Theairrather than the words moved MacGillivray and his soldiers who listened. Their heads were bowed and their eyes were sad, for their hearts and souls, their memory and their love, were far away—away to the land where, at that hour, the silver moon was casting the shadows of the heath-clad mountains on the grassy glens below; away to the Braes of Lochaber, the shores of Lochiel, and the deep blue lochs that form a chain of watery links in the great glen of Caledonia; away to the land of the clans, the soil from whence their fathers sprang, and where their graves lay under the old sepulchral yew, or by the Druid clachan of ages past and gone; away from the lone woods and mighty wilds of that Far West, which in the next century was to become the home of their children, where the expatriated men of Sutherland, Barra, and Breadalbane were to find a refuge from the avaricious dukes, the canting marquises, and grinding factors of the Western Highlands, and from their infamous system of modern oppression, tyranny, and misrule, which has decreed that the poor have no right to the soil of their native country.
All were hushed and still in the group as the Highland girl sang—for, though a wedded wife, and on the eve of being a mother, Mary was but a girl yet—when hark! the report of a musket on the outer bastion broke the stillness of the evening hour, and an officer of the mainguard rushed, sword in hand, towards the startled listeners.
"Munro,", he exclaimed; "Colonel Munro—a column of French are in sight, and already within range of cannon-shot."
"So close, Captain Dacres?"
"And in great strength," added the officer.
"And the Indians—those diabolical Iroquois?"
"Fill the woods on every side—they are already at the foot of the glacis. Hark!" continued Captain Dacres, as a contused volley was heard, "the mainguard are opening a fire on their advanced files."
The colonel kissed his child, and with an impressive glance consigned it to the care of Mary.
"Fall in, Sixtieth!" he exclaimed, rushing into the barracks, where the alarm was now general. "MacGillivray, get your lads of the Black Watch under arms, and let them pick me off those brown devils as fast as they can load and fire again. Gentlemen, to your companies; we shall have grim work to do before another sun sets on the waters of the Horican."
In ten minutes the troops in the little garrison were all under arms, for the men came rushing, cross-belted, to their colours, while the log huts echoed again and again to the long roll of the alarm drum—that peculiar roll, which, when heard in camp or garrison, makes the blood of all quicken, as it is the well-known warning "to arms;" and now the pipes of Alisdair Bane (a pupil of Munich Dhu, or Black Murdoch MacInnon, the old piper of Glenarrow) lent their pibroch to swell the warlike din, while the troops loaded, and fresh casks of ball-cartridge were staved and distributed by the sergeants in rear of each company.
The artillerymen stood by their guns, with rammer, sponge, and lighted matches; the battalions of the Royal Americans and of the unfortunate Colonel Parker, a corps of Provincials, and the fifty Celts of the Black Watch, soon manned the ramparts, from whence, in the dim twilight of eve, the white uniforms of the regiments of Bearn, Guienne, and Languedoc, who formed the flower of Montcalm's army, and the bronze-like figures of the gliding Iroquois, who formed the scourge of ours, were seen at times between the green masses of foliage that fringed the calm, deep waters of Lake George, which lay motionless as a vast mirror of polished steel.
"Away to the bomb-proofs, Mary; this is no scene for you," said MacGillivray, giving his weeping and terrified wife a tender embrace; "the vaults are your only place of safety. Would to God," he added, giving her a farewell kiss, "that you were safe at home, laoighe mo chri, even with the humblest of our cottars in Glenarrow. The thought of you alone causes my heart to fail, and makes a coward of me, Mary. Alaster MacGregor, conduct her to the bomb-proofs, and join us again."
The soldier led her to the vaults in which the whole of the women and children of the garrison were enclosed for safety from shot and shell, and where they nestled together in fear and trembling, preparing lint and bandages for the wounded; and scarcely had Alaster rejoined his commander, when a red flash and a stream of white smoke came from the darkening wood, and the first cannon of the French sent a sixteen-pound shot crashing through the log barracks and slew a captain of the Royal Americans.
Then a hearty hurrah of defiance rose from the garrison of Munro, and the fiendish yells and warwhooping of the Iroquois were heard in the echoing woods.
MacGillivray envied the lightness of heart possessed at this crisis by his unmarried comrades, who had neither wife nor child to excite their anxiety, compassion, or fear—men who, careless and soldier like, seemed to live for the present, without regret for the past or dread of the future; but such is the life of a soldier, while as we have it in "Don Juan"—
"Nought so bothersThe hearts of the heroic in a charge,As leaving a small family at large."
At the head of all the forces he could collect, ten thousand regular infantry of France, and hordes of the wild Iroquois, Louis de St. Veran, Marquis of Montcalm, and his second in command, the Baron de Beauchatel, Chevalier of St. Louis, now invested Fort William Henry, and pushed the siege with a vigour that was all the greater because General Webb, with four thousand British troops, was posted at some distance, for the purpose of protecting Munro's garrison, a duty about which he did not give himself the smallest concern whatever.
Before daybreak next morning, the French artillery opened heavily on the turf ramparts, the wooden palisades and log huts of the fort; while a fire of musketry was maintained upon it from every available point, and the Indian marksmen, from behind every tree, rock, and bush, or tuft of sedge-grass that afforded an opportunity for concealing their dingy forms, shot with deadly precision at the officers, and all who in any way exposed or signalized themselves. Munro and his soldiers fought with ardour, and defended themselves with confidence, never doubting that General Webb would soon advance to their support, and by a brisk attack in the rear, compel the marquis to abandon the siege. From their gun-batteries and stockades, they maintained an unceasing fire, and thus the slaughter on both sides became desperate and severe.
In the gloomy vault to which the humanity and prudence of Colonel Munro had consigned the women and children of his garrison, the timid wife of MacGillivray could hear the roar of musketry, with the incessant booming of the heavy artillery on every side, and ever and anon the hiss or crash of the exploding shells. These and other dreadful sounds paralysed her; for she had but one thought—the safety of her husband; and appalled by the united horrors of the siege, she almost forgot to pray, and sat with her arms round the child of Munro, pale, sad, and silent—awed and bewildered.
Meanwhile Roderick, with his party of the Black Watch, proved invaluable to Munro. As the dispatch of the latter has it, "Being all expert marksmen and deadly shots, they manned a line of loopholed stockades, which faced a wood full of the Iroquois, of whom they slew an incredible number; for if the foot or hand, or even the scalp lock of a warrior became visible for a moment to these quicksighted deer-stalkers from the Highland hills, it revealed where the rest of his body could be covered by their levelled barrels; thus there were soon more dead than living warriors in the bush where the braves of the Five Nations had posted themselves, and the yells and screams of rage uttered by the survivors in their anticipations of vengeance, were like nothing one could imagine but the cries of the damned."
Among the savages who swarmed thick as bees upon the skirts of the forest, MacGillivray repeatedly recognised the ghastly warrior Ossong, who was painted over with white stripes; and his comrade Orono, who had so recently made an escape from the fort, and who was conspicuous alike by his bravery and the tuft of eagle's feathers in his scalp-lock.
MacGillivray relinquished his claymore for a musket, and, as Munro said, "Knocked over more Red Indians in an hour, than he could have done red deer in a week, at home."
