XIX. PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE
The Chevalier des Meloises, quite out of humor with the merry Louises, picked his way with quick, dainty steps down the Rue du Palais. The gay Louises, before returning to the Convent, resolved to make a hasty promenade to the walls to see the people at work upon them. They received with great contentment the military salutes of the officers of their acquaintance, which they acknowledged with the courtesy of well-trained internes, slightly exaggerated by provoking smiles and mischievous glances which had formed no part of the lessons in politeness taught them by the nuns.
In justice be it said, however, the girls were actuated by a nobler feeling than the mere spirit of amusement--a sentiment of loyalty to France, a warm enthusiasm for their country, drew them to the walls: they wanted to see the defenders of Quebec, to show their sympathy and smile approval upon them.
“Would to heaven I were a man,” exclaimed Louise de Brouague, “that I might wield a sword, a spade, anything of use, to serve my country! I shame to do nothing but talk, pray, and suffer for it, while every one else is working or fighting.”
Poor girl! she did not foresee a day when the women of New France would undergo trials compared with which the sword stroke that kills the strong man is as the touch of mercy,--when the batteries of Wolfe would for sixty-five days shower shot and shell upon Quebec, and the South shore for a hundred miles together be blazing with the fires of devastation. Such things were mercifully withheld from their foresight, and the light-hearted girls went the round of the works as gaily as they would have tripped in a ballroom.
The Chevalier des Meloises, passing through the Porte du Palais, was hailed by two or three young officers of the Regiment of Béarn, who invited him into the Guard House to take a glass of wine before descending the steep hill. The Chevalier stopped willingly, and entered the well-furnished quarters of the officers of the guard, where a cool flask of Burgundy presently restored him to good humor with himself, and consequently with the world.
“What is up to-day at the Palace?” asked Captain Monredin, a vivacious Navarrois. “All the Gros Bonnets of the Grand Company have gone down this afternoon! I suppose you are going too, Des Meloises?”
“Yes! They have sent for me, you see, on affairs of State--what Penisault calls 'business.' Not a drop of wine on the board! Nothing but books and papers, bills and shipments, money paid, money received! Doit et avoir and all the cursed lingo of the Friponne! I damn the Friponne, but bless her money! It pays, Monredin! It pays better than fur-trading at a lonely outpost in the northwest.” The Chevalier jingled a handful of coin in his pocket. The sound was a sedative to his disgust at the idea of trade, and quite reconciled him to the Friponne.
“You are a lucky dog nevertheless, to be able to make it jingle!” said Monredin, “not one of us Béarnois can play an accompaniment to your air of money in both pockets. Here is our famous Regiment of Béarn, second to none in the King's service, a whole year in arrears without pay! Gad! I wish I could go into 'business,' as you call it, and woo that jolly dame, La Friponne!
“For six months we have lived on trust. Those leeches of Jews, who call themselves Christians, down in the Sault au Matelot, won't cash the best orders in the regiment for less than forty per cent. discount!”
“That is true!” broke in another officer, whose rather rubicund face told of credit somewhere, and the product of credit,--good wine and good dinners generally. “That is true, Monredin! The old curmudgeon of a broker at the corner of the Cul de Sac had the impudence to ask me fifty per cent. discount upon my drafts on Bourdeaux! I agree with Des Meloises there: business may be a good thing for those who handle it, but devil touch their dirty fingers for me!”
“Don't condemn all of them, Emeric,” said Captain Poulariez, a quiet, resolute-looking officer. “There is one merchant in the city who carries the principles of a gentleman into the usages of commerce. The Bourgeois Philibert gives cent. per cent. for good orders of the King's officers, just to show his sympathy with the army and his love for France.”
“Well, I wish he were paymaster of the forces, that is all, and then I could go to him if I wanted to,” replied Monredin.
“Why do you not go to him?” asked Poulariez.
“Why, for the same reason, I suppose, so many others of us do not,” replied Monredin. “Colonel Dalquier endorses my orders, and he hates the Bourgeois cordially, as a hot friend of the Intendant ought to do. So you see I have to submit to be plucked of my best pen-feathers by that old fesse-mathieu Penisault at the Friponne!”
“How many of yours have gone out to the great spread at Belmont?” asked Des Meloises, quite weary of commercial topics.
“Par Dieu!” replied Monredin, “except the colonel and adjutant, who stayed away on principle, I think every officer in the regiment, present company excepted--who being on duty could not go, much to their chagrin. Such a glorious crush of handsome girls has not been seen, they say, since our regiment came to Quebec.”
“And not likely to have been seen before your distinguished arrival--eh, Monredin?” ejaculated Des Meloises, holding his glass to be refilled. “That is delicious Burgundy,” added he, “I did not think any one beside the Intendant had wine like that.”
“That is some of La Martinière's cargo,” replied Poulariex. “It was kind of him, was it not, to remember us poor Béarnois here on the wrong side of the Atlantic?”
“And how earnestly we were praying for that same Burgundy,” ejaculated Monredin, “when it came, as if dropped upon us by Providence! Health and wealth to Captain La Martinière and the good frigate Fleur-de-Lis!”
Another round followed.
“They talk about those Jansenist convulsionnaires at the tomb of Master Paris, which are setting all France by the ears,” exclaimed Monredin, “but I say there is nothing so contagious as the drinking of a glass of wine like that.”
“And the glass gives us convulsions too, Monredin, if we try it too often, and no miracle about it either,” remarked Poulariez.
Monredin looked up, red and puffy, as if needing a bridle to check his fast gait.
“But they say we are to have peace soon. Is that true, Des Meloises?” asked Poulariez. “You ought to know what is under the cards before they are played.”
“No, I don't know; and I hope the report is not true. Who wants peace yet? It would ruin the King's friends in the Colony.” Des Meloises looked as statesmanlike as he could when delivering this dictum.
“Ruin the King's friends! Who are they, Des Meloises?” asked Poulariez, with a look of well-assumed surprise.
“Why, the associates of the Grand Company, to be sure! What other friends has the King got in New France?”
“Really! I thought he had the Regiment of Béarn for a number of them--to say nothing of the honest people of the Colony,” replied Poulariez, impatiently.
“The Honnêtes Gens, you mean!” exclaimed Des Meloises. “Well, Poulariez, all I have to say is that if this Colony is to be kept up for the sake of a lot of shopkeepers, wood-choppers, cobblers, and farmers, the sooner the King hands it over to the devil or the English the better!”
Poulariex looked indignant enough; but from the others a loud laugh followed this sally.
The Chevalier des Meloises pulled out his watch. “I must be gone to the Palace,” said he. “I dare say Cadet, Varin, and Penisault will have balanced the ledgers by this time, and the Intendant, who is the devil for business on such occasions, will have settled the dividends for the quarter--the only part of the business I care about.”
“But don't you help them with the work a little?” asked Poulariez.
“Not I; I leave business to them that have a vocation for it. Besides, I think Cadet, Vargin, and Penisault like to keep the inner ring of the company to themselves.” He turned to Emeric: “I hope there will be a good dividend to-night, Emeric,” said he. “I owe you some revenge at piquet, do I not?”
“You capoted me last night at the Taverne de Menut, and I had three aces and three kings.”
“But I had a quatorze, and took the fishes,” replied Des Meloises.
“Well, Chevalier, I shall win them back to-night. I hope the dividend will be good: in that way I too may share in the 'business' of the Grand Company.”
“Good-by, Chevalier; remember me to St. Blague!” (This was a familiar sobriquet of Bigot.) “Tis the best name going. If I had an heir for the old château on the Adour, I would christen him Bigot for luck.”
The Chevalier des Meloises left the officers and proceeded down the steep road that led to the Palace. The gardens were quiet to-day--a few loungers might be seen in the magnificent alleys, pleached walks, and terraces; beyond these gardens, however, stretched the King's wharves and the magazines of the Friponne. These fairly swarmed with men loading and unloading ships and bateaux, and piling and unpiling goods.
The Chevalier glanced with disdain at the magazines, and flourishing his cane, mounted leisurely the broad steps of the Palace, and was at once admitted to the council-room.
“Better late than never, Chevalier des Meloises!” exclaimed Bigot, carelessly glancing at him as he took a seat at the board, where sat Cadet, Varin, Penisault, and the leading spirits of the Grand Company. “You are in double luck to-day. The business is over, and Dame Friponne has laid a golden egg worth a Jew's tooth for each partner of the Company.”
The Chevalier did not notice, or did not care for, the slight touch of sarcasm in the Intendant's tone. “Thanks, Bigot!” drawled he. “My eggs shall be hatched to-night down at Menut's. I expect to have little more left than the shell of it to-morrow.”
“Well, never mind! We have considered all that, Chevalier. What one loses another gets. It is all in the family. Look here,” continued he, laying his finger upon a page of the ledger that lay open before him, “Mademoiselle Angélique des Meloises is now a shareholder in the Grand Company. The list of high, fair, and noble ladies of the Court who are members of the Company will be honored by the addition of the name of your charming sister.”
The Chevalier's eyes sparkled with delight as he read Angélique's name on the book. A handsome sum of five digits stood to her credit. He bowed his thanks with many warm expressions of his sense of the honor done his sister by “placing her name on the roll of the ladies of the Court who honor the Company by accepting a share of its dividends.”
“I hope Mademoiselle des Meloises will not refuse this small mark of our respect,” observed Bigot, feeling well assured she would not deem it a small one.
“Little fear of that!” muttered Cadet, whose bad opinion of the sex was incorrigible. “The game fowls of Versailles scratch jewels out of every dung-hill, and Angélique des Meloises has longer claws than any of them!”
Cadet's ill-natured remark was either unheard or unheeded; besides, he was privileged to say anything. Des Meloises bowed with an air of perfect complaisance to the Intendant as he answered,--“I guarantee the perfect satisfaction of Angélique with this marked compliment of the Grand Company. She will, I am sure, appreciate the kindness of the Intendant as it deserves.”
Cadet and Varin exchanged smiles, not unnoticed by Bigot, who smiled too. “Yes, Chevalier,” said he, “the Company gives this token of its admiration for the fairest lady in New France. We have bestowed premiums upon fine flax and fat cattle: why not upon beauty, grace, and wit embodied in handsome women?”
“Angélique will be highly flattered, Chevalier,” replied he, “at the distinction. She must thank you herself, as I am sure she will.”
“I am happy to try to deserve her thanks,” replied Bigot; and, not caring to talk further on the subject,--“what news in the city this afternoon, Chevalier?” asked he; “how does that affair at Belmont go off?”
“Don't know. Half the city has gone, I think. At the Church door, however, the talk among the merchants is that peace is going to be made soon. Is it so very threatening, Bigot?”
“If the King wills it, it is.” Bigot spoke carelessly.
“But your own opinion, Chevalier Bigot; what think you of it?”
“Amen! amen! Quod fiat fiatur! Seigny John, the fool of Paris, could enlighten you as well as I could as to what the women at Versailles may decide to do,” replied Bigot in a tone of impatience.
“I fear peace will be made. What will you do in that case, Bigot?” asked Des Meloises, not noticing Bigot's aversion to the topic.
“If the King makes it, invitus amabo! as the man said who married the shrew.” Bigot laughed mockingly. “We must make the best of it, Des Meloises! and let me tell you privately, I mean to make a good thing of it for ourselves whichever way it turns.”
“But what will become of the Company should the war expenditure stop?” The Chevalier was thinking of his dividend of five figures.
“Oh! you should have been here sooner, Des Meloises: you would have heard our grand settlement of the question in every contingency of peace or war.”
“Be sure of one thing,” continued Bigot, “the Grand Company will not, like the eels of Melun, cry out before they are skinned. What says the proverb, 'Mieux vaut êngin que force' (craft beats strength)? The Grand Company must prosper as the first condition of life in New France. Perhaps a year or two of repose may not be amiss, to revictual and reinforce the Colony; and by that time we shall be ready to pick the lock of Bellona's temple again and cry Vive la guerre! Vive la Grande Compagnie! more merrily than ever!”
Bigot's far-reaching intellect forecast the course of events, which remained so much subject to his own direction after the peace of Aix la Chapelle--a peace which in America was never a peace at all, but only an armed and troubled truce between the clashing interests and rival ambitions of the French and English in the New World.
The meeting of the Board of Managers of the Grand Company broke up, and--a circumstance that rarely happened--without the customary debauch. Bigot, preoccupied with his own projects, which reached far beyond the mere interests of the Company, retired to his couch. Cadet, Varin, and Penisault, forming an interior circle of the Friponne, had certain matters to shape for the Company's eye. The rings of corruption in the Grand Company descended, narrower and more black and precipitous, down to the bottom where Bigot sat, the Demiurgos of all.
The Chevalier des Meloises was rather proud of his sister's beauty and cleverness, and in truth a little afraid of her. They lived together harmoniously enough, so long as each allowed the other his or her own way. Both took it, and followed their own pleasures, and were not usually disagreeable to one another, except when Angélique commented on what she called his penuriousness, and he upon her extravagance, in the financial administration of the family of the Des Meloises.
The Chevalier was highly delighted to-day to be able to inform Angélique of her good fortune in becoming a partner of the Friponne and that too by grace of his Excellency the Intendant. The information filled Angélique with delight, not only because it made her independent of her brother's mismanagement of money, but it opened a door to her wildest hopes. In that gift her ambition found a potent ally to enable her to resist the appeal to her heart which she knew would be made to-night by Le Gardeur de Repentigny.
The Chevalier des Meloises had no idea of his sister's own aims. He had long nourished a foolish fancy that, if he had not obtained the hand of the wealthy and beautiful heiress of Repentigny, it was because he had not proposed. Something to-day had suggested the thought that unless he did propose soon his chances would be nil, and another might secure the prize which he had in his vain fancy set down as his own.
He hinted to Angélique to-day that he had almost resolved to marry, and that his projected alliance with the noble and wealthy house of Tilly could be easily accomplished if Angélique would only do her share, as a sister ought, in securing her brother's fortune and happiness.
“How?” asked she, looking up savagely, for she knew well at what her brother was driving.
“By your accepting Le Gardeur without more delay! All the city knows he is mad in love, and would marry you any day you choose if you wore only the hair on your head. He would ask no better fortune!”
“It is useless to advise me, Renaud!” said she, “and whether I take Le Gardeur or no it would not help your chance with Amélie! I am sorry for it, for Amélie is a prize, Renaud! but not for you at any price. Let me tell you, that desirable young lady will become the bride of Pierre Philibert, and the bride of no other man living.”
“You give one cold encouragement, sister! But I am sure, if you would only marry Le Gardeur, you could easily, with your tact and cleverness, induce Amélie to let me share the Tilly fortune. There are chests full of gold in the old Manor House, and a crow could hardly fly in a day over their broad lands!”
“Perfectly useless, brother! Amélie is not like most girls. She would refuse the hand of a king for the sake of the man she loves, and she loves Pierre Philibert to his finger-ends. She has married him in her heart a thousand times. I hate paragons of women, and would scorn to be one, but I tell you, brother, Amélie is a paragon of a girl, without knowing it!”
“Hum, I never tried my hand on a paragon: I should like to do so,” replied he, with a smile of decided confidence in his powers. “I fancy they are just like other women when you can catch them with their armor off.”
“Yes, but women like Amélie never lay off their armor! They seem born in it, like Minerva. But your vanity will not let you believe me, Renaud! So go try her, and tell me your luck! She won't scratch you, nor scold. Amélie is a lady, and will talk to you like a queen. But she will give you a polite reply to your proposal that will improve your opinions of our sex.”
“You are mocking me, Angélique, as you always do! One never knows when you are in jest or when in earnest. Even when you get angry, it is often unreal and for a purpose! I want you to be serious for once. The fortune of the Tillys and De Repentignys is the best in New France, and we can make it ours if you will help me.”
“I am serious enough in wishing you those chests full of gold, and those broad lands that a crow cannot fly over in a day; but I must forego my share of them, and so must you yours, brother!” Angélique leaned back in her chair, desiring to stop further discussion of a topic she did not like to hear.
“Why must you forego your share of the De Repentigny fortune, Angélique? You could call it your own any day you chose by giving your little finger to Le Gardeur! you do really puzzle me.”
The Chevalier did look perplexed at his inscrutable sister, who only smiled over the table at him, as she nonchalantly cracked nuts and sipped her wine by drops.
“Of course I puzzle you, Renaud!” said she at last. “I am a puzzle to myself sometimes. But you see there are so many men in the world,--poor ones are so plenty, rich ones so scarce, and sensible ones hardly to be found at all,--that a woman may be excused for selling herself to the highest bidder. Love is a commodity only spoken of in romances or in the patois of milkmaids now-a-days!”
“Zounds, Angélique! you would try the patience of all the saints in the calendar! I shall pity the fellow you take in! Here is the fairest fortune in the Colony about to fall into the hands of Pierre Philibert--whom Satan confound for his assurance! A fortune which I always regarded as my own!”
“It shows the folly and vanity of your sex! You never spoke a word to Amélie de Repentigny in the way of wooing in your life! Girls like her don't drop into men's arms just for the asking.”
“Pshaw! as if she would refuse me if you only acted a sister's part! But you are impenetrable as a rock, and the whole of your fickle sex could not match your vanity and caprice, Angélique.”
She rose quickly with a provoked air.
“You are getting so complimentary to my poor sex, Renaud,” said she, “that I must really leave you to yourself, and I could scarcely leave you in worse company.”
“You are so bitter and sarcastic upon one!” replied he, tartly; “my only desire was to secure a good fortune for you, and another for myself. I don't see, for my part, what women are made for, except to mar everything a man wants to do for himself and for them!”
“Certainly everything should be done for us, brother; but I have no defence to make for my sex, none! I dare say we women deserve all that men think of us, but then it is impolite to tell us so to our faces. Now, as I advised you, Renaud, I would counsel you to study gardening, and you may one day arrive at as great distinction as the Marquis de Vandriere--you may cultivate chou chou if you cannot raise a bride like Amélie de Repentigny.”
Angélique knew her brother's genius was not penetrating, or she would scarcely have ventured this broad allusion to the brother of La Pompadour, who, by virtue of his relationship to the Court favorite, had recently been created Director of the Royal Gardens. What fancy was working in the brain of Angélique when she alluded to him may be only surmised.
The Chevalier was indignant, however, at an implied comparison between himself and the plebeian Marquis de Vandriere. He replied, with some heat,--
“The Marquis de Vandriere! How dare you mention him and me together! There's not an officer's mess in the army that receives the son of the fishmonger! Why do you mention him, Angélique? You are a perfect riddle!”
“I only thought something might happen, brother, if I should ever go to Paris! I was acting a charade in my fancy, and that was the solution of it!”
“What was? You would drive the whole Sorbonne mad with your charades and fancies! But I must leave you.”
“Good-by, brother,--if you will go. Think of it!--if you want to rise in the world you may yet become a royal gardener like the Marquis de Vandriere!” Her silvery laugh rang out good-humoredly as he descended the stairs and passed out of the house.
She sat down in her fauteuil. “Pity Renaud is such a fool!” said she; “yet I am not sure but he is wiser in his folly than I with all my tact and cleverness, which I suspect are going to make a greater fool of me than ever he is!”
She leaned back in her chair in a deep thinking mood. “It is growing dark,” murmured she. “Le Gardeur will assuredly be here soon, in spite of all the attractions of Belmont. How to deal with him when he comes is more than I know: he will renew his suit, I am sure.”
For a moment the heart of Angélique softened in her bosom. “Accept him I must not!” said she; “affront him I will not! cease to love him is out of my power as much as is my ability to love the Intendant, whom I cordially detest, and shall marry all the same!” She pressed her hands over her eyes, and sat silent for a few minutes. “But I am not sure of it! That woman remains still at Beaumanoir! Will my scheming to remove her be all in vain or no?” Angélique recollected with a shudder a thought that had leaped in her bosom, like a young Satan, engendered of evil desires. “I dare hardly look in the honest eyes of Le Gardeur after nursing such a monstrous fancy as that,” said she; “but my fate is fixed all the same. Le Gardeur will vainly try to undo this knot in my life, but he must leave me to my own devices.” To what devices she left him was a thought that sprang not up in her purely selfish nature.
In her perplexity Angélique tied knot upon knot hard as pebbles in her handkerchief. Those knots of her destiny, as she regarded them, she left untied, and they remain untied to this day--a memento of her character and of those knots in her life which posterity has puzzled itself over to no purpose to explain.
XX. BELMONT
A short drive from the gate of St. John stood the old mansion of Belmont, the country-seat of the Bourgeois Philibert--a stately park, the remains of the primeval forest of oak, maple, and pine; trees of gigantic growth and ample shade surrounded the high-roofed, many-gabled house that stood on the heights of St. Foye overlooking the broad valley of the St. Charles. The bright river wound like a silver serpent through the flat meadows in the bottom of the valley, while the opposite slopes of alternate field and forest stretched away to the distant range of the Laurentian hills, whose pale blue summits mingled with the blue sky at midday or, wrapped in mist at morn and eve, were hardly distinguishable from the clouds behind them.
The gardens and lawns of Belmont were stirring with gay company to-day in honor of the fête of Pierre Philibert upon his return home from the campaign in Acadia. Troops of ladies in costumes and toilettes of the latest Parisian fashion gladdened the eye with pictures of grace and beauty which Paris itself could not have surpassed. Gentlemen in full dress, in an age when dress was an essential part of a gentleman's distinction, accompanied the ladies with the gallantry, vivacity, and politeness belonging to France, and to France alone.
