 | CHAPTER XXIX. The King of the Hurons |  |
29. CHAPTER XXIX.
My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.
Teach not thy lips such scorn.
Shaks. Richard III.
Carlton lost no time in obtaining an interview with Miss
Montaigne, still flattering himself that her objections to him were
only feigned, or that they would readily yield to his assiduous
addresses. He approached his subject with but little delay, yet with
an unqualified conceit of manner, comporting but ludicrously with
the idea of homage to his lady love. His habitual fear of compromising
his personal dignity proved indeed a sort of check-string
to the excesses of a native politeness, and produced an awkward
mélange of ardor and reserve.
Blanche took the first opportunity which was offered by any
decisive language of her lover to express to him politely her
declension of his suit; but the count did himself the honor to hope
that Miss Montaigne's views would undergo a change—“that—in
short—she did not mean decidedly to—to—that is to say—”
“Decidedly, sir count!” replied Blanche, “it is best to be plain in
the outset; I am obliged to you for your good opinion, but cannot
reciprocate the sentiments you profess to feel.”
“Profess to feel!” exclaimed the count, suddenly inspired with
the hope that Miss Montaigne's coldness resulted only from uncertainty
as to the genuineness of his attachment—“profess to feel! you doubt
me, my angel! that is to say—Miss Montaigne; I feel all that
I profess and a thousand times—that is—a considerable more.”
“It is immaterial, Count Carlton,” Blanche replied: “I did not
mean to question your sincerity—”
“But you will relent? you will—”
“Never, sir count, let me say it now, once for all—never—under
any possible concurrence of circumstances of which the imagination
can conceive.”
The count took snuff and wondered what degree of force of will
the Baron Montaigne would desire his daughter to possess; he gazed
at her a moment, and added with a changed manner which proclaimed
a conscious security of position, and the cool insolence of his
heart:
“You are animated, Miss Montaigne! I like to see it; it adds to
your charms; you are a cherub, and will soon be a countess;
the baron and myself indeed have long agreed upon
a union of our—our houses; he has prepared me for these
eccentricities; I do not take them amiss; farewell, Miss Montaigne:
I shall have the pleasure soon of calling you by a different title—
and then we will laugh at these little pleasantries.”
The suitor reported to the baron the result of his mission, and
expressed his fears that the young lady's resolution could not be
shaken.
“We will not make the attempt;—we can manage to dispense
with her assent; she owes her being to me—to you its preservation;
it were marvellous, indeed, if we had not the right to control
her in a matter so essential to her welfare,” said the baron, seemingly
arguing against some latent misgivings.
“Yes—certainly, it would be very singular indeed, that would!”
“She shall have but little time for reflection; promptness is ever
one of the elements of success, and in a matter like this, may be
highly essential; had she been less wilful the wedding should not
have been hastened, but, as it is, a week from to-day, if you please,
sir count, she shall be your bride.”
“Certainly, sir, you make me very happy, and I will do my best,
enough to fail, may I inquire how it is you propose to proceed?”
“Inquire nothing, and doubt nothing, Count Carlton; only
discharge your own duty and believe me, that yonder chapel, which
yesterday resounded with the Te Deum of the priests for your safe
return, shall, at the set time, hear your nuptial benediction spoken.
It would be strange, indeed,” he continued, after a pause, speaking
rather in soliloquy, than as if addressing his companion; “it would
be strange, indeed, if among all the cowled priests who eat of my
bread, there were none who could be depended on in an emergency.
Our superannuated Father Parez is at least reliable, for he is well
nigh blind, and the very brother of the adder in deafness; he will
go mechanically through any priestly function that may be designated,
only place the parties before him, and signify to him whether it is a
wedding, a christening, or a funeral, and it will be sung through,
despite any interruption less than a cannonading.”
“Ah yes, Father Parez—I know his reverence—he mistook me
this morning for the Lynx, and when I shouted my salutations in his
ear, in the very best of French, he thanked me, and said he did not
understand the Huron language—ha! ha! yes, he's the very man.”
“And his marriage certificate will be equal to the pope's,” added
Montaigne—“therefore, I say again, fear nothing, for rather than be
thwarted in this measure, I would bestow Blanche upon you after
the custom of the nation, of which, as you are aware, I am now the
principal chief. There is a thing, you must know, which cob-web
spinning lawyers call the lex loci contractu—they put it into His
Majesty's gracious noddle, and made my Indian cara sposa a baroness;
the marquis has told you the story of course; and as it is a
law of which I have had the benefit,” the baron smiled bitterly at
the word, “it is but fair that you should have it also, if needed.”