On the second day, just as the firing was about to re-commence, a French officer, bearing a flag of truce, and accompanied by a drummer beating a parley, appeared before the gates, and was received by MacGillivray, who conducted him, blindfolded by a handkerchief, to the presence of Munro. He was a tall and handsome man, about forty years of age, and wore the white uniform of the Grenadiers of Guienne, with the order of St. Louis, and had a white flowing peruke,à la Louis XV.
"Your name, monsieur?" said Munro, bowing low.
"The Sieur Fontbrune, Baron of Beauchatel," replied he, bowing to the diamond buckles at his knees, and then presenting his box of rappee.
"Indeed—the second in command to the Marquis of Montcalm!"
"The same, and Colonel of the Regiment of Guienne."
"We are greatly honoured."
"Nay," responded the courteous French noble, "the honour is mine in having the privilege of conferring with an officer of such valour as M. le Colonel Munro."
"And your purpose?" asked the latter, drily.
"The delivery of this letter,"
In presence of the senior officers of his garrison, Munro opened and read this communication from the French marquis, in which the latter wrote, that he deemed himself obliged by the common dictates of humanity to request that M. le Colonel Munro would surrender the fort, and cease, by a futile resistance, to provoke the savage Iroquois, who accompanied the French army in such vast and unmanageable hordes.
"A detachment of your garrison, under Colonel Parker, has lately (he continued) experienced their cruelty. I have it yet in my power to restrain and oblige them to observe a capitulation, as comparatively few of them have been hitherto killed. Your persisting in the defence of your fort can only retard its fate a few days, and must of necessity expose an unfortunate garrison, who cannot possibly receive relief, when we consider theprecautionstaken to prevent it. I demand a decisive answer; and for this purpose have sent the Sieur de Fontbrune, one of my staff. You may implicitly credit all that he tells you.
"MONTCALM."
"I will never surrender while we have a shot left," exclaimed Munro, furiously. "What say you, gentlemen?"
"That we and our soldiers will stand by you, Colonel, to the last gasp!" replied Captain Dacres.
"This, then, is your decision, messieurs?" said M. Beauchatel, playing with the ringlets of his peruke.
"It is—it is," was the answer on all hands.
"A most unwise one, permit me to say," urged the baron.
"To yield when General Webb is within less than one day's march of us, would be a treason to the King and a disgrace to ourselves."
The French baron smiled with provoking coolness, and said,
"General Webb beholds our preparations and approaches with an apparent indifference that originates either in infamous cowardice or miserable infatuation. In short, M. le Colonel, he has abandoned you."
"M. le Baron," replied Munro, with some heat, "General Webb is a British officer, and I have no doubt will fully maintain his reputation. If he has not already advanced to raise the siege, he must deem it better for the King's service to remain in position where he is; but, ere long, you will hear his cannon opening on your rear."
"Pardieu, you delude yourself."
"I do not, M. le Baron, and you may inform the Marquis de Montcalm, that he had better have continued to amuse himself with mounting guard at Versailles and Marli, than by beating up our quarters here on the Canadian lakes."
"Oh, he and I have mounted guard at Mons and Tournay, at Lisle and Fontenoy, Colonel, where men don't play at soldiers, as here in America," replied the Frenchman, smiling; "but adieu, mon ami—adieu."
"Farewell—MacGillivray, conduct M. le Baron beyond the gates."
So ended this parley, and in less than five minutes the din of cannon and musketry, with the warwhoop of the Indians, again rang along the echoing shores of the Horican, and once more the white smoke shrouded alike the defences and defenders of Fort William Henry.
The Baron de Beauchatel led the Regiment of Guienne close up to the stockades, which were lined by the fifty Highlanders of the Black Watch, and though exposed to a withering fire, he bravely and furiously strove to destroy the barrier by axes and sledge hammers. MacGillivray thrice covered the Baron with his deadly aim; but, inspired by some mysterious emotion, the origin of which at that time he could not fathom, he spared him and levelled his weapon at others. Filled with rage by the resistance they experienced, the soldiers of the Regiment of Guienne encouraged each other by shouts of
"Vive le Roi! Tue—tue les sauvages d'Ecosse! à la baionette! à la baionette!"
They soon fell into confusion; but the brave Beauchatel continued to brandish his sword and shout themot de ralliementof his corps, for it was then usual in the French service to have a war-cry or regimental rallying-word.
"Notre Dame! Notre Dame de frappemort!" (Our holy Lady, who strikes home!) he was heard crying again and again; for the Virgin was the patroness of the Grenadiers of Guienne; but neither the spell of her name nor the fiery spirit of Beauchatel enabled the soldiers to withstand the fire of the Highlanders, whose position was impregnable; and on Captain Dacres' company of the 60th opening a flank fusilade upon them, they were swept back into the forest, leaving a mound of white-coated killed and wounded before the stockades they had so valiantly attempted to destroy.
Alaster MacGregor received a wound from a French soldier, who, on finding himself dying, crawled on his hands and knees close up to the stockade, and, with the last effort of expiring nature, fired his musket through a loophole and fell back dead.
"A brave fellow!" exclaimed MacGillivray.
"Yes," added Alaster, as the blood dripped from his left cheek: "but I wish he had departed this life five minutes sooner."
A third and fourth day of conflict passed away, and the loss by killed and wounded became severe in Fort William Henry; five hundred dead men were already lying within the narrow compass of its batteries; but still there was no sign of Webb's brigade advancing to the rescue. Munro began to have serious doubts of the issue, with secret regrets that he had not accepted the first offers of the Marquis de Montcalm, for the blood of the Iroquois was now at boiling heat, in their longing to revenge the fall of so many of their braves, who, notwithstanding all their caution and cunning, had perished under the deadly aim of the Highland marksmen, and lay in dusky piles among the long wavy sedge grass and luxuriant foliage of the forest; but though he confined these thoughts to his own breast, his garrison began to have the same misgivings.
One day, telescope in hand, he was eagerly sweeping the distant landscape in the direction where it was known that General Webb was posted, when Dacres, of his own regiment, approached him. Not a bayonet or musket-barrel were seen to glitter, or a standard to wave in the hazy distance in token of coming aid, and he sharply closed the glass with a sigh and turned away; so Dacres addressed him.
"When smoking a pipe in the bomb-proofs this morning—by the bye, my dear colonel, I am always thoughtful during that operation—it occurred to me that General Webb——"
"Well, sir—well," said Munro, irritably.
"Remains very long in position without advancing to our relief."
"I am too well aware of that, sir."
"But what does such conduct mean?"
"God and himself alone know," replied Munro, while his keen grey eye flashed with passion; "he would seem to be in league with the enemy against us; ay, in league with Montcalm, and the words of Beauchatel seemed to infer some previous knowledge of his intentions, and hence perhaps the friendly warning about the Indians; but we have cast the die with them. If in the course of one day more Webb comes not to our aid——"
"By Heaven, I will pistol him with my own hand; that is, if I survive this affair!" exclaimed MacGillivray, who joined them.
"Nay, sir," replied the colonel, "I shall claim that task, if task it be; but hark! there is a salvo."
