The Project Gutenberg EBook The Seats Of The Mighty, by G. Parker, v5
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Title: The Seats Of The Mighty, Volume 5.
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6228]
[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, V5 ***
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
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'
XXV
IN THE CATHEDRAL
I awoke with the dawn, and, dressing, looked out of the window,
seeing the brindled light spread over the battered roofs and ruins
of the Lower Town. A bell was calling to prayers in the Jesuit
College not far away, and bugle-calls told of the stirring
garrison. Soldiers and stragglers passed down the street near by,
and a few starved peasants crept about the cathedral with downcast
eyes, eager for crumbs that a well-fed soldier might cast aside.
Yet I knew that in the Intendant's Palace and among the officers
of the army there was abundance, with revelry and dissipation.
Presently I drew to the trap-door of my loft, and, raising it
gently, came down the ladder to the little hallway, and softly
opened the door of the room where Labrouk's body lay. Candles
were burning at his head and his feet, and two peasants sat dozing
in chairs near by. I could see Labrouk's face plainly in the
flickering light: a rough, wholesome face it was, refined by death,
yet unshaven and unkempt, too. Here was work for Voban's shears and
razor. Presently there was a footstep behind me, and, turning, I
saw in the half-light the widowed wife.
"Madame," said I in a whisper, "I too weep with you. I pray for
as true an end for myself."
"He was of the true faith, thank the good God," she said
sincerely. She passed into the room, and the two watchers, after
taking refreshment, left the house. Suddenly she hastened to the
door, called one back, and, pointing to the body, whispered
something. The peasant nodded and turned away. She came back into
the room, stood looking at the face of the dead man for a moment,
and bent over and kissed the crucifix clasped in the cold hands.
Then she stepped about the room, moving a chair and sweeping up a
speck of dust in a mechanical way. Presently, as if she again
remembered me, she asked me to enter the room. Then she bolted the
outer door of the house. I stood looking at the body of her husband,
and said, "Were it not well to have Voban the barber?"
"I have sent for him and for Gabord," she replied. "Gabord was
Jean's good friend. He is with General Montcalm. The Governor put
him in prison because of the marriage of Mademoiselle Duvarney, but
Monsieur Doltaire set him free, and now he serves General Montcalm.
"I have work in the cathedral," continued the poor woman, "and I
shall go to it this morning as I have always gone. There is a
little unused closet in a gallery where you may hide, and still see
all that happens. It is your last look at the lady, and I will give
it to you, as you gave me to know of my Jean."
"My last look?" I asked eagerly.
"She goes into the nunnery to-morrow, they say," was the reply.
"Her marriage is to be set aside by the bishop to-day--in the
cathedral. This is her last night to live as such as I--but no,
she will be happier so."
"Madame," said I, "I am a heretic, but I listened when your
husband said, 'Mon grand homme de Calvaire, bon soir!' Was the
cross less a cross because a heretic put it to his lips? Is a
marriage less a marriage because a heretic is the husband? Madame,
you loved your Jean; if he were living now, what would you do to
keep him. Think, madame, is not love more than all?"
She turned to the dead body. "Mon petit Jean!" she
murmured, but made no reply to me, and for many minutes the room
was silent. At last she turned, and said, "You must come at once,
for soon the priests will be at the church. A little later I will
bring you some breakfast, and you must not stir from there till I
come to fetch you--no."
"I wish to see Voban," said I.
She thought a moment. "I will try to fetch him to you by-and-bye,"
she said. She did not speak further, but finished the sentence by
pointing to the body.
Presently, hearing footsteps, she drew me into another little
room. "It is the grandfather," she said. "He has forgotten you
already, and he must not see you again."
We saw the old man hobble into the room we had left, carrying in
one arm Jean's coat and hat. He stood still, and nodded at the body
and mumbled to himself; then he went over and touched the hands and
forehead, nodding wisely; after which he came to his armchair, and,
sitting down, spread the coat over his knees, put the cap on it,
and gossiped with himself:
"In eild our idle fancies all return,
The mind's eye cradled by the open grave."
A moment later, the woman passed from the rear of the house to
the vestry door of the cathedral. After a minute, seeing no one
near, I followed, came to the front door, entered, and passed up a
side aisle towards the choir. There was no one to be seen, but soon
the woman came out of the vestry and beckoned to me nervously. I
followed her quick movements, and was soon in a narrow stairway,
coming, after fifty steps or so, to a sort of cloister, from which
we went into a little cubiculum, or cell, with a wooden lattice
door which opened on a small gallery. Through the lattices the
nave amid choir could be viewed distinctly.
Without a word the woman turned and left me, and I sat down on a
little stone bench and waited. I saw the acolytes come and go,
and priests move back and forth before the altar; I smelt the
grateful incense as it rose when mass was said; I watched the people
gather in little clusters at the different shrines, or seek the
confessional, or kneel to receive the blessed sacrament. Many who
came were familiar--among them Mademoiselle Lucie Lotbiniere. Lucie
prayed long before a shrine of the Virgin, and when she rose at last
her face bore signs of weeping. Also I noticed her suddenly start as
she moved down the aisle, for a figure came forward from seclusion
and touched her arm. As he half turned I saw that it was Juste
Duvarney. The girl drew back from him, raising her hand as if in
protest, and it struck me that her grief and her repulse of him had
to do with putting Alixe away into a nunnery.
I sat hungry and thirsty for quite three hours, and then the
church became empty, and only an old verger kept a seat by the
door, half asleep, though the artillery of both armies was at work,
and the air was laden with the smell of powder. (Until this time
our batteries had avoided firing on the churches.) At last I heard
footsteps near me in the dark stairway, and I felt for my pistols,
for the feet were not those of Labrouk's wife. I waited anxiously,
and was overjoyed to see Voban enter my hiding-place, bearing some
food. I greeted him warmly, but he made little demonstration. He
was like one who, occupied with some great matter, passed through
the usual affairs of life with a distant eye. Immediately he
handed me a letter, saying:
"M'sieu', I give my word to hand you this--in a day or a year,
as I am able. I get your message to me this morning, and then I
come to care for Jean Labrouk, and so I find you here, and I
give the letter. It come to me last night."
The letter was from Alixe. I opened it with haste, and, in the
dim light, read:
MY BELOVED HUSBAND: Oh, was there no power in earth or heaven to
bring me to your arms to-day?
To-morow they come to see my marriage annulled by the Church.
And every one will say it is annulled--every one but me. I, in
God's name, will say no, though it break my heart to oppose
myself to them all.
Why did my brother come back? He has been hard--O, Robert, he
has been hard upon me, and yet I was ever kind to him! My father,
too, he listens to the Church, and, though he likes not Monsieur
Doltaire, he works for him in a hundred ways without seeing it.
I, alas! see it too well, and my brother is as wax in monsieur's
hands. Juste loves Lucie Lotbiniere--that should make him kind.
She, sweet friend, does not desert me, but is kept from me. She
says she will not yield to Juste's suit until he yields to me.
If--oh, if Madame Jamond had not gone to Montreal!
...As I was writing the foregoing sentence, my father asked to
see me, and we have had a talk--ah, a most bitter talk!
"Alixe," said he, "this is our last evening together, and I
would have it peaceful."
"My father," said I, "it is not my will that this evening be our
last; and for peace, I long for it with all my heart."
He frowned, and answered, "You have brought me trouble and
sorrow. Mother of God! was it not possible for you to be as
your sister Georgette? I gave her less love, yet she honours
me more."
"She honours you, my father, by a sweet, good life, and by marriage
into an honourable family, and at your word she gives her hand to
Monsieur Auguste de la Darante. She marries to your pleasure,
therefore she has peace and your love. I marry a man of my own
choosing, a bitterly wronged gentleman, and you treat me as some
wicked thing. Is that like a father who loves his child?"
"The wronged gentleman, as you call him, invaded that which is
the pride of every honest gentleman," he said.
"And what is that?" asked I quietly, though I felt the blood
beating at my temples.
"My family honour, the good name and virtue of my daughter."
I got to my feet, and looked my father in the eyes with an anger
and a coldness that hurts me now when I think of it, and I said, "I
will not let you speak so to me. Friendless though I be, you shall
not. You have the power to oppress me, but you shall not slander me
to my face. Can not you leave insults to my enemies?"
"I will never leave you to the insults of this mock marriage,"
answered he, angrily also. "Two days hence I take command of five
thousand burghers, and your brother Juste serves with General
Montcalm. There is to be last fighting soon between us and the
English. I do not doubt of the result, but I may fall, and your
brother also, and, should the English win, I will not leave you to
him you call your husband. Therefore you shall be kept safe where
no alien hands may reach you. The Church will hold you close."
I calmed myself again while listening to him, and I asked, "Is
there no other way?"
He shook his head.
"Is there no Monsieur Doltaire?" said I. "He has a king's blood
in his veins!"
He looked sharply at me. "You are mocking," he replied. "No, no,
that is no way, either. Monsieur Doltaire must never mate with
daughter of mine. I will take care of that; the Church is a perfect
if gentle jailer."
I could bear it no longer. I knelt to him. I begged him to have
pity on me. I pleaded with him; I recalled the days when, as a
child, I sat upon his knee and listened to the wonderful tales he
told; I begged him, by the memory of all the years when he and I
were such true friends to be kind to me now, to be merciful--even
though he thought I had done wrong--to be merciful. I asked him to
remember that I was a motherless girl, and that if I had missed the
way to happiness he ought not to make my path bitter to the end. I
begged him to give me back his love and confidence, and, if I must
for evermore be parted from you, to let me be with him, not to put
me away into a convent.
Oh, how my heart leaped when I saw his face soften! "Well,
well," he said, "if I live, you shall be taken from the convent;
but for the present, till this fighting is over, it is the only
safe place. There, too, you shall be safe from Monsieur
Doltaire."
It was poor comfort. "But should you be killed, and the English
take Quebec?" said I.
"When I am dead," he answered, "when I am dead, then there is
your brother."
"And if he speaks for Monsieur Doltaire?" asked I.
"There is the Church and God always," he answered.
"And my own husband, the man who saved your life, my father," I
urged gently; and when he would have spoken I threw myself into his
arms--the first time in such long, long weeks!--and, stopping his
lips with my fingers, burst into tears on his breast. I think much
of his anger against me passed, yet before he left he said he could
not now prevent the annulment of the marriage, even if he would,
for other powers were at work; which powers I supposed to be the
Governor, for certain reasons of enmity to my father and me--alas!
how changed is he, the vain old man!--and Monsieur Doltaire, whose
ends I knew so well. So they will unwed us to-morrow, Robert; but
be sure that I shall never be unwed in my own eyes, and that I will
wait till I die, hoping you will come and take me--oh, Robert, my
husband--take me home.
If I had one hundred men, I would fight my way out of this city,
and to you; but, dear, I have none, not even Gabord, who is not let
come near me. There is but Voban. Yet he will bear you this, if it
be possible, for he comes to-night to adorn my fashionable brother.
The poor Mathilde I have not seen of late. She has vanished. When
they began to keep me close, and carried me off at last into the
country, where we were captured by the English, I could not see
her, and my heart aches for her.
God bless you, Robert, and farewell. How we shall smile, when
all this misery is done! Oh, say we shall, say we shall smile, and
all this misery cease. Will you not take me home? Do you still
love thy wife, thy
ALIXE?
I bade Voban come to me at the little house behind the church
that night at ten o'clock, and by then I should have arranged some
plan of action. I knew not whether to trust Gabord or no. I was
sorry now that I had not tried to bring Clark with me. He was
fearless, and he knew the town well; but he lacked discretion,
and that was vital.
Two hours of waiting, then came a scene which is burned into my
brain. I looked down upon a mass of people, soldiers, couriers of
the woods, beggars, priests, camp followers, and anxious gentlefolk,
come from seclusion, or hiding, or vigils of war, to see a host of
powers torture a young girl who by suffering had been made a woman
long before her time. Out in the streets was the tramping of armed
men, together with the call of bugles and the sharp rattle of drums.
Presently I heard the hoofs of many horses, and soon afterwards
there entered the door, and way was made for him up the nave,
the Marquis de Vaudreuil and his suite, with the Chevalier de la
Darante, the Intendant, and--to my indignation--Juste Duvarney.
They had no sooner taken their places than, from a little side
door near the vestry, there entered the Seigneur Duvarney and
Alixe, who, coming down slowly, took places very near the chancel
steps. The Seigneur was pale and stern, and carried himself with
great dignity. His glance never shifted from the choir, where the
priests slowly entered and took their places, the aged and feeble
bishop going falteringly to his throne. Alixe's face was pale and
sorrowful, and yet it had a dignity and self-reliance that gave
it a kind of grandeur. A buzz passed through the building, yet I
noted, too, with gladness that there were tears on many faces.
A figure stole in beside Alixe. It was Mademoiselle Lotbiniere, who
immediately was followed by her mother. I leaned forward, perfectly
hidden, and listened to the singsong voices of the priests, the
musical note of the responses, heard the Kyrie Eleison, the
clanging of the belfry bell as the host was raised by the trembling
bishop. The silence which followed the mournful voluntary played by
the organ was most painful to me.
