waved him curtly back. “I have come to ask shelter for myself and babe,
from the lord of the seigneurie, monsieur, not to drink wine.” Then,
pausing as if for breath, she stood erect beside the door, slender and
lissome, a multitude of snow-flakes slowly melting in the red-gold of
her hair.
For a moment Poutrincourt was silent. Idly his thoughts travelled the
endless forest wastes of Acadie, snow-clad and inhospitable, where,
this winter of 1611, was no white settlement beside his own. He had even
passed up the great river to Quebec, where his friend Captain Samuel
Champlain had three years before planted the banner of the fleur-de-lis,
when with a start he became aware the woman’s eyes were fixed haughtily
upon him. Then, mindful of his duty, he stepped forward, bowing low, and
bade her welcome to his seigneurie of Port Royal, brushing the snow from
her long fur mantle with his own white hands. And in an instant more the
stranger was ensconced in a chair before the fire.
Biencourt and the duc resumed their gaming, Monsieur Lescarbot took
out his tablets preparatory to verse-making, and Imbert busied himself
mulling wine for the conclusion of the evening’s potations, which in
Port Royal were wont to be of the deepest. But no one ventured to mar
the hospitality of Port Royal with a question, and the newcomer proved
more taciturn than would have been expected from the laughing curves of
her lips, sitting moment after moment silent in the glow of the fire.
The wind still battered at the door and muttered angrily in the chimney,
but to Biencourt the room was filled with a new light--a strange
radiance that seemed to emanate from the stranger’s golden head or the
crimson kirtle which she wore. He forgot his game. He watched only her
drooping lashes, with a vague hope that soon she might raise them. And
as he watched, the pile of money before him lessened rapidly.
“I fear you bring me ill-luck, madame,” he cried at last, ruefully
smiling toward her. “These pistoles have a sorry trick of vanishing
since you came.”
The stranger raised her lashes, as he had hoped.
She smiled back responsively, and her eyes caught an amber light from
the leaping flames. “Would you turn me into the night again?” she asked,
jestingly, yet with a strange inflection in her voice as though speaking
to some one far away.
Biencourt shook his head. “This may bring me fortune,” he said, in eager
tones. And rising and striding to her side, he stooped down and made the
sign of the cross above the baby’s forehead--a simple superstition, but
evidently not to the newcomer’s liking, for she said with some hauteur,
“I, monsieur, am of the reformed faith,” and leaned back coldly in her
chair.
“Methinks, madame, you cannot have journeyed far,” broke in
Poutrincourt, who had been staring into the fire. “Your cloak had little
snow for much travel, and, besides, there was the babe.”
Madame’s face lost its haughtiness, and she smiled once more.
Poutrincourt rubbed his slender hands softly together. “All about us
is the endless forest, and lo! as if by magic you appear! Are you sure
there be no witchcraft in it?”
The stranger’s laugh rang through the hall, dying faintly amid the armor
in the far corner. “Mayhap I sailed hither in some sea-rover from the
Spanish lands, or perhaps”--and here she smiled demurely--“I hid myself
in yonder vessel that this day came from France. Perchance I dared the
drifts alone, or I may have bribed some of the red savages to carry me.
But where’er I came from, the sentry at the gate is not to blame. The
night is dark, and the snow has heaped an easy road from outside over
the bastion.”
“I am waiting, Monsieur Biencourt,” broke in the duc, with an impatient
glance at his opponent, who was still standing by the stranger lady’s
side. There was such anger in his tone that the other men, remembering
his former listlessness, glanced curiously at him.
His pale face was even paler than before; tiny drops of moisture
glittered on his forehead; one hand was clenched above his winnings, in
the other his dice-box trembled. “Does he love his pistoles after all?”
thought the poet, pausing in his poem. The wine was mulled at last
and the goblets filled. The Seigneur of Port Royal drank slowly and
reflectively, in small sips, glancing alternately from the fair-haired
mother to her dark-eyed, cooing child. “I have thought about your
lodging, madame,” he said at last, tilting his goblet to and fro.
“Here you would have no rest, else I would give you my own apartments.