A tremendous shock now shook the fort, as a camarade battery of ten 32-pounders commenced a discharge against it, and showers of destructive bombbelles from small mortars were poured into the heart of the place. Many of these little engines of destruction bounded from the shingle roofs of the barracks and burst in the waters of the lake; others were exploding in all directions, with a sound like the roar of artillery, forcing the soldiers, who crept and cowered in rear of the parapets and palisades, to lie close, while the heavyhumof the round shot, with that peculiar sound which terminates its course by piercing the ground, or crashing through a building, and the sharperwhishof the musket-balls, filled up all the intervals by noises fraught with alarm. The barracks and storehouses were soon unroofed and ruined, for the camarade battery proved very destructive; the stockades were soon swept away in showers of white splinters before its discharges, which resembled nothing but a whirlwind of shot and shell, while vast masses of the earthen works were also torn down, leaving the defenders exposed to the deadly rifles of the lurking Indians. The cannon of Munro were alike defective and dangerous to his soldiers; for two 18-pounders, two 32-pounders, and two 9-pounders burst in succession, destroying all who were near them, and at last the colonel received intimation that only seventeen bombs remained in the magazine.
On thesixthday, there was still no appearance of General Daniel Webb (who was Colonel of the 48th, or Northamptonshire Foot), though his column was within hearing of the firing, being at Fort Edward, which was only six miles distant; and now the spirit of the garrison began to sink; but in that dejected band there was no heart more heavy than MacGillivray's, for the condition of his wife at such a terrible crisis filled him with the deepest anxiety and the most tender solicitude.
At last Munro, finding the futility of further resisting forces so overwhelming, and that all hope of succour from Webb was hopeless, on the 9th day of August, 1757, lowered his standard, and sent forth MacGillivray to the French camp, bearer of a flag of truce, to confer on the terms of a surrender.
Immediately on leaving the gates, he was received by the Baron de Beauchatel and a party of the Grenadiers of Guienne, who surrounded him with fixed bayonets, as a protection from the infuriated Iroquois, who crowded near in naked hordes, leaping, dancing, screaming like incarnate fiends, and brandishing their tomahawks, seeking only an opening in the close files of the French escort to slay, scalp, and hew him to pieces. Thus he was conducted to the tent of Louis Marquis de Montcalm de St. Veran, Maréchal du Camp, and Lieutenant-General of the Armies of His Most Christian Majesty in America. Before the tent were posted the colours of the Regiments of Bearn and Languedoc, and around it were a guard of grenadiers in white coats, with the long periwigs and smart little triangular hats of the French line. These received the flag of truce with presented arms, while the drums beat a march.
Montcalm, then in his forty-fifth year, came forth, and, presenting his hand to MacGillivray, conducted him within. Then followed several officers of the staff whom, with M. de Beauchatel, he had invited to the conference.
"You perceive, now," said the baron, "that I proved a true prophet!"
"In what manner, monsieur?" asked MacGillivray.
"When I affirmed that M. le Général Webb would leave Munro to his own resources. Ma foi! but he is a brave fellow, Munro."
"M. le Marquis," said MacGillivray, with an air of hauteur, "I am here to stipulate that our garrison shall be permitted to march out with their arms——"
"Unloaded——"
"Be it so; but as Christian men you cannot refuse us arms in a land so wild as this; the officers to have their baggage, and the men their kits; that a detachment of French troops shall escort us to within two miles of the gates of Fort Edward, and that your interpreter attached to the savages will make this treaty known to the Iroquois."
"I gladly agree to these conditions," replied Montcalm, "though I fear thelatter portionwill be achieved with difficulty; for the comprehension of these Red Iroquois is not very clear, and they will despise me for burying the war-hatchet and smoking the pipe of peace, for permitting you to depart with your scalps on, and so forth; but they must be forced to understand and observe our treaty. For the space of eighteen months every officer and soldier now in Fort William Henry must not bear arms against the Most Christian King. M. le Colonel Munro must give me hostages for the safe return of my troops who are to form your escort; and say to him, that in testimony of my esteem for his valour and spirit as a soldier, I shall present him with one cannon, a 6-pounder, to be delivered at the moment the grenadiers of my own regiment receive the gates of the fort, and his troops are ready to depart."
"Our wounded and sick, of whom we have many——"
"I shall send under guard to General Webb at Fort Edward."
"Thanks, marquis."
The terms were soon drawn up and signed by the staff officers of both forces; by Munro in the name of the British Commander-in-Chief, and by Montcalm in the name of the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor-General, and Lieutenant-General of New France; and after ably concluding this negotiation, so important for his comrades, MacGillivray returned to the fort just as the red round moon began to rise like a bloody targe above the eastern skirts of the forest, and to tinge with its quivering rays the placid waters of Lake George.
The first who received him at the gate was his "dear wee Mary," as he called her, trembling and in tears for his safety. During the whole time of his visit to the camp of Montcalm, the yelling and whooping of the Indians had filled the fort and the woods with horrid sounds.
The next day passed before Munro had all prepared to leave the shattered ramparts he had defended so well.
It was on a gorgeous August evening when his war-worn and weary garrison paraded, prior to their final departure. The western clouds, as they floated across the sky, were tinged with violet and saffron hues. The forest and the grass wore their most brilliant green, and Lake George its deepest blue. The large golden butter-cups that spotted all the verdant glacis of the ramparts, within which so many brave men were lying stark and stiffened in their blood, and the bright-coloured wildflowers that grew amid the waters of the fosse and by the margin of the lake which filled it, were unclosing their petals, to catch the coming dew, and wore their gayest tints.
The whole aspect of the scenery, and of the soft balmy evening, were little in accordance with the horrors that were passed, and those which were soon to ensue!
Already the grenadiers of Montcalm, with all the formality of friends, had received the gates and various posts from the guards of the Royal Americans; the white banner of France, under a royal salute, had replaced the Union Jack, and at that moment sharply beat the drums, as the garrison began to march out, with theirunloadedmuskets slung and their colours cased—the Royal Americans, Parker's Foot, and the little band of our old friends, the Black Watch (now less by sixteen men than on the day of their arrival), with the piper and MacGillivray at their head, defiling from the fort in close column of subdivisions, while the French escort was under arms to receive them in line by a general salute, with drummers beating on the flanks.
A faint cheer was heard within the fort. It came from the log huts where the wounded lay. They, poor fellows! were left to the care of the enemy, together with the unburied bodies of those who would never hear a sound again until the last trumpet shakes the earth with its peal.
The veteran Colonel Munro, tall and erect, with his quaint Kevenhuller hat and old-fashioned wig of the days of Malplacquet, marched at the head of his crestfallen column; he was on foot, with his sword drawn, and led by the hand the child, his son, as being the only object he cared about preserving in that hour of bitterness and defeat.
Seated on the tumbril of the 6-pounder, with two other ladies (one of whom had lost her husband in the siege), was the wife of MacGillivray, awe-stricken and all unused to such stern and stirring scenes as she had daily witnessed in Fort William Henry. Hermarriage brooch, almost the only ornament she possessed, she had concealed in the folds or tresses of her long black hair, lest it should excite the cupidity of any French soldier or Indian, for she had an equal dread, and nearly an equal repugnance for them both.
