paused for a
moment, confronting him, while a sudden pallor marked the countenance
of the latter.
“I go,” said Huntington, “but not without proclaiming you the
coward and villain which your acts have proved.”
Saying so, he stepped to the shore.
“You will tempt me to follow you with a brace of balls, if you
violence was attempted. “Push off, my boys!”
“I do not think you dare even do that!” answered Henrich,
wrought to that desperation which sees no terror in death, and
drawing at the same time a pistol from his belt; he stood scarce six
feet from his adversary, as he spoke, and the latter, utterly cowed
by the words and manner of Huntington, forbore reply until the
moving boat had placed a distance of several additional yards between
them.
“You hold your life lightly, young man,” he said, at length, while
the canoe continued to recede; “it is well for you that others have
more regard for it.”
Huntington made no response; he was incapable of descending to
mere vituperation, and the fervor of wrath was already giving way
to the painful consciousness of his position.
Carlton continued his voyage three additional hours, at the end of
which time his party were permitted to stop on the eastern shore for
repose. With smiling visage and unusual blandness of demeanor,
he here rejoined the ladies, and apologized for his temporary separation
from them, alleging that the desire of occupying the post of
danger, in case of pursuit from the fort, had induced him to proceed
in the second boat; and that, his apprehensions of peril from that
source being now past, he should resume his former place.
Blanche and Emily gave no evidence of requiring to be appeased,
but replied, as usual, with politeness. They looked occasionally
down the river for Henrich's canoe, but supposing it to be at hand,
made no direct inquiry, until, their morning meal being in readiness,
they were invited, as usual, by the count, to partake of it.
“You forget that our company are not yet all present,” replied
Blanche, glancing again towards the river; “Mr. Huntington will
think lightly of our civility, if we commence our meal before he
arrives.”
“You remind me of my omissions,” returned Carlton; “I forgot
that I am charged with his adieux to yourself and Miss Roselle—”
“His adieux! Mr. Huntington's adieux!” exclaimed Blanche,
unguardedly, and with a look of utter astonishment, not unblended
with a bitterer feeling; “you surely are jesting, Count Carlton; he
could not have left us without bidding us farewell in person.”
“I do not jest,” the count replied, adding, with a sarcastic tone,
“but if I had dreamed of the intelligence being so unpleasant to Miss
Montaigne, I would have divulged it less abruptly,”
“It is unpleasant, indeed,” answered Blanche, “to believe that
Mr. Huntington could have been capable of so much incivility;
perhaps, however, there is some explanation, and I have judged him
harshly.”
“There is an explanation, I believe, to the benefit of which he is
entitled, if any is necessary,” responded Carlton. “When we embarked,
last evening, he doubtless expected to see you again; he
was not, I believe, aware that we were so near Albany, which, as the
northernmost English settlement, and one which will afford him the
means of a safe return to his home, was, you will perceive, very
appropriately his stopping-place.”
“I am happy that he has grown so prudent,” said Blanche, smiling,
and fearful that she had exhibited too deep an interest in the
event; “we will proceed, if you please, to our meal.”
Anxious to repair the error of a moment of surprise, Miss Montaigne
preserved a forced vivacity of spirits during the remainder of
their stay upon shore, and it was not until they were once more embarked,
that she dared recur in thought to a subject which proved so
exciting to her mind. She had never analyzed her sentiments towards
Henrich, and knew little in reality, even at this moment, of their
true character; but whatever they might be, she was both mortified
and grieved at his conduct, which remained inexplicable, save by the
merest conjecture. Generous in her judgments, her vacillating
thoughts settled, at length, upon the conviction that she had given
wrongs by censuring his manly resentment. A still more painful
apprehension, which at times displaced her more settled opinion,
was, that the very wound which he had received in her defence,
aggravated by exposure and fatigue, had compelled him to desert
the party for the purpose of seeking medical aid in the settlement
which they had passed. Whichever of these views the adopted, it
was coupled with the conviction that she should never meet her
benefactor again, nor be able to repair her injustice towards him;
and this reflection, if not her only source of disquiet, was the only
one which her self-respect would allow her to recognise.
The last prolonged stage of the voyagers' journey had rendered a
corresponding proportion of rest necessary to them, and it was now
nearly noon when they again resumed their way. While they had
remained encamped, Carlton had been haunted by some vague fears
that Henrich might follow and overtake them still, if it were only to
make known his wrongs to those of the party who had so much
reason to be his friends. How such a useless feat could be accomplished,
even if Huntington had had the hardihood to undertake it,
he did not pause to reflect; for he had warily landed upon the
opposite shore from that on which he had deserted Henrich, and in
a place admitting of close seclusion from any distant view; but it
was only now, when his barge was again gliding rapidly forward,
that he became altogether free from apprehension.
His next stage was nearly as long as the one preceding, and was
made with equal rapidity; for he was resolved to incur no further
danger of re-union with his rival. Eight hours he proceeded with a
happy consciousness that not even an Indian pedestrian could have
made equal progress among the impediments of a pathless wilderness,
much less a man unused to forest life. It was only when
night had again descended upon the earth, that he ventured to take
such full repose as the wearied energies of his men required; he
encamped near the point where his route, leaving the Hudson,
give that beautiful sheet of water the benefit of all its names, Christian,
practical, and poetical, Lake Horicon, or the Lake of the Holy
Sacrament.
| CHAPTER XXI. The King of the Hurons | |