For a little while after leaving the shore the priest kept silence.
"Dominique," said he at length, "there is something in your guests that puzzles me; and something too that puzzles me in the manner of their coming to Boisveyrac. Tell me now precisely how you found them."
"It was not I who found them, Father. Telesphore Courteau came running to me, a little before sunset, with news that a man—an Indian—was standing on the shore opposite and signalling with his arms as if for help. Well, at first I thought it might be some trick of the Iroquois—not that I had dreamed of any in the neighbourhood: and Chrétien got his men ready and under arms. But the glass seemed to show that this was not an Iroquois: and next I saw a bundle, which might be a wounded man, lying on the bank beside him. So we launched a boat and pushed across very carefully until we came within hail: and then we parleyed for some while, the soldiers standing ready to fire, until the Indian's look and speech convinced me—for I have been as far west as Michilimackinac, and know something of the Ojibway talk. So when he called out his nation to me, I called back to him to leave speaking in French and use his own tongue."
"Yes, yes—he is an Ojibway beyond doubt."
"Well, Father, while I was making sure of this, we had pushed forward little by little and I saw the wounded man clearly. He was half-naked, but lay with his tunic over him, as the Indian had wrapped him against the chill. Indeed he was half-dead too, and past speaking, when at length we took him off."
"And they had lost their boat in the Cedars?"
"So the Ojibway said. The wonder is that they ever came to shore."
"The wonder to my thinking is rather that, coming through the wilderness from the Richelieu River, they should have possessed a canoe to launch on the Great River here."
"Their tale is that they were four, and happened on a small party of Iroquois by surprise: and that two perished while this pair possessed themselves of the Iroquois' canoe and so escaped."
"Yes," mused the priest, "so again the Ojibway told me. A strange story: and when I began to put questions he grew more and more stupid—but I know well enough by this time, I should hope, when an Indian pretends to be duller than he is. The sick man I could not well cross-examine. He told me something of the fight at Fort Carillon, where he, it appears, saw the main fighting upon the ridge, while the Indians were spread as sharpshooters along the swamps below. For the rest he refers me to his comrade." Father Launoy fell to musing again. "What puzzles me is that he carries no message, or will not own to carrying one. But what then brings him across the Wilderness? The other boats with the wounded and prisoners went down the Richelieu to its mouth, and will be travelling up the Great River to Montreal—that is, if they have not already arrivéd. Now why should this one boat have turned aside? That I could understand, if the man were upon special service: the way he came would be a short cut either down the river to Montreal, or up-stream to Fort Amitié or Fort Frontenac. But, as I say, this man apparently carries no message. Also he started from Fort Carillon with two wounds; and who would entrust special service to a wounded man?"
"Of a certainty, Father, he was wounded, as I myself saw when we drew off his shirt. The hurt in his ribs is scarcely skinned over, and he has a fresh scar on his wrist. But the blow on the head, from which he suffers, is later, and was given him (he says) by an Indian."
"A bad blow—and yet he escaped."
"A bad blow. Either from that or from the drenching, towards morning his head wandered and he talked at full speed for an hour."
"Of what did he talk?" asked the priest quickly.
"That I cannot tell, since he chattered in English."
"English? How do you know that it was English?"
"Why, since it was not French, nor like any kind of Indian! Moreover, I have heard the English talk. They were prisoners brought down from Oswego, twelve bateaux in all, and I took them through the falls. When they talked, it was just as this man chattered last night."
"Then you, too, Dominique, find your guest a strange fellow?"
"Oh, as for that! He is a sergeant, and of the regiment of Béarn. Your reverence saw his coat hanging by the bed."
"Even in that there is something strange. For Béarn lies in the Midi, close to the Pyrenees; and, as I understand, the regiment of Béarn was recruited and officered almost entirely from its own province. But this Sergeant à Clive comes from the north; his speech has no taste of the south in it, and indeed he owns to me that he is a northerner. He says further that he comes from my own seminary of Douai. And this again is correct; for I cross-questioned him on the seminary, and he knows it as a hand knows its glove—the customs of the place, the lectures, the books in use there. He has told me, moreover, why he left it.… Dominique, you do right in misliking your guest."
"I do not say, Father, that I mislike him. I fear him a little—I cannot tell why."
"You do right, then, to fear him; and I will tell you why. He is an atheist."
"An atheist? O—oh!"
"He has been of the true Faith. But he rejected me; he would make no confession, but turned himself to the wall when I exhorted him.Voyons—here is a Frenchman who talks English in his delirium; a northerner serving in a regiment of the south; an infidel, from Douai. Dominique, I do not like your guest."
"Nor I, Father, since you tell me that he is an atheist."
While they talked they had been lifting their voices insensibly to the roar of the nearing rapids; and were now come to Bout de l'lsle and the edge of peril. Below Bout de l'lsle the river divided to plunge through the Roches Fendues, where to choose the wrong channel meant destruction. Yet a mile below the Roches Fendues lay the Cascades, with a long straight plunge over smooth shelves of rock and two miles of furious water beyond. Yet farther down came the terrible rapids of La Chine, not to be attempted. There thevoyageurswould leave the canoe and reach Montreal on foot.
Father Launoy was a brave man. Thrice before he had let Dominique lead him through the awful dance ahead, and always at the end of it had felt his soul purged of earthly terrors and left clean as a child's.
Dominique reached out a hand in silence and took the paddle from the Etchemin, who crawled aft and seated himself with an expressionless face. Then with a single swift glance astern to assure himself that the other Indian was prepared, the young man knelt and crouched, with his eyes on the V-shaped ripple ahead, for the angle of which they were heading.
On this, too, the priest's eyes were bent. He gripped the gunwale as the current lifted and swept the canoe down at a pace past control; as it sped straight for the point of the smooth water, and so, seeming to be warned by the roar it met, balanced itself fore-and-aft for one swift instant and plunged with a swoop that caught away the breath.
