The Hidden Children

When we rose on tiptoe, I thought she was asleep, but Lois was not certain; and as we crept out onto the rifle-platform and seated ourselves in a sheltered corner under the parapet, she said uneasily:

"Lanette is a strange maid, Euan. At first I knew she disliked me. Then, of a sudden, one day she came to me and clung like a child afraid. And we loved from that minute.... It is strange."

"Is she ill?"

"In mind, I think."

"Why?"

"I do not know, Euan."

"Is it love, think you—her disorder?"

"I do not know, I tell you. Once I thought it was—that. But knew not how to be certain."

"Does Boyd still court her?"

"No—I do not know," she said with a troubled look.

"Is it that affair which makes her unhappy?"

"I thought so once. They were ever together. Then she avoided him—or seemed to. It was Betty Bleecker who interfered between them. For Mrs. Bleecker was very wrathful, Euan, and Lana's indiscretions madded her.... There was a scene.... So Boyd came no more, save when other officers came, which was every day. Somehow I have never been certain that he and Lana did not meet in secret when none suspected."

"Have you proof?" I asked, cold with rage.

She shook her head, and her gaze grew vague and remote. After a while she seemed to put away her apprehensions, and, smiling, she turned to me, challenging me with her clear, sunny eyes:

"Come, Euan, you shall do me reason, now that my curly pate is innocent of powder, no French red to tint my lips and hide my freckles, and but a linsey-woolsey gown instead of chintz and silk to cover me! So tell me honestly, does not the enchantment break that for a little while seemed to hold you near me?"

"Do you forget," said I, "that I first saw my enchantress in rags and tattered shoon?"

"Oh!" she said, tossing her pretty head. "Extremes attract all men. But now in this sober and common guise of every day, I am neither Cinderella nor yet the Princess—merely a frowsy, rustic, freckled maid with a mouth somewhat too large for beauty, and the clipped and curly poll of a careless boy. And I desire to know, once for all, how I now suit you, Euan."

"You are perfection—once for all."

"I? What obstinate foolishness you utter! In all seriousness—"

"You are—more beautiful than ever—in all seriousness!"

"What folly!" She began to laugh nervously, then shrugged her shoulders, adding: "This young man is plainly partizan and deaf to reason."

"Being in love."

"You! In love! What nonsense!"

"Do you doubt it?"

"Oh!" she said carelessly. "You are in love with love—as all men are—and not particularly in love with me. Men, my dear Euan, are gamblers. When first you saw me in tatters, you laid a wager with yourself that I'd please you in silks. A gay hazard! A sporting wager! And straight you dressed me up to suit you; and being a man, and therefore conceited, you could scarcely admit that you had lost your wager to your better senses. Could you? But now you shall admit that in this frowsy, woollen gown the magic of both Cinderella and the Princess vanishes with yesterday's enchantment, and, instead of Chloe, pink and simpering, only a sturdy comrade stands revealed who now, as guerdon for the future, strikes hands with you—like this! Koue!" And with the clear and joyous cry on her lips she struck my palm violently with hers, nor winced under my quick-closing grip.

"Is all now clear and plain between us, Euan?" she inquired. And it seemed to me that her eagerness and fervour rang false.

"You can not love me, then?" I asked in a low voice.

"I? What has love to do with us—here in the woods—and I without knowledge and experience–"

"You do not love me, then?"

"I can not."

"Why?"

She made no answer, but bit her lip.

"You need not reply," said I. "Yet—that night I left Otsego—and when I passed you in the dark—I thought–"

"My heart was full that night! What comrade could feel less and still possess a human heart?" she said almost sullenly.

"Your letter—and mine—encouraged me to believe–"

"I know," she said, with the curt and almost breathless impatience of haste, "but have I ever denied our bond of intimacy, Euan? Closer bond have I with no man. But it must be a comrade's bond between us.... I meant to make that plain to you—and doubtless, my heart being full—and I but a girl—conveyed to you—by what I said—and did–"

"Lois! Is it not in you to love me as a woman loves a man?"

"I told you that when the time arrived I would doubtless be what you wish me to be–"

"You can love me, then?"

"How do I know? You perplex and vex me. Who else would I love but you? Who else is there in the world—except my mother?"