A slender escort of French soldiers with their bayonets fixed protected Munro's garrison on both flanks; but as they proceeded into the forest, the savages continued to assemble in dark hordes, till their numbers, their gestures, and yells of rage became seriously alarming. They were animated by the blindest frenzy on finding themselves deluded of their plunder and the blood—the red reeking scalps of the hated Yengees—by a treaty which they could not and cared not to understand. They were rehearsing to each other the bravery and worth, the names and number of their warriors who had perished, and all continued to scream and shout, but none cared to begin the work of destruction while so near the tents of the pale faces of France.
"Push on—push on, for God's sake, gentlemen and comrades!"
"Forward, my friends—let us lose no time in reaching Fort Edward."
"Step out, comrades—step out, you fellows in front."
"Throw off your knapsacks—let these greedy hounds have them."
"Better lose an old kit than a young life."
"On, on—push on, boys!"
Such were the cries that were heard along the column as the rear urged on the front, and the dark yelling hordes of the infernal Iroquois blackened all the woods and grew denser and closer, until at last they insolently jostled and crushed the French guard among the impeded ranks of those they were escorting.
"This is intolerable—let us attack those dogs," said MacGillivray.
"Beware—beware!" exclaimed Munro; "if once blood be shed or the warwhoop raised, all will be over with us."
The leader of this hostile display was the savage whom we have already introduced as Ossong. A Lenni Lennape, he was almost the last of his ferocious tribe, which, with the Miami, had been conquered and exterminated by the Iroquois, with whom he had now completely identified himself. His aspect was frightful! His forehead was low; with a short nose of great breadth; his ears were huge, and set high upon his head; his mouth was large, with teeth sharp and serrated like those of some voracious fish. His mantle of woven grass was trimmed with scores of human scalp-locks salted and dried, while rows of human teeth intermingled with glass beads and gilt regimental buttons and British coins (the relics of Colonel Parker's force) covered all his brown expansive chest. On his brawny shoulders hung the skin of a black bear; in front, he wore the fur of a racoon; his girdle, moccassins, and arms were ornamented with brilliant wampum beads, which rattled as he walked, and he brandished alternately a rifle, a tomahawk, and scalping-knife.
Two or three soldiers had already been dragged out of the ranks and slain to increase the general alarm; but as yet thewarwhoophad not been raised.
Perceiving a savage near him, who was placing his hands to his mouth and puffing out his cheeks, previous to raising that dreadful signal for a general onslaught, MacGillivray, unable longer to restrain the fury which boiled within him, drew the Highlandtack(i.e.steel pistol) from his belt and shot him dead.
"Rash man," exclaimed Munro, "we are lost!"
"Fix your bayonets, my lads, and bear back this naked rabble!" said MacGillivray, drawing his sword. "Remember, colonel, you are a kinsman of the House of Foulis; in an hour like this belie not your name!"
A thousand throats now uttered the horrible whoop of the Iroquois, and from a myriad echoes the vast forest encircling the shores of the Horican replied.
It was the death-knell of theYengees; and now ensued that frightful episode of the war known in American history as the Massacre of Fort William Henry.
"In the name of God and the King, keep together, 60th—shoulder to shoulder, Royal Americans!" cried Munro; but his soldiers, crushed and impeded by the pressure, strove in vain to free their muskets and bear back the human tide that closed upon them. In the confusion poor old Munro lost his child, and with him all his soldierly coolness and self-possession. He became a prey to grief and distraction.
"Lochmoy! Lochmoy! stand by MacGillivray!" were the shouts of the Black Watch, as they flung aside their muskets, knapsacks, and cantines, and, unsheathing their dirks and claymores, closed hand-to-hand with the Iroquois, and hewed them down like children on every side.
"Dhia! o Dhia! my wife!" was the first thought of MacGillivray; and when last he saw Mary she was standing erect on the tumbril, the horses of which had been shot, wringing her hands in an attitude of despair, as the brown tide of the Iroquois swept round her like a living sea; and the last she saw of her husband was his form towering above all others, when combating bravely and making frantic efforts, with Alaster MacGregor, Ewen Chisholm, Bane the piper, and other Celtic swordsmen, to reach her; but by a horde of savages they were driven into the forest, and she saw them no more.
The French guard offered but a feeble resistance, and fled; then ensued a thousand episodes replete with horror! On all hands the unfortunate survivors of the siege were hewn down, slashed, stabbed, tomahawked, and scalped. Shrieks, groans, screams, prayers, and wild entreaties for mercy, with the occasional explosions of musketry, rang through the forest; but above all other sounds, on earth or in the sky of heaven, rose the appalling whoop of the unglutted Iroquois.
One of Mary's companions—the widow—was literally hewn to pieces in a moment, while her children were whirled round by the feet, and had their brains dashed out against the trees; her other friend, the wife of Captain Dacres, a fair-haired and pretty young Englishwoman, was torn from her side. The glittering hatchet of one Indian cleft her head to the nose, while another caught her body as it was falling, and by a single sweep of his knife shred off her scalp, and waved the silken curls as a trophy above his head. Mary was to be their next victim; but ere they could drag her down she flung herself at the feet of Ossong, and, clasping his moccassined legs, said in his own language—
"I will pray the Great Spirit that he pardon you my death; but do not torture me; do not make me suffer—I am a weak woman, and about to become a mother."
Ossong grinned hideously, and grasping her by the hair raised his scalping-knife; but at that moment his hand was grasped from behind. He turned furiously, and was confronted by Orono.
"Spare her!" said the latter, in his guttural tones.
"For what? My ears are not as the ears of an ass, therefore I hear not follies; nor of a fox, therefore I hear no lies!" responded the fierce savage; "spare her for what?"
"The wigwam of Orono."
Ossong laughed scornfully, and turned away in search of other victims, which he found but too readily.
Mary clung to her preserver. She gave a wild and haggard glance over that forest scene, in the recesses of which the shrieks of the destroyer and destroyed were already dying away—over that wilderness of red-coated dead, of mothers and their children, gashed, hewn and dismembered, scalped and mutilated—over the debris of scattered muskets, torn standards, and broken drums, rifled baggage, open knapsacks, hats, and powdered wigs—everywhere blood, death, and disorder! Then the light seemed to go out of her eyes; she became senseless, and remembered no more.
Saved by the French, Colonels Munro and Young with three hundred fugitives reached Albany; and General Webb, when all was over, sent out five hundred men from Fort Edward to glean up survivors and bury the dead. Our soldiers perished in the forest in scores under every species of torture, wounds, thirst and fatigue; many were flayed and roasted alive by the Iroquois; others were stripped nude, scalped, and made a mark for bullets or tomahawks till death relieved them of their misery.
"Thus," says Smollett, "ended (with the fall of Fort William Henry) the third campaign in America, where, with an evident superiority over the enemy, an army of twenty thousand regular troops, a great number of provincial forces, ana a prodigious naval power—not less than twenty ships of the line—we abandoned our allies, exposed our people, suffered them to be cruelly massacred in sight of our troops, and relinquished a large and valuable tract of country, to the eternal disgrace and reproach of the British name!"
Three of the Black Watch alone escaped this massacre—viz., Ewen Chisholm, with Alaster MacGregor—whose adventures were somewhat remarkable—and another, of whom hereafter.