The bows shot under the white water below the fall, lifted to the first wave, knocking up foam out of foam, and so dived to the next, quivering like a reed shaken in the hand. Dominique straightened himself on his knees. In a moment he was working his paddle like a madman, striking broad off with it on this side and that, forcing the canoe into its course, zigzagging within a hand's breadth of rocks which, at a touch, would have broken her like glass, and across the edge of whirlpools waiting to drown a man and chase his body round for hours within a few inches of the surface; and all at a speed of fifteen to eighteen miles an hour, with never an instant's pause between sight and stroke. The Indian in the stern took his cue from Dominique; now paddling for dear life, now flinging his body back as with a turn of the wrist he checked the steerage.
The priest sat with a white drenched face; a brave man terrified. He felt the floor of the world collapsing, saw its forests reeling by in the spray. It cracked like a bubble and was dissolved in rainbows—wisps caught in the rocks and fluttering in the wind of the boat's flight. Then, as the pressure on heart and chest grew intolerable, the speed began to slacken and he drew a shuddering breath; but his brain still kept the whirl of the wild minutes past and his hand scarcely relaxed its grip on the gunwale. As a runaway horse, still galloping, drops back to control, so the canoe seemed to find her senses and leapt at the waves with a cunning change of motion, no longer shearing through their crests, but riding them with a long and easy swoop. Still Father Launoy did not speak. He sat as one for whom a door has been held half-open, and closed again, upon a vision.
Yet when he found his tongue—which was not until they reached the end of the white water, and Dominique, after panting a while, headed the canoe for shore—his voice did not shake.
"It was a bold thought of these men, or a foolhardy, to strike across the Wilderness," he said meditatively, in the tone of one picking up a talk which chance has interrupted.
"There are many ways through those woods," Dominique answered. "Between here and Fort Niagara you may hear tell of a dozen perhaps; and the Iroquois have their own."
"Let us hope that none of theirs crosses the one you and Bateese taught to Monsieur Armand. The Seigneur will be uneasy about his son when he hears what 'Polyte and Damase report; and Monsieur Etienne and Mademoiselle Diane will be uneasy also."
"But this Ojibway saw nothing of M. Armand or his party."
"No news is good news. As you owe the Seigneur your duty, take your guests up to Fort Amitié to-morrow and let them be interrogated."
"My Father, must I go?" There was anguish in Dominique's voice. "Surely Jo Lagassé or Pierre Courteau will do as well?—and there is much work at Boisveyrac which cannot be neglected."
They had come to shore, and the priest had stepped out upon the bank after Dominique for a few parting words.
"But that is not your true reason?" He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder and looked him in the eyes.
Dominique's fell. "Father," he entreated in a choking voice, "you know my secret: do not be hard on me! 'Lead us not into temptation'—"
"It will not serve you to run from yours. You must do battle with it. Bethink you that, as through the Wilderness, there are more ways than one in love, and the best is that of self-denial. Mademoiselle Diane is not for you, Dominique, her father'scensitaire: yet you may love her your life through, and do her lifelong service. To-morrow, by taking these men to Fort Amitié, you may ease her heart of its fears: and will you fail in so simple a devoir? There is too much of self in your passion, Dominique—for I will not call it love. Love finds itself in giving: but passion is always a beggar."
"My Father, you do not understand—"
"Who told you that I do not understand?" the priest interrupted harshly. "I too have known passion, and learnt that it is full of self and comes of Satan. Nay, is that not evident to you, seeing what mischief it has already worked in your life? Think of Bateese."
"Do I ever cease thinking of Bateese? Do I ever cease fighting with myself?" Dominique's voice rose almost to a cry of pain. He stared across the water with gloomy eyes and added—it seemed quite inconsequently—"The Cascades is a bad fall, but I think it will be the Roches Fendues that gets me in the end."
He said it calmly, wistfully: and, pausing for a moment, met the priest's eyes.
"Your blessing, Father. I will go."
He knelt.
Generations ofvoyageurs, upward bound, and porting their canoes to avoid the falls, had worn a track beside the river bank. Dominique made such speed back along it that he came in sight of Boisveyrac as the bell in the little chapel of the Seigniory began to ring the Angelus. Its note came floating down the river distinct above the sound of the falls. He bared his head, and repeated hisAvesduly.
"But all the same," he added, working out the train of his thoughts as he gazed across the deserted harvest-fields, impoverished by tree-stumps, to the dense forest behind the Château, "let God confound the English, and New France shall belong to a newnoblessethat have learned, as the old will not, to lay their hands on her wealth."
John à Cleeve lay on his bed in the guest-room of the Seigniory, listening to the sound of the distant falls.
That song was his anodyne. All day he had let it lull his conscience, rousing himself irritably as from a drugged sleep to answer the questions put to him by Dominique or the priest. Dominique's questions had been few and easily answered, the most of them relating to the battle.
"A brother of mine was there beyond doubt," he had wound up wistfully. "He is a bateau-man, by name Baptiste Guyon. But of course you will not know him?"
"Ils m'ont tire pour la battue, moi," John had fenced him off with a feeble joke and a feeble laugh. (Why should he feel ashamed? Was this not war, and he a prisoner tricking his captors?)
But the priest had been a nuisance. Heaven be praised for his going!
And now the shadows were closing upon the room, and in the hush of sunset the voice of the waters had lifted its pitch and was humming insistently, with but a semitone's fall and rise. During the priest's exhortations he had turned his face to the wall; but now for an hour he had lain on his other side, studying the rafters, the furniture, the ray of sunlight creeping along the floor-boards and up the dark, veneered face of anarmoirebuilt into the wall. Behind the doors of it hung Sergeant Barboux's white tunic; and sometimes it seemed to him that the doors were transparent and he saw it dangling like a grey ghost within.