There was a silence; then I said:

"Has this passionate quest of her so wholly absorbed and controlled you that all else counts as nothing?"

"Yes, yes! You know it. You knew it at Otsego! Nothing else matters. I will not permit anything else to matter! And, lest you deem me cold, thankless, inhuman, ask of yourself, Euan, why such a lonely girl as I should close her eyes and stop her ears and lock her heart and—and turn her face away when the man—to whom she owes all—to whom she is—utterly devoted—urges her toward emotions—toward matters strange to her—and too profound as yet. So I ask you, for a time, to let what sleeps within us both lie sleeping, undisturbed. There is a love more natural, more imperious, more passionate still; and—it has led me here! And I will not confuse it with any other sentiment; nor share it with any man—not even with you—dear as you have become to me—lonely as I am,—no, not even with you will I share it! For I have vowed that I shall never slake my thirst with love save first in her dear embrace.... After these wistful, stark, and barren years—loveless, weary, naked, and unkind–" Suddenly she covered her face with her hands, bowing her head to her knees.

"Yet you bid me hope, Lois?" I asked under my breath.

She nodded.

"You make me happy beyond words," I whispered.

She looked up from her hands:

"Is that all you required to make you happy?"

"Can I ask more?"

"I—I thought men were more ruthless—more imperious and hotly impatient with the mistress of their hearts—if truly I am mistress of yours, as you tell me."

"I am impatient only for your happiness; ruthless only to secure it."

"For my happiness? Not for your own?"

"How can that come to me save when yours comes to you?"

"Oh!… I did not understand. I had not thought it mattered very greatly to men, so that they found their happiness—so that they found contentment in their sweethearts' yielding.... Then my surrender would mean nothing to you unless I yielded happily?"

"Nothing. Good God! In what school have you learned of love!"

She nodded thoughtfully, looking me in the eyes.

"What you tell me, Euan, is pleasant to think on. It reassures and comforts; nay, it is the sweetest thing you ever said to me—that you could find no happiness in my yielding unless I yield happily.... Why, Euan, that alone would win me—were it time. It clears up much that I have never understood concerning you.... Men have not used me gently.... And then you came.... And I thought you must be like the others, being a man, except that you are the only one to whom I was at all inclined—perhaps because you were from the beginning gentler and more honest with me.... What a way to win a woman's heart! To seek her happiness first of all!… Could you give me to another—if my happiness required it?"

"What else could I do, Lois?"

"Would you do that!" she demanded hotly.

"Have I any choice?"

"Not if your strange creed be sincere. Is it sincere?"

"There is no other creed for those who really love."

"You are wrong," she said angrily, looking at me with tightened lips.

"How wrong?"

"Because—I would not give you to another woman, though you cried out for her till the heavens fell!"

I began to laugh, but her eyes still harboured lightning.

"You should not go to her, whether or not you loved her!" she repeated. "I would not have it. I would not endure it!"

"Yet—if I loved another–"

"No! That is treason! Your happiness should be in me. And if you wavered I would hold you prisoner against your treacherous and very self!"

"How could you hold me?"

"What? Why—why—I–" She sat biting her scarlet lips and thinking, with straight brows deeply knitted, her greyish-purple eyes fixed hard on me. Then a slight colour stained her cheeks, and she looked elsewhere, murmuring: "I do not know how I would hold you prisoner. But I know I should do it, somehow."

"I know it, too," said I, looking at my ring she wore.

She blushed hotly: "It is well that you do, Euan. Death is the dire penalty if my prisoner escapes!" She hesitated, bit her lip, then added faintly: "Death for me, I mean." After a moment she slowly lifted her eyes to mine, and so still and clear were they that it seemed my regard plunged to the very depths of her.

"You do love me then," I said, taking her hand in mine.

Her face paled, and she caught her breath.

"Will you not wait—a little while—before you court me?" she faltered. "Will you not wait because I ask it of you?"

"Yes, I will wait."

"Nor speak of love—until–"

"Nor speak of love until you bid me speak."

"Nor—caress me—nor touch me—nor look in my eyes—this way–" Her hand had melted somehow closely into mine. We both were trembling now; and she withdrew her hand and slowly pressed it close against her heart, gazing at me in a white and childish wonder, as though dumb and reproachful of some wound that I had dealt her. And as I saw her there, so hurt and white and sweet, all quivering under the first swift consciousness of love, I trembled, too, with the fierce desire to take her in my arms and whisper what was raging in my heart of passionate assurance and devotion.

