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Updated: May 1, 2025
They had always loved the English, but Pontiac had compelled them to go to war. Now they were sorry they had obeyed him and longed to be at peace with their English brothers. Gladwin understood their deceit, but as he was in need of winter supplies, readily granted them a truce. The various tribes broke up their camps and separated for the long winter hunt.
But he joined little in the talk, and exercised rather a sobering effect upon us. Once or twice he spoke out. Mention was made of Gissing's Papers of Henry Ryecroft, and Father Payne asked him if he had read it. "Oh no, I couldn't read it, of course," said Gladwin; "I looked into it, and had to put it away. I felt as if I had opened a letter addressed to someone else by mistake!"
The war in which he took so prominent a part is generally called by his name; his is the central figure in the striking drama which was enacted in the Western and Ohio country for two years and a half before peace generally reigned and Canada could be considered secure from Indian attacks. At Detroit, where Major Gladwin was in command, Pontiac hoped to seize the fort by a stratagem.
He thought the hour for talking had passed; the time for action had come. Treachery was his readiest weapon and he used it. He replied that he could consent to no terms unless they were made with the English in person, and asked that Captain Campbell, second in command at the fort, come to a council in his camp. Captain Campbell had no fear, and urged Major Gladwin to permit him to go.
It is now spring; the sun shines bright and hot; the bears, the oaks, the rivers awake from their sleep. Brothers, it is time for the friendship between us to awake. Our chiefs have come to do their part, to renew their pledges of peace and friendship." Here he made a movement with the belt he held in his hand, as if about to turn it over. Every Indian was ready to spring. Gladwin gave a signal.
"So much for Major Gladwin's extreme sense of honor," exclaimed Alfred; "had he detained Pontiac as a prisoner, nothing of this would have happened." "I agree with you, Mr. Alfred," replied Captain Sinclair, "it was letting loose a wolf; but Major Gladwin thought he was doing what was right, and therefore can not be well blamed.
"Like it?" said Gladwin meditatively, "I don't know that I can go as far as that! I like it in your house." Gladwin said very little at dinner. He ate and drank sparingly; and I noticed that he looked at any dish that was offered him with a quick scrutinising glance. He tasted his first glass of wine with the same air of suspense, and then appeared to be relieved from a preoccupation.
Old Schmidt in his monoplane was the next off the crowd howling with mirth as the queer green contrivance scuttled over the ground in a series of spasmodic hops, just like its grasshopper namesake. Then came Gladwin, the novice, and a half dozen others.
"Only it would grieve him still more if Duncan had heard of him," said Father Payne; "there would be a commonness about that!" Then turning to me, he said, "Gladwin? Well, he's about the most critical man in England, I suppose. He does a little work a very little: and I think he might have been a great man, if he hadn't become so fearfully dry.
In the proscenium boxes were the wife of the Austrian Ambassador and the Duchess Gladwin; in the amphitheatre Berthe d'Osigny and Jane Tulle, the latter made famous the day before by the suicide of one of her lovers; in the boxes, Madame Berard de La Malle, her eyes lowered, her long eyelashes shading her pure cheeks; Princess Seniavine, who, looking superb, concealed under her fan panther like yawnings; Madame de Morlaine, between two young women whom she was training in the elegances of the mind; Madame Meillan, resting assured on thirty years of sovereign beauty; Madame Berthier d'Eyzelles, erect under iron-gray hair sparkling with diamonds.
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