It was to avoid this sight that he had turned to the wall when the priest began to interrogate him. Heavens! how incurably, after all, he hated these priests!
Menehwehna had answered most of the questions, standing by the bed's foot: and Menehwehna was seated there still in the dusk.
How many lies had Menehwehna told? John himself had told none, unless it were a lie to pronounce his name French-fashion—"John à Cleeve," "Jean à Clive." And, once more, was not this war?
For the rest and for his own part, it was astonishing how easily, the central truth being hidden—that the tunic in thearmoirewas not his—the deception had run on its own wheels. Why, after all, should that tunic frighten him? He, John à Cleeve, had not killed its wearer. He had never buttoned it about him nor slipped an arm into one of its sleeves. Menehwehna had offered to help him into it and had shown much astonishment on being refused. John's own soiled regimentals they had weighted with a stone and sunk in the river, and he had been lying all but naked, with the accursed garment over his legs, when the rescue-party found them on the bank.
How many lies had Menehwehna told? John could remember the sound of two voices, the priest's and the Indian's, questioning and explaining; but the sound only. As soon as he shut his eyes and tried to recall the words, the priest's voice faded down the song of the falls, and only the Indian and himself were left, dropping— dropping—to the sound, over watery ledges and beneath pendent boughs. Then, as the walls of the room dissolved and the priest's figure vanished with them, Menehwehna's voice grew distinct. At one time it said: "What is done is done. Come with me, and we will go up through the Great Lakes, beyond Michilimackinac, to the Beaver Islands which are in the mouth of Lake Michigan. There we will find the people of my tribe, and when the snow comes and they separate, you shall go with me to the wintering-grounds and learn to be a hunter."
In another dream the voice said: "You will not come because you weary of me and wish to leave me. We have voyaged together, and little by little my heart has been opened to you; but yours will not open in return. I would have made you to me all that Muskingon was; but you would not. When I killed that man, it was for your sake no less than Muskingon's. I told him so when he died. Of what avail is my friendship, brother, when you will give me none in exchange?…"
In yet a third dream the canoe floated on a mirror, between a forest and the image of a forest.… His eyes followed the silver wake of a musk-rat swimming from shore to shore, and in his ear Menehwehna was saying, "Your head is weak yet: when it grows stronger you will wish to come. Muskingon struck you too hard—so—with the flat of his tomahawk. He did not mean it, but his heart was jealous that already so much of my love had passed over to you. Yet he was a good lad, and my daughter's husband. The White-coat called across the stream to him, to kill you; but he would not, nor would he bring you over the ford until we had made the White-coat promise that you should not be killed for trying to run away. The man could do nothing against us two; but he bore ill-will to Muskingon afterwards, and left him to die when we could have saved him."
So, while John had lain senseless, fate had been binding him with cords—cords of guilt and cords of gratitude—and twining them inextricably. Therefore he feared sleep, because these dreams awoke him to pluck again at the knot of conscience. Ease came only with the brain's exhaustion, when in sheer weakness he could let slip the tangle and let the song of the rapids drug his senses once more.
He turned on his side and watched the sunbeam as it crept up the face of thearmoire. "Menehwehna!" he called weakly.
From his seat in the corner among the shadows the Indian came and stood behind him.
"Menehwehna, this lying cannot go on! Make you for this fort they talk of; tell your tale there and push on to join your tribe. Let us fix a length of time, enough for your travel beyond reach, and at the end of it I will speak."
"And what will my brother tell them?"
"The truth—that I am no Frenchman but an English prisoner."
"It is weakness makes you lose patience," answered Menehwehna, as one might soothe a child. "Let the weak listen to the strong. All things I have contrived, and will contrive; there is no danger, and will be none."
John groaned. How could he explain that he abhorred this lying? Worse—how could he explain that he loathed Menehwehna's company and could not be friends with him as of old; that something in his blood, something deep and ineradicable as the difference between white man and red man, cried out upon the sergeant's murder? How could he make this clear? Menehwehna—who had preserved his life, nursed him, toiled for him cheerfully, borne with him patiently—would understand only that all these pains had been spent upon an ingrate. John tugged away from the bond of guilt only to tighten this other yet more hateful bond of gratitude. He must sever them both, and in one way only could this be done. He and Menehwehna must part. "I do not fear to be a prisoner. Moreover, it will not be for long. The river leads, after all, to Quebec; and the English, if they take Louisbourg, will quickly push up that way."
"The White-coat used to speak wisdom once in a while," answered Menehwehna gravely. "'It is a great battle,' he said, 'that battle of If; only it has the misfortune never to be fought.' Take heart, brother, and come with me to the Isles du Castor. When your countrymen take Quebec you shall return to them, if you still have the mind, and I will swear that we held you captive. But to tell this needless tale is a sick man's folly."
John could not meet the Indian's eyes, full as they were of a wondering simplicity. He feared they might read the truth—that his desire to escape was dead. During Father Launoy's exhortations he had lain, as it were, with his ear against its cold heart; had lain secretly whispering it to awake. But it would not. The questions and cross-questions about Douai he had answered almost inattentively. What did it all matter?
The priest had been merely tedious. Back on Lake Champlain and on the Richelieu, when the world of his ken, though lost, lay not far behind him, his hope had been to escape and seek back to it; his comfort against failure the thought that here in the north one restful, familiar face awaited him—the face of the Church Catholic. Now the hope and the consolation were gone together. Perhaps under the lengthening strain some vital spring had snapped in him, or the forests had slowly choked it, or it had died with a nerve of the brain under Muskingon's tomahawk.
He was not Sergeant à Clive of the regiment of Béarn; but almost as little was he that Ensign John à Cleeve of the Forty-sixth who had entered the far side of the Wilderness.
He wanted only to be quit of Menehwehna and guilt. It would be a blessed relief to lie lost, alone, as a ball tossed into a large country. As he had fallen, so he prayed to lie; empty in the midst of a great emptiness. The Communion of all the Saints could not comfort him now, since he had passed all need of comfort.