Duncan MacGregor, a soldier from Glengyle, and as some averred a son of the venerableGlhun Dhu, who was captain of Doune Castle under Prince Charles, fell mortally wounded by a bullet from the rifle of an Indian in the woods. On finding himself dying, he begged his clansman Alaster to convey his little all—a few pounds of back pay and prize-money—to his aged and widowed mother. Faithful to the trust reposed in him by his expiring friend, this poor fellow bore the money about with him, untouched, throughout the most arduous struggles of the American campaign, during a long captivity in France, and amid the urgent necessities of nearly ten years of privation, until he reached Glengyle, and then he handed to the mother of his comrade the money, still wrapped in the moccassin of a Pawnee, whom he had slain at Fort William Henry.
Ewen Chisholm, one of the eight faithful men of the Coire-gaoth in Glenmorriston, survived the war in America, but was slain when the Black Watch was at Guadaloupe, in 1759; and his death is thus recorded in theEdinburgh Chroniclefor that year, which contains a letter from Ensign Grant—known as Alaster the One-handed—detailing the circumstance:—
"When the troops were to embark, the outposts were called in. This soldier (Chisholm) had been placed as a single sentinel by his captain. When summoned to come off, he refused, unless his captain who had appointed him his post would personally give him orders. He was told that his captain and most of the troops were embarked, and that unless he came off he would be taken prisoner; he still refused, and said he would keep his station. When the troops were all on board the ships, they saw a party of forty or fifty men coming towards him; he retired a little, and setting his back to a tree, fired his gun at them, then, throwing it aside, he drew his sword, rushed amongst them, and after making considerable havoc was cut to pieces."
Such was the end of Ewen Chisholm; but to resume:—
The noon of the next day—the 11th August—was passed before Mary became fully alive to the desolate nature of her position—to all that she had lost and suffered—and to the circumstance that in her delirium she had become the mother of a little daughter.
She was lying on a bed of soft furs of various kinds, within a hut formed by branches and matting tied to poles, and covered with broad pieces of bark. Upon these poles hung various Indian weapons, at the sight of which she closed her swimming eyes as the memory of her husband and the horrors of yesterday rushed upon her. An old Indian woman, hideous as a tawny skin full of wrinkles and streaked with paint could make her, sat near, squatted on the ground like a Burmese idol; but this ancient squaw was nursing the new-born infant tenderly, and with care placed it in the bosom of Mary, who wept and moaned with sorrow and joy as she pressed it in her arms, and the new emotions of a mother woke within her; but again the light seemed to pass from her eyes, and a faintness came over her. Then starting, she sought to shake it off that she might look upon her child, and strive to trace the features of Roderick in her face; but the weakness she suffered was too great—she sank back upon the bed of furs, and lay still, and to all appearance asleep, though tears were oozing fast from her long black lashes.
Close by, behind a matting, crouched an Indian warrior. This person was Orono concealing himself, for the honest creature felt instinctively, that at such a critical time his presence or his aspect might very naturally excite the terror of the desolate patient. Two terrible questions were ever on the tongue and in the heart of the latter.
"Was Roderick safe?"
If so, how were she and her babe to join him?
At last she remembered Orono, who had preserved her, and on the third day, though weak, and though she knew it not—dying—she inquired of the squaw where he was.
"Here," replied the watchful Indian, stepping forward, while his eyes beamed with pleasure, on finding that he was not forgotten.
"My husband, Orono—know you aught of my husband?"
The Indian shook his head.
"When did you last see him?" she asked, imploringly.
"Fighting against a hundred braves in the forest, where the pawaws of the French have put up two trees,thus," said he, crossing his fingers to indicate a cross made by the Jesuits near the Horican.
"Alas! my mother taught me that the way of the cross was the way to heaven. Oh, my husband!—and that at the foot of that cross I should give up my whole heart. God, who bringeth good out of evil, will order all things for the best; but can this be, if my husband, my friend, my protector, the father of my babe, be slain? May he not have been preserved for himself and this little one? Oh, yes—God is kind. His will is adorable," continued the poor girl, kissing her babe in a wild rapture of resignation and despair.
She recalled with sorrow and horror the many whom she had seen so barbarously destroyed, and others whom she believed to have perished; the brave soldiers, the kind old colonel, and the poor little boy, his son, to whom she had been almost a mother, during the terrors of the recent siege. Their voices lingered in her ear; their faces hovered before her.
Orono visited the place where he had last seen the "white chief," as he not inaptly named MacGillivray; but could discover no trace of him. Many of the dead had already been interred by the soldiers of Montcalm, who now possessed the shattered remains of Fort William Henry; others had been devoured by wild animals. No body answering the description of Roderick had been, found or seen among the slain by the Iroquois. He was known to have a gold bracelet of Mary's, rivetted round his sword arm; but that might have been cut off, or buried with him, undiscovered.
Mary felt a great repugnance for the old squaw; yet the poor Indian was kind and attentive in her own barbarous fashion; and the patient, while her heart was swollen almost to bursting, conversed with her, in the hope of obtaining surer protection for her little one, and discovering some traces of its father.
"What would it avail you, were he found?" asked the squaw.
"Why?"
"The Red warriors would immediately take his scalp, for the oracles of the pawaws have driven them mad. After three days of conjuration, they have told us—"
"They—are the pawaws a tribe of the Iroquois?"
"They are our wise men—our oracles."
"And they told—what?"
"That the devils would not hinder the pale faces from being masters of our country. We have fought bravely; but the brandy, the gold and silver of the Yengees are more powerful than the prophesies of the lying pawaws or the knives of our warriors."
"Every Red man in the land has dug up the war-hatchet," said a strange guttural voice; "the print of the white moccassins will soon be effaced on the prairies and in the woods—their graves alone will remain—their scalps and their bones."
The old squaw started nimbly forward, and poor Mary pressed her little naked babe closer to her breast, on seeing the towering form of Ossong, streaked with his ghastly war paint, appear between her and the door of the wretched wigwam in which she lay so helplessly at his mercy.
"What seekyouin the dwelling of Orono?" demanded the Indian woman with some asperity.
"Neither the squaw nor the papoose of the white man," replied Ossong, scornfully.
"It is well. You are in your native land, and can find the bones of your fathers; but here the poor squaw of the white chief is a stranger."
"And Orono will protect her," added the other savage, who bore that name, stepping proudly forward.
"The pawaws say our fathers come from the rising sun, and that we must go towards the place of its setting—-thatthereis the future home of the Red man," said Ossong, as a savage glare lit up his eyes and he played with his scalping-knife; "shall even one pale face be permitted to live, if such things are said? Go—Orono has become a woman!"
With this taunt, the most bitter that can be made to an Indian, Ossong waved his hand, and strode away with a sombre air of fury and disdain.
As he left the hut, a glittering ornament which hung at his neck caught the eye of Mary. She uttered a faint cry, for she was weak and feeble, and while clutching her babe in one arm, strove to raise her attenuated form with the other. She endeavoured to call back Ossong; but her voice failed, and she sank despairingly on her bed of skins. Among the gewgaws which covered the broad breast of Ossong, to her horror, she had discovered the gilt regimental gorget of her husband, which she knew too well, by its silver thistle, as there had been no other officer of Highlanders but be in Fort William Henry.
The eyes of Orono gleamed brightly; he, too, had detected the cause of her agitation, and he said,
"It is an ornament of the pale chief, worn by Ossong."