Communication with the mother country was precarious and uncertain by reason of the war and the blockade of the Gulf by the English cruisers. Hence the good fortune and daring of the gallant Captain Martinière in running his frigate, the Fleur-de-Lis, through the fleet of the enemy, enabling him among other things to replenish the wardrobes of the ladies of Quebec with latest Parisian fashions, made him immensely popular on this gala day. The kindness and affability of the ladies extended without diminution of graciousness to the little midshipmen even, whom the Captain conditioned to take with him wherever he and his officers were invited. Captain Martinière was happy to see the lads enjoy a few cakes on shore after the hard biscuit they had so long nibbled on shipboard. As for himself, there was no end to the gracious smiles and thanks he received from the fair ladies at Belmont.
At the great door of the Manor House, welcoming his guests as they arrived, stood the Bourgeois Philibert, dressed as a gentleman of the period, in attire rich but not ostentatious. His suit of dark velvet harmonized well with his noble manner and bearing. But no one for a moment could overlook the man in contemplating his dress. The keen, discriminating eye of woman, overlooking neither dress nor man, found both worthy of warmest commendation, and many remarks passed between the ladies on that day that a handsomer man and more ripe and perfect gentleman than the Bourgeois Philibert had never been seen in New France.
His grizzled hair grew thickly all over his head, the sign of a tenacious constitution. It was powdered and tied behind with a broad ribbon, for he hated perukes. His strong, shapely figure was handsomely conspicuous as he stood, chapeau in hand, greeting his guests as they approached. His eyes beamed with pleasure and hospitality, and his usually grave, thoughtful lips were wreathed in smiles, the sweeter because not habitually seen upon them.
The Bourgeois had this in common with all complete and earnest characters, that the people believed in him because they saw that he believed in himself. His friends loved and trusted him to the uttermost, his enemies hated and feared him in equal measure; but no one, great or small, could ignore him and not feel his presence as a solid piece of manhood.
It is not intellect, nor activity, nor wealth, that obtains most power over men; but force of character, self-control, a quiet, compressed will and patient resolve; these qualities make one man the natural ruler over others by a title they never dispute.
The party of the Honnêtes Gens, the “honest folks” as they were derisively called by their opponents, regarded the Bourgeois Philibert as their natural leader. His force of character made men willingly stand in his shadow. His clear intellect, never at fault, had extended his power and influence by means of his vast mercantile operations over half the continent. His position as the foremost merchant of New France brought him in the front of the people's battle with the Grand Company, and in opposition to the financial policy of the Intendant and the mercantile assumption of the Friponne.
But the personal hostility between the Intendant and the Bourgeois had its root and origin in France, before either of them crossed the ocean to the hither shore of the Atlantic. The Bourgeois had been made very sensible of a fact vitally affecting him, that the decrees of the Intendant, ostensibly for the regulation of trade in New France, had been sharply pointed against himself. “They draw blood!” Bigot had boasted to his familiars as he rubbed his hands together with intense satisfaction one day, when he learned that Philibert's large trading-post in Mackinaw had been closed in consequence of the Indians having been commanded by royal authority, exercised by the Intendant, to trade only at the comptoirs of the Grand Company. “They draw blood!” repeated he, “and will draw the life yet out of the Golden Dog.” It was plain the ancient grudge of the courtly parasite had not lost a tooth during all those years.
The Bourgeois was not a man to talk of his private griefs, or seek sympathy, or even ask counsel or help. He knew the world was engrossed with its own cares. The world cares not to look under the surface of things for sake of others, but only for its own sake, its own interests, its own pleasures.
To-day, however, cares, griefs, and resentments were cast aside, and the Bourgeois was all joy at the return of his only son, and proud of Pierre's achievements, and still more of the honors spontaneously paid him. He stood at the door, welcoming arrival after arrival, the happiest man of all the joyous company who honored Belmont that day.
A carriage with outriders brought the Count de la Galissonière and his friend Herr Kalm and Dr. Gauthier, the last a rich old bachelor, handsome and generous, the physician and savant par excellence of Quebec. After a most cordial reception by the Bourgeois the Governor walked among the guests, who had crowded up to greet him with the respect due to the King's representative, as well as to show their personal regard; for the Count's popularity was unbounded in the Colony except among the partizans of the Grand Company.
Herr Kalm was presently enticed away by a bevy of young ladies, Hortense de Beauharnais leading them, to get the learned professor's opinion on some rare specimens of botany growing in the park. Nothing loath--for he was good-natured as he was clever, and a great enthusiast withal in the study of plants--he allowed the merry, talkative girls to lead him where they would. He delighted them in turn by his agreeable, instructive conversation, which was rendered still more piquant by the odd medley of French, Latin, and Swedish in which it was expressed.
An influx of fresh arrivals next poured into the park--the Chevalier de la Corne, with his pretty daughter, Agathe La Corne St. Luc; the Lady de Tilly and Amélie de Repentigny, with the brothers de Villiers. The brothers had overtaken the Chevalier La Corne upon the road, but the custom of the highway in New France forbade any one passing another without politely asking permission to do so.
“Yes, Coulon,” replied the Chevalier; “ride on!” He winked pleasantly at his daughter as he said this. “There is, I suppose, nothing left for an old fellow who dates from the sixteen hundreds but to take the side of the road and let you pass. I should have liked, however, to stir up the fire in my gallant little Norman ponies against your big New England horses. Where did you get them? Can they run?”
“We got them in the sack of Saratoga,” replied Coulon, “and they ran well that day, but we overtook them. Would Mademoiselle La Corne care if we try them now?”
Scarcely a girl in Quebec would have declined the excitement of a race on the highroad of St. Foye, and Agathe would fain have driven herself in the race, but being in full dress to-day, she thought of her wardrobe and the company. She checked the ardor of her father, and entered the park demurely, as one of the gravest of the guests.
“Happy youths! Noble lads, Agathe!” exclaimed the Chevalier, admiringly, as the brothers rode rapidly past them. “New France will be proud of them some day!”
The rest of the company now began to arrive in quick succession. The lawn was crowded with guests. “Ten thousand thanks for coming!” exclaimed Pierre Philibert, as he assisted Amélie de Repentigny and the Lady de Tilly to alight from their carriage.
“We could not choose but come to-day, Pierre,” replied Amélie, feeling without displeasure the momentary lingering of his hand as it touched hers. “Nothing short of an earthquake would have kept aunt at home,” added she, darting a merry glance of sympathy with her aunt's supposed feelings.
“And you, Amélie?” Pierre looked into those dark eyes which shyly turned aside from his gaze.
“I was an obedient niece, and accompanied her. It is so easy to persuade people to go where they wish to go!” She withdrew her hand gently, and took his arm as he conducted the ladies into the house. She felt a flush on her cheek, but it did not prevent her saying in her frank, kindly way,--“I was glad to come to-day, Pierre, to witness this gathering of the best and noblest in the land to honor your fête. Aunt de Tilly has always predicted greatness for you.”
“And you, Amélie, doubted, knowing me a shade better than your aunt?”
“No, I believed her; so true a prophet as aunt surely deserved one firm believer!”
Pierre felt the electric thrill run through him which a man feels at the moment he discovers a woman believes in him. “Your presence here to-day, Amélie! you cannot think how sweet it is,” said he.
Her hand trembled upon his arm. She thought nothing could be sweeter than such words from Pierre Philibert. With a charming indirectness, however, which did not escape him, she replied, “Le Gardeur is very proud of you to-day, Pierre.”
He laid his fingers upon her hand. It was a delicate little hand, but with the strength of an angel's it had moulded his destiny and led him to the honorable position he had attained. He was profoundly conscious at this moment of what he owed to this girl's silent influence. He contented himself, however, with saying, “I will so strive that one day Amélie de Repentigny shall not shame to say she too is proud of me.”
She did not reply for a moment. A tremor agitated her low, sweet voice. “I am proud of you now, Pierre,--more proud than words can tell to see you so honored, and proudest to think you deserve it all.”
It touched him almost to tears. “Thanks, Amélie; when you are proud of me I shall begin to feel pride of myself. Your opinion is the one thing in life I have most cared for,--your approbation is my best reward.”
Her eyes were eloquent with unspoken words, but she thought, “If that were all!” Pierre Philibert had long received the silent reward of her good opinion and approbation.
The Bourgeois at this moment came up to salute Amélie and the Lady de Tilly.
“The Bourgeois Philibert has the most perfect manner of any gentleman in New France,” was the remark of the Lady de Tilly to Amélie, as he left them again to receive other guests. “They say he can be rough and imperious sometimes to those he dislikes, but to his friends and strangers, and especially to ladies, no breath of spring can be more gentle and balmy.” Amélie assented with a mental reservation in the depths of her dark eyes, and in the dimple that flashed upon her cheek as she suppressed the utterance of a pleasant fancy in reply to her aunt.
Pierre conducted the ladies to the great drawing-room, which was already filled with company, who overwhelmed Amélie and her aunt with the vivacity of their greeting.
In a fine shady grove at a short distance from the house, a row of tables was set for the entertainment of several hundreds of the hardy dependents of the Bourgeois; for while feasting the rich the Bourgeois would not forget his poorer friends, and perhaps his most exquisite satisfaction was in the unrestrained enjoyment of his hospitality by the crowd of happy, hungry fellows and their families, who, under the direction of his chief factor, filled the tables from end to end, and made the park resound with songs and merriment--fellows of infinite gaiety, with appetites of Gargantuas and a capacity for good liquors that reminded one of the tubs of the Danaïdes. The tables groaned beneath mountains of good things, and in the centre of each, like Mont Blanc rising from the lower Alps, stood a magnificent Easter pie, the confection of which was a masterpiece of the skill of Maître Guillot Gobet, the head cook of the Bourgeois, who was rather put out, however, when Dame Rochelle decided to bestow all the Easter pies upon the hungry voyageurs, woodmen, and workmen, and banished them from the menu of the more patrician tables set for the guests of the mansion.
“Yet, after all,” exclaimed Maître Guillot, as he thrust his head out of the kitchen door to listen to the song the gay fellows were singing with all their lungs in honor of his Easter pie; “after all, the fine gentlemen and ladies would not have paid my noble pies such honor as that! and what is more the pies would not have been eaten up to the last crumb!” Maître Guillot's face beamed like a harvest moon, as he chimed in with the well-known ditty in praise of the great pie of Rouen:
“'C'est dans la ville de Rouen, Ils ont fait un paté si grand, Ils ont fait un paté si grand, Qu'ils ont trouvê un homme dedans!'”
Maître Guillot would fain have been nearer, to share in the shouting and clapping of hands which followed the saying of grace by the good Curé of St. Foye, and to see how vigorously knives were handled, and how chins wagged in the delightful task of levelling down mountains of meat, while Gascon wine and Norman cider flowed from ever-replenished flagons.
The Bourgeois and his son, with many of his chief guests, honored for a time the merry feast out-of-doors, and were almost inundated by the flowing cups drunk to the health and happiness of the Bourgeois and of Pierre Philibert.
Maître Guillot Gobet returned to his kitchen, where he stirred up his cooks and scullions on all sides, to make up for the loss of his Easter pies on the grand tables in the hall. He capered among them like a marionette, directing here, scolding there, laughing, joking, or with uplifted hands and stamping feet despairing of his underlings' cooking a dinner fit for the fête of Pierre Philibert.
Maître Guilot was a little, fat, red-nosed fellow, with twinkling black eyes, and a mouth irascible as that of a cake-baker of Lerna. His heart was of the right paste, however, and full as a butter-boat of the sweet sauce of good nature, which he was ready to pour over the heads of all his fellows who quietly submitted to his dictation. But woe to man or maid servant who delayed or disputed his royal orders! An Indian typhoon instantly blew. At such a time even Dame Rochelle would gather her petticoats round her and hurry out of the storm, which always subsided quickly in proportion to the violence of its rage.
Maître Guillot knew what he was about, however. He did not use, he said, to wipe his nose with a herring! and on that day he was going to cook a dinner fit for the Pope after Lent, or even for the Reverend Father De Berey himself, who was the truest gourmet and the best trencherman in New France.
Maître Guillot honored his master, but in his secret soul he did not think his taste quite worthy of his cook! But he worshipped Father De Berey, and gloried in the infallible judgment and correct taste of cookery possessed by the jolly Recollet. The single approbation of Father De Berey was worth more than the praise of a world full of ordinary eating mortals, who smacked their lips and said things were good, but who knew no more than one of the Cent Suisses why things were good, or could appreciate the talents of an artiste of the cordon bleu.
Maître Guillot's Easter pie had been a splendid success. “It was worthy,” he said, “to be placed as a crown on top of the new Cathedral of St. Marie, and receive the consecration of the Bishop.”
Lest the composition of it should be forgotten, Maître Guillot had, with the solemnity of a deacon intoning the Litany, ravished the ear of Jules Painchaud, his future son-in-law, as he taught him the secrets of its confection.
With his white cap set rakishly on one side of his head and arms akimbo, Maître Guillot gave Jules the famous recipe:
“Inside of circular walls of pastry an inch thick, and so rich as easily to be pulled down, and roomy enough within for the Court of King Pepin, lay first a thick stratum of mince-meat of two savory hams of Westphalia, and if you cannot get them, of two hams of our habitans.”
“Of our habitans!” ejaculated Jules, with an air of consternation.
“Precisely! don't interrupt me!” Maître Guillot grew red about the gills in an instant. Jules was silenced. “I have said it!” cried he; “two hams of our habitans! what have you to say against it--stock fish, eh?”
“Oh, nothing, sir,” replied Jules, with humility, “only I thought--” Poor Jules would have consented to eat his thought rather than fall out with the father of his Susette.
“You thought!” Maître Guillot's face was a study for Hogarth, who alone could have painted the alto tone of voice as it proceeded from his round O of a mouth. “Susette shall remain upon my hands an old maid for the term of her natural life if you dispute the confection of Easter pie!”
“Now listen, Jules,” continued he, at once mollified by the contrite, submissive air of his future son-in-law: “Upon the foundation of the mince-meat of two hams of Westphalia,--or, if you cannot get them, of two hams of our habitans,--place scientifically the nicely-cut pieces of a fat turkey, leaving his head to stick out of the upper crust, in evidence that Master Dindon lies buried there! Add two fat capons, two plump partridges, two pigeons, and the back and thighs of a brace of juicy hares. Fill up the whole with beaten eggs, and the rich contents will resemble, as a poet might say, 'fossils of the rock in golden yolks embedded and enjellied!' Season as you would a saint. Cover with a slab of pastry. Bake it as you would cook an angel, and not singe a feather. Then let it cool, and eat it! And then, Jules, as the Reverend Father de Berey always says after grace over an Easter pie, 'Dominus vobiscum!'”
XXI. SIC ITUR AD ASTRA
The old hall of Belmont had been decorated for many a feast since the times of its founder, the Intendant Talon; but it had never contained a nobler company of fair women and brave men, the pick and choice of their race, than to-day met round the hospitable and splendid table of the Bourgeois Philibert in honor of the fête of his gallant son.
Dinner was duly and decorously despatched. The social fashion of New France was not for the ladies to withdraw when the wine followed the feast, but to remain seated with the gentlemen, purifying the conversation, and by their presence restraining the coarseness which was the almost universal vice of the age.
A troop of nimble servitors carried off the carved dishes and fragments of the splendid pâtisseries of Maître Guillot, in such a state of demolition as satisfied the critical eye of the chief cook that the efforts of his genius had been very successful. He inspected the dishes through his spectacles. He knew, by what was left, the ability of the guests to discriminate what they had eaten and to do justice to his skill. He considered himself a sort of pervading divinity, whose culinary ideas passing with his cookery into the bodies of the guests enabled them, on retiring from the feast, to carry away as part of themselves some of the fine essence of Maître Gobet himself.
At the head of his table, peeling oranges and slicing pineapples for the ladies in his vicinity, sat the Bourgeois himself, laughing, jesting, and telling anecdotes with a geniality that was contagious. “'The gods are merry sometimes,' says Homer, 'and their laughter shakes Olympus!'” was the classical remark of Father de Berey, at the other end of the table. Jupiter did not laugh with less loss of dignity than the Bourgeois.
Few of the guests did not remember to the end of their lives the majestic and happy countenance of the Bourgeois on this memorable day.
At his right hand sat Amélie de Repentigny and the Count de la Galissonière. The Governor, charmed with the beauty and agreeableness of the young chatelaine, had led her in to dinner, and devoted himself to her and the Lady de Tilly with the perfection of gallantry of a gentleman of the politest court in Europe. On his left sat the radiant, dark-eyed Hortense de Beauharnais. With a gay assumption of independence Hortense had taken the arm of La Corne St. Luc, and declared she would eat no dinner unless he would be her cavalier and sit beside her! The gallant old soldier surrendered at discretion. He laughingly consented to be her captive, he said, for he had no power and no desire but to obey. Hortense was proud of her conquest. She seated herself by his side with an air of triumph and mock gravity, tapping him with her fan whenever she detected his eye roving round the table, compassionating, she affirmed, her rivals, who had failed where she had won in securing the youngest, the handsomest, and most gallant of all the gentlemen at Belmont.
“Not so fast, Hortense!” exclaimed the gay Chevalier; “you have captured me by mistake! The tall Swede--he is your man! The other ladies all know that, and are anxious to get me out of your toils, so that you may be free to ensnare the philosopher!”
“But you don't wish to get away from me! I am your garland, Chevalier, and you shall wear me to-day. As for the tall Swede, he has no idea of a fair flower of our sex except to wear it in his button-hole,--this way!” added she, pulling a rose out of a vase and archly adorning the Chevalier's vest with it.
“All pretence and jealousy, mademoiselle. The tall Swede knows how to take down your pride and bring you to a proper sense of your false conceit of the beauty and wit of the ladies of New France.”
Hortense gave two or three tosses of defiance to express her emphatic dissent from his opinions.
“I wish Herr Kalm would lend me his philosophic scales, to weigh your sex like lambs in market,” continued La Corne St. Luc; “but I fear I am too old, Hortense, to measure women except by the fathom, which is the measure of a man.”
“And the measure of a man is the measure of an angel too scriptum est, Chevalier!” replied she. Hortense had ten merry meanings in her eye, and looked as if bidding him select which he chose. “The learned Swede's philosophy is lost upon me,” continued she, “he can neither weigh by sample nor measure by fathom the girls of New France!” She tapped him on the arm. “Listen to me, chevalier,” said she, “you are neglecting me already for sake of Cecile Tourangeau!” La Corne was exchanging some gay badinage with a graceful, pretty young lady on the other side of the table, whose snowy forehead, if you examined it closely, was marked with a red scar, in figure of a cross, which, although powdered and partially concealed by a frizz of her thick blonde hair, was sufficiently distinct to those who looked for it; and many did so, as they whispered to each other the story of how she got it.
Le Gardeur de Repentigny sat by Cecile, talking in a very sociable manner, which was also commented on. His conversation seemed to be very attractive to the young lady, who was visibly delighted with the attentions of her handsome gallant.
At this moment a burst of instruments from the musicians, who occupied a gallery at the end of the hall, announced a vocal response to the toast of the King's health, proposed by the Bourgeois. “Prepare yourself for the chorus, Chevalier,” exclaimed Hortense. “Father de Berey is going to lead the royal anthem!”
“Vive le Roi!” replied La Corne. “No finer voice ever sang Mass, or chanted 'God Save the King!' I like to hear the royal anthem from the lips of a churchman rolling it out ore rotundo, like one of the Psalms of David. Our first duty is to love God,--our next to honor the King! and New France will never fail in either!” Loyalty was ingrained in every fibre of La Corne St. Luc.
“Never, Chevalier. Law and Gospel rule together, or fall together! But we must rise,” replied Hortense, springing up.
The whole company rose simultaneously. The rich, mellow voice of the Rev. Father de Berey, round and full as the organ of Ste. Marie, commenced the royal anthem composed by Lulli in honor of Louis Quatorze, upon an occasion of his visit to the famous Convent of St. Cyr, in company with Madame de Maintenon.
The song composed by Madame Brinon was afterwards translated into English, and words and music became, by a singular transposition, the national hymn of the English nation.
“God Save the King!” is no longer heard in France. It was buried with the people's loyalty, fathoms deep under the ruins of the monarchy. But it flourishes still with pristine vigor in New France, that olive branch grafted on the stately tree of the British Empire. The broad chest and flexile lips of Father de Berey rang out the grand old song in tones that filled the stately old hall:
“'Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi! Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi! Sauvez le Roi! Que toujours glorieux. Louis Victorieux, Voye ses ennemis Toujours soumis!'”
The company all joined in the chorus, the gentlemen raising their cups, the ladies waving their handkerchiefs, and male and female blending in a storm of applause that made the old walls ring with joy. Songs and speeches followed in quick succession, cutting as with a golden blade the hours of the dessert into quinzaines of varied pleasures.
The custom of the times had reduced speechmaking after dinner to a minimum. The ladies, as Father de Berey wittily remarked, preferred private confession to public preaching; and long speeches, without inlets for reply, were the eighth mortal sin which no lady would forgive.
