The World's Greatest Books - Volume 2 Part 45
I cannot explain this vision. I only saw it when I held Pauline's hand.
When I let her hand drop the scene vanished. You may call it cataleptic, clairvoyant, anything you will; it was as I relate.
_IV.--Seeking the Truth in Siberia_
Macari called on me the day after this strange scene to ask me about the memorial to Victor Emanuel.
"Before I consent to help you," I said, "I must know why you murdered a man three years ago in a house in Horace Street."
He sprang to his feet and grasping my arm, looked intently into my eyes.
I saw that he recognised me in spite of the great change that blindness makes in a face.
"Why should I deny the affair to an eye-witness? To others I would deny it fast enough. Now, my fine fellow, my gay bridegroom, my dear brother-in-law, I will tell you why I killed that man. He had insulted my family. That man was Pauline's lover!"
He saw what was in my face as I rose and walked towards him.
"Not here," he said hastily, "what good can it do here--a vulgar scuffle between two gentlemen?"
"Go," I cried, "murderer and coward. Every word you have spoken to me has been a lie, and because you hate me you have to-day told me the greatest lie of all."
He left me with a look of malicious triumph in his face. I knew he lied, but how could I prove that he lied? Only Ceneri could tell me the truth.
He was in Siberia, and, mad as the scheme seemed, thither I determined to go to get the whole truth from his lips.
I exerted all the influence I possessed. I spent money freely, and with a special pa.s.sport signed by the Czar himself, which placed all the resources of the Russian police at my disposal, I pa.s.sed across Russia into Siberia. At last, after travelling thousands of miles, I came up with the gang of wretched prisoners in which the doctor was. Showing my papers to the officer in command, I was taken at once to the awful prison-house. I had him brought to me in a private room, and placed before him food and drink.
"I want to ask you some questions," I said, "questions which you alone can answer."
"Ask them. You have given me an hour's release from misery. I am grateful."
"The first question I have to ask is--who and what is that man Macari?"
Ceneri sprang to his feet. "A traitor! a traitor!" he cried.
It was Macari who had betrayed him. Macari was no more Anthony March, the brother of Pauline, than I was, and Pauline had never had a lover in the sense in which Macari had used the word.
Pauline was an innocent as an angel. The lie I had come so far to destroy had dissolved. There was one other question I had to ask. Who was the man Macari had killed, and what had he to do with Pauline?
Ceneri's face turned ashen as I asked him the question. It was some moments before he understood that I was the man who had stumbled into the room. Then he told me all.
The murdered man was Anthony March, the brother of Pauline. As he had already confessed, Ceneri had spent all the trust-money of which he was guardian for Pauline and her brother, in the cause of Italian freedom.
When the young man grew up, the time drew near when Ceneri must explain all and take the consequences. The evil day was delayed by providing him with money. That money ran out. Ceneri and the two other men, fearful of the consequences to all of them, decided upon a plan to silence Anthony.
He was to be lured to the house in Horace Street, and to leave it as a lunatic in charge of a doctor and keepers. But Macari ruined the plot.
He was in love with Pauline, and Anthony had spoken contemptuously of such a match for his sister. A few insolent words at the house in Horace Street, and the pa.s.sionate Italian's knife had found its way into the young man's heart. It was Ceneri who had saved my life when I stumbled upon the scene. The third sharer in the tragedy, who had drowned Pauline's shrieks in a sofa cushion, had since died raving mad in a cell. That was the story.
I hastened back to England, leaving money behind me to provide a few comforts for the unfortunate prisoner. I went direct to the little village where Pauline was staying with Priscilla. I could see that she remembered me but as a person in a dream. I had to woo her now. Of our marriage she seemed to have forgotten everything. Though all the old apathy had disappeared, and her mind had once more awakened in her beautiful body, she did not remember that. I despaired at last of winning her, and I determined to bid her good-bye forever. As I sat in the woods with her for the last time, gloom in my heart, I fell into a doze. I was awakened by kisses on my cheeks. I sprang to my feet. In front of me stood Pauline, and looking into her eyes, I saw that she loved me.
She had realised on my first return that I was her husband, but had determined to find out if I loved her. As I said nothing, so she too had remained silent.
"Gilbert," she said, "I have wept, but now I smile. The past is pa.s.sed.
Let the love I bore my brother be buried in the greater love I give my husband. Let us turn our backs on the dark shadows and begin our lives."
Have I more to tell--one thing only. We went to Paris for our real honeymoon. The great war was over, and the Commune had just ended. In the company of a friend I saw some Communists led out to be shot, and among their faces I recognised Macari.
