started up and prepared to inter the remains of poor Mary, when the
glittering epaulettes and appointments of a French officer, who was
leading his horse by the bridle, appeared at the door of the wigwam.
He was the Baron de Beauchatel, with the gold cross of St. Louis
dangling on the lapelle of the gay white uniform of the Grenadiers of
Guienne. Having lost his way in the forest, he now sought a guide to
the camp of Montcalm; but the dead mother caught his eye at the
moment he peered into the obscurity of the hut.
"Mon Dieu! what have we here?" he asked, with surprise.
"The squaw and papoose of a pale chief," replied the apparently
unmoved Indian.
"Dead--a lady, too!" exclaimed the French officer, stooping over her
with a commiseration that was greatly increased when he discovered
that she was young and beautiful. He gently pressed her thin white
hand, and lifted her soft black hair. "And this is her child?"
Orono nodded.
"Almost newly born--how calmly it sleeps! The poor infant--alone in
this wilderness--Tête Dieu! it is frightful! Tell me all about this,
Iroquois, and I will reward you handsomely with a new English
clasp-knife, a bottle of eau de vie, a blanket, or whatever else your
refined taste teaches you to prize most."
In his own language, by turns soft and guttural, Orono related to the
baron all that he knew of the white woman; that she had twice saved
his life, and that he, in gratitude, had protected her from the
Iroquois; but he had no power over the Great Spirit.
The baron was a humane and gallant French officer of the old days of
the monarchy. He had been a gay fellow some few years before, and
had been sent to America (according to Parisian gossip) because he
had been too favourably noticed by Madame de Pompadour; but he had a
good and tender heart; thus, the story of the poor mother, and the
helplessness of her orphan, stirred him deeply. By the whole aspect
of the dead, and the remains of her attire, he suspected that her
rank and position in life had been good--a lady at least. A ring
upon the fourth finger of her left hand, bearing the name of her
husband in Gaelic, he gently removed; he then cut off some of her
fine black hair, and, after making a few memoranda descriptive of her
person, he bargained with the Indian that he should give up the child
for a few francs. This the Iroquois at once agreed to do, and, with
the assistance of the baron, Mary was wrapped in furs and buried
under a tree on the sequestered shore of the Horican.
To Beauchatel it seemed strange and repugnant that a Christian woman
should be laid there without a prayer or a blessing, on the rough
mould that covered her pale attenuated form, her pains and her
sorrows; but it was long since _he_ had prayed; yet, with an impulse
of piety, he cut on the bark of the tree, which covered the place
where she lay, a large cross, and raising his hat retired.
The act was in itself a prayer!
"Can I now do aught for you?" he asked of Orono.
The Indian mournfully shook his head, and then said,
"Give me a new musket, for the time is coming--the time that has been
foretold."
"By whom?"
"The sachems, the pawaws, and the old men of the Iroquois."
"And what shall happen, _mon camarade_?"
"The warriors of the Six Nations will break the pipe of peace and dig
up the great war-hatchet."
"Against whom?
"All who come from the land of the rising sun."
"Be it so," said the baron, shrugging his shoulders, and looking with
some anxiety towards the long shadows, that darkened in the forest
vistas; "you shall have your musket; but give me the child, _mon
ami_; and now for the camp of Louis de St. Voran!"
* * * *
Let us change the scene.
It is 1778, exactly twenty-one years after the events recorded as
having happened at Fort William Henry. We are now in France, in the
sunny province of Guienne, and near the gay city of Bordeaux.
A lady, young and beautiful, is seated at one of the lofty open
windows of the turreted Chateau de Fontbrune, which crowns the summit
of a wooded eminence on the right bank of the Garonne. Her eyes and
hair are dark; her complexion soft and brilliant. Her attire, as she
is in the country, partakes of the picturesque fashion of the last
days of Louis XV. She reclines on a velvet fauteuil, and forcibly
reminds us of a languid little beauty in one of Watteau's pictures
waiting for some one to make love to her. As a poet of the time has
it, her attire
"Was whimsically traversed o'er,
Here a knot and there a flower;
Like her little heart that dances,
Full of maggots--full of fancies;
Flowing loosely down her back,
Fell with art the graceful sacque;
Ornamented well with gimping,
Flounces, furbelows, and crimping,
While her ruffles, many a row,
Guard her elbows, white as snow,
Knots below and points above,
Emblem of the ties of love."