The Bourgeois, however, felt it incumbent upon himself to express his deep thanks for the honor done his house on this auspicious occasion. And he remarked that the doors of Belmont, so long closed by reason of the absence of Pierre, would hereafter be ever open to welcome all his friends. He had that day made a gift of Belmont, with all its belongings, to Pierre, and he hoped,--the Bourgeois smiled as he said this, but he would not look in a quarter where his words struck home,--he hoped that some one of Quebec's fair daughters would assist Pierre in the menage of his home and enable him to do honor to his housekeeping.
Immense was the applause that followed the short, pithy speech of the Bourgeois. The ladies blushed and praised, the gentlemen cheered and enjoyed in anticipation the renewal of the old hospitalities of Belmont.
“The skies are raining plum cakes!” exclaimed the Chevalier La Corne to his lively companion. “Joy's golden drops are only distilled in the alembic of woman's heart! What think you, Hortense? Which of Quebec's fair daughters will be willing to share Belmont with Pierre?”
“Oh, any of them would!” replied she. “But why did the Bourgeois restrict his choice to the ladies of Quebec, when he knew I came from the Three Rivers?”
“Oh, he was afraid of you, Hortense; you would make Belmont too good for this world! What say you, Father de Berry? Do you ever walk on the cape?”
The friar, in a merry mood, had been edging close to Hortense. “I love, of all things, to air my gray gown on the cape of a breezy afternoon,” replied the jovial Recollet, “when the fashionables are all out, and every lady is putting her best foot foremost. It is then I feel sure that Horace is the next best thing to the Homilies:
“'Teretesque suras laudo, et integer ego!'”
The Chevalier La Corne pinched the shrugging shoulder of Hortense as he remarked, “Don't confess to Father de Berey that you promenade on the cape! But I hope Pierre Philibert will soon make his choice! We are impatient to visit him and give old Provençal the butler a run every day through those dark crypts of his, where lie entombed the choicest vintages of sunny France.”
The Chevalier said this waggishly, for the benefit of old Provençal, who stood behind his chair looking half alarmed at the threatened raid upon his well-filled cellars.
“But if Pierre should not commit matrimony,” replied Hortense, “what will become of him? and especially what will become of us?”
“We will drink his wine all the same, good fellow that he is! But Pierre had as lief commit suicide as not commit matrimony; and who would not? Look here, Pierre Philibert,” continued the old soldier, addressing him, with good-humored freedom. “Matrimony is clearly your duty, Pierre; but I need not tell you so: it is written on your face plain as the way between Peronne and St. Quintin,--a good, honest way as ever was trod by shoe leather, and as old as Chinon in Touraine! Try it soon, my boy. Quebec is a sack full of pearls!” Hortense pulled him mischievously by the coat, so he caught her hand and held it fast in his, while he proceeded: “You put your hand in the sack and take out the first that offers. It will be worth a Jew's ransom! If you are lucky to find the fairest, trust me it will be the identical pearl of great price for which the merchant went and sold all that he had and bought it. Is not that Gospel, Father de Berey? I think I have heard something like that preached from the pulpit of the Recollets?”
“Matter of brimborion, Chevalier! not to be questioned by laymen! Words of wisdom for my poor brothers of St. Francis, who, after renouncing the world, like to know that they have renounced something worth having! But not to preach a sermon on your parable, Chevalier, I will promise Colonel Philibert that when he has found the pearl of great price,”--Father de Berey, who knew a world of secrets, glanced archly at Amélie as he said this,--“the bells of our monastery shall ring out such a merry peal as they have not rung since fat Brother Le Gros broke his wind, and short Brother Bref stretched himself out half a yard pulling the bell ropes on the wedding of the Dauphin.”
Great merriment followed the speech of Father de Berey. Hortense rallied the Chevalier, a good old widower, upon himself not travelling the plain way between Peronne and St. Quintin, and jestingly offered herself to travel with him, like a couple of gypsies carrying their budget of happiness pick-a-back through the world.
“Better than that!” La Corne exclaimed. Hortense was worthy to ride on the baggage-wagons in his next campaign! Would she go? She gave him her hand. “I expect nothing else!” said she. “I am a soldier's daughter, and expect to live a soldier's wife, and die a soldier's widow. But a truce to jest. It is harder to be witty than wise,” continued she. “What is the matter with Cousin Le Gardeur?” Her eyes were fixed upon him as he read a note just handed to him by a servant. He crushed it in his hand with a flash of anger, and made a motion as if about to tear it, but did not. He placed it in his bosom. But the hilarity of his countenance was gone.
There was another person at the table whose quick eye, drawn by sisterly affection, saw Le Gardeur's movement before even Hortense. Amélie was impatient to leave her seat and go beside him, but she could not at the moment leave the lively circle around her. She at once conjectured that the note was from Angélique des Meloises. After drinking deeply two or three times Le Gardeur arose, and with a faint excuse that did not impose on his partner left the table. Amélie rose quickly also, excusing herself to the Bourgeois, and joined her brother in the park, where the cool night air blew fresh and inviting for a walk.
Pretty Cecile Touraugeau had caught a glimpse of the handwriting as she sat by the side of Le Gardeur, and guessed correctly whence it had come and why her partner so suddenly left the table.
She was out of humor; the red mark upon her forehead grew redder as she pouted in visible discontent. But the great world moves on, carrying alternate storms and sunshine upon its surface. The company rose from the table--some to the ball-room, some to the park and conservatories. Cecile's was a happy disposition, easily consoled for her sorrows. Every trace of her displeasure was banished and almost forgotten from the moment the gay, handsome Jumonville de Villiers invited her out to the grand balcony, where, he said, the rarest pastime was going on.
And rare pastime it was! A group of laughing but half-serious girls were gathered round Doctor Gauthier, urging him to tell their fortunes by consulting the stars, which to-night shone out with unusual brilliancy.
At that period, as at the present, and in every age of the world, the female sex, like the Jews of old, asks signs, while the Greeks--that is, the men--seek wisdom.
The time never was, and never will be, when a woman will cease to be curious,--when her imagination will not forecast the decrees of fate in regard to the culminating event of her life and her whole nature--marriage. It was in vain Doctor Gauthier protested his inability to read the stars without his celestial eye-glasses.
The ladies would not accept his excuses: he knew the heavens by heart, they said, and could read the stars of destiny as easily as the Bishop his breviary.
In truth the worthy doctor was not only a believer but an adept in astrology. He had favored his friends with not a few horoscopes and nativities, when pressed to do so. His good nature was of the substance of butter: any one that liked could spread it over their bread. Many good men are eaten up in that way by greedy friends.
Hortense de Beauharnais urged the Doctor so merrily and so perseveringly, promising to marry him herself if the stars said so, that he laughingly gave way, but declared he would tell Hortense's fortune first, which deserved to be good enough to make her fulfil her promise just made.
She was resigned, she said, and would accept any fate from the rank of a queen to a cell among the old maids of St. Cyr! The girls of Quebec hung all their hopes on the stars, bright and particular ones especially. They were too loving to live single, and too proud to live poor. But she was one who would not wait for ships to land that never came, and plums to drop into her mouth that never ripened. Hortense would be ruled by the stars, and wise Doctor Gauthier should to-night declare her fate.
They all laughed at this free talk of Hortense. Not a few of the ladies shrugged their shoulders and looked askance at each other, but many present wished they had courage to speak like her to Doctor Gauthier.
“Well, I see there is nothing else for it but to submit to my ruling star, and that is you, Hortense!” cried the Doctor; “so please stand up before me while I take an inventory of your looks as a preliminary to telling your fortune.”
Hortense placed herself instantly before him. “It is one of the privileges of our dry study,” remarked he, as he looked admiringly on the tall, charming figure and frank countenance of the girl before him.
“The querent,” said he gravely, “is tall, straight, slender, arms long, hands and feet of the smallest, hair just short of blackness, piercing, roving eyes, dark as night and full of fire, sight quick, and temperament alive with energy, wit, and sense.”
“Oh, tell my fortune, not my character! I shall shame of energy, wit, and sense, if I hear such flattery, Doctor!” exclaimed she, shaking herself like a young eagle preparing to fly.
“We shall see what comes of it, Hortense!” replied he gravely, as with his gold-headed cane he slowly quartered the heavens like an ancient augur, and noted the planets in their houses. The doctor was quite serious, and even Hortense, catching his looks, stood very silent as he studied the celestial aspects,
“Carrying through ether in perpetual round Decrees and resolutions of the Gods.”
“The Lord of the ascendant,” said he, “is with the Lord of the seventh in the tenth house. The querent, therefore, shall marry the man made for her, but not the man of her youthful hope and her first love.
“The stars are true,” continued he, speaking to himself rather than to her. “Jupiter in the seventh house denotes rank and dignity by marriage, and Mars in sextile foretells successful wars. It is wonderful, Hortense! The blood of Beauharnais shall sit on thrones more than one; it shall rule France, Italy, and Flanders, but not New France, for Saturn in quintile looks darkly upon the twins who rule America!”
“Come, Jumonville,” exclaimed Hortense, “congratulate Claude on the greatness awaiting the house of Beauharnais, and condole with me that I am to see none of it myself! I do not care for kings and queens in the third generation, but I do care for happy fortune in the present for those I know and love! Come, Jumonville, have your fortune told now, to keep me in countenance. If the Doctor hits the truth for you I shall believe in him for myself.”
“That is a good idea, Hortense,” replied Jumonville; “I long ago hung my hat on the stars--let the Doctor try if he can find it.”
The Doctor, in great good humor, surveyed the dark, handsome face and lithe, athletic figure of Jumonville de Villiers. He again raised his cane with the gravity of a Roman pontifex, marking off his templum in the heavens. Suddenly he stopped. He repeated more carefully his survey, and then turned his earnest eyes upon the young soldier.
“You see ill-fortune for me, Doctor!” exclaimed Jumonville, with bright, unflinching eyes, as he would look on danger of any kind.
“The Hyleg, or giver of life, is afflicted by Mars in the eighth house, and Saturn is in evil aspect in the ascendant!” said the Doctor slowly.
“That sounds warlike, and means fighting I suppose, Doctor. It is a brave fortune for a soldier. Go on!” Jumonville was in earnest now.
“The pars fortunae,” continued the Doctor, gazing upward, “rejoices in a benign aspect with Venus. Fame, true love, and immortality will be yours, Jumonville de Villiers; but you will die young under the flag of your country and for sake of your King! You will not marry, but all the maids and matrons of New France will lament your fate with tears, and from your death shall spring up the salvation of your native land--how, I see not; but decretum est, Jumonville, ask me no more!”
A thrill like a stream of electricity passed through the company. Their mirth was extinguished, for none could wholly free their minds from the superstition of their age. The good Doctor sat down, and wiped his moistened eye-glasses. He would tell no more to-night, he said. He had really gone too far, making jest of earnest and earnest of jest, and begged pardon of Jumonville for complying with his humor.
The young soldier laughed merrily. “If fame, immortality, and true love are to be mine, what care I for death? It will be worth giving up life for, to have the tears of the maids and matrons of New France to lament your fate. What could the most ambitious soldier desire more?”
The words of Jumonville struck a kindred chord in the bosom of Hortense de Beauharnais. They were stamped upon her heart forever. A few years after this prediction, Jumonville de Villiers lay slain under a flag of truce on the bank of the Monongahela, and of all the maids and matrons of New France who wept over his fate, none shed more and bitterer tears than his fair betrothed bride, Hortense de Beauharnais.
The prediction of the Sieur Gauthier was repeated and retold as a strangely true tale; it passed into the traditions of the people, and lingered in their memory generations after the festival of Belmont was utterly forgotten.
When the great revolt took place in the English Colonies, the death of the gallant Jumonville de Villiers was neither forgotten nor forgiven by New France. Congress appealed in vain for union and help from Canadians. Washington's proclamations were trodden under foot, and his troops driven back or captured. If Canada was lost to France partly through the death of Jumonville, it may also be said that his blood helped to save it to England. The ways of Providence are so mysterious in working out the problems of national existence that the life or death of a single individual may turn the scales of destiny over half a continent.
But all these events lay as yet darkly in the womb of the future. The gallant Jumonville who fell, and his brother Coulon who took his “noble revenge” upon Washington by sparing his life, were to-day the gayest of the gay throng who had assembled to do honor to Pierre Philibert.
While this group of merry guests, half in jest, half in earnest, were trying to discover in the stars the “far-reaching concords” that moulded the life of each, Amélie led her brother away from the busy grounds near the mansion, and took a quiet path that led into the great park which they entered.
A cool salt-water breeze, following the flood tide that was coming up the broad St. Lawrence, swept their faces as Amélie walked by the side of Le Gardeur, talking in her quiet way of things familiar, and of home interests until she saw the fever of his blood abate and his thoughts return into calmer channels. Her gentle craft subdued his impetuous mood--if craft it might be called--for more wisely cunning than all craft is the prompting of true affection, where reason responds like instinct to the wants of the heart.
They sat down upon a garden seat overlooking the great valley. None of the guests had sauntered out so far, but Amélie's heart was full; she had much to say, and wished no interruption.
“I am glad to sit in this pretty spot, Amélie,” said he, at last, for he had listened in silence to the sweet, low voice of his sister as she kept up her half sad, half glad monologue, because she saw it pleased him. It brought him into a mood in which she might venture to talk of the matter that pressed sorely upon her heart.
“A little while ago, I feared I might offend you, Le Gardeur,” said she, taking his hand tenderly in hers, “if I spoke all I wished. I never did offend you that I remember, brother, did I?”
“Never, my incomparable sister; you never did, and never could. Say what you will, ask me what you like; but I fear I am unworthy of your affection, sister.”
“You are not unworthy; God gave you as my only brother, you will never be unworthy in my eyes. But it touches me to the quick to suspect others may think lightly of you, Le Gardeur.”
He flinched, for his pride was touched, but he knew Amélie was right. “It was weakness in me,” said he, “I confess it, sister. To pour wine upon my vexation in hope to cure it, is to feed a fire with oil. To throw fire into a powder magazine were wisdom compared with my folly, Amélie: I was angry at the message I got at such a time. Angélique des Meloises has no mercy upon her lovers!”
“Oh, my prophetic heart! I thought as much! It was Angélique, then, sent you the letter you read at table?”
“Yes, who else could have moved me so? The time was ill-chosen, but I suspect, hating the Bourgeois as she does, Angélique intended to call me from Pierre's fête. I shall obey her now, but tonight she shall obey me, decide to make or mar me, one way or other! You may read the letter, Amélie, if you will.”
“I care not to read it, brother; I know Angélique too well not to fear her influence over you. Her craft and boldness were always a terror to her companions. But you will not leave Pierre's fête tonight?” added she, half imploringly; for she felt keenly the discourtesy to Pierre Philibert.
“I must do even that, sister! Were Angélique as faulty as she is fair, I should only love her the more for her faults, and make them my own. Were she to come to me like Herodias with the Baptist's head in a charger, I should outdo Herod in keeping my pledge to her.”
Amélie uttered a low, moaning cry. “O my dear infatuated brother, it is not in nature for a De Repentigny to love irrationally like that! What maddening philtre have you drank, to intoxicate you with a woman who uses you so imperiously? But you will not go, Le Gardeur!” added she, clinging to his arm. “You are safe so long as you are with your sister,--you will be safe no longer if you go to the Maison des Meloises tonight!”
“Go I must and shall, Amélie! I have drank the maddening philtre,--I know that, Amélie, and would not take an antidote if I had one! The world has no antidote to cure me. I have no wish to be cured of love for Angélique, and in fine I cannot be, so let me go and receive the rod for coming to Belmont and the reward for leaving it at her summons!” He affected a tone of levity, but Amélie's ear easily detected the false ring of it.
“Dearest brother!” said she, “are you sure Angélique returns, or is capable of returning, love like yours? She is like the rest of us, weak and fickle, merely human, and not at all the divinity a man in his fancy worships when in love with a woman.” It was in vain, however, for Amélie to try to persuade her brother of that.
“What care I, Amélie, so long as Angélique is not weak and fickle to me?” answered he; “but she will think her tardy lover is both weak and fickle unless I put in a speedy appearance at the Maison des Meloises!” He rose up as if to depart, still holding his sister by the hand.
Amélie's tears flowed silently in the darkness. She was not willing to plant a seed of distrust in the bosom of her brother, yet she remembered bitterly and indignantly what Angélique had said of her intentions towards the Intendant. Was she using Le Gardeur as a foil to set off her attractions in the eyes of Bigot?
“Brother!” said Amélie, “I am a woman, and comprehend my sex better than you. I know Angélique's far-reaching ambition and crafty ways. Are you sure, not in outward persuasion but in inward conviction, that she loves you as a woman should love the man she means to marry?”
Le Gardeur felt her words like a silver probe that searched his heart. With all his unbounded devotion, he knew Angélique too well not to feel a pang of distrust sometimes, as she showered her coquetries upon every side of her. It was the overabundance of her love, he said, but he thought it often fell like the dew round Gideon's fleece, refreshing all the earth about it, but leaving the fleece dry. “Amélie!” said he, “you try me hard, and tempt me too, my sister, but it is useless. Angélique may be false as Cressida to other men, she will not be false to me! She has sworn it, with her hand in mine, before the altar of Notre Dame. I would go down to perdition with her in my arms rather than be a crowned king with all the world of women to choose from and not get her.”
Amélie shuddered at his vehemence, but she knew how useless was expostulation. She wisely refrained, deeming it her duty, like a good sister, to make the best of what she could not hinder. Some jasmines overhung the seat; she plucked a handful, and gave them to him as they rose to return to the house.
“Take them with you, Le Gardeur,” said she, giving him the flowers, which she tied into a wreath; “they will remind Angélique that she has a powerful rival in your sister's love.”
He took them as they walked slowly back. “Would she were like you, Amélie, in all things!” said he. “I will put some of your flowers in her hair to-night for your sake, sister.”
“And for her own! May they be for you both an augury of good! Mind and return home, Le Gardeur, after your visit. I shall sit up to await your arrival, to congratulate you;” and, after a pause, she added, “or to console you, brother!”
“Oh, no fear, sister!” replied he, cheeringly. “Angélique is true as steel to me. You shall call her my betrothed tomorrow! Good-by! And now go dance with all delight till morning.” He kissed her and departed for the city, leaving her in the ball-room by the side of the Lady de Tilly.
Amélie related to her aunt the result of her conversation with Le Gardeur, and the cause of his leaving the fête so abruptly. The Lady de Tilly listened with surprise and distress. “To think,” said she, “of Le Gardeur asking that terrible girl to marry him! My only hope is, she will refuse him. And if it be as I hear, I think she will!”
“It would be the ruin of Le Gardeur if she did, aunt! You cannot think how determined he is on this marriage.”
“It would be his ruin if she accepted him!” replied the Lady de Tilly. “With any other woman Le Gardeur might have a fair chance of happiness; but none with her! More than one of her lovers lies in a bloody grave by reason of her coquetries. She has ruined every man whom she has flattered into loving her. She is without affection. Her thoughts are covered with a veil of deceit impenetrable. She would sacrifice the whole world to her vanity. I fear, Amélie, she will sacrifice Le Gardeur as ruthlessly as the most worthless of her admirers.”
“We can only hope for the best, aunt; and I do think Angélique loves Le Gardeur as she never loved any other.”
They were presently rejoined by Pierre Philibert. The Lady de Tilly and Amélie apologized for Le Gardeur's departure,--he had been compelled to go to the city on an affair of urgency, and had left them to make his excuses. Pierre Philibert was not without a shrewd perception of the state of affairs. He pitied Le Gardeur, and excused him, speaking most kindly of him in a way that touched the heart of Amélie. The ball went on with unflagging spirit and enjoyment. The old walls fairly vibrated with the music and dancing of the gay company.
The music, like the tide in the great river that night, reached its flood only after the small hours had set in. Amélie had given her hand to Pierre for one or two dances, and many a friendly, many a half envious guess was made as to the probable Chatelaine of Belmont.
XXII. SO GLOZED THE TEMPTER
The lamps burned brightly in the boudoir of Angélique des Meloises on the night of the fête of Pierre Philibert. Masses of fresh flowers filled the antique Sèvres vases, sending delicious odors through the apartment, which was furnished in a style of almost royal splendor. Upon the white hearth a few billets of wood blazed cheerfully, for, after a hot day, as was not uncommon in New France, a cool salt-water breeze came up the great river, bringing reminders of cold sea-washed rocks and snowy crevices still lingering upon the mountainous shores of the St. Lawrence.
Angélique sat idly watching the wreaths of smoke as they rose in shapes fantastic as her own thoughts.
By that subtle instinct which is a sixth sense in woman, she knew that Le Gardeur de Repentigny would visit her to-night and renew his offer of marriage. She meant to retain his love and evade his proposals, and she never for a moment doubted her ability to accomplish her ends. Men's hearts had hitherto been but potter's clay in her hands, and she had no misgivings now; but she felt that the love of Le Gardeur was a thing she could not tread on without a shock to herself like the counter-stroke of a torpedo to the naked foot of an Indian who rashly steps upon it as it basks in a sunny pool.
