August night air, sweet with a half salt breath from the St. Lawrence,
met the miller of San Joachim as he looked out; but he bolted the
single thick door of the mill, and cast across it into a staple a
hook as long as his body and as thick as his arm. At any alarm in the
village he must undo these fastenings, and receive the refugees from
Montgomery; yet he could not sleep without locking the door. So all
that summer he had slept on a bench in the mill basement, to be ready
for the call.
All the parishes on the island of Orleans, and on each side of the
river, quite to Montmorenci Falls, where Wolfe's army was encamped,
had been sacked by that evil man, Captain Alexander Montgomery, whom
the English general himself could hardly restrain. San Joachim du
Petit Cap need not hope to escape. It was really Wolfe's policy to
harry the country which in that despairing summer of 1759 he saw no
chance of conquering.
The mill was grinding with a shuddering noise which covered all
country night sounds. But so accustomed was the miller to this lullaby
that he fell asleep on his chaff cushion directly, without his usual
review of the trouble betwixt La Vigne and himself. He was sensitive
to his neighbors' claims, and the state of the country troubled him,
but he knew he could endure La Vigne's misfortunes better than any
other man's.
Loopholes in the hoary stone walls of the basement were carefully
covered, but a burning dip on the hearth betrayed them within. There
was a deep blackened oven built at right angles to the fireplace in
the south wall. The stairway rose like a giant's ladder to the vast
dimness overhead. No other such fortress-mill was to be found between
Cap Tourmente and the citadel, or indeed anywhere on the St. Lawrence.
It had been built not many years before by the Seminaire priests of
Quebec for the protection and nourishment of their seigniory, that
huge grant of rich land stretching from Beaupré to Cap Tourmente,
bequeathed to the church by the first bishop of Canada.
The miller suddenly dashed up with a shout. He heard his wife scream
above the rattle of the mill, and stumbling over basement litter he
unstopped a loophole and saw the village already mounting in flames.
The mill door's iron-clamped timbers were beaten by a crowd of
entreating hands, and he tore back the fastenings and dragged his
neighbors in. Children, women, men, fell past him on the basement
floor, and he screamed for help to hold the door against Montgomery's
men. The priest was the last one to enter and the first to set a
shoulder with the miller's. A discharge of firearms from without
made lightning in the dim inclosure, and the curé, Father Robineau de
Portneuf, reminded his flock of the guns they had stored in the mill
basement. Loopholes were soon manned, and the enemy were driven back
from the mill door. The roaring torch of each cottage thatch showed
them in the redness of their uniforms,--good marks for enraged
refugees; so they drew a little farther westward still, along the hot
narrow street of San Joachim du Petit Cap.
At an unoccupied loophole Father Robineau watched his chapel burning,
with its meagre enrichments, added year by year. But this was nothing,
when his eye dropped to the two or three figures lying face downward
on the road. He turned himself toward the wailing of a widow and a
mother.
The miller's wife was coming downstairs with a candle, leaving her
children huddled in darkness at the top. Those two dozen or more
people whom she could see lifting dazed looks at her were perhaps
of small account in the province; but they were her friends and
neighbors, and bounded her whole experience of the world, except that
anxiety of having her son Laurent with Montcalm's militia. The dip
light dropped tallow down her petticoat, and even unheeded on one bare
foot.
"My children," exhorted Father Robineau through the wailing of
bereaved women, "have patience." The miller's wife stooped and passed
a hand across a bright head leaning against the stair side.
"Thy mother is safe, Angèle?"
"Oh, yes, Madame Sandeau."
"Thy father and the children are safe?"
"Oh, yes," testified the miller, passing towards the fireplace, "La
Vigne and all his are within. I counted them."
"The saints be praised," said his wife.
"Yes, La Vigne got in safely," added the miller, "while that excellent
Jules Martin, our good neighbor, lies scalped out there in the
road."[1]
"He does not know what he is saying, Angèle," whispered his wife to
the weeping girl. But the miller snatched the candle from the hearth
as if he meant to fling his indignation with it at La Vigne. His
worthy act, however, was to light the sticks he kept built in the
fireplace for such emergency. A flame arose, gradually revealing
the black earthen floor, the swarm of refugees, and even the
tear-suspending lashes of little children's eyes.
