The Translation of a Savage, Volume 2.
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Gilbert Parker >> The Translation of a Savage, Volume 2.
Lady Haldwell, in spite of herself, chafed. There was a subtlety in the
woman before her not to be reckoned with lightly.
"And if an enemy?" she said, smiling.
A strange smile also flickered across Mrs. Armour's face as she said:
"If an enemy of my husband called, and was penitent, I should--offer her
tea, no doubt."
"That is, in this country; but in your own country, which, I believe, is
different, what would you do?" Mrs. Armour looked steadily and coldly
into her visitor's eyes.
"In my country enemies do not compel us to be polite."
"By calling on you?" Lady Haldwell was growing a little reckless. "But
then, that is a savage country. We are different here. I suppose,
however, your husband told you of these things, so that you were not
surprised. And when does he come? His stay is protracted. Let me see,
how long is it? Ah yes, near four years." Here she became altogether
reckless, which she regretted afterwards, for she knew, after all, what
was due herself. "He will comeback, I suppose?"
Lady Haldwell was no coward, else she had hesitated before speaking in
that way before this woman, in whose blood was the wildness of the
heroical North. Perhaps she guessed the passion in Lali's breast,
perhaps not. In any case she would have said what she listed at the
moment.
Wild as were the passions in Lali's breast, she thought on the instant of
her child, of what Richard Armour would say; for he had often talked to
her about not showing her emotions and passions, had told her that
violence of all kinds was not wise or proper. Her fingers ached to grasp
this beautiful, exasperating woman by the throat. But after an effort at
calmness she remained still and silent, looking at her visitor with a
scornful dignity. Lady Haldwell presently rose,--she could not endure
the furnace of that look,--and said good-bye. She turned towards the
door. Mrs. Armour remained immovable. At that instant, however, some
one stepped from behind a large screen just inside the door. It was
Richard Armour. He was pale, and on his face was a sternness the like
of which this and perhaps only one other woman had ever seen on him. He
interrupted her.
"Lady Haldwell has a fine talent for irony," he said, "but she does not
always use it wisely. In a man it would bear another name, and from a
man it would be differently received." He came close to her. "You are a
brave woman," he said, "or you would have been more careful. Of course
you knew that my mother and sister were not at home?"
She smiled languidly. "And why 'of course'?"
"I do not know that; only I know that I think so; and I also think that
my brother Frank's worst misfortune did not occur when Miss Julia
Sherwood trafficked without compunction in his happiness."
"Don't be oracular, my dear Richard Armour," she replied. "You are
trying, really. This seems almost melodramatic; and melodrama is bad
enough at Drury Lane."
"You are not a good friend even to yourself," he answered.
"What a discoverer you are! And how much in earnest! Do come back to
the world, Mr. Armour; you would be a relief, a new sensation."
"I fancy I shall come back, if only to see the 'engineer hoist with his
own'--torpedo."
He paused before the last word to give it point, for her husband's father
had made his money out of torpedoes. She felt the sting in spite of
herself, and she saw the point.
"And then we will talk it over at the end of the season," he added, "and
compare notes. Good-afternoon."
"You stake much on your hazard," she said, glancing back at Lali, who
still stood immovable. "Au revoir!" She left the room. Richard heard
the door close after her and the servant retire. Then he turned to Lali.
As he did so, she ran forward to him with a cry. "Oh, Richard, Richard!"
she exclaimed, with a sob, threw her arms over his shoulder, and let her
forehead drop on his breast. Then came a sudden impulse in his blood.
Long after he shuddered when he remembered what he thought at that
instant; what he wished to do; what rich madness possessed him. He knew
now why he had come to town; he also knew why he must not stay, or, if
staying, what must be his course.
He took her gently by the arm and led her to a chair, speaking cheerily
to her. Then he sat down beside her, and all at once again, her face wet
and burning, she flung herself forward on her knees beside him, and clung
to him.
"Oh, Richard, I am glad you have come," she said. "I would have killed
her if I had not thought of you. I want you to stay; I am always better
when you are with me. I have missed you, and I know that baby misses you
too."
He had his cue. He rose, trembling a little. "Come, come," he said
heartily, "it's all right, it's all right-my sister. Let us go and see
the youngster. There, dry your eyes, and forget all about that woman.