At that moment a figure stepped from behind a pillar, and gave
Alixe a deep, scrutinizing look. It was Doltaire. He was graver
than I had ever seen him, and was dressed scrupulously in black,
with a little white lace showing at the wrists and neck. A
handsomer figure it would be hard to see; and I hated him for it,
and wondered what new devilry was in his mind. He seemed to sweep
the church with a glance. Nothing could have escaped that swift,
searching look. His eyes were even raised to where I was, so that
I involuntarily drew back, though I knew he could not see me.
I was arrested suddenly by a curious disdainful, even sneering
smile which played upon his face as he looked at Vaudreuil and
Bigot. There was in it more scorn than malice, more triumph than
active hatred. All at once I remembered what he had said to me
the day before: that he had commission from the King through La
Pompadour to take over the reins of government from the two
confederates, and send them to France to answer the charges made
against them.
At last the bishop came forward, and read from a paper as follows:
"Forasmuch as a well-beloved child of our Holy Church, Mademoiselle
Alixe Duvarney, of the parish of Beauport and of this cathedral
parish, in this province of New France, forgetting her manifest duty
and our sacred teaching, did illegally and in sinful error make
feigned contract of marriage with one Robert Moray, captain in a
Virginian regiment, a heretic, a spy, and an enemy to our country;
and forasmuch as this was done in violence of all nice habit and
commendable obedience to Mother Church and our national uses, we
do hereby declare and make void this alliance until such time as
the Holy Father at Rome shall finally approve our action and
proclaiming. And it is enjoined upon Mademoiselle Alixe Duvarney,
on peril of her soul's salvation, to obey us in this matter, and
neither by word or deed or thought have commerce more with this
notorious and evil heretic and foe of our Church and of our country.
It is also the plain duty of the faithful children of our Holy
Church to regard this Captain Moray with a pious hatred, and to
destroy him without pity; and any good cunning or enticement which
should lure him to the punishment he so much deserves shall be
approved. Furthermore, Mademoiselle Alixe Duvarney shall, until
such times as there shall be peace in this land, and the molesting
English are driven back with slaughter--and for all time, if the
heart of our sister incline to penitence and love of Christ--be
confined within the Convent of the Ursulines, and cared for with
great tenderness."
He left off reading, and began to address himself to Alixe
directly; but she rose in her place, and while surprise and awe
seized the congregation, she said:
"Monseigneur, I must needs, at my father's bidding, hear the
annulment of my marriage, but I will not hear this public
exhortation. I am but a poor girl, unlearned in the law, and I must
needs submit to your power, for I have no one here to speak for me.
But my soul and my conscience I carry to my Saviour, and I have no
fear to answer Him. I am sorry that I have offended against my
people and my country and Holy Church, but I repent not that I love
and hold to my husband. You must do with me as you will, but in
this I shall never willingly yield."
She turned to her father, and all the people breathed hard; for
it passed their understanding, and seemed most scandalous that a
girl could thus defy the Church, and answer the bishop in his own
cathedral. Her father rose, and then I saw her sway with faintness.
I know not what might have occurred, for the bishop stood with hand
upraised and a great indignation in his face, about to speak, when
out of the desultory firing from our batteries there came a shell,
which burst even at the cathedral entrance, tore away a portion of
the wall, and killed and wounded a number of people.
Then followed a panic which the priests in vain tried to quell.
The people swarmed into the choir and through the vestry. I saw
Doltaire with Juste Duvarney spring swiftly to the side of Alixe,
and, with her father, put her and Mademoiselle Lotbiniere into
the pulpit, forming a ring round it, and preventing the crowd
from trampling on them, as, suddenly gone mad, they swarmed past.
The Governor, the Intendant, and the Chevalier de la Darante did
as much also for Madame Lotbiniere; and as soon as the crush had
in a little subsided, a number of soldiers cleared the way, and
I saw my wife led from the church. I longed to leap down there
among them and claim her, but that thought was madness, for I
should have been food for worms in a trice, so I kept my place.
XXVI
THE SECRET OF THE TAPESTRY
That evening, at eight o'clock, Jean Labrouk was buried. A
shell had burst not a dozen paces from his own door, within the
consecrated ground of the cathedral, and in a hole it had made he
was laid, the only mourners his wife and his grandfather, and two
soldiers of his company sent by General Bougainville to bury him.
I watched the ceremony from my loft, which had one small dormer
window. It was dark, but burning buildings in the Lower Town made
all light about the place. I could hear the grandfather mumbling
and talking to the body as it was lowered into the ground. While
yet the priest was hastily reading prayers, a dusty horseman came
riding to the grave, and dismounted.
"Jean," he said, looking at the grave, "Jean Labrouk, a man dies
well that dies with his gaiters on, aho! ... What have you said
for Jean Labrouk, m'sieu'?" he added to the priest.
The priest stared at him, as though he had presumed.
"Well?" said Gabord. "Well?"
The priest answered nothing, but prepared to go, whispering a
word of comfort to the poor wife. Gabord looked at the soldiers,
looked at the wife, at the priest, then spread out his legs and
stuck his hands down into his pockets, while his horse rubbed its
nose against his shoulder. He fixed his eyes on the grave, and
nodded once or twice musingly.
"Well," he said at last, as if he had found a perfect virtue,
and the one or only thing that could be said, "well, he never
eat his words, that Jean."
A moment afterwards he came into the house with Babette, leaving
one of the soldiers holding his horse. After the old man had gone,
I heard him say, "Were you at mass to-day? And did you see all?"
And when she had answered yes, he continued: "It was a mating as
birds mate, but mating was it, and holy fathers and Master Devil
Doltaire can't change it till cock-pheasant Moray come rocketing to
's grave. They would have hanged me for my part in it, but I repent
not, for they have wickedly hunted this little lady."
"I weep with her," said Jean's wife.
"Ay, ay, weep on, Babette," he answered.
"Has she asked help of you?" said the wife.
"Truly; but I know not what says she, for I read not, but I know
her pecking. Here it is. But you must be secret."
Looking through a crack in the floor, I could plainly see them.
She took the letter from him and read aloud:
"If Gabord the soldier have a good heart still, as ever
he had in the past, he will again help a poor
friendless woman. She needs him, for all are against her. Will he
leave her alone among her enemies? Will he not aid her to fly? At
eight o'clock to-morrow night she will be taken to the Convent of
the Ursulines, to be there shut in. Will he not come to her
before that time?"
For a moment after the reading there was silence, and I could see
the woman looking at him curiously. "What will you do?" she asked.
"My faith, there's nut to crack, for I have little time. This
letter but reached me with the news of Jean, two hours ago, and I
know not what to do, but, scratching my head, here comes word from
General Montcalm that I must ride to Master Devil Doltaire with a
letter, and I must find him wherever he may be, and give it
straight. So forth I come; and I must be at my post again by morn,
said the General."
"It is now nine o'clock, and she will be in the convent," said
the woman tentatively.
"Aho!" he answered, "and none can enter there but Governor, if
holy Mother say no. So now goes Master Devil there? 'Gabord,' quoth
he, 'you shall come with me to the convent at ten o'clock, bringing
three stout soldiers of the garrison. Here's an order on Monsieur
Ramesay, the Commandant. Choose you the men, and fail me not, or
you shall swing aloft, dear Gabord.' Sweet lovers of hell, but
Master Devil shall have swinging too one day." He put his thumb to
his nose, and spread his fingers out.
Presently he seemed to note something in the woman's eyes, for
he spoke almost sharply to her: "Jean Labrouk was honest man, and
kept faith with comrades."
"And I keep faith too, comrade," was the answer.
"Gabord's a brute to doubt you," he rejoined quickly, and he
drew from his pocket a piece of gold, and made her take it,
though she much resisted.
Meanwhile my mind was made up. I saw, I thought, through "Master
Devil's" plan, and I felt, too, that Gabord would not betray me. In
any case, Gabord and I could fight it out. If he opposed me, it was
his life or mine, for too much was at stake, and all my plans were
now changed by his astounding news. At that moment Voban entered
the room without knocking. Here was my cue, and so, to prevent
explanations, I crept quickly down, opened the door, came in on
them.
They wheeled at my footsteps; the woman gave a little cry, and
Gabord's hand went to his pistol. There was a wild sort of look in
his face, as though he could not trust his eyes. I took no notice of
the menacing pistol, but went straight to him and held out my hand.
"Gabord," said I, "you are not my jailer now."
"I'll be your guard to citadel," said he, after a moment's dumb
surprise, refusing my outstretched hand.
"Neither guard nor jailer any more, Gabord," said I seriously.
"We've had enough of that, my friend."
The soldier and the jailer had been working in him, and his
fingers trifled with the trigger. In all things he was the foeman
first. But now something else was working in him. I saw this, and
added pointedly, "No more cage, Gabord, not even for reward of
twenty thousand livres and at command of Holy Church."
He smiled grimly, too grimly, I thought, and turned inquiringly
to Babette. In a few words she told him all, tears dropping from
her eyes.
"If you take him, you betray me," she said; "and what would Jean
say, if he knew?"
"Gabord," said I, "I come not as a spy; I come to seek my wife,
and she counts you as her friend. Do harm to me, and you do harm to
her. Serve me, and you serve her. Gabord, you said to her once that
I was an honourable man."
He put up his pistol. "Aho, you've put your head in the trap.
Stir, and click goes the spring."
"I must have my wife," I continued. "Shall the nest you helped
to make go empty?"
I worked upon him to such purpose that, all bristling with war
at first, he was shortly won over to my scheme, which I disclosed
to him while the wife made us a cup of coffee. Through all our talk
Voban had sat eying us with a covert interest, yet showing no
excitement. He had been unable to reach Alixe. She had been taken
to the convent, and immediately afterwards her father and brother
had gone their ways--Juste to General Montcalm, and the Seigneur
to the French camp. Thus Alixe did not know that I was in Quebec.
An hour after this I was marching, with two other men and Gabord,
to the Convent of the Ursulines, dressed in the ordinary costume
of a French soldier, got from the wife of Jean Labrouk. In manner
and speech though I was somewhat dull, my fellows thought, I was
enough like a peasant soldier to deceive them, and my French was
more fluent than their own. I was playing a desperate game; yet
I liked it, for it had a fine spice of adventure apart from the
great matter at stake. If I could but carry it off, I should have
sufficient compensation for all my miseries, in spite of their
twenty thousand livres and Holy Church.
In a few minutes we came to the convent, and halted outside,
waiting for Doltaire. Presently he came, and, looking sharply at us
all, he ordered two to wait outside, and Gabord and myself to come
with him. Then he stood looking at the building curiously for a
moment. A shell had broken one wing of it, and this portion had
been abandoned; but the faithful Sisters clung still to their home,
though urged constantly by the Governor to retire to the Hotel Dieu,
which was outside the reach of shot and shell. This it was their
intention soon to do, for within the past day or so our batteries
had not sought to spare the convent. As Doltaire looked he laughed
to himself, and then said, "Too quiet for gay spirits, this hearse.
Come, Gabord, and fetch this slouching fellow," nodding towards me.
Then he knocked loudly. No one came, and he knocked again and
again. At last the door was opened by the Mother Superior, who was
attended by two others. She started at seeing Doltaire.
"What do you wish, monsieur?" she asked.
"I come on business of the King, good Mother," he replied
seriously, and stepped inside.
"It is a strange hour for business," she said severely.
"The King may come at all hours," he answered soothingly: "is it
not so? By the law he may enter when he wills."
"You are not the King, monsieur," she objected, with her head
held up sedately.
"Or the Governor may come, good Mother?"
"You are not the Governor, Monsieur Doltaire," she said, more
sharply still.
"But a Governor may demand admittance to this convent, and by
the order of his Most Christian Majesty he may not be refused:
is it not so?"
"Must I answer the catechism of Monsieur Doltaire?"
"But is it not so?" he asked again urbanely.
"It is so, yet how does that concern you, monsieur?"
"In every way," and he smiled.
"This is unseemly, monsieur. What is your business?"
"The Governor's business, good Mother."
"Then let the Governor's messenger give his message and depart
in peace," she answered, her hand upon the door.
"Not the Governor's messenger, but the Governor himself," he
rejoined gravely.
He turned and was about to shut the door, but she stopped him.
"This is no house for jesting, monsieur," she said. "I will arouse
the town if you persist.--Sister," she added to one standing near,
"the bell!"
"You fill your office with great dignity and merit, Mere St.
George," he said, as he put out his hand and stayed the Sister.
"I commend you for your discretion. Read this," he continued,
handing her a paper.
A Sister held a light, and the Mother read it. As she did so
Doltaire made a motion to Gabord, and he shut the door quickly
on us. Mere St. George looked up from the paper, startled and
frightened too.
"Your Excellency!" she exclaimed.
"You are the first to call me so," he replied. "I thought to
leave untouched this good gift of the King, and to let the Marquis
de Vaudreuil and the admirable Bigot untwist the coil they have
made. But no. After some too generous misgivings, I now claim my
own. I could not enter here, to speak with a certain lady, save
as the Governor, but as the Governor I now ask speech with
Mademoiselle Duvarney. Do you hesitate?" he added. "Do you doubt
that signature of his Majesty? Then see this. Here is a line from
the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the late Governor. It is not dignified,
one might say it is craven, but it is genuine."