Her cheek rested on her hand, and heedless of the too familiar
splendour of the apartment in which she was seated, she impatiently
drew back the blue satin hangings, which were festooned by cords and
tassels of silver, and setting her round dimpled chin into the white
palm of her pretty little hand, gazed languidly upon the beautiful
landscape that spread, as it were, at her feet.
The vine-covered district of the Bordelais, through which wound the
Garonne; Bourdeaux, clustering on its left bank in the form, of a
crescent, with its old walls and towers of the Middle Ages; its
nineteen gates, through which the tide of human life was ebbing and
flowing; its long rows of trees casting their lengthening shadows to
the eastward; the huge grey ramparts of the venerable Chateau de
Trompette; the palace of the Dukes of Guienne; the church of St.
Michel and the cathedral of St. André, with its two tall and splendid
spires, which pierced the saffron-tinted sky like stone needles; and
then the majestic river sweeping past towards the sea, all bathed in
the broad light of a glorious June sunset. But Therese had seen all
this a thousand times before, and it ceased to interest her now.
In the lap of this noble lady reposed a pretty, but saucy and
snubnosed Bologna spaniel, with the long ears and black silky hair of
which the white fingers of one hand played involuntarily. Statues,
bronzes, buhl tables, vases of flowers, and a hundred beautiful
trifles, decorated this little room, which was her boudoir--her own
peculiar sanctum sanctorum--and the windows of which overlooked a
bastion, whereon were sixteen antique brass cannon; for the Chateau
de Fontbrune, in which we have now the honour of finding ourselves,
was an old baronial house, which, after being fortified by Louis de
Foix, had given shelter to Charles VII., and been beleaguered by the
Maréchal de Matignon.
The productions of the popular men of the day strewed the apartment.
The poems of Bernis, the comedies of the Abbé Boissy, the music of
Lulli, with drawings and pictures without end, lay near, while a
vaudeville by Panard was open upon the piano. Mademoiselle had
evidently been sorely puzzled in her efforts to get through the long
hours of this day of June, 1778.
"Oh, Nanon!" she exclaimed to her attendant, a pretty girl of
eighteen, who sat near her on a tabourette, sewing; "I am _so_
ennuyé--for in this dreary old chateau, which I am not permitted to
leave, and to which no one comes but prosy old colonels and stupid
magistrates, such as M. le Maire, or M. le Maitre du Palais, or still
worse, those horrid counsellors of the Court of Admiralty, there is
so little to rouse one from sad thoughts and drowsy lethargy."
"Try another chapter of that new romance by M. de Marivaux."
"Ah, _merci!_ he is a most tiresome fellow, Nanon, and odious, too."
"Odious?"
"Yes."
"How, Mademoiselle Therese?"
"I judge from his memoir of himself."
"Explain, mademoiselle."
"He was once in love with a young lady--"
"Once, only--then he is no true romance writer."
"She had black hair, hazel eyes and long lashes, divine little hands
and feet--in fact, the counterpart of myself, as the old Abbé de
Boissy told me--and was on the point of paying his most solemn and
magnificent addresses to her; when, happening to enter her boudoir
one day unexpectedly, he found--"
"Not a lover?" exclaimed Nanon, becoming suddenly interested; "not a
student or mousquetaire, I hope?"
"_Ma foi!_ no--nothing half so pleasant."
"What, then?"
"Mademoiselle studying smiles and postures before her mirror."
"And this--"
"So shocked the staid and proper M. de Marivaux, that his passion
passed away in a moment, and he took to novel writing."
"It was no passion whatever, mademoiselle," replied Nanon, disgusted
to find that a lady should lose a lover by the same arts which she
practised daily to win one; and now ensued another long pause.
This young lady--so beautiful, so tenderly nurtured, so accomplished,
and so splendidly jewelled--was the richest heiress in Bordeaux, a
ward of the young King Louis XVI., _fiancée_ of the Comte d'Arcot, a
high military noble, who had covered himself with distinction in
India, and was now on his way home with a fabulous sum in livres,
and, of course, with the liver complaint. But this noble demoiselle,
successor of M. le Baron Beauchatel, Seigneur de Fontbrune and of St.
Emilion, Seneschal of Bordeaux, and Commandant of the Chateau de
Trompette, was the foundling of the Iroquois wigwam, the orphan child
of Roderick MacGillivray and of that lonely and despairing mother who
found her grave, uncoffined, in the savage solitude on the southern
shore of the Horican.
And now to solve this mystery.