“You are a most potent monarch in your way, my lord baron,”
replied Carlton, gleefully; “Prospero in his haunted isle, was a pigmy
to you; I rely on you with perfect confidence.”
“You may do so, sir count, and believe me, that, a week from
to-day, Blanche shall be your bride.”
The baron's excitement prevented him from observing that the
door of his room had opened before he uttered the last sentence, and
that the moccasined Lynx had entered with his usual noiseless
tread.
“How is this?” he said sternly, “why do you intrude thus upon
our privacy? But, I am wrong; he comes ever thus, like a shadow,
and has never been reproved; if there is fault, therefore, it is mine.”
“Is not this my cousin, the King of the Hurons?” said the Indian
gravely.
“It is—it is,” said the baron; “I was hasty, the Lynx is welcome;
why has he not brought his valiant friend, the Beaver, with him;
there are piled presents awaiting his return.”
“The Beaver shall come; my cousin shall see him,” replied the
Indian, departing as he spoke, as silently as he had approached.
Encouraged by the manner in which Montaigne had spoken of
the disguised Henrich, the Indian had concluded that it was a
favorable moment to produce his friend, and to make the long
deferred explanation. He had heard, but scarcely heeded the baron's
promise to bestow Blanche on the count as his bride, for the intelligence
was not new to his mind, rumor having long predicted the alliance,
although no suspicion was entertained of its being in opposition to
the lady's wishes. Sagacious as was the Lynx on other points, he
was quite at fault in all the signs which mark affection between young
hearts; the trail of Cupid was invisible to his eyes; and he had
failed to discover the daring love of Henrich for the beautiful companion
of his travels. If it had been otherwise, and above all, if he
had suspected the baron's knowledge of such an attachment, his
reason, soberer than the lover's, would have anticipated no friendly
reception of Huntington by Montaigne, and he would have been
spared the bitter disappointment to which he was destined.
Bitter, indeed, it was, both for him and the ingenuous youth. Not
welcome, or insane enough to hope to supplant his titled rival in the
regard of the baron; but he had expected common justice and
gratitude, and hospitality, and for everything beyond, he was willing
to wait the revealings of time and truth. He had begun to feel
confident of an interest in the heart of Blanche, and although he
knew that a thousand influences would be brought to bear upon her
mind in favor of the count, he still hoped on, vaguely and indefinitely,
as the desolate will ever hope.
As he approached the castle, clad once more in his proper apparel,
the appalled count discerned him in the distance, and a sudden
perception of the ruse which had been practised upon him, filled his
heart with rage and mortification. He kept, however, warily aloof
from the visiter, convinced that he had already planted a petard in
his path to which his own steps must now ensure a destructive
explosion. He did not greatly overrate the effect of the suspicions
which he had excited in the baron's breast, and little more is perhaps
essential to be related of the interview which ensued. The ghosts
of past offences, and the phantoms of anticipated wrongs were
conjured up to meet the guest, and where he thought to be treated
as a benefactor, he found himself virtually arraigned as a criminal.
His advantages of person and education served only to increase the
disfavor with which he was beheld, for in these things, his host saw
but the confirmation of Carlton's suspicions, and the probable cause
of his daughter's mysterious conduct.
Henrich was, in short, barely forgiven as an offender, was insulted
by the offer of a pecuniary reward for his services, and, if not denied
the hospitalities of the castle, they were tendered in a way which
rendered their rejection necessary to his self-respect. He departed,
as he came, with the Lynx, more cold and stately than the man
whose presence he left, and scathing, with the legible scorn of his
face and air, a heart which scorn alone could scathe.
He did not see Blanche: she knew not of his presence, and heard
what had taken place; and it was in vain that either herself or
Emily sought to gain speech with the incensed baron on the subject.
She learned, however, through Myrtle's agency, that Henrich had
taken up his abode with the Lynx, and rejoicing in the security which
the attachment of the faithful chief afforded him, she still indulged
the hope that some returning sense of justice would yet actuate her
father's conduct towards him. She did not, indeed, anticipate a
change which could ever favor Henrich's claims as her suitor, but at
the same time she remained comparatively free from any serious
apprehensions of a compulsory union to another. The plot, however,
was thickening around her, the mesh was entangling her steps, the
more securely, because unsuspected.
| CHAPTER XXIX. The King of the Hurons | |