Again the distressed lady read, and again she said, "Your
Excellency!" Then, "You wish to see her in my presence,
your Excellency?"
"Alone, good Mother," he softly answered.
"Your Excellency, will you, the first officer in the land, defy
our holy rules, and rob us of our privilege to protect and comfort
and save?"
"I defy nothing," he replied. "The lady is here against her will,
a prisoner. She desires not your governance and care. In any case,
I must speak with her; and be assured, I honour you the more for
your solicitude, and will ask your counsel when I have finished
talk with her."
Was ever man so crafty? After a moment's thought she turned,
dismissed the others, and led the way, and Gabord and I followed.
We were bidden to wait outside a room, well lighted but bare, as I
could see through the open door. Doltaire entered, smiling, and
then bowed the nun on her way to summon Alixe. Gabord and I stood
there, not speaking, for both were thinking of the dangerous game
now playing. In a few minutes the Mother returned, bringing Alixe.
The light from the open door shone upon her face. My heart leaped,
for there was in her look such a deep sorrow. She was calm, save
for those shining yet steady eyes; they were like furnaces, burning
up the colour of her cheeks. She wore a soft black gown, with no
sign of ornament, and her gold-brown hair was bound with a piece of
black velvet ribbon. Her beauty was deeper than I had ever seen it;
a peculiar gravity seemed to have added years to her life. As she
passed me her sleeve brushed my arm, as it did that day I was
arrested in her father's house. She started, as though I had
touched her fingers, but only half turned toward me, for her mind
was wholly occupied with the room where Doltaire was.
At that moment Gabord coughed slightly, and she turned quickly
to him. Her eyes flashed intelligence, and presently, as she passed
in, a sort of hope seemed to have come on her face to lighten its
painful pensiveness. The Mother Superior entered with her, the door
closed, and then, after a little, the Mother came out again. As
she did so I saw a look of immediate purpose in her face, and her
hurrying step persuaded me she was bent on some project of espial.
So I made a sign to Gabord and followed her. As she turned the
corner of the hallway just beyond, I stepped forward silently and
watched her enter a room that would, I knew, be next to this we
guarded.
Listening at the door for a moment, I suddenly and softly turned
the handle and entered, to see the good Mother with a panel drawn
in the wall before her, and her face set to it. She stepped back as
I shut the door and turned the key in the lock. I put my finger to
my lips, for she seemed about to cry out.
"Hush!" said I. "I watch for those who love her. I am here to
serve her--and you."
"You are a servant of the Seigneur's?" she said, the alarm
passing out of her face.
"I served the Seigneur, good Mother," I answered, "and I would
lay down my life for ma'm'selle."
"You would hear?" she asked, pointing to the panel.
I nodded.
"You speak French not like a Breton or Norman," she added. "What
is your province?"
"I am an Auvergnian."
She said no more, but motioned to me, enjoining silence also by
a sign, and I stood with her beside the panel. Before it was a
piece of tapestry which was mere gauze in one place, and I could
see through and hear perfectly. The room we were in was at least
four feet higher than the other, and we looked down on its
occupants.
"Presently, holy Mother," said I, "all shall be told true to
you, if you wish it. It is not your will to watch and hear; it
is because you love the lady. But I love her, too, and I am to
be trusted. It is not business for such as you."
She saw my implied rebuke, and said, as I thought a little abashed,
"You will tell me all? And if he would take her forth, give me alarm
in the room opposite yonder door, and stay them, and--"
"Stay them, holy Mother, at the price of my life. I have the
honour of her family in my hands."
She looked at me gravely, and I assumed a peasant openness of
look and honesty. She was deceived completely, and, without further
speech, she stepped to the door like a ghost and was gone. I never
saw a human being so noiseless, so uncanny. Our talk had been
carried on silently, and I had closed the panel quietly, so that we
could not be heard by Alixe or Doltaire. Now I was alone, to see
and hear my wife in speech with my enemy, the man who had made a
strong, and was yet to make a stronger fight to unseat me in her
affections.
There was a moment's compunction, in which I hesitated to see
this meeting; but there was Alixe's safety to be thought on, and
what might he not here disclose of his intentions!--knowing which,
I should act with judgment, and not in the dark. I trusted Alixe,
though I knew well that this hour would see the great struggle in
her between this scoundrel and myself. I knew that he had ever had
a sort of power over her, even while she loathed his character;
that he had a hundred graces I had not, place which I had not, an
intellect that ever delighted me, and a will like iron when it was
called into action. I thought for one moment longer ere I moved
the panel. My lips closed tight, and I felt a pang at my heart.
Suppose, in this conflict, this singular man, acting on a nature
already tried beyond reason, should bend it to his will, to which
it was, in some radical ways, inclined? Well, if that should be,
then I would go forth and never see her more. She must make her
choice out of her own heart and spirit, and fight this fight alone,
and having fought, and lost or won, the result should be final,
should stand, though she was my wife, and I was bound in honour to
protect her from all that might invade her loyalty, to cherish her
through all temptation and distress. But our case was a strange one,
and it must be dealt with according to its strangeness--our only
guides our consciences. There were no precedents to meet our needs;
our way had to be hewn out of a noisome, pathless wood. I made up my
mind: I would hear and see all. So I slid the panel softly, and put
my eyes to the tapestry. How many times did I see, in the next hour,
my wife's eyes upraised to this very tapestry, as if appealing to
the Madonna upon it! How many times did her eyes look into mine
without knowing it! And more than once Doltaire followed her
glance, and a faint smile passed over his face, as if he saw and
was interested in the struggle in her, apart from his own passion
and desires.
When first I looked in, she was standing near a tall high-backed
chair, in almost the same position as on the day when Doltaire told
me of Braddock's death, accused me of being a spy, and arrested me.
It gave me, too, a thrill to see her raise her handkerchief to her
mouth as if to stop a cry, as she had done then, the black sleeve
falling away from her perfect rounded arm, now looking almost like
marble against the lace. She held her handkerchief to her lips for
quite a minute; and indeed it covered more than a little of her
face, so that the features most showing were her eyes, gazing at
Doltaire with a look hard to interpret, for there seemed in it
trouble, entreaty, wonder, resistance, and a great sorrow--no fear,
trepidation, or indirectness.
His disturbing words were these: "To-night I am the Governor of
this country. You once doubted my power--that was when you would
save your lover from death. I proved it in that small thing--I saved
him. Well, when you saw me carried off to the Bastile--it looked
like that--my power seemed to vanish: is it not so? We have talked
of this before, but now is a time to review all things again. And
once more I say I am the Governor of New France. I have had the
commission in my hands ever since I came back. But I have spoken of
it to no one--except your lover."
"My husband!" she said steadily, crushing the handkerchief in
her hand, which now rested upon the chair-arm.
"Well, well, your husband--after a fashion. I did not care to
use this as an argument. I chose to win you by personal means
alone, to have you give yourself to Tinoir Doltaire because you
set him before any other man. I am vain, you see; but then vanity
is no sin when one has fine aspirations, and I aspire to you!"
She made a motion with her hand. "Oh, can you not spare me this
to-day of all days in my life--your Excellency?"
"Let it be plain 'monsieur,'" he answered. "I can not spare you,
for this day decides all. As I said, I desired you. At first my
wish was to possess you at any cost: I was your hunter only. I am
still your hunter, but in a different way. I would rather have you
in my arms than save New France; and with Montcalm I could save it.
Vaudreuil is a blunderer and a fool; he has sold the country. But
what ambition is that? New France may come and go, and be forgotten,
and you and I be none the worse. There are other provinces to
conquer. But for me there is only one province, and I will lift my
standard there, and build a grand chateau of my happiness there.
That is my hope, and that is why I come to conquer it, and not the
English. Let the English go--all save one, and he must die. Already
he is dead; he died to-day at the altar of the cathedral--"
"No, no, no!" broke in Alixe, her voice low and firm.
"But yes," he said; "but yes, he is dead to you forever. The
Church has said so; the state says so; your people say so; race and
all manner of good custom say so; and I, who love you better--yes,
a hundred times better than he--say so."
She made a hasty, deprecating gesture with her hand. "Oh, carry
this old song elsewhere," she said, "for I am sick of it." There
were now both scorn and weariness in her tone.
He had a singular patience, and he resented nothing. "I understand,"
he went on, "what it was sent your heart his way. He came to you
when you were yet a child, before you had learnt the first secret
of life. He was a captive, a prisoner, he had a wound got in fair
fighting, and I will do him the credit to say he was an honest man;
he was no spy."
She looked up at him with a slight flush, almost of gratitude.
"I know that well," she returned. "I knew there was other cause
than spying at the base of all ill treatment of him. I know that
you, you alone, kept him prisoner here five long years."
"Not I; the Grande Marquise--for weighty reasons. You should not
fret at those five years, since it gave you what you have cherished
so much, a husband--after a fashion. But yet we will do him
justice: he is an honourable fighter, he has parts and graces of a
rude order. But he will never go far in life; he has no instincts
and habits common with you; it has been, so far, a compromise,
founded upon the old-fashioned romance of ill-used captive and
soft-hearted maid; the compassion, too, of the superior for the
low, the free for the caged."
"Compassion such as your Excellency feels for me, no doubt," she
said, with a slow pride.
"You are caged, but you may be free," he rejoined meaningly.
"Yes, in the same market open to him, and at the same price of
honour," she replied, with dignity.
"Will you not sit down?" he now said, motioning her to a chair
politely, and taking one himself, thus pausing before he answered
her.
I was prepared to see him keep a decorous distance from her. I
felt he was acting upon deliberation; that he was trusting to the
power of his insinuating address, his sophistry, to break down
barriers. It was as if he felt himself at greater advantage, making
no emotional demonstrations, so allaying her fears, giving her time
to think; for it was clear he hoped to master her intelligence, so
strong a part of her.
She sat down in the high-backed chair, and I noted that our
batteries began to play upon the town--an unusual thing at night.
It gave me a strange feeling--the perfect stillness of the holy
place, the quiet movement of this tragedy before me, on which
broke, with no modifying noises or turmoil, the shouting cannonade.
Nature, too, it would have seemed, had forged a mood in keeping
with the time, for there was no air stirring when we came in, and a
strange stillness had come upon the landscape. In the pause, too, I
heard a long, soft shuffling of feet in the corridor--the evening
procession from the chapel--and a slow chant:
"I am set down in a wilderness, O Lord, I am alone. If a strange
voice call, O teach me what to say; if I languish, O give me
Thy cup to drink; O strengthen Thou my soul. Lord, I am like a
sparrow far from home; O bring me to Thine honourable house.
Preserve my heart, encourage me, according to Thy truth."
The words came to us distinctly yet distantly, swelled softly,
and died away, leaving Alixe and Doltaire seated and looking at
each other. Alixe's hands were clasped in her lap.
"Your honour is above all price," he said at last in reply to
her. "But what is honour in this case of yours, in which I throw
the whole interest of my life, stake all? For I am convinced that,
losing, the book of fate will close for me. Winning, I shall begin
again, and play a part in France which men shall speak of when I
am done with all. I never had ambition for myself; for you, Alixe
Duvarney, a new spirit lives in me.... I will be honest with you.
At first I swore to cool my hot face in your bosom; and I would
have done that at any price, and yet I would have stood by that
same dishonour honourably to the end. Never in my whole life did I
put my whole heart in any--episode--of admiration: I own it, for
you to think what you will. There never was a woman whom, loving
to-day,"--he smiled--"I could not leave to-morrow with no more than
a pleasing kind of regret. Names that I ought to have recalled I
forgot; incidents were cloudy, like childish remembrances. I was
not proud of it; the peasant in me spoke against it sometimes. I
even have wished that I, half peasant, had been--"
"If only you had been all peasant, this war, this misery of
mine, had never been," she interrupted.
He nodded with an almost boyish candour. "Yes, yes, but I was half
prince also; I had been brought up, one foot in a cottage and
another in a palace. But for your misery: is it, then, misery? Need
it be so? But lift your finger and all will be well. Do you wish to
save your country? Would that be compensation? Then I will show you
the way. We have three times as many soldiers as the English, though
of poorer stuff. We could hold this place, could defeat them, if we
were united and had but two thousand men. We have fifteen thousand.
As it is now, Vaudreuil balks Montcalm, and that will ruin us in the
end unless you make it otherwise. You would be a patriot? Then shut
out forever this English captain from your heart, and open its doors
to me. To-morrow I will take Vaudreuil's place, put your father
in Bigot's, your brother in Ramesay's--they are both perfect and
capable; I will strengthen the excellent Montcalm's hands in every
way, will inspire the people, and cause the English to raise this
siege. You and I will do this: the Church will bless us, the State
will thank us; your home and country will be safe and happy, your
father and brother honoured. This, and far, far greater things I
will do for your sake."
He paused. He had spoken with a deep power, such as I knew he
could use, and I did not wonder that she paled a little, even
trembled before it.
"Will you not do it for France?" she said.