She is only envious of you. Come, for his imperial highness!"
She was in a tumult of feeling. It was seldom that she had shown emotion
in the past two years, and it was the more ample when it did break forth.
But she dried her eyes, and together they went to the nursery. She
dismissed the nurse and they were left alone by the sleeping child. She
knelt at the head of the little cot, and touched the child's forehead
with her lips. He stooped down also beside it.
"He's a grand little fellow," he said. "Lali," he continued presently,
"it is time Frank came home. I am going to write for him. If he does
not come at once, I shall go and fetch him."
"Never! never!" Her eyes flashed angrily. "Promise that you will not.
Let him come when he is ready.
"He does not, care." She shuddered a little.
"But he will care when he comes, and you--you care for him, Lali?"
Again she shuddered, and a whiteness ran under the hot excitement of her
cheeks. She said nothing, but looked up at him, then dropped her face in
her hands.
"You do care for him, Lali," he said earnestly, almost solemnly, his lips
twitching slightly. "You must care for him; it is his right; and he
will--I swear to you I know he will--care for you."
In his own mind there was another thought, a hard, strange thought; and
it had to do with the possibility of his brother not caring for this
wife.
Still she did not speak.
"To a good woman, with a good husband," he continued, "there is no one--
there should be no one--like the father of her child. And no woman ever
loved her child more than you do yours." He knew that this was special
pleading.
She trembled, and then dropped her cheek beside the child's. "I want
Frank to be happy," he went on; "there is no one I care more for than
for Frank."
She lifted her face to him now, in it a strange light. Then her look ran
to confusion, and she seemed to read all that he meant to convey. He
knew she did. He touched her shoulder.
"You must do the best you can every way, for Frank's sake, for all our
sakes. I will help you--God knows I will--all I can."
"Ah, yes, yes," she whispered, from the child's pillow.
He could see the flame in her cheek. "I understand." She put out her
hand to him, but did not look up. "Leave me alone with my baby,
Richard," she pleaded.
He took her hand and pressed it again and again in his old, unconscious
way. Then he let it go, and went slowly to the door. There he turned
and looked back at her. He mastered the hot thought in him. "God help
me!" she murmured from the cot. The next morning Richard went back to
Greyhope.
CHAPTER VII
A COURT-MARTIAL
It was hard to tell, save for a certain deliberateness of speech and a
colour a little more pronounced than that of a Spanish woman, that Mrs.
Frank Armour had not been brought up in England. She had a kind of grave
sweetness and distant charm which made her notable at any table or in
any ballroom. Indeed, it soon became apparent that she was to be the
pleasant talk, the interest of the season. This was tolerably comforting
to the Armours. Again Richard's prophecy had been fulfilled, and as he
sat alone at Greyhope and read the Morning Post, noticing Lali's name
at distinguished gatherings, or, picking up the World, saw how the lion-
hunters talked extravagantly of her, he took some satisfaction to himself
that he had foreseen her triumph where others looked for her downfall.
Lali herself was not elated; it gratified her, but she had been an angel,
and a very unsatisfactory one, if it had not done so. As her confidence
grew (though outwardly she had never appeared to lack it greatly), she
did not hesitate to speak of herself as an Indian, her country as a good
country, and her people as a noble if dispossessed race; all the more so
if she thought reference to her nationality and past was being rather
conspicuously avoided. She had asked General Armour for an interview
with her husband's solicitor. This was granted. When she met the
solicitor, she asked him to send no newspaper to her husband containing
any reference to herself, nor yet to mention her in his letters.
She had never directly received a line from him but once, and that was
after she had come to know the truth about his marriage with her. She
could read in the conventional sentences, made simple as for a child,
the strained politeness, and his absolute silence as to whether or not
a child had been born to them, the utter absence of affection for her.
She had also induced General Armour and his wife to give her husband's
solicitor no information regarding the birth of the child. There was
thus apparently no more inducement for him to hurry back to England than
there was when he had sent her off on his mission of retaliation, which
had been such an ignominious failure. For the humiliation of his family
had been short-lived, the affront to Lady Haldwell nothing at all. The
Armours had not been human if they had failed to enjoy their daughter-in
-law's success. Although they never, perhaps, would quite recover the
disappointment concerning Lady Agnes Martling, the result was so much
better than they in their cheerfulest moments dared hope for, that they
appeared genuinely content.