"It was my husband's! Oh, Orono, ask him—for pity, ask him, where, when, how he obtained possession of it."
"Ossong is fierce as a Pequot," said the Iroquois, sadly.
"Ask him, lest I die!" exclaimed Mary, passionately.
"Ossong in a strong and fierce warrior," replied the savage, gently; "I will steal it for you, if I can. Ossong is cruel. Listen; he found a pale face on the shore of the Horican; he was wounded and feeble, so Ossong stripped and bound him to a gum-tree, where he roasted him with sedge-grass, and, before death, forced him to eat his own ears, which were cut off by a scalping-knife."
"Oh, my husband!" exclaimed Mary, in despair; "and a fiend such as this has had his hands on you!"
"I fear me," said Orono, shaking his head, "that he you weep for has gone to where the sun hides itself at night."
"What mean you, Orono?"
"Away beyond the great prairies of the buffaloes—to the place of sleep—the wigwam of grass, where the Indian sleeps sounder than even the fire-water of the white man can make him."
"Alas! you mean the grave?"
The Iroquois nodded his head, and relapsed into silence, while with a low moan at a suggestion which seemed to fulfil her own fears, and seemed only too probable, Mary fell back and became, to all appearance, insensible.
Several days passed, during which she hovered between time and eternity; but nothing, even in civilized life, could surpass the watchful kindness and attention of the poor but grateful savage on whose mercy she found herself thrown.HowOssong became possessed of the regimental gorget—whether he had found it in the wood, or torn it from her husband's neck when dead, Orono could never discover, as his tawny compatriot was animated in no measured degree by the worst attributes of the American Indian—craft, timidity, fickleness, ferocity, revenge, and quickness of apprehension. Hence there were no means of wresting the important—perhaps dreadful—secret from him. He was soon after shot in a skirmish by the soldiers of Fort Edward, and the story of the gilded badge perished with him.
"Oh, never to see my dear, dear husband again—never, in this dreary world! It is a terrible blow—a dreadful and soul-crushing conviction!" Mary continued to exclaim, "God has required many sacrifices of me; but that Roderick should never see the wee pet-lamb I have brought into this vale of woe is the bitterest thought of all; and to what a fate shall I leave it! My heart is like a stone—my brain a chaos."
"Remain and be the squaw of Orono; he is good and gentle, and will love the lonely pale face, and will teach her to hoe rice," said the enterprising proprietor of the wigwam, who also possessed a valuable property in wampum and scalp-locks.
"Remain here! a month, yea, a week of this will kill me, Orono. Remain here, and so far away from my country—from the deep glens where the heather blooms so sweetly! I cannot stay, Orono," continued the poor girl, wildly. "I have been taught to love my native land by the voices of my father, who fell in battle, of my mother, who died of sorrow, and of my brave husband, who perished in this hated wilderness!"
"Orono understands," said the Indian, quietly; "he, too, loves the hunting-grounds of the Iroquois; but he will protect the poor pale face and her child."
Seeing her weep bitterly, after a pause, during which he regarded her attentively—
"Orono," said he, "is but a poor Indian warrior and knows not the God of the pale faces; but may he speak."
"Say on."
"Turn to the Great Spirit of the Iroquois, who dwells far away beyond the lakes and the prairies; be resigned to his will. The lightning is not swifter than his wrath; the hunting-grounds are not greater than his goodness. This Great Spirit knows every leaf in the woods—every ripple on the waters; and doubtless he has removed the white chief from evils more terrible than yonder battle by the Horican; for sudden death is good."
"How think you so?"
"I know not; but the pawaws say so."
Here was a subject for one who could reflect; but the heart of Mary seemed to have died within her.
"Oh yes," continued the Indian, patting her white shoulder gently with his strong brown hand, and pointing south; "he is gone to the abode of the Great Spirit, to the happy hunting-grounds, where the souls of all brave warriors go, and where they seem to live again."
"Oh that I were with him."
"Orono has no squaw now; but the Oneida girl who slept on his breast is there."
"Orono," said the widow, touched by his tone, and gathering hope from his protection, "is a good warrior."
"He is a brave one!" replied the Iroquois, proudly.
"It is better to be good than brave; and youaregood."
"Orono is grateful to the squaw of the white chief, and has given his promise to protect her; so the strongest and tallest braves of the Iroquois must respect that promise. My brothers say, Let the pale face die——"
"She will not trouble you long," said Mary, weeping over her child, for which she had neither proper nurture nor little garments, nor even the rites of baptism.
"Are we to perish, they cry, that pale faces may gather, and dig, and sow, on the sacred banks of the Horican? Are they sent here to inherit the home of the Indian, the hunting-ground of his fathers, and the great solemn barrows where their bones lie by the Oswego and the Mississippi, as if the Great Spirit loved them better than his children the Iroquois."
From this day fever of mind and body—an illness for which she had neither nurse, physician, nor comforts around her—prostrated the faculties of the poor widow, for such she deemed herself. As each link in the chain of life is broken by death, we are united more closely to those which remain; but to poor Mary all seemed a hopeless blank. Thelast linkwas a child, whose feeble life and doubtful future filled her with dismay.
Now that Roderick was gone, her heart seemed to follow him. She clung with fonder affection to the world that was to come, and where she was to meet him; but her babe, could she selfishly forsake it? Her heart was sorely lacerated. Eternity seemed close—terriblycloseto her; and her husband being there, instituted to her a more endearing tie between this world and that mysterious "bourne from whence no traveller returns." She had no terror of this journey, for he whom she loved with all the strength of her soul had gone before and awaited her there. At times she fancied that he chid her delay; she felt drawn towards that spirit-world by a chord of affection which made her now yearn for it, as before she had wept and yearned for her Highland home.
But her babe—so innocent and so deserted—could she die and leave it among the Iroquois?
How did Roderick die—where? Peacefully or in torture? Was he buried, or lying still unentombed?
These dreadful questions and thoughts were ever before her in the intervals of waking from her fits of delirium, which often lasted for hours; and her snatches of sleep were filled by horrible dreams.
In these intervals a new hope dawned in her heart. Her husband might have escaped and gained Fort Edward or the army of Montcalm, and she might yet reach him with her child if protected by Orono. This idea gave a new and exciting impulse to her already overwrought frame; but it came, alas! too late, for, a few days after the birth of her little one, she too surely felt herself dying—dying there with none to hear her story, or to whom she could bequeath her helpless babe—a thought sufficient alone to kill her. With the last effort of her strength she took from her now matted hair the Celtic marriage brooch (the old palladium of her husband's family) which she had kept there concealed since the day of their departure from Fort William Henry, and fixing it to a fragment of her own dress, which she had wrapped round the infant, pointed to it, that Orono might deem it an amulet or talisman—"a great medicine"—and expired!
* * * *
It was about the time of sunset, and before interring the body in a deep grave which he had scooped at the foot of a gum-tree, and lined with soft furs, Orono sat silent and watching in his wigwam. Near the dead mother her unconscious child slept peacefully. The poor Indian was perhaps praying, and feeling thankful in his heart that he had discharged a debt of gratitude, and would yet do more by conveying the little orphan to the nearest white settlement, and there leaving her to her fate.