"I will not do it for France," he answered. "I will do it for
you alone. Will you not be your country's friend? It is no virtue
in me to plead patriotism--it is a mere argument, a weapon that I
use; but my heart is behind it, and it is a means to that which
you will thank me for one day. I would not force you to anything,
but I would persuade your reason, question your foolish loyalty
to a girl's mistake. Can you think that you are right? You have no
friend that commends your cause; the whole country has upbraided
you, the Church has cut you off from the man. All is against
reunion with him, and most of all your own honour. Come with me,
and be commended and blessed here, while over in France homage
shall be done you. For you I would take from his Majesty a dukedom
which he has offered me more than once."
Suddenly, with a passionate tone, he continued: "Your own heart is
speaking for me. Have I not seen you tremble when I come near you?"
He rose and came forward a step or two. "You thought it was fear
of me. It was fear, but fear of that in you which was pleading for
me, while you had sworn yourself away to him who knows not and can
never know how to love you, who has nothing kin with you in mind or
heart--an alien of poor fortune, and poorer birth and prospects."
He fixed his eyes upon her, and went on, speaking with forceful
quietness: "Had there been cut away that mistaken sense of duty to
him, which I admire unspeakably--yes, though it is misplaced--you
and I would have come to each other's arms long ago. Here in your
atmosphere I feel myself possessed, endowed. I come close to you,
and something new in me cries out simply, 'I love you, Alixe, I
love you!' See, all the damnable part of me is burned up by the
clear fire of your eyes; I stand upon the ashes, and swear that
I can not live without you. Come--come--"
He stepped nearer still, and she rose like one who moves under
some fascination, and I almost cried out, for in that moment she
was his, his--I felt it; he possessed her like some spirit; and I
understood it, for the devilish golden beauty of his voice was
like music, and he had spoken with great skill.
"Come," he said, "and know where all along your love has lain.
That other way is only darkness--the convent, which will keep you
buried, while you will never have heart for the piteous seclusion,
till your life is broken all to pieces; till you have no hope, no
desire, no love, and at last, under a cowl, you look out upon the
world, and, with a dead heart, see it as in a pale dream, and die
at last: you, born to be a wife, without a husband; endowed to be
the perfect mother, without a child; to be the admired of princes,
a moving, powerful figure to influence great men, with no salon but
the little bare cell where you pray. With me all that you should be
you will be. You have had a bad, dark dream; wake, and come into the
sun with me. Once I wished for you as the lover only; now, by every
hope I ever might have had, I want you for my wife."
He held out his arms to her and smiled, and spoke one or two low
words which I could not hear. I had stood waiting death against
the citadel wall, with the chance of a reprieve hanging between
uplifted muskets and my breast; but that suspense was less than
this, for I saw him, not moving, but standing there waiting for
her, the warmth of his devilish eloquence about him, and she
moving toward him.
"My darling," I heard him say, "come, till death...us do part,
and let no man put asunder."
She paused, and, waking from the dream, drew herself together,
as though something at her breast hurt her, and she repeated his
words like one dazed--"Let no man put asunder!"
With a look that told of her great struggle, she moved to a shrine
of the Virgin in the corner, and, clasping her hands before her
breast for a moment, said something I could not hear, before she
turned to Doltaire, who had now taken another step towards her.
By his look I knew that he felt his spell was broken; that his
auspicious moment had passed; that now, if he won her, it must
be by harsh means.
For she said: "Monsieur Doltaire, you have defeated yourself.
'Let no man put asunder' was my response to my husband's 'Whom God
hath joined,' when last I met him face to face. Nothing can alter
that while he lives, nor yet when he dies, for I have had such a
sorrowful happiness in him that if I were sure he were dead I would
never leave this holy place--never. But he lives, and I will keep my
vow. Holy Church has parted us, but yet we are not parted. You say
that to think of him now is wrong, reflects upon me. I tell you,
monsieur, that if it were a wrong a thousand times greater I would
do it. To me there can be no shame in following till I die the man
who took me honourably for his wife."
He made an impatient gesture and smiled ironically.
"Oh, I care not what you say or think," she went on. "I know not
of things canonical and legal; the way that I was married to him
is valid in his country and for his people. Bad Catholic you call
me, alas! But I am a true wife, who, if she sinned, sinned not
knowingly, and deserves not this tyranny and shame."
"You are possessed with a sad infatuation," he replied
persuasively. "You are not the first who has suffered so. It will
pass, and leave you sane--leave you to me. For you are mine; what
you felt a moment ago you will feel again, when this romantic
martyrdom of yours has wearied you."
"Monsieur Doltaire," she said, with a successful effort at
calmness, though I could see her trembling too, "it is you who are
mistaken, and I will show you how. But first: You have said often
that I have unusual intelligence. You have flattered me in that, I
doubt not, but still here is a chance to prove yourself sincere. I
shall pass by every wicked means that you took first to ruin me, to
divert me to a dishonest love (though I knew not what you meant at
the time), and, failing, to make me your wife. I shall not refer to
this base means to reach me in this sacred place, using the King's
commission for such a purpose."
"I would use it again and do more, for the same ends," he rejoined,
with shameless candour.
She waved her hand impatiently. "I pass all that by. You shall
listen to me as I have listened to you, remembering that what I say
is honest, if it has not your grace and eloquence. You say that I
will yet come to you, that I care for you and have cared for you
always, and that--that this other--is a sad infatuation. Monsieur,
in part you are right."
He came another step forward, for he thought he saw a foothold
again; but she drew back to the chair, and said, lifting her hand
against him, "No, no, wait till I have done. I say that you are
right in part. I will not deny that, against my will, you have
always influenced me; that, try as I would, your presence moved me,
and I could never put you out of my mind, out of my life. At first
I did not understand it, for I knew how bad you were. I was sure
you did evil because you loved it; that to gratify yourself you
would spare no one: a man without pity--"
"On the contrary," he interrupted, with a sour sort of smile,
"pity is almost a foible with me."
"Not real pity," she answered. "Monsieur, I have lived long enough
to know what pity moves you. It is the moment's careless whim; a
pensive pleasure, a dramatic tenderness. Wholesome pity would make
you hesitate to harm others. You have no principles--"
"Pardon me, many," he urged politely, as he eyed her with
admiration.
"Ah no, monsieur; habits, not principles. Your life has been one
long irresponsibility. In the very maturity of your powers, you use
them to win to yourself, to your empty heart, a girl who has tried
to live according to the teachings of her soul and conscience. Were
there not women elsewhere to whom it didn't matter--your abandoned
purposes? Why did you throw your shadow on my path? You are not,
never were, worthy of a good woman's love."
He laughed with a sort of bitterness. "Your sinner stands between
two fires--" he said. She looked at him inquiringly, and he added,
"the punishment he deserves and the punishment he does not deserve.
But it is interesting to be thus picked out upon the stone, however
harsh the picture. You said I influenced you--well?"
"Monsieur," she went on, "there were times when, listening to
you, I needed all my strength to resist. I have felt myself weak
and shaking when you came into the room. There was something in you
that appealed to me, I know not what; but I do know that it was not
the best of me, that it was emotional, some strange power of your
personality--ah yes, I can acknowledge all now. You had great
cleverness, gifts that startled and delighted; but yet I felt
always, and that feeling grew and grew, that there was nothing in
you wholly honest, that by artifice you had frittered away what
once may have been good in you. Now all goodness in you was an
accident of sense and caprice, not true morality."
"What has true morality to do with love of you?" he said.
"You ask me hard questions," she replied. "This it has to do
with it: We go from morality to higher things, not from higher
things to morality. Pure love is a high thing; yours was not high.
To have put my life in your hands--ah no, no! And so I fought you.
There was no question of yourself and Robert Moray--none. Him I
knew to possess fewer gifts, but I knew him also to be what you
could never be. I never measured him against you. What was his was
all of me worth the having, and was given always; there was no
change. What was yours was given only when in your presence, and
then with hatred of myself and you--given to some baleful
fascination in you. For a time, the more I struggled against it
the more it grew, for there was nothing that could influence
a woman which you did not do. Monsieur, if you had had Robert
Moray's character and your own gifts, I could--monsieur, I could
have worshiped you!"
Doltaire was in a kind of dream. He was sitting now in the
high-backed chair, his mouth and chin in his hand, his elbow resting
on the chair-arm. His left hand grasped the other arm, and he leaned
forward with brows bent and his eyes fixed on her intently. It was a
figure singularly absorbed, lost in study of some deep theme. Once
his sword clanged against the chair as it slipped a little from its
position, and he started almost violently, though the dull booming
of a cannon in no wise seemed to break the quietness of the scene.
He was dressed, as in the morning, in plain black, but now the star
of Louis shone on his breast. His face was pale, but his eyes, with
their swift-shifting lights, lived upon Alixe, devoured her.
She paused for an instant.
"Thou shalt not commit--idolatry," he remarked in a low, cynical
tone, which the repressed feeling in his face and the terrible new
earnestness of his look belied.
She flushed a little, and continued: "Yet all the time I was
true to him, and what I felt concerning you he knew--I told him
enough."
Suddenly there came into Doltaire's looks and manner an astounding
change. Both hands caught the chair-arm, his lips parted with a sort
of snarl, and his white teeth showed maliciously. It seemed as if,
all at once, the courtier, the flaneur, the man of breeding, had
gone, and you had before you the peasant, in a moment's palsy from
the intensity of his fury.
"A thousand hells for him!" he burst out in the rough patois of
Poictiers, and got to his feet. "You told him all, you confessed
your fluttering fears and desires to him, while you let me play upon
those ardent strings of feelings, that you might save him! You used
me, Tinoir Doltaire, son of a king, to further your amour with a
bourgeois Englishman! And he laughed in his sleeve, and soothed away
those dangerous influences of the magician. By the God of heaven,
Robert Moray and I have work to do! And you--you, with all the gifts
of the perfect courtesan--"
"Oh, shame! shame!" she said, breaking in.
"But I speak the truth. You berate me, but you used incomparable
gifts to hold me near you, and the same gifts to let me have no
more of you than would keep me. I thought you the most honest, the
most heavenly of women, and now--"
"Alas!" she interrupted, "what else could I have done? To draw
the line between your constant attention and my own necessity!
Ah, I was but a young girl; I had no friend to help me; he was
condemned to die; I loved him; I did not believe in you, not in
ever so little. If I had said, 'You must not speak to me again,'
you would have guessed my secret, and all my purposes would have
been defeated. So I had to go on; nor did I think that it ever
would cause you aught but a shock to your vanity."
He laughed hatefully. "My faith, but it has, shocked my vanity,"
he answered. "And now take this for thinking on: Up to this point I
have pleaded with you, used persuasion, courted you with a humility
astonishing to myself. Now I will have you in spite of all. I will
break you, and soothe your hurt afterwards. I will, by the face of
the Madonna, I will feed where this Moray would pasture, I will
gather this ripe fruit!"
With a devilish swiftness he caught her about the waist, and
kissed her again and again upon the mouth.
The blood was pounding in my veins, and I would have rushed in
then and there, have ended the long strife, and have dug revenge
for this outrage from his heart, but that I saw Alixe did not move,
nor make the least resistance. This struck me with horror, till,
all at once, he let her go, and I saw her face. It was very white
and still, smooth and cold as marble. She seemed five years older
in the minute.
"Have you quite done, monsieur?" she said, with infinite quiet
scorn. "Do you, the son of a king, find joy in kissing lips that
answer nothing, a cheek from which the blood flows in affright and
shame? Is it an achievement to feed as cattle feed? Listen to me,
Monsieur Doltaire. No, do not try to speak till I have done, if
your morality--of manners--is not all dead. Through this cowardly
act of yours, the last vestige of your power over me is gone. I
sometimes think that, with you, in the past, I have remained true
and virtuous at the expense of the best of me; but now all that is
over, and there is no temptation--I feel beyond it: by this hour
here, this hour of sore peril, you have freed me. I was
tempted--Heaven knows, a few minutes ago I was tempted, for
everything was with you; but God has been with me, and you and I
are no nearer than the poles."
"You doubt that I love you?" he said in an altered voice.
"I doubt that any man will so shame the woman he loves," she
answered.
"What is insult to-day may be a pride to-morrow," was his quick
reply. "I do not repent of it, I never will, for you and I shall
go to-night from here, and you shall be my wife; and one day, when
this man is dead, when you have forgotten your bad dream, you will
love me as you can not love him. I have that in me to make you love
me. To you I can be loyal, never drifting, never wavering. I tell
you, I will not let you go. First my wife you shall be, and after
that I will win your love; in spite of all, mine now, though it is
shifted for the moment. Come, come, Alixe"--he made as if to take
her hand--"you and I will learn the splendid secret--"
She drew back to the shrine of the Virgin.
"Mother of God! Mother of God!" I heard her whisper, and then she
raised her hand against him. "No, no, no," she said, with sharp
anguish, "do not try to force me to your wishes--do not; for I, at
least, will never live to see it. I have suffered more than I can
bear I will end this shame, I will--"
I had heard enough. I stepped back quickly, closed the panel,
and went softly to the door and into the hall, determined to bring
her out against Doltaire, trusting to Gabord not to oppose me.