And I said nothing, nor did she. But presently the wild-rose tint crept back into her pale cheeks, and her head dropped, and she sat with eyes remote and vaguely sweet, her hands listless in her lap.

And I, my heart in furious protest, condemned to batter at its walls in a vain summons to the silent lips that should have voiced its every beat, remained mute in futile and impotent adoration of the miracle love had wrought under my very eyes.

Consigned to silence, condemned to patience super-human, I scarce knew how to conduct. And so cruelly the restraint cut and checked me that what with my perplexity, my happiness, and my wretchedness, I was in a plight.

No doubt the spectacle that my features presented—a very playground for my varying emotions—was somewhat startling to a maid so new at love. For, glancing with veiled eyes at me, presently her own eyes flew open wide. And:

"Euan!" she faltered. "Is aught amiss with you? Are you ill, dear lad? And have not told me?"

Whereat I was confused and hot and vexed; and I told her very plainly what it was that ailed me. And now mark! In place of an understanding and sympathy and a nice appreciation of my honourable discomfort, she laughed; and as her cheeks cooled she laughed the more, tossing back her pretty head while her mirth, now uncontrolled, rippled forth till the wild birds, excited, joined in with restless chirping, and a squirrel sprung his elfin rattle overhead.

"And that," said I, furious, "is what I get for deferring to your wishes! I've a mind to kiss you now!"

Breathless, her hands pressed to her breast, she looked at me, and made as though to speak, but laughter seized her and she surrendered to it helplessly.

Whereat I sprang to my feet and marched to the parapet, and she after me, laying her hand on my arm.

"Dear lad—I do not mean unkindness.... But it is all so new to me—and you are so tall a man to pull such funny faces—as though love was a stomach pain–" She swayed, helpless again with laughter, still clinging to my arm.

"If you truly find my features ridiculous–" I began, but her hand instantly closed my lips. I kissed it, however, with angry satisfaction, and she took it away hurriedly.

"Are you ashamed—you great, sulky and hulking boy—to take my harmless pleasantry so uncouthly? And how is this?" says she, stamping her foot. "May I not laugh a little at my lover if I choose? I will have you know, Euan, that I do what pleases me with mine own, and am not to sit in dread of your displeasure if I have a mind to laugh."

"It hurt me that you should make a mockery–"

"I made no mockery! I laughed. And you shall know that one day, please God, I shall laugh at you, plague you, torment you, and–" She looked at me smilingly, hesitating; then in a low voice: "All my caprices you shall endure as in duty bound.... Because your reward shall be—the adoration of one who is at heart—your slave already.... And your desires will ever be her own—are hers already, Euan.... Have I made amends?"

"More fully than–"

"Then be content," she said hastily, "and pull me no more lugubrious faces to fright me. Lord! What a vexing paradox is this young man who sits and glowers and gnaws his lips in the very moment of his victory, while I, his victim, tranquil and happy in defeat, sit calmly telling my thoughts like holy beads to salve my new-born soul. Ai-me! There are many things yet to be learned in this mad world of men."

We leaned over the parapet, shoulder to shoulder, looking down upon the river. The rain had ceased, but the sun gleamed only at intervals, and briefly.

After a moment she turned and looked at me with her beautiful and candid eyes—the most honest eyes I ever looked upon.

"Euan," she said in a quiet voice, "I know how hard it is for us to remain silent in the first flush of what has so sweetly happened to us both. I know how natural it is for you to speak of it and for me to listen. But if I were to listen, now, and when one dear word of yours had followed another, and the next another still; and when our hands had met, and then our lips—alas, dear lad, I had become so wholly yours, and you had so wholly filled my mind and heart that—I do not know, but I deeply fear—something of my virgin resolution might relax. The inflexible will—the undeviating obstinacy with which I have pursued my quest as far as this forest place, might falter, be swerved, perhaps, by this new and other passion—for I am as yet ignorant of its force and possibilities. I would not have it master me until I am free to yield. And that freedom can come happily and honourably to me only when I set my foot in Catharines-town. Do you understand me, Euan?"

"Yes."

