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Title: The Seats Of The Mighty, Volume 1.
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6224]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 4, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEATS OF THE MIGHTY, PARKER, V1 ***
This eBook was produced by Andrew Sly.
THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY
BEING THE MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROBERT MORAY,
SOMETIME AN OFFICER IN THE VIRGINIA REGIMENT,
AND AFTERWARDS OF AMHERST'S REGIMENT
By Gilbert Parker
To the Memory of Madge Henley.
CONTENTS
Volume 1.
Introduction to the Imperial Edition
Prefatory note to First Edition
I An escort to the citadel
II The master of the King's magazine
III The wager and the sword
IV The rat in the trap
V The device of the dormouse
VI Moray tells the story of his life
Volume 2.
VII "Quoth little Garaine"
VIII As vain as Absalom
IX A little concerning the Chevalier de la Darante
X An officer of marines
XI The coming of Doltaire
XII "The point envenomed too!"
XIII A little boast
Volume 3.
XIV Argand Cournal
XV In the chamber of torture
XVI Be saint or imp
XVII Through the bars of the cage
XVIII The steep path of conquest
XIX A Danseuse and the Bastile
Volume 4.
XX Upon the ramparts
XXI La Jongleuse
XXII The lord of Kamaraska
XXIII With Wolfe at Montmorenci
XXIV The sacred countersign
Volume 5.
XXV In the cathedral
XXVI The secret of the tapestry
XXVII A side-wind of revenge
XXVIII "To cheat the Devil yet"
XXIX "Master Devil" Doltaire
XXX "Where all the lovers can hide"
Appendix--Excerpt from 'The Scot in New France'
INTRODUCTION TO THE IMPERIAL EDITION
It was in the winter of 1892, when on a visit to French Canada, that I
made up my mind I would write the volume which the public knows as 'The
Seats of the Mighty,' but I did not begin the composition until early in
1894. It was finished by the beginning of February, 1895, and began to
appear in 'The Atlantic Monthly' in March of that year. It was not my
first attempt at historical fiction, because I had written 'The Trail of
the Sword' in the year 1893, but it was the first effort on an ambitious
scale, and the writing of it was attended with as much searching of
heart as enthusiasm. I had long been saturated by the early history of
French Canada, as perhaps 'The Trail of the Sword' bore witness, and
particularly of the period of the Conquest, and I longed for a subject
which would, in effect, compel me to write; for I have strong views
upon this business of compulsion in the mind of the writer. Unless a
thing has seized a man, has obsessed him, and he feels that it excludes
all other temptations to his talent or his genius, his book will
not convince. Before all else he must himself be overpowered by the
insistence of his subject, then intoxicated with his idea, and, being
still possessed, become master of his material while remaining the
slave of his subject. I believe that every book which has taken hold of
the public has represented a kind of self-hypnotism on the part of the
writer. I am further convinced that the book which absorbs the author,
which possesses him as he writes it, has the effect of isolating him into
an atmosphere which is not sleep, and which is not absolute wakefulness,
but a place between the two, where the working world is indistinct and
the mind is swept along a flood submerging the self-conscious but not
drowning into unconsciousness.
Such, at any rate, is my own experience. I am convinced that the books
of mine which have had so many friends as this book, 'The Seats of the
Mighty', has had in the English-speaking world were written in just such
conditions of temperamental isolation or absorption. First the subject,
which must of itself have driving power, then the main character, which
becomes a law working out its own destiny; and the subject in my own work
has always been translatable into a phrase. Nearly every one of my books
has always been reducible to its title.
For years I had wished to write an historical novel of the conquest
of Canada or the settlement of the United Empire loyalists and the
subsequent War of 1812, but the central idea and the central character
had not come to me; and without both and the driving power of a big idea
and of a big character, a book did not seem to me possible. The human
thing with the grip of real life was necessary. At last, as pointed out
in the prefatory note of the first edition, published in the spring of
1896 by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., of New York, and Messrs. Methuen &
Co., of London, I ran across a tiny little volume in the library of Mr.
George M. Fairchild, Jr., of Quebec, called the Memoirs of Major Robert
Stobo. It was published by John S. Davidson, of Market Street,
Pittsburgh, with an introduction by an editor who signed himself
"N. B.C."
The Memoirs proper contained about seventeen thousand words, the
remaining three thousand words being made up of abstracts and appendices
collected by the editor. The narrative was written in a very ornate and
grandiloquent style, but the hero of the memoirs was so evidently a man
of remarkable character, enterprise and adventure, that I saw in the
few scattered bones of the story which he unfolded the skeleton of an
ample historical romance. There was necessary to offset this buoyant and
courageous Scotsman, adventurous and experienced, a character of the race
which captured him and held him in leash till just before the taking of
Quebec. I therefore found in the character of Doltaire--which was the
character of Voltaire spelled with a big D--purely a creature of the
imagination, one who, as the son of a peasant woman and Louis XV, should
be an effective offset to Major Stobo. There was no hint of Doltaire
in the Memoirs. There could not be, nor of the plot on which the story
was based, because it was all imagination. Likewise, there was no
mention of Alixe Duvarney in the Memoirs, nor of Bigot or Madame Cournal
and all the others. They too, when not characters of the imagination,
were lifted out of the history of the time; but the first germ of the
story came from 'The Memoirs of Robert Stobo', and when 'The Seats of
the Mighty' was first published in 'The Atlantic Monthly' the subtitle
contained these words: "Being the Memoirs of Captain Robert Stobo,
sometime an officer in the Virginia Regiment, and afterwards of
Amherst's Regiment."
When the book was published, however, I changed the name of Robert Stobo
to Robert Moray, because I felt I had no right to saddle Robert Stobo's
name with all the incidents and experiences and strange enterprises
which the novel contained. I did not know then that perhaps it might be
considered an honour by Robert Stobo's descendants to have his name
retained. I could not foresee the extraordinary popularity of 'The
Seats of the Mighty', but with what I thought was a sense of honour I
eliminated his name and changed it to Robert Moray. 'The Seats of the
Mighty' goes on, I am happy to say, with an ever-increasing number of
friends. It has a position perhaps not wholly deserved, but it has
crystallised some elements in the life of the continent of America,
the history of France and England, and of the British Empire which may
serve here and there to inspire the love of things done for the sake
of a nation rather than for the welfare of an individual.
I began this introduction by saying that the book was started in the
summer of 1894. That was at a little place called Mablethorpe in
Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. For several months I worked
in absolute seclusion in that out-of-the-way spot which had not then
become a Mecca for trippers, and on the wonderful sands, stretching for
miles upon miles coastwise and here and there as much as a mile out to
the sea, I tried to live over again the days of Wolfe and Montcalm.
Appropriately enough the book was begun in a hotel at Mablethorpe called
"The Book in Hand." The name was got, I believe, from the fact that, in
a far-off day, a ship was wrecked upon the coast at Mablethorpe, and the
only person saved was the captain, who came ashore with a Bible in his
hands. During the writing now and again a friend would come to me from
London or elsewhere, and there would be a day off, full of literary
tattle, but immediately my friends were gone I was lost again in the
atmosphere of the middle of the eighteenth century.
I stayed at Mablethorpe until the late autumn, and then I went to
Harrogate, exchanging the sea for the moors, and there, still living the
open-air life, I remained for several months until I had finished the
book. The writing of it knew no interruption and was happily set. It
was a thing apart, and not a single untoward invasion of other interests
affected its course.
The title of the book was for long a trouble to me. Months went by
before I could find what I wanted. Scores of titles occurred to me,
but each was rejected. At last, one day when I was being visited by Mr.
Grant Richards, since then a London publisher, but at that time a writer,
who had come to interview me for 'Great Thoughts', I told him of my
difficulties regarding the title. I was saying that I felt the title
should be, as it were, the kernel of a book. I said: "You see, it is a
struggle of one simple girl against principalities and powers; it is the
final conquest of the good over the great. In other words, the book will
be an illustration of the text, 'He has put down the mighty from their
seats, and has exalted the humble and meek.'" Then, like a flash, the
title came 'The Seats of the Mighty'.
Since the phrase has gone into the language and was from the very
first a popular title, it seems strange that the literary director
of the American firm that published the book should take strong
exception to it on the ground that it was grandiloquent. I like to
think that I was firm, and that I declined to change the title.
I need say no more save that the book was dramatised by myself, and
produced, first at Washington by Herbert (now Sir Herbert) Beerbohm
Tree in the winter of 1897 and 1898, and in the spring of 1898 it
opened his new theatre in London.
PREFATORY NOTE TO FIRST EDITION
This tale would never have been written had it not been for the
kindness of my distinguished friend Dr. John George Bourinot,
C.M.G., of Ottawa, whose studies in parliamentary procedure, the
English and Canadian Constitutions, and the history and development
of Canada have been of singular benefit to the Dominion and to the
Empire. Through Dr. Bourinot's good offices I came to know Mr.
James Lemoine, of Quebec, the gifted antiquarian, and President of
the Royal Society of Canada. Mr. Lemoine placed in my hands certain
historical facts suggestive of romance. Subsequently, Mr. George
M. Fairchild, Jr., of Cap Rouge, Quebec, whose library contains a
valuable collection of antique Canadian books, maps, and prints,
gave me generous assistance and counsel, allowing me "the run"
of all his charts, prints, histories, and memoirs. Many of these
prints, and a rare and authentic map of Wolfe's operations against
Quebec are now reproduced in this novel, and may be considered
accurate illustrations of places, people, and events. By the
insertion of these faithful historical elements it is hoped to
give more vividness to the atmosphere of the time, and to
strengthen the verisimilitude of a piece of fiction which is
not, I believe, out of harmony with fact.
Gilbert Parker
PRELUDE
To Sir Edward Seaforth, Bart., of Sangley Hope in Derbyshire, and
Seaforth House in Hanover Square.
Dear Ned: You will have them written, or I shall be pestered to my
grave! Is that the voice of a friend of so long standing? And yet
it seems but yesterday since we had good hours in Virginia together,
or met among the ruins of Quebec. My memoirs--these only will
content you? And to flatter or cajole me, you tell me Mr. Pitt still
urges on the matter. In truth, when he touched first upon this, I
thought it but the courtesy of a great and generous man. But indeed
I am proud that he is curious to know more of my long captivity at
Quebec, of Monsieur Doltaire and all his dealings with me, and the
motions he made to serve La Pompadour on one hand, and, on the
other, to win from me that most perfect of ladies, Mademoiselle
Alixe Duvarney.
Our bright conquest of Quebec is now heroic memory, and honour and
fame and reward have been parcelled out. So I shall but briefly, in
these memoirs (ay, they shall be written, and with a good heart),
travel the trail of history, or discourse upon campaigns and sieges,
diplomacies and treaties. I shall keep close to my own story; for
that, it would seem, yourself and the illustrious minister of the
King most wish to hear. Yet you will find figuring in it great men
like our flaming hero General Wolfe, and also General Montcalm, who,
I shall ever keep on saying, might have held Quebec against us, had
he not been balked by the vain Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil;
together with such notorious men as the Intendant Bigot, civil
governor of New France, and such noble gentlemen as the Seigneur
Duvarney, father of Alixe.
I shall never view again the citadel on those tall heights where
I was detained so barbarously, nor the gracious Manor House at
Beauport, sacred to me because of her who dwelt therein--how long
ago, how long! Of all the pictures that flash before my mind when
I think on those times, one is most with me: that of the fine
guest-room in the Manor House, where I see moving the benign maid
whose life and deeds alone can make this story worth telling. And
with one scene therein, and it the most momentous in all my days,
I shall begin my tale.
I beg you convey to Mr. Pitt my most obedient compliments,
and say that I take his polite wish as my command.
With every token of my regard, I am, dear Ned, affectionately
your friend,
Robert Moray
I
AN ESCORT TO THE CITADEL
When Monsieur Doltaire entered the salon, and, dropping lazily
into a chair beside Madame Duvarney and her daughter, drawled out,
"England's Braddock--fool and general--has gone to heaven, Captain
Moray, and your papers send you there also," I did not shift a jot,
but looked over at him gravely--for, God knows, I was startled--and
I said,
"The General is dead?"
I did not dare to ask, Is he defeated? though from Doltaire's
look I was sure it was so, and a sickness crept through me, for
at the moment that seemed the end of our cause. But I made as if
I had not heard his words about my papers.
"Dead as a last years courtier, shifted from the scene," he
replied; "and having little now to do, we'll go play with the rat
in our trap."
I would not have dared look towards Alixe, standing beside her
mother then, for the song in my blood was pitched too high, were it
not that a little sound broke from her. At that, I glanced, and saw
that her face was still and quiet, but her eyes were shining, and
her whole body seemed listening. I dared not give my glance meaning,
though I wished to do so. She had served me much, had been a good
friend to me, since I was brought a hostage to Quebec from Fort
Necessity. There, at that little post on the Ohio, France threw
down the gauntlet, and gave us the great Seven Years War. And though
it may be thought I speak rashly, the lever to spring that trouble
had been within my grasp. Had France sat still while Austria and
Prussia quarreled, that long fighting had never been. The game of
war had lain with the Grande Marquise--or La Pompadour, as she was
called--and later it may be seen how I, unwillingly, moved her to
set it going.
Answering Monsieur Doltaire, I said stoutly, "I am sure he made
a good fight; he had gallant men."
"Truly gallant," he returned--"your own Virginians among others"
(I bowed); "but he was a blunderer, as were you also, monsieur, or
you had not sent him plans of our forts and letters of such candour.
They have gone to France, my captain."
Madame Duvarney seemed to stiffen in her chair, for what did
this mean but that I was a spy? and the young lady behind them now
put her handkerchief to her mouth as if to stop a word. To make
light of the charges against myself was the only thing, and yet I
had little heart to do so. There was that between Monsieur Doltaire
and myself--a matter I shall come to by-and-bye--which well might
make me apprehensive.
"My sketch and my gossip with my friends," said I, "can have
little interest in France."
"My faith, the Grande Marquise will find a relish for them," he
said pointedly at me. He, the natural son of King Louis, had played
the part between La Pompadour and myself in the grave matter of
which I spoke. "She loves deciding knotty points of morality," he
added.
"She has had chance and will enough," said I boldly, "but what
point of morality is here?"
"The most vital--to you," he rejoined, flicking his handkerchief a
little, and drawling so that I could have stopped his mouth with my
hand. "Shall a hostage on parole make sketches of a fort and send
them to his friends, who in turn pass them on to a foolish general?"
"When one party to an Article of War brutally breaks his sworn
promise, shall the other be held to his?" I asked quietly.
I was glad that, at this moment, the Seigneur Duvarney entered,
for I could feel the air now growing colder about Madame his wife.
He, at least, was a good friend; but as I glanced at him, I saw his
face was troubled and his manner distant. He looked at Monsieur
Doltaire a moment steadily, stooped to his wife's hand, and then
offered me his own without a word; which done, he went to where
his daughter stood. She kissed him, and, as she did so, whispered
something in his ear, to which he nodded assent. I knew afterwards
that she had asked him to keep me to dinner with them.
Presently turning to Monsieur Doltaire, he said inquiringly,
"You have a squad of men outside my house, Doltaire?"
Doltaire nodded in a languid way, and answered, "An escort--for
Captain Moray--to the citadel."