This evening we are something quieter than usual, but oftener the noise
of revelling disturbs the forest far into the night. The hall is full of
men in leathern hunting suits, the red savages sit smoking by the fire,
there is gaming and wine-drinking, and in the intervals we sing the
songs of France. But without the fort, a half-mile beyond the gate,
are two disused huts. One of these I give you to inhabit. And that you
suffer insult from none, a protector shall go with you, who shall answer
for your honor with his own. There be two huts, and each shall have one.
But this night you will lodge here.”
The stranger leaned forward. Her slender fingers touched his arm. “You
have forgotten to name the one who is to guard me,” she said hastily, a
curious thrill vibrating through her voice.
The Seigneur pointed at Biencourt, and her face, which had seemed
strained and eager, relaxed again. “We shall be brave allies, shall we
not?” she cried, turning her blue eyes toward him. Biencourt laughed.
“None better,” he responded in great good-humor.
The storm was growing fiercer as the night went on. The door rattled
more noisily, and the flames in the great chimney waved to and fro in
the sudden gusts. The space on the other side of the table, feebly lit
by two candles in brazen candlesticks, became a battleground of shadows
from the group before the fire. The stranger lady, seeming not to mind
the storm, looked dreamily about her at the strange antlers on the
walls, and at the motto of the lords of Port Royal, carved above the
oaken mantel, shielding her baby’s face the while from the glare of the
flames. Presently her eyes met Biencourt’s.
“You are brave; is it not so?” she asked, with a laugh and a toss of her
head that spread her golden hair in sunshine over her shoulders.
Imbert answered in his place. “Very brave, and a fine swordsman!” cried
the old pirate, while his black eyes flashed. “All Port Royal knows the
young admiral and his famous wrist-play.”
“Admiral!” Again the blue eyes looked into his, and again Biencourt had
the same strange feeling, as if the speaker’s thoughts were far away,
and she were merely toying with the words.
“Aye!” went on Imbert, coming nearer, and laying his monstrous hands
upon the mantel, “the late King Henry made him an admiral for these
waters months ere his martyrdom, and since then he has swept the
freebooters from the coast.”
His highness the Duc de Montpelier leaned lazily backward in his chair,
raising his black eyebrows. “So my good cousin, Henry of Navarre,
chose for his admirals beardless boys!” he said very softly and very
languidly.
There was an instant hush throughout the room, in which the clatter
of the door rose almost to a scream. Imbert drew in his breath with
a sharp, hissing sound; the poet looked up from his tablets, and
Poutrincourt from the fire. These latter were just in time to see
Biencourt leap to his feet and draw his sword, and almost before they
understood the cause the fight had begun.
The first of the encounter was much in the duc’s favor. He fenced so
strongly behind a certain affectation of disdain, and his thrusts
came so subtly home, that, ere five minutes had passed, Biencourt was
bleeding from a wound in his left shoulder. The duc lowered his sword
and surveyed his opponent. “Are you satisfied, monsieur?” he asked
placidly.
“Not yet!” cried Biencourt, angrily.
Imbert drew near and examined the wound. “A scratch!” he called,
contemptuously. Then, with a warning look, he lounged back to his
position by the mantel. The room was very still as the two faced each
other again,--the duc, dark and pale; Biencourt, with a crimson flush
upon his cheeks.
There was the same writhing of swords, the same chilly music of steel,
and once again the duellists swayed to and fro. Then for the second time
the duc’s sword found its mark; this time not far below the heart.
Biencourt leaned back, ashen white, upon Lescarbot’s shoulder. His blood
flowed fast and his eyes were closed as if in pain. The duc himself
approached and surveyed him, leaning the while a trifle wearily upon his
sword, for the last bout had been a fierce one.
“It was a brave fight,” he said slowly.
At the sound of his voice Biencourt’s blue eyes opened. “Can you stay
the bleeding?” he asked huskily of Imbert, who with the deftness of an
old campaigner was binding a mass of soft cloths about the wound.
Imbert nodded.
“Then a moment more and I am ready.”
“But, monsieur,” the duc courteously interposed, “your wound is deep and
you have already done enough for honor. Believe me you have this night
shown a swordsmanship I never saw before--I who have met and conquered
every _maître d’armes_ in France. It was but by using all my skill I
touched you.”