The evening was beautiful, like those which preceded the siege and the massacre. A mellow sunset was deepening on the hills that overlook the waters of Lake George, and the setting beams played with a wavering radiance on the green foliage that was tossed like verdant plumage by the evening wind, and on the ripples that ran before it over the bosom of that lovely lake. All was still within the Indian hut where the dead woman lay, with her long black lashes resting on the pallid cheek from which they never more would rise: and with her pure, pale profile, sharply defined against the coarse grass matting that screened her wretched couch. Crouching on one side was the old squaw, appalled by the marble hue of the strange corpse; on the other sat Orono, divested of his plume and all his ornaments in token of grief, with his deep glittering eyes fixed on the rocky bluffs which seemed to start forward from the copse-covered slopes, and were then tinted with a deep purple by the sinking sun.
As the last rays died away from the volcanic peaks, the Indian started up and prepared to inter the remains of poor Mary, when the glittering epaulettes and appointments of a French officer, who was leading his horse by the bridle, appeared at the door of the wigwam.
He was the Baron de Beauchatel, with the gold cross of St. Louis dangling on the lapelle of the gay white uniform of the Grenadiers of Guienne. Having lost his way in the forest, he now sought a guide to the camp of Montcalm; but the dead mother caught his eye at the moment he peered into the obscurity of the hut.
"Mon Dieu! what have we here?" he asked, with surprise.
"The squaw and papoose of a pale chief," replied the apparently unmoved Indian.
"Dead—a lady, too!" exclaimed the French officer, stooping over her with a commiseration that was greatly increased when he discovered that she was young and beautiful. He gently pressed her thin white hand, and lifted her soft black hair. "And this is her child?"
Orono nodded.
"Almost newly born—how calmly it sleeps! The poor infant—alone in this wilderness—Tête Dieu! it is frightful! Tell me all about this, Iroquois, and I will reward you handsomely with a new English clasp-knife, a bottle of eau de vie, a blanket, or whatever else your refined taste teaches you to prize most."
In his own language, by turns soft and guttural, Orono related to the baron all that he knew of the white woman; that she had twice saved his life, and that he, in gratitude, had protected her from the Iroquois; but he had no power over the Great Spirit.
The baron was a humane and gallant French officer of the old days of the monarchy. He had been a gay fellow some few years before, and had been sent to America (according to Parisian gossip) because he had been too favourably noticed by Madame de Pompadour; but he had a good and tender heart; thus, the story of the poor mother, and the helplessness of her orphan, stirred him deeply. By the whole aspect of the dead, and the remains of her attire, he suspected that her rank and position in life had been good—a lady at least. A ring upon the fourth finger of her left hand, bearing the name of her husband in Gaelic, he gently removed; he then cut off some of her fine black hair, and, after making a few memoranda descriptive of her person, he bargained with the Indian that he should give up the child for a few francs. This the Iroquois at once agreed to do, and, with the assistance of the baron, Mary was wrapped in furs and buried under a tree on the sequestered shore of the Horican.
To Beauchatel it seemed strange and repugnant that a Christian woman should be laid there without a prayer or a blessing, on the rough mould that covered her pale attenuated form, her pains and her sorrows; but it was long sincehehad prayed; yet, with an impulse of piety, he cut on the bark of the tree, which covered the place where she lay, a large cross, and raising his hat retired.
The act was in itself a prayer!
"Can I now do aught for you?" he asked of Orono.
The Indian mournfully shook his head, and then said,
"Give me a new musket, for the time is coming—the time that has been foretold."
"By whom?"
"The sachems, the pawaws, and the old men of the Iroquois."
"And what shall happen,mon camarade?"
"The warriors of the Six Nations will break the pipe of peace and dig up the great war-hatchet."
"Against whom?
"All who come from the land of the rising sun."
"Be it so," said the baron, shrugging his shoulders, and looking with some anxiety towards the long shadows, that darkened in the forest vistas; "you shall have your musket; but give me the child,mon ami; and now for the camp of Louis de St. Voran!"
* * * *
Let us change the scene.
It is 1778, exactly twenty-one years after the events recorded as having happened at Fort William Henry. We are now in France, in the sunny province of Guienne, and near the gay city of Bordeaux.
A lady, young and beautiful, is seated at one of the lofty open windows of the turreted Chateau de Fontbrune, which crowns the summit of a wooded eminence on the right bank of the Garonne. Her eyes and hair are dark; her complexion soft and brilliant. Her attire, as she is in the country, partakes of the picturesque fashion of the last days of Louis XV. She reclines on a velvet fauteuil, and forcibly reminds us of a languid little beauty in one of Watteau's pictures waiting for some one to make love to her. As a poet of the time has it, her attire
"Was whimsically traversed o'er,Here a knot and there a flower;Like her little heart that dances,Full of maggots—full of fancies;Flowing loosely down her back,Fell with art the graceful sacque;Ornamented well with gimping,Flounces, furbelows, and crimping,While her ruffles, many a row,Guard her elbows, white as snow,Knots below and points above,Emblem of the ties of love."
Her cheek rested on her hand, and heedless of the too familiar splendour of the apartment in which she was seated, she impatiently drew back the blue satin hangings, which were festooned by cords and tassels of silver, and setting her round dimpled chin into the white palm of her pretty little hand, gazed languidly upon the beautiful landscape that spread, as it were, at her feet.
The vine-covered district of the Bordelais, through which wound the Garonne; Bourdeaux, clustering on its left bank in the form, of a crescent, with its old walls and towers of the Middle Ages; its nineteen gates, through which the tide of human life was ebbing and flowing; its long rows of trees casting their lengthening shadows to the eastward; the huge grey ramparts of the venerable Chateau de Trompette; the palace of the Dukes of Guienne; the church of St. Michel and the cathedral of St. André, with its two tall and splendid spires, which pierced the saffron-tinted sky like stone needles; and then the majestic river sweeping past towards the sea, all bathed in the broad light of a glorious June sunset. But Therese had seen all this a thousand times before, and it ceased to interest her now.
In the lap of this noble lady reposed a pretty, but saucy and snubnosed Bologna spaniel, with the long ears and black silky hair of which the white fingers of one hand played involuntarily. Statues, bronzes, buhl tables, vases of flowers, and a hundred beautiful trifles, decorated this little room, which was her boudoir—her own peculiar sanctum sanctorum—and the windows of which overlooked a bastion, whereon were sixteen antique brass cannon; for the Chateau de Fontbrune, in which we have now the honour of finding ourselves, was an old baronial house, which, after being fortified by Louis de Foix, had given shelter to Charles VII., and been beleaguered by the Maréchal de Matignon.
The productions of the popular men of the day strewed the apartment. The poems of Bernis, the comedies of the Abbé Boissy, the music of Lulli, with drawings and pictures without end, lay near, while a vaudeville by Panard was open upon the piano. Mademoiselle had evidently been sorely puzzled in her efforts to get through the long hours of this day of June, 1778.
"Oh, Nanon!" she exclaimed to her attendant, a pretty girl of eighteen, who sat near her on a tabourette, sewing; "I amsoennuyé—for in this dreary old chateau, which I am not permitted to leave, and to which no one comes but prosy old colonels and stupid magistrates, such as M. le Maire, or M. le Maitre du Palais, or still worse, those horrid counsellors of the Court of Admiralty, there is so little to rouse one from sad thoughts and drowsy lethargy."
