The Trespasser | Page 3

the grand
homme to little Jacques Brillon." Jacques was tired and testy.
The other laid his whip softly on the half-breed's shoulder.
"See, my peacock: none of that. You're a spanking good servant, but
you're in a country where it's knuckle down man to master; and what
they do here you've got to do, or quit--go back to your pea-soup and
caribou. That's as true as God's in heaven, little Brillon. We're not on
the buffalo trail now. You understand?"

Jacques nodded.
"Hadn't you better say it?"
The warning voice drew up the half-breed's face swiftly, and he replied:
"I am to do what you please."
"Exactly. You've been with me six years--ever since I turned Bear
Eye's moccasins to the sun; and for that you swore you'd never leave
me. Did it on a string of holy beads, didn't you, Frenchman?"
"I do it again."
He drew out a rosary, and disregarding Belward's outstretched hand,
said:
"By the Mother of God, I will never leave you!" There was a kind of
wondering triumph in Belward's eyes, though he had at first shrunk
from Jacques's action, and a puzzling smile came.
"Wherever I go, or whatever I do?"
"Whatever you do, or wherever you go."
He put the rosary to his lips, and made the sign of the cross.
His master looked at him curiously, intently. Here was a vain, naturally
indolent half-breed, whose life had made for selfishness and
independence, giving his neck willingly to a man's heel, serving with
blind reverence, under a voluntary vow.
"Well, it's like this, Jacques," Belward said presently; "I want you, and
I'm not going to say that you'll have a better time than you did in the
North, or on the Slope; but if you'd rather be with me than not, you'll
find that I'll interest you. There's a bond between us, anyway. You're
half French, and I'm one-fourth French, and more. You're half Indian,
and I'm one-fourth Indian--no more. That's enough. So far, I haven't
much advantage. But I'm one-half English--King's English, for there's

been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there's the
royal difference. That's where I get my brains--and manners."
"Where did you get the other?!" asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively.
"Money?"
"Not money--the other."
Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously. A laugh came
back on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a
feeling of awe. They were apart for a long time, then came together
again, and rode for miles without a word. At last Belward, glancing at a
sign-post before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--"The Whisk o'
Barley,"--and drew rein. He regarded the place curiously for a minute.
The landlord came out. Belward had some beer brought.
A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away. He touched his horse
with a heel. Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question
of the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a
kind of cross-examination. Presently he dismounted.
As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people, a
coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past. He lifted
his eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings
away from Northumberland Avenue of a morning. He was not idle,
however; but he had not come to England to show surprise at anything.
As the coach passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the
horse, keen, dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by
the uncommon horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes. Not
he alone, but Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the
minds of both, and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a
corner and was gone.
The landlord was at Belward's elbow.
"The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court. That's Maister

Ian Belward, sir."
Gaston Belward's eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his
face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse's mane, and
put a foot in the stirrup.
"Who is 'Maister Ian'?"
"Maister Ian be Sir William's eldest, sir. On'y one that's left, sir. On'y
three to start wi': and one be killed i' battle, and one had trouble wi' his
faither and Maister Ian; and he went away and never was heard on
again, sir. That's the end on him."
"Oh, that's the end on him, eh, landlord? And how long ago was that?"
"Becky, lass," called the landlord within the door, "wheniver was it
Maister Robert turned his back on the Court--iver so while ago? Eh, a
fine lad that Maister Robert as iver I see!"
Fat laborious Becky hobbled out, holding an apple and