But with the duc’s insult still rankling at his heart Biencourt was in
no mood for fine speeches. “I can try once more,” he answered rather
grimly, “and I warn you to be on your guard. Let no gleam of the
stranger’s golden hair tempt you from your watchfulness, or ill may well
betide you.”
At this the duc’s pale face flushed and he shook his head in fiercest
anger. But he spoke no word. Then the two faced each other again.
Poutrincourt’s oval face was gray and haggard; Lescarbot looked on half
eagerly, half sullenly; Imbert, his hands twined in his shaggy black
hair, alone was imperturbable. And at one side, with head averted, the
stranger leaned idly in her chair, smoothing her baby’s forehead with
her hand.
This time there was no respite. The two pressed each other fiercely,
their swords flashing in the candlelight like twin twining snakes. To
and fro they swayed; a dozen times each saved his life as by a miracle;
their breath came in quick and quicker gasps, and still they fought on.
The duc’s face was now fiery red with passion, and it was evident no
thought of mercy lingered in his mind. And for the first time he became
uncertain of the result, for Biencourt was fighting with a dogged
persistence that boded ill. Try as he would, his thrusts were parried so
that presently he began half doubtfully to wonder if at last he had met
his equal. And while these thoughts lingered in his mind, giving to his
wounded adversary’s face a look of pale foreboding, the infant in the
stranger’s arms began crying shrilly. For an instant the duc glanced
hastily toward the chair in which she sat, his guard failed, and
Biencourt, fainting from loss of blood, ran him through the chest.
It was months ere Biencourt and the Duc de Montpelier met again. Then
one June afternoon, when Acadie lay in a yellow swoon, the duc appeared
before the two solitary huts, leaning heavily on a stick.
“We shall not quarrel again, I hope,” he said gayly, bowing to
Biencourt, who was lounging in the shadow of the forest. “Of a truth I
have no mind to stay longer in bed. And I have come, monsieur, both to
make amends for my discourtesy on the evening of our meeting, and to beg
the honor of your friendship.”
And having thus spoken, he bowed low again and waited, a short yet
stately figure set against a background of deep green spruce. But his
face, as Biencourt sprang forward to grasp his hand, showed haggard and
drawn as if through pain.
This was the beginning of a strange friendship. Lescarbot had turned
the duel into a ballad of Homeric proportions, variegated here and there
with choice allusions to the “listless lady by the fire.” This the two
read together, seated side by side on a rustic seat Imbert had arranged
in the shadow--all except the ending, which the poet, despite his skill,
had not yet been able to fashion to his mind. Beneath them the bay
sparkled in the sunshine; to the right lay the fort, with its gleaming
cannon; in the distance a purple mountain ridge reared itself softly
against the sky. Of this scene the duc seemed never to weary. Morning
after morning he lounged for hours on the rustic seat, idly drinking in
its beauty. It was at the second of these meetings he asked Bien-court
about his charge.
“You have no trouble with these Port Royal gallants?” he queried.
Biencourt shook his head.
“And how does madame--Manette, the Seigneur told me was her name--how
does madame relish her forest life?”
“She is thinner and her cheeks are pale. Since her child died, I fear
she grieves.”
For a time the duc sat silent, carelessly digging with his scabbard
in the moist, black earth. “One may not see her?” he said at last,
doubtfully.
“Why not? Without doubt you will respect her honor, and she seems
lonely.”
On the duc’s lips a faint smile trembled. For a moment he seemed about
to laugh. But he only repeated, “So she seems lonely.”
Biencourt rose and knocked at the door of the adjoining hut. “Does
madame please to walk?” he called.
There was a reply from within, inaudible to the duc’s ears, and in
another moment the stranger lady, whose plain name of Madame Manette ill
consorted with her stately air, appeared equipped for walking. The duc
sauntered near.
“Madame Manette,” said Biencourt, “I have the honor to present to your
notice his highness Monsieur le Duc de Montpelier.”
The duc’s plumed hat swept the earth in greeting. “Methinks the climate
suits us strangers ill,” he said, gayly. “From your face it steals the
roses; me it hinders too long of recovery.”
Madame Manette shrugged her fine shoulders. “Are you in danger?” she
asked politely. The subject was evidently uninteresting.