XXVII
A SIDE-WIND OF REVENGE
I knew it was Doltaire's life or mine, and I shrank from desecrating
this holy place; but our bitter case would warrant this, and more.
As I came quickly through the hall, and round the corner where stood
Gabord, I saw a soldier talking with the Mother Superior.
"He is not dead?" I heard her say.
"No, holy Mother," was the answer, "but sorely wounded. He was
testing the fire-organs for the rafts, and one exploded too soon."
At that moment the Mother turned to me, and seemed startled by
my look. "What is it?" she whispered.
"He would carry her off," I replied.
"He shall never do so," was her quick answer. "Her father, the
good Seigneur, has been wounded, and she must go to him."
"I will take her," said I at once, and I moved to open the door.
At that moment I caught Gabord's eye. There I read what caused me
to pause. If I declared myself now, Gabord's life would pay for his
friendship to me--even if I killed Doltaire; for the matter would
be open to all then just the same. That I could not do, for the man
had done me kindnesses dangerous to himself. Besides, he was a true
soldier, and disgrace itself would be to him as bad as the drum-head
court-martial. I made up my mind to another course even as the
perturbed "aho" which followed our glance fell from his puffing lips.
"But no, holy Mother," said I, and I whispered in her ear. She
opened the door and went in, leaving it ajar. I could hear only
a confused murmur of voices, through which ran twice, "No, no,
monsieur," in Alixe's soft, clear voice. I could scarcely restrain
myself, and I am sure I should have gone in, in spite of all, had
it not been for Gabord, who withstood me.
He was right, and as I turned away I heard Alixe cry, "My father,
my poor father!"
Then came Doltaire's voice, cold and angry: "Good Mother, this
is a trick."
"Your Excellency should be a better judge of trickery," she
replied quietly. "Will not your Excellency leave an unhappy lady
to her trouble and the Church's care?"
"If the Seigneur is hurt, I will take mademoiselle to him," was
his instant reply.
"It may not be, your Excellency," she said. "I will furnish her
with other escort."
"And I, as Governor of this province, as commander-in-chief of
the army, say that only with my escort shall the lady reach her
father."
At this Alixe spoke: "Dear Mere St. George, do not fear
for me; God will protect me--"
"And I also, mademoiselle, with my life," interposed
Doltaire.
"God will protect me," Alixe repeated; "I have no fear."
"I will send two of our Sisters with mademoiselle to nurse the
poor Seigneur," said Mere St. George.
I am sure Doltaire saw the move. "A great kindness, holy Mother,"
he said politely, "and I will see they are well cared for. We will
set forth at once. The Seigneur shall be brought to the Intendance,
and he and his daughter shall have quarters there."
He stepped towards the door where we were. I fell back into
position as he came. "Gabord," said he, "send your trusted fellow
here to the General's camp, and have him fetch to the Intendance
the Seigneur Duvarney, who has been wounded. Alive or dead, he must
be brought," he added in a lower voice.
Then he turned back into the room. As he did so, Gabord looked
at me inquiringly.
"If you go, you put your neck into the gin," said he; "some one
in camp will know you."
"I will not leave my wife," I answered in a whisper. Thus were
all plans altered on the instant. Gabord went to the outer door and
called another soldier, to whom he gave this commission.
A few moments afterwards, Alixe, Doltaire, and the Sisters of
Mercy were at the door ready to start. Doltaire turned and bowed
with a well-assumed reverence to the Mother Superior. "To-night's
affairs here are sacred to ourselves, Mere St. George," he said.
She bowed, but made no reply. Alixe turned and kissed her hand.
But as we stepped forth, the Mother said suddenly, pointing to me,
"Let the soldier come back in an hour, and mademoiselle's luggage
shall go to her, your Excellency."
Doltaire nodded, glancing at me. "Surely he shall attend you, Mere
St. George," he said, and then stepped on with Alixe, Gabord and
the other soldier ahead, the two Sisters behind, and myself beside
these. Going quietly through the disordered Upper Town, we came down
Palace Street to the Intendance. Here Doltaire had kept his quarters
despite his growing quarrel with Bigot. As we entered he inquired of
the servant where Bigot was, and was told he was gone to the Chateau
St. Louis. Doltaire shrugged a shoulder and smiled--he knew that
Bigot had had news of his deposition through the Governor. He
gave orders for rooms to be prepared for the Seigneur and for the
Sisters; mademoiselle meanwhile to be taken to hers, which had, it
appeared, been made ready. Then I heard him ask in an undertone if
the bishop had come, and he was answered that Monseigneur was at
Charlesbourg, and could not be expected till the morning. I was
in a most dangerous position, for, though I had escaped notice,
any moment might betray me; Doltaire himself might see through
my disguise.
We all accompanied Alixe to the door of her apartments, and there
Doltaire with courtesy took leave of her, saying that he would
return in a little time to see if she was comfortable, and to
bring her any fresh news of her father. The Sisters were given
apartments next her own, and they entered her room with her, at
her own request.
When the door closed, Doltaire turned to Gabord, and said, "You
shall come with me to bear letters to General Montcalm, and you
shall send one of these fellows also for me to General Bougainville
at Cap Rouge." Then he spoke directly to me, and said, "You shall
guard this passage till morning. No one but myself may pass into
this room or out of it, save the Sisters of Mercy, on pain of
death."
I saluted, but spoke no word.
"You understand me?" he repeated.
"Absolutely, monsieur," I answered in a rough peasantlike voice.
He turned and walked in a leisurely way through the passage, and
disappeared, telling Gabord to join him in a moment. As he left,
Gabord said to me in a low voice, "Get back to General Wolfe, or
wife and life will both be lost."
I caught his hand and pressed it, and a minute afterwards I was
alone before Alixe's door.
An hour later, knowing Alixe to be alone, I tapped on her door
and entered. As I did so she rose from a priedieu where she had
been kneeling. Two candles were burning on the mantel, but the room
was much in shadow.
"What is't you wish?" she asked, approaching.
I had off my hat; I looked her direct in the eyes and put my fingers
on my lips. She stared painfully for a moment.
"Alixe," said I.
She gave a gasp, and stood transfixed, as though she had seen a
ghost, and then in an instant she was in my arms, sobs shaking her.
"Oh, Robert! oh my dear, dear husband!" she cried again and again.
I calmed her, and presently she broke into a whirl of questions.
I told her of all I had seen at the cathedral and at the convent,
what my plans had been, and then I waited for her answer. A new
feeling took possession of her. She knew that there was one
question at my lips which I dared not utter. She became very quiet,
and a sweet, settled firmness came into her face.
"Robert," she said, "you must go back to your army without me. I
can not leave my father now. Save yourself alone, and if--and if
you take the city, and I am alive, then we shall be reunited. If
you do not take the city, then, whether father lives or dies, I
will come to you. Of this be sure, that I shall never live to be
the wife of any other man--wife or aught else. You know me. You
know all, you trust me, and, my dear husband, my own love, we
must part once more. Go, go, and save yourself, keep your life
safe for my sake, and may God in heaven, may God--"
Here she broke off and started back from my embrace, staring hard
a moment over my shoulder; then her face became deadly pale, and
she fell back unconscious. Supporting her, I turned round, and
there, inside the door, with his back to it, was Doltaire. There
was a devilish smile on his face, as wicked a look as I ever saw on
any man. I laid Alixe down on a sofa without a word, and faced him
again.
"As many coats as Joseph's coat had colours," he said. "And for
once disguised as an honest man--well, well!"
"Beast" I hissed, and I whipped out my short sword.
"Not here," he said, with a malicious laugh. "You forget your
manners: familiarity"--he glanced towards the couch--"has bred--"
"Coward!" I cried. "I will kill you at her feet."
"Come, then," he answered, and stepped away from the door,
drawing his sword, "since you will have it here. But if I kill you,
as I intend--"
He smiled detestably, and motioned towards the couch, then
turned to the door again as if to lock it. I stepped between, my
sword at guard. At that the door opened. A woman came in quickly,
and closed it behind her. She passed me, and faced Doltaire.
It was Madame Cournal. She was most pale, and there was a peculiar
wildness in her eyes.
"You have deposed Francois Bigot," she said.
"Stand back, madame; I have business with this fellow," said
Doltaire, waving his hand.
"My business comes first," she replied. "You--you dare to depose
Francois Bigot!"
"It needs no daring," he said nonchalantly.
"You shall put him back in his place."
"Come to me to-morrow morning, dear madame."
"I tell you he must be put back, Monsieur Doltaire."
"Once you called me Tinoir," he said meaningly.
Without a word she caught from her cloak a dagger and struck him
in the breast, though he threw up his hand and partly diverted the
blow. Without a cry he half swung round, and sank, face forward,
against the couch where Alixe lay.
Raising himself feebly, blindly, he caught her hand and kissed
it; then he fell back.
Stooping beside him, I felt his heart. He was alive. Madame
Cournal now knelt beside him, staring at him as in a kind of dream.
I left the room quickly, and met the Sisters of Mercy in the hall.
They had heard the noise, and were coming to Alixe. I bade them
care for her. Passing rapidly through the corridors, I told a
servant of the household what had occurred, bade him send for
Bigot, and then made for my own safety. Alixe was safe for a time,
at least--perhaps forever, thank God!--from the approaches of
Monsieur Doltaire. As I sped through the streets, I could not help
but think of how he had kissed her hand as he fell, and I knew by
this act, at such a time, that in very truth he loved her after his
fashion.
I came soon to the St. John's Gate, for I had the countersign
from Gabord, and, dressed as I was, I had no difficulty in passing.
Outside I saw a small cavalcade arriving from Beauport way. I drew
back and let it pass me, and then I saw that it was soldiers
bearing the Seigneur Duvarney to the Intendance.
An hour afterwards, having passed the sentries, I stood on a
lonely point of the shore of Lower Town, and, seeing no one near,
I slid into the water. As I did so I heard a challenge behind me,
and when I made no answer there came a shot, another, and another;
for it was thought, I doubt not, that I was a deserter. I was
wounded in the shoulder, and had to swim with one arm; but though
boats were put out, I managed to evade them and to get within hail
of our fleet. Challenged there, I answered with my name. A boat shot
out from among the ships, and soon I was hauled into it by Clark
himself; and that night I rested safe upon the Terror of France.
XXVIII
"TO CHEAT THE DEVIL YET."
My hurt proved more serious than I had looked for, and the day
after my escape I was in a high fever. General Wolfe himself,
having heard of my return, sent to inquire after me. He also was
ill, and our forces were depressed in consequence; for he had a
power to inspire them not given to any other of our accomplished
and admirable generals. He forbore to question me concerning the
state of the town and what I had seen; for which I was glad. My
adventure had been of a private nature, and such I wished it to
remain. The general desired me to come to him as soon as I was
able, that I might proceed with him above the town to reconnoitre.
But for many a day this was impossible, for my wound gave me much
pain and I was confined to my bed.
Yet we on the Terror of France served our good general, too; for
one dark night, when the wind was fair, we piloted the remaining
ships of Admiral Holmes's division above the town. This move was
made on my constant assertion that there was a way by which Quebec
might be taken from above; and when General Wolfe made known my
representations to his general officers, they accepted it as a
last resort; for otherwise what hope had they? At Montmorenci our
troops had been repulsed, the mud flats of the Beauport shore and
the St. Charles River were as good as an army against us; the
Upper Town and citadel were practically impregnable; and for
eight miles west of the town to the cove and river at Cap Rouge
there was one long precipice, broken in but one spot; but just
there, I was sure, men could come up with stiff climbing as I
had done. Bougainville came to Cap Rouge now with three thousand
men, for he thought that this was to be our point of attack.
Along the shore from Cap Rouge to Cape Diamond small batteries
were posted, such as that of Lancy's at Anse du Foulon; but they
were careless, for no conjectures might seem so wild as that of
bringing an army up where I had climbed.
"Tut, tut," said General Murray, when he came to me on the
Terror of France, after having, at my suggestion, gone to the
south shore opposite Anse du Foulon, and scanned the faint line
that marked the narrow cleft on the cliff side--"tut, tut, man,"
said he, "'tis the dream of a cat or a damned mathematician."
Once, after all was done, he said to me that cats and
mathematicians were the only generals.
With a belligerent pride Clark showed the way up the river one
evening, the batteries of the town giving us plunging shots as we
went, and ours at Point Levis answering gallantly. To me it was a
good if most anxious time: good, in that I was having some sort of
compensation for my own sufferings in the town; anxious, because no
single word came to me of Alixe or her father, and all the time we
were pouring death into the place.
But this we knew from deserters, that Vaudreuil was Governor
and Bigot Intendant still; by which it would seem that, on the
momentous night when Doltaire was wounded by Madame Cournal, he
gave back the governorship to Vaudreuil and reinstated Bigot.
Presently, from an officer who had been captured as he was setting
free a fire-raft upon the river to run among the boats of our
fleet, I heard that Doltaire had been confined in the Intendance
from a wound given by a stupid sentry. Thus the true story had been
kept from the public. From him, too, I learned that nothing was
known of the Seigneur Duvarney and his daughter; that they had
suddenly disappeared from the Intendance, as if the earth had
swallowed them; and that even Juste Duvarney knew nothing of them,
and was, in consequence, much distressed.