"Then—we will not speak of love. Or even let the language of our eyes trouble each other with all we may not say and venture.... You will not kiss me, will you? Before I ask it of you?"

"No."

"Under no provocation? Will you—even if I should ask it?"

"No."

"I will tell you why, Euan. I have promised myself—it is odd, too, for I first thought of it the day I first laid eyes on you. I said to myself that, as God had kept me pure in spite of all—I should wish that the first one ever to touch my lips should be my mother. And I made that vow—having no doubt of keeping it—until I saw you again–"

"When?"

"When you came to me in Westchester before the storm."

"Then!" I exclaimed, amazed.

"Is it not strange, Euan? I know not how it was with me or why, all suddenly, I seemed to know—seemed to catch a sudden glimmer of my destiny—a brief, confusing gleam. And only seemed to fear and hate you—yet, it was not hate or fear, either.... And when I came to you in the rain—there at the stable shed—and when you followed, and gave your ring—such hell and heaven as awakened in my heart you could not fathom—nor could I—nor can I yet understand.... Do you think I loved you even then? Not knowing that I loved you?"

"How could you love me then?"

"God knows.... And afterward, on the rock in the moonlight—as you lay there asleep—oh, I knew not what so moved me to leave you my message and a wild-rose lying there.... It was my destiny—my destiny! I seemed to fathom it.... For when you spoke to me on the parade at the Middle Fort, such a thrill of happiness possessed me–"

"You rebuked and rebuked me, sweeting!"

"Because all my solicitude was for you, and how it might disgrace you."

"I could have knelt there at your ragged feet, in sight of all the fort!"

"Could you truly, Euan?"

"As willingly as I kneel at prayer!"

"How dear and gallant and sweet you are to me–" She broke off in dismay. "Ai-me! Heaven pity us both, for we are saying what should wait to be said, and have talked of love only while vowing not to do so!… Let loose my hand, Euan—that somehow has stolen into yours. Ai-me! This is a very maze I seem to travel in, with every pitfall hiding all I would avoid, and everywhere ambush laid for me.... Listen, dear lad, I am more pitifully at your mercy than I dreamed of. Be faithful to my faithless self that falters. Point out the path from your own strength and compassion.... I—I must find my way to Catharines-town before I can give myself to thoughts of you—to dreams of all that you inspire in me."

"Listen, Lois. This fort is as far as you may go."

"What!"

"Truly, dear maid. It is not alone the perils of an unknown country that must check you here. There is a danger that you know not of—that you never even heard of."

"A danger?"

"Worse. A threat of terrors hellish, inconceivable, terrible beyond words."

"What do you mean? The hatchet? The stake? Dear lad, may I not then venture what you soldiers brave so lightly?"

"It is not what we brave that threatens you!"

"What then?" she asked, startled.

"Dear did you ever learn that you are a 'Hidden Child'?"

"What is that, Euan?"

"Then you do not know?"

She shook her head.

And so I told her; told her also all that we had guessed concerning her; how that her captive mother, terrified by Amochol and his red acolytes, had concealed her, consecrated her, and, somehow, had found a runner to carry her beyond the doors of the Long House to safety.

This runner must have written the Iroquois message which I had read amid the corn-husks of her garret. It was all utterly plain and horrible now, to her and to myself.

As for the moccasins, the same faithful runner must have carried them to her, year after year, and taken back with him to the desolate mother the assurance that her child was living and still undiscovered and unharmed by Amochol.

All this I made plain to her; and I also told her that I, too, was of the Hidden Ones; and made it most clear to her who I really was. And I told her of the Cat-People, and of the Erie, and how the Sorcerer had defied us and boasted that the Hidden Child should yet die strangled upon the altar of Red Amochol.

She was quiet and very pale while I was speaking, and at moments her grey eyes widened with the unearthly horror of the thing; but never a tremour touched her, nor did lid or lips quiver or her gaze falter.

And when I had done she remained silent, looking out over the river at our feet, which was now all crinkling with the sun's bright network through the tracery of leaves.

"There is a danger to you," I said, "which will not cease until this army has left the Red Priest dead amid the sacrilegious ashes of his own vile altar. My Indians have made a vow to leave no Erie, no blasphemous and perverted priest alive. Amochol, the Wyoming Witch, the Toad-Woman—all that accursed spawn of Frontenac must die.