The duc shook his head and smiled. His black eyes were full of a strange
light, and his lips quivered so that Biencourt, watching him, feared he
might be in danger of overtaxing his new-found strength. Then the three
set out through the forest, loitering along quaint footpaths brown with
fallen pine needles, or stooping to gather wild flowers in the shelter
of anciently bearded trees, where was naught but primeval stillness.
The walk that day, however, was a short one, for Madame Manette was
weary, so that presently they found themselves again before the log hut,
with its thatched roof and mossy walls. Vines of Imbert’s planting were
beginning to twine about the doorway, and in the air floated the dreamy
scent of bursting pine buds. A half mile in the distance the four cannon
on the bastion of Port Royal flashed brightly in the sunshine, and the
flag of France flaunted civilization and progress in the face of the
hoary forest; in a neighboring glade the conical wigwams of an Indian
camp stood brown and lonely in the shadow.
At the doorway Madame Manette paused a moment before saying adieu; and
as she leaned listlessly against the door, with her eyes fixed on the
distant fort, the duc asked a question.
“Your baby!” he cried, abruptly; “where may its grave be?”
Madame Manette’s blue eyes were scanning the great stone gateway, and
for a moment it seemed she had not heard. Then, without turning her
head, she said slowly: “It is buried where you stand. Your feet,
monsieur, are above its heart.”
Her questioner moved hastily aside, a deep pallor on his cheeks, and
Madame Manette went on calmly: “It was my own choice it should lie
there; and my feet, passing over it each day, do but make it rest the
sweeter.” Then, bowing slightly, she retired within.
Next day the duc joined in the walk again, and on many succeeding days,
which was very natural, since he and Biencourt were constantly together.
Indeed, now that he had shaken off his listlessness, he had become a
most fascinating companion. To Biencourt he talked for hours of the
court and its affairs; Imbert he held under a respectful spell with
stories of his campaigns in the frozen north, where men perished by
squadrons in the snowstorms. But his fascinations could hardly be said
to extend to Madame Manette, who treated him throughout with a certain
chilling disdain. His remarks she answered in monosyllables; the flowers
he gave her she languidly let fall ere five minutes had passed. But,
without a sign of discomfiture, he next day gathered more and talked
on, unconcerned. Very frequently, too, he made excuses to speak to her
alone, when the morning stroll was ended, and before she had entered the
hut. On these occasions, which generally ended in her abrupt withdrawal,
he betrayed a curious dread of stepping upon the unmarked grave,
standing always much to one side.
The summer waxed and waned upon the hillside, dying day by day in
blood-red spots among the hardwood trees, and still Madame Manette
lingered in Acadie. Her seclusion was more rigid than before; it might
be that she was thinner, but that was all. At intervals, as vessels left
for France, the Seigneur called to offer her passage home, which each
time she smilingly refused, accompanying her refusal, however, with such
liberal gifts to the colony’s poor as sent Poutrincourt away in a maze
of wonder. She took pleasure in her seclusion, she told Biencourt one
day, when they were for an instant alone, and in their daily ramblings
through the forest. It had been a strange experience, this summer on the
very skirt of savagery, and her baby’s grave had bound her to the place.
But with the first snow she would return to France. And so time went on.
But after many mornings, there at length chanced one when Madame Manette
was indisposed, and there was no walking. Next day the same thing
happened, to the evident annoyance of the duc, who paced for hours
up and down before her door. On the succeeding morning, however, she
appeared again, looking very white and frail. She declined to walk, on
account of weariness, and spent an hour idly in the rustic chair.
“You are weak, madame,” cried Biencourt, eagerly, as they walked back to
her hut. “You need aid. Indeed, you seem to grow ever frailer and more
weary.”
Madame Manette turned on the threshold of her domains and surveyed her
two escorts with deliberation. There was a faint shadowy smile upon her
lips, and her marvellous hair lay in a golden blaze against the white
hollow of her cheeks. “He dreams--does he not?” she asked, addressing
the duc.
“I fear his dreams are true.” And Biencourt, glancing at him, thought he
had never looked so ghastly since his wound. His lips were aquiver and
his words came from them with a strange tremor.