She was agitated beyond her wont, for she loved Le Gardeur with a strange, selfish passion, for her own sake, not for his,--a sort of love not uncommon with either sex. She had the frankness to be half ashamed of it, for she knew the wrong she was doing to one of the most noble and faithful hearts in the world. But the arrival of the Intendant had unsettled every good resolution she had once made to marry Le Gardeur de Repentigny and become a reputable matron in society. Her ambitious fantasies dimmed every perception of duty to her own heart as well as his; and she had worked herself into that unenviable frame of mind which possesses a woman who cannot resolve either to consent or deny, to accept her lover or to let him go.
The solitude of her apartment became insupportable to her. She sprang up, opened the window, and sat down in the balcony outside, trying to find composure by looking down into the dark, still street. The voices of two men engaged in eager conversation reached her ear. They sat upon the broad steps of the house, so that every word they spoke reached her ear, although she could scarcely distinguish them in the darkness. These were no other than Max Grimeau and Blind Bartemy, the brace of beggars whose post was at the gate of the Basse Ville. They seemed to be comparing the amount of alms each had received during the day, and were arranging for a supper at some obscure haunt they frequented in the purlieus of the lower town, when another figure came up, short, dapper, and carrying a knapsack, as Angélique could detect by the glimmer of a lantern that hung on a rope stretched across the street. He was greeted warmly by the old mendicants.
“Sure as my old musket it is Master Pothier, and nobody else!” exclaimed Max Grimeau rising, and giving the newcomer a hearty embrace. “Don't you see, Bartemy? He has been foraging among the fat wives of the south shore. What a cheek he blows--red as a peony, and fat as a Dutch Burgomaster!” Max had seen plenty of the world when he marched under Marshal de Belleisle, so he was at no loss for apt comparisons.
“Yes!” replied Blind Bartemy, holding out his hand to be shaken. “I see by your voice, Master Pothier, that you have not said grace over bare bones during your absence. But where have you been this long time?”
“Oh, fleecing the King's subjects to the best of my poor ability in the law! and without half the success of you and Max here, who toll the gate of the Basse Ville more easily than the Intendant gets in the King's taxes!”
“Why not?” replied Bartemy, with a pious twist of his neck, and an upward cast of his blank orbs. “It is pour l'amour de Dieu! We beggars save more souls than the Curé; for we are always exhorting men to charity. I think we ought to be part of Holy Church as well as the Gray Friars.”
“And so we are part of Holy Church, Bartemy!” interrupted Max Grimeau. “When the good Bishop washed twelve pair of our dirty feet on Maunday Thursday in the Cathedral, I felt like an Apostle--I did! My feet were just ready for benediction; for see! they had never been washed, that I remember of, since I marched to the relief of Prague! But you should have been out to Belmont to-day, Master Pothier! There was the grandest Easter pie ever made in New France! You might have carried on a lawsuit inside of it, and lived off the estate for a year--I ate a bushel of it. I did!”
“Oh, the cursed luck is every day mine!” replied Master Pothier, clapping his hands upon his stomach. “I would not have missed that Easter pie--no, not to draw the Pope's will! But, as it is laid down in the Coutume d' Orléans (Tit. 17), the absent lose the usufruct of their rights; vide, also, Pothier des Successions--I lost my share of the pie of Belmont!”
“Well, never mind, Master Pothier,” replied Max. “Don't grieve; you shall go with us to-night to the Fleur-de-Lis in the Sault au Matelot. Bartemy and I have bespoken an eel pie and a gallon of humming cider of Normandy. We shall all be jolly as the marguilliers of Ste. Roche, after tithing the parish!”
“Have with you, then! I am free now: I have just delivered a letter to the Intendant from a lady at Beaumanoir, and got a crown for it. I will lay it on top of your eel pie, Max!”
Angélique, from being simply amused at the conversation of the old beggars, became in an instant all eyes and ears at the words of Master Pothier.
“Had you ever the fortune to see that lady at Beaumanoir?” asked Max, with more curiosity than was to be expected of one in his position.
“No; the letter was handed me by Dame Tremblay, with a cup of wine. But the Intendant gave me a crown when he read it. I never saw the Chevalier Bigot in better humor! That letter touched both his purse and his feelings. But how did you ever come to hear of the Lady of Beaumanoir?”
“Oh, Bartemy and I hear everything at the gate of the Basse Ville! My Lord Bishop and Father Glapion of the Jesuits met in the gate one day and spoke of her, each asking the other if he knew who she was--when up rode the Intendant; and the Bishop made free, as Bishops will, you know, to question him whether he kept a lady at the Château.
“'A round dozen of them, my Lord Bishop!' replied Bigot, laughing. La! It takes the Intendant to talk down a Bishop! He bade my Lord not to trouble himself, the lady was under his tutelle! which I comprehended as little, as little--”
“As you do your Nominy Dominy!” replied Pothier. “Don't be angry, Max, if I infer that the Intendant quoted Pigean (Tit. 2, 27): 'Le Tuteur est comptable de sa gestion.'”
“I don't care what the pigeons have to say to it--that is what the Intendant said!” replied Max, hotly, “and THAT, for your law grimoire, Master Pothier!” Max snapped his fingers like the lock of his musket at Prague, to indicate what he meant by THAT!
“Oh, inepte loquens! you don't understand either law or Latin, Max!” exclaimed Pothier, shaking his ragged wig with an air of pity.
“I understand begging; and that is getting without cheating, and much more to the purpose,” replied Max, hotly. “Look you, Master Pothier! you are learned as three curates; but I can get more money in the gate of the Basse Ville by simply standing still and crying out Pour l'amour de Dieu! than you with your budget of law lingo-jingo, running up and down the country until the dogs eat off the calves of your legs, as they say in the Nivernois.”
“Well, never mind what they say in the Nivernois about the calves of my legs! Bon coq ne fut jamais gras!--a game-cock is never fat--and that is Master Pothier dit Robin. Lean as are my calves, they will carry away as much of your eel pie to-night as those of the stoutest carter in Quebec!”
“And the pie is baked by this time; so let us be jogging!” interrupted Bartemy, rising. “Now give me your arm, Max! and with Master Pothier's on the other side, I shall walk to the Fleur-de-Lis straight as a steeple.”
The glorious prospect of supper made all three merry as crickets on a warm hearth, as they jogged over the pavement in their clouted shoes, little suspecting they had left a flame of anger in the breast of Angélique des Meloises, kindled by the few words of Pothier respecting the lady of Beaumanoir.
Angélique recalled with bitterness that the rude bearer of the note had observed something that had touched the heart and opened the purse of the Intendant. What was it? Was Bigot playing a game with Angélique des Meloises? Woe to him and the lady of Beaumanoir if he was! As she sat musing over it a knock was heard on the door of her boudoir. She left the balcony and reëntered her room, where a neat, comely girl in a servant's dress was waiting to speak to her.
The girl was not known to Angélique. But courtesying very low, she informed her that she was Fanchon Dodier, a cousin of Lizette's. She had been in service at the Château of Beaumanoir, but had just left it. “There is no living under Dame Tremblay,” said she, “if she suspect a maid servant of flirting ever so little with M. Froumois, the handsome valet of the Intendant! She imagined that I did; and such a life as she has led me, my Lady! So I came to the city to ask advice of cousin Lizette, and seek a new place. I am sure Dame Tremblay need not be so hard upon the maids. She is always boasting of her own triumphs when she was the Charming Josephine.”
“And Lizette referred you to me?” asked Angélique, too occupied just now to mind the gossip about Dame Tremblay, which another time she would have enjoyed immensely. She eyed the girl with intense curiosity; for might she not tell her something of the secret over which she was eating her heart out?
“Yes, my Lady! Lizette referred me to you, and told me to be very circumspect indeed about what I said touching the Intendant, but simply to ask if you would take me into your service. Lizette need not have warned me about the Intendant; for I never reveal secrets of my masters or mistresses, never! never, my Lady!”
“You are more cunning than you look, nevertheless,” thought Angélique, “whatever scruple you may have about secrets.” “Fanchon,” said she, “I will make one condition with you: I will take you into my service if you will tell me whether you ever saw the Lady of Beaumanoir.”
Angélique's notions of honor, clear enough in theory, never prevented her sacrificing them without compunction to gain an object or learn a secret that interested her.
“I will willingly tell you all I know, my Lady. I have seen her once; none of the servants are supposed to know she is in the Château, but of course all do.” Fanchon stood with her two hands in the pockets of her apron, as ready to talk as the pretty grisette who directed Lawrence Sterne to the Opéra Comique.
“Of course!” remarked Angélique, “a secret like that could never be kept in the Château of Beaumanoir! Now tell me, Fanchon, what is she like?” Angélique sat up eagerly and brushed back the hair from her ear with a rapid stroke of her hand as she questioned the girl. There was a look in her eyes that made Fanchon a little afraid, and brought out more truth than she intended to impart.
“I saw her this morning, my Lady, as she knelt in her oratory: the half-open door tempted me to look, in spite of the orders of Dame Tremblay.”
“Ah! you saw her this morning!” repeated Angélique impetuously; “how does she appear? Is she better in looks than when she first came to the Château, or worse? She ought to be worse, much worse!”
“I do not know, my Lady, but, as I said, I looked in the door, although forbid to do so. Half-open doors are so tempting, and one cannot shut one's eyes! Even a keyhole is hard to resist when you long to know what is on the other side of it--I always found it so!”
“I dare say you did! But how does she look?” broke in Angélique, impatiently stamping her dainty foot on the floor.
“Oh, so pale, my Lady! but her face is the loveliest I ever saw,--almost,” added she, with an after-thought; “but so sad! she looks like the twin sister of the blessed Madonna in the Seminary chapel, my Lady.”
“Was she at her devotions, Fanchon?”
“I think not, my Lady: she was reading a letter which she had just received from the Intendant.”
Angélique's eyes were now ablaze. She conjectured at once that Caroline was corresponding with Bigot, and that the letter brought to the Intendant by Master Pothier was in reply to one from him. “But how do you know the letter she was reading was from the Intendant? It could not be!” Angélique's eyebrows contracted angrily, and a dark shadow passed over her face. She said “It could not be,” but she felt it could be, and was.
“Oh, but it was from the Intendant, my Lady! I heard her repeat his name and pray God to bless François Bigot for his kind words. That is the Intendant's name, is it not, my Lady?”
“To be sure it is! I should not have doubted you, Fanchon! but could you gather the purport of that letter? Speak truly, Fanchon, and I will reward you splendidly. What think you it was about?”
“I did more than gather the purport of it, my Lady: I have got the letter itself!” Angélique sprang up eagerly, as if to embrace Fanchon. “I happened, in my eagerness, to jar the door; the lady, imagining some one was coming, rose suddenly and left the room. In her haste she dropped the letter on the floor. I picked it up; I thought no harm, as I was determined to leave Dame Tremblay to-day. Would my Lady like to read the letter?”
Angélique fairly sprang at the offer. “You have got the letter, Fanchon? Let me see it instantly! How considerate of you to bring it! I will give you this ring for that letter!” She pulled a ring off her finger, and seizing Fanchon's hand, put it on hers. Fanchon was enchanted; she admired the ring, as she turned it round and round her finger.
“I am infinitely obliged, my Lady, for your gift. It is worth a million such letters,” said she.
“The letter outweighs a million rings,” replied Angélique as she tore it open violently and sat down to read.
The first word struck her like a stone:
“DEAR CAROLINE:”--it was written in the bold hand of the Intendant, which Angélique knew very well--“You have suffered too much for my sake, but I am neither unfeeling nor ungrateful. I have news for you! Your father has gone to France in search of you! No one suspects you to be here. Remain patiently where you are at present, and in the utmost secrecy, or there will be a storm which may upset us both. Try to be happy, and let not the sweetest eyes that were ever seen grow dim with needless regrets. Better and brighter days will surely come. Meanwhile, pray! pray, my Caroline! it will do you good, and perhaps make me more worthy of the love which I know is wholly mine.
“Adieu, FRANÇOIS.”
Angélique devoured rather than read the letter. She had no sooner perused it than she tore it up in a paroxysm of fury, scattering its pieces like snowflakes over the floor, and stamping on them with her firm foot as if she would tread them into annihilation.
Fanchon was not unaccustomed to exhibitions of feminine wrath; but she was fairly frightened at the terrible rage that shook Angélique from head to foot.
“Fanchon! did you read that letter?” demanded she, turning suddenly upon the trembling maid. The girl saw her mistress's cheeks twitch with passion, and her hands clench as if she would strike her if she answered yes.
Shrinking with fear, Fanchon replied faintly, “No, my Lady; I cannot read.”
“And you have allowed no other person to read it?”
“No, my Lady; I was afraid to show the letter to any one; you know I ought not to have taken it!”
“Was no inquiry made about it?” Angélique laid her hand upon the girl's shoulder, who trembled from head to foot.
“Yes, my Lady; Dame Tremblay turned the Château upside down, looking for it; but I dared not tell her I had it!”
“I think you speak truth, Fanchon!” replied Angélique, getting somewhat over her passion; but her bosom still heaved, like the ocean after a storm. “And now mind what I say!”--her hand pressed heavily on the girl's shoulder, while she gave her a look that seemed to freeze the very marrow in her bones. “You know a secret about the Lady of Beaumanoir, Fanchon, and one about me too! If you ever speak of either to man or woman, or even to yourself, I will cut the tongue out of your mouth and nail it to that door-post! Mind my words, Fanchon! I never fail to do what I threaten.”
“Oh, only do not look so at me, my Lady!” replied poor Fanchon, perspiring with fear. “I am sure I never shall speak of it. I swear by our Blessed Lady of Ste. Foye! I will never breathe to mortal that I gave you that letter.”
“That will do!” replied Angélique, throwing herself down in her great chair. “And now you may go to Lizette; she will attend to you. But REMEMBER!”
The frightened girl did not wait for another command to go. Angélique held up her finger, which to Fanchon looked terrible as a poniard. She hurried down to the servants' hall with a secret held fast between her teeth for once in her life; and she trembled at the very thought of ever letting it escape.
Angélique sat with her hands on her temples, staring upon the fire that flared and flickered in the deep fireplace. She had seen a wild, wicked vision there once before. It came again, as things evil never fail to come again at our bidding. Good may delay, but evil never waits. The red fire turned itself into shapes of lurid dens and caverns, changing from horror to horror until her creative fancy formed them into the secret chamber of Beaumanoir with its one fair, solitary inmate, her rival for the hand of the Intendant,--her fortunate rival, if she might believe the letter brought to her so strangely. Angélique looked fiercely at the fragments of it lying upon the carpet, and wished she had not destroyed it; but every word of it was stamped upon her memory, as if branded with a hot iron.
“I see it all, now!” exclaimed she--“Bigot's falseness, and her shameless effrontery in seeking him in his very house. But it shall not be!” Angélique's voice was like the cry of a wounded panther tearing at the arrow which has pierced his flank. “Is Angélique des Meloises to be humiliated by that woman? Never! But my bright dreams will have no fulfilment so long as she lives at Beaumanoir,--so long as she lives anywhere!”
She sat still for a while, gazing into the fire; and the secret chamber of Beaumanoir again formed itself before her vision. She sprang up, touched by the hand of her good angel perhaps, and for the last time. “Satan whispered it again in my ear!” cried she. “Ste. Marie! I am not so wicked as that! Last night the thought came to me in the dark--I shook it off at dawn of day. To-night it comes again,--and I let it touch me like a lover, and I neither withdraw my hand nor tremble! To-morrow it will return for the last time and stay with me,--and I shall let it sleep on my pillow! The babe of sin will have been born and waxed to a full demon, and I shall yield myself up to his embraces! O Bigot, Bigot! what have you not done? C'est la faute à vous! C'est la faute à vous!” She repeated this exclamation several times, as if by accusing Bigot she excused her own evil imaginings and cast the blame of them upon him. She seemed drawn down into a vortex from which there was no escape. She gave herself up to its drift in a sort of passionate abandonment. The death or the banishment of Caroline were the only alternatives she could contemplate. “'The sweetest eyes that were ever seen'--Bigot's foolish words!” thought she; “and the influence of those eyes must be killed if Angélique des Meloises is ever to mount the lofty chariot of her ambition.”
“Other women,” she thought bitterly, “would abandon greatness for love, and in the arms of a faithful lover like Le Gardeur find a compensation for the slights of the Intendant!”
But Angélique was not like other women: she was born to conquer men--not to yield to them. The steps of a throne glittered in her wild fancy, and she would not lose the game of her life because she had missed the first throw. Bigot was false to her, but he was still worth the winning, for all the reasons which made her first listen to him. She had no love for him--not a spark! But his name, his rank, his wealth, his influence at Court, and a future career of glory there--these things she had regarded as her own by right of her beauty and skill in ruling men. “No rival shall ever boast she has conquered Angélique des Meloises!” cried she, clenching her hands. And thus it was in this crisis of her fate the love of Le Gardeur was blown like a feather before the breath of her passionate selfishness. The weights of gold pulled her down to the nadir. Angélique's final resolution was irrevocably taken before her eager, hopeful lover appeared in answer to her summons recalling him from the festival of Belmont.
XXIII. SEALS OF LOVE, BUT SEALED IN VAIN
She sat waiting Le Gardeur's arrival, and the thought of him began to assert its influence as the antidote of the poisonous stuff she had taken into her imagination. His presence so handsome, his manner so kind, his love so undoubted, carried her into a region of intense satisfaction. Angélique never thought so honestly well of herself as when recounting the marks of affection bestowed upon her by Le Gardeur de Repentigny. “His love is a treasure for any woman to possess, and he has given it all to me!” said she to herself. “There are women who value themselves wholly by the value placed upon them by others; but I value others by the measure of myself. I love Le Gardeur; and what I love I do not mean to lose!” added she, with an inconsequence that fitted ill with her resolution regarding the Intendant. But Angélique was one who reconciled to herself all professions, however opposite or however incongruous.
A hasty knock at the door of the mansion, followed by the quick, well-known step up the broad stair, brought Le Gardeur into her presence. He looked flushed and disordered as he took her eagerly-extended hand and pressed it to his lips.
Her whole aspect underwent a transformation in the presence of her lover. She was unfeignedly glad to see him. Without letting go his hand she led him to the sofa, and sat down by him. Other men had the semblance of her graciousness, and a perfect imitation it was too; but he alone had the reality of her affection.
“O Le Gardeur!” exclaimed she, looking him through and through, and detecting no flaw in his honest admiration, “can you forgive me for asking you to come and see me to-night? and for absolutely no reason--none in the world, Le Gardeur, but that I longed to see you! I was jealous of Belmont for drawing you away from the Maison des Meloises to-night!”
“And what better reason could I have in the world than that you were longing to see me, Angélique? I think I should leave the gate of Heaven itself if you called me back, darling! Your presence for a minute is more to me than hours of festivity at Belmont, or the company of any other woman in the world.”
Angélique was not insensible to the devotion of Le Gardeur. Her feelings were touched, and never slow in finding an interpretation for them she raised his hand quickly to her lips and kissed it. “I had no motive in sending for you but to see you, Le Gardeur!” said she; “will that content you? If it won't--”
“This shall,” replied he, kissing her cheek--which she was far from averting or resenting.
“That is so like you, Le Gardeur!” replied she,--“to take before it is given!” She stopped--“What was I going to say?” added she. “It was given, and my contentment is perfect to have you here by my side!” If her thoughts reverted at this moment to the Intendant it was with a feeling of repulsion, and as she looked fondly on the face of Le Gardeur she could not help contrasting his handsome looks with the hard, swarthy features of Bigot.
“I wish my contentment were perfect, Angélique; but it is in your power to make it so--will you? Why keep me forever on the threshold of my happiness, or of my despair, whichever you shall decree? I have spoken to Amélie tonight of you!”
“O do not press me, Le Gardeur!” exclaimed she, violently agitated, anxious to evade the question she saw burning on his lips, and distrustful of her own power to refuse; “not now! not to-night! Another day you shall know how much I love you, Le Gardeur! Why will not men content themselves with knowing we love them, without stripping our favors of all grace by making them duties, and in the end destroying our love by marrying us?” A flash of her natural archness came over her face as she said this.
“That would not be your case or mine, Angélique,” replied he, somewhat puzzled at her strange speech. But she rose up suddenly without replying, and walked to a buffet, where stood a silver salver full of refreshments. “I suppose you have feasted so magnificently at Belmont that you will not care for my humble hospitalities,” said she, offering him a cup of rare wine, a recent gift of the Intendant,--which she did not mention, however. “You have not told me a word yet of the grand party at Belmont. Pierre Philibert has been highly honored by the Honnêtes Gens I am sure!”
“And merits all the honor he receives! Why were you not there too, Angélique? Pierre would have been delighted,” replied he, ever ready to defend Pierre Philibert.
“And I too! but I feared to be disloyal to the Fripponne!” said she, half mockingly. “I am a partner in the Grand Company you know, Le Gardeur! But I confess Pierre Philibert is the handsomest man--except one--in New France. I own to THAT. I thought to pique Amélie one day by telling her so, but on the contrary I pleased her beyond measure! She agreed without excepting even the one!”
“Amélie told me your good opinions of Pierre, and I thanked you for it!” said he, taking her hand. “And now, darling, since you cannot with wine, words, or winsomeness divert me from my purpose in making you declare what you think of me also, let me tell you I have promised Amélie to bring her your answer to-night!”