This officer also said that now, when it might seem as if both
the Seigneur and his daughter were dead, opinion had turned in
Alixe's favour, and the feeling had crept about, first among the
common folk and afterwards among the people of the garrison, that
she had been used harshly. This was due largely, he thought, to the
constant advocacy of the Chevalier de la Darante, whose nephew had
married Mademoiselle Georgette Duvarney. This piece of news, in
spite of the uncertainty of Alixe's fate, touched me, for the
Chevalier had indeed kept his word to me.
At last all of Admiral Holmes's division was got above the town,
with very little damage, and I never saw a man so elated, so
profoundly elated as Clark over his share in the business. He was
a daredevil, too; for the day that the last of the division was
taken up the river, without my permission or the permission of the
admiral or any one else, he took the Terror of France almost up to
Bougainville's earthworks in the cove at Cap Rouge and insolently
emptied his six swivels into them, and then came out and stood
down the river. When I asked what he was doing--for I was now well
enough to come on deck--he said he was going to see how monkeys
could throw nuts; when I pressed him, he said he had a will to
hear the cats in the eaves; and when I became severe, he added
that he would bring the Terror of France up past the batteries of
the town in broad daylight, swearing that they could no more hit
him than a woman could a bird on a flagstaff. I did not relish this
foolish bravado, and I forbade it; but presently I consented, on
condition that he take me to General Wolfe's camp at Montmorenci
first; for now I felt strong enough to be again on active service.
Clark took the Terror of France up the river in midday, running
perilously close to the batteries; and though they pounded at him
petulantly, foolishly angry at his contemptuous defiance, he ran
the gauntlet safely, and coming to the flagship, the Sutherland,
saluted with his six swivels, to the laughter of the whole fleet
and his own profane joy.
"Mr. Moray," said General Wolfe, when I saw him, racked with
pain, studying a chart of the river and town which his chief
engineer had just brought him, "show me here this passage in the
hillside."
I did so, tracing the plains of Maitre Abraham, which I
assured him would be good ground for a pitched battle. He nodded;
then rose, and walked up and down for a time, thinking. Suddenly
he stopped, and fixed his eyes upon me.
"Mr. Moray," said he, "it would seem that you, angering La
Pompadour, brought down this war upon us." He paused, smiling in a
dry way, as if the thought amused him, as if indeed he doubted it;
but for that I cared not, it was an honour I could easily live
without.
I bowed to his words, and said, "Mine was the last straw, sir."
Again he nodded, and replied, "Well, well, you got us into trouble;
you must show us the way out," and he looked at the passage I had
traced upon the chart. "You will remain with me until we meet our
enemy on these heights." He pointed to the plains of Maitre Abraham.
Then he turned away, and began walking up and down again. "It is
the last chance!" he said to himself in a tone despairing and yet
heroic. "Please God, please God!" he added.
"You will speak nothing of these plans," he said to me at last,
half mechanically. "We must make feints of landing at Cap
Rouge--feints of landing everywhere save at the one possible place;
confuse both Bougainville and Montcalm; tire out their armies with
watchings and want of sleep; and then, on the auspicious night,
make the great trial."
I had remained respectfully standing at a little distance from
him. Now he suddenly came to me, and, pressing my hand, said
quickly, "You have trouble, Mr. Moray. I am sorry for you. But
maybe it is for better things to come."
I thanked him stumblingly, and a moment later left him, to serve
him on the morrow, and so on through many days, till, in divers
perils, the camp at Montmorenci was abandoned, the troops were got
aboard the ships, and the general took up his quarters on the
Sutherland; from which, one notable day, I sallied forth with him
to a point at the south shore opposite the Anse du Foulon, where he
saw the thin crack in the cliff side. From that moment instant and
final attack was his purpose.
The great night came, starlit and serene. The camp-fires of two
armies spotted the shores of the wide river, and the ships lay like
wild fowl in convoys above the town from where the arrow of fate
should be sped. Darkness upon the river, and fireflies upon the
shore. At Beauport, an untiring general, who for a hundred days had
snatched sleep, booted and spurred, and in the ebb of a losing game,
longed for his adored Candiac, grieved for a beloved daughter's
death, sent cheerful messages to his aged mother and to his wife,
and by the deeper protests of his love foreshadowed his own doom.
At Cap Rouge, a dying commander, unperturbed and valiant, reached
out a finger to trace the last movements in a desperate campaign of
life that opened in Flanders at sixteen; of which the end began
when he took from his bosom the portrait of his affianced wife,
and said to his old schoolfellow, "Give this to her, Jervis, for
we shall meet no more."
Then, passing to the deck, silent and steady, no signs of pain
upon his face, so had the calm come to him, as to Nature and this
beleaguered city, before the whirlwind, he looked out upon the
clustered groups of boats filled with the flower of his army,
settled in a menacing tranquillity. There lay the Light Infantry,
Bragg's, Kennedy's, Lascelles's, Anstruther's Regiment, Fraser's
Highlanders, and the much-loved, much-blamed, and impetuous
Louisburg Grenadiers. Steady, indomitable, silent as cats, precise
as mathematicians, he could trust them, as they loved his awkward
pain-twisted body and ugly red hair. "Damme, Jack, didst thee ever
take hell in tow before?" said a sailor from the Terror of France
to his fellow once, as the marines grappled with a flotilla of
French fire-ships, and dragged them, spitting destruction, clear
of the fleet, to the shore. "Nay, but I've been in tow of Jimmy
Wolfe's red head; that's hell-fire, lad!" was the reply.
From boat to boat the General's eye passed, then shifted to the
ships--the Squirrel, the Leostaff, the Seahorse, and the rest--and
lastly to where the army of Bougainville lay. Then there came
towards him an officer, who said quietly, "The tide has turned,
sir." For reply the general made a swift motion towards the
maintop shrouds, and almost instantly lanterns showed in them. In
response the crowded boats began to cast away, and, immediately
descending, the General passed into his own boat, drew to the
front, and drifted in the current ahead of his gallant men, the
ships following after.
It was two by the clock when the boats began to move, and slowly
we ranged down the stream, silently steered, carried by the
current. No paddle, no creaking oarlock, broke the stillness. I was
in the next boat to the General's, for, with Clark and twenty-two
other volunteers to the forlorn hope, I was to show the way up the
heights, and we were near to his person for over two hours that
night. No moon was shining, but I could see the General plainly;
and once, when our boats almost touched, he saw me, and said
graciously, "If they get up, Mr. Moray, you are free to serve
yourself."
My heart was full of love of country then, and I answered, "I
hope, sir, to serve you till your flag is hoisted in the citadel."
He turned to a young midshipman beside him, and said, "How old
are you, sir?"
"Seventeen, sir," was the reply.
"It is the most lasting passion," he said, musing.
It seemed to me then, and I still think it, that the passion he
meant was love of country. A moment afterwards I heard him recite
to the officers about him, in a low clear tone, some verses by Mr.
Gray, the poet, which I had never then read, though I have prized
them since. Under those frowning heights, and the smell from our
roaring thirty-two-pounders in the air, I heard him say:
"The curfew tolls, the knell of parting day;
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea;
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me."
I have heard finer voices than his--it was as tin beside
Doltaire's--but something in it pierced me that night, and I
felt the man, the perfect hero, when he said:
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour--
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Soon afterwards we neared the end of our quest, the tide carrying
us in to shore; and down from the dark heights there came a
challenge, satisfied by an officer who said in French that we were
provision-boats for Montcalm: these, we knew, had been expected!
Then came the batteries of Samos. Again we passed with the same
excuse, and we rounded a headland, and the great work was begun.
The boats of the Light Infantry swung in to shore. No sentry
challenged, but I knew that at the top Lancy's tents were set. When
the Light Infantry had landed, we twenty-four volunteers stood
still for a moment, and I pointed out the way. Before we started,
we stooped beside a brook that leaped lightly down the ravine, and
drank a little rum and water. Then I led the way, Clark at one side
of me, and a soldier of the Light Infantry at the other. It was
hard climbing, but, following in our careful steps as silently as
they might, the good fellows came eagerly after. Once a rock broke
loose and came tumbling down, but plunged into a thicket, where it
stayed; else it might have done for us entirely. I breathed freely
when it stopped. Once, too, a branch cracked loudly, and we lay
still; but hearing nothing above, we pushed on, and, sweating
greatly, came close to the top.
Here I drew back with Clark, for such honour as there might be
in gaining the heights first I wished to go to these soldiers who
had trusted their lives to my guidance. I let six go by and reach
the heights, and then I drew myself up. We did not stir till all
twenty-four were safe; then we made a dash for the tents of Lancy,
which now showed in the first gray light of morning. We made a dash
for them, were discovered, and shots greeted us; but we were on
them instantly, and in a moment I had the pleasure of putting a
bullet in Lancy's heel, and brought him down. Our cheers told the
general the news, and soon hundreds of soldiers were climbing the
hard way that we had come.
And now while an army climbed to the heights of Maitre Abraham,
Admiral Saunders in the gray dawn was bombarding Montcalm's
encampment, and boats filled with marines and soldiers drew to the
Beauport flats, as if to land there; while shots, bombs, shells,
and carcasses were hurled from Levis upon the town, deceiving
Montcalm. At last, however, suspecting, he rode towards the town
at six o'clock, and saw our scarlet ranks spread across the plains
between him and Bougainville, and on the crest, nearer to him,
eying us in amazement, the white-coated battalion of Guienne,
which should the day before have occupied the very ground held by
Lancy. A slight rain falling added to their gloom, but cheered us.
It gave us a better light to fight by, for in the clear September
air, the bright sun shining in our faces, they would have had us
at advantage.
In another hour the gates of St. John and St. Louis emptied out
upon this battlefield a warring flood of our foes. It was a
handsome sight: the white uniforms of the brave regiments,
Roussillon, La Sarre, Guienne, Languedoc, Bearn, mixed with
the dark, excitable militia, the sturdy burghers of the town, a
band of coureurs de bois in their rough hunter's costume, and
whooping Indians, painted and furious, ready to eat us. At last
here was to be a test of fighting in open field, though the
French had in their whole army twice the number of our men, a
walled and provisioned city behind them, and field-pieces in
great number to bring against us.
But there was bungling with them. Vaudreuil hung back or came
tardily from Beauport; Bougainville had not yet arrived; and when
they might have pitted twice our number against us, they had not
many more than we. With Bougainville behind us and Montcalm in
front, we might have been checked, though there was no man in all
our army but believed that we should win the day. I could plainly
see Montcalm, mounted on a dark horse, riding along the lines as
they formed against us, waving his sword, a truly gallant figure.
He was answered by a roar of applause and greeting. On the left
their Indians and burghers overlapped our second line, where
Townsend with Amherst's and the Light Infantry, and Colonel Burton
with the Royal Americans and Light Infantry, guarded our flank,
prepared to meet Bougainville. In vain our foes tried to get
between our right flank and the river; Otway's Regiment, thrown
out, defeated that.
It was my hope that Doltaire was with Montcalm, and that we
might meet and end our quarrel. I came to know afterwards that it
was he who had induced Montcalm to send the battalion of Guienne
to the heights above the Anse du Foulon. The battalion had not
been moved till twenty-four hours after the order was given, or
we should never have gained those heights; stones rolled from the
cliff would have destroyed an army.
We waited, Clark and I, with the Louisburg Grenadiers while
they formed. We made no noise, but stood steady and still, the
bagpipes of the Highlanders shrilly challenging. At eight o'clock
sharpshooters began firing on us from the left, and skirmishers
were thrown out to hold them in check, or dislodge them and drive
them from the houses where they sheltered and galled Townsend's
men. Their field-pieces opened on us, too, and yet we did nothing,
but at nine o'clock, being ordered, lay down and waited still.
There was no restlessness, no anxiety, no show of doubt, for
these men of ours were old fighters, and they trusted their
leaders. From bushes, trees, coverts, and fields of grain there
came that constant hail of fire, and there fell upon our ranks a
doggedness, a quiet anger, which grew into a grisly patience. The
only pleasure we had in two long hours was in watching our two
brass six-pounders play upon the irregular ranks of our foes,
making confusion, and Townsend drive back a detachment of cavalry
from Cap Rouge, which sought to break our left flank and reach
Montcalm.
We had seen the stars go down, the cold, mottled light of dawn
break over the battered city and the heights of Charlesbourg;
we had watched the sun come up, and then steal away behind
slow-travelling clouds and hanging mist; we had looked across over
unreaped cornfields and the dull, slovenly St. Charles, knowing
that endless leagues of country, north and south, east and west,
lay in the balance for the last time. I believed that this day
would see the last of the strife between England and France for
dominion here; of La Pompadour's spite which I had roused to action
against my country; of the struggle between Doltaire and myself.