I knew now, as he had said, that I was in the trap; that he had
begun the long sport which came near to giving me the white
shroud of death, as it turned white the hair upon my head ere
I was thirty-two. Do I not know, the indignities, the miseries
I suffered, I owed mostly to him, and that at the last he
nearly robbed England of her greatest pride, the taking of New
France?--For chance sometimes lets humble men like me balance
the scales of fate; and I was humble enough in rank, if in
spirit always something above my place.
I was standing as he spoke these words, and I turned to him and
said, "Monsieur, I am at your service."
"I have sometimes wished," he said instantly, and with a courteous
if ironical gesture, "that you were in my service--that is, the King's."
I bowed as to a compliment, for I would not see the insolence,
and I retorted, "Would I could offer you a company in my Virginia
regiment!"
"Delightful! delightful!" he rejoined. "I should make as good a
Briton as you a Frenchman, every whit."
I suppose he would have kept leading to such silly play, had I
not turned to Madame Duvarney and said, "I am most sorry that
this mishap falls here; but it is not of my doing, and in colder
comfort, Madame, I shall recall the good hours spent in your
home."
I think I said it with a general courtesy, yet, feeling the eyes
of the young lady on me, perhaps a little extra warmth came into
my voice, and worked upon Madame, or it may be she was glad of my
removal from contact with her daughter; but kindness showed in her
face, and she replied gently, "I am sure it is only for a few days
till we see you again."
Yet I think in her heart she knew my life was perilled: those
were rough and hasty times, when the axe or the rope was the surest
way to deal with troubles. Three years before, at Fort Necessity, I
had handed my sword to my lieutenant, bidding him make healthy use
of it, and, travelling to Quebec on parole, had come in and out of
this house with great freedom. Yet since Alixe had grown towards
womanhood there had been strong change in Madame's manner.
"The days, however few, will be too long until I tax your
courtesy again," I said. "I bid you adieu, Madame."
"Nay, not so," spoke up my host; "not one step: dinner is nearly
served, and you must both dine with us. Nay, but I insist," he
added, as he saw me shake my head. "Monsieur Doltaire will grant
you this courtesy, and me the great kindness. Eh, Doltaire?"
Doltaire rose, glancing from Madame to her daughter. Madame was
smiling, as if begging his consent; for, profligate though he was,
his position, and more than all, his personal distinction, made him
a welcome guest at most homes in Quebec. Alixe met his look without
a yes or no in her eyes--so young, yet having such control and
wisdom, as I have had reason beyond all men to know. Something,
however, in the temper of the scene had filled her with a kind of
glow, which added to her beauty and gave her dignity. The spirit of
her look caught the admiration of this expatriated courtier, and I
knew that a deeper cause than all our past conflicts--and they were
great--would now, or soon, set him fatally against me.
"I shall be happy to wait Captain Moray's pleasure," he said
presently, "and to serve my own by sitting at your table. I was
to have dined with the Intendant this afternoon, but a messenger
shall tell him duty stays me.... If you will excuse me!" he added,
going to the door to find a man of his company. He looked back
for an instant, as if it struck him I might seek escape, for he
believed in no man's truth; but he only said, "I may fetch my men
to your kitchen, Duvarney? 'Tis raw outside."
"Surely. I shall see they have some comfort," was the reply.
Doltaire then left the room, and Duvarney came to me. "This is a
bad business, Moray," he said sadly. "There is some mistake, is
there not?"
I looked him fair in the face. "There is a mistake," I answered.
"I am no spy, and I do not fear that I shall lose my life, my
honour, or my friends by offensive acts of mine."
"I believe you," he responded, "as I have believed since you came,
though there has been gabble of your doings. I do not forget you
bought my life back from those wild Mohawks five years ago. You
have my hand in trouble or out of it."
Upon my soul, I could have fallen on his neck, for the blow to
our cause and the shadow on my own fate oppressed me for the
moment.
At this point the ladies left the room to make some little
toilette before dinner, and as they passed me the sleeve of Alixe's
dress touched my arm. I caught her fingers for an instant, and to
this day I can feel that warm, rich current of life coursing from
finger-tips to heart. She did not look at me at all, but passed on
after her mother. Never till that moment had there been any open
show of heart between us. When I first came to Quebec (I own it to
my shame) I was inclined to use her youthful friendship for private
and patriotic ends; but that soon passed, and then I wished her
companionship for true love of her. Also, I had been held back
because when I first knew her she seemed but a child. Yet how
quickly and how wisely did she grow out of her childhood! She had a
playful wit, and her talents were far beyond her years. It amazed
me often to hear her sum up a thing in some pregnant sentence
which, when you came to think, was the one word to be said. She had
such a deep look out of her blue eyes that you scarcely glanced
from them to see the warm sweet colour of her face, the fair broad
forehead, the brown hair, the delicate richness of her lips, which
ever were full of humour and of seriousness--both running together,
as you may see a laughing brook steal into the quiet of a
river.
Duvarney and I were thus alone for a moment, and he straightway
dropped a hand upon my shoulder. "Let me advise you," he said,
"be friendly with Doltaire. He has great influence at the Court
and elsewhere. He can make your bed hard or soft at the citadel."
I smiled at him, and replied, "I shall sleep no less sound because
of Monsieur Doltaire."
"You are bitter in your trouble," said he.
I made haste to answer, "No, no, my own troubles do not weigh so
heavy--but our General's death!"
"You are a patriot, my friend," he added warmly. "I could well
have been content with our success against your English army
without this deep danger to your person."
I put out my hand to him, but I did not speak, for just then
Doltaire entered. He was smiling at something in his thought.
"The fortunes are with the Intendant always," said he. "When
things are at their worst, and the King's storehouse, the dear
La Friponne, is to be ripped by our rebel peasants like a sawdust
doll, here comes this gay news of our success on the Ohio; and in
that Braddock's death the whining beggars will forget their empty
bellies, and bless where they meant to curse. What fools, to be
sure! They had better loot La Friponne. Lord, how we love fighting,
we French! And 'tis so much easier to dance, or drink, or love."
He stretched out his shapely legs as he sat musing.
Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, smiling. "But you, Doltaire--there's
no man out of France that fights more."
He lifted an eyebrow. "One must be in the fashion; besides, it
does need some skill to fight. The others--to dance, drink, love:
blind men's games!" He smiled cynically into the distance.
I have never known a man who interested me so much--never one so
original, so varied, and so uncommon in his nature. I marvelled at
the pith and depth of his observations; for though I agreed not with
him once in ten times, I loved his great reflective cleverness and
his fine penetration--singular gifts in a man of action. But action
to him was a playtime; he had that irresponsibility of the Court
from which he came, its scornful endurance of defeat or misery,
its flippant look upon the world, its scoundrel view of women. Then
he and Duvarney talked, and I sat thinking. Perhaps the passion
of a cause grows in you as you suffer for it, and I had suffered,
and suffered most by a bitter inaction. Governor Dinwiddie, Mr.
Washington (alas that, as I write the fragment chapters of my life,
among the hills where Montrose my ancestor fought, George leads
the colonists against the realm of England!), and the rest were
suffering, but they were fighting too. Brought to their knees, they
could rise again to battle; and I thought then, How more glorious to
be with my gentlemen in blue from Virginia, holding back death from
the General, and at last falling myself, than to spend good years a
hostage at Quebec, knowing that Canada was for our taking, yet doing
nothing to advance the hour!
In the thick of these thoughts I was not conscious of what the
two were saying, but at last I caught Madame Cournal's name; by
which I guessed Monsieur Doltaire was talking of her amours, of
which the chief and final was with Bigot the Intendant, to whom
the King had given all civil government, all power over commerce
and finance in the country. The rivalry between the Governor and
the Intendant was keen and vital at this time, though it changed
later, as I will show. At her name I looked up and caught Monsieur
Doltaire's eye.
He read my thoughts. "You have had blithe hours here, monsieur,"
he said--"you know the way to probe us; but of all the ladies who
could be most useful to you, you left out the greatest. There you
erred. I say it as a friend, not as an officer, there you erred.
From Madame Cournal to Bigot, from Bigot to Vaudreuil the Governor,
from the Governor to France. But now--"
He paused, for Madame Duvarney and her daughter had come, and we
all rose.
The ladies had heard enough to know Doltaire's meaning. "But
now--Captain Moray dines with us," said Madame Duvarney quietly
and meaningly.
"Yet I dine with Madame Cournal," rejoined Doltaire, smiling.
"One may use more option with enemies and prisoners," she said
keenly, and the shot ought to have struck home. In so small a place
it was not easy to draw lines close and fine, and it was in the
power of the Intendant, backed by his confederates, to ruin almost
any family in the province if he chose; and that he chose at times
I knew well, as did my hostess. Yet she was a woman of courage and
nobility of thought, and I knew well where her daughter got her
good flavor of mind.
I could see something devilish in the smile at Doltaire's lip's,
but his look was wandering between Alixe and me, and he replied
urbanely, "I have ambition yet--to connive at captivity"; and
then he looked full and meaningly at her.
I can see her now, her hand on the high back of a great oak chair,
the lace of her white sleeve falling away, and her soft arm showing,
her eyes on his without wavering. They did not drop, nor turn aside;
they held straight on, calm, strong--and understanding. By that look
I saw she read him; she, who had seen so little of the world, felt
what he was, and met his invading interest firmly, yet sadly; for I
knew long after that a smother was at her heart then, foreshadowings
of dangers that would try her as few women are tried. Thank God that
good women are born with greater souls for trial than men; that,
given once an anchor for their hearts, they hold until the cables
break.
When we were about to enter the dining-room, I saw, to my joy,
Madame incline towards Doltaire, and I knew that Alixe was for
myself--though her mother wished it little, I am sure. As she took
my arm, her finger-tips plunged softly into the velvet of my sleeve,
giving me a thrill of courage. I felt my spirits rise, and I set
myself to carry things off gaily, to have this last hour with her
clear of gloom, for it seemed easy to think that we should meet no
more.
As we passed into the dining-room, I said, as I had said the
first time I went to dinner in her father's house, "Shall we be
flippant, or grave?"
I guessed that it would touch her. She raised her eyes to mine
and answered, "We are grave; let us seem flippant."
In those days I had a store of spirits. I was seldom dismayed,
for life had been such a rough-and-tumble game that I held to
cheerfulness and humour as a hillsman to his broadsword, knowing it
the greatest of weapons with a foe, and the very stone and mortar
of friendship. So we were gay, touching lightly on events around us,
laughing at gossip of the doorways (I in my poor French), casting
small stones at whatever drew our notice, not forgetting a throw or
two at Chateau Bigot, the Intendant's country house at Charlesbourg,
five miles away, where base plots were hatched, reputations soiled,
and all clean things dishonoured. But Alixe, the sweetest soul
France ever gave the world, could not know all I knew; guessing
only at heavy carousals, cards, song, and raillery, with far-off
hints of feet lighter than fit in cavalry boots dancing among the
glasses on the table. I was never before so charmed with her swift
intelligence, for I never had great nimbleness of thought, nor
power to make nice play with the tongue.
"You have been three years with us," suddenly said her father,
passing me the wine. "How time has flown! How much has happened!"
"Madame Cournal's husband has made three million francs," said
Doltaire, with dry irony and truth.
Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, stiffened; for, oblique as the
suggestion was, he did not care to have his daughter hear it.
"And Vaudreuil has sent bees buzzing to Versailles about Bigot
and Company," added the impish satirist.
Madame Duvarney responded with a look of interest, and the
Seigneur's eyes steadied to his plate. All at once by that I saw
the Seigneur had known of the Governor's action, and maybe had
counseled with him, siding against Bigot. If that were so--as it
proved to be--he was in a nest of scorpions; for who among them
would spare him: Marin, Cournal, Rigaud, the Intendant himself?
Such as he were thwarted right and left in this career of knavery
and public evils.
"And our people have turned beggars; poor and starved, they beg at
the door of the King's storehouse--it is well called La Friponne,"
said Madame Duvarney, with some heat; for she was ever liberal to
the poor, and she had seen manor after manor robbed, and peasant
farmers made to sell their corn for a song, to be sold to them again
at famine prices by La Friponne. Even now Quebec was full of pilgrim
poor begging against the hard winter, and execrating their spoilers.
Doltaire was too fond of digging at the heart of things not to
admit she spoke truth.
"La Pompadour et La Friponne!
Qu'est que cela, mon petit homme?"
"Les deux terribles, ma chere mignonne,
Mais, c'est cela--
La Pompadour et La Friponne!"
He said this with cool drollery and point, in the patois of the
native, so that he set us all laughing, in spite of our mutual
apprehensions.
Then he continued, "And the King has sent a chorus to the play, with
eyes for the preposterous make-believe, and more, no purse to fill."
We all knew he meant himself, and we knew also that so far as
money went he spoke true; that though hand-in-glove with Bigot, he
was poor, save for what he made at the gaming-table and got from
France. There was the thing that might have clinched me to him, had
matters been other than they were; for all my life I have loathed
the sordid soul, and I would rather, in these my ripe years, eat
with a highwayman who takes his life in his hands than with the
civilian who robs his king and the king's poor, and has no better
trick than false accounts, nor better friend than the pettifogging
knave. Doltaire had no burning love for France, and little faith in
anything; for he was of those Versailles water-flies who recked not
if the world blackened to cinders when their lights went out. As
will be seen by-and-bye, he had come here to seek me, and to serve
the Grande Marquise.
More speech like this followed, and amid it all, with the flower of
the world beside me at this table, I remembered my mother's words
before I bade her good-bye and set sail from Glasgow for Virginia.
"Keep it in mind, Robert," she said, "that an honest love is the
thing to hold you honest with yourself. 'Tis to be lived for, and
fought for, and died for. Ay, be honest in your loves. Be true."
And there I took an oath, my hand clenched beneath the table, that
Alixe should be my wife if better days came; when I was done with
citadel and trial and captivity, if that might be.
The evening was well forward when Doltaire, rising from his seat
in the drawing-room, bowed to me, and said, "If it pleases you,
monsieur?"
I rose also, and prepared to go. There was little talk, yet we
all kept up a play of cheerfulness. When I came to take the
Seigneur's hand, Doltaire was a distance off, talking to Madame.
"Moray," said the Seigneur quickly and quietly, "trials portend
for both of us." He nodded towards Doltaire.
"But we shall come safe through," said I.
"Be of good courage, and adieu," he answered, as Doltaire turned
towards us.
My last words were to Alixe. The great moment of my life was come.
If I could but say one thing to her out of earshot, I would stake
all on the hazard. She was standing beside a cabinet, very still, a
strange glow in her eyes, a new, fine firmness at the lips. I felt
I dared not look as I would; I feared there was no chance now to
speak what I would. But I came slowly up the room with her mother.
As we did so, Doltaire exclaimed and started to the window, and the
Seigneur and Madame followed. A red light was showing on the panes.
I caught Alixe's eye, and held it, coming quickly to her. All backs
were on us. I took her hand and pressed it to my lips suddenly. She
gave a little gasp, and I saw her bosom heave.
"I am going from prison to prison," said I, "and I leave a loved
jailer behind."
She understood. "Your jailer goes also," she answered, with a
sad smile.
"I love you! I love you!" I urged.
She was very pale. "Oh, Robert!" she whispered timidly; and then,
"I will be brave, I will help you, and I will not forget. God
guard you."