The eyes of Le Gardeur shone with a light of loyal affection. Angélique saw there was no escaping a declaration. She sat irresolute and trembling, with one hand resting on his arm and the other held up deprecatingly. It was a piece of acting she had rehearsed to herself for this foreseen occasion. But her tongue, usually so nimble and free, faltered for once in the rush of emotions that well-nigh overpowered her. To become the honored wife of Le Gardeur de Repentigny, the sister of the beauteous Amélie, the niece of the noble Lady de Tilly, was a piece of fortune to have satisfied, until recently, both her heart and her ambition. But now Angélique was the dupe of dreams and fancies. The Royal Intendant was at her feet. France and its courtly splendors and court intrigues opened vistas of grandeur to her aspiring and unscrupulous ambition. She could not forego them, and would not! She knew that, all the time her heart was melting beneath the passionate eyes of Le Gardeur.
“I have spoken to Amélie, and promised to take her your answer to-night,” said he, in a tone that thrilled every fibre of her better nature. “She is ready to embrace you as her sister. Will you be my wife, Angélique?”
Angélique sat silent; she dared not look up at him. If she had, she knew her hard resolution would melt. She felt his gaze upon her without seeing it. She grew pale and tried to answer no, but could not; and she would not answer yes.
The vision she had so wickedly revelled in flashed again upon her at this supreme moment. She saw, in a panorama of a few seconds, the gilded halls of Versailles pass before her, and with the vision came the old temptation.
“Angélique!” repeated he, in a tone full of passionate entreaty, “will you be my wife, loved as no woman ever was,--loved as alone Le Gardeur de Repentigny can love you?”
She knew that. As she weakened under his pleading and grasped both his hands tight in hers, she strove to frame a reply which should say yes while it meant no; and say no which he should interpret yes.
“All New France will honor you as the Châtelaine de Repentigny! There will be none higher, as there will be none fairer, than my bride!” Poor Le Gardeur! He had a dim suspicion that Angélique was looking to France as a fitting theatre for her beauty and talents.
She still sat mute, and grew paler every moment. Words formed themselves upon her lips, but she feared to say them, so terrible was the earnestness of this man's love, and no less vivid the consciousness of her own. Her face assumed the hardness of marble, pale as Parian and as rigid; a trembling of her white lips showed the strife going on within her; she covered her eyes with her hand, that he might not see the tears she felt quivering under the full lids, but she remained mute.
“Angélique!” exclaimed he, divining her unexpressed refusal; “why do you turn away from me? You surely do not reject me? But I am mad to think it! Speak, darling! one word, one sign, one look from those dear eyes, in consent to be the wife of Le Gardeur, will bring life's happiness to us both!” He took her hand, and drew it gently from her eyes and kissed it, but she still averted her gaze from him; she could not look at him, but the words dropped slowly and feebly from her lips in response to his appeal:
“I love you, Le Gardeur, but I will not marry you!” said she. She could not utter more, but her hand grasped his with a fierce pressure, as if wanting to hold him fast in the very moment of refusal.
He started back, as if touched by fire. “You love me, but will not marry me! Angélique, what mystery is this? But you are only trying me! A thousand thanks for your love; the other is but a jest,--a good jest, which I will laugh at!” And Le Gardeur tried to laugh, but it was a sad failure, for he saw she did not join in his effort at merriment, but looked pale and trembling, as if ready to faint.
She laid her hands upon his heavily and sadly. He felt her refusal in the very touch. It was like cold lead. “Do not laugh, Le Gardeur, I cannot laugh over it; this is no jest, but mortal earnest! What I say I mean! I love you, Le Gardeur, but I will not marry you!”
She drew her hands away, as if to mark the emphasis she could not speak. He felt it like the drawing of his heartstrings.
She turned her eyes full upon him now, as if to look whether love of her was extinguished in him by her refusal. “I love you, Le Gardeur--you know I do! But I will not--I cannot--marry you now!” repeated she.
“Now!” he caught at the straw like a drowning swimmer in a whirlpool. “Now? I said not now but when you please, Angélique! You are worth a man's waiting his life for!”
“No, Le Gardeur!” she replied, “I am not worth your waiting for; it cannot be, as I once hoped it might be; but love you I do and ever shall!” and the false, fair woman kissed him fatuously. “I love you, Le Gardeur, but I will not marry you!”
“You do not surely mean it, Angélique!” exclaimed he; “you will not give me death instead of life? You cannot be so false to your own heart, so cruel to mine? See, Angélique! My saintly sister Amélie believed in your love, and sent these flowers to place in your hair when you had consented to be my wife,--her sister; you will not refuse them, Angélique?”
He raised his hand to place the garland upon her head, but Angélique turned quickly, and they fell at her feet. “Amélie's gifts are not for me, Le Gardeur--I do not merit them! I confess my fault: I am, I know, false to my own heart, and cruel to yours. Despise me,--kill me for it if you will, Le Gardeur! better you did kill me, perhaps! but I cannot lie to you as I can to other men! Ask me not to change my resolution, for I neither can nor will.” She spoke with impassioned energy, as if fortifying her refusal by the reiteration of it.
“It is past comprehension!” was all he could say, bewildered at her words thus dislocated from all their natural sequence of association. “Love me and not marry me!--that means she will marry another!” thought he, with a jealous pang. “Tell me, Angélique,” continued he, after several moments of puzzled silence, “is there some inscrutable reason that makes you keep my love and reject my hand?”
“No reason, Le Gardeur! It is mad unreason,--I feel that,--but it is no less true. I love you, but I will not marry you.” She spoke with more resolution now. The first plunge was over, and with it her fear and trembling as she sat on the brink.
The iteration drove him beside himself. He seized her hands, and exclaimed with vehemence,--“There is a man--a rival--a more fortunate lover--behind all this, Angélique des Meloises! It is not yourself that speaks, but one that prompts you. You have given your love to another, and discarded me! Is it not so?”
“I have neither discarded you, nor loved another,” Angélique equivocated. She played her soul away at this moment with the mental reservation that she had not yet done what she had resolved to do upon the first opportunity--accept the hand of the Intendant Bigot.
“It is well for that other man, if there be one!” Le Gardeur rose and walked angrily across the room two or three times. Angélique was playing a game of chess with Satan for her soul, and felt that she was losing it.
“There was a Sphinx in olden times,” said he, “that propounded a riddle, and he who failed to solve it had to die. Your riddle will be the death of me, for I cannot solve it, Angélique!”
“Do not try to solve it, dear Le Gardeur! Remember that when her riddle was solved the Sphinx threw herself into the sea. I doubt that may be my fate! But you are still my friend, Le Gardeur!” added she, seating herself again by his side, in her old fond, coquettish manner. “See these flowers of Amélie's, which I did not place in my hair; I treasure them in my bosom!” She gathered them up as she spoke, kissed them, and placed them in her bosom.
“You are still my friend, Le Gardeur?” Her eyes turned upon him with the old look she could so well assume.
“I am more than a thousand friends, Angélique!” replied he; “but I shall curse myself that I can remain so and see you the wife of another.”
The very thought drove him to frenzy. He dashed her hand away and sprang up towards the door, but turned suddenly round. “That curse was not for you, Angélique!” said he, pale and agitated; “it was for myself, for ever believing in the empty love you professed for me. Good-by! Be happy! As for me, the light goes out of my life, Angélique, from this day forth.”
“Oh, stop! stop, Le Gardeur! do not leave me so!” She rose and endeavored to restrain him, but he broke from her, and without adieu or further parley rushed out bareheaded into the street. She ran to the balcony to call him back, and leaning far over it, cried out, “Le Gardeur! Le Gardeur!” That voice would have called him from the dead could he have heard it, but he was already lost in the darkness. A few rapid steps resounded on the distant pavement, and Le Gardeur de Repentigny was lost to her forever!
She waited long on the balcony, looking over it for a chance of hearing his returning steps, but none came. It was the last impulse of her love to save her, but it was useless. “Oh, God!” she exclaimed in a voice of mortal agony, “he is gone forever--my Le Gardeur! my one true lover, rejected by my own madness, and for what?” She thought “For what!” and in a storm of passion, tearing her golden hair over her face, and beating her breast in her rage, she exclaimed,--“I am wicked, unutterably bad, worse and more despicable than the vilest creature that crouches under the bushes on the Batture! How dared I, unwomanly that I am, reject the hand I worship for sake of a hand I should loathe in the very act of accepting it? The slave that is sold in the market is better than I, for she has no choice, while I sell myself to a man whom I already hate, for he is already false to me! The wages of a harlot were more honestly earned than the splendor for which I barter soul and body to this Intendant!”
The passionate girl threw herself upon the floor, nor heeded the blood that oozed from her head, bruised on the hard wood. Her mind was torn by a thousand wild fancies. Sometimes she resolved to go out like the Rose of Sharon and seek her beloved in the city and throw herself at his feet, making him a royal gift of all he claimed of her.
She little knew her own wilful heart. She had seen the world bow to every caprice of hers, but she never had one principle to guide her, except her own pleasure. She was now like a goddess of earth, fallen in an effort to reconcile impossibilities in human hearts, and became the sport of the powers of wickedness.
She lay upon the floor senseless, her hands in a violent clasp. Her glorious hair, torn and disordered, lay over her like the royal robe of a queen stricken from her throne and lying dead upon the floor of her palace.
It was long after midnight, in the cold hours of the morning, when she woke from her swoon. She raised herself feebly upon her elbow, and looked dazedly up at the cold, unfeeling stars that go on shining through the ages, making no sign of sympathy with human griefs. Perseus had risen to his meridian, and Algol, her natal star, alternately darkened and brightened as if it were the scene of some fierce conflict of the powers of light and darkness, like that going on in her own soul.
Her face was stained with hard clots of blood as she rose, cramped and chilled to the bone. The night air had blown coldly upon her through the open lattice; but she would not summon her maid to her assistance. Without undressing she threw herself upon a couch, and utterly worn out by the agitation she had undergone, slept far into the day.
XXIV. THE HURRIED QUESTION OF DESPAIR
Le Gardeur plunged headlong down the silent street, neither knowing nor caring whither. Half mad with grief, half with resentment, he vented curses upon himself, upon Angélique, upon the world, and looked upon Providence itself as in league with the evil powers to thwart his happiness,--not seeing that his happiness in the love of a woman like Angélique was a house built on sand, which the first storm of life would sweep away.
“Holla! Le Gardeur de Repentigny! Is that you?” exclaimed a voice in the night. “What lucky wind blows you out at this hour?” Le Gardeur stopped and recognized the Chevalier de Pean. “Where are you going in such a desperate hurry?”
“To the devil!” replied Le Gardeur, withdrawing his hand from De Pean's, who had seized it with an amazing show of friendship. “It is the only road left open to me, and I am going to march down it like a garde du corps of Satan! Do not hold me, De Pean! Let go my arm! I am going to the devil, I tell you!”
“Why, Le Gardeur,” was the reply, “that is a broad and well-travelled road--the king's highway, in fact. I am going upon it myself, as fast and merrily as any man in New France.”
“Well, go on it then! March either before or after me, only don't go with me, De Pean; I am taking the shortest cuts to get to the end of it, and want no one with me.” Le Gardeur walked doggedly on; but De Pean would not be shaken off. He suspected what had happened.
“The shortest cut I know is by the Taverne de Menut, where I am going now,” said he, “and I should like your company, Le Gardeur! Our set are having a gala night of it, and must be musical as the frogs of Beauport by this hour! Come along!” De Pean again took his arm. He was not repelled this time.
“I don't care where I go, De Pean!” replied he, forgetting his dislike to this man, and submitting to his guidance,--the Taverne de Menut was just the place for him to rush into and drown his disappointment in wine. The two moved on in silence for a few minutes.
“Why, what ails you, Le Gardeur?” asked his companion, as they walked on arm in arm. “Has fortune frowned upon the cards, or your mistress proved a fickle jade like all her sex?”
His words were irritating enough to Le Gardeur. “Look you, De Pean,” said he, stopping, “I shall quarrel with you if you repeat such remarks. But you mean no mischief I dare say, although I would not swear it!” Le Gardeur looked savage.
De Pean saw it would not be safe to rub that sore again. “Forgive me, Le Gardeur!” said he, with an air of sympathy well assumed. “I meant no harm. But you are suspicious of your friends to-night as a Turk of his harem.”
“I have reason to be! And as for friends, I find only such friends as you, De Pean! And I begin to think the world has no better!” The clock of the Recollets struck the hour as they passed under the shadow of its wall. The brothers of St. Francis slept quietly on their peaceful pillows, like sea birds who find in a rocky nook a refuge from the ocean storms. “Do you think the Recollets are happy, De Pean?” asked he, turning abruptly to his companion.
“Happy as oysters at high water, who are never crossed in love, except of their dinner! But that is neither your luck nor mine, Le Gardeur!” De Pean was itching to draw from his companion something with reference to what had passed with Angélique.
“Well, I would rather be an oyster than a man, and rather be dead than either!” was the reply of Le Gardeur. “How soon, think you, will brandy kill a man, De Pean?” asked he abruptly, after a pause of silence.
“It will never kill you, Le Gardeur, if you take it neat at Master Menut's. It will restore you to life, vigor, and independence of man and woman. I take mine there when I am hipped as you are, Le Gardeur. It is a specific for every kind of ill-fortune,--I warrant it will cure and never kill you.”
They crossed the Place d'Armes. Nothing in sight was moving except the sentries who paced slowly like shadows up and down the great gateway of the Castle of St. Louis.
“It is still and solemn as a church-yard here,” remarked De Pean; “all the life of the place is down at Menut's! I like the small hours,” added he as the chime of the Recollets ceased. “They are easily counted, and pass quickly, asleep or awake. Two o'clock in the morning is the meridian of the day for a man who has wit to wait for it at Menut's!--these small hours are all that are worth reckoning in a man's life!”
Without consenting to accompany De Pean, Le Gardeur suffered himself to be led by him. He knew the company that awaited him there--the wildest and most dissolute gallants of the city and garrison were usually assembled there at this hour.
The famous old hostelry was kept by Master Menut, a burly Breton who prided himself on keeping everything full and plenty about his house--tables full, tankards full, guests full, and himself very full. The house was to-night lit up with unusual brilliance, and was full of company--Cadet, Varin, Mercier, and a crowd of the friends and associates of the Grand Company. Gambling, drinking, and conversing in the loudest strain on such topics as interested their class, were the amusements of the night. The vilest thoughts, uttered in the low argot of Paris, were much affected by them. They felt a pleasure in this sort of protest against the extreme refinement of society, just as the collegians of Oxford, trained beyond their natural capacity in morals, love to fall into slang and, like Prince Hal, talk to every tinker in his own tongue.
De Pean and Le Gardeur were welcomed with open arms at the Taverne de Menut. A dozen brimming glasses were offered them on every side. De Pean drank moderately. “I have to win back my losses of last night,” said he, “and must keep my head clear.” Le Gardeur, however, refused nothing that was offered him. He drank with all, and drank every description of liquor. He was speedily led up into a large, well-furnished room, where tables were crowded with gentlemen playing cards and dice for piles of paper money, which was tossed from hand to hand with the greatest nonchalance as the game ended and was renewed.
Le Gardeur plunged headlong into the flood of dissipation. He played, drank, talked argot, and cast off every shred of reserve. He doubled his stakes, and threw his dice reckless and careless whether he lost or won. His voice overbore that of the stoutest of the revellers. He embraced De Pean as his friend, who returned his compliments by declaring Le Gardeur de Repentigny to be the king of good fellows, who had the “strongest head to carry wine and the stoutest heart to defy dull care of any man in Quebec.”
De Pean watched with malign satisfaction the progress of Le Gardeur's intoxication. If he seemed to flag, he challenged him afresh to drink to better fortune; and when he lost the stakes, to drink again to spite ill luck.
But let a veil be dropped over the wild doings of the Taverne de Menut. Le Gardeur lay insensible at last upon the floor, where he would have remained had not some of the servants of the inn who knew him lifted him up compassionately and placed him upon a couch, where he lay, breathing heavily like one dying. His eyes were fixed; his mouth, where the kisses of his sister still lingered, was partly opened, and his hands were clenched, rigid as a statue's.
“He is ours now!” said De Pean to Cadet. “He will not again put his head under the wing of the Philiberts!”
The two men looked at him, and laughed brutally.
“A fair lady whom you know, Cadet, has given him liberty to drink himself to death, and he will do it.”
“Who is that? Angélique?” asked Cadet.
“Of course; who else? and Le Gardeur won't be the first or last man she has put under stone sheets,” replied De Pean, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Gloria patri filioque!” exclaimed Cadet, mockingly; “the Honnêtes Gens will lose their trump card. How did you get him away from Belmont, De Pean?”
“Oh, it was not I! Angélique des Meloises set the trap and whistled the call that brought him,” replied De Pean.
“Like her, the incomparable witch!” exclaimed Cadet with a hearty laugh. “She would lure the very devil to play her tricks instead of his own. She would beat Satan at his best game to ruin a man.”
“It would be all the same, Cadet, I fancy--Satan or she! But where is Bigot? I expected him here.”
“Oh, he is in a tantrum to-night, and would not come. That piece of his at Beaumanoir is a thorn in his flesh, and a snow-ball on his spirits. She is taming him. By St. Cocufin! Bigot loves that woman!”
“I told you that before, Cadet. I saw it a month ago, and was sure of it on that night when he would not bring her up to show her to us.”
“Such a fool, De Pean, to care for any woman! What will Bigot do with her, think you?”
“How should I know? Send her adrift some fine day I suppose, down the Rivière du Loup. He will, if he is a sensible man. He dare not marry any woman without license from La Pompadour, you know. The jolly fish-woman holds a tight rein over her favorites. Bigot may keep as many women as Solomon--the more the merrier; but woe befall him if he marries without La Pompadour's consent! They say she herself dotes on Bigot,--that is the reason.” De Pean really believed that was the reason; and certainly there was reason for suspecting it.
“Cadet! Cadet!” exclaimed several voices. “You are fined a basket of champagne for leaving the table.”
“I'll pay it,” replied he, “and double it; but it is hot as Tartarus in here. I feel like a grilled salmon.” And indeed, Cadet's broad, sensual face was red and glowing as a harvest moon. He walked a little unsteady too, and his naturally coarse voice sounded thick, but his hard brain never gave way beyond a certain point under any quantity of liquor.
“I am going to get some fresh air,” said he. “I shall walk as far as the Fleur-de-Lis. They never go to bed at that jolly old inn.”
“I will go with you!” “And I!” exclaimed a dozen voices.
“Come on then; we will all go to the old dog-hole, where they keep the best brandy in Quebec. It is smuggled of course, but that makes it all the better.”
Mine host of the Taverne de Menut combatted this opinion of the goodness of the liquors at the Fleur-de-Lis. His brandy had paid the King's duties, and bore the stamp of the Grand Company, he said; and he appealed to every gentleman present on the goodness of his liquors.
Cadet and the rest took another round of it to please the landlord, and sallied out with no little noise and confusion. Some of them struck up the famous song which, beyond all others, best expressed the gay, rollicking spirit of the French nation and of the times of the old régime:
“'Vive Henri Quatre! Vive le Roi vaillant! Ce diable à quatre A le triple talent, De boire et de battre, Et d'être un vert galant!'”
When the noisy party arrived at the Fleur-de-Lis, they entered without ceremony into a spacious room--low, with heavy beams and with roughly plastered walls, which were stuck over with proclamations of governors and intendants and dingy ballads brought by sailors from French ports.
A long table in the middle of the room was surrounded by a lot of fellows, plainly of the baser sort,--sailors, boatmen, voyageurs,--in rough clothes, and tuques--red or blue,--upon their heads. Every one had a pipe in his mouth. Some were talking with loose, loquacious tongues; some were singing; their ugly, jolly visages--half illumined by the light of tallow candles stuck in iron sconces on the wall--were worthy of the vulgar but faithful Dutch pencils of Schalken and Teniers. They were singing a song as the new company came in.
At the head of the table sat Master Pothier, with a black earthen mug of Norman cider in one hand and a pipe in the other. His budget of law hung on a peg in the corner, as quite superfluous at a free-and-easy at the Fleur-de-Lis.
Max Grimeau and Blind Bartemy had arrived in good time for the eel pie. They sat one on each side of Master Pothier, full as ticks and merry as grigs; a jolly chorus was in progress as Cadet entered.
The company rose and bowed to the gentlemen who had honored them with a call. “Pray sit down, gentlemen; take our chairs!” exclaimed Master Pothier, officiously offering his to Cadet, who accepted it as well as the black mug, of which he drank heartily, declaring old Norman cider suited his taste better than the choicest wine.
“We are your most humble servitors, and highly esteem the honor of your visit,” said Master Pothier, as he refilled the black mug.
“Jolly fellows!” replied Cadet, stretching his legs refreshingly, “this does look comfortable. Do you drink cider because you like it, or because you cannot afford better?”
“There is nothing better than Norman cider, except Cognac brandy,” replied Master Pothier, grinning from ear to ear. “Norman cider is fit for a king, and with a lining of brandy is drink for a Pope! It will make a man see stars at noonday. Won't it, Bartemy?”
“What! old turn-penny! are you here?” cried Cadet, recognizing the old beggar of the gate of the Basse Ville.