FENIMORE COOPER
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper, born in New Jersey on September 15, 1789, was a hot-headed controversialist of Quaker descent, who, after a restless youth, partly spent at sea, became the earliest conspicuous American novelist. Apart from fiction, Cooper's princ.i.p.al subject was American naval history. Though he made many enemies and lived in turmoil, the novelist had a strain of n.o.bility in his character that is reflected throughout his formal but manly narratives. Love interest rarely rises in his stories beyond a mechanical sentimentality; it is the descriptions of adventure that attract. Nowhere are Fenimore Cooper's vivid powers of description more apparent than in "The Last of the Mohicans,"
the second in order of the Leatherstocking tales. In the first of the series, "The Pioneers," the Leatherstocking is represented as already past the prime of life, and is gradually being driven out of his beloved forests by the axe and the smoke of the white settler. "The Last of the Mohicans"
takes the reader back before this period, to a time when the red man was in his vigour, and was a power to be reckoned with in the east of America. The third of the famous tales is "The Prairie," in which Cooper's picturesque hero is laid in his grave. Despite this, the author resuscitates him in the two remaining volumes--"The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer." Of these five novels, and, as a matter of fact, of all Cooper's works, "The Last of the Mohicans" is regarded as the masterpiece. In it are to be found all the author's virtues, and few of his faults. It is certainly the most popular, having been translated into several languages. It was first published in 1826. Cooper died at Cooperstown, the family locality, on September 14. 1851.
_I.--Betrayed by the Redskin_
It was the third year of the war between France and England in North America. At Fort Edward, where General Webb lay with five thousand men, the startling news had just been received that the French general, Montcalm, was moving up the Champlain Lake with an army "numerous as the leaves on the trees," with the forest fastness of Fort William Henry as his object.
Fort William Henry was held by the veteran Scotchman, Munro, at the head of a regiment of regulars and a few provincials. As this force was utterly inadequate to stem Montcalm's advance, General Webb at once sent fifteen hundred men to strengthen the position. While the camp was in a state of bustle consequent on the departure of this relieving force, Captain Duncan Hayward detached himself from the throng, and conducting two ladies, the daughters of Munro, Alice and Cora, to their horses, mounted another steed himself. It was his welcome duty to see that the ladies reached Fort William Henry in safety. In order that they might make the journey the more expeditiously, they had obtained the services of a famous Indian runner, known by the name of Le Renard Subtil, whose native appellation was Magua.
The party had but five leagues to traverse, and Magua had undertaken to lead them a short way through the forest. The girls hesitated as they reached the point where they left the military road and had to take to a narrow and blind path amidst the dense trees and undergrowth. The terrifying aspect of the guide and the loneliness of the route filled them with alarm.
"Here, then, lies our way," said Duncan in a low voice. "Manifest no distrust, or you may invite the danger you appear to apprehend."
Taking this hint, the girls whipped up their horses and followed the runner along the dark and tangled pathway. They had not gone far when they heard the sounds of a horse's hoofs behind them, and presently there dashed up to their side a singular-looking person, with extraordinary long thin legs, an emaciated body, and an enormous head.
The grotesqueness of his figure was enhanced by a sky-blue coat and a soiled vest of embossed silk embroidered with tarnished silver lace.
Coming up with the party, he declared his intention of accompanying them to Fort William Henry. Refusing to listen to any objection, he took from his vest a curious musical instrument, and, placing it to his mouth, drew from it a high, shrill sound. This done, he began singing in full and melodious tones one of the New England versions of the Psalms.
Magua whispered something to Heyward, and the latter turned impatiently to David Gamut--such was the singer's name--and requested him in the name of common prudence to postpone his chant until a safer opportunity.
The Indian allies of Montcalm, it was known, swarmed in the forest, and the object of the party was to move forward as quietly as possible.
As the cavalcade pressed deeper into the wild thicket, a savage face peered out at them from between the bushes. A gleam of exultation shot across his darkly painted lineaments as he watched his victims walking unconsciously into the trap which Magua had prepared.
_II.--In the Nick of Time_
Within an hour's journey of Fort Edward two men were lingering on the banks of a small stream. One of them was a magnificent specimen of an Indian--almost naked, with a terrific emblem of death painted upon his chest. The other was a European, with the quick, roving eye, sun-tanned cheeks, and rough dress of a hunter.
"Listen, Hawk-eye," said the Indian, addressing his companion, "and I will tell you what my fathers have said, and what the Mohicans have done. We came and made this land ours, and drove the Maquas who followed us, into the woods with the bears. Then came the Dutch, and gave my people the fire-water. They drank until the heavens and the earth seemed to meet. Then they parted with their land, and now I, that am a chief and a Sagamore, have never seen the sun shine but through the trees, and have never visited the graves of my fathers. When Uncas, my son, dies, there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores. My boy is the last of the Mohicans."
"Uncas is here," said another voice, in the same soft, guttural tones.
"Who speaks to Uncas?" At the next instant a youthful warrior pa.s.sed between them with a noiseless tread, and seated himself by the side of his father, Chingachgook. "I have been on the trail of the Maquas, who lie hid like cowards," continued Uncas.