La Vigne appeared, sitting with his hands in his hair. And the
miller's wife saw there was a strange young demoiselle among the women
of the côte, trying to quiet them. She had a calm dark beauty and an
elegance of manner unusual to the provinces, and even Father Robineau
beheld her with surprise.
"Mademoiselle, it is unfortunate that you should be in Petit Cap at
this time," said the priest.
"Father, I count myself fortunate," she answered, "if no worse
calamity has befallen me. My father is safe within here. Can you tell
me anything about my husband, Captain De Mattissart, of the Languedoc
regiment, with General Montcalm?"
"Madame, I never saw your husband."
"He was to meet me with escort at Petit Cap. We landed on a little
point, secretly, with no people at all, and my father would have
returned in his sailboat, but my husband did not meet us. These
English must have cut him off, father."
"These are not times in which a woman should stir abroad," said the
priest.
"Monsieur the curé, there is no such comfortable doctrine for a man
with a daughter," said a figure at the nearest loophole, turning and
revealing himself by face and presence a gentilhomme. "Especially a
daughter married to a soldier. I am Denys of Bonaventure, galloping
hither out of Acadia at her word of command."
The priest made him a gesture of respect and welcome.
"One of the best men in Acadia should be of advantage to us here. But
I regret madame's exposure. You were not by yourselves attempting to
reach Montcalm's camp?"
"How do I know, monsieur the curé? My daughter commanded this
expedition." Denys of Bonaventure shrugged his shoulders and spread
his palms with a smile.
"We were going to knock at the door of the curé of Petit Cap," said
the lady. "There was nothing else for us to do; but the English
appeared."
Successive shots at the loopholes proved that the English had not yet
disappeared. Denys seized his gun again, and turned to the defense,
urging that the children and women be sent out of the way of balls.
Father Robineau, on his part, gave instant command to the miller's
wife, and she climbed the stairs again, heading a long line of
distressed neighbors.
The burrs were in the second story, and here the roaring of the mill
took possession of all the shuddering air. Every massive joist half
growing from dimness overhead was hung with ghostly shreds of cobweb;
and on the grayish whiteness of the floor the children's naked soles
cut out oblongs dotted with toe-marks.
Mother Sandeau made her way first to an inclosed corner, and looked
around to invite the attention of her followers. Such violence had
been done to her stolid habits that she seemed to need the sight of
her milk-room to restore her to intelligent action. The group was
left in half darkness while she thrust her candle into the milk-room,
showing its orderly array of flowered bowls amidst moist coolness.
Here was a promise of sustenance to people dependent for the next
mouthful of food. "It will last a few days, even if the cows be driven
off and killed!" said the miller's good wife.
But there was the Acadian lady to be first thought of. Neighbors could
be easily spread out on the great floor, with rolls of bedding. Her
own oasis of homestead stood open, showing a small fireplace hollowed
in one wall, two feet above the floor; table and heavy chairs; and
sleeping rooms beyond. Yet none of these things were good enough to
offer such a stranger.
"Take no thought about me, good friend," said the girl, noticing
Mother Sandeau's anxiously creased face. "I shall presently go back to
my father."
"But, no," exclaimed the miller's wife, "the priest forbids women
below, and there is my son's bridal room upstairs with even a
dressing-table in it. I only held back on account of Angèle La Vigne,"
she added to comprehending neighbors, "but Angèle will attend to the
lady there."
"Angèle will gladly attend to the lady anywhere," spoke out Angèle's
mother, with a resentment of her child's position which ruin could not
crush. "It is the same as if marriage was never talked of between your
son Laurent and her."
"Yes, neighbor, yes," said the miller's wife appeasingly. It was not
her fault that a pig had stopped the marriage. She gave her own
candle to Angèle, with a motherly look. The girl had a pink and golden
prettiness unusual among habitantes. Though all flush was gone out of
her skin under the stress of the hour, she retained the innocent clear
pallor of an infant. Angèle hurried to straighten her disordered dress
before taking the candle, and then led Madame De Mattissart up the
next flight of stairs.
The mill's noise had forced talkers to lift their voices, and it now
half dulled the clamp of habitante shoes below, and the whining of
children longing again for sleep. Huge square wooden hoppers were
shaking down grain, and the two or three square sashes in the
thickness of front wall let in some light from the burning côte.