But Madame Manette shook her head. “You are both over anxious,” she said
lightly, though even as she spoke her voice faltered wearily. Then, with
a bow and a glance at some wild-fowl flying near, she closed the door
behind her, leaving the two gazing at each other with a mute, fearful
questioning.
That night Biencourt chanced to be favored by a visit from Lescarbot.
The poet had been wandering about the forest, vainly striving to fashion
an ending to his famous ballad, and was consequently in a state of great
depression. His figure drooped; his gray eyes stared moodily before him.
And thus for hours he sat, while the moon rose above the trees and paled
the solitary candle with her rays.
“There will never be an end,” he cried at last, rising pettishly and
flinging the door open wide. “For months have I thought upon it--the
wild storm, the dicing, the newcomer, and the duel--and each time I reel
back, baffled like a child at the entrance of a gloomy forest. For who
can paint the motive that daily forms itself beneath his gaze? And here
is that which came perhaps from far.”
Monsieur Lescarbot’s troubled face relaxed. His analysis evidently
pleased him well, for he stepped briskly into the moonlight flung across
the doorway.
Biencourt made no answer. He was busy with a long epistle, which a
vessel on the morrow would carry to a certain black-eyed maid of honor
at the court of France, and scarcely heeded what the poet said.
“From far! Who knows how far?” Lescar-bot went on dreamily. “Perchance
from the royal”--here he paused and crossed himself hastily, as heavy
footsteps sounded near by. They came nearer still, and the poet drew in
from the doorway, falling upon his knees in prayer. Biencourt sprang in
wonder to his feet, and there, in the brilliant moonlight, a few feet
from the hut, saw what had so transfigured his companion, a man bending
laboriously beneath a heavy load--a load with lifeless limbs, and loose
hair waving in the night wind. Then he knew, as the poet had known, it
was the Duc de Montpelier with the dead form of Madame Manette upon his
shoulders.
A moment only the duc paused before he staggered across the threshold,
and, shivering violently, laid the body on the floor. Yet in that moment
the thought of his broken trust stung Biencourt like a lash, and half
unconsciously his sword flashed in the moonlight. But ere he could frame
the question surging to his lips, it was answered.
The duc sank down beside the body, his left hand resting on the ashen
face. “You will seek to know the meaning of the riddle,” he said
mechanically, without lifting his eyes from off her rigid form. “It is
very simple. She was my wife. Nay, do not start, monsieur”--as Biencourt
made a gesture of amazement. “It is as I say, and this is the body of
Madame la Duchesse de Montpelier, wife of a prince of the blood, and--a
Huguenot. And know you not”--and here the duc spoke lower and his words
came slowly, while he made the sign of the cross--“know you not the Holy
Father can disannul such marriages if it be the interest of the Truth?
And among all the Huguenots of France--fierce and bitter as they have
been and are--is there none more relentless than the comte, her father.”
For an hour the duc spoke no word more. With his arms tightly clasped
about his wife’s stiffening form, he crouched beside her on the floor.
And at the table near by the two unwilling spectators sat watching.
Finally the duc spoke again, still with the same mechanical tone and
with his eyes still fastened on her face. “She came to Acadie without
my knowledge, by the connivance of some of her own faith at Rochelle, as
she herself told me, hiring a swift trading bark that dogged our course
all the way, and landed her in the darkness below the fort. And ever
since our meeting here has she been most bitter to me. She gave me no
reproaches. She was too proud, if you understand, but each morning her
eyes rested scornfully on me, as we left her at the door. Often, too, in
the evenings, would I wander about her hut, watching her shadow pass to
and fro across the window. Once I tapped lightly at the door, giving a
secret signal we had often idly used in France, and she bade me depart
so sternly I never ventured signal more. To-night it chanced I was
standing not far from the window, when suddenly I heard her fall. In an
instant I was within, but Manette was already dead. And now she is dead,
monsieur,” went on the duc, his eyes glittering feverishly as he tossed
the golden hair caressingly to and fro, “now she is dead, she is mine
again. And I will bury her this night in a secret place I last week
learned of, so that alien faces shall look on her no more, and where she
shall slumber by the dust of dead Indian chiefs, and near the noise of
a rushing stream. For it was by a brawling brook on her father’s estate
that we first met, and ever she loved its noises well.”