That was all, for Doltaire turned to me then and said, "They've
made of La Friponne a torch to light you to the citadel, monsieur."
A moment afterwards we were outside in the keen October air, a
squad of soldiers attending, our faces towards the citadel heights.
I looked back, doffing my cap. The Seigneur and Madame stood at
the door, but my eyes were for a window where stood Alixe. The
reflection of the far-off fire bathed the glass, and her face had
a glow, the eyes shining through, intent and most serious. Yet how
brave she was, for she lifted her handkerchief, shook it a little,
and smiled.
As though the salute were meant for him, Doltaire bowed twice
impressively, and then we stepped forward, the great fire over
against the Heights lighting us and hurrying us on.
We scarcely spoke as we went, though Doltaire hummed now and then
the air La Pompadour et La Friponne. As we came nearer I said,
"Are you sure it is La Friponne, monsieur?"
"It is not," he said, pointing. "See!"
The sky was full of shaking sparks, and a smell of burning grain
came down the wind.
"One of the granaries, then," I added, "not La Friponne itself?"
To this he nodded assent, and we pushed on.
II
THE MASTER OF THE KING'S MAGAZINE
"What fools," said Doltaire presently, "to burn the bread and oven
too! If only they were less honest in a world of rogues, poor moles!"
Coming nearer, we saw that La Friponne itself was safe, but one
warehouse was doomed and another threatened. The streets were full
of people, and thousands of excited peasants, laborers, and sailors
were shouting, "Down with the palace! Down with Bigot!"
We came upon the scene at the most critical moment. None of the
Governors soldiers were in sight, but up the Heights we could hear
the steady tramp of General Montcalm's infantry as they came on.
Where were Bigot's men? There was a handful--one company--drawn up
before La Friponne, idly leaning on their muskets, seeing the great
granary burn, and watching La Friponne threatened by the mad crowd
and the fire. There was not a soldier before the Intendant's
palace, not a light in any window.
"What is this weird trick of Bigot's?" said Doltaire, musing.
The Governor, we knew, had been out of the city that day. But
where was Bigot? At a word from Doltaire we pushed forward towards
the palace, the soldiers keeping me in their midst. We were not
a hundred feet from the great steps when two gates at the right
suddenly swung open, and a carriage rolled out swiftly and dashed
down into the crowd. I recognized the coachman first--Bigot's,
an old one-eyed soldier of surpassing nerve, and devoted to his
master. The crowd parted right and left. Suddenly the carriage
stopped, and Bigot stood up, folding his arms, and glancing round
with a disdainful smile without speaking a word. He carried a paper
in one hand.
Here were at least two thousand armed and unarmed peasants, sick
with misery and oppression, in the presence of their undefended
tyrant. One shot, one blow of a stone, one stroke of a knife--to
the end of a shameless pillage. But no hand was raised to do the
deed. The roar of voices subsided--he waited for it--and silence
was broken only by the crackle of the burning building, the tramp
of Montcalm's soldiers in Mountain Street, and the tolling of the
cathedral bell. I thought it strange that almost as Bigot came out
the wild clanging gave place to a cheerful peal.
After standing for a moment, looking round him, his eye resting on
Doltaire and myself (we were but a little distance from him), Bigot
said in a loud voice: "What do you want with me? Do you think I may
be moved by threats? Do you punish me by burning your own food,
which, when the English are at our doors, is your only hope? Fools!
How easily could I turn my cannon and my men upon you! You think to
frighten me. Who do you think I am?--a Bostonnais or an Englishman?
You--revolutionists! T'sh! You are wild dogs without a leader. You
want one that you can trust; you want no coward, but one who fears
you not at your wildest. Well, I will be your leader. I do not fear
you, and I do not love you, for how have you deserved my love? By
ingratitude and aspersion? Who has the King's favour? Francois Bigot.
Who has the ear of the Grande Marquise? Francois Bigot. Who stands
firm while others tremble lest their power pass to-morrow? Francois
Bigot. Who else dare invite revolution, this danger"--his hand
sweeping to the flames--"who but Francois Bigot?" He paused for a
moment, and looking up to the leader of Montcalm's soldiers on the
Heights, waved him back; then he continued:
"And to-day, when I am ready to give you great news, you play the
mad dog's game; you destroy what I had meant to give you in our hour
of danger, when those English came. I made you suffer a little, that
you might live then. Only to-day, because of our great and glorious
victory--"
He paused again. The peal of bells became louder. Far up on the
Heights we heard the calling of bugles and the beating of drums;
and now I saw the whole large plan, the deep dramatic scheme. He
had withheld the news of the victory that he might announce it when
it would most turn to his own glory. Perhaps he had not counted on
the burning of the warehouse, but this would tell now in his favour.
He was not a large man, but he drew himself up with dignity, and
continued in a contemptuous tone:
"Because of our splendid victory, I designed to tell you all my
plans, and, pitying your trouble, divide among you at the smallest
price, that all might pay, the corn which now goes to feed the
stars."
At that moment some one from the Heights above called out shrilly,
"What lie is in that paper, Francois Bigot?"
I looked up, as did the crowd. A woman stood upon a point of the
great rock, a red robe hanging on her, her hair free over her
shoulders, her finger pointing at the Intendant. Bigot only glanced
up, then smoothed out the paper.
He said to the people in a clear but less steady voice, for I could
see that the woman had disturbed him, "Go pray to be forgiven for
your insolence and folly. His most Christian Majesty is triumphant
upon the Ohio. The English have been killed in thousands, and their
General with them. Do you not hear the joy-bells in the Church of
Our Lady of the Victories? and more--listen!"
There burst from the Heights on the other side a cannon shot, and
then another and another. There was a great commotion, and many ran
to Bigot's carriage, reached in to touch his hand, and called down
blessings on him.
"See that you save the other granaries," he urged, adding, with a
sneer, "and forget not to bless La Friponne in your prayers!"
It was a clever piece of acting. Presently from the Heights
above came the woman's voice again, so piercing that the crowd
turned to her.
"Francois Bigot is a liar and a traitor!" she cried. "Beware of
Francois Bigot! God has cast him out."
A dark look came upon Bigot's face; but presently he turned, and
gave a sign to some one near the palace. The doors of the courtyard
flew open, and out came squad after squad of soldiers. In a moment,
they, with the people, were busy carrying water to pour upon the
side of the endangered warehouse. Fortunately the wind was with
them, else it and the palace also would have been burned that night.
The Intendant still stood in his carriage watching and listening to
the cheers of the people. At last he beckoned to Doltaire and to
me. We both went over.
"Doltaire, we looked for you at dinner," he said. "Was Captain
Moray"--nodding towards me--"lost among the petticoats? He knows
the trick of cup and saucer. Between the sip and click he sucked
in secrets from our garrison--a spy where had been a soldier, as
we thought. You once wore a sword, Captain Moray--eh?"
"If the Governor would grant me leave, I would not only wear,
but use one, your excellency knows well where," said I.
"Large speaking, Captain Moray. They do that in Virginia, I am
told."
"In Gascony there's quiet, your excellency."
Doltaire laughed outright, for it was said that Bigot, in his
coltish days, had a shrewish Gascon wife, whom he took leave to
send to heaven before her time. I saw the Intendant's mouth twitch
angrily.
"Come," he said, "you have a tongue; we'll see if you have a
stomach. You've languished with the girls; you shall have your
chance to drink with Francois Bigot. Now, if you dare, when
we have drunk to the first cockcrow, should you be still on your
feet, you'll fight some one among us, first giving ample cause."
"I hope, your excellency," I replied, with a touch of vanity, "I
have still some stomach and a wrist. I will drink to cockcrow, if
you will. And if my sword prove the stronger, what?"
"There's the point," he said. "Your Englishman loves not fighting
for fighting's sake, Doltaire; he must have bonbons for it. Well,
see: if your sword and stomach prove the stronger, you shall go your
ways to where you will. Voila!"
If I could but have seen a bare portion of the craftiness of this
pair of devils artisans! They both had ends to serve in working ill
to me, and neither was content that I should be shut away in the
citadel, and no more. There was a deeper game playing. I give them
their due: the trap was skillful, and in those times, with great
things at stake, strategy took the place of open fighting here and
there. For Bigot I was to be a weapon against another; for Doltaire,
against myself.
What a gull they must have thought me! I might have known that,
with my lost papers on the way to France, they must hold me tight
here till I had been tried, nor permit me to escape. But I was sick
of doing nothing, thinking with horror on a long winter in the
citadel, and I caught at the least straw of freedom.
"Captain Moray will like to spend a couple of hours at his lodgings
before he joins us at the palace," the Intendant said, and with a
nod to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a
moment the great doors opened, and he had passed inside to applause,
though here and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the
Scarlet Woman had made an impression. The Intendant's men essayed to
trace these noises, but found no one. Looking again to the Heights,
I saw that the woman had gone. Doltaire noted my glance and the
inquiry in my face, and he said:
"Some bad fighting hours with the Intendant at Chateau Bigot, and
then a fever, bringing a kind of madness: so the story creeps about,
as told by Bigot's enemies."
Just at this point I felt a man hustle me as he passed. One of the
soldiers made a thrust at him, and he turned round. I caught his
eye, and it flashed something to me. It was Voban the barber, who
had shaved me every day for months when I first came, while my arm
was stiff from a wound got fighting the French on the Ohio. It was
quite a year since I had met him, and I was struck by the change in
his face. It had grown much older; its roundness was gone. We had
had many a talk together; he helping me with French, I listening
to the tales of his early life in France, and to the later tale
of a humble love, and of the home which he was fitting up for his
Mathilde, a peasant girl of much beauty, I was told, but whom I had
never seen. I remembered at that moment, as he stood in the crowd
looking at me, the piles of linen which he had bought at Ste. Anne
de Beaupre, and the silver pitcher which his grandfather had got
from the Duc de Valois for an act of merit. Many a time we had
discussed the pitcher and the deed, and fingered the linen, now
talking in French, now in English; for in France, years before, he
had been a valet to an English officer at King Louis's court. But my
surprise had been great when I learned that this English gentleman
was no other than the best friend I ever had, next to my parents and
my grandfather. Voban was bound to Sir John Godric by as strong ties
of affection as I. What was more, by a secret letter I had sent to
George Washington, who was then as good a Briton as myself, I had
been able to have my barber's young brother, a prisoner of war,
set free.
I felt that he had something to say to me. But he turned away
and disappeared among the crowd. I might have had some clue if I
had known that he had been crouched behind the Intendant's carriage
while I was being bidden to the supper. I did not guess then that
there was anything between him and the Scarlet Woman who railed at
Bigot.
In a little while I was at my lodgings, soldiers posted at my door
and one in my room. Doltaire gone to his own quarters promising
to call for me within two hours. There was little for me to do but
to put in a bag the fewest necessaries, to roll up my heavy cloak,
to stow safely my pipes and two goodly packets of tobacco, which
were to be my chiefest solace for many a long day, and to write some
letters--one to Governor Dinwiddie, one to George Washington, and
one to my partner in Virginia, telling them my fresh misfortunes,
and begging them to send me money, which, however useless in my
captivity, would be important in my fight for life and freedom.
I did not write intimately of my state, for I was not sure my
letters would ever pass outside Quebec. There were only two men I
could trust to do the thing. One was a fellow-countryman, Clark,
a ship-carpenter, who, to save his neck and to spare his wife and
child, had turned Catholic, but who hated all Frenchmen barbarously
at heart, remembering two of his bairns butchered before his eyes.
The other was Voban. I knew that though Voban might not act, he
would not betray me. But how to reach either of them? It was clear
that I must bide my chances.
One other letter I wrote, brief but vital, in which I begged the
sweetest girl in the world not to have uneasiness because of me;
that I trusted to my star and to my innocence to convince my
judges; and begging her, if she could, to send me a line at the
citadel. I told her I knew well how hard it would be, for her
mother and her father would not now look upon my love with favour.
But I trusted all to time and Providence.
I sealed my letters, put them in my pocket, and sat down to smoke
and think while I waited for Doltaire. To the soldier on duty,
whom I did not notice at first, I now offered a pipe and a glass
of wine, which he accepted rather gruffly, but enjoyed, if I might
judge by his devotion to them.
By-and-bye, without any relevancy at all, he said abruptly, "If a
little sooner she had come--aho!"
For a moment I could not think what he meant; but soon I saw.
"The palace would have been burnt if the girl in scarlet had come
sooner--eh?" I asked. "She would have urged the people on?"
"And Bigot burnt, too, maybe," he answered.
"Fire and death--eh?"
I offered him another pipeful of tobacco. He looked doubtful,
but accepted.
"Aho! And that Voban, he would have had his hand in," he growled.
I began to get more light.
"She was shut up at Chateau Bigot--hand of iron and lock of
steel--who knows the rest! But Voban was for always," he added
presently.
The thing was clear. The Scarlet Woman was Mathilde. So here was the
end of Voban's little romance--of the fine linen from Ste. Anne de
Beaupre and the silver pitcher for the wedding wine. I saw, or felt,
that in Voban I might find now a confederate, if I put my hard case
on Bigot's shoulders.
"I can't see why she stayed with Bigot," I said tentatively.
"Break the dog's leg, it can't go hunting bones--mais, non! Holy,
how stupid are you English!"
"Why doesn't the Intendant lock her up now? She's dangerous to
him. You remember what she said?"
"Tonnerre, you shall see to-morrow," he answered; "now all the sheep
go bleating with the bell. Bigot--Bigot--Bigot--there is nothing
but Bigot! But, pish! Vaudreuil the Governor is the great man, and
Montcalm, aho! son of Mahomet! You shall see. Now they dance to
Bigot's whistling; he will lock her safe enough to-morrow, 'less
some one steps in to help her. Before to-night she never spoke of
him before the world--but a poor daft thing, going about all sad
and wild. She missed her chance to-night--aho!"
"Why are you not with Montcalm's soldiers?" I asked. "You like
him better."
"I was with him, but my time was out, and I left him for Bigot.
Pish! I left him for Bigot, for the militia!" He raised his thumb
to his nose, and spread out his fingers. Again light dawned on me.
He was still with the Governor in all fact, though soldiering for
Bigot--a sort of watch upon the Intendant.
I saw my chance. If I could but induce this fellow to fetch me
Voban! There was yet an hour before I was to go to the intendance.
I called up what looks of candour were possible to me, and told
him bluntly that I wished Voban to bear a letter for me to the
Seigneur Duvarney's. At that he cocked his ear and shook his bushy
head, fiercely stroking his mustaches.
I knew that I should stake something if I said it was a letter for
Mademoiselle Duvarney, but I knew also that if he was still the
Governor's man in Bigot's pay he would understand the Seigneur's
relations with the Governor. And a woman in the case with a
soldier--that would count for something. So I said it was for her.
Besides, I had no other resource but to make a friend among my
enemies, if I could, while yet there was a chance.
It was like a load lifted from me when I saw his mouth and eyes open
wide in a big soundless laugh, which came to an end with a voiceless
aho! I gave him another tumbler of wine. Before he took it, he made
a wide mouth at me again, and slapped his leg. After drinking, he
said, "Poom--what good? They're going to hang you for a spy."
"That rope's not ready yet," I answered. "I'll tie a pretty knot
in another string first, I trust."