"You must go, Menehwehna. I will not speak until you are beyond reach."
"It is my brother that talks so. Else would I call it the twitter of a wren that has flown over. Is Menehwehna a coward, that he spoke with thought of saving himself?"
"I know that you did not," answered John, and cursed the knowledge. But the voice of the falls had begun to lull him. "We will talk of it to-morrow," he said drowsily.
"Yes, indeed; for this is a thought of sickness, that a man should choose to be a prisoner when by any means he may be free."
He found a tinder-box and lit the night-lamp—a wick floating in a saucer of oil: then, having shaken up John's pillow and given him to drink from a pannikin, went noiselessly back to his corner.
The light wavered on the dark panels of thearmoire. While John watched, it fell into tune with the music of the distant falls.…
He awoke, with the rhythm of dance-music in his brain. In his dream the dawn was about him, and he stood on the lawn outside the Schuylers' great house above Albany. From the ballroom came the faint sound of violins, while he lingered to say good-bye to three night-gowned little girls in the window over the porch; and some way down the hill stood young Sagramore, of the Twenty-seventh, who was saying, "It is a long way to go. Do you think he is strong enough?"
Still in his dream John turned on him indignantly. And behold! it was not young Sagramore, but Dominique, standing by the bed and talking with Menehwehna.
"We are to start for the Fort, it appears," said Menehwehna to John.
"Let us first make sure," said Dominique, "that he is strong enough to dress." He thrust his hand within thearmoireand unhitched the white tunic from its peg.
John shrank back into his corner.
"Not that!" he stammered.
Across the lamp smoking in the dawn, Dominique stared at him.
The Fort stood high on a wooded slope around which the river swept through narrows to spread itself below in a lake three miles wide and almost thirty long. In shape it was quadrilateral with a frontage of fifty toises and a depth of thirty, and from each angle of its stone walls abutted a flanking tower, the one at the western angle taller than the others by a good twenty feet and surmounted by a flagstaff.
East, west, and south, the ground fell gently to the water's edge, entirely clear of trees: even their stumps had been uprooted to make room for small gardens in which the garrison grew its cabbages and pot-herbs; and below these gardens the Commandant's cows roamed in a green riverside meadow. At the back a rougher clearing, two cannon-shots in width, divided the northern wall from the dark tangle of the forest.
The canoe had been sighted far down the lake, and the Commandant himself, with his brother M. Etienne and his daughter Mademoiselle Diane, had descended to the quay to welcome thevoyageurs. A little apart stood Sergeant Bédard, old Jérémie Tripier (formerly major-domo and general factotum at Boisveyrac, now at Fort Amitié promoted to bemaréchal des logis), and five or six militiamen. And to John, as he neared the shore in the haze of a golden evening, the scene and the figures—the trim little stone fortress, the white banner of France transparent against the sky, the sentry like a toy figure at the gate, the cattle browsing below, the group at the river's brink—appeared as a tableau set for a child's play.
To add to the illusion, as the canoe came to the quay the sun sank, a gun boomed out from the tallest of the four towers, and the flag ran down its staff; all as if by clockwork. As if by clockwork, too, the taller of the two old gentlemen on the quay—the one in a gold-laced coat—stepped forward with a wave of his hand.
"Welcome, welcome, my good Dominique! It will be news you bring from Boisveyrac—more news of the great victory, perhaps? And who are these your comrades?"
"Your servant, Monseigneur; and yours, Monsieur Etienne, and yours, Mademoiselle Diane!" Dominique brought his canoe alongside and saluted respectfully. "All my own news is that we have gathered the harvest at Boisveyrac; a crop not far below the average, we hope. But Father Launoy desired me to bring you these strangers, who will tell of matters more important."
"It is the wounded man—the sergeant from Fort Carillon!" cried Diane, clasping her hands.
"Eh, my child? Nonsense, nonsense—he wears no uniform, as you see. Moreover, 'Polyte Latulippe brought word that he was lying at the point of death."
"It is he, nevertheless."
"Mademoiselle has guessed rightly," said Dominique. "It is the wounded soldier. I have lent him an outfit."
The Commandant stared incredulously from Dominique to John, from John to Menehwehna, and back again to John. A delightful smile irradiated his face.
"Then you bring us a good gift indeed! Welcome, sir, welcome to Fort Amitié! where we will soon have you hale and strong again, if nursing can do it."
Here, if John meant to play his part, was the moment for him to salute. He half lifted his hand as he reclined, but let it fall again. From the river-bank a pair of eyes looked down into his; dark grey eyes—or were they violet?—shy and yet bold, dim and yet shining with emotion. God help him! This child—she could be little more—was worshipping him for a hero!
"Nay, sir, give it to me!" cried the Commandant, stooping by the quay's edge. "I shall esteem it an honour to grasp the hand of one who comes from Fort Carillon—who was wounded for France in her hour of victory. Your name, my friend?—for the messengers who brought word of you yesterday had not heard it, or perhaps had forgotten."
"My name is à Cleeve, monsieur."
"À Clive? à Clive? It is unknown to me, and yet it has a good sound, and should belong toun homme Men ne?" He turned inquiringly towards his brother, a mild, elderly man with a scHolàr's stoop and a face which assorted oddly with his uniform of captain of militia, being shrivelled as parchment and snuff-dried and abstracted in expression as though he had just lifted his eyes from a book. "À Clive, Etienne. From what province should our friend derive?"
M. Etienne's eyes—they were, in fact, short-sighted—seemed to search inwardly for a moment before he answered:
"There was a family of that name in the Quercy; so late, I think, as 1650. I had supposed it to be extinct. It bore arms counterpaly argent and gules, a canton ermine—"
"My brother, sir," the Commandant interrupted, "is a famous genealogist. Do you accept this coat-of-arms he assigns to you?"