Beauchatel had conveyed the infant girl to Fort William Henry, and
consigned her to the care of the baroness, a lady of gentle and
amiable disposition. In pity for the helplessness of the child, she
undertook its care, at first as a mere duty of humanity, but as
months passed on, her regard became a strong love for this lonely
little waif--a love all the stronger that she was herself without
children, and had long ceased to hope that she would ever be a
mother; so it seemed as if Heaven had sent this infant to fill up the
void in her heart. She named her _Therese_, after herself; for she
had been Mademoiselle Therese de St. Veran, a sister of the Marquis
de Montcalm, and consequently was a lady of Nismes. Soon after her
return to France with Beauchatel she died, and her last request was,
that he would continue to protect the orphan which fate had so
strangely committed to his care. The good and faithful soldier had
learned to love the little girl as if she had been his own, and being
without kinsmen or heirs to his title and estates, he obtained from
the young King Louis XVI., then in the fourth year of his unhappy
reign, as a reward for his services and those of his ancestors,
permission to adopt her in legal form. The necessary documents were
accordingly drawn up, sealed, signed, and registered; and thus the
poor foundling of the Canadian forest, the child of Roderick
MacGillivray of the Black Watch, became the heiress of the Chateau de
Fontbrune and of the Seigneurie of Saint Emilion.
On returning from America, the baron had served five years under M.
Law de Lauriston in the East, upholding the interests of the French
India Company against the Nabob of Bengal and the British, under Lord
Clive. There he had met and become acquainted with Count d'Arcot,
for whom he had conceived a sudden and vehement friendship--so much
so, that, after his return to France, he resolved that, _bongré
malgré_, his young ward should marry this soldier of fortune; for
such he was, having been created Count d'Ascot and Knight of St.
Louis for his bravery at the recapture of that city of Hindostan, the
capital of the Carnatic.
Poor Therese had been told the sad story of the mother she had never
known, and of whom no relics remained but some silky black hair, a
ring, and that singular brooch--an ornament so unlike anything she
had ever seen, and which was graven with a legend in a language to
her so strange and barbarous; and her heart yearned for a further
knowledge of whom she was, and whence she came, and for that mother's
kiss, of which, though it had been planted a thousand times upon her
little lips, she had no memory; and at times she mourned for that
father she had never seen. Then it seemed so odd, so strange, so
grievous that she could have any other father than the dear, kind old
baron, for whom she had a love and reverence so filial and so strong.
But to resume.
"The evening lags, as if the sun would never set," yawned the
petulant little beauty. "What shall we do with ourselves--speak, you
provoking Nanon?"
"Play," was the pithy reply.
"I have played everything that came last from Paris, and my piano is
now frightfully out of tune--the chords are fallen."
"Read."
"I have read MM. Marivaux, Bernis, and Jean Jacques de Rousseau till
I am sick of them."
"Draw."
"It makes my head ache, and the Abbé Boissy says it will spoil my
eyes, in which he seems to take a poetical interest."
"Sing."
"Nanon, you bore me!"
"Suppose we pray, then!"
"Ma foi!--that would not be very amusing when one is dull and dreary."
"Order out the grey pads and ride."
"M. Beauchatel never allows that, as you know well, Nanon, save when
he is with me; and we shall have enough of our horses, I have no
doubt, when this odious old count, whom I am to marry, and whom I
already hate, and whom I am resolved to tease to death, arrives here."
"I shall retire, mademoiselle."
"You shall not!"
"I fear you find me poor company," urged Nanon, demurely.
"Poor or bad company are better than none----"
"Here in this huge chateau, perhaps; but one would not think so in
the midst of a wood."
"Here I am left all day with no thoughts to rouse me but of that
horrible old Comte d'Arcot, who is certainly coming from India, and
to whom I am to be given like a box of rupees or a bale of sugar."
"It is a long way to India," said Nanon; "away round the end of the
world at Cape Finisterre, and perhaps--perhaps----"
"Say on, Nanon."
"He may be drowned by the way."
"Ah! don't say so, Nanon!"
"Storms may arise, as they frequently do, and then ships are wrecked.
There was M. la Perouse, who sailed away out into the wide ocean in
the days of the late King Louis XV., and has never been heard of
since. If stout young sailors drown, surely an old soldier like
Comte d'Arcot may."
"I am almost wicked enough to wish it."
"I think I see something that will amuse you, mademoiselle."
"Mon Dieu! I am glad of that--what is it?"
"A party of soldiers."