"Damned if you haven't spirit!" said he. "That Seigneur Duvarney,
I know him; and I know his son the ensign--whung, what saltpetre
is he! And the ma'm'selle--excellent, excellent; and a face, such
a face, and a seat like leeches in the saddle. And you a British
officer mewed up to kick your heels till gallows day! So droll,
my dear!"
"But will you fetch Voban?" I asked.
"To trim your hair against the supper to-night--eh, like that?"
As he spoke he puffed out his red cheeks with wide boylike eyes,
burst his lips in another soundless laugh, and laid a finger beside
his nose. His marvellous innocence of look and his peasant openness
hid, I saw, great shrewdness and intelligence--an admirable man for
Vaudreuil's purpose, as admirable for mine. I knew well that if I
had tried to bribe him he would have scouted me, or if I had made a
motion for escape he would have shot me off-hand. But a lady--that
appealed to him; and that she was the Seigneur Duvarney's daughter
did the rest.
"Yes, yes," said I, "one must be well appointed in soul and body
when one sups with his Excellency and Monsieur Doltaire."
"Limed inside and chalked outside," he retorted gleefully. "But
M'sieu' Doltaire needs no lime, for he has no soul. No, by Sainte
Helois! The good God didn't make him. The devil laughed, and that
laugh grew into M'sieu' Doltaire. But brave!--no kicking pulse is
in his body."
"You will send for Voban--now?" I asked softly.
He was leaning against the door as he spoke. He reached and put
the tumbler on a shelf, then turned and opened the door, his face
all altered to a grimness.
"Attend here, Labrouk!" he called; and on the soldier coming, he
blurted out in scorn, "Here's this English captain can't go to
supper without Voban's shears to snip him. Go fetch him, for I'd
rather hear a calf in a barn-yard than this whing-whanging for
'M'sieu' Voban!'"
He mocked my accent in the last two words, so that the soldier
grinned, and at once started away. Then he shut the door, and
turned to me again, and said more seriously, "How long have we
before Monsieur comes?"--meaning Doltaire.
"At least an hour," said I.
"Good," he rejoined, and then he smoked while I sat thinking.
It was near an hour before we heard footsteps outside; then came
a knock, and Voban was shown in.
"Quick, m'sieu'," he said. "M'sieu' is almost at our heels."
"This letter," said I, "to Mademoiselle Duvarney," and I handed
four: hers, and those to Governor Dinwiddie, to Mr. Washington,
and to my partner.
He quickly put them in his coat, nodding. The soldier--I have
not yet mentioned his name--Gabord, did not know that more than one
passed into Voban's hands.
"Off with your coat, m'sieu'," said Voban, whipping out his shears,
tossing his cap aside, and rolling down his apron. "M'sieu' is here."
I had off my coat, was in a chair in a twinkling, and he was
clipping softly at me as Doltaire's hand turned the handle of the
door.
"Beware--to-night!" Voban whispered.
"Come to me in the prison," said I. "Remember your brother!"
His lips twitched. "M'sieu', I will if I can." This he said in
my ear as Doltaire entered and came forward.
"Upon my life!" Doltaire broke out. "These English gallants! They go
to prison curled and musked by Voban. VOBAN--a name from the court
of the King, and it garnishes a barber. Who called you, Voban?"
"My mother, with the cure's help, m'sieu'."
Doltaire paused, with a pinch of snuff at his nose, and replied
lazily, "I did not say 'Who called you VOBAN?' Voban, but
who called you here, Voban?"
I spoke up testily then of purpose: "What would you have, monsieur?
The citadel has better butchers than barbers. I sent for him."
He shrugged his shoulders and came over to Voban. "Turn round,
my Voban," he said. "Voban--and such a figure! a knee, a back
like that!"
Then, while my heart stood still, he put forth a finger and
touched the barber on the chest. If he should touch the letters! I
was ready to seize them--but would that save them? Twice, thrice,
the finger prodded Voban's breast, as if to add an emphasis to his
words. "In Quebec you are misplaced, Monsieur le Voban. Once a wasp
got into a honeycomb and died."
I knew he was hinting at the barber's resentment of the poor
Mathilde's fate. Something strange and devilish leapt into the
man's eyes, and he broke out bitterly,
"A honey-bee got into a nest of wasps--and died."
I thought of the Scarlet Woman on the hill.
Voban looked for a moment as if he might do some wild thing. His
spirit, his devilry, pleased Doltaire, and he laughed. "Who would
have thought our Voban had such wit? The trade of barber is
double-edged. Razors should be in fashion at Versailles."
Then he sat down, while Voban made a pretty show of touching off
my person. A few minutes passed so, in which the pealing of bells,
the shouting of the people, the beating of drums, and the calling
of bugles came to us clearly.
A half hour afterwards, on our way to the Intendant's palace, we
heard the Benedictus chanted in the Church of the Recollets as
we passed--hundreds kneeling outside, and responding to the chant
sung within:
"That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hands
of all that hate us."
At the corner of a building which we passed, a little away from
the crowd, I saw a solitary cloaked figure. The words of the chant,
following us, I could hear distinctly:
"That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies,
might serve Him without fear."
And then, from the shadowed corner came in a high, melancholy
voice the words:
"To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow
of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace."
Looking closer, I saw it was Mathilde.
Doltaire smiled as I turned and begged a moment's time to speak
to her.
"To pray with the lost angel and sup with the Intendant, all in
one night--a liberal taste, monsieur; but who shall stay the good
Samaritan!"
They stood a little distance away, and I went over to her and
said, "Mademoiselle--Mathilde, do you not know me?"
Her abstracted eye fired up, as there ran to her brain some
little sprite out of the House of Memory and told her who I
was.
"There were two lovers in the world," she said: "the Mother of
God forgot them, and the devil came. I am the Scarlet Woman," she
went on; "I made this red robe from the curtains of Hell--"
Poor soul! My own trouble seemed then as a speck among the stars
to hers. I took her hand and held it, saying again, "Do you not
know me? Think, Mathilde!"
I was not sure that she had ever seen me, to know me, but I thought
it possible; for, as a hostage, I had been much noticed in Quebec,
and Voban had, no doubt, pointed me out to her. Light leapt from
her black eye, and then she said, putting her finger on her lips,
"Tell all the lovers to hide. I have seen a hundred Francois Bigots."
I looked at her, saying nothing--I knew not what to say. Presently
her eye steadied to mine, and her intellect rallied. "You are a
prisoner, too," she said; "but they will not kill you: they will
keep you till the ring of fire grows in your head, and then you
will make your scarlet robe, and go out, but you will never find
It--never. God hid first, and then It hides.... It hides, that
which you lost--It hides, and you can not find It again. You go
hunting, hunting, but you can not find It."
My heart was pinched with pain. I understood her. She did not
know her lover now at all. If Alixe and her mother at the Manor
could but care for her, I thought. But alas! what could I do?
It were useless to ask her to go to the Manor; she would not
understand.
Perhaps there come to the disordered mind flashes of insight,
illuminations and divinations, greater than are given to the sane,
for she suddenly said in a whisper, touching me with a nervous
finger, "I will go and tell her where to hide. They shall not find
her. I know the woodpath to the Manor. Hush! she shall own all I
have--except the scarlet robe. She showed me where the May-apples
grew. Go,"--she pushed me gently away--"go to your prison, and pray
to God. But you can not kill Francois Bigot, he is a devil." Then she
thrust into my hands a little wooden cross, which she took from many
others at her girdle. "If you wear that, the ring of fire will not
grow," she said. "I will go by the woodpath, and give her one, too.
She shall live with me: I will spread the cedar branches and stir
the fire. She shall be safe. Hush! Go, go softly, for their wicked
eyes are everywhere, the were-wolves!"
She put her fingers on my lips for an instant, and then, turning,
stole softly away towards the St. Charles River.
Doltaire's mockery brought me back to myself.
"So much for the beads of the addled; now for the bowls of sinful
man," said he.
III
THE WAGER AND THE SWORD
As I entered the Intendant's palace with Doltaire I had a singular
feeling of elation. My spirits rose unaccountably, and I felt as
though it were a fete night, and the day's duty over, the hour of
play was come. I must needs have felt ashamed of it then, and now,
were I not sure it was some unbidden operation of the senses. Maybe
a merciful Spirit sees how, left alone, we should have stumbled and
lost ourselves in our own gloom, and so gives us a new temper fitted
to our needs. I remember that at the great door I turned back and
smiled upon the ruined granary, and sniffed the air laden with the
scent of burnt corn--the peoples bread; that I saw old men and women
who could not be moved by news of victory, shaking with cold, even
beside this vast furnace, and peevishly babbling of their hunger,
and I did not say, "Poor souls!" that for a time the power to feel
my own misfortunes seemed gone, and a hard, light indifference came
on me.
For it is true I came into the great dining-hall, and looked upon
the long loaded table, with its hundred candles, its flagons and
pitchers of wine, and on the faces of so many idle, careless
gentlemen bid to a carouse, with a manner, I believe, as reckless
and jaunty as their own. And I kept it up, though I saw it was not
what they had looked for. I did not at once know who was there, but
presently, at a distance from me, I saw the face of Juste Duvarney,
the brother of my sweet Alixe, a man of but twenty or so, who had a
name for wildness, for no badness that I ever heard of, and for a
fiery temper. He was in the service of the Governor, an ensign. He
had been little at home since I had come to Quebec, having been
employed up to the past year in the service of the Governor of
Montreal. We bowed, but he made no motion to come to me, and the
Intendant engaged me almost at once in gossip of the town; suddenly,
however, diverging upon some questions of public tactics and civic
government. He much surprised me, for though I knew him brave and
able, I had never thought of him save as the adroit politician and
servant of the King, the tyrant and the libertine. I might have
known by that very scene a few hours before that he had a wide, deep
knowledge of human nature, and despised it; unlike Doltaire, who had
a keener mind, was more refined even in wickedness, and, knowing the
world, laughed at it more than he despised it, which was the sign of
the greater mind. And indeed, in spite of all the causes I had to
hate Doltaire, it is but just to say he had by nature all the great
gifts--misused and disordered as they were. He was the product of
his age; having no real moral sense, living life wantonly, making
his own law of right or wrong. As a lad, I was taught to think the
evil person carried evil in his face, repelling the healthy mind.
But long ago I found that this was error. I had no reason to admire
Doltaire, and yet to this hour his handsome face, with its shadows
and shifting lights, haunts me, charms me. The thought came to me
as I talked with the Intendant, and I looked round the room. Some
present were of coarse calibre--bushranging sons of seigneurs and
petty nobles, dashing and profane, and something barbarous; but
most had gifts of person and speech, and all seemed capable.
My spirits continued high. I sprang alertly to meet wit and gossip,
my mind ran nimbly here and there, I filled the role of honoured
guest. But when came the table and wine, a change befell me. From
the first drop I drank, my spirits suffered a decline. On one side
the Intendant rallied me, on the other Doltaire. I ate on, drank
on; but while smiling by the force of will, I grew graver little by
little. Yet it was a gravity which had no apparent motive, for I
was not thinking of my troubles, not even of the night's stake and
the possible end of it all; simply a sort of gray colour of the mind,
a stillness in the nerves, a general seriousness of the senses.
I drank, and the wine did not affect me, as voices got loud and
louder, and glasses rang, and spurs rattled on shuffling heels, and
a scabbard clanged on a chair. I seemed to feel and know it all in
some far-off way, but I was not touched by the spirit of it, was
not a part of it. I watched the reddened cheeks and loose scorching
mouths around me with a sort of distant curiosity, and the ribald
jests flung right and left struck me not at all acutely. It was
as if I were reading a Book of Bacchus. I drank on evenly, not
doggedly, and answered jest for jest without a hot breath of
drunkenness. I looked several times at Juste Duvarney, who sat not
far away, on the other side of the table, behind a grand piece
of silver filled with October roses. He was drinking hard, and
Doltaire, sitting beside him, kept him at it. At last the silver
piece was shifted, and he and I could see each other fairly. Now
and then Doltaire spoke across to me, but somehow no word passed
between Duvarney and myself.
Suddenly, as if by magic--I know it was preconcerted--the talk
turned on the events of the evening and on the defeat of the
British. Then, too, as strangely I began to be myself again, amid
a sense of my position grew upon me. I had been withdrawn from
all real feeling and living for hours, but I believe that same
suspension was my salvation. For with every man present deeply gone
in liquor round me--every man save Doltaire--I was sane and steady,
and settling into a state of great alertness, determined on escape,
if that could be, and bent on turning every chance to serve my
purposes.
Now and again I caught my own name mentioned with a sneer, then with
remarks of surprise, then with insolent laughter. I saw it all.
Before dinner some of the revellers had been told of the new charge
against me, and, by instruction, had kept it till the inflammable
moment. Then, when the why and wherefore of my being at this supper
were in the hazard, the stake, as a wicked jest of Bigot's, was
mentioned. I could see the flame grow inch by inch, fed by the
Intendant and Doltaire, whose hateful final move I was yet to see.
For one instant I had a sort of fear, for I was sure they meant I
should not leave the room alive; but anon I felt a river of fiery
anger flow through me, rousing me, making me loathe the faces of
them all. Yet not all, for in one pale face, with dark, brilliant
eyes, I saw the looks of my flower of the world: the colour of her
hair in his, the clearness of the brow, the poise of the head--how
handsome he was!--the light, springing step, like a deer on the sod
of June. I call to mind when I first saw him. He was sitting in a
window of the Manor, just after he had come from Montreal, playing a
violin which had once belonged to De Casson, the famous priest whose
athletic power and sweet spirit endeared him to New France. His
fresh cheek was bent to the brown, delicate wood, and he was playing
to his sister the air of the undying chanson, "Je vais mourir pour
ma belle reine." I loved the look of his face, like that of a young
Apollo, open, sweet, and bold, all his body having the epic strength
of life. I wished that I might have him near me as a comrade, for
out of my hard experience I could teach him much, and out of his
youth he could soften my blunt nature, by comradeship making
flexuous the hard and ungenial.
I went on talking to the Intendant, while some of the guests
rose and scattered about the rooms, at tables, to play picquet,
the jesting on our cause and the scorn of myself abating not at
all. I would not have it thought that anything was openly coarse or
brutal; it was all by innuendo, and brow-lifting, and maddening,
allusive phrases such as it is thought fit for gentlefolk to use
instead of open charge. There was insult in a smile, contempt
in the turn of a shoulder, challenge in the flicking of a
handkerchief. With great pleasure I could have wrung their noses
one by one, and afterwards have met them tossing sword-points in
the same order. I wonder now that I did not tell them so, for I was
ever hasty; but my brain was clear that night, and I held myself
in proper check, letting each move come from my enemies. There was
no reason why I should have been at this wild feast at all, I a
prisoner, accused falsely of being a spy, save because of some
plot by which I was to have fresh suffering and some one else be
benefited--though how that could be I could not guess at first.
But soon I understood everything. Presently I heard a young
gentleman say to Duvarney over my shoulder:
"Eating comfits and holding yarn--that was his doing at your
manor when Doltaire came hunting him."
"He has dined at your table, Lancy," broke out Duvarney hotly.
"But never with our ladies," was the biting answer.
"Should prisoners make conditions?" was the sharp, insolent retort.
The insult was conspicuous, and trouble might have followed, but
that Doltaire came between them, shifting the attack.