"If M. le Commandant will excuse me—"
"Eh, eh?—an awkward question, no doubt, to put to many a young man of family now serving with the colours?" The Commandant chuckled knowingly. "But I have an eye, sir, for nice shades, and an ear too.Verbum sapienti satis. A sergeant, they tell me—and of the Béarnais; but until we have cured you, sir, and the active list again claims you, you are Monsieur à Clive and my guest. We shall talk, so, upon an easier footing. Tut-tut! I have eyes in my head, I repeat. And this Indian of yours—how does he call himself?"
"Menehwehna, monsieur. He is an Ojibway."
"And you and he have come by way of the Wilderness? Now what puzzles me—"
"Papa!" interposed the girl gently, laying a hand on her father's sleeve; "ought we not to get him ashore before troubling him with all these questions? He is suffering, I think."
"You say well, my child. A thousand pardons, sir. Here, Bédard! Jérémie!"
But it was Menehwehna who, with inscrutable face, helped John ashore, suffering the others only to hold the canoe steady. John tried hard to collect his thoughts to face this new situation. He had dreamed of falling among savages in these backwoods; but he had fallen among folk gentle in manner and speech, anxious to show him courtesy; folk to whom (as in an instant he divined) truth and uprightness were dearer than life and judged as delicately as by his own family at home in Devonshire. How came they here? Who was this girl whose eyes he avoided lest they should weigh him, as a sister's might, in the scales of honour?
A man may go through life cherishing many beliefs which are internecine foes; unaware of their discordance, or honestly persuaded that within him the lion and the lamb are lying down together, whereas in truth his fate has never drawn the bolts of their separate cages. John had his doubts concerning God; but something deeper than reason within him detested a lie. Yet as a soldier he had accepted without examination the belief that many actions vile in peace are in war permissible, even obligatory; a loose belief, the limits of which no man in his regiment—perhaps no man in the two armies—could have defined. In war you may kill; nay, you must; but you must do it by code, and with many exceptions and restrictions as to the how and when. In war (John supposed) you may lie; nay, again, in certain circumstances you must.
With this girl's eyes upon him, worshipping him for a hero, John discovered suddenly that here and now he could not. For an instant, as if along a beam of light, he looked straight into Militarism's sham and ugly heart.
Yes, he saw it quite clearly, and was resolved to end the lie. But for the moment, in his bodily weakness, his will lagged behind his brain. As a sick man tries to lift a hand and cannot, so he sought to rally his will to meet the crisis and was dismayed to find it benumbed and half-asleep.
They were ascending the slope, and still as they went the Commandant's voice was questioning him.
"Through the Wilderness! That was no small exploit, my friend, and it puzzles me how you came to attempt it; for you were severely wounded, were you not?"
"I received two wounds at Fort Carillon, monsieur. The proposal to make across the woods was not mine. It came from the French sergeant in command of our boat."
"So—so. I ought to have guessed it. You were a whole boat's party then, at starting?" John felt the crisis near; but the Commandant's mind was discursive, and he paused to wave a proprietary hand towards the walls and towers of his fortress. "A snug little shelter for the backwoods—eh, M. à Clive? I am, you must know, a student of the art of fortification;c'est ma rengaine, as my daughter will tell you, and I shall have much to ask concerning that famous outwork of M. de Montcalm's, which touches my curiosity. So far as Damase could tell me, Fort Carillon itself was never even in danger—" But here Mademoiselle Diane again touched his sleeve. "Yes, yes, to be sure, we will not weary our friend just now. We will cure him first; and while he is mending, you shall look out a new uniform from the stores and set your needle to work to render it as like as you can contrive to the Béarnais. Nay, sir, to her enthusiasm that will be but a trifle. Remember that you come to us crowned with laurels, and with news for which we welcome you as though you brought a message from the General himself." A sudden thought fetched the Commandant to a standstill. "You are sure that the sergeant, your comrade, carried no message?"
John paused with Menehwehna's arm supporting him.
"If he carried a message, monsieur, he told me of none."
Where were his faculties? Why were they hanging back and refusing to come to grips with the crisis? Why did this twilit riverside persist in seeming unreal to him, and the actors, himself included, as figures moving in a shadow-play?
Once, in a dream, he had seen himself standing at the wings of a stage—an actor, dressed for his part. The theatre was crowded; someone had begun to ring a bell for the curtain to go up; and he, the hero of the piece, knew not one word of his part, could not even remember the name of the play or what it was about. The dream had been extraordinarily vivid, and he had awakened in a sweat.
"But," the Commandant urged, "he must have had some reason for striking through the forest. What was his name?"
"Barboux."
John, as he answered, could not see Menehwehna's face; but Menehwehna's supporting arm did not flinch.
"Was he, too, of the regiment of Béarn?"
"He was of the Béarnais, monsieur."
"Tell us now. When the Iroquois overtook you, could he have passed on a message, had he carried one?"
While John hesitated, Menehwehna answered him. "It was I only who saw the sergeant die," said Menehwehna quietly. He gave me no message."
"You were close to him?"
"Very close."
"It is curious," mused the Commandant, and turned to John again. "Your falling in with the Iroquois, monsieur, gives me some anxiety; since it happens that a party from here and from Fort Frontenac was crossing the Wilderness at about the same time, with messages for the General on Lake Champlain. You saw nothing of them?"
Again Menehwehna took up the answer. "We met no one but these Iroquois," he said smoothly.
And as Menehwehna spoke the words John felt that everyone in the group about him had been listening for it with a common tension of anxiety. He gazed around, bewildered for the moment by the lie. The girl stood with clasped hands. "Thank God!" he heard the Commandant say, lifting his hat.