"Major Parr is of the same opinion; Clinton sees the importance of this, having had the sense to learn of Amherst how to stop the Seneca demons with a stout hempen rope. Two Sachems he hung, and the whole nation cowed down in terror of him while his authority remained.

"But Amherst left us; and the yelps of the Toad-Woman aroused the Sorcerers from their torpor. But I swear to you by St. Catharine, who is the saint of the Iroquois also, that the sway of Amochol shall end, and that he shall lie on his own bloody altar, nor die there before he sees the flames of Catharines-town touch the very heaven of an affronted God!"

"Can you do this?"

"With God's help and General Sullivan's," I said cheerfully. "For I daily pray to the One, and I have the promise of the other that before our marching army alarms Catharines-town, I and my Indians and Boyd and his riflemen shall strike the Red Priest there at the Onon-hou-aroria."

"What is that, Euan?"

"Their devil-rites—an honest feast which they have perverted. It was the Dream Feast, Lois, but Amochol has made of it an orgy unspeakable, where human sacrifices are offered to the Moon Witch, Atensi, and to Leshi and the Stone-Throwers, and the Little People—many of which were not goblins and ghouls until Amochol so decreed them."

"When is this feast to be held in Catharines-town?"

"On the last day of this month. Until then you must not leave this camp; and after the army marches you must not go outside this fort. Amochol's arm is long. His acolytes are watching. And now I think you understand at last."

She nodded. Presently she rested her pale cheek on her arms and looked at the reddening edges of the woods. Northwest lay Catharines-town, so Mayaro said. And into the northwest her grey eyes now gazed, calmly and steadily, while the sun went out behind the forest and the high heavens were plumed with fire.

Under us the river ran, all pink and primrose, save where deep, glassy shadows bounded it under either bank. The tips of the trees glowed with rosy flame, faded to ashes, then, burnt out, stood once more dark and serrated against the evening sky.

Suddenly an unearthly cry rang out from somewhere close to the river bank up stream. Instantly a sentry on the parapet near us fired his piece.

"Oh, God! What is it!" faltered Lois, grasping my arm. But I sprang for the ladder and ran down it; and the scattered soldiers and officers below on the parade were already running some grasping their muskets, others drawing pistols and hangers.

We could hear musketry firing ahead, and drums beating to arms in our camp behind us.

"The cattle-guard!" panted an officer at my elbow as we ran up stream along the river-bank. "The Senecas have made their kill again, God curse them!"

It was so. Out of the woods came running our frightened cattle, with the guard plodding heavily on their flanks; and in the rear two of our soldiers urged them on with kicks and blow; two more retreated backward, facing the dusky forest with levelled muskets, and a third staggered beside them, half carrying, half trailing a man whose head hung down crimsoning the leaves as it dragged over them.

He had been smoking a cob pipe when the silent assassin's hatchet struck him, and the pipe now remained clenched between his set teeth. At first, for the dead leaves stuck to him, we could not see that he had been scalped, but when we turned him over the loose and horrible features, all wrinkled where the severed brow-muscles had released the skin, left us in no doubt.

"This man never uttered that abominable cry," I said, shuddering. "Is there yet another missing from the guard?"

"Oh, no, sir," said the soldier who had dragged him. "That there was a heifer bawling when them devils cut her throat."

He stood scratching his head and gazing blankly down at his dead comrade.

"Jesus," he drawled. "What be I a-goin' for to tell his woman now?"

CHAPTER XVI

LANA HELMER

Our Sunday morning gun had scarce been fired when from up the river came the answering thunder of artillery. Thirteen times did the distant cannon bellow their salute, announcing Clinton's advance, our camp swarmed like an excited hive, mounted officers galloping, foot officers running, troops tumbling out as the drums rattled the "general" in every regimental bivouac.

Colonel Proctor's artillery band marched out toward the landing place as I entered No. 2 Block-House and ran up the ladder, and I heard the ford-guard hurrahing and the garrison troops on the unfinished parapets answering them with cheer after cheer.

At my loud rapping on the flooring, Lois opened the trap for me, her lovely, youthful features flushed with excitement; Lana, behind her, beckoned me; and I sprang up into the loft and paid my duty to them both.

"What a noble earthquake of artillery up the river!" said Lois. "Butler has no cannon, has he?"