"Prisoners, my dear Duvarney," said he, "are most delicate and
exacting; they must be fed on wine and milk. It is an easy life, and
hearts grow soft for them. As thus-- Indeed, it is most sad: so young
and gallant; in speech, too, so confiding! And if we babble all our
doings to him, think you he takes it seriously? No, no--so gay and
thoughtless, there is a thoroughfare from ear to ear, and all's lost
on the other side. Poor simple gentleman, he is a claimant on our
courtesy, a knight without a sword, a guest without the power to
leave us--he shall make conditions, he shall have his caprice. La,
la! my dear Duvarney and my Lancy!"
He spoke in a clear, provoking tone, putting a hand upon the
shoulder of each young gentleman as he talked, his eyes wandering
over me idly, and beyond me. I saw that he was now sharpening the
sickle to his office. His next words made this more plain to me:
"And if a lady gives a farewell sign to one she favours for the
moment, shall not the prisoner take it as his own?" (I knew he was
recalling Alixe's farewell gesture to me at the manor.) "Who shall
gainsay our peacock? Shall the guinea cock? The golden crumb was
thrown to the guinea cock, but that's no matter. The peacock
clatters of the crumb." At that he spoke an instant in Duvarney's
ear. I saw the lad's face flush, and he looked at me angrily.
Then I knew his object: to provoke a quarrel between this young
gentleman and myself, which might lead to evil ends; and the
Intendant's share in the conspiracy was to revenge himself upon
the Seigneur for his close friendship with the Governor. If Juste
Duvarney were killed in the duel which they foresaw, so far as
Doltaire was concerned I was out of the counting in the young lady's
sight. In any case my life was of no account, for I was sure my
death was already determined on. Yet it seemed strange that Doltaire
should wish me dead, for he had reasons for keeping me alive, as
shall be seen.
Juste Duvarney liked me once, I knew, but still he had the
Frenchman's temper, and had always to argue down his bias against my
race, and to cherish a good heart towards me; for he was young, and
most sensitive to the opinions of his comrades. I can not express
what misery possessed me when I saw him leave Doltaire, and, coming
to me where I stood alone, say--
"What secrets found you at our seigneury, monsieur?"
I understood the taunt--as though I were the common interrogation
mark, the abuser of hospitality, the abominable Paul Pry. But I held
my wits together.
"Monsieur," said I, "I found the secret of all good life: a noble
kindness to the unfortunate."
There was a general laugh, led by Doltaire, a concerted influence on
the young gentleman. I cursed myself that I had been snared to this
trap.
"The insolent," responded Duvarney, "not the unfortunate."
"Insolence is no crime, at least," I rejoined quietly, "else this
room were a penitentiary."
There was a moment's pause, and presently, as I kept my eye on
him, he raised his handkerchief and flicked me across the face with
it, saying, "Then this will be a virtue, and you may have more such
virtues as often as you will."
In spite of will, my blood pounded in my veins, and a devilish
anger took hold of me. To be struck across the face by a beardless
Frenchman, scarce past his teens!--it shook me more than now I care
to own. I felt my cheek burn, my teeth clinched, and I know a kind
of snarl came from me; but again, all in a moment, I caught a turn
of his head, a motion of the hand, which brought back Alixe to me.
Anger died away, and I saw only a youth flushed with wine, stung by
suggestions, with that foolish pride the youngster feels--and he was
the youngest of them all--in being as good a man as the best, and
as daring as the worst. I felt how useless it would be to try the
straightening of matters there, though had we two been alone a dozen
words would have been enough. But to try was my duty, and I tried
with all my might; almost, for Alixe's sake, with all my heart.
"Do not trouble to illustrate your meaning," said I patiently.
"Your phrases are clear and to the point."
"You bolt from my words," he retorted, "like a shy mare on the
curb; you take insult like a donkey on a well-wheel. What fly will
the English fish rise to? Now it no more plays to my hook than an
August chub."
I could not help but admire his spirit and the sharpness of his
speech, though it drew me into a deeper quandary. It was clear that
he would not be tempered to friendliness; for, as is often so, when
men have said things fiercely, their eloquence feeds their passion
and convinces them of holiness in their cause. Calmly, but with a
heavy heart, I answered:
"I wish not to find offense in your words, my friend, for in some
good days gone you and I had good acquaintance, and I can not forget
that the last hours of a light imprisonment before I entered on a
dark one were spent in the home of your father--of the brave
Seigneur whose life I once saved."
I am sure I should not have mentioned this in any other
situation--it seemed as if I were throwing myself on his mercy;
but yet I felt it was the only thing to do--that I must bridge
this affair, if at cost of some reputation.
It was not to be. Here Doltaire, seeing that my words had indeed
affected my opponent, said: "A double retreat! He swore to give a
challenge to-night, and he cries off like a sheep from a porcupine;
his courage is so slack, he dares not move a step to his liberty.
It was a bet, a hazard. He was to drink glass for glass with any
and all of us, and fight sword for sword with any of us who gave
him cause. Having drunk his courage to death, he'd now browse at
the feet of those who give him chance to win his stake."
His words came slowly and bitingly, yet with an air of damnable
nonchalance. I looked round me. Every man present was full-sprung
with wine; and a distance away, a gentleman on either side of him,
stood the Intendant, smiling detestably, a keen, houndlike look
shooting out of his small round eyes.
I had had enough; I could bear no more. To be baited like a bear
by these Frenchmen--it was aloes in my teeth! I was not sorry then
that these words of Juste Duvarney's gave me no chance of escape
from fighting; though I would it had been any other man in the room
than he. It was on my tongue to say that if some gentleman would
take up his quarrel I should be glad to drive mine home, though
for reasons I cared not myself to fight Duvarney. But I did not,
for I knew that to carry that point farther might rouse a general
thought of Alixe, and I had no wish to make matters hard for her.
Everything in its own good time, and when I should be free! So,
without more ado, I said to him:
"Monsieur, the quarrel was of your choosing, not mine. There was no
need for strife between us, and you have more to lose than I: more
friends, more years of life, more hopes. I have avoided your bait,
as you call it, for your sake, not mine own. Now I take it, and you,
monsieur, show us what sort of fisherman you are."
All was arranged in a moment. As we turned to pass from the room
to the courtyard, I noted that Bigot was gone. When we came
outside, it was just one, as I could tell by a clock striking in a
chamber near. It was cold, and some of the company shivered as we
stepped upon the white, frosty stones. The late October air bit the
cheek, though now and then a warm, pungent current passed across
the courtyard--the breath from the people's burnt corn. Even yet
upon the sky was the reflection of the fire, and distant sounds of
singing, shouting, and carousal came to us from the Lower Town.
We stepped to a corner of the yard and took off our coats; swords
were handed us--both excellent, for we had had our choice of many.
It was partial moonlight, but there were flitting clouds. That we
should have light, however, pine torches had been brought, and
these were stuck in the wall. My back was to the outer wall of the
courtyard, and I saw the Intendant at a window of the palace looking
down at us. Doltaire stood a little apart from the other gentlemen
in the courtyard, yet where he could see Duvarney and myself at
advantage.
Before we engaged, I looked intently into my opponent's face, and
measured him carefully with my eye, that I might have his height
and figure explicit and exact; for I know how moonlight and fire
distort, how the eye may be deceived. I looked for every button; for
the spot in his lean, healthy body where I could disable him, spit
him, and yet not kill him--for this was the thing furthest from my
wishes, God knows. Now the deadly character of the event seemed to
impress him, for he was pale, and the liquor he had drunk had given
him dark hollows round the eyes, and a gray shining sweat was on his
cheek. But his eyes themselves were fiery and keen and there was
reckless daring in every turn of his body.
I was not long in finding his quality, for he came at me violently
from the start, and I had chance to know his strength and weakness
also. His hand was quick, his sight clear and sure, his knowledge
to a certain point most definite and practical, his mastery of the
sword delightful; but he had little imagination, he did not divine,
he was merely a brilliant performer, he did not conceive. I saw that
if I put him on the defensive I should have him at advantage, for he
had not that art of the true swordsman, the prescient quality which
foretells the opponents action and stands prepared. There I had him
at fatal advantage--could, I felt, give him last reward of insult
at my pleasure. Yet a lust of fighting got into me, and it was
difficult to hold myself in check at all, nor was it easy to meet
his breathless and adroit advances.
Then, too, remarks from the bystanders worked me up to a deep sort
of anger, and I could feel Doltaire looking at me with that still,
cold face of his, an ironical smile at his lips. Now and then, too,
a ribald jest came from some young roisterer near, and the fact
that I stood alone among sneering enemies wound me up to a point
where pride was more active than aught else. I began to press him a
little, and I pricked him once. Then a singular feeling possessed
me. I would bring this to an end when I had counted ten; I would
strike home when I said "ten."
So I began, and I was not aware then that I was counting aloud.
"One--two--three!" It was weird to the onlookers, for the yard grew
still, and you could hear nothing but maybe a shifting foot or a
hard breathing. "Four--five--six!" There was a tenseness in the air,
and Juste Duvarney, as if he felt a menace in the words, seemed to
lose all sense of wariness, and came at me lunging, lunging with
great swiftness and heat. I was incensed now, and he must take what
fortune might send; one can not guide one's sword to do the least
harm fighting as did we.
I had lost blood, and the game could go on no longer. "Eight!" I
pressed him sharply now. "Nine!" I was preparing for the trick
which would end the matter, when I slipped on the frosty stones,
now glazed with our tramping back and forth, and, trying to recover
myself, left my side open to his sword. It came home, though I
partly diverted it. I was forced to my knees, but there, mad,
unpardonable youth, he made another furious lunge at me. I threw
myself back, deftly avoided the lunge, and he came plump on my
upstretched sword, gave a long gasp, and sank down.
At that moment the doors of the courtyard opened, and men stepped
inside, one coming quickly forward before the rest. It was the
Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He spoke, but what he said I
knew not, for the stark upturned face of Juste Duvarney was there
before me, there was a great buzzing in my ears, and I fell back
into darkness.
IV
THE RAT IN THE TRAP
When I waked I was alone. At first nothing was clear to me; my brain
was dancing in my head, my sight was obscured, my body painful, my
senses were blunted. I was in darkness, yet through an open door
there showed a light, which, from the smell and flickering, I knew
to be a torch. This, creeping into my senses, helped me to remember
that the last thing I saw in the Intendant's courtyard was a burning
torch, which suddenly multiplied to dancing hundreds and then went
out. I now stretched forth a hand, and it touched a stone wall; I
moved, and felt straw under me. Then I fixed my eyes steadily on
the open door and the shaking light, and presently it all came to
me: the events of the night, and that I was now in a cell of the
citadel. Stirring, I found that the wound in my body had been bound
and cared for. A loosely tied scarf round my arm showed that some
one had lately left me, and would return to finish the bandaging. I
raised myself with difficulty, and saw a basin of water, a sponge,
bits of cloth, and a pocket-knife. Stupid and dazed though I was,
the instinct of self-preservation lived, and I picked up the knife
and hid it in my coat. I did it, I believe, mechanically, for a
hundred things were going through my mind at the time.
All at once there rushed in on me the thought of Juste Duvarney as
I saw him last--how long ago was it?--his white face turned to the
sky, his arms stretched out, his body dabbled in blood. I groaned
aloud. Fool, fool! to be trapped by these lying French! To be
tricked into playing their shameless games for them, to have a
broken body, to have killed the brother of the mistress of my heart,
and so cut myself off from her and ruined my life for nothing--for
worse than nothing! I had swaggered, boasted, had taken a challenge
for a bout and a quarrel like any hanger-on of a tavern.
Suddenly I heard footsteps and voices outside; then one voice,
louder than the other, saying, "He hasn't stirred a peg--lies like
a log!" It was Gabord.
Doltaire's voice replied, "You will not need a surgeon--no?" His
tone, as it seemed to me, was less careless than usual.
Gabord answered, "I know the trick of it all--what can a surgeon do?
This brandy will fetch him to his intellects. And by-and-bye crack'll
go his spine--aho!"
You have heard a lion growling on a bone. That is how Gabord's voice
sounded to me then--a brutal rawness; but it came to my mind also
that this was the man who had brought Voban to do me service!
"Come, come, Gabord, crack your jaws less, and see you fetch him on
his feet again," said Doltaire. "From the seats of the mighty they
have said that he must live--to die another day; and see to it, or
the mighty folk will say that you must die to live another day--in a
better world, my Gabord."
There was a moment in which the only sound was that of tearing
linen, and I could see the shadows of the two upon the stone wall of
the corridor wavering to the light of the torch; then the shadows
shifted entirely, and their footsteps came on towards my door. I
was lying on my back as when I came to, and, therefore, probably as
Gabord had left me, and I determined to appear still in a faint.
Through nearly closed eyelids however I saw Gabord enter. Doltaire
stood in the doorway watching as the soldier knelt and lifted my arm
to take off the bloody scarf. His manner was imperturbable as ever.
Even then I wondered what his thoughts were, what pungent phrase
he was suiting to the time and to me. I do not know to this day
which more interested him--that very pungency of phrase, or the
critical events which inspired his reflections. He had no sense of
responsibility; his mind loved talent, skill, and cleverness, and
though it was scathing of all usual ethics, for the crude, honest
life of the poor it had sympathy. I remember remarks of his in the
market-place a year before, as he and I watched the peasant in his
sabots and the good-wife in her homespun cloth.
"These are they," said he, "who will save the earth one day, for
they are like it, kin to it. When they are born they lie close to
it, and when they die they fall no height to reach their graves. The
rest--the world--are like ourselves in dreams: we do not walk; we
think we fly, over houses, over trees, over mountains; and then one
blessed instant the spring breaks, or the dream gets twisted, and we
go falling, falling, in a sickening fear, and, waking up, we find we
are and have been on the earth all the while, and yet can make no
claim on it, and have no kin with it, and no right to ask anything
of it--quelle vie--quelle vie!"
Sick as I was, I thought of that as he stood there, looking in at
me; and though I knew I ought to hate him, I admired him in spite
of all.
Presently he said to Gabord, "You'll come to me at noon to-morrow,
and see you bring good news. He breathes?"
Gabord put a hand on my chest and at my neck, and said at once,
"Breath for balloons--aho!"
Doltaire threw his cloak over his shoulder and walked away, his
footsteps sounding loud in the passages. Gabord began humming to
himself as he tied the bandages, and then he reached down for the
knife to cut the flying strings. I could see this out of a little
corner of my eye. When he did not find it, he settled back on his
haunches and looked at me. I could feel his lips puffing out, and
I was ready for the "Poom!" that came from him. Then I could feel
him stooping over me, and his hot strong breath in my face. I was
so near to unconsciousness at that moment by a sudden anxiety that
perhaps my feigning had the look of reality. In any case, he thought
me unconscious and fancied that he had taken the knife away with
him; for he tucked in the strings of the bandage. Then, lifting
my head, he held the flask to my lips; for which I was most
grateful--I was dizzy and miserably faint.
I think I came to with rather more alacrity than was wise, but he
was deceived, and his first words were, "Ho, ho! the devil's
knocking; who's for home, angels?"
It was his way to put all things allusively, using strange figures
and metaphors. Yet, when one was used to him and to them, their
potency seemed greater than polished speech and ordinary phrase.
He offered me more brandy, and then, without preface, I asked him the
one question which sank back on my heart like a load of ice even as I
sent it forth. "Is he alive?" I inquired. "Is Monsieur Juste Duvarney
alive?"