What new mystery was here? Menehwehna stood with a face immobile and inscrutable; and John's soul rose up against him in rage and loathing. The man had dishonoured him, counting on his gratitude to endorse the lie. Well, he was quit of gratitude now. "To-morrow, my fine fellow," said he to himself, clenching his teeth, "the whole tale shall be told; between this and the telling you may save your skin, if you can "; and so he turned to the Commandant.
"Monsieur," he said with a meaning glance at Menehwehna, "I beg you to accept no part of our story until I have told it through to you."
The Commandant was plainly puzzled. "Willingly, monsieur; but I beg you to consider the sufferings of our curiosity and be kind in putting a term to them."
"To-morrow—" began John, and looking up, came to a pause. Dominique Guyon had followed them up from the boat and was thrusting himself unceremoniously upon the Commandant's attention.
"Since this monsieur mentions to-morrow," interrupted Dominique abruptly, "and before I am dismissed to supper, may I claim the Seigneur's leave to depart early to-morrow morning?"
The interruption was so unmannerly that John stared from one to another of the group. The Commandant's face had grown very red indeed. Dominique himself seemed sullenly aware of his rudeness. But John's eyes came to rest on Mademoiselle Diane's; on her eyes for an instant, and then on her lashes, as she bent her gaze on the ground—it seemed to him, purposely, and to avoid Dominique's.
"Dominique," said the Commandant haughtily, "you forget yourself. You intrude upon my conversation with this gentleman." His voice shook and yet it struck John that his anger covered some anxiety.
"Monseigneur must forgive me," answered Dominique, still with an awkward sullenness. "But it is merely my dismissal that I beg. I wish to return early to-morrow to Boisveyrac; the harvest there is gathered, to be sure, but no one can be trusted to finish the stacks. With so many dancing attendance on the military, the Seigniory suffers; and, by your leave, I am responsible for it."
He glared upon John, who gazed back honestly puzzled. The Commandant seemed on the verge of an explosion, but checked himself.
"My excellent Dominique Guyon," said he, "uses the freedom of an old tenant. But here we are at the gate. I bid you welcome, Monsieur a Clive, to my small fortress! Tut, tut, Dominique! We will talk of business in the morning."
Alone with Menehwehna in the bare hospital ward to which old Jérémie asmaréchal des logisescorted them, John turned on the Ojibway and let loose his indignation.
"And look you," he wound up, "this shall be the end. At daybreak to-morrow the gate of the fort will be opened. Take the canoe and make what speed you can. I will give you until ten o'clock, but at that hour I promise you to tell my tale to the Commandant, and to tell him all."
"If my brother is resolved," said Menehwehna composedly, "let him waste no words. What is settled is settled, and to be angry will do his head no good."
He composed himself to sleep on the floor at the foot of John's bed, pulling his rug up to his ears. There were six empty beds in the ward, and one had been prepared for him; but Menehwehna despised beds.
John awoke to sunlight. It poured in through three windows high in the whitewashed wall opposite, and his first thought was to turn over and look for Menehwehna.
Menehwehna had disappeared.
John lay back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. Menehwehna had gone; he was free of him, and this day was to deliver his soul. In an hour or so he would be sitting under lock and key, but with a conscience bathed and refreshed, a companion to be looked in the face, a clear-eyed counsellor. The morning sunlight filled the room with a clean cheerfulness, and he seemed to drink it in through his pores. Forgetting his wound, he jumped out of bed with a laugh.
As he did so his eye travelled along the empty beds in the ward, and along a row of pegs above them, and stiffened suddenly.
There were twelve pegs, and all were bare save one—the one in the wall-space separating his bed from the bed which had been prepared for Menehwehna; and from this peg hung Sergeant Barboux's white tunic.
It had not been hanging there last night when he dropped asleep: to that he could take his oath. He had supposed it to be left behind in thearmoireat Boisveyrac. For a full minute he sat on the bed's edge gazing at it in sheer dismay, its evil menace closing like a grip upon his heart.
But by and by the grip relaxed as dismay gave room to rage, and with rage came courage.
He laughed again fiercely. Up to this moment he had always shrunk from touch of the thing; but now he pulled it from its peg, held it at arm's length for a moment, and flung it contemptuously on the floor.
"You, at least, I am not going to fear any longer!"
As he cast it from him something crackled under his fingers. For a second or two he stood over the tunic, eyeing it between old disgust and new surmise. Then, dropping on one knee, he fumbled it over, found the inner breast-pocket, and pulled from it a paper.
It was of many sheets, folded in a blue wrapper, sealed with a large red seal, and addressed in cipher.
Turning it over in his hand, he caught sight, in the lower left-hand corner, of a dark spot which his thumb had covered. He stared at it; then at his thumb, to the ball of which some red dust adhered; then at the seal. The wax bore the impress of a flying Mercury, with cap, caduceus and winged sandals. The ciphered address he could not interpret; it was brief, written in two lines, in a bold clear hand.
This, then, was the missive which Barboux had carried.
Had Menehwehna discovered it and placed it here for him to discover? Yes, undoubtedly. And this was a French dispatch; and at any cost he must intercept it! His soldier's sacrament required no less. He must conceal it—seek his opportunity to escape with it—go on lying meanwhile in hope of an opportunity.
Where now was the prospects of his soul's deliverance?
He crept back to bed and was thrusting the letter under his pillow when a slight sound drew his eyes towards the door.
In the doorway stood Menehwehna with a breakfast-tray. The Indian's eyes travelled calmly across the room as he entered and set the tray down on the bed next to John's. Without speaking he picked up the tumbled tunic from the floor and set it back on its peg.
"But touching this polygon of M. de Montcalm's—"
Within the curtain-wall facing the waterside the ground had been terraced up to form a high platform orterre-plein, whence six guns, mounted in embrasures, commanded the river. Hither John had crept, with the support of a stick, to enjoy the sunshine and the view, and here the Commandant had found him and held him in talk, walking him to and fro, with pauses now and again beside a gun for a few minutes' rest.