The public stake was worthy of our army--worthy of the dauntless
soldier, who had begged his physicians to patch him up long enough
to fight this fight, whereon he staked reputation, life, all that a
man loves in the world; the private stake was more than worthy of
my long sufferings. I thought that Montcalm would have waited for
Vaudreuil, but no. At ten o'clock his three columns moved down upon
us briskly, making a wild rattle; two columns moving upon our right
and one upon our left, firing obliquely and constantly as they
marched. Then came the command to rise, and we stood up and waited,
our muskets loaded with an extra ball. I could feel the stern
malice in our ranks, as we stood there and took, without returning
a shot, that damnable fire. Minute after minute passed; then came
the sharp command to advance. We did so, and again halted, and yet
no shot came from us. We stood there, a long palisade of red.
At last I saw our general raise his sword, a command rang down
the long line of battle, and, like one terrible cannon-shot, our
muskets sang together with as perfect a precision as on a private
field of exercise. Then, waiting for the smoke to clear a little,
another volley came with almost the same precision; after which the
firing came in choppy waves of sound, and again in a persistent
clattering. Then a light breeze lifted the smoke and mist well
away, and a wayward sunlight showed us our foe, like a long white
wave retreating from a rocky shore, bending, crumpling, breaking,
and, in a hundred little billows, fleeing seaward.
Thus checked, confounded, the French army trembled and fell back.
Then I heard the order to charge, and from near four thousand
throats there came for the first time our exultant British cheer,
and high over all rang the slogan of Fraser's Highlanders. To my
left I saw the flashing broadswords of the clansmen, ahead of all
the rest. Those sickles of death clove through and broke the
battalions of La Sarre, and Lascelles scattered the good soldiers
of Languedoc into flying columns. We on the right, led by Wolfe,
charged the desperate and valiant men of Roussillon and Guienne
and the impetuous sharpshooters of the militia. As we came on, I
observed the general sway and push forward again, and then I lost
sight of him, for I saw what gave the battle a new interest to me:
Doltaire, cool and deliberate, animating and encouraging the
French troops.
I moved in a shaking hedge of bayonets, keeping my eye on him;
and presently there was a hand-to-hand melee, out of which I fought
to reach him. I was making for him, where he now sought to rally
the retreating columns, when I noticed, not far away, Gabord,
mounted, and attacked by three grenadiers. Looking back now, I see
him, with his sabre cutting right and left, as he drove his horse
at one grenadier, who slipped and fell on the slippery ground,
while the horse rode on him, battering him. Obliquely down swept
the sabre, and drove through the cheek and chin of one foe;
another sweep, and the bayonet of the other was struck aside;
and another, which was turned aside as Gabord's horse came down,
bayoneted by the fallen grenadier. But Gabord was on his feet
again, roaring like a bull, with a wild grin on his face, as
he partly struck aside the bayonet of the last grenadier. It caught
him in the flesh of the left side. He grasped the musket-barrel,
and swung his sabre with fierce precision. The man's head dropped
back like the lid of a pot, and he tumbled into a heap of the faded
golden-rod flower which spattered the field.
It was at this moment I saw Juste Duvarney making towards me,
hatred and deadly purpose in his eyes. I had will enough to meet
him, and to kill him too, yet I could not help but think of Alixe.
Gabord saw him, also, and, being nearer, made for me as well.
For that act I cherish his memory. The thought was worthy of a
gentleman of breeding; he had the true thing in his heart. He
would save us--two brothers--from fighting, by fighting me himself.
He reached me first, and with an "Au diable!" made a stroke at
me. It was a matter of sword and sabre now. Clark met Juste
Duvarney's rush; and there we were, at as fine a game of
cross-purposes as you can think: Clark hungering for Gabord's life
(Gabord had once been his jailer, too), and Juste Duvarney for
mine; the battle faring on ahead of us. Soon the two were clean
cut off from the French army, and must fight to the death or
surrender.
Juste Duvarney spoke only once, and then it was but the
rancorous word "Renegade!" nor did I speak at all; but Clark
was blasphemous, and Gabord, bleeding, fought with a sputtering
relish.
"Fair fight and fowl for spitting," he cried. "Go home to heaven,
dickey-bird."
Between phrases of this kind we cut and thrust for life, an odd
sort of fighting. I fought with a desperate alertness, and
presently my sword passed through his body, drew out, and he
shivered--fell--where he stood, collapsing suddenly like a bag. I
knelt beside him, and lifted up his head. His eyes were glazing
fast.
"Gabord! Gabord!" I called, grief-stricken, for that work was
the worst I ever did in this world.
He started, stared, and fumbled at his waistcoat. I quickly put
my hand in, and drew out--one of Mathilde's wooden crosses.
"To cheat--the devil--yet--aho!" he whispered, kissed the cross,
and so was done with life.
When I turned from him, Clark stood beside me. Dazed as I was, I
did not at first grasp the significance of that fact. I looked
towards the town, and saw the French army hustling into the St.
Louis Gate; saw the Highlanders charging the bushes at the
Cote Ste. Genevieve, where the brave Canadians made their last
stand; saw, not fifty feet away, the noblest soldier of our time,
even General Wolfe, dead in the arms of Mr. Henderson, a volunteer
in the Twenty-Second; and then, almost at my feet, stretched out
as I had seen him lie in the Palace courtyard two years before,
Juste Duvarney.
But now he was beyond all friendship or
reconciliation--forever.
XXIX
"MASTER DEVIL" DOLTAIRE
The bells of some shattered church were calling to vespers, the
sun was sinking behind the flaming autumn woods, as once more I
entered the St. Louis Gate, with the grenadiers and a detachment of
artillery, the British colours hoisted on a gun-carriage. Till this
hour I had ever entered and left this town a captive, a price set
on my head, and in the very street where now I walked I had gone
with a rope round my neck, abused and maltreated. I saw our flag
replace the golden lilies of France on the citadel where Doltaire
had baited me, and at the top of Mountain Street, near to the
bishop's palace, our colours also flew.
Every step I took was familiar, yet unfamiliar too. It was a
disfigured town, where a hungry, distracted people huddled among
ruins, and begged for mercy and for food, nor found time in the
general overwhelming to think of the gallant Montcalm, lying in his
shell-made grave at the chapel of the Ursulines, not fifty steps
from where I had looked through the tapestry on Alixe and Doltaire.
The convent was almost deserted now, and as I passed it, on my way
to the cathedral, I took off my hat; for how knew I but that she
I loved best lay there, too, as truly a heroine as the admirable
Montcalm was hero! A solitary bell was clanging on the chapel as
I went by, and I saw three nuns steal past me with bowed heads.
I longed to stop them and ask them of Alixe, for I felt sure that
the Church knew where she was, living or dead, though none of all
I asked knew aught of her, not even the Chevalier de la Darante,
who had come to our camp the night before, accompanied by Monsieur
Joannes, the town major, with terms of surrender.
I came to the church of the Recollets as I wandered; for now,
for a little time, I seemed bewildered and incapable, lost in a
maze of dreadful imaginings. I entered the door of the church,
and stumbled upon a body. Hearing footsteps ahead in the dusk,
I passed up the aisle, and came upon a pile of debris. Looking
up, I could see the stars shining through a hole in the roof,
Hearing a noise beyond, I went on, and there, seated on the high
altar, was the dwarf who had snatched the cup of rum out of
the fire the night that Mathilde had given the crosses to the
revellers. He gave a low, wild laugh, and hugged a bottle to his
breast. Almost at his feet, half naked, with her face on the lowest
step of the altar, her feet touching the altar itself, was the
girl--his sister--who had kept her drunken lover from assaulting
him. The girl was dead--there was a knife-wound in her breast. Sick
at the sight I left the place, and went on, almost mechanically,
to Voban's house. It was level with the ground, a crumpled heap of
ruins. I passed Lancy's house, in front of which I had fought with
Gabord; it too was broken to pieces.
As I turned away I heard a loud noise, as of an explosion, and I
supposed it to be some magazine. I thought of it no more at the
time. Voban must be found; that was more important. I must know
of Alixe first, and I felt sure that if any one guessed her
whereabouts it would be he: she would have told him where she was
going, if she had fled; if she were dead, who so likely to know,
this secret, elusive, vengeful watcher? Of Doltaire I had heard
nothing; I would seek him out when I knew of Alixe. He could not
escape me in this walled town. I passed on for a time without
direction, for I seemed not to know where I might find the barber.
Our sentries already patrolled the streets, and our bugles were
calling on the heights, with answering calls from the fleet in
the basin. Night came down quickly, the stars shone out in the
perfect blue, and, as I walked along, broken walls, shattered
houses, solitary pillars, looked mystically strange. It was
painfully quiet, as if a beaten people had crawled away into the
holes our shot and shell had made, to hide their misery. Now and
again a gaunt face looked out from a hiding-place, and drew back
again in fear at sight of me. Once a drunken woman spat at me and
cursed me; once I was fired at; and many times from dark corners
I heard voices crying, "Sauvez-moi--ah, sauvez-moi, bon Dieu!"
Once I stood for many minutes and watched our soldiers giving
biscuits and their own share of rum to homeless French peasants
hovering round the smouldering ruins of a house which carcasses had
destroyed.
And now my wits came back to me, my purposes, the power to act,
which for a couple of hours had seemed to be in abeyance. I
hurried through narrow streets to the cathedral. There it stood,
a shattered mass, its sides all broken, its roof gone, its tall
octagonal tower alone substantial and unchanged. Coming to its
rear, I found Babette's little house, with open door, and I went
in. The old grandfather sat in his corner, with a lighted candle
on the table near him, across his knees Jean's coat that I had
worn. He only babbled nonsense to my questioning, and, after
calling aloud to Babette and getting no reply, I started for
the Intendance.
I had scarcely left the house when I saw some French peasants
coming towards me with a litter. A woman, walking behind the
litter, carried a lantern, and one of our soldiers of artillery
attended and directed. I ran forward, and discovered Voban,
mortally hurt. The woman gave a cry, and spoke my name in a kind
of surprise and relief; and the soldier, recognizing me, saluted.
I sent him for a surgeon, and came on with the hurt man to the
little house. Soon I was alone with him save for Babette, and her
I sent for a priest. As soon as I had seen Voban I guessed what
had happened: he had tried for his revenge at last. After a little
time he knew me, but at first he could not speak.
"What has happened--the Palace?" said I.
He nodded.
"You blew it up--with Bigot?" I asked.
His reply was a whisper, and his face twitched with pain:
"Not--with Bigot."
I gave him some cordial, which he was inclined to refuse. It
revived him, but I saw he could live only a few hours. Presently
he made an effort. "I will tell you," he whispered.
"Tell me first of my wife," said I. "Is she alive?--is she alive?"
If a smile could have been upon his lips then, I saw one
there--good Voban! I put my ear down, and my heart almost stopped
beating, until I heard him say, "Find Mathilde."
"Where?" asked I.
"In the Valdoche Hills," he answered, "where the Gray Monk
lives--by the Tall Calvary."
He gasped with pain. I let him rest awhile, and eased the
bandages on him, and at last he told his story:
"I am to be gone soon. For two years I have wait for the good
time to kill him--Bigot--to send him and his palace to hell. I can
not tell you how I work to do it. It is no matter--no. From an old
cellar I mine, and at last I get the powder lay beneath him--his
palace. So. But he does not come to the Palace much this many
months, and Madame Cournal is always with him, and it is hard to
do the thing in other ways. But I laugh when the English come in
the town, and when I see Bigot fly to his palace alone to get his
treasure-chest I think it is my time. So I ask the valet, and he
say he is in the private room that lead to the treasure-place.
Then I come back quick to the secret spot and fire my mine. In ten
minutes all will be done. I go at once to his room again, alone. I
pass through the one room, and come to the other. It is a room with
one small barred window. If he is there, I will say a word to him
that I have wait long to say, then shut the door on us both--for I
am sick of life--and watch him and laugh at him till the end comes.
If he is in the other room, then I have another way as sure--"
He paused, exhausted, and I waited till he could again go on. At
last he made a great effort, and continued: "I go back to the first
room, and he is not there. I pass soft, to the treasure-room, and I
see him kneel beside a chest, looking in. His back is to me. I hear
him laugh to himself. I shut the door, turn the key, go to the
window and throw it out, and look at him again. But now he stand
and turn to me, and then I see--I see it is not Bigot, but M'sieu'
Doltaire!
"I am sick when I see that, and at first I can not speak, my
tongue stick in my mouth so dry. 'Has Voban turn robber?' m'sieu'
say. I put out my hand and try to speak again--but no. 'What did
you throw from the window?' he ask. 'And what's the matter, my
Voban?' 'My God,' I say at him now, 'I thought you are Bigot!'
I point to the floor. 'Powder!' I whisper.
"His eyes go like fire so terrible; he look to the window, take
a quick angry step to me, but stand still. Then he point to the
window. 'The key, Voban?' he say; and I answer, 'Yes.' He get
pale; then he go and try the door, look close at the walls, try
them--quick, quick, stop, feel for a panel, then try again, stand
still, and lean against the table. It is no use to call; no one
can hear, for it is all roar outside, and these walls are solid
and very thick.