With exasperating coolness he winked an eye, to connect the event
with what he knew of the letter I had sent to Alixe, and, cocking
his head, he blew out his lips with a soundless laugh, and said:
"To whisk the brother off to heaven is to say good-bye to sister
and pack yourself to Father Peter."
"For God's sake, tell me, is the boy dead?" I asked, my voice
cracking in my throat.
"He's not mounted for the journey yet," he answered, with a shrug,
"but the Beast is at the door."
I plied my man with questions, and learned that they had carried
Juste into the palace for dead, but found life in him, and
straightway used all means to save him. A surgeon came, his father
and mother were sent for, and when Doltaire had left there was
hope that he would live.
I learned also that Voban had carried word to the Governor of the
deed to be done that night; had for a long time failed to get
admittance to him, but was at last permitted to tell his story;
and Vaudreuil had gone to Bigot's palace to have me hurried to
the citadel, and had come just too late.
After answering my first few questions, Gabord say nothing more,
and presently he took the torch from the wall and with a gruff
good-night prepared to go. When I asked that a light be left, he
shook his head, said he had no orders. Whereupon he left me, the
heavy door clanging to, the bolts were shot, and I was alone in
darkness with my wounds and misery. My cloak had been put into the
cell beside my couch, and this I now drew over me, and I lay and
thought upon my condition and my prospects, which, as may be seen,
were not cheering. I did not suffer great pain from my wounds--only
a stiffness that troubled me not at all if I lay still. After an
hour or so passed--for it is hard to keep count of time when one's
thoughts are the only timekeeper--I fell asleep.
I know not how long I slept, but I awoke refreshed. I stretched
forth my uninjured arm, moving it about. In spite of will a sort of
hopelessness went through me, for I could feel long blades of corn
grown up about my couch, an unnatural meadow, springing from the
earth floor of my dungeon. I drew the blades between my fingers,
feeling towards them as if they were things of life out of place
like myself. I wondered what colour they were. Surely, said I
to myself, they can not be green, but rather a yellowish white,
bloodless, having only fibre, the heart all pinched to death. Last
night I had not noted them, yet now, looking back, I saw, as in
a picture, Gabord the soldier feeling among them for the knife
that I had taken. So may we see things, and yet not be conscious
of them at the time, waking to their knowledge afterwards. So may
we for years look upon a face without understanding, and then,
suddenly, one day it comes flashing out, and we read its hidden
story like a book.
I put my hand out farther, then brought it back near to my couch,
feeling towards its foot mechanically, and now I touched an earthen
pan. A small board lay across its top, and moving my fingers along
it I found a piece of bread. Then I felt the jar, and knew it was
filled with water. Sitting back, I thought hard for a moment. Of
this I was sure: the pan and bread were not there when I went to
sleep, for this was the spot where my eyes fell naturally while I
lay in bed looking towards Doltaire; and I should have remembered
it now, even if I had not noted it then. My jailer had brought
these while I slept. But it was still dark. I waked again as though
out of sleep, startled: I was in a dungeon that had no window!
Here I was, packed away in a farthest corner of the citadel, in a
deep hole that maybe had not been used for years, to be, no doubt,
denied all contact with the outer world--I was going to say FRIENDS,
but whom could I name among them save that dear soul who, by last
night's madness, should her brother be dead, was forever made dumb
and blind to me? Whom had I but her and Voban!--and Voban was yet to
be proved. The Seigneur Duvarney had paid all debts he may have owed
me, and he now might, because of the injury to his son, leave me to
my fate. On Gabord the soldier I could not count at all.
There I was, as Doltaire had said, like a rat in a trap. But I would
not let panic seize me. So I sat and ate the stale but sweet bread,
took a long drink of the good water from the earthen jar, and then,
stretching myself out, drew my cloak up to my chin, and settled
myself for sleep again. And that I might keep up a kind delusion
that I was not quite alone in the bowels of the earth, I reached out
my hand and affectionately drew the blades of corn between my
fingers.
Presently I drew my chin down to my shoulder, and let myself drift
out of painful consciousness almost as easily as a sort of woman can
call up tears at will. When I waked again, it was without a start
or moving, without confusion, and I was bitterly hungry. Beside my
couch, with his hands on his hips and his feet thrust out, stood
Gabord, looking down at me in a quizzical and unsatisfied way. A
torch was burning near him.
"Wake up, my dickey-bird," said he in his rough, mocking voice, "and
we'll snuggle you into the pot. You've been long hiding; come out of
the bush--aho!"
I drew myself up painfully. "What is the hour?" I asked, and
meanwhile I looked for the earthen jar and the bread.
"Hour since when?" said he.
"Since it was twelve o'clock last night," I answered.
"Fourteen hours since THEN," said he.
The emphasis arrested my attention. "I mean," I added, "since the
fighting in the courtyard."
"Thirty-six hours and more since then, m'sieu' the dormouse," was
his reply.
I had slept a day and a half since the doors of this cell closed on
me. It was Friday then; now it was Sunday afternoon. Gabord had
come to me three times, and seeing how sound asleep I was had not
disturbed me, but had brought bread and water--my prescribed diet.
He stood there, his feet buried in the blanched corn--I could see
the long yellowish-white blades--the torch throwing shadows about
him, his back against the wall. I looked carefully round my dungeon.
There was no a sign of a window; I was to live in darkness. Yet if
I were but allowed candles, or a lantern, or a torch, some books,
paper, pencil, and tobacco, and the knowledge that I had not killed
Juste Duvarney, I could abide the worst with some sort of calmness.
How much might have happened, must have happened, in all these hours
of sleep! My letter to Alixe should have been delivered long ere
this; my trial, no doubt, had been decided on. What had Voban done?
Had he any word for me? Dear Lord! here was a mass of questions
tumbling one upon the other in my head, while my heart thumped
behind my waistcoat like a rubber ball to a prize-fighter's fist.
Misfortunes may be so great and many that one may find grim humour
and grotesqueness in their impossible conjunction and multiplicity.
I remembered at that moment a friend of mine in Virginia, the
most unfortunate man I ever knew. Death, desertion, money losses,
political defeat, flood, came one upon the other all in two years,
and coupled with this was loss of health. One day he said to me:
"Robert, I have a perforated lung, my liver is a swelling sponge,
eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in
my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for
happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The
devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his--plague and
pestilence, being final, are the will of God--and, upon my soul,
it is an absurd comedy of ills!" At that he had a fit of coughing,
and I gave him a glass of spirits, which eased him.
"That's better," said I cheerily to him.
"It's robbing Peter to pay Paul," he answered; "for I owed it to my
head to put the quid refert there, and here it's gone to my lungs to
hurry up my breathing. Did you ever think, Robert," he added, "that
this breathing of ours is a labor, and that we have to work every
second to keep ourselves alive? We have to pump air in and out like
a blacksmith's boy." He said it so drolly, though he was deadly ill,
that I laughed for half an hour at the stretch, wiping away my tears
as I did it; for his pale gray face looked so sorry, with its quaint
smile and that odd, dry voice of his.
As I sat there in my dungeon, with Gabord cocking his head and his
eyes rolling, that scene flashed on me, and I laughed freely--so
much so that Gabord sulkily puffed out his lips, and flamed like
bunting on a coast-guard's hut. The more he scowled and spluttered,
the more I laughed, till my wounded side hurt me and my arm had
twinges. But my mood changed suddenly, and I politely begged his
pardon, telling him frankly then and there what had made me laugh,
and how I had come to think of it. The flame passed out of his
cheeks, the revolving fire of his eyes dimmed, his lips broke into
a soundless laugh, and then, in his big voice, he said:
"You've got your knees to pray on yet, and crack my bones, but
you'll have need to con your penitentials if tattle in the town
be true."
"Before you tell of that," said I, "how is young Monsieur Duvarney?
Is--is he alive?" I added, as I saw his face look lower.
"The Beast was at door again last night, wild to be off, and foot of
young Seigneur was in the stirrup, when along comes sister with drug
got from an Indian squaw who nursed her when a child. She gives it
him, and he drinks; they carry him back, sleeping, and Beast must
stand there tugging at the leathers yet."
"His sister--it was his sister," said I, "that brought him back to
life?"
"Like that--aho! They said she must not come, but she will have her
way. Straight she goes to the palace at night, no one knowing
but--guess who? You can't--but no!"
A light broke in on me. "With the Scarlet Woman--with Mathilde,"
I said, hoping in my heart that it was so, for somehow I felt even
then that she, poor vagrant, would play a part in the history of
Alixe's life and mine.
"At the first shot," he said. "'Twas the crimson one, as quiet as
a baby chick, not hanging to ma'm'selle's skirts, but watching and
whispering a little now and then--and she there in Bigot's palace,
and he not knowing it! And maids do not tell him, for they knew the
poor wench in better days--aho!"
I got up with effort and pain, and made to grasp his hand in
gratitude, but he drew back, putting his arms behind him.
"No, no," said he, "I am your jailer. They've put you here to break
your high spirits, and I'm to help the breaking."
"But I thank you just the same," I answered him; "and I promise to
give you as little trouble as may be while you are my jailer--which,
with all my heart, I hope may be as long as I'm a prisoner."
He waved out his hands to the dungeon walls, and lifted his shoulders
as if to say that I might as well be docile, for the prison was safe
enough. "Poom!" said he, as if in genial disdain of my suggestion.
I smiled, and then, after putting my hands on the walls here and
there to see if they were, as they seemed, quite dry, I drew back to
my couch and sat down. Presently I stooped to tip the earthen jar
of water to my lips, for I could not lift it with one hand, but my
humane jailer took it from me and held it to my mouth. When I had
drunk, "Do you know," asked I as calmly as I could, "if our barber
gave the letter to Mademoiselle?"
"M'sieu', you've travelled far to reach that question," said he,
jangling his keys as if he enjoyed it. "And if he had--?"
I caught at his vague suggestion, and my heart leaped.
"A reply," said I, "a message or a letter," though I had not dared
to let myself even think of that.
He whipped a tiny packet from his coat. "'Tis a sparrow's pecking--no
great matter here, eh?"--he weighed it up and down on his fingers--"a
little piping wren's par pitie."
I reached out for it. "I should read it," said he. "There must be
no more of this. But new orders came AFTER I'd got her dainty a
m'sieu'! Yes, I must read it," said he--"but maybe not at first," he
added, "not at first, if you'll give word of honour not to tear it."
"On my sacred honour," said I, reaching out still.
He looked it all over again provokingly, and then lifted it to his
nose, for it had a delicate perfume. Then he gave a little grunt of
wonder and pleasure, and handed it over.
I broke the seal, and my eyes ran swiftly through the lines, traced
in a firm, delicate hand. I could see through it all the fine, sound
nature, by its healthy simplicity mastering anxiety, care, and fear.
"Robert," she wrote, "by God's help my brother will live, to repent
with you, I trust, of Friday night's ill work. He was near gone, yet
we have held him back from that rough-rider, Death.
"You will thank God, will you not, that my brother did not die?
Indeed, I feel you have. I do not blame you; I know--I need not tell
you how--the heart of the affair; and even my mother can see through
the wretched thing. My father says little, and he has not spoken
harshly; for which I gave thanksgiving this morning in the chapel
of the Ursulines. Yet you are in a dungeon, covered with wounds of
my brother's making, both of you victims of others' villainy, and
you are yet to bear worse things, for they are to try you for your
life. But never shall I believe that they will find you guilty of
dishonour. I have watched you these three years; I do not, nor ever
will, doubt you, dear friend of my heart.
"You would not believe it, Robert, and you may think it fanciful,
but as I got up from my prayers at the chapel I looked towards a
window, and it being a little open, for it is a sunny day, there sat
a bird on the sill, a little brown bird that peeped and nodded. I
was so won by it that I came softly over to it. It did not fly away,
but hopped a little here and there. I stretched out my hand gently
on the stone, and putting its head now this side, now that, at last
it tripped into it, and chirped most sweetly. After I had kissed it
I placed it back on the window-sill, that it might fly away again.
Yet no, it would not go, but stayed there, tipping its gold-brown
head at me as though it would invite me to guess why it came. Again
I reached out my hand, and once more it tripped into it. I stood
wondering and holding it to my bosom, when I heard a voice behind me
say, 'The bird would be with thee, my child. God hath many signs.' I
turned and saw the good Mere St. George looking at me, she of whom
I was always afraid, so distant is she. I did not speak, but only
looked at her, and she nodded kindly at me and passed on.
"And, Robert, as I write to you here in the Intendant's palace (what
a great wonderful place it is! I fear I do not hate it and its
luxury as I ought!), the bird is beside me in a cage upon the table,
with a little window open, so that it may come out if it will. My
brother lies in the bed asleep; I can touch him if I but put out my
hand, and I am alone save for one person. You sent two messengers:
can you not guess the one that will be with me? Poor Mathilde, she
sits and gazes at me till I almost fall weeping. But she seldom
speaks, she is so quiet--as if she knew that she must keep a secret.
For, Robert, though I know you did not tell her, she knows--she
knows that you love me, and she has given me a little wooden cross
which she said will make us happy.
"My mother did not drive her away, as I half feared she would, and
at last she said that I might house her with one of our peasants.
Meanwhile she is with me here. She is not so mad but that she has
wisdom too, and she shall have my care and friendship.
"I bid thee to God's care, Robert. I need not tell thee to be not
dismayed. Thou hast two jails, and one wherein I lock thee safe is
warm and full of light. If the hours drag by, think of all thou
wouldst do if thou wert free to go to thine own country--yet alas
that thought!--and of what thou wouldst say if thou couldst speak
to thy ALIXE.
"Postscript.--I trust that they have cared for thy wounds, and that
thou hast light and food and wine. Voban hath promised to discover
this for me. The soldier Gabord, at the citadel, he hath a good
heart. Though thou canst expect no help from him, yet he will not be
rougher than his orders. He did me a good service once, and he likes
me, and I him. And so fare thee well, Robert. I will not languish;
I will act, and not be weary. Dost thou really love me?"
V
THE DEVICE OF THE DORMOUSE
When I had read the letter, I handed it up to Gabord without a
word. A show of trust in him was the only thing, for he had enough
knowledge of our secret to ruin us, if he chose. He took the letter,
turned it over, looking at it curiously, and at last, with a shrug
of the shoulders, passed it back.
"'Tis a long tune on a dot of a fiddle," said he, for indeed
the letter was but a small affair in bulk. "I'd need two
pairs of eyes and telescope! Is it all Heart-o'-my-heart, and
Come-trip-in-dewy-grass--aho? Or is there knave at window to
bear m'sieu' away?"
I took the letter from him. "Listen," said I, "to what the lady says
of you." And then I read him that part of her postscript which had
to do with himself.
He put his head on one side like a great wise magpie, and "H'm--ha!"
said he whimsically, "aho! Gabord the soldier, Gabord, thou hast a
good heart--and the birds fed the beast with plums and froth of
comfits till he died, and on his sugar tombstone they carved the
words, 'Gabord had a good heart.'"
"It was spoken out of a true spirit," said I petulantly, for I could
not bear from a common soldier even a tone of disparagement, though
I saw the exact meaning of his words. So I added, "You shall read
the whole letter, or I will read it to you and you shall judge. On
the honour of a gentleman, I will read all of it!"
"Poom!" said he, "English fire-eater! corn-cracker! Show me the
'good heart' sentence, for I'd see how it is written--how GABORD
looks with a woman's whimsies round it."