“Oh, yes, your Honor!” replied Bartemy, with his professional whine, “pour l'amour de Dieu!”
“Gad! you are the jolliest beggar I know out of the Friponne,” replied Cadet, throwing him a crown.
“He is not a jollier beggar than I am, your Honor,” said Max Grimeau, grinning like an Alsatian over a Strasbourg pie. “It was I sang bass in the ballad as you came in--you might have heard me, your Honor?”
“To be sure I did; I will be sworn there is not a jollier beggar in Quebec than you, old Max! Here is a crown for you too, to drink the Intendant's health and another for you, you roving limb of the law, Master Pothier! Come, Master Pothier! I will fill your ragged gown full as a demijohn of brandy if you will go on with the song you were singing.”
“We were at the old ballad of the Pont d'Avignon, your Honor,” replied Master Pothier.
“And I was playing it,” interrupted Jean La Marche; “you might have heard my violin, it is a good one!” Jean would not hide his talent in a napkin on so auspicious an occasion as this. He ran his bow over the strings and played a few bars,--“that was the tune, your Honor.”
“Ay, that was it! I know the jolly old song! Now go on!” Cadet thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his laced waistcoat and listened attentively; rough as he was, he liked the old Canadian music.
Jean tuned his fiddle afresh, and placing it with a knowing jerk under his chin, and with an air of conceit worthy of Lulli, began to sing and play the old ballad:
“'A St. Malo, beau port de mer, Trois navires sont arrivés, Chargés d'avoine, chargés de bled; Trois dames s'en vont les merchander!'”
“Tut!” exclaimed Varin, “who cares for things that have no more point in them than a dumpling! give us a madrigal, or one of the devil's ditties from the Quartier Latin!”
“I do not know a 'devil's ditty,' and would not sing one if I did,” replied Jean La Marche, jealous of the ballads of his own New France. “Indians cannot swear because they know no oaths, and habitans cannot sing devil's ditties because they never learned them; but 'St. Malo, beau port de mer,'--I will sing that with any man in the Colony!”
The popular songs of the French Canadians are simple, almost infantine, in their language, and as chaste in expression as the hymns of other countries. Impure songs originate in classes who know better, and revel from choice in musical slang and indecency.
“Sing what you like! and never mind Varin, my good fellow,” said Cadet, stretching himself in his chair; “I like the old Canadian ballads better than all the devil's ditties ever made in Paris! You must sing your devil's ditties yourself, Varin; our habitans won't,--that is sure!”
After an hour's roystering at the Fleur-de-Lis the party of gentlemen returned to the Taverne de Menut a good deal more unsteady and more obstreperous than when they came. They left Master Pothier seated in his chair, drunk as Bacchus, and every one of the rest of his companions blind as Bartemy.
The gentlemen, on their return to the Taverne de Menut, found De Pean in a rage. Pierre Philibert had followed Amélie to the city, and learning the cause of her anxiety and unconcealed tears, started off with the determination to find Le Gardeur.
The officer of the guard at the gate of the Basse Ville was able to direct him to the right quarter. He hastened to the Taverne de Menut, and in haughty defiance of De Pean, with whom he had high words, he got the unfortunate Le Gardeur away, placed him in a carriage, and took him home, receiving from Amélie such sweet and sincere thanks as he thought a life's service could scarcely have deserved.
“Par Dieu! that Philibert is a game-cock, De Pean,” exclaimed Cadet, to the savage annoyance of the Secretary. “He has pluck and impudence for ten gardes du corps. It was neater done than at Beaumanoir!” Cadet sat down to enjoy a broad laugh at the expense of his friend over the second carrying off of Le Gardeur.
“Curse him! I could have run him through, and am sorry I did not,” exclaimed De Pean.
“No, you could not have run him through, and you would have been sorry had you tried it, De Pean,” replied Cadet. “That Philibert is not as safe as the Bank of France to draw upon. I tell you it was well for yourself you did not try, De Pean. But never mind,” continued Cadet, “there is never so bad a day but there is a fair to-morrow after it, so make up a hand at cards with me and Colonel Trivio, and put money in your purse; it will salve your bruised feelings.” De Pean failed to laugh off his ill humor, but he took Cadet's advice, and sat down to play for the remainder of the night.
“Oh, Pierre Philibert, how can we sufficiently thank you for your kindness to my dear, unhappy brother?” said Amélie to him, her eyes tremulous with tears and her hand convulsively clasping his, as Pierre took leave of her at the door of the mansion of the Lady de Tilly.
“Le Gardeur claims our deepest commiseration, Amélie,” replied he; “you know how this has happened?”
“I do know, Pierre, and shame to know it. But you are so generous ever. Do not blame me for this agitation!” She strove to steady herself, as a ship will right up for a moment in veering.
“Blame you! what a thought! As soon blame the angels for being good! But I have a plan, Amélie, for Le Gardeur--we must get him out of the city and back to Tilly for a while. Your noble aunt has given me an invitation to visit the Manor House. What if I manage to accompany Le Gardeur to his dear old home?”
“A visit to Tilly in your company would, of all things, delight Le Gardeur,” said she, “and perhaps break those ties that bind him to the city.”
These were pleasing words to Philibert, and he thought how delightful would be her own fair presence also at Tilly.
“All the physicians in the world will not help Le Gardeur as will your company at Tilly!” exclaimed she, with a sudden access of hope. “Le Gardeur needs not medicine, only care, and--”
“The love he has set his heart on, Amélie! Men sometimes die when they fail in that.” He looked at her as he said this, but instantly withdrew his eyes, fearing he had been overbold.
She blushed, and only replied, with absolute indirection, “Oh, I am so thankful to you, Pierre Philibert!” But she gave him, as he left, a look of gratitude and love which never effaced itself from his memory. In after-years, when Pierre Philibert cared not for the light of the sun, nor for woman's love, nor for life itself, the tender, impassioned glance of those dark eyes wet with tears came back to him like a break in the dark clouds, disclosing the blue heaven beyond; and he longed to be there.
XXV. BETWIXT THE LAST VIOLET AND THE EARLIEST ROSE
“Do not go out to-day, brother, I want you so particularly to stay with me to-day,” said Amélie de Repentigny, with a gentle, pleading voice. “Aunt has resolved to return to Tilly to-morrow; I need your help to arrange these papers, and anyway, I want your company, brother,” added she, smiling.
Le Gardeur sat feverish, nervous, and ill after his wild night spent at the Taverne de Menut. He started and reddened as his sister's eyes rested on him. He looked through the open window like a wild animal ready to spring out of it and escape.
A raging thirst was on him, which Amélie sought to assuage by draughts of water, milk, and tea--a sisterly attention which he more than once acknowledged by kissing the loving fingers which waited upon him so tenderly.
“I cannot stay in the house, Amélie,” said he; “I shall go mad if I do! You know how it has fared with me, sweet sister! I yesterday built up a tower of glass, high as heaven, my heaven--a woman's love; to-day I am crushed under the ruins of it.”
“Say not so, brother! you were not made to be crushed by the nay of any faithless woman. Oh! why will men think more of our sex than we deserve? How few of us do deserve the devotion of a good and true man!”
“How few men would be worthy of you, sweet sister!” replied he, proudly. “Ah! had Angélique had your heart, Amélie!”
“You will be glad one day of your present sorrow, brother,” replied she. “It is bitter I know, and I feel its bitterness with you, but life with Angélique would have been infinitely harder to bear.”
He shook his head, not incredulously, but defiantly at fate. “I would have accepted it,” said he, “had I been sure life with her had been hard as millstones! My love is of the perverse kind, not to be transmuted by any furnace of fiery trial.”
“I have no answer, brother, but this:” and Amdlie stooped and kissed his fevered forehead. She was too wise to reason in a case where she knew reason always made default.
“What has happened at the Manor House,” asked he after a short silence, “that aunt is going to return home sooner than she expected when she left?”
“There are reports to-day of Iroquois on the upper Chaudière, and her censitaires are eager to return to guard their homes from the prowling savages; and what is more, you and Colonel Philibert are ordered to go to Tilly to look after the defence of the Seigniory.”
Le Gardeur sat bolt upright. His military knowledge could not comprehend an apparently useless order. “Pierre Philibert and I ordered to Tilly to look after the defence of the Seigniory! We had no information yesterday that Iroquois were within fifty leagues of Tilly. It is a false rumor raised by the good wives to get their husbands home again! Don't you think so, Amélie?” asked he, smiling for the first time.
“No, I don't think so, Le Gardeur! but it would be a pretty ruse de guerre, were it true. The good wives naturally feel nervous at being left alone--I should myself,” added she, playfully.
“Oh, I don't know! the nervous ones have all come with the men to the city; but I suppose the works are sufficiently advanced, and the men can be spared to return home. But what says Pierre Philibert to the order despatching him to Tilly? You have seen him since?”
Amélie blushed a little as she replied, “Yes, I have seen him; he is well content, I think, to see Tilly once more in your company, brother.”
“And in yours, sister!--Why blush, Amélie? Pierre is worthy of you, should he ever say to you what I so vainly said last night to Angélique des Meloises!” Le Gardeur held her tightly by the hand.
Her face was glowing scarlet,--she was in utter confusion. “Oh, stop, brother! Don't say such things! Pierre never uttered such thoughts to me!--never will, in all likelihood!”
“But he will! And, my darling sister, when Pierre Philibert shall say he loves you and asks you to be his wife, if you love him, if you pity me, do not say him nay!” She was trembling with agitation, and without power to reply. But Le Gardeur felt her hand tighten upon his. He comprehended the involuntary sign, drew her to him, kissed her, and left the topic without pressing it further; leaving it in the most formidable shape to take deep root in the silent meditations of Amélie.
The rest of the day passed in such sunshine as Amélie could throw over her brother. Her soft influence retained him at home: she refreshed him with her conversation and sympathy, drew from him the pitiful story of his love and its bitter ending. She knew the relief of disburdening his surcharged heart; and to none but his sister, from whom he had never had a secret until this episode in his life, would he have spoken a word of his heart's trouble.
Numerous were the visitors to-day at the hospitable mansion of the Lady de Tilly; but Le Gardeur would see none of them except Pierre Philibert, who rode over as soon as he was relieved from his military attendance at the Castle of St. Louis.
Le Gardeur received Pierre with an effusion of grateful affection--touching, because real. His handsome face, so like Amélie's, was peculiarly so when it expressed the emotions habitual to her; and the pleasure both felt in the presence of Pierre brought out resemblances that flashed fresh on the quick, observant eye of Pierre.
The afternoon was spent in conversation of that kind which gives and takes with mutual delight. Le Gardeur seemed more his old self again in the company of Pierre; Amélie was charmed at the visible influence of Pierre over him, and a hope sprang up in her bosom that the little artifice of beguiling Le Gardeur to Tilly in the companionship of Pierre might be the means of thwarting those adverse influences which were dragging him to destruction.
If Pierre Philibert grew more animated in the presence of those bright eyes, which were at once appreciative and sympathizing, Amélie drank in the conversation of Pierre as one drinks the wine of a favorite vintage. If her heart grew a little intoxicated, what the wonder? Furtively as she glanced at the manly countenance of Pierre, she saw in it the reflection of his noble mind and independent spirit; and remembering the injunction of Le Gardeur,--for, woman-like, she sought a support out of herself to justify a foregone conclusion,--she thought that if Pierre asked her she could be content to share his lot, and her greatest happiness would be to live in the possession of his love.
Pierre Philibert took his departure early from the house of the Lady de Tilly, to make his preparations for leaving the city next day. His father was aware of his project, and approved of it.
The toils of the day were over in the house of the Chien d'Or. The Bourgeois took his hat and sword and went out for a walk upon the cape, where a cool breeze came up fresh from the broad river. It was just the turn of tide. The full, brimming waters, reflecting here and there a star, began to sparkle under the clear moon that rose slowly and majestically over the hills of the south shore.
The Bourgeois sat down on the low wall of the terrace to enjoy the freshness and beauty of the scene which, although he had seen it a hundred times before, never looked lovelier, he thought, than this evening. He was very happy in his silent thoughts over his son's return home; and the general respect paid him on the day of his fête had been more felt, perhaps, by the Bourgeois than by Pierre himself.
As he indulged in these meditations, a well-known voice suddenly accosted him. He turned and was cordially greeted by the Count de la Galissonière and Herr Kalm, who had sauntered through the garden of the Castle and directed their steps towards the cape with intention to call upon the Lady de Tilly and pay their respects to her before she left the city.
The Bourgeois, learning their intentions, said he would accompany them, as he too owed a debt of courtesy to the noble lady and her niece Amélie, which he would discharge at the same time.
The three gentlemen walked gravely on, in pleasant conversation. The clearness of the moonlit night threw the beautiful landscape, with its strongly accentuated features, into contrasts of light and shade to which the pencil of Rembrandt alone could have done justice. Herr Kalm was enthusiastic in his admiration,--moonlight over Drachenfels on the Rhine, or the midnight sun peering over the Gulf of Bothnia, reminded him of something similar, but of nothing so grand on the whole as the matchless scene visible from Cape Diamond--worthy of its name.
Lady de Tilly received her visitors with the gracious courtesy habitual to her. She especially appreciated the visit from the Bourgeois, who so rarely honored the houses of his friends by his welcome presence. As for His Excellency, she remarked, smiling, it was his official duty to represent the politeness of France to the ladies of the Colony, while Herr Kalm, representing the science of Europe, ought to be honored in every house he chose to visit,--she certainly esteemed the honor of his presence in her own.
Amélie made her appearance in the drawing-room, and while the visitors stayed exerted herself to the utmost to please and interest them by taking a ready and sympathetic part in their conversation. Her quick and cultivated intellect enabled her to do so to the delight, and even surprise, of the three grave, learned gentlemen. She lacked neither information nor opinions of her own, while her speech, soft and womanly, gave a delicacy to her free yet modest utterances that made her, in their recollections of her in the future, a standard of comparison,--a measure of female perfections.
Le Gardeur, learning who were in the house, came down after a while to thank the Governor, the Bourgeois, and Herr Kalm for the honor of their visit. He exerted himself by a desperate effort to be conversable,--not very successfully, however; for had not Amélie watched him with deepest sympathy and adroitly filled the breaks in his remarks, he would have failed to pass himself creditably before the Governor. As it was, Le Gardeur contented himself with following the flow of conversation which welled up copiously from the lips of the rest of the company.
After a while came in Félix Baudoin in his full livery, reserved for special occasions, and announced to his lady that tea was served. The gentlemen were invited to partake of what was then a novelty in New France. The Bourgeois, in the course of the new traffic with China that had lately sprung up in consequence of the discovery of ginseng in New France, had imported some chests of tea, which the Lady de Tilly, with instinctive perception of its utility, adopted at once as the beverage of polite society. As yet, however, it was only to be seen upon the tables of the refined and the affluent.
A fine service of porcelain of Chinese make adorned her table, pleasing the fancy with its grotesque pictures,--then so new, now so familiar to us all. The Chinese garden and summer-house, the fruit-laden trees, and river with overhanging willows; the rustic bridge with the three long-robed figures passing over it; the boat floating upon the water and the doves flying in the perspectiveless sky--who does not remember them all?
Lady de Tilly, like a true gentlewoman, prized her china, and thought kindly of the mild, industrious race who had furnished her tea-table with such an elegant equipage.
It was no disparagement to the Lady de Tilly that she had not read English poets who sang the praise of tea: English poets were in those days an unknown quantity in French education, and especially in New France until after the conquest. But Wolfe opened the great world of English poetry to Canada as he recited Gray's Elegy with its prophetic line,--
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave,”
as he floated down the St. Lawrence in that still autumnal night to land his forces and scale by stealth the fatal Heights of Abraham, whose possession led to the conquest of the city and his own heroic death, then it was the two glorious streams of modern thought and literature united in New France, where they have run side by side to this day,--in time to be united in one grand flood stream of Canadian literature.
The Bourgeois Philibert had exported largely to China the newly discovered ginseng, for which at first the people of the flowery kingdom paid, in their sycee silver, ounce for ounce. And his Cantonese correspondent esteemed himself doubly fortunate when he was enabled to export his choicest teas to New France in exchange for the precious root.
Amélie listened to an eager conversation between the Governor and Herr Kalm, started by the latter on the nature, culture, and use of the tea-plant,--they would be trite opinions now,--with many daring speculations on the ultimate conquest of the tea-cup over the wine-cup. “It would inaugurate the third beatitude!” exclaimed the philosopher, pressing together the tips of the fingers of both hands, “and the 'meek would inherit the earth;'” so soon as the use of tea became universal, mankind would grow milder, as their blood was purified from the fiery products of the still and the wine-press! The life of man would be prolonged and made more valuable.
“What has given China four thousand of years of existence?” asked Herr Kaim, abruptly, of the Count.
The Count could not tell, unless it were that the nation was dead already in all that regarded the higher life of national existence,--had become mummified, in fact,--and did not know it.
“Not at all!” replied Herr Kalm. “It is the constant use of the life-giving infusion of tea that has saved China! Tea soothes the nerves; it clears the blood, expels vapors from the brain, and restores the fountain of life to pristine activity. Ergo, it prolongs the existence of both men and nations, and has made China the most antique nation in the world.”
Herr Kalm was a devotee to the tea-cup; he drank it strong to excite his flagging spirits, weak to quiet them down. He took Bohea with his facts, and Hyson with his fancy, and mixed them to secure the necessary afflatus to write his books of science and travel. Upon Hyson he would have attempted the Iliad, upon Bohea he would undertake to square the circle, discover perpetual motion, or reform the German philosophy.
The professor was in a jovial mood, and gambolled away gracefully as a Finland horse under a pack-saddle laden with the learning of a dozen students of Abo, travelling home for the holidays.
“We are fortunate in being able to procure our tea in exchange for our useless ginseng,” remarked the Lady de Tilly, as she handed the professor a tiny plate of the leaves, as was the fashion of the day. After drinking the tea, the infused leaves were regarded as quite a fashionable delicacy. Except for the fashion, it had not been perhaps considered a delicacy at all.
The observation of the Lady de Tilly set the professor off on another branch of the subject. “He had observed,” he said, “the careless methods of preparing the ginseng in New France, and predicted a speedy end of the traffic, unless it were prepared to suit the fancy of the fastidious Chinese.”
“That is true, Herr Kalm,” replied the Governor, “but our Indians who gather it are bad managers. Our friend Philibert, who opened this lucrative trade, is alone capable of ensuring its continuance. It is a mine of wealth to New France, if rightly developed. How much made you last year by ginseng, Philibert?”
“I can scarcely answer,” replied the Bourgeois, hesitating a moment to mention what might seem like egotism; “but the half million I contributed towards the war in defence of Acadia was wholly the product of my export of ginseng to China.”
“I know it was! and God bless you for it, Philibert!” exclaimed the Governor with emotion, as he grasped the hand of the patriotic merchant.
“If we have preserved New France this year, it was through your timely help in Acadia. The King's treasury was exhausted,” continued the Governor, looking at Herr Kalm, “and ruin imminent, when the noble merchant of the Chien d'Or fed, clothed, and paid the King's troops for two months before the taking of Grand Pré from the enemy!”
“No great thing in that, your Excellency,” replied the Bourgeois, who hated compliments to himself. “If those who have do not give, how can you get from those who have not? You may lay some of it to the account of Pierre too,--he was in Acadia, you know, Governor.” A flash of honest pride passed over the usually sedate features of the Bourgeois at the mention of his son.
Le Gardeur looked at his sister. She knew instinctively that his thoughts put into words would say, “He is worthy to be your father, Amélie!” She blushed with a secret pleasure, but spoke not. The music in her heart was without words yet; but one day it would fill the universe with harmony for her.
The Governor noticed the sudden reticence, and half surmising the cause, remarked playfully, “The Iroquois will hardly dare approach Tilly with such a garrison as Pierre Philibert and Le Gardeur, and with you, my Lady de Tilly, as commandant, and you, Mademoiselle Amélie, as aide-de-camp!”
“To be sure! your Excellency,” replied the Lady de Tilly. “The women of Tilly have worn swords and kept the old house before now!” she added playfully, alluding to a celebrated defence of the château by a former lady of the Manor at the head of a body of her censitaires; “and depend upon it, we shall neither give up Tilly nor Le Gardeur either, to whatever savages claim them, be they red or white!”
The lady's allusion to his late associates did not offend Le Gardeur, whose honest nature despised their conduct, while he liked their company. They all understood her, and laughed. The Governor's loyalty to the King's commission prevented his speaking his thoughts. He only remarked, “Le Gardeur and Pierre Philibert will be under your orders, my Lady, and my orders are that they are not to return to the city until all dangers of the Iroquois are over.”
“All right, your Excellency!” exclaimed Le Gardeur. “I shall obey my aunt.” He was acute enough to see through their kindly scheming for his welfare; but his good nature and thorough devotion to his aunt and sister, and his affectionate friendship for Pierre, made him yield to the project without a qualm of regret. Le Gardeur was assailable on many sides,--a fault in his character--or a weakness--which, at any rate, sometimes offered a lever to move him in directions opposite to the malign influences of Bigot and his associates.
The company rose from the tea-table and moved to the drawing-room, where conversation, music, and a few games of cards whiled away a couple of hours very pleasantly.