"But touching this polygon of M. de Montcalm's, he would doubtless follow Courmontaigne rather than Vauban. The angles, you say, were boldly advanced?"
"So they appeared to me, monsieur; but you understand that I took no part—"
"By advancing the angles boldly"—here the Commandant pressed his finger-tips together by way of illustration—"we allow so much more play to enfilading fire. I speak only of defence against direct assault; for of opposing such a structure to artillery the General could have had no thought."
"Half a dozen six-pounders, well directed, could have knocked it about his ears in as many minutes."
"That does not detract from his credit. Every general fights with two heads—his own and his adversary's; and, for the rest, we have to do what we can do with our material." The Commandant halted and gazed down whimsically upon the courtyard, in the middle of which his twenty-five militiamen were being drilled by M. Etienne and Sergeant Bédard. "My whole garrison, sir! Eh? you seem incredulous. My whole garrison, I give you my word! Five-and-twenty militiamen to defend a post of this importance; and up at Fort Frontenac, the very key of the West, my old friend Payan de Noyan has but a hundred in command! I do not understand it, sir. Stores we have in abundance, and ammunition and valuable presents to propitiate the Indians who no longer exist in this neighbourhood. Yes, and—would you believe it?—no longer than three months ago the Governor sent up a boatload of women. It appeared that his Majesty had forwarded them all the way from France, for wives for his faithful soldiers. I packed them off, sir, and returned them to M. de Vaudreuil. 'With all submission to his Majesty's fatherly wisdom,' I wrote, 'the requirements of New France at this moment are best determined by sterner considerations'; and I asked for fifty regulars to man our defences. M. de Vaudreuil replied by sending me up one man, andhehad but one arm! I made Noyan a present of him; his notions of fortification were rudimentary, not to say puerile."
The Commandant paused and dug the surface of theterre-pleinindignantly with his heel. "As for fortification, do I not know already what additional defences we need? Fort Amitié, monsieur, was constructed by the great Frontenac himself, and with wonderful sagacity, if we consider the times. Take, for example, the towers. You are acquainted, of course, with the modern rule of giving the bastions a salient angle of fifteen degrees in excess of half the angle of the figure in all figures from the square up to the dodecagon? Well, Fort Amitié being a square—or rather a right-angled quadrilateral—the half of its angle will be forty-five degrees; add fifteen, and we get sixty; which is as nearly as possible the salience of our flanking towers; only they happen to be round. So far, so good; but Frontenac had naturally no opportunity of studying Vauban's masterpieces, and perhaps as the older man he never digested Vauban's theories. He did not see that a quadrilateral measuring fifty toises by thirty must need some protection midway in its longer curtains, and more especially on the riverside. A ravelin is out of the question, for we have no counterscarp to stand it on—no ditch at all in fact; our glaçis slopes straight from the curtain to the river. I have thought of a tenaille—of a flat bastion. We could do so much if only M. de Vaudreuil would send us men!—but, as it is, on what are we relying? Simply, M. à Clive, on our enemies' ignorance of our weakness."
John turned his face away and stared out over the river. The walls of the fort seemed to stifle him; but in truth his own breast was the prison.
"Well now," the Commandant pursued, "your arrival has set me thinking. We cannot strengthen ourselves against artillery; but they say that these English generals learn nothing. They may come against us with musketry, and what served Fort Carillon may also serve Fort Amitié. A breastwork—call it a lunette—half-way down the slope yonder, so placed as to command the landing-place at close musket range—it might be useful, eh? There will be trouble with Polyphile Cartier—'Sans Quartier,' as they call him. He is proud of his cabbages, and we might have to evict them; yes, certainly our lunette would impinge upon his cabbages. But the safety of the Fort would, of course, override all such considerations."
He caught John by the arm and hurried him along for a better view of Sans Quartier's cabbage-patch. And just then Mademoiselle Diane came walking swiftly towards them from the end of theterre-pleinby the flagstaff tower. An instant later the head and shoulders of Dominique Guyon appeared above the ascent.
Clearly he was following her; and as she drew near John read, or thought he read, a deep trouble in the child's eyes. But from her eyes his glance fell upon a bundle that she carried, and his own cheek paled. For the bundle was a white tunic, and it took a second glance to assure him that the tunic was a new one and not Sergeant Barboux's!
"Eh? What did I tell you? She has been rifling the stores already!" Here the Commandant caught sight of Dominique and hailed him. "Holà, Dominique!"
Dominique halted for a moment and then came slowly forward; while the girl, having greeted John with a grown woman's dignity, stood close by her father's elbow.
"Dominique, how many men can you spare me from Boisveyrac, now that the harvest is over?"
"For what purpose do you wish men, Monseigneur?"
"Eh? That is my affair, I hope."
The young man's face darkened, but he controlled himself to say humbly, "Monseigneur rebukes me with justice. I should not have spoken so; but it was in alarm for his interests."
"You mean that you are unwilling to spare me a single man? Come, come, my friend—the harvest is gathered; and, apart from that, my interests are the King's. Positively you must spare me half a dozen for his Majesty'scorvée."
"The harvest is gathered, to be sure; but no one at Boisveyrac can be trusted to finish the stacks. They are a good-for-nothing lot; and now Damase, the best thatcher among them, has, I hear, been sent up to Fort Frontenac along with 'Polyte Latulippe."
"By my orders."
Dominique bent his eyes on the ground.
"Monseigneur's orders shall be obeyed. May I have his permission to return at once to Boisveyrac?—at least, as soon as we have discussed certain matters of business?"
"Business? But since it is not convenient just now—" It seemed to John that the old gentleman had suddenly grown uneasy.
"I speak only of certain small repairs: the matter of Lagassé's holding, for example," said Dominique tranquilly. "The whole will not detain Monseigneur above ten minutes."
"Ah, to be sure!" The Commandant's voice betrayed relief. "Come to my orderly-room, then. You will excuse me, M. à Clive?"