To their grandchild they were devotedly attached. Marion was his
faithful slave and admirer, so much so that Captain Vidall, who now and
then was permitted to see the child, declared himself jealous. He and
Marion were to be married soon. The wedding had been delayed owing to
his enforced absence abroad. Mrs. Edward Lambert, once Mrs. Townley,
shyly regretted in Lali's presence that the child, or one as sweet,
was not hers. Her husband evidently shared her opinion, from the
extraordinary notice he took of it when his wife was not present. Not
that Richard Joseph Armour, Jun., was always en evidence, but when asked
for by his faithful friends and admirers he was amiably produced.
Meanwhile, Frank Armour across the sea was engaged with many things.
His business concerns had not prospered prodigiously, chiefly because his
judgment, like his temper, had grown somewhat uncertain. His popularity
in the Hudson's Bay country had been at some tension since he had shipped
his wife away to England. Even the ordinary savage mind saw something
unusual and undomestic in it, and the general hospitality declined a
little. Armour did not immediately guess the cause; but one day, about a
year after his wife had gone, he found occasion to reprove a half-breed,
by name Jacques Pontiac; and Jacques, with more honesty than politeness,
said some hard words, and asked how much he paid for his English hired
devils to kill his wife. Strange to say, he did not resent this
startling remark. It set him thinking. He began to blame himself for
not having written oftener to his people--and to his wife. He wondered
how far his revenge had succeeded. He was most ashamed of it now. He
knew that he had done a dishonourable thing. The more he thought upon
it the more angry with himself he became. Yet he dreaded to go back to
England and face it all: the reproach of his people; the amusement of
society; his wife herself. He never attempted to picture her as a
civilised being. He scarcely knew her when he married her. She knew
him much better, for primitive people are quicker in the play of their
passions, and she had come to love him before he had begun to notice
her at all.
Presently he ate his heart out with mortification. To be yoked for ever
to--a savage! It was horrible. And their children? It was strange he
had not thought of that before. Children? He shrugged his shoulders.
There might possibly be a child, but children--never! But he doubted
even regarding a child, for no word had come to him concerning that
possibility. He was even most puzzled at the tone and substance of their
letters. From the beginning there had been no reproaches, no excitement,
no railing, but studied kindness and conventional statements, through
which Mrs. Armour's solicitous affection scarcely ever peeped. He had
shot his bolt, and got--consideration, almost imperturbability. They
appeared to treat the matter as though he were a wild youth who would not
yet mend his ways. He read over their infrequent letters to him; his to
them had been still more infrequent. In one there was the statement that
"she was progressing favourably with her English"; in another, that "she
was riding a good deal"; again, that "she appeared anxious to adapt
herself to her new life."
At all these he whistled a little to himself, and smiled bitterly. Then,
all at once, he got up and straightway burned them all. He again tried
to put the matter behind him for the present, knowing that he must face
it one day, and staving off its reality as long as possible. He did his
utmost to be philosophical and say his quid refert, but it was easier
tried than done; for Jacques Pontiac's words kept rankling in his mind,
and he found himself carrying round a vague load, which made him
abstracted occasionally, and often a little reckless in action and
speech. In hunting bear and moose he had proved himself more daring than
the oldest hunter, and proportionately successful. He paid his servants
well, but was sharp with them.
He made long, hard expeditions, defying the weather as the hardiest of
prairie and mountain men mostly hesitate to defy it; he bought up much
land, then, dissatisfied, sold it again at a loss, but subsequently made
final arrangements for establishing a very large farm. When he once
became actually interested in this he shook off something of his
moodiness and settled himself to develop the thing. He had good talent
for initiative and administration, and at last, in the time when his wife
was a feature of the London season, he found his scheme in working order,
and the necessity of going to England was forced upon him.
Actually he wished that the absolute necessity had presented itself
before. There was always the moral necessity, of course--but then!