"Where?--oh, I do so love to see soldiers!"
"'Tis a guard conveying prisoners to the Chateau de Trompette, and
now they are about to cross the Garonne by boats."
The lady gazed from the window, and saw a mass of armed soldiers
marching quickly down the opposite slope towards the river. As they
issued from under the green vine trellis which shaded the roads for
miles in every direction, she could distinctly discern the scarlet
coats of the prisoners contrasting with the white of the French
linesmen who formed the escort, and had their bayonets fixed.
"Red uniforms--they are British prisoners of war!" exclaimed Nanon;
"oh, mademoiselle, we have gained a battle somewhere, and beaten the
English, as we always do."
"Poor, poor fellows!" sighed Therese; "ah, Nanon, I feel sad when I
see them, for M. le Baron says my mother was one of these people: yet
it seems so strange that I should ever have had any other than
Therese de St. Veran--dear Madame la Baronesse, whom the Blessed
Virgin has taken to herself."
"See how they crowd into that little boat! Oh, mon Dieu! the brave
reckless fellows--it will never hold them all!"
"And the stream is deep and rapid there."
"See--see, O Dieu! what has happened!" shrieked Nanon.
"Overturned--the boat has overturned."
"No--'tis a man overboard!--he is in the stream, and drowning!"
"Oh, I cannot look upon this!" said Therese, shrinking back and
burying her face in her hands, while loud cries of alarm ascended
from the river to the windows of the chateau; but Nanon, whose
nervous temperament was less delicate than that of her mistress,
continued to gaze steadily.
Two men were swimming or splashing in the water. One had fallen
overboard; the other had plunged in to succour or save him; but both
were swept away by the stream. In short, the former was soon
drowned, and the latter rescued with the utmost difficulty. When
dragged on shore he was quite insensible; but the officer in command
of the escort, having no time to spare, desired four of his men to
form a litter with their muskets, and bear him to the Chateau de
Fontbrune, as the nearest place where the usual means might be
adopted for the restoration of life.
The half-drowned man, who had perilled life so gallantly to save the
unfortunate soldier, was an officer, and moreover, one that was sure
to win favour in French eyes, being young, handsome, and an _Officier
d'Ecossais_, as Nanon reported minutely to her startled mistress, who
had promptly all her household in attendance on the sufferer, though
she dared not peep into his room in person. At last Nanon brought
the joyous intelligence that he was "recovering, and had opened a
pair of such beautiful eyes!"--so here was a stirring episode for our
young demoiselle, who, a half hour before, had been so dull and
_ennuyé_ that she was weary of her own charming self and all the
world beside.
France and Britain were still, as we last left them twenty-one years
ago, engaged in the lively and profitable occupation of fighting
battles, battering fleets and burning towns in America, where the
subject of taxation had occasioned hostilities between the mother
country and her colonies, whose forces, led by Washington, were aided
in the strife by the armies and fleets of France, Spain, and Holland.
Some days elapsed before the young officer, who was on his parole of
honour, had sufficiently recovered to appear on the terrace of the
chateau, where Mademoiselle Therese and the gossiping Nanon received
him in due form. He was pale and thin from the effects of a wound,
his long sea voyage, and the severe treatment to which prisoners of
war were usually subjected in those days; but all this only served to
make him the more interesting to the two girls, who were quite
flattered by the presence of the chance visitor fortune had sent them
to enliven the old chateau. His uniform was sorely dilapidated; the
lace and epaulettes of his scarlet coat were blackened by powder and
long service, and it consorted oddly with a pair of French hussar
pantaloons. Still, notwithstanding these disadvantages, his bearing
was free, gallant, and gentlemanly; and in very good French he
thanked the lady of Fontbrune for her humanity and hospitality.
"May I ask your name, monsieur?" asked Therese, timidly.
"Munro--Hector Munro."
"And your regiment?"
"The Black Watch--Ecossais."
"Oh, indeed," said Therese, with her dark eyes brightening; for to
belong to a Scottish regiment in those days (and even in the
_present_) was as sure a guide to French favour as if he could have
answered, "The Irish Brigade."
"And you were taken prisoner----"
"In America, mademoiselle, on the Acushnet River, where my regiment
was serving with the brigades of grenadiers and light infantry then
ordered to destroy a number of pirates who made New Plymouth their
haunt. This we achieved successfully, but not without severe loss."
"Were you not dreadfully frightened?"
"I was then under fire for the _first_ time," said the young officer,
smiling.