"Try another chapter of that new romance by M. de Marivaux."
"Ah,merci!he is a most tiresome fellow, Nanon, and odious, too."
"Odious?"
"Yes."
"How, Mademoiselle Therese?"
"I judge from his memoir of himself."
"Explain, mademoiselle."
"He was once in love with a young lady—"
"Once, only—then he is no true romance writer."
"She had black hair, hazel eyes and long lashes, divine little hands and feet—in fact, the counterpart of myself, as the old Abbé de Boissy told me—and was on the point of paying his most solemn and magnificent addresses to her; when, happening to enter her boudoir one day unexpectedly, he found—"
"Not a lover?" exclaimed Nanon, becoming suddenly interested; "not a student or mousquetaire, I hope?"
"Ma foi!no—nothing half so pleasant."
"What, then?"
"Mademoiselle studying smiles and postures before her mirror."
"And this—"
"So shocked the staid and proper M. de Marivaux, that his passion passed away in a moment, and he took to novel writing."
"It was no passion whatever, mademoiselle," replied Nanon, disgusted to find that a lady should lose a lover by the same arts which she practised daily to win one; and now ensued another long pause.
This young lady—so beautiful, so tenderly nurtured, so accomplished, and so splendidly jewelled—was the richest heiress in Bordeaux, a ward of the young King Louis XVI.,fiancéeof the Comte d'Arcot, a high military noble, who had covered himself with distinction in India, and was now on his way home with a fabulous sum in livres, and, of course, with the liver complaint. But this noble demoiselle, successor of M. le Baron Beauchatel, Seigneur de Fontbrune and of St. Emilion, Seneschal of Bordeaux, and Commandant of the Chateau de Trompette, was the foundling of the Iroquois wigwam, the orphan child of Roderick MacGillivray and of that lonely and despairing mother who found her grave, uncoffined, in the savage solitude on the southern shore of the Horican.
And now to solve this mystery.
Beauchatel had conveyed the infant girl to Fort William Henry, and consigned her to the care of the baroness, a lady of gentle and amiable disposition. In pity for the helplessness of the child, she undertook its care, at first as a mere duty of humanity, but as months passed on, her regard became a strong love for this lonely little waif—a love all the stronger that she was herself without children, and had long ceased to hope that she would ever be a mother; so it seemed as if Heaven had sent this infant to fill up the void in her heart. She named herTherese, after herself; for she had been Mademoiselle Therese de St. Veran, a sister of the Marquis de Montcalm, and consequently was a lady of Nismes. Soon after her return to France with Beauchatel she died, and her last request was, that he would continue to protect the orphan which fate had so strangely committed to his care. The good and faithful soldier had learned to love the little girl as if she had been his own, and being without kinsmen or heirs to his title and estates, he obtained from the young King Louis XVI., then in the fourth year of his unhappy reign, as a reward for his services and those of his ancestors, permission to adopt her in legal form. The necessary documents were accordingly drawn up, sealed, signed, and registered; and thus the poor foundling of the Canadian forest, the child of Roderick MacGillivray of the Black Watch, became the heiress of the Chateau de Fontbrune and of the Seigneurie of Saint Emilion.
On returning from America, the baron had served five years under M. Law de Lauriston in the East, upholding the interests of the French India Company against the Nabob of Bengal and the British, under Lord Clive. There he had met and become acquainted with Count d'Arcot, for whom he had conceived a sudden and vehement friendship—so much so, that, after his return to France, he resolved that,bongré malgré, his young ward should marry this soldier of fortune; for such he was, having been created Count d'Ascot and Knight of St. Louis for his bravery at the recapture of that city of Hindostan, the capital of the Carnatic.
Poor Therese had been told the sad story of the mother she had never known, and of whom no relics remained but some silky black hair, a ring, and that singular brooch—an ornament so unlike anything she had ever seen, and which was graven with a legend in a language to her so strange and barbarous; and her heart yearned for a further knowledge of whom she was, and whence she came, and for that mother's kiss, of which, though it had been planted a thousand times upon her little lips, she had no memory; and at times she mourned for that father she had never seen. Then it seemed so odd, so strange, so grievous that she could have any other father than the dear, kind old baron, for whom she had a love and reverence so filial and so strong.
But to resume.
"The evening lags, as if the sun would never set," yawned the petulant little beauty. "What shall we do with ourselves—speak, you provoking Nanon?"
"Play," was the pithy reply.
"I have played everything that came last from Paris, and my piano is now frightfully out of tune—the chords are fallen."
"Read."
"I have read MM. Marivaux, Bernis, and Jean Jacques de Rousseau till I am sick of them."
"Draw."
"It makes my head ache, and the Abbé Boissy says it will spoil my eyes, in which he seems to take a poetical interest."
"Sing."
"Nanon, you bore me!"
"Suppose we pray, then!"
"Ma foi!—that would not be very amusing when one is dull and dreary."
"Order out the grey pads and ride."
"M. Beauchatel never allows that, as you know well, Nanon, save when he is with me; and we shall have enough of our horses, I have no doubt, when this odious old count, whom I am to marry, and whom I already hate, and whom I am resolved to tease to death, arrives here."
"I shall retire, mademoiselle."
"You shall not!"
"I fear you find me poor company," urged Nanon, demurely.
"Poor or bad company are better than none——"
"Here in this huge chateau, perhaps; but one would not think so in the midst of a wood."
"Here I am left all day with no thoughts to rouse me but of that horrible old Comte d'Arcot, who is certainly coming from India, and to whom I am to be given like a box of rupees or a bale of sugar."
"It is a long way to India," said Nanon; "away round the end of the world at Cape Finisterre, and perhaps—perhaps——"
"Say on, Nanon."
"He may be drowned by the way."
"Ah! don't say so, Nanon!"
"Storms may arise, as they frequently do, and then ships are wrecked. There was M. la Perouse, who sailed away out into the wide ocean in the days of the late King Louis XV., and has never been heard of since. If stout young sailors drown, surely an old soldier like Comte d'Arcot may."
"I am almost wicked enough to wish it."
"I think I see something that will amuse you, mademoiselle."
"Mon Dieu! I am glad of that—what is it?"
"A party of soldiers."
"Where?—oh, I do so love to see soldiers!"
"'Tis a guard conveying prisoners to the Chateau de Trompette, and now they are about to cross the Garonne by boats."
The lady gazed from the window, and saw a mass of armed soldiers marching quickly down the opposite slope towards the river. As they issued from under the green vine trellis which shaded the roads for miles in every direction, she could distinctly discern the scarlet coats of the prisoners contrasting with the white of the French linesmen who formed the escort, and had their bayonets fixed.
"Red uniforms—they are British prisoners of war!" exclaimed Nanon; "oh, mademoiselle, we have gained a battle somewhere, and beaten the English, as we always do."
"Poor, poor fellows!" sighed Therese; "ah, Nanon, I feel sad when I see them, for M. le Baron says my mother was one of these people: yet it seems so strange that I should ever have had any other than Therese de St. Veran—dear Madame la Baronesse, whom the Blessed Virgin has taken to herself."
"See how they crowd into that little boat! Oh, mon Dieu! the brave reckless fellows—it will never hold them all!"
"And the stream is deep and rapid there."