"'How long?' he say, and take out his watch. 'Five minutes--maybe,'
I answer. He put his watch on the table, and sit down on a bench by
it, and for a little minute he do not speak, but look at me close,
and not angry, as you would think. 'Voban,' he say in a low voice,
'Bigot was a thief.' He point to the chest. 'He stole from the
King--my father. He stole your Mathilde from you! He should have
died. We have both been blunderers, Voban, blunderers,' he say;
'things have gone wrong with us. We have lost all.' There is little
time. 'Tell me one thing,' he go on: 'Is Mademoiselle Duvarney
safe--do you know?' I tell him yes, and he smile, and take from
his pocket something, and lay it against his lips, and then put
it back in his breast.
"'You are not afraid to die, Voban?' he ask. I answer no. 'Shake
hands with me, my friend,' he speak, and I do so that. 'Ah, pardon,
pardon, m'sieu',' I say. 'No, no, Voban; it was to be,' he answer.
'We shall meet again, comrade--eh, if we can?' he speak on, and he
turn away from me and look to the sky through the window. Then he
look at his watch, and get to his feet, and stand there still. I
kiss my crucifix. He reach out and touch it, and bring his fingers
to his lips. 'Who can tell--perhaps--perhaps!' he say. For a little
minute--ah, it seem like a year, and it is so still, so still he
stand there, and then he put his hand over the watch, lift it up,
and shut his eyes, as if time is all done. While you can count ten
it is so, and then the great crash come."
For a long time Voban lay silent again. I gave him more cordial,
and he revived and ended his tale. "I am a blunderer, as m'sieu'
say," he went on, "for he is killed, not Bigot and me, and only a
little part of the palace go to pieces. And so they fetch me here,
and I wish--my God in Heaven, I wish I go with M'sieu' Doltaire."
But he followed him a little later.
Two hours afterwards I went to the Intendance, and there I found
that the body of my enemy had been placed in the room where I had
last seen him with Alixe. He lay on the same couch where she had
lain. The flag of France covered his broken body, but his face was
untouched--as it had been in life, haunting, fascinating, though
the shifting lights were gone, the fine eyes closed. A noble peace
hid all that was sardonic; not even Gabord would now have called
him "Master Devil." I covered up his face and left him there--
peasant and prince--candles burning at his head and feet, and the
star of Louis on his shattered breast; and I saw him no more.
All that night I walked the ramparts, thinking, remembering,
hoping, waiting for the morning; and when I saw the light break
over those far eastern parishes, wasted by fire and sword, I set
out on a journey to the Valdoche Hills.
XXX
"WHERE ALL THE LOVERS CAN HIDE"
It was in the saffron light of early morning that I saw it, the
Tall Calvary of the Valdoche Hills.
The night before I had come up through a long valley, overhung
with pines on one side and crimsoning maples on the other, and,
travelling till nearly midnight, had lain down in the hollow of a
bank, and listened to a little river leap over cascades, and, far
below, go prattling on to the greater river in the south. My eyes
closed, but for long I did not sleep. I heard a night-hawk go by on
a lonely mission, a beaver slide from a log into the water, and the
delicate humming of the pine needles was a drowsy music, through
which broke by-and-bye the strange crying of a loon from the water
below. I was neither asleep nor awake, but steeped in this wide
awe of night, the sweet smell of earth and running water in my
nostrils. Once, too, in a slight breeze, the scent of some wild
animal's nest near by came past, and I found it good. I lifted up
a handful of loose earth and powdered leaves, and held it to my
nose--a good, brave smell--all in a sort of drowsing.
While I mused, Doltaire's face passed before me as it was in
life, and I heard him say again of the peasants, "These shall save
the earth some day, for they are of it, and live close to it, and
are kin to it."
Suddenly there rushed before me that scene in the convent, when
all the devil in him broke loose upon the woman I loved. But,
turning on my homely bed, I looked up and saw the deep quiet of the
skies, the stable peace of the stars, and I was a son of the good
Earth again, a sojourner in the tents of Home. I did not doubt that
Alixe was alive or that I should find her. There was assurance in
this benignant night. In that thought, dreaming that her cheek lay
close to mine, her arm around my neck, I fell asleep. I waked to
bear the squirrels stirring in the trees, the whir of the partridge,
and the first unvarying note of the oriole. Turning on my dry,
leafy bed, I looked down, and saw in the dark haze of dawn the
beavers at their house-building.
I was at the beginning of a deep gorge or valley, on one side of
which was a steep sloping hill of grass and trees, and on the other
a huge escarpment of mossed and jagged rocks. Then, farther up, the
valley seemed to end in a huge promontory. On this great wedge grim
shapes loomed in the mist, uncouth and shadowy and unnatural--a
lonely, mysterious Brocken, impossible to human tenantry. Yet as
I watched the mist slowly rise, there grew in me the feeling that
there lay the end of my quest. I came down to the brook, bathed
my face and hands, ate my frugal breakfast of bread, with berries
picked from the hillside, and, as the yellow light of the rising
sun broke over the promontory, I saw the Tall Calvary upon a knoll,
strange comrade to the huge rocks and monoliths--as it were vast
playthings of the Mighty Men, the fabled ancestors of the Indian
races of the land.
I started up the valley, and presently all the earth grew
blithe, and the birds filled the woods and valleys with jocund
noise.
It was near noon before I knew that my pilgrimage was over.
Coming round a point of rock, I saw the Gray Monk, of whom
strange legends had lately travelled to the city. I took off my hat
to him reverently; but all at once he threw back his cowl, and I
saw--no monk, but, much altered, the good chaplain who had married
me to Alixe in the Chateau St. Louis. He had been hurt when he was
fired upon in the water; had escaped, however, got to shore, and
made his way into the woods. There he had met Mathilde, who led
him to her lonely home in this hill. Seeing the Tall Calvary, he
had conceived the idea of this disguise, and Mathilde had brought
him the robe for the purpose.
In a secluded cave I found Alixe with her father, caring for
him, for he was not yet wholly recovered from his injuries.
There was no waiting now. The ban of Church did not hold my
dear girl back, nor did her father do aught but smile when she
came laughing and weeping into my arms.
"Robert, O Robert, Robert!" she cried, and at first that was all
she could say.
The good Seigneur put out his hand to me beseechingly. I took
it, clasped it.
"The city?" he asked.
"Is ours," I answered.
"And my son--my son?"
I told him how, the night that the city was taken, the Chevalier
de la Darante and I had gone a sad journey in a boat to the Isle
of Orleans, and there, in the chapel yard, near to his father's
chateau, we had laid a brave and honest gentleman who died
fighting for his country.
By-and-bye, when their grief had a little abated, I took them
out into the sunshine. A pleasant green valley lay to the north,
and to the south, far off, was the wall of rosy hills that hid
the captured town. Peace was upon it all, and upon us.
As we stood there, a scarlet figure came winding in and out among
the giant stones, crosses hanging at her girdle. She approached
us, and, seeing me, she said: "Hush! I know a place where all the
lovers can hide."
And she put a little wooden cross into my hands.
APPENDIX
The following is an excerpt from 'The Scot in New France' (1880)
by J.M. Lemoine. It is an account of Robert Stobo, the man whose
life this text is loosely based upon.
Five years previous to the battle of the Plains of Abraham, one
comes across three genuine Scots in the streets of Quebec--all
however prisoners of war, taken in the border raids--as such
under close surveillance. One, a youthful and handsome officer of
Virginia riflemen, aged 27 years, a friend of Governor Dinwiddie,
had been allowed the range of the fortress, on parole. His good
looks, education, smartness (we use the word advisedly) and
misfortunes seem to have created much sympathy for the captive,
but canny Scot. He has a warm welcome in many houses--the French
ladies even plead his cause; le beau capitaine is asked out; no
entertainment at last is considered complete, without Captain--later
on Major Robert Stobo. The other two are: Lieutenant Stevenson of
Rogers' Rangers, another Virginia corps, and a Leith carpenter of
the name of Clarke. Stobo, after more attempts than one, eluded the
French sentries, and still more dangerous foes to the peace of mind
of a handsome bachelor--the ladies of Quebec. He will re-appear on
the scene, the advisor of General Wolfe, as to the best landing
place round Quebec. Doubtless you wish to hear more about the
adventurous Scot.
A plan of escape between him, Stevenson and Clarke, was carried out
on 1st May, 1759. Major Stobo met the fugitives under a wind-mill,
probably the old wind-mill on the grounds of the General Hospital
Convent. Having stolen a birch canoe, the party paddled it all
night, and, after incredible fatigue and danger, they passed
Isle-aux-Coudres, Kamouraska, and landed below this spot, shooting
two Indians in self-defence, whom Clarke buried after having scalped
them, saying to the Major: "Good sir, by your permission, these same
two scalps, when I come to New York, will sell for twenty-four good
pounds: with this I'll be right merry, and my wife right beau." They
then murdered the Indians' faithful dog, because he howled, and
buried him with his masters. It was shortly after this that they met
the laird of the Kamouraska Isles, le Chevalier de la Durantaye,
who said that the best Canadian blood ran in his veins, and that he
was of kin with the mighty Duc de Mirapoix. Had the mighty Duke,
however, at that moment seen his Canadian cousin steering the
four-oared boat, loaded with wheat, he might have felt but a very
qualified admiration for the majesty of his stately demeanor and
his nautical savoir faire. Stobo took possession of the Chevalier's
pinnace, and made the haughty laird, nolens volens, row him with the
rest of the crew, telling him to row away, and that, had the Great
Louis himself been in the boat at that moment, it would be his fate
to row a British subject thus. "At these last mighty words," says
the Memoirs, "a stern resolution sat upon his countenance, which the
Canadian beheld and with reluctance temporized." After a series of
adventures, and dangers of every kind, the fugitives succeeded in
capturing a French boat. Next, they surprised a French sloop, and,
after a most hazardous voyage, they finally, in their prize, landed
at Louisbourg, to the general amazement. Stobo missed the English
fleet; but took passage two days after in a vessel leaving for
Quebec, where he safely arrived to tender his services to the
immortal Wolfe, who gladly availed himself of them. According to the
Memoirs, Stobo used daily to set out to reconnoitre with Wolfe on
the deck of a frigate, opposite the Falls of Montmorency, some French
shots were nigh carrying away his "decorated" and gartered legs.
We next find the Major, on the 21st July, 1759, piloting the
expedition sent to Deschambault to seize, as prisoners, the Quebec
ladies who had taken refuge there during the bombardment--"Mesdames
Duchesnay and Decharnay; Mlle. Couillard; the Joly, Malhiot and
Magnan families." "Next day, in the afternoon, les belles captives,
who had been treated with every species of respect, were put on
shore and released at Diamond Harbour. The English admiral, full of
gallantry, ordered the bombardment of the city to be suspended, in
order to afford the Quebec ladies time to seek places of safety."
The incident is thus referred to in a letter communicated to the
Literary and Historical Society by Capt. Colin McKenzie.
Stobo next points out the spot, at Sillery, where Wolfe landed,
and soon after was sent with despatches, via the St. Lawrence, to
General Amherst; but, during the trip, the vessel was overhauled and
taken by a French privateer, the despatches having been previously
consigned to the deep. Stobo might have swung at the yard-arm in
this new predicament, had his French valet divulged his identity
with the spy of Fort du Quesne; but fortune again stepped in to
preserve the adventurous Scot. There were already too many prisoners
on board of the French privateer. A day's provision is allowed the
English vessel, which soon landed Stobo at Halifax, from whence
he joined General Amherst, "many a league across the country." He
served under Amherst on his Lake Champlain expedition, and there he
finished the campaign; which ended, he begs to go to Williamsburg,
the then capital of Virginia.
It seems singular that no command of any importance appears to have
been given to the brave Scot; but, possibly, the part played by
the Major when under parole at Fort du Quesne, was weighed by the
Imperial authorities. There certainly seems to be a dash of the
Benedict Arnold in this transaction. However, Stobo was publicly
thanked by a committee of the Assembly of Virginia, and was allowed
his arrears of pay for the time of his captivity. On the 30th April,
1756, he had also been presented by the Assembly of Virginia with
300 pounds, in consideration of his services to the country and his
sufferings in his confinement as a hostage in Quebec. On the 19th
November, 1759, he was presented with 1,000 pounds as "a reward for
his zeal to his country and the recompense for the great hardships
he has suffered during his confinement in the enemy's country."
On the 18th February, 1760, Major Stobo embarked from New York for
England, on board the packet with Colonel West and several other
gentlemen. One would imagine that he had exhausted the vicissitudes
of fortune. But no. A French privateer boards them in the midst of
the English channel. The Major again consigns to the deep all his
letters, all except one which he forgot, in the pocket of his coat,
under the arm pit. This escaped the general catastrophe; and will
again restore him to notoriety; it is from General A. Monckton to
Mr. Pitt. The passengers of the packet were assessed 2,500 pounds to
be allowed their liberty, and Stobo had to pay 125 pounds towards
the relief fund. The despatch forgotten in his coat on delivery to
the great Pitt brought back a letter from Pitt to Amherst. With this
testimonial, Stobo sailed for New York, 24th April, 1760, to rejoin
the army engaged in the invasion of Canada; here end the Memoirs.
Though Stobo's conduct at Fort du Quesne and at Quebec can never be
defended or palliated, all will agree that he exhibited, during his
eventful career, most indomitable fortitude, a boundless ingenuity,
and great devotion to his country--the whole crowned with final
success.
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