"And how did you feel--oh, pray tell me?"
"A tightening of the breast--a long-drawn breath, as the _first_ shot
whizzed past my ear; another as the first cannon-ball seemed to
scream in the air overhead, and then I rushed on fearless, filled by
a fierce and tumultuous joy. I heard only the din of the bagpipes
and the cheers of my comrades. But I lost my way in the wood, and
falling among a detachment of the Regiment of Languedoc, was made a
prisoner. With many others in the same predicament, I was soon
shipped off for France, and so have the honour to appear before you."
"And who was the soldier for whom you risked your life?"
"A sergeant of the Regiment of Languedoc."
"A Frenchman!"
"Yes, mademoiselle; the same man who made me prisoner in America."
"Ah, mon Dieu! and you tried to save him! How noble!"
"Mademoiselle, my father, who was a brave old soldier, taught me that
when the sword was in the scabbard _all men are brothers_."
"And your rank?"
"Lieutenant; and now," he added, bitterly, "I may remain a prisoner
for ten years perhaps, with my hopes blighted, my promotion stopped,
and my pay gone."
"It is very sad," replied Therese, casting down her fine eyes, which
she feared might betray the interest she already felt in the young
prisoner of war; "but when the baron comes home from Paris--he will
be here in three days--we shall see what can be done for you."
Three days--poor little Therese! by that time she was irrevocably in
love with young Munro, and Nanon left nothing undone or unsaid to
convince her that the passion was quite mutual. Though they did not
meet at meals, they, were constantly together on the terraces and in
the gardens of the chateau; thus it was impossible for this young man
to spend his time in the society of such a girl as Therese, in the
full bloom of her youth and beauty (a _fair bloom_ that belonged not
to France), without feeling his heart influenced; while her artless
and charming manner, which by turns was playful, sad, earnest, or
winning, lured him into a passion against which his better judgment
strove in vain; for he knew the danger and absurdity of a
subaltern--a prisoner of war--a lad without rank, home, friends, or
subsistence--and more than all, in that land of tyranny, bastilles,
and lettres de cachet, engaging in a love affair with a lady of rank
and wealth.
"In three days," thought he, "this deuced old baron returns; but in
three days I shall be well enough to be out of the sick list, to
march off from here, and report myself at the Chateau de Trompette."
According to the author of _Dream Life_, "Youthful passion is a
giant! It overleaps all the dreams and all the resolves of our
better and quieter nature, and madly drives toward some wild issue
that lives only in its own frenzy. How little account does passion
take of goodness! It is not within the cycle of its revolution--it
is below--it is tamer--it is older--it wears no wings."
So the evening of the sixth day passed into twilight, and found M.
Hector Munro, of his Britannic Majesty's 42nd Highlanders, still
lingering by the side of Therese in the garden of that delightful old
chateau by the "silvery Garonne," when the ominous sound of horses'
hoofs, and of wheels rasping on the gravel under the antique porte
cochère, announced the return of the Baron de Beauchatel!
Therese grew deadly pale.
"Your father--he has arrived, and I must bid you farewell," said
Munro, kissing her trembling hands with sudden emotion.
"Stay, monsieur," said Therese, in an imploring voice. So "monsieur"
stayed; to go was impossible.
"M. le Baron!" exclaimed Nanon, rushing towards them, while her round
black eyes dilated with excitement; "M. le Baron, and oh, mon Dieu,
M. le Comte d'Arcot is with him!"
"M. d'Arcot!" murmured poor Therese, and stood rooted to the spot,
the statue of terror and grief; for, after six days such as the last,
to meet an old and previously unknown _fiancé_ with the cordiality
requisite, was more than poor human nature could bear or achieve.
The baron, who was considerably changed in person since we last had
the pleasure of seeing him, having become stout and paunchy, abrupt
and irritable in manner, now approached, leading, and indeed almost
pulling forward a tall, thin, and soldier-like Chevalier of St.
Louis, whose form and face seemed wasted by inward thought and care,
by exposure to the burning sun of India and the toils of war, rather
than by lapse of time; yet he seemed quite old, though in reality not
much more than fifty years of age. His hair, which he wore
unpowdered, was white as snow, and was simply tied behind by a black
ribbon. He wore the undress uniform of a French Maréchal du Camp,
and leaned a little on his cane as he walked.
"Mademoiselle de Beauchatel--my daughter--M. le Comte d'Arcot," said
the baron, introducing them, and kissing Therese.