Here now was a business need; and he must go. Yet he did not fix a day
or make definite arrangements. He could hardly have believed himself
such a coward. With liberal emphasis he called himself a sneak, and one
day at Fort Charles sat down to write to his solicitor in Montreal to say
that he would come on at once. Still he hesitated. As he sat there
thinking, Eye-of-the-Moon, his father-in-law, opened the door quietly and
entered. He had avoided the chief ever since he had come back to Fort
Charles, and practically had not spoken to him for a year. Armour
flushed slightly with annoyance. But presently, with a touch of his old
humour, he rose, held out his hand, and said ironically: "Well, father-
in-law, it's about time we had a big talk, isn't it? We're not very
intimate for such close relatives."
The old Indian did not fully understand the meaning or the tone of
Armour's speech, but he said "How!" and, reaching out his hand for the
pipe offered him, lighted it, and sat down, smoking in silence. Armour
waited; but, seeing that the other was not yet moved to talk, he turned
to his letter again. After a time, Eye-of-the-Moon said gravely, getting
to his feet: "Brother!"
Armour looked up, then rose also. The Indian bowed to him courteously,
then sat down again. Armour threw a leg over a corner of the table and
waited.
"Brother," said the Indian presently, "you are of the great race that
conquers us. You come and take our land and our game, and we at last
have to beg of you for food and shelter. Then you take our daughters,
and we know not where they go. They are gone like the down from the
thistle. We see them not, but you remain. And men say evil things.
There are bad words abroad. Brother, what have you done with my
daughter?"
Had the Indian come and stormed, begged money of him, sponged on him,
or abused him, he had taken it very calmly--he would, in fact, have been
superior. But there was dignity in the chief's manner; there was
solemnity in his speech; his voice conveyed resoluteness and earnestness,
which the stoic calm of his face might not have suggested; and Armour
felt that he had no advantage at all. Besides, Armour had a conscience,
though he had played some rare tricks with it of late, and it needed more
hardihood than he possessed to face this old man down. And why face him
down? Lali was his daughter, blood of his blood, the chieftainess of one
branch of his people, honoured at least among these poor savages, and the
old man had a right to ask, as asked another more famous, "Where is my
daughter?"
His hands in his pockets, Armour sat silent for a minute, eyeing his
boot, as he swung his leg to and fro. Presently he said: "Eye-of-the-
Moon, I don't think I can talk as poetically as you, even in my own
language, and I shall not try. But I should like to ask you this:
Do you believe any harm has come to your daughter--to my wife?"
The old Indian forgot to blow the tobacco-smoke from his mouth, and, as
he sat debating, lips slightly apart, it came leaking out in little
trailing clouds and gave a strange appearance to his iron-featured face.
He looked steadily at Armour, and said: "You are of those who rule in
your land,"--here Armour protested, "you have much gold to buy and sell.
I am a chief, "he drew himself up,--"I am poor: we speak with the
straight tongue; it is cowards who lie. Speak deep as from the heart,
my brother, and tell me where my daughter is."
Armour could not but respect the chief for the way this request was put,
but still it galled him to think that he was under suspicion of having
done any bodily injury to his wife, so he quietly persisted: "Do you
think I have done Lali any harm?"
"The thing is strange," replied the other. "You are of those who are
great among your people. You married a daughter of a red man. Then she
was yours for less than one moon, and you sent her far away, and you
stayed. Her father was as a dog in your sight. Do men whose hearts
are clear act so? They have said strange things of you. I have not
believed; but it is good I know all, that I may say to the tale-bearers,
'You have crooked tongues.'"
Armour sat for a moment longer, his face turned to the open window. He
was perfectly still, but he had become grave. He was about to reply to
the chief, when the trader entered the room hurriedly with a newspaper in
his hand. He paused abruptly when he saw Eye-of-the-Moon. Armour felt
that the trader had something important to communicate. He guessed it
was in the paper. He mutely held out his hand for it. The trader handed
it to him hesitatingly, at the same time pointing to a paragraph, and
saying: "It is nearly two years old, as you see. I chanced upon it by
accident to-day."
It was a copy of a London evening paper, containing a somewhat
sensational account of Lali's accident. It said that she was in a
critical condition. This time Armour did not ask for brandy, but the
trader put it out beside him. He shook his head. "Gordon," he said
presently, "I shall leave here in the morning. Please send my men to
me."
The trader whispered to him: "She was all right, of course, long ago, Mr.
Armour, or you would have heard."