Amélie sang exquisitely. The Governor was an excellent musician, and accompanied her. His voice, a powerful tenor, had been strengthened by many a conflict with old Boreas on the high seas, and made soft and flexible by his manifold sympathies with all that is kindly and good and true in human nature.
A song of wonderful pathos and beauty had just been brought down from the wilds of the Ottawa, and become universally sung in New France. A voyageur flying from a band of Iroquois had found a hiding-place on a rocky islet in the middle of the Sept Chutes. He concealed himself from his foes, but could not escape, and in the end died of starvation and sleeplessness. The dying man peeled off the white bark of the birch, and with the juice of berries wrote upon it his death song, which was found long after by the side of his remains. His grave is now a marked spot on the Ottawa. La Complainte de Cadieux had seized the imagination of Amélie. She sang it exquisitely, and to-night needed no pressing to do so, for her heart was full of the new song, composed under such circumstances of woe. Intense was the sympathy of the company, as she began:
“'Petit rocher de la haute montagne, Je viens finir ici cette campagne! Ah! doux echos, entendez mes soupirs! En languissant je vais bientôt--mourir.'”
There were no dry eyes as she concluded. The last sighs of Cadieux seemed to expire on her lips:
“'Rossignole, va dire à ma maîtresse, A mes enfans, qu'un adieu je leur laisse, Que j'ai gardé mon amour et ma foi, Et desormais faut renoncer à moi.'”
A few more friends of the family dropped in--Coulon de Villiers, Claude Beauharnais, La Corne St. Luc, and others, who had heard of the lady's departure and came to bid her adieu.
La Corne raised much mirth by his allusions to the Iroquois. The secret was plainly no secret to him. “I hope to get their scalps,” said he, “when you have done with them and they with you, Le Gardeur!”
The evening passed on pleasantly, and the clock of the Recollets pealed out a good late hour before they took final leave of their hospitable hostess, with mutual good wishes and adieus, which with some of them were never repeated. Le Gardeur was no little touched and comforted by so much sympathy and kindness. He shook the Bourgeois affectionately by the hand, inviting him to come up to Tilly. It was noticed and remembered that this evening Le Gardeur clung filially, as it were, to the father of Pierre, and the farewell he gave him was tender, almost solemn, in a sort of sadness that left an impress upon all minds. “Tell Pierre--but indeed, he knows we start early,” said Le Gardeur, “and the canoes will be waiting on the Batture an hour after sunrise.
The Bourgeois knew in a general way the position of Le Gardeur, and sympathized deeply with him. “Keep your heart up, my boy!” said he on leaving. “Remember the proverb,--never forget it for a moment, Le Gardeur: Ce que Dieu garde est bien gardé!”
“Good-by, Sieur Philibert!” replied he, still holding him by the hand. “I would fain be permitted to regard you as a father, since Pierre is all of a brother to me!”
“I will be a father, and a loving one too, if you will permit me, Le Gardeur,” said the Bourgeois, touched by the appeal. “When you return to the city, come home with Pierre. At the Golden Dog, as well as at Belmont, there will be ever welcome for Pierre's friend as for Pierre's self.”
The guests then took their departure.
The preparations for the journey home were all made, and the household retired to rest, all glad to return to Tilly. Even Felix Baudoin felt like a boy going back on a holiday. His mind was surcharged with the endless things he had gathered up, ready to pour into the sympathizing ear of Barbara Sanschagrin; and the servants and censitaires were equally eager to return to relate their adventures in the capital when summoned on the King's corvée to build the walls of Quebec.
XXVI. THE CANADIAN BOAT-SONG
“V'là l'bon vent! V'là l'joli vent! V'là l'bon vent! Ma mie m'appelle! V'là l'bon vent! V'là l'joli vent! V'là l'bon vent! Ma mie m'attend!”
The gay chorus of the voyageurs made the shores ring, as they kept time with their oars, while the silver spray dripped like a shower of diamonds in the bright sunshine at every stroke of their rapid paddles. The graceful bark canoes, things of beauty and almost of life, leaped joyously over the blue waters of the St. Lawrence as they bore the family of the Lady de Tilly and Pierre Philibert with a train of censitaires back to the old Manor House.
The broad river was flooded with sunshine as it rolled majestically between the high banks crowned with green fields and woods in full leaf of summer. Frequent cottages and villages were visible along the shores, and now and then a little church with its bright spire or belfry marked the successive parishes on either hand.
The tide had already forced its way two hundred leagues up from the ocean, and still pressed irresistibly onward, surging and wrestling against the weight of the descending stream.
The wind too was favorable. A number of yachts and bateaux spread their snowy sails to ascend the river with the tide. They were for the most part laden with munitions of war for the Richelieu on their way to the military posts on Lake Champlain, or merchandise for Montreal to be reladen in fleets of canoes for the trading posts up the river of the Ottawas, the Great Lakes, or, mayhap, to supply the new and far-off settlements on the Belle Rivière and the Illinois.
The line of canoes swept past the sailing vessels with a cheer. The light-hearted crews exchanged salutations and bandied jests with each other, laughing immoderately at the well-worn jokes current upon the river among the rough voyageurs. A good voyage! a clear run! short portages and long rests! Some inquired whether their friends had paid for the bear and buffalo skins they were going to buy, or they complimented each other on their nice heads of hair, which it was hoped they would not leave behind as keepsakes with the Iroquois squaws.
The boat-songs of the Canadian voyageurs are unique in character, and very pleasing when sung by a crew of broad-chested fellows dashing their light birch-bark canoes over the waters rough or smooth, taking them, as they take fortune, cheerfully,--sometimes skimming like wild geese over the long, placid reaches, sometimes bounding like stags down the rough rapids and foaming saults.
Master Jean La Marche, clean as a new pin and in his merriest mood, sat erect as the King of Yvetot in the bow of the long canoe which held the Lady de Tilly and her family. His sonorous violin was coquettishly fixed in its place of honor under his wagging chin, as it accompanied his voice while he chanted an old boat-song which had lightened the labor of many a weary oar on lake and river, from the St. Lawrence to the Rocky Mountains.
Amélie sat in the stern of the canoe, laying her white hand in the cool stream which rushed past her. She looked proud and happy to-day, for the whole world of her affections was gathered together in that little bark.
She felt grateful for the bright sun; it seemed to have dispelled every cloud that lately shaded her thoughts on account of her brother, and she silently blessed the light breeze that played with her hair and cooled her cheek, which she felt was tinged with a warm glow of pleasure in the presence of Pierre Philibert.
She spoke little, and almost thanked the rough voyageurs for their incessant melodies, which made conversation difficult for the time, and thus left her to her own sweet silent thoughts, which seemed almost too sacred for the profanation of words.
An occasional look, or a sympathetic smile exchanged with her brother and her aunt, spoke volumes of pure affection. Once or twice the eyes of Pierre Philibert captured a glance of hers which might not have been intended for him, but which Amélie suffered him to intercept and hide away among the secret treasures of his heart. A glance of true affection--brief, it may be, as a flash of lightning--becomes, when caught by the eyes of love, a real thing, fixed and imperishable forever. A tender smile, a fond word of love's creation, contains a universe of light and life and immortality,--small things, and of little value to others, but to him or her whom they concern more precious and more prized than the treasures of Ind.
Master Jean La Marche, after a few minutes' rest, made still more refreshing by a draught from a suspicious-looking flask, which, out of respect for the presence of his mistress, the Lady de Tilly, he said contained “milk,” began a popular boat-song which every voyageur in New France knew as well as his prayers, and loved to his very finger-ends.
The canoe-men pricked up their ears, like troopers at the sound of a bugle, as Jean La Marche began the famous old ballad of the king's son who, with his silver gun, aimed at the beautiful black duck, and shot the white one, out of whose eyes came gold and diamonds, and out of whose mouth rained silver, while its pretty feathers, scattered to the four winds, were picked up by three fair dames, who with them made a bed both large and deep--
“For poor wayfaring men to sleep.”
Master Jean's voice was clear and resonant as a church bell newly christened; and he sang the old boat-song with an energy that drew the crews of half-a-dozen other canoes into the wake of his music, all uniting in the stirring chorus:
“Fringue! Fringue sur la rivière! Fringue! Fringue sur l'aviron!”
The performance of Jean La Marche was highly relished by the critical boatmen, and drew from them that flattering mark of approval, so welcome to a vocalist,--an encore of the whole long ballad, from beginning to end.
As the line of canoes swept up the stream, a welcome cheer occasionally greeted them from the shore, or a voice on land joined in the gay refrain. They draw nearer to Tilly, and their voices became more and more musical, their gaiety more irrepressible, for they were going home; and home to the habitans, as well as to their lady, was the world of all delights.
The contagion of high spirits caught even Le Gardeur, and drew him out of himself, making him for the time forget the disappointments, resentments, and allurements of the city.
Sitting there in the golden sunshine, the blue sky above him, the blue waters below,--friends whom he loved around him, mirth in every eye, gaiety on every tongue,--how could Le Gardeur but smile as the music of the boatmen brought back a hundred sweet associations? Nay, he laughed, and to the inexpressible delight of Amélie and Pierre, who watched every change in his demeanor, united in the chorus of the glorious boat-song.
A few hours of this pleasant voyaging brought the little fleet of canoes under the high bank, which from its summit slopes away in a wide domain of forests, park, and cultivated fields, in the midst of which stood the high-pointed and many-gabled Manor House of Tilly.
Upon a promontory--as if placed there for both a land and sea mark, to save souls as well as bodies--rose the belfry of the Chapel of St. Michael, overlooking a cluster of white, old-fashioned cottages, which formed the village of St. Michael de Tilly.
Upon the sandy beach a crowd of women, children, and old men had gathered, who were cheering and clapping their hands at the unexpected return of the lady of the Manor with all their friends and relatives.
The fears of the villagers had been greatly excited for some days past by exaggerated reports of the presence of Iroquois on the upper waters of the Chaudière. They not unnaturally conjectured, moreover, that the general call for men on the King's corvée, to fortify the city, portended an invasion by the English, who, it was rumored, were to come up in ships from below, as in the days of Sir William Phipps with his army of New Englanders, the story of whose defeat under the walls of Quebec was still freshly remembered in the traditions of the Colony.
“Never fear them!” said old Louis, the one-eyed pilot. “It was in my father's days. Many a time have I heard him tell the story--how, in the autumn of the good year 1690, thirty-four great ships of the Bostonians came up from below, and landed an army of ventres bleus of New England on the flats of Beauport. But our stout Governor, Count de Frontenac, came upon them from the woods with his brave soldiers, habitans, and Indians, and drove them pell-mell back to their boats, and stripped the ship of Admiral Phipps of his red flag, which, if you doubt my word,--which no one does,--still hangs over the high altar of the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires. Blessed be our Lady, who saved our country from our enemies,--and will do so again, if we do not by our wickedness lose her favor! But the arbre sec--the dry tree--still stands upon the Point de Levis, where the Boston fleet took refuge before beating their retreat down the river again,--and you know the old prophecy: that while that tree stands, the English shall never prevail against Quebec!”
Much comforted by this speech of old Louis the pilot, the villagers of Tilly rushed to the beach to receive their friends.
The canoes came dashing into shore. Men, women, and children ran knee-deep into the water to meet them, and a hundred eager hands were ready to seize their prows and drag them high and dry upon the sandy beach.
“Home again! and welcome to Tilly, Pierre Philibert!” exclaimed Lady de Tilly, offering her hand. “Friends like you have the right of welcome here.” Pierre expressed his pleasure in fitting terms, and lent his aid to the noble lady to disembark.
Le Gardeur assisted Amélie out of the canoe. As he led her across the beach, he felt her hand tremble as it rested on his arm. He glanced down at her averted face, and saw her eyes directed to a spot well remembered by himself--the scene of his rescue from drowning by Pierre Philibert.
The whole scene came before Amélie at this moment. Her vivid recollection conjured up the sight of the inanimate body of her brother as it was brought ashore by the strong arm of Pierre Philibert and laid upon the beach; her long agony of suspense, and her joy, the greatest she had ever felt before or since, at his resuscitation to life, and lastly, her passionate vow which she made when clasping the neck of his preserver--a vow which she had enshrined as a holy thing in her heart ever since.
At that moment a strange fancy seized her: that Pierre Philibert was again plunging into deep water to rescue her brother, and that she would be called on by some mysterious power to renew her vow or fulfil it to the very letter.
She twitched Le Gardeur gently by the arm and said to him, in a half whisper, “It was there, brother! do you remember?”
“I know it, sister!” replied he; “I was also thinking of it. I am grateful to Pierre; yet, oh, my Amélie, better he had left me at the bottom of the deep river, where I had found my bed! I have no pleasure in seeing Tilly any more!”
“Why not, brother? Are we not all the same? Are we not all here? There is happiness and comfort for you at Tilly.”
“There was once, Amélie,” replied he, sadly; “but there will be none for me in the future, as I feel too well. I am not worthy of you, Amélie.”
“Come, brother!” replied she, cheerily, “you dampen the joy of our arrival. See, the flag is going up on the staff of the turret, and old Martin is getting ready to fire off the culverin in honor of your arrival.”
Presently there was a flash, a cloud of smoke, and the report of a cannon came booming down to the shore from the Manor House.
“That was well done of Martin and the women!” remarked Felix Baudoin, who had served in his youth, and therefore knew what was fitting in a military salute. “'The women of Tilly are better than the men of Beauce,' says the proverb.”
“Ay, or of Tilly either!” remarked Josephte Le Tardeur, in a sharp, snapping tone. Josephte was a short, stout virago, with a turned-up nose and a pair of black eyes that would bore you through like an auger. She wore a wide-brimmed hat of straw, overtopping curls as crisp as her temper. Her short linsey petticoat was not chary of showing her substantial ankles, while her rolled-up sleeves displayed a pair of arms so red and robust that a Swiss milkmaid might well have envied them.
Her remark was intended for the ear of José Le Tardeur, her husband, a lazy, good-natured fellow, whose eyes had been fairly henpecked out of his head all the days of his married life. Josephte's speech hit him without hurting him, as he remarked to a neighbor. Josephte made a target of him every day. He was glad, for his part, that the women of Tilly were better soldiers than the men, and so much fonder of looking after things! It saved the men a deal of worry and a good deal of work.
“What are you saying, José?” exclaimed Felix, who only caught a few half words.
“I say, Master Felix, that but for Mère Eve there would have been no curse upon men, to make them labor when they do not want to, and no sin either. As the Curé says, we could have lain on the grass sunning ourselves all day long. Now it is nothing but work and pray, never play, else you will save neither body nor soul. Master Felix, I hope you will remember me if I come up to the Manor house.”
“Ay, I will remember you, José,” replied Felix, tartly; “but if labor was the curse which Eve brought into the world when she ate the apple, I am sure you are free from it. So ride up with the carts, José, and get out of the way of my Lady's carriage!”
José obeyed, and taking off his cap, bowed respectfully to the Lady de Tilly as she passed, leaning on the arm of Pierre Philibert, who escorted her to her carriage.
A couple of sleek Canadian horses, sure-footed as goats and strong as little elephants, drew the coach with a long, steady trot up the winding road which led to the Manor House.
The road, unfenced and bordered with grass on each side of the track, was smooth and well kept, as became the Grande Chaussée of the Barony of Tilly. It ran sometimes through stretches of cultivated fields--green pastures or corn-lands ripening for the sickle of the censitaire. Sometimes it passed through cool, shady woods, full of primeval grandeur,--part of the great Forest of Tilly, which stretched away far as the eye could reach over the hills of the south shore. Huge oaks that might have stood there from the beginning of the world, wide-branching elms, and dark pines overshadowed the highway, opening now and then into vistas of green fields where stood a cottage or two, with a herd of mottled cows grazing down by the brook. On the higher ridges the trees formed a close phalanx, and with their dark tops cut the horizon into a long, irregular line of forest, as if offering battle to the woodman's axe that was threatening to invade their solitudes.
Half an hour's driving brought the company to the Manor House, a stately mansion, gabled and pointed like an ancient château on the Seine.
It was a large, irregular structure of hammered stone, with deeply-recessed windows, mullioned and ornamented with grotesque carvings. A turret, loopholed and battlemented, projected from each of the four corners of the house, enabling its inmates to enfilade every side with a raking fire of musketry, affording an adequate defence against Indian foes. A stone tablet over the main entrance of the Manor House was carved with the armorial bearings of the ancient family of Tilly, with the date of its erection, and a pious invocation placing the house under the special protection of St. Michael de Thury, the patron saint of the House of Tilly.
The Manor House of Tilly had been built by Charles Le Gardeur de Tilly, a gentleman of Normandy, one of whose ancestors, the Sieur de Tilly, figures on the roll of Battle Abbey as a follower of Duke William at Hastings. His descendant, Charles Le Gardeur, came over to Canada with a large body of his vassals in 1636, having obtained from the King a grant of the lands of Tilly, on the bank of the St. Lawrence, “to hold in fief and seigniory,”--so ran the royal patent,--“with the right and jurisdiction of superior, moyenne and basse justice, and of hunting, fishing, and trading with the Indians throughout the whole of this royal concession; subject to the condition of foi et hommage, which he shall be held to perform at the Castle of St. Louis in Quebec, of which he shall hold under the customary duties and dues, agreeably to the coutume de Paris followed in this country.”
Such was the style of the royal grants of seignioral rights conceded in New France, by virtue of one of which this gallant Norman gentleman founded his settlement and built this Manor House on the shores of the St. Lawrence.
A broad, smooth carriage road led up to the mansion across a park dotted with clumps of evergreens and deciduous trees. Here and there an ancient patriarch of the forest stood alone,--some old oak or elm, whose goodly proportions and amplitude of shade had found favor in the eyes of the seigniors of Tilly, and saved it from the axe of the woodman.
A pretty brook, not too wide to be crossed over by a rustic bridge, meandered through the domain, peeping occasionally out of the openings in the woods as it stole away like a bashful girl from the eyes of her admirer.
This brook was the outflow of a romantic little lake that lay hidden away among the wooded hills that bounded the horizon, an irregular sheet of water a league in circumference, dotted with islands and abounding with fish and waterfowl that haunted its quiet pools. That primitive bit of nature had never been disturbed by axe or fire, and was a favorite spot for recreation to the inmates of the Manor House, to whom it was accessible either by boat up the little stream, or by a pleasant drive through the old woods.
As the carriages drew up in front of the Manor House, every door, window, and gable of which looked like an old friend in the eyes of Pierre Philibert, a body of female servants--the men had all been away at the city--stood ranged in their best gowns and gayest ribbons to welcome home their mistress and Mademoiselle Amélie, who was the idol of them all.
Great was their delight to see Monsieur Le Gardeur, as they usually styled their young master, with another gentleman in military costume, whom it did not take two minutes for some of the sharp-eyed lasses to recognize as Pierre Philibert, who had once saved the life of Le Gardeur on a memorable occasion, and who now, they said one to another, was come to the Manor House to--to--they whispered what it was to each other, and smiled in a knowing manner.
Women's wits fly swiftly to conclusions, and right ones too on most occasions. The lively maids of Tilly told one another in whispers that they were sure Pierre Philibert had come back to the Manor House as a suitor for the hand of Mademoiselle Amélie, as was most natural he should do, so handsome and manly looking as he was, and mademoiselle always liked to hear any of them mention his name. The maids ran out the whole chain of logical sequences before either Pierre or Amélie had ventured to draw a conclusion of any kind from the premises of this visit.
Behind the mansion, overlooking poultry-yards and stables which were well hidden from view, rose a high colombière, or pigeon-house, of stone, the possession of which was one of the rights which feudal law reserved to the lord of the manor. This colombière was capable of containing a large army of pigeons, but the regard which the Lady de Tilly had for the corn-fields of her censitaires caused her to thin out its population to such a degree that there remained only a few favorite birds of rare breed and plumage to strut and coo upon the roofs, and rival the peacocks on the terrace with their bright colors.
In front of the mansion, contrasting oddly with the living trees around it, stood a high pole, the long, straight stem of a pine-tree, carefully stripped of its bark, bearing on its top the withered remains of a bunch of evergreens, with the fragments of a flag and ends of ribbon which fluttered gaily from it. The pole was marked with black spots from the discharge of guns fired at it by the joyous habitans, who had kept the ancient custom of May-day by planting this May-pole in front of the Manor House of their lady.
The planting of such a pole was in New France a special mark of respect due to the feudal superior, and custom as well as politeness required that it should not be taken down until the recurrence of another anniversary of Flora, which in New France sometimes found the earth white with snow and hardened with frost, instead of covered with flowers as in the Old World whence the custom was derived.
The Lady de Tilly duly appreciated this compliment of her faithful censitaires, and would sooner have stripped her park of half its live trees than have removed that dead pole, with its withered crown, from the place of honor in front of her mansion.
The revels of May in New France, the king and queen of St. Philip, the rejoicings of a frank, loyal peasantry--illiterate in books but not unlearned in the art of life,--have wholly disappeared before the levelling spirit of the nineteenth century.
The celebration of the day of St. Philip has been superseded by the festival of St. John the Baptist, at a season of the year when green leaves and blooming flowers give the possibility of arches and garlands in honor of the Canadian summer.
