Saint-Denis tried to sit up in bed, but was obliged to resign himself,
with a gasp, to the straw pillows.
Night pressed against the unblinded window. A stir, not made by the
wind, was heard at the door, and Frontenac, and Frontenac's Récollet
confessor, and Sainte-Hélène's two brothers from the citadel, came
into the room. The governor of New France was imposing in presence.
Perhaps there was no other officer in the province to whom he would
have galloped in such haste from Quebec. It was a tidal moment in his
affairs, and Frontenac knew the value of such moments better than
most men. But Sainte-Hélène did not know the governor was there. The
Récollet father fell on his knees and at once began his office.
Longueuil sat down on Gaspard's stool and covered his face against
the wall. He had been hurt by a spent bullet, and one arm needed
bandaging, but he said nothing about it, though the surgeon was now at
liberty, standing and looking at a patient for whom nothing could be
done. The sterner brothers watched, also, silent, as Normans taught
themselves to be in trouble. The sons of Charles Le Moyne carried his
name and the lilies of France from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the
Gulf of Mexico.
Anselm de Saint-Castin had fought two days alongside the man who lay
dying. The boy had an ardent face, like his father's. He was sorry,
with the skin-deep commiseration of youth for those who fall, whose
falling thins the crowded ranks of competition. But he was not for a
moment unconscious of the girl hiding her head against her father from
the sight of death. The hope of one man forever springing beside the
grave of another must work sadness in God. Yet Sainte-Hélène did not
know any young supplanter was there. He did not miss or care for
the fickle vanity of applause; he did not torment himself with the
spectres of the mind, or feel himself shrinking with the littleness of
jealousy; he did not hunger for a love that was not in the world, or
waste a Titan's passion on a human ewe any more. For him, the aching
and bewilderment, exaltations and self-distrusts, animal gladness and
subjection to the elements, were done.
Clementine's father beckoned to the boy, and put her in his care.
"Take her home to the women," Saint-Denis whispered. "She is not used
to war and such sight as these. And bid some of the older ones stay
with her."
Anselm and Clementine went out, their hands just touching as he led
her in wide avoidance of the figure on the floor. Sainte-Hélène
did not know the boy and girl left him, for starlight, for silence
together, treading the silvered earth in one cadenced step, as
he awaited that moment when the solitary spirit finds its utmost
loneliness.
Gaspard also went out. When the governor sat in his armchair, and his
seignior lay on the bed, and Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène was stretched
that way on the floor, it could hardly be decent for an old habitant
to stand by, even cap in hand. Yet he could scarcely take his eyes
from the familiar face as it changed in phosphorescent light.
The features lifted themselves with firm nobility, expressing an
archangel's beauty. Sainte-Hélène's lips parted, and above the patter
of the reciting Récollet the watchers were startled by one note like
the sigh of a wind-harp.
The Montreal militia, the Lorette Hurons, and Beauport men were still
thronging about, overflowing laterally upon the other farms. They
demanded word of the young seignior, hushing their voices. Some of
them had gone into Gaspard's milk cave and handed out stale milk for
their own and their neighbors' refreshment. A group were sitting on
the crisp ground, with a lantern in their midst, playing some game;
their heads and shoulders moving with an alacrity objectless to
observers, so closely was the light hemmed in.
Gaspard reached his gateway with the certainty of custom. He looked
off at both ends of the world. The starlit stretch of road was almost
as deserted as when Quebec shut in the inhabitants of Beauport. From
the direction of Montmorenci he saw a gray thing come loping down,
showing eyes and tongue of red fire. He screamed an old man's scream,
pointing to it, and the cry of "Loup-garou!" brought all Beauport men
to their feet. The flints clicked. It was a time of alarms. Two shots
were fired together, and an under officer sprung across the fence of a
neighboring farm to take command of the threatened action.
The camp of sturdy New Englanders on the St. Charles was hid by a
swell in the land. At the outcry, those Frenchmen around the lantern
parted company, some recoiling backwards, and others scrambling
to seize their guns. But one caught up the lantern, and ran to the
struggling beast in the road.
Gaspard pushed into the gathering crowd, and craned himself to see the
thing, also. He saw a gaunt dog, searching yet from face to face for
some lost idol, and beating the flinty world with a last thump of
propitiation.
Frontenac opened the door and stood upon the doorstep. His head almost
reached the overhanging straw thatch.
"What is the alarm, my men?"
"Your excellency," the subaltern answered, "it was nothing but a dog.
It came down from Montmorenci, and some of the men shot it."
"Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène," declared Frontenac, lowering his plumed
hat, "has just died for New France."
* * * * *
Gaspard stayed out on his river front until he felt half frozen. The
old habitant had not been so disturbed and uncomfortable since his
family died of smallpox. Phips's vessels lay near the point of Orleans
Island, a few portholes lighting their mass of gloom, while two red
lanterns aloft burned like baleful eyes at the lost coast of Canada.
Nothing else showed on the river. The distant wall of Levis palisades
could be discerned, and Quebec stood a mighty crown, its gems all
sparkling. Behind Gaspard, Beauport was alive. The siege was virtually
over, and he had not set foot off his farm during Phips's invasion of
New France. He did not mind sleeping on the floor, with his heels to
the fire. But there were displacements and changes and sorrows which
he did mind.
"However," muttered the old man, and it was some comfort to the vague
aching in his breast to formulate one fact as solid as the heights
around, "it is certain that there are loups-garous."