Armour looked at the date of the paper. He had several letters from
England of a later date, and these said nothing of her illness. It
bewildered him, made him uneasy. Perhaps the first real sense of his
duty as a husband came home to him there. For the first time he was
anxious about the woman for her own sake. The trader had left the room.
"What a scoundrel I've been!" said Armour between his teeth, oblivious,
for the moment, of Eye-of-the-Moon's presence. Presently, bethinking
himself, he turned to the Indian. "I've been debating," he said. "Eye-
of-the-Moon, my wife is in England, at my father's home. I am going to
her. Men have lied in thinking I would do her any injury, but--but--
never mind, the harm was of another kind. It isn't wise for a white man
and an Indian to marry, but when they are married--well, they must live
as man and wife should live, and, as I said, I am going to my wife."
To say all this to a common Indian, whose only property was a dozen
ponies and a couple of tepees, required something very like moral
courage; but then Armour had not been exercising moral courage during
the last year or so, and its exercise was profitable to him. The next
morning he was on his way to Montreal, and Eye-of-the-Moon was the
richest chief in British North America, at that moment, by five thousand
dollars or so.
CHAPTER VIII
TO EVERY MAN HIS HOUR
It was the close of the season: many people had left town, but
festivities were still on. To a stranger the season might have seemed
at its height. The Armours were giving a large party in Cavendish Square
before going back again to Greyhope, where, for the sake of Lali and
her child, they intended to remain during the rest of the summer,
in preference to going on the Continent or to Scotland. The only
unsatisfactory feature of Lali's season was the absence of her husband.
Naturally there were those who said strange things regarding Frank
Armour's stay in America; but it was pretty generally known that he was
engaged in land speculations, and his club friends, who perhaps took the
pleasantest view of the matter, said that he was very wise indeed, if a
little cowardly, in staying abroad until his wife was educated and ready
to take her position in society. There was one thing on which they were
all agreed: Mrs. Frank Armour either had a mind superior to the charms
of their sex, or was incapable of that vanity which hath many suitors,
and says: "So far shalt thou go, and--" The fact is, Mrs. Frank Armour's
mind was superior. She had only one object--to triumph over her husband
grandly, as a woman righteously might. She had vanity, of course, but it
was not ignoble. She kept one thing in view; she lived for it.
Her translation had been successful. There were times when she
remembered her father, the wild days on the prairies, the buffalo-hunt,
tracking the deer, tribal battles, the long silent hours of the winter,
and the warm summer nights when she slept in the prairie grass or camped
with her people in the trough of a great landwave. Sometimes the hunger
for its freedom, and its idleness, and its sport, came to her greatly;
but she thought of her child, and she put it from her. She was ambitious
for him; she was keen to prove her worth as a wife against her husband's
unworthiness. This perhaps saved her. She might have lost had her life
been without this motive.
The very morning of this notable reception, General Armour had received
a note from Frank Armour's solicitor, saying that his son was likely to
arrive in London from America that day or the next. Frank had written to
his people no word of his coming; to his wife, as we have said, he had
not written for months; and before he started back he would not write,
because he wished to make what amends he could in person. He expected to
find her improved, of course, but still he could only think of her as an
Indian, showing her common prairie origin. His knowledge of her before
their marriage had been particularly brief; she was little more in his
eyes than a thousand other Indian women, save that she was better-
looking, was whiter than most, and had finer features. He could not very
clearly remember the tones of her voice, because after marriage, and
before he had sent her to England, he had seen little or nothing of her.
When General Armour received the news of Frank's return he told his wife
and Marion, and they consulted together whether it were good to let Lali
know at once. He might arrive that evening. If so, the position would
be awkward, because it was impossible to tell how it might affect her.
If they did tell her, and Frank happened not to arrive, it might unnerve
her so as to make her appearance in the evening doubtful. Richard, the
wiseacre, the inexhaustible Richard, was caring for his cottagers and
cutting the leaves of new books--his chiefest pleasure--at Greyhope.
They felt it was a matter they ought to be able to decide for themselves,
but still it was the last evening of Lali's stay in town, and they did
not care to take any risk. Strange to say, they had come to take pride
in their son's wife; for even General and Mrs. Armour, high-minded and
of serene social status as they were, seemed not quite insensible to the
pleasure of being an axle on which a system of social notoriety revolved.