The building's mighty stone hollows were as cool as the dew-pearled
and river-vapored landscape outside. Occasional shots from below kept
reverberating upward through two more floors overhead.
Laurent's bridal apartment was of new boards built like a deck cabin
at one side of the third story. It was hard for Angèle to throw open
the door of this sacred little place which she had expected to
enter as a bride, and the French officer's young wife understood it,
restraining the girl's hand.
"Stop, my child. Let us not go in. I came up here simply to quiet the
others."
"But you were to rest in this chamber, madame."
"Do you think I can rest when I do not know whether I am wife or
widow?"
The young girls looked at each other with piteous eyes.
"This is a terrible time, madame."
"It will, however, pass by, in some fashion."
"But what shall I do for you, madame? Where will you sit? Is there
nothing you require?"
"Yes, I am thirsty. Is there not running water somewhere in this
mill?"
"There is the flume-chamber overhead," said Angèle. "I will set the
light here, and go down for a cup, madame."
"Do not. We will go to the flume-chamber together. My hands, my
throat, my eyes burn. Go on, Angèle, show me the way."
Laurent's room, therefore, was left in darkness, holding unseen its
best furniture, the family's holiday clothes of huge grained flannel,
and the little yellow spinning-wheel, with its pile of unspun wool
like forgotten snow.
In the fourth story, as below, deep-set swinging windows had small
square panes, well dusted with flour. Nothing broke the monotony of
wall except a row of family snow-shoes. The flume-chamber, inclosed
from floor to ceiling, suggested a grain's sprouting here and there in
its upright humid boards.
As the two girls glanced around this grim space, they were startled by
silence through the building, for the burrs ceased to work. Feet and
voices indeed stirred below, but the sashes no longer rattled. Then a
tramping seemed following them up, and Angèle dragged the young lady
behind a stone pillar, and blew out their candle.
"What are you doing?" demanded Madame De Mattissart in displeasure.
"If the door has been forced, should we desert our fathers?"
"It is not that," whispered Angèle. And before she could give any
reason for her impulse, the miller's head and light appeared above the
stairs. It was natural enough for Angèle La Vigne to avoid Laurent's
father. What puzzled her was to see her own barefooted father creeping
after the miller, his red wool night-cap pulled over dejected brows.
These good men had been unable to meet without quarreling since the
match between Laurent and Angèle was broken off, on account of a
pig which Father La Vigne would not add to her dower. Angèle had a
blanket, three dishes, six tin plates, and a kneading-trough; at
the pig her father drew the line, and for a pig Laurent's father
contended. But now all the La Vigne pigs were roasted or scattered,
Angèle's dower was destroyed, and what had a ruined habitant to say to
the miller of Petit Cap?
Father Robineau had stopped the mill because its noise might cover
attacks. As the milder ungeared his primitive machinery, he had
thought of saving water in the flume-chamber. There were wires and
chains for shutting off its escape.
He now opened a door in the humid wall and put his candle over the
clear, dark water. The flume no longer furnished a supply, and he
stared open-lipped, wondering if the enemy had meddled with his
water-gate in the upland.
The flume, at that time the most ambitious wooden channel on the north
shore, supported on high stilts of timber, dripped all the way from
a hill stream to the fourth story of Petit Cap mill. The miller had
watched it escape burning thatches, yet something had happened at the
dam. Shreds of moss, half floating and half moored, reminded him to
close the reservoir, and he had just moved the chains when La Vigne
startled him by speaking at his ear.
The miller recoiled, but almost in the action his face recovered
itself. He wore a gray wool night-cap, and its tassel hung down over
one lifted eyebrow.
"Pierre Sandeau, my friend," opened La Vigne with a whimper, "I
followed you up here to weep with you."
"You did well," replied the miller bluntly, "for I am a ruined man
with the parish to feed, unless the Seminaire fathers take pity on
me."
"Yes, you have lost more than all of us," said La Vigne.
"I am not the man to measure losses and exult over my neighbors,"
declared the miller; "but how many pigs would you give to your girl's
dower now, Guillaume?"
"None at all, my poor Pierre. At least she is not a widow."
"Nor ever likely to be now, since she has no dower to make her a
wife."
"How could she be a wife without a husband? Taunt me no more about
that pig. I tell you it is worse with you: you have no son."