I traced the words with my fingers, holding the letter near the
torch. "'Yet he will not be rougher than his orders,'" said he after
me, and "'He did me a good service once.'"
"Comfits," he continued; "well, thou shalt have comfits, too," and
he fished from his pocket a parcel. It was my tobacco and my pipe.
Truly, my state might have been vastly worse. Little more was said
between Gabord and myself, but he refused bluntly to carry message
or letter to anybody, and bade me not to vex him with petitions.
But he left me the torch and a flint and steel, so I had light
for a space, and I had my blessed tobacco and pipe. When the doors
clanged shut and the bolts were shot, I lay back on my couch.
I was not all unhappy. Thank God, they had not put chains on me, as
Governor Dinwiddie had done with a French prisoner at Williamsburg,
for whom I had vainly sought to be exchanged two years before,
though he was my equal in all ways and importance. Doltaire was the
cause of that, as you shall know. Well, there was one more item to
add to his indebtedness. My face flushed and my fingers tingled at
thought of him, and so I resolutely turned my meditations elsewhere,
and again in a little while I seemed to think of nothing, but lay
and bathed in the silence, and indulged my eyes with the good red
light of the torch, inhaling its pitchy scent. I was conscious, yet
for a time I had no thought: I was like something half animal, half
vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor
has sense, but only lives. I seemed hung in space, as one feels when
going from sleep to waking--a long lane of half-numb life, before
the open road of full consciousness is reached.
At last I was aroused by the sudden cracking of a knot in the torch.
I saw that it would last but a few hours more. I determined to put
it out, for I might be allowed no more light, and even a few minutes
of this torch every day would be a great boon. So I took it from its
place, and was about to quench it in the moist earth at the foot of
the wall, when I remembered my tobacco and my pipe. Can you think
how joyfully I packed full the good brown bowl, delicately filling
in every little corner, and at last held it to the flame, and saw
it light? That first long whiff was like the indrawn breath of
the cold, starved hunter, when, stepping into his house, he sees
food, fire, and wife on his hearthstone. Presently I put out the
torchlight, and then went back to my couch and sat down, the bowl
shining like a star before me.
There and then a purpose came to me--something which would keep
my brain from wandering, my nerves from fretting and wearing, for
a time at least. I determined to write to my dear Alixe the true
history of my life, even to the point--and after--of this thing
which now was bringing me to so ill a pass. But I was in darkness, I
had no paper, pens, nor ink. After a deal of thinking I came at last
to the solution. I would compose the story, and learn it by heart,
sentence by sentence, as I so composed it.
So there and then I began to run back over the years of my life,
even to my first remembrances, that I might see it from first to
last in a sort of whole and with a kind of measurement. But when I
began to dwell upon my childhood, one little thing gave birth to
another swiftly, as you may see one flicker in the heaven multiply
and break upon the mystery of the dark, filling the night with
clusters of stars. As I thought, I kept drawing spears of the
dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had come to be like
comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the very first
memory of my life. It had never come to me before, and I knew now
that it was the beginning of conscious knowledge: for we can never
know till we can remember. When a child remembers what it sees or
feels, it has begun life.
I put that recollection into the letter which I wrote Alixe, and it
shall be set down forthwith and in little space, though it took me
so very many days and weeks to think it out, to give each word a
fixed place, so that it should go from my mind no more. Every phrase
of that story as I told it is as fixed as stone in my memory. Yet it
must not be thought I can give it all here. I shall set down only a
few things, but you shall find in them the spirit of the whole. I
will come at once to the body of the letter.
VI
MORAY TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
"...I would have you know of what I am and whence I came, though I
have given you glimpses in the past. That done, I will make plain
why I am charged with this that puts my life in danger, which would
make you blush that you ever knew me if it were true. And I will
show you first a picture as it runs before me, sitting here, the
corn of my dungeon garden twining in my fingers:--
"A multiplying width of green grass spotted with white flowers, an
upland where sheep browsed on a carpet of purple and gold and green,
a tall rock on a hill where birds perched and fluttered, a blue
sky arching over all. There, sprawling in a garden, a child pulled
at long blades of grass, as he watched the birds flitting about
the rocks, and heard a low voice coming down the wind. Here in my
dungeon I can hear the voice as I have not heard it since that day
in the year 1730--that voice stilled so long ago. The air and the
words come floating down (for the words I knew years afterwards):
'Did ye see the white cloud in the glint o' the sun?
That's the brow and the eye o' my bairnie.
Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o' the crag?
That's the rose in the cheek o' my bairnie.
Did ye hear the gay lilt o' the lark by the burn?
That's the voice of my bairnie, my dearie.
Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o' the wood?
That's the breath o' my ain, o' my bairnie.
Sae I'll gang awa' hame, to the shine o' the fire,
To the cot where I lie wi' my bairnie.'
"These words came crooning over the grass of that little garden at
Balmore which was by my mother's home. There I was born one day in
June, though I was reared in the busy streets of Glasgow, where my
father was a prosperous merchant and famous for his parts and
honesty.
"I see myself, a little child of no great strength, for I was,
indeed, the only one of my family who lived past infancy, and
my mother feared she should never bring me up. She, too, is in
that picture, tall, delicate, kind yet firm of face, but with a
strong brow, under which shone grave gray eyes, and a manner so
distinguished that none might dispute her kinship to the renowned
Montrose, who was lifted so high in dying, though his gallows was
but thirty feet, that all the world has seen him there. There was
one other in that picture, standing near my mother, and looking at
me, who often used to speak of our great ancestor--my grandfather,
John Mitchell, the Gentleman of Balmore, as he was called, out of
regard for his ancestry and his rare merits.
"I have him well in mind: his black silk breeches and white
stockings and gold seals, and two eyes that twinkled with great
humour when, as he stooped over me, I ran my head between his calves
and held him tight. I recall how my mother said, 'I doubt that I
shall ever bring him up,' and how he replied (the words seem to
come through great distances to me), 'He'll live to be Montrose the
second, rascal laddie! Four seasons at the breast? Tut, tut! what
o' that? 'Tis but his foolery, his scampishness! Nae, nae! his
epitaph's no for writing till you and I are tucked i' the sod,
my Jeanie. Then, like Montrose's, it will be--
'Tull Edinburrow they led him thair,
And on a gallows hong;
They hong him high abone the rest,
He was so trim a boy.'
"I can hear his laugh this minute, as he gave an accent to the words
by stirring me with his stick, and I caught the gold head of it and
carried it off, trailing it through the garden, till I heard my
mother calling, and then forced her to give me chase, as I pushed
open a little gate and posted away into that wide world of green,
coming quickly to the river, where I paused and stood at bay. I can
see my mother's anxious face now, as she caught me to her arms; and
yet I know she had a kind of pride, too, when my grandfather said,
on our return, 'The rascal's at it early. Next time he'll ford the
stream and skirl at ye, Jeanie, from yonder bank.'
"This is the first of my life that I remember. It may seem strange
to you that I thus suddenly recall not only it, but the words then
spoken too. It is strange to me, also. But here it comes to me all
on a sudden in this silence, as if another self of me were speaking
from far places. At first all is in patches and confused, and then
it folds out--if not clearly, still so I can understand--and the
words I repeat come as if filtered through many brains to mine. I
do not say that it is true--it may be dreams; and yet, as I say, it
is firmly in my mind.
"The next that I remember was climbing upon a chair to reach for my
grandfather's musket, which hung across the chimney. I got at last
upon the mantelshelf, and my hands were on the weapon, when the
door opened, and my grandfather and my father entered. I was so
busy I did not hear them till I was caught by the legs and swung
to a shoulder, where I sat kicking. 'You see his tastes, William,'
said my grandfather to my father; 'he's white o' face and slim o'
body, but he'll no carry on your hopes.' And more he said to the
point, though what it was I knew not. But I think it to have been
suggestion (I heard him say it later) that I would bring Glasgow up
to London by the sword (good doting soul!) as my father brought it
by manufactures, gaining honour thereby.
"However that may be, I would not rest till my grandfather had put
the musket into my arms. I could scarcely lift it, but from the
first it had a charm for me, and now and then, in spite of my
mother's protests, I was let to handle it, to learn its parts, to
burnish it, and by-and-bye--I could not have been more than six
years old--to rest it on a rock and fire it off. It kicked my
shoulder roughly in firing, but I know I did not wink as I pulled
the trigger. Then I got a wild hunger to fire it at all times; so
much so, indeed, that powder and shot were locked up, and the musket
was put away in my grandfather's chest. But now and again it was
taken out, and I made war upon the unresisting hillside, to the
dismay of our neighbours in Balmore. Feeding the fever in my veins,
my grandfather taught me soldiers' exercises and the handling of
arms: to my dear mother's sorrow, for she ever fancied me as leading
a merchant's quiet life like my father's, hugging the hearthstone,
and finding joy in small civic duties, while she and my dear father
sat peacefully watching me in their decline of years.
"I have told you of that river which flowed near my father's house.
At this time most of my hours were spent by it in good weather, for
at last my mother came to trust me alone there, having found her
alert fears of little use. But she would very often come with me and
watch me as I played there. I loved to fancy myself a miller, and my
little mill-wheel, made by my own hands, did duty here and there on
the stream, and many drives of logs did I, in fancy, saw into piles
of lumber, and loads of flour sent away to the City of Desire. Then,
again, I made bridges, and drove mimic armies across them; and if
they were enemies, craftily let them partly cross, to tumble them in
at the moment when part of the forces were on one side of the stream
and part on the other, and at the mercy of my men.
"My grandfather taught me how to build forts and breastworks, and
I lay in ambush for the beadle, who was my good friend, for my
grandfather, and for half a dozen other village folk, who took no
offense at my sport, but made believe to be bitterly afraid when I
surrounded them and drove them, shackled, to my fort by the river.
Little by little the fort grew, until it was a goodly pile; for
now and then a village youth helped me, or again an old man, whose
heart, maybe, rejoiced to play at being child again with me. Years
after, whenever I went back to Balmore, there stood the fort, for
no one ever meddled with it, nor tore it down.
"And I will tell you one reason why this was, and you will think it
strange that it should have played such a part in the history of
the village, as in my own life. You must know that people living in
secluded places are mostly superstitious. Well, when my fort was
built to such proportions that a small ladder must be used to fix
new mud and mortar in place upon it, something happened.
"Once a year there came to Balmore--and he had done so for a
generation--one of those beings called The Men, who are given to
prayer, fasting, and prophesying, who preach the word of warning
ever, calling even the ministers of the Lord sharply to account.
One day this Man came past my fort, folk with him, looking for
preaching or prophesy from him. Suddenly turning he came inside my
fort, and, standing upon the ladder against the wall, spoke to them
fervently. His last words became a legend in Balmore, and spread
even to Glasgow and beyond.
"'Hear me!' cried he. 'As I stand looking at ye from this wall,
calling on ye in your natural bodies to take refuge in the Fort of
God, the Angel of Death is looking ower the battlements of heaven,
choosing ye out, the sheep frae the goats; calling the one to
burning flames, and the other into peaceable habitations. I hear the
voice now,' cried he, 'and some soul among us goeth forth. Flee ye
to the Fort of Refuge.' I can see him now, his pale face shining,
his eyes burning, his beard blowing in the wind, his grizzled hair
shaking on his forehead. I had stood within the fort watching him.
At last he turned, and, seeing me intent, stooped, caught me by the
arms, and lifted me upon the wall. 'See you,' said he, 'yesterday's
babe a warrior to-day. Have done, have done, ye quarrelsome hearts.
Ye that build forts here shall lie in darksome prisons; there is no
fort but the Fort of God. The call comes frae the white ramparts.
Hush!' he added solemnly, raising a finger. 'One of us goeth hence
this day; are ye ready to walk i' the fearsome valley?'
"I have heard my mother speak these words over often, and they were,
as I said, like an old song in Balmore and Glasgow. He set me down,
and then walked away, waving the frightened people back; and there
was none of them that slept that night.
"Now comes the stranger thing. In the morning The Man was found
dead in my little fort, at the foot of the wall. Henceforth the
spot was sacred, and I am sure it stands there as when last I saw
it twelve years ago, but worn away by rains and winds.
"Again and again my mother said over to me his words, 'Ye that build
forts here shall lie in darksome prisons'; for always she had fear
of the soldier's life, and she was moved by signs and dreams.
"But this is how the thing came to shape my life:
"About a year after The Man died, there came to my grandfather's
house, my mother and I being present, a gentleman, by name Sir
John Godric, and he would have my mother tell the whole story of
The Man. That being done, he said that The Man was his brother, who
had been bad and wild in youth, a soldier; but repenting had gone
as far the other way, giving up place and property, and cutting off
from all his kin.
"This gentleman took much notice of me and said that he should
be glad to see more of me. And so he did, for in the years that
followed he would visit at our home in Glasgow when I was at
school, or at Balmore until my grandfather died.
"My father liked Sir John greatly, and they grew exceedingly
friendly, walking forth in the streets of Glasgow, Sir John's
hand upon my father's arm. One day they came to the school in High
Street, where I learned Latin and other accomplishments, together
with fencing from an excellent master, Sergeant Dowie of the One
Hundredth Foot. They found me with my regiment at drill; for I
had got full thirty of my school-fellows under arms, and spent
all leisure hours in mustering, marching, and drum-beating, and
practising all manner of discipline and evolution which I had been
taught by my grandfather and Sergeant Dowie.
"Those were the days soon after which came Dettingen and Fontenoy
and Charles Edward the Pretender, and the ardour of arms ran high.
Sir John was a follower of the Stuarts, and this was the one point
at which he and my father paused in their good friendship. When
Sir John saw me with my thirty lads marching in fine order, all
fired with the little sport of battle--for to me it was all real,
and our sham fights often saw broken heads and bruised shoulders--he
stamped his cane upon the ground, and said in a big voice, 'Well
done! well done! For that you shall have a hundred pounds next
birthday, and as fine a suit of scarlet as you please, and a sword
from London too.'
"Then he came to me and caught me by both shoulders. 'But alack,
alack! there needs some blood and flesh here, Robert Moray,' said
he. 'You have more heart than muscle.'
"This was true. I had ever been more eager than my strength--thank
God, that day is gone!--and sometimes, after Latin and the drill of
my Lightfoots, as I called them, I could have cried for weakness
and weariness, had I been a girl and not a proud lad. And Sir John
kept his word, liking me better from that day forth, and coming
now and again to see me at the school,--though he was much abroad
in France--giving many a pound to my Lightfoots, who were no worse
soldiers for that. His eye ran us over sharply, and his head nodded,
as we marched past him; and once I heard him say, 'If they had had
but ten years each on their heads, my Prince!'
"About this time my father died--that is, when I was fourteen years
old. Sir John became one of the executors with my mother, and
at my wish, a year afterwards, I was sent to the university, where
at least fifteen of my Lightfoots went also; and there I formed a
new battalion of them, though we were watched at first, and even
held in suspicion, because of the known friendship of Sir John for
me; and he himself had twice been under arrest for his friendship
to the Stuart cause. That he helped Prince Charles was clear: his
estates were mortgaged to the hilt.