Felix Beaudoin with a wave of his hand scattered the bevy of maid servants who stood chattering as they gazed upon the new arrivals. The experience of Felix told him that everything had of course gone wrong during his absence from the Manor House, and that nothing could be fit for his mistress's reception until he had set all to rights again himself.
The worthy majordomo was in a state of perspiration lest he should not get into the house before his mistress and don his livery to meet her at the door with his white wand and everything en régle, just as if nothing had interrupted their usual course of housekeeping.
The Lady de Tilly knew the weakness of her faithful old servitor, and although she smiled to herself, she would not hurt his feelings by entering the house before he was ready at his post to receive her. She continued walking about the lawn conversing with Amélie, Pierre, and Le Gardeur, until she saw old Felix with his wand and livery standing at the door, when, taking Pierre's arm, she led the way into the house.
The folding doors were open, and Felix with his wand walked before his lady and her companions into the mansion. They entered without delay, for the day had been warm, and the ladies were weary after sitting several hours in a canoe, a mode of travelling which admits of very little change of position in the voyagers.
The interior of the Manor House of Tilly presented the appearance of an old French château. A large hall with antique furniture occupied the center of the house, used occasionally as a court of justice when the Seigneur de Tilly exercised his judicial office for the trial of offenders, which was very rarely, thanks to the good morals of the people, or held a cour plenière of his vassals, on affairs of the seigniory for apportioning the corvées for road-making and bridge-building, and, not the least important by any means, for the annual feast to his censitaires on the day of St. Michael de Thury.
From this hall, passages led into apartments and suites of rooms arranged for use, comfort, and hospitality. The rooms were of all sizes, panelled, tapestried, and furnished in a style of splendor suited to the wealth and dignity of the Seigneurs of Tilly. A stair of oak, broad enough for a section of grenadiers to march up it abreast, led to the upper chambers, bedrooms, and boudoirs, which looked out of old mullioned windows upon the lawn and gardens that surrounded the house, affording picturesque glimpses of water, hills, and forests far enough off for contemplation, and yet near enough to be accessible by a short ride from the mansion.
Pierre Philibert was startled at the strange familiarity of everything he saw: the passages and all their intricacies, where he, Le Gardeur, and Amélie had hid and found one another with cries of delight,--he knew where they all led to; the rooms with their antique and stately furniture, the paintings on the wall, before which he had stood and gazed, wondering if the world was as fair as those landscapes of sunny France and Italy and why the men and women of the house of Tilly, whose portraits hung upon the walls, looked at him so kindly with those dark eyes of theirs, which seemed to follow him everywhere, and he imagined they even smiled when their lips were illumined by a ray of sunshine. Pierre looked at them again with a strange interest,--they were like the faces of living friends who welcomed him back to Tilly after years of absence.
Pierre entered a well-remembered apartment which he knew to be the favorite sitting-room of the Lady de Tilly. He walked hastily across it to look at a picture upon the wall which he recognized again with a flush of pleasure.
It was the portrait of Amélie painted by himself during his last visit to Tilly. The young artist, full of enthusiasm, had put his whole soul into the work, until he was himself startled at the vivid likeness which almost unconsciously flowed from his pencil. He had caught the divine upward expression of her eyes, as she turned her head to listen to him, and left upon the canvas the very smile he had seen upon her lips. Those dark eyes of hers had haunted his memory forever after. To his imagination that picture had become almost a living thing. It was as a voice of his own that returned to his ear as the voice of Amélie. In the painting of that portrait Pierre had the first revelation of a consciousness of his deep love which became in the end the master passion of his life.
He stood for some minutes contemplating this portrait, so different from her in age now, yet so like in look and expression. He turned suddenly and saw Amélie; she had silently stepped up behind him, and her features in a glow of pleasure took on the very look of the picture.
Pierre started. He looked again, and saw every feature of the girl of twelve looking through the transparent countenance of the perfect woman of twenty. It was a moment of blissful revelation, for he felt an assurance at that moment that Amélie was the same to him now as in their days of youthful companionship. “How like it is to you yet, Amélie!” said he; “it is more true than I knew how to make it!”
“That sounds like a paradox, Pierre Philibert!” replied she, with a smile. “But it means, I suppose, that you painted a universal portrait of me which will be like through all my seven ages. Such a picture might be true of the soul, Pierre, had you painted that, but I have outgrown the picture of my person.”
“I could imagine nothing fairer than that portrait! In soul and body it is all true, Amélie.”
“Flatterer that you are!” said she, laughing. “I could almost wish that portrait would walk out of its frame to thank you for the care you bestowed upon its foolish little original.”
“My care was more than rewarded! I find in that picture my beau-ideal of the beauty of life, which, belonging to the soul, is true to all ages.”
“The girl of twelve would have thanked you more enthusiastically for that remark, Pierre, than I dare do,” replied she.
“The thanks are due from me, not from you, Amélie! I became your debtor for a life-long obligation when without genius I could do impossibilities. You taught me that paradox when you let me paint that picture.”
Amélie glanced quickly up at him. A slight color came and went on her cheek. “Would that I could do impossibilities,” said she, “to thank you sufficiently for your kindness to Le Gardeur and all of us in coming to Tilly at this time.
“It would be a novelty, almost a relief, to put Pierre Philibert under some obligation to us for we all owe him, would it not, Le Gardeur?” continued she, clasping the arm of her brother, who just now came into the room. “We will discharge a portion of our debt to Pierre for this welcome visit by a day on the lake,--we will make up a water-party. What say you, brother? The gentlemen shall light fires, the ladies shall make tea, and we will have guitars and songs, and maybe a dance, brother! and then a glorious return home by moonlight! What say you to my programme, Le Gardeur de Repentigny? What say you, Pierre Philibert?”
“It is a good programme, sister, but leave me out of it. I shall only mar the pleasure of the rest; I will not go to the lake. I have been trying ever since my return home to recognize Tilly; everything looks to me in an eclipse, and nothing bright as it once was, not even you, Amélie. Your smile has a curious touch of sadness in it which does not escape my eyes; accursed as they have been of late, seeing things they ought not to see, yet I can see that, and I know it, too; I have given you cause to be sad, sister.”
“Hush, brother! it is a sin against your dear eyes to speak of them thus! Tilly is as bright and joyous as ever. As for my smiles, if you detect in them one trace of that sadness you talk about, I shall grow as melancholy as yourself, and for as little cause. Come! you shall confess before three days, brother, if you will only help me to be gay, that your sister has the lightest heart in New France.”
XXVII. CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS AND CONFIDENT TO-MORROWS
The ladies retired to their several rooms, and after a general rearranging of toilets descended to the great parlor, where they were joined by Messire La Lande, the curé of the parish, a benevolent, rosy old priest, and several ladies from the neighborhood, with two or three old gentlemen of a military air and manner, retired officers of the army who enjoyed their pensions and kept up their respectability at a cheaper rate in the country than they could do in the city.
Felix Beaudoin had for the last two hours kept the cooks in hot water. He was now superintending the laying of the table, resolved that, notwithstanding his long absence from home, the dinner should be a marvellous success.
Amélie was very beautiful to-day. Her face was aglow with pure air and exercise, and she felt happy in the apparent contentment of her brother, whom she met with Pierre on the broad terrace of the Manor House.
She was dressed with exquisite neatness, yet plainly. An antique cross of gold formed her only adornment except her own charms. That cross she had put on in honor of Pierre Philibert. He recognized it with delight as a birthday gift to Amélie which he had himself given her during their days of juvenile companionship, on one of his holiday visits to Tilly.
She was conscious of his recognition of it,--it brought a flush to her cheek. “It is in honor of your visit, Pierre,” said she, frankly, “that I wear your gift. Old friendship lasts well with me, does it not? But you will find more old friends than me at Tilly who have not forgotten you.”
“I am already richer than Croesus, if friendship count as riches, Amélie. The hare had many friends, but none at last; I am more fortunate in possessing one friend worth a million.”
“Nay, you have the million too, if good wishes count in your favor, Pierre, you are richer”--the bell in the turret of the château began to ring for dinner, drowning her voice somewhat.
“Thanks to the old bell for cutting short the compliment, Pierre,” continued she, laughing; “you don't know what you have lost! but in compensation you shall be my cavalier, and escort me to the dining-room.”
She took the arm of Pierre, and in a merry mood, which brought back sweet memories of the past, their voices echoed again along the old corridors of the Manor House as they proceeded to the great dining-room, where the rest of the company were assembling.
The dinner was rather a stately affair, owing to the determination of Felix Beaudoin to do especial honor to the return home of the family. How the company ate, talked, and drank at the hospitable table need not be recorded here. The good Curé's face, under the joint influence of good humor and good cheer, was full as a harvest moon. He rose at last, folded his hands, and slowly repeated “agimus gratias.” After dinner the company withdrew to the brilliantly lighted drawing-room, where conversation, music, and a few games of cards for such as liked them, filled up a couple of hours longer.
The Lady de Tilly, seated beside Pierre Philibert on the sofa, conversed with him in a pleasant strain, while the Curé, with a couple of old dowagers in turbans, and an old veteran officer of the colonial marine, long stranded on a lee shore, formed a quartette at cards.
These were steady enthusiasts of whist and piquet, such as are only to be found in small country circles where society is scarce and amusements few. They had met as partners or antagonists, and played, laughed, and wrangled over sixpenny stakes and odd tricks and honors, every week for a quarter of a century, and would willingly have gone on playing till the day of judgment without a change of partners if they could have trumped death and won the odd trick of him.
Pierre recollected having seen these same old friends seated at the same card-table during his earliest visits to the Manor House. He recalled the fact to the Lady de Tilly, who laughed and said her old friends had lived so long in the company of the kings and queens that formed the paste-board Court of the Kingdom of Cocagne that they could relish no meaner amusement than one which royalty, although mad, had the credit of introducing.
Amélie devoted herself to the task of cheering her somewhat moody brother. She sat beside him, resting her hand with sisterly affection upon his shoulder, while in a low, sweet voice she talked to him, adroitly touching those topics only which she knew awoke pleasurable associations in his mind. Her words were sweet as manna and full of womanly tenderness and sympathy, skilfully wrapped in a strain of gaiety like a bridal veil which covers the tears of the heart.
Pierre Philibert's eyes involuntarily turned towards her, and his ears caught much of what she said. He was astonished at the grace and perfection of her language; it seemed to him like a strain of music filled with every melody of earth and heaven, surpassing poets in beauty of diction, philosophers in truth,--and in purity of affection, all the saints and sweetest women of whom he had ever read.
Her beauty, her vivacity, her modest reticences, and her delicate tact in addressing the captious spirit of Le Gardeur, filled Pierre with admiration. He could at that moment have knelt at her feet and worshipped in her the realization of every image which his imagination had ever formed of a perfect woman.
Now and then she played on the harp for Le Gardeur the airs which she knew he liked best. His sombre mood yielded to her fond exertions, and she had the reward of drawing at last a smile from his eyes as well as from his lips. The last she knew might be simulated, the former she felt was real, for the smile of the eye is the flash of the joy kindled in the glad heart.
Le Gardeur was not dull nor ungrateful; he read clearly enough the loving purpose of his sister. His brow cleared up under her sunshine. He smiled, he laughed; and Amélie had the exquisite joy of believing she had gained a victory over the dark spirit that had taken possession of his soul, although the hollow laugh struck the ear of Pierre Philibert with a more uncertain sound than that which fluttered the fond hopes of Amélie.
Amélie looked towards Pierre, and saw his eyes fixed upon her with that look which fills every woman with an emotion almost painful in its excess of pleasure when first she meets it--that unmistakable glance from the eyes of a man who, she is proud to perceive, has singled her out from all other women for his love and homage.
Her face became of a deep glow in spite of her efforts to look calm and cold; she feared Pierre might have misinterpreted her vivacity of speech and manner. Sudden distrust of herself came over her in his presence,--the flow of her conversation was embarrassed, and almost ceased.
To extricate herself from her momentary confusion, which she was very conscious had not escaped the observation of Pierre,--and the thought of that confused her still more,--she rose and went to the harpsichord, to recover her composure by singing a sweet song of her own composition, written in the soft dialect of Provence, the Languedoc, full of the sweet sadness of a tender, impassioned love.
Her voice, tremulous in its power, flowed in a thousand harmonies on the enraptured ears of her listeners. Even the veteran card-players left a game of whist unfinished, to cluster round the angelic singer.
Pierre Philibert sat like one in a trance. He loved music, and understood it passing well. He had heard all the rare voices which Paris prided itself in the possession of, but he thought he had never known what music was till now. His heart throbbed in sympathy with every inflection of the voice of Amélie, which went through him like a sweet spell of enchantment. It was the voice of a disembodied spirit singing in the language of earth, which changed at last into a benediction and good-night for the parting guests, who, at an earlier hour than usual, out of consideration for the fatigue of their hosts, took their leave of the Manor House and its hospitable inmates.
The family, as families will do upon the departure of their guests, drew up in a narrower circle round the fire, that blessed circle of freedom and confidence which belongs only to happy households. The novelty of the situation kept up the interest of the day, and they sat and conversed until a late hour.
The Lady de Tilly reclined comfortably in her fauteuil looking with good-natured complacency upon the little group beside her. Amélie, sitting on a stool, reclined her head against the bosom of her aunt, whose arm embraced her closely and lovingly as she listened with absorbing interest to an animated conversation between her aunt and Pierre Philibert.
The Lady de Tilly drew Pierre out to talk of his travels, his studies, and his military career, of which he spoke frankly and modestly. His high principles won her admiration; the chivalry and loyalty of his character, mingled with the humanity of the true soldier, touched a chord in her own heart, stirring within her the sympathies of a nature akin to his.
The presence of Pierre Philibert, so unforeseen at the old Manor House, seemed to Amélie the work of Providence for a good and great end--the reformation of her brother. If she dared to think of herself in connection with him it was with fear and trembling, as a saint on earth receives a beatific vision that may only be realized in Heaven.
Amélie, with peculiar tact, sought to entangle Le Gardeur's thoughts in an elaborate cobweb of occupations rivalling that of Arachne, which she had woven to catch every leisure hour of his, so as to leave him no time to brood over the pleasures of the Palace of the Intendant or the charms of Angélique des Meloises.
There were golden threads too in the network in which she hoped to entangle him: long rides to the neighboring seigniories, where bright eyes and laughing lips were ready to expel every shadow of care from the most dejected of men, much more from a handsome gallant like Le Gardeur de Repentigny, whose presence at any of these old manors put their fair inmates at once in holiday trim and in holiday humor; there were shorter walks through the park and domain of Tilly, where she intended to botanize and sketch, and even fish and hunt with Le Gardeur and Pierre, although, sooth to say, Amélie's share in hunting would only be to ride her sure-footed pony and look at her companions; there were visits to friends far and near, and visits in return to the Manor House, and a grand excursion of all to the lake of Tilly in boats,--they would colonize its little island for a day, set up tents, make a governor and intendant, perhaps a king and queen, and forget the world till their return home.
This elaborate scheme secured the approbation of the Lady de Tilly, who had, in truth, contributed part of it. Le Gardeur said he was a poor fly whom they were resolved to catch and pin to the wall of a château en Espagne, but he would enter the web without a buzz of opposition on condition that Pierre would join him. So it was all settled.
Amélie did not venture again that night to encounter the eyes of Pierre Philibert,--she needed more courage than she felt just now to do that; but in secret she blessed him, and treasured those fond looks of his in her heart, never to be forgotten any more. When she retired to her own chamber and was alone, she threw herself in passionate abandonment before the altar in her little oratory, which she had crowned with flowers to mark her gladness. She poured out her pure soul in invocations of blessings upon Pierre Philibert and upon her brother and all the house. The golden head of her rosary lingered long in her loving fingers that night, as she repeated over and over her accustomed prayers for his safety and welfare.
The sun rose gloriously next morning over the green woods and still greener meadows of Tilly. The atmosphere was soft and pure; it had been washed clean of all its impurities by a few showers in the night. Every object seemed nearer and clearer to the eye, while the delicious odor of fresh flowers filled the whole air with fragrance.
The trees, rocks, waters, and green slopes stood out with marvellous precision of outline, as if cut with a keen knife. No fringe of haze surrounded them, as in a drought or as in the evening when the air is filled with the shimmering of the day dust which follows the sun's chariot in his course round the world.
Every object, great and small, seemed magnified to welcome Pierre Philibert, who was up betimes this morning and out in the pure air viewing the old familiar scenes.
With what delight he recognized each favorite spot! There was the cluster of trees which crowned a promontory overlooking the St. Lawrence where he and Le Gardeur had stormed the eagle's nest. In that sweep of forest the deer used to browse and the fawns crouch in the long ferns. Upon yonder breezy hill they used to sit and count the sails turning alternately bright and dark as the vessels tacked up the broad river. There was a stretch of green lawn, still green as it was in his memory--how everlasting are God's colors! There he had taught Amélie to ride, and, holding fast, ran by her side, keeping pace with her flying Indian pony. How beautiful and fresh the picture of her remained in his memory!--the soft white dress she wore, her black hair streaming over her shoulders, her dark eyes flashing delight, her merry laugh rivalling the trill of the blackbird which flew over their heads chattering for very joy. Before him lay the pretty brook with its rustic bridge reflecting itself in the clear water as in a mirror. That path along the bank led down to the willows where the big mossy stones lay in the stream and the silvery salmon and speckled trout lay fanning the water gently with their fins as they contemplated their shadows on the smooth, sandy bottom.
Pierre Philibert sat down on a stone by the side of the brook and watched the shoals of minnows move about in little battalions, wheeling like soldiers to the right or left at a wave of the hand. But his thoughts were running in a circle of questions and enigmas for which he found neither end nor answer.
For the hundredth time Pierre proposed to himself the tormenting enigma, harder, he thought, to solve than any problem of mathematics,--for it was the riddle of his life: “What thoughts are truly in the heart of Amélie de Repentigny respecting me? Does she recollect me only as her brother's companion, who may possibly have some claim upon her friendship, but none upon her love?” His imagination pictured every look she had given him since his return. Not all! Oh, Pierre Philibert! the looks you would have given worlds to catch, you were unconscious of! Every word she had spoken, the soft inflection of every syllable of her silvery voice lingered in his ear. He had caught meanings where perhaps no meaning was, and missed the key to others which he knew were there--never, perhaps, to be revealed to him. But although he questioned in the name of love, and found many divine echoes in her words, imperceptible to every ear but his own, he could not wholly solve the riddle of his life. Still he hoped.
“If love creates love, as some say it does,” thought he, “Amélie de Repentigny cannot be indifferent to a passion which governs every impulse of my being! But is there any especial merit in loving her whom all the world cannot help admiring equally with myself? I am presumptuous to think so!--and more presumptuous still to expect, after so many years of separation and forgetfulness, that her heart, so loving and so sympathetic, has not already bestowed its affection upon some one more fortunate than me.”
While Pierre tormented himself with these sharp thorns of doubt,--and of hopes painful as doubts,--little did he think what a brave, loving spirit was hid under the silken vesture of Amélie de Repentigny, and how hard was her struggle to conceal from his eyes those tender regards, which, with over-delicacy, she accounted censurable because they were wholly spontaneous.
He little thought how entirely his image had filled her heart during those years when she dreamed of him in the quiet cloister, living in a world of bright imaginings of her own; how she had prayed for his safety and welfare as she would have prayed for the soul of one dead,--never thinking, or even hoping, to see him again.
Pierre had become to her as one of the disembodied saints or angels whose pictures looked down from the wall of the Convent chapel--the bright angel of the Annunciation or the youthful Baptist proclaiming the way of the Lord. Now that Pierre Philibert was alive in the flesh,--a man, beautiful, brave, honorable, and worthy of any woman's love,--Amélie was frightened. She had not looked for that, and yet it had come upon her. And, although trembling, she was glad and proud to find she had been remembered by the brave youth, who recognized in the perfect woman the girl he had so ardently loved as a boy.
Did he love her still? Woman's heart is quicker to apprehend all possibilities than man's. She had caught a look once or twice in the eyes of Pierre Philibert which thrilled the inmost fibres of her being; she had detected his ardent admiration. Was she offended? Far from it! And although her cheek had flushed deeply red, and her pulses throbbed hard at the sudden consciousness that Pierre Philibert admired, nay, more,--she could not conceal it from herself,--she knew that night that he loved her! She would not have foregone that moment of revelation for all that the world had to offer.
She would gladly at that moment of discovery have fled to her own apartment and cried for joy, but she dared not; she trembled lest his eyes, if she looked up, should discover the secret of her own. She had an overpowering consciousness that she stood upon the brink of her fate; that ere long that look of his would be followed by words--blessed, hoped-for words, from the lips of Pierre Philibert! words which would be the pledge and assurance to her of that love which was hereafter to be the joy--it might be the despair, but in any case the all in all of her life forever.
Amélie had not yet realized the truth that love is the strength, not the weakness of woman; and that the boldness of the man is rank cowardice in comparison with the bravery she is capable of, and the sacrifices she will make for the sake of the man who has won her heart.
God locks up in a golden casket of modesty the yearnings of a woman's heart; but when the hand in which he has placed the key that opens it calls forth her glorified affections, they come out like the strong angels, and hold back the winds that blow from the four corners of the earth that they may not hurt the man whose forehead is sealed with the kiss of her acknowledged love.