"What do you mean? I have half a dozen."
"But Laurent is shot."
"Laurent--shot?" whispered the miller, relaxing his flabby face, and
letting the candle sink downward until it spread their shadows on the
floor.
"Yes, my friend," whimpered La Vigne. "I saw him through my window
when the alarm was given. He was doubtless coming to save us all, for
an officer was with him. Jules Martin's thatch was just fired. It was
bright as sunrise against the hill, and the English saw our Laurent
and his officer, no doubt, for they shot them down, and I saw it
through my back window."
The miller sunk to his knees, and set the candle on the floor; La
Vigne approached and mingled night-cap tassels and groans with him.
"Oh, my son! And I quarreled with thee, Guillaume, about a pig, and
made the children unhappy."
"But I was to blame for that, Pierre," wept La Vigne, "and now we have
neither pig nor son!"
"Perhaps Montgomery's men have scalped him;" the miller pulled the
night-cap from his own head and threw it on the floor in helpless
wretchedness.
La Vigne uttered a low bellow in response, and they fell upon each
other's necks and were about to lament together in true Latin fashion,
when the wife of Montcalm's officer called to them.
She stood out from the shadow of the stone column, dead to all
appearances, yet animate, and trying to hold up Angèle whose whole
body lapsed downward in half unconsciousness. "Bring water," demanded
Madame De Mattissart.
And seeing who had overheard the dreadful news, La Vigne ran to the
flume-chamber, and the miller scrambled up and reached over him to dip
the first handful. Both stooped within the door, both recoiled, and
both raised a yell which echoed among high rafters in the attic above.
The miller thought Montgomery's entire troop were stealing into the
mill through the flume; for a man's legs protruded from the opening
and wriggled with such vigor that his body instantly followed and he
dropped into the water.
His beholders seized and dragged him out upon the floor; but he
threw off their hands, sprang astride of the door-sill, and stretched
himself to the flume mouth to help another man out of it.
La Vigne ran downstairs shrieking for the priest, as if he had seen
witchcraft. But the miller stood still, with the candle flaring on the
floor behind him, not sure of his son Laurent in militia uniform, but
trembling with some hope.
It was Madame De Mattissart's cry to her husband which confirmed the
miller's senses. She knew the young officer through the drenching
and raggedness of his white and gold uniform; she understood how two
wounded men could creep through any length of flume, from which a
miller's son would know how to turn off the water. She had no need to
ask what their sensations were, sliding down that slimy duct, or how
they entered it without being seen by the enemy. Let villagers talk
over such matters, and shout and exclaim when they came to hear this
strange thing. It was enough that her husband had met her through
every danger, and that he was able to stand and receive her in his
arms.
Laurent's wound was serious. After all his exertions he fainted; but
Angèle took his head upon her knee, and the fathers and mothers and
neighbors swarmed around him, and Father Robineau did him doctor's
service. Every priest then on the St. Lawrence knew how to dress
wounds as well as bind up spirits.
Denys of Bonaventure, notwithstanding the excitement overhead, kept
men at the basement loopholes until Montgomery had long withdrawn and
returned to camp.
He then felt that he could indulge himself with a sight of his
son-in-law, and tiptoed up past the colony of women and children whom
the priest had just driven again to their rest on the second floor;
past that sacred chamber on the third floor, and on up to the flume
loft. There Monsieur De Bonaventure paused, with his head just above
the boards, like a pleasant-faced sphinx.
"Accept my salutations, Captain De Mattissart," he said laughing.
"I am told that you and this young militia-man floated down the
mill-stream into this mill, with the French flag waving over your
heads, to the no small discouragement of the English. Quebec will
never be taken, monsieur."
Long ago those who found shelter in the mill dispersed to rebuild
their homes under a new order of things, or wedded like Laurent and
Angèle, and lived their lives and died. Yet, witnessing to all these
things, the old mill stands to-day at Petit Cap, huge and cavernous;
with its oasis of home, its milk-room, its square hoppers and
flume-chamber unchanged. Daylight refuses to follow you into the
blackened basement; and the shouts of Montgomery's sacking horde seem
to linger in the mighty hollows overhead.
[Footnote 1: Wolfe forbade such barbarities, but Montgomery did not
always obey. It was practiced on both sides.]