"He died suddenly on that day of January when Culloden was fought,
before he knew of the defeat of the Prince. I was with him at the
last. After some most serious business, which I shall come to
by-and-bye, 'Robert,' said he, 'I wish thou hadst been with my
Prince. When thou becomest a soldier, fight where thou hast heart to
fight; but if thou hast conscience for it, let it be with a Stuart.
I thought to leave thee a good moiety of my fortune, Robert, but
little that's free is left for giving. Yet thou hast something
from thy father, and down in Virginia, where my friend Dinwiddie is
Governor, there's a plantation for thee, and a purse of gold, which
was for me in case I should have cause to flee this troubled realm.
But I need it not; I go for refuge to my Father's house. The little
vineyard and the purse of gold are for thee, Robert. If thou
thinkest well of it, leave this sick land for that new one. Build
thyself a name in that great young country, wear thy sword honourably
and bravely, use thy gifts in council and debate--for Dinwiddie will
be thy friend--and think of me as one who would have been a father
to thee if he could. Give thy good mother my loving farewells....
Forget not to wear my sword--it has come from the first King Charles
himself, Robert.'
"After which he raised himself upon his elbow and said, 'Life--life,
is it so hard to untie the knot?' Then a twinge of agony crossed
over his face, and afterwards came a great clearing and peace, and
he was gone.
"King George's soldiers entered with a warrant for him even as he
died, and the same moment dropped their hands upon my shoulder. I
was kept in durance for many days, and was not even at the funeral
of my benefactor; but through the efforts of the provost of the
university and some good friends who could vouch for my loyal
principles, I was released. But my pride had got a setback, and
I listened with patience to my mother's prayers that I would not
join the King's men. With the anger of a youth, I now blamed his
Majesty for the acts of Sir John Godric's enemies. And though I
was a good soldier of the King at heart, I would not serve him
henceforth. We threshed matters back and forth, and presently it
was thought I should sail to Virginia to take over my estate. My
mother urged it, too, for she thought if I were weaned from my old
comrades, military fame would no longer charm. So she urged me,
and go I did, with a commission from some merchants of Glasgow, to
give my visit to the colony more weight.
"It was great pain to leave my mother, but she bore the parting
bravely, and away I set in a good ship. Arrived in Virginia, I was
treated with great courtesy in Williamsburg, and the Governor gave
me welcome to his home for the sake of his old friend; and yet a
little for my own, I think, for we were of one temper, though he
was old and I young. We were both full of impulse and proud, and
given to daring hard things, and my military spirit suited him.
"In Virginia I spent a gay and busy year, and came off very well
with the rough but gentlemanly cavaliers, who rode through the wide,
sandy streets of the capital on excellent horses, or in English
coaches, with a rusty sort of show and splendour, but always with
great gallantry. The freedom of the life charmed me, and with
rumours of war with the French there seemed enough to do, whether
with the sword or in the House of Burgesses, where Governor
Dinwiddie said his say with more force than complaisance. So taken
was I with the life--my first excursion into the wide working
world--that I delayed my going back to Glasgow, the more so that
some matters touching my property called for action by the House
of Burgesses, and I had to drive the affair to the end. Sir John
had done better by me than he thought, and I thanked him over and
over again for his good gifts.
"Presently I got a letter from my father's old partner to say that
my dear mother was ill. I got back to Glasgow only in time--but
how glad I was of that!--to hear her last words. When my mother
was gone I turned towards Virginia with longing, for I could not
so soon go against her wishes and join the King's army on the
Continent, and less desire had I to be a Glasgow merchant. Gentlemen
merchants had better times in Virginia. So there was a winding-up
of the estate, not greatly to my pleasure; for it was found that by
unwise ventures my father's partner had perilled the whole, and lost
part of the property. But as it was, I had a competence and several
houses in Glasgow, and I set forth to Virginia with a goodly sum
of money and a shipload of merchandise, which I should sell to
merchants, if it chanced I should become a planter only. I was
warmly welcomed by old friends and by the Governor and his family,
and I soon set up an establishment of my own in Williamsburg,
joining with a merchant there in business, while my land was worked
by a neighbouring planter.
"Those were hearty days, wherein I made little money, but had
much pleasure in the giving and taking of civilities, in throwing
my doors open to acquaintances, and with my young friend, Mr.
Washington, laying the foundation for a Virginian army, by drill and
yearly duty in camp, with occasional excursions against the Indians.
I saw very well what the end of our troubles with the French would
be, and I waited for the time when I should put to keen use the
sword Sir John Godric had given me. Life beat high then, for I was
in the first flush of manhood, and the spirit of a rich new land
was waking in us all, while in our vanity we held to and cherished
forms and customs that one would have thought to see left behind in
London streets and drawing-rooms. These things, these functions in
a small place, kept us a little vain and proud, but, I also hope it
gave us some sense of civic duty.
"And now I come to that which will, comrade of my heart, bring home
to your understanding what lies behind the charges against me:
"Trouble came between Canada and Virginia. Major Washington, one
Captain Mackaye, and myself marched out to the Great Meadows, where
at Fort Necessity we surrendered, after hard fighting, to a force
three times our number. I, with one Captain Van Braam, became a
hostage. Monsieur Coulon Villiers, the French commander, gave his
bond that we should be delivered up when an officer and two cadets,
who were prisoners with us, should be sent on. It was a choice
between Mr. Mackaye of the Regulars and Mr. Washington, or Mr. Van
Braam and myself. I thought of what would be best for the country;
and besides, Monsieur Coulon Villiers pitched upon my name at
once, and held to it. So I gave up my sword to Charles Bedford, my
lieutenant, with more regret than I can tell, for it was sheathed
in memories, charging him to keep it safe--that he would use it
worthily I knew. And so, sorrowfully bidding my friends good-by,
away we went upon the sorry trail of captivity, arriving in due time
at Fort Du Quesne, at the junction of the Ohio and the Monongahela,
where I was courteously treated. There I bettered my French and made
the acquaintance of some ladies from Quebec city, who took pains to
help me with their language.
"Now, there was one lady to whom I talked with some freedom of my
early life and of Sir John Godric. She was interested in all, but
when I named Sir John she became at once much impressed, and I told
her of his great attachment to Prince Charles. More than once she
returned to the subject, begging me to tell her more; and so I
did, still, however, saying nothing of certain papers Sir John
had placed in my care. A few weeks after the first occasion of my
speaking, there was a new arrival at the fort. It was--can you
guess?--Monsieur Doltaire. The night after he came he visited me
in my quarters, and after courteous passages, of which I need
not speak, he suddenly said, 'You have the papers of Sir John
Godric--those bearing on Prince Charles's invasion of England?'
"I was stunned by the question, for I could not guess his drift or
purpose, though presently it dawned upon me.--Among the papers were
many letters from a great lady in France, a growing rival with La
Pompadour in the counsels and favour of the King. She it was who had
a secret passion for Prince Charles, and these letters to Sir John,
who had been with the Pretender at Versailles, must prove her ruin
if produced. I had promised Sir John most solemnly that no one
should ever have them while I lived, except the great lady herself,
and that I would give them to her some time, or destroy them. It
was Doltaire's mission to get these letters, and he had projected
a visit to Williamsburg to see me, having just arrived in Canada,
after a search for me in Scotland, when word came from the lady
gossip at Fort Du Quesne (with whom he had been on most familiar
terms in Quebec) that I was there.
"When I said I had the papers, he asked me lightly for 'those
compromising letters,' remarking that a good price would be paid,
and adding my liberty as a pleasant gift. I instantly refused, and
told him I would not be the weapon of La Pompadour against her
rival. With cool persistence he begged me to think again, for much
depended on my answer.
"'See, monsieur le capitaine,' said he, 'this little affair at Fort
Necessity, at which you became a hostage, shall or shall not be a
war between England and France as you shall dispose.' When I asked
him how that was, he said, 'First, will you swear that you will not,
to aid yourself, disclose what I tell you? You can see that matters
will be where they were an hour ago in any case.'
"I agreed, for I could act even if I might not speak. So I gave my
word. Then he told me that if those letters were not put into his
hands, La Pompadour would be enraged, and fretful and hesitating
now, would join Austria against England, since in this provincial
war was convenient cue for battle. If I gave the letters up, she
would not stir, and the disputed territory between us should be by
articles conceded by the French.
"I thought much and long, during which he sat smoking and humming,
and seeming to care little how my answer went. At last I turned
on him, and told him I would not give up the letters, and if a war
must hang on a whim of malice, then, by God's help, the rightness of
our cause would be our strong weapon to bring France to her knees.
"'That is your final answer?' asked he, rising, fingering his lace,
and viewing himself in a looking-glass upon the wall.
"'I will not change it now or ever,' answered I.
"'Ever is a long time,' retorted he, as one might speak to a wilful
child. 'You shall have time to think and space for reverie. For
if you do not grant this trifle you shall no more see your dear
Virginia; and when the time is ripe you shall go forth to a better
land, as the Grande Marquise shall give you carriage.'
"'The Articles of Capitulation!' I broke out protestingly.
"He waved his fingers at me. 'Ah, that,' he rejoined--'that is a
matter for conning. You are a hostage. Well, we need not take any
wastrel or nobody the English offer in exchange for you. Indeed,
why should we be content with less than a royal duke? For you are
worth more to us just now than any prince we have; at least so
says the Grande Marquise. Is your mind quite firm to refuse?' he
added, nodding his head in a bored sort of way.
"'Entirely,' said I. 'I will not part with those letters.'
"'But think once again,' he urged; 'the gain of territory to
Virginia, the peace between our countries!'
"'Folly!' returned I. 'I know well you overstate the case. You turn
a small intrigue into a game of nations. Yours is a schoolboy's
tale, Monsieur Doltaire.'
"'You are something of an ass,' he mused, and took a pinch of snuff.
"'And you--you have no name,' retorted I.
"I did not know, when I spoke, how this might strike home in two
ways or I should not have said it. I had not meant, of course, that
he was King Louis's illegitimate son.
"'There is some truth in that,' he replied patiently, though a red
spot flamed high on his cheeks. 'But some men need no christening
for their distinction, and others win their names with proper
weapons. I am not here to quarrel with you. I am acting in a large
affair, not in a small intrigue; a century of fate may hang on this.
Come with me,' he added. 'You doubt my power, maybe.'
"He opened the door of the cell, and I followed him out, past the
storehouse and the officers' apartments, to the drawbridge. Standing
in the shadow by the gate, he took keys from his pocket. 'Here,'
said he, 'are what will set you free. This fort is all mine: I act
for France. Will you care to free yourself? You shall have escort
to your own people. You see I am most serious,' he added, laughing
lightly. 'It is not my way to sweat or worry. You and I hold war and
peace in our hands. Which shall it be? In this trouble France or
England will be mangled. It tires one to think of it when life can
be so easy. Now, for the last time,' he urged, holding out the keys.
'Your word of honour that the letters shall be mine--eh?'
"'Never,' I concluded. 'England and France are in greater hands than
yours or mine. The God of battles still stands beside the balances.'
"He shrugged a shoulder. 'Oh well,' said he, 'that ends it. It will
be interesting to watch the way of the God of battles. Meanwhile you
travel to Quebec. Remember that however free you may appear you will
have watchers, that when you seem safe you will be in most danger,
that in the end we will have those letters or your life; that
meanwhile the war will go on, that you shall have no share in it,
and that the whole power of England will not be enough to set her
hostage free. That is all there is to say, I think.... Will you have
a glass of wine with me?' he added courteously, waving a hand
towards the commander's quarters.
"I assented, for why, thought I, should there be a personal quarrel
between us? We talked on many things for an hour or more, and his
I found the keenest mind that ever I have met. There was in him a
dispassionateness, a breadth, which seemed most strange in a trifler
of the Court, in an exquisite--for such he was. I sometimes think
that his elegance and flippancy were deliberate, lest he should be
taking himself or life too seriously. His intelligence charmed me,
held me, and, later, as we travelled up to Quebec, I found my journey
one long feast of interest. He was never dull, and his cynicism had
an admirable grace and cordiality. A born intriguer, he still was
above intrigue, justifying it on the basis that life was all sport.
In logic a leveller, praising the moles, as he called them, the
champion of the peasant, the apologist for the bourgeois--who
always, he said, had civic virtues--he nevertheless held that what
was was best, that it could not be altered, and that it was all
interesting. 'I never repent,' he said to me one day. 'I have done
after my nature, in the sway and impulse of our time, and as the
King has said, After us the deluge. What a pity it is we shall see
neither the flood nor the ark! And so, when all is done, we shall
miss the most interesting thing of all: ourselves dead and the gap
and ruin we leave behind us. By that, from my standpoint,' he would
add, 'life is a failure as a spectacle.'
"Talking in this fashion and in a hundred other ways, we came to
Quebec. And you know in general what happened. I met your honoured
father, whose life I had saved on the Ohio some years before, and
he worked for my comfort in my bondage. You know how exchange after
exchange was refused, and that for near three years I have been
here, fretting my soul out, eager to be fighting in our cause,
yet tied hand and foot, wasting time and losing heart, idle in an
enemy's country. As Doltaire said, war was declared, but not till he
had made here in Quebec last efforts to get those letters. I do not
complain so bitterly of these lost years, since they have brought me
the best gift of my life, your love and friendship; but my enemies
here, commanded from France, have bided their time, till an accident
has given them a cue to dispose of me without openly breaking the
accepted law of nations. They could not decently hang a hostage, for
whom they had signed articles; but they have got their chance, as
they think, to try me for a spy.
"Here is the case. When I found that they were determined and had
ever determined to violate their articles, that they never intended
to set me free, I felt absolved from my duty as an officer on
parole, and I therefore secretly sent to Mr. Washington in Virginia
a plan of Fort Du Quesne and one of Quebec. I knew that I was
risking my life by so doing, but that did not deter me. By my
promise to Doltaire, I could not tell of the matter between us, and
whatever he has done in other ways, he has preserved my life; for it
would have been easy to have me dropped off by a stray bullet, or
to have accidentally drowned me in the St. Lawrence. I believe this
matter of the letters to be between myself and him and Bigot--and
perhaps not even Bigot, though he must know that La Pompadour has
some peculiar reason for interesting herself in a poor captain of
provincials. You now can see another motive for the duel which was
brought about between your brother and myself.
"My plans and letters were given by Mr. Washington to General
Braddock, and the sequel you know: they have fallen into the hands
of my enemies, copies have gone to France, and I am to be tried for
my life. Preserving faith with my enemy Doltaire, I can not plead
the real cause of my long detention; I can only urge that they had
not kept to their articles, and that I, therefore, was free from the
obligations of parole. I am sure they have no intention of giving
me the benefit of any doubt. My real hope lies in escape and the
intervention of England, though my country, alas! has not concerned
herself about me, as if indeed she resented the non-delivery of
those letters to Doltaire, since they were addressed to one she
looked on as a traitor, and held by one whom she had unjustly put
under suspicion.
"So, dear Alixe, from that little fort on the banks of the river
Kelvin have come these strange twistings of my life, and I can date
this dismal fortune of a dungeon from that day The Man made his
prophecy from the wall of my mud fort.
"Whatever comes now, if you have this record, you will know the
private history of my life.... I have told all, with unpractised
tongue, but with a wish to be understood, and to set forth a story
of which the letter should be as true as the spirit. Friend beyond
all price to me, some day this tale will reach your hands, and I ask
you to house it in your heart, and, whatever comes, let it be for my
remembrance. God be with you, and farewell!"
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