He turned to go, and Dominique stepped aside to allow the girl to accompany her father. But she made no sign. He shot a look at her and sullenly descended the terrace at his seigneur's heels.
Mademoiselle Diane's brow grew clear again as the sound of his footsteps died away, and presently she faced John with a smile so gay and frank that (although, quite involuntarily, he had been watching her) the change startled him. There was something in this girl at once innocently candid and curiously elusive; to begin with, he could not decide whether to think of her as child or woman. Last night her eyes had rested on him with a child's open wonder, and a minute ago in Dominique's presence she had seemed to shrink close to her father with a child's timidity. Now, gaily as she smiled, her bearing had grown dignified and self-possessed.
"You are not to leave me, please, M. à Clive—seeing that I came expressly to find you."
John lifted his hat with mock gravity. "You do me great honour, mademoiselle. And Dominique?" he added. "Was he also coming in search of me?"
She frowned, and turning towards a cannon in the embrasure behind her, spread the white tunic carefully upon it. "Dominique Guyon is tiresome," she said. "At times, as you have heard, he speaks with too much freedom to my father; but it is the freedom of old service. The Guyons have farmed Boisveyrac for our family since first the Seigniory was built." She seemed about to say more, but checked herself, and stood smoothing an arm of the tunic upon the gun. "Ah, here is Félicité!" she exclaimed, as a stout middle-aged woman came bustling along the terrace towards them. "You have kept me waiting, Félicité. And, good heavens! what is that you carry? Did I not tell you that I would get Jérémie to find me a tunic from the stores? See, I have one already."
"But this is not from the stores, mademoiselle!" panted Félicité, as she came to a halt. "It appears that monsieur brought his tunic with him—Jérémie told me he had seen it hanging by his bed in the sick ward—and here it is, see you!" She displayed it triumphantly, spreading its skirts to the sunshine. "A trifle soiled! but it will save us all the trouble in the world with the measurements—eh, mademoiselle?"
Diane's eyes were on John's face. For a moment or two she did not answer, but at length said slowly:
"Nevertheless you shall measure monsieur. Have you the tapes? Good: give me one, with the blue chalk, and I will check off your measurements."
She seated herself on the gun-carriage and drew the two tunics on to her lap. John shivered as she touched the dead sergeant's.
Félicité grinned as she advanced with the tape. "Do not be shy of me, monsieur," she encouraged him affably. "You are a hero, and I myself am the mother of eight, which is in its way heroic. There should be a good understanding between us. Raise your arms a little, pray, while I take first of all the measure of your chest."
Her two arms—and they were plump, not to say brawny—went about him. "Thirty-eight," she announced, after examining the tape. It's long since I have embraced one so slight."
"Thirty-eight," repeated Mademoiselle Diane, puckering up her lips and beginning to measure off thepoucesacross the breast and back of Sergeant Barboux's tunic. "Thirty-eight, did you say?"
"Thirty-eight, mademoiselle. We must remember that these brave defenders of ours sometimes pad themselves a little; it will be nothing amiss if you allow for forty. Eh, monsieur?" Félicité laughed up in John's face. "But you find some difficulty, mademoiselle. Can I help you?"
"I thank you—it is all right," Diane answered hurriedly.
"Waist, twenty-nine," Félicité continued. "One might even say twenty-eight, only monsieur is drawing in his breath."
"Where are the scissors, Félicité?" demanded her mistress, who had carefully smuggled them beneath her skirt as she sat.
"The scissors? Of a certainty now I brought them—but the sight of that heathen Ojibway, when he gave me the tunic, was enough to make any decent woman faint! I shook like an aspen, if you will credit me, all the way across the drill-ground, and perhaps the scissors… no, indeed, I cannot find them… but if mademoiselle will excuse me while I run back for another pair.…" She bustled off towards the Commandant's quarters.
Mademoiselle Diane reached down a hand to the tunic which had fallen at her feet, and drew it on to her lap again, as if to examine it. But her eyes were searching John's face.
"Why do you shiver?" she asked.
"I beg of you not to touch it, mademoiselle. It—it hurts to see you touching it."
"Did you kill him?"
"Of whom is mademoiselle speaking?"
"Pray do not pretend to be stupid, monsieur. I am speaking of that other man—the owner of this tunic—the sergeant who took you into the forest. Did you kill him?"
"He died in fair fight, mademoiselle."
"It was a duel, then?" He did not answer, and she continued, "I can trust your face, monsieur. I am sure it was only in fair fight. But why should you think me afraid to touchthis? Oh, why, M. à Clive, will men take it so cruelly for granted that we women are afraid of the thought of blood—nay, even that we owe it to ourselves to be afraid? If we are what you all insist we should be, what right have we to be born in these times? Think of New France fighting now for dear life—ah! why should I askyouto think, who have bled for her? Yet you would have me shudder at the touch of a stained piece of cloth; and while you hold these foolish prejudices, can you wonder that New France has no Jeanne d'Arc? When I was at the Ursulines at Quebec, they used to pray to her on this side of sainthood, and ask for her intercession; but what they taught was needlework."
"The world has altered since her time, mademoiselle," said John, falsely and lamely.
"Has it? It burnt her; even in those days it did its best according to its lights," she answered bitterly. "Only in these days there are no heroines to burn. No heroines… no fires… and even in our needlework we must be demure, and not touch a garment that has been touched with blood! Monsieur, was this man a coward?" She lifted the tunic.
"He was a vain fellow and a bully, mademoiselle, but by no means a coward."
"He fought for France?"
"Yes; and, I believe, with credit."
"Then, monsieur, because he was a bully, I commend the man who killed him fairly. And because he was brave and fought for France, I am proud to handle his tunic."
As John à Cleeve gazed at her kindled face, the one thought that rose above his own shame was a thought that her earnestness marvellously made her beautiful.