The cannon was for the time silent, the gunners being elsewhere, but a
boy's voice called from the bastion:--
"Come out here, mademoiselle. I have an apple for you."
"Where did you get an apple?" replied a girl's voice.
"Monsieur Bigot gave it to me. He has everything the king's stores
will buy. His slave was carrying a basketful."
"I do not like Monsieur Bigot. His face is blotched, and he kisses
little girls."
"His apples are better than his manners," observed the boy, waiting,
knife in hand, for her to come and see that the division was a fair
one.
She tiptoed out from the gallery of the commandant's house, the wind
blowing her curls back from her shoulders. A bastion of Fort St. Louis
was like a balcony in the clouds. The child's lithe, long body made a
graceful line in every posture, and her face was vivid with light and
expression.
"Perhaps your sick mother would like this apple, Monsieur Jacques. We
do not have any in the fort."
The boy flushed. He held the halves ready on his palm.
"I thought of her; but the surgeon might forbid it, and she is not
fond of apples when she is well. And you are always fond of apples,
Mademoiselle Anglaise."
"My name is Clara Baker. If you call me Mademoiselle Anglaise, I will
box your ears."
"But you are English," persisted the boy. "You cannot help it. I am
sorry for it myself; and when I am grown I will whip anybody that
reproaches you for it."
They began to eat the halves of the apple, forgetful of Jacques's sick
mother, and to quarrel as their two nations have done since France and
England stood on the waters.
"Don't distress yourself, Monsieur Jacques Repentigny. The English
will be the fashion in Quebec when you are grown."
It was amusing to hear her talk his language glibly while she
prophesied.
"Do you think your ugly General Wolfe can ever make himself the
fashion?" retorted Jacques. "I saw him once across the Montmorenci
when I was in my father's camp. His face runs to a point in the
middle, and his legs are like stilts."
"His stilts will lift him into Quebec yet."
The boy shook his black queue. He had a cheek in which the flush came
and went, and black sparkling eyes.
"The English never can take this province. What can you know about it?
You were only a little baby when Madame Ramesay bought you from the
Iroquois Indians who had stolen you. If your name had not been on your
arm, you would not even know that. But a Le Moyne of Montreal knows
all about the province. My grandfather, Le Moyne de Longueuil, was
wounded down there at Beauport, when the English came to take Canada
before. And his brother Jacques that I am named for--Le Moyne de
Sainte-Hélène--was killed. I have often seen the place where he died
when I went with my father to our camp."
The little girl pushed back her sleeve, as she did many times a day,
and looked at the name tattooed in pale blue upon her arm. Jacques
envied her that mark, and she was proud of it. Her traditions were
all French, but the indelible stamp, perhaps of an English seaman,
reminded her what blood was in her veins.
The children stepped nearer the parapet, where they could see all
Quebec Basin, and the French camp stretching its city of tents across
the valley of the St. Charles. Beneath them was Lower Town, a huddle
of blackened shells and tottering walls.
"See there what the English have done," said Clara, pointing down the
sheer rock. "It will be a long time before you and I go down Breakneck
Stairs again to see the pretty images in the church of Our Lady of
Victories."
"They did that two months ago," replied Jacques. "It was all they
could do. And now they are sick of bombarding, and are going home.
All their soldiers at Montmorenci and on the point of Orleans are
embarking. Their vessels keep running around like hens in a shower,
hardly knowing what to do."
"Look at them getting in a line yonder," insisted his born enemy.
"General Montcalm is in front of them at Beauport," responded Jacques.
The ground was moist underfoot, and the rock on which they leaned felt
damp. Quebec grayness infused with light softened the autumn world. No
one could behold without a leap of the heart that vast reach of river
and islands, and palisade and valley, and far-away melting mountain
lines. Inside Quebec walls the children could see the Ursuline convent
near the top of the slope, showing holes in its roof. Nearly every
building in the city had suffered.
Drums began to beat on the British ships ranged in front of Beauport,
and a cannon flashed. Its roar was shaken from height to height. Then
whole broadsides of fire broke forth, and the earth rumbled with the
sound, and scarlet uniforms filled the boats like floating poppies.
"The English may be going home," exulted Clara, "but you now see for
yourself, Monsieur Jacques Repentigny, what they intend to do before
they go."
"I wish my father had not been sent with his men back to Montreal!"
exclaimed Jacques in excitement. "But I shall go down to the camps,
anyhow."
"Your mother will cry," threatened the girl.
"My mother is used to war. She often lets me sleep in my father's
tent. Tell her I have gone to the camps."
"They will put you in the guard-house."
"They do not put a Repentigny in the guard-house."
"If you will stay here," called the girl, running after him towards
the fortress gate, "I will play anything you wish. The cannon balls
might hit you."
Deaf to the threat of danger, he made off through cross-cuts toward
the Palace Gate, the one nearest the bridge of boats on the St.
Charles River.
"Very good, monsieur. I'll tell your mother," she said, trembling and
putting up a lip.
But nothing except noise was attempted at Beauport. Jacques was
so weary, as he toiled back uphill in diminishing light, that he
gratefully crawled upon a cart and lay still, letting it take him
wherever the carter might be going. There were not enough horses and
oxen in Canada to move the supplies for the army from Montreal to
Quebec by land. Transports had to slip down the St. Lawrence by night,
running a gauntlet of vigilant English vessels. Yet whenever the
intendant Bigot wanted to shift anything, he did not lack oxen or
wheels. Jacques did not talk to the carter, but he knew a load of
king's provisions was going out to some favorite of the intendant's
who had been set to guard the northern heights. The stealings of this
popular civil officer were common talk in Quebec.
That long slope called the Plains of Abraham, which swept away from
the summit of the rock toward Cap Rouge, seemed very near the sky.
Jacques watched dusk envelop this place. Patches of faded herbage and
stripped corn, and a few trees only, broke the monotony of its extent.
On the north side, overhanging the winding valley of the St. Charles,
the rock's great shoulder was called Côte Ste. Geneviève. The bald
plain was about a mile wide, but the cart jogged a mile and a half
from Quebec before it reached the tents where its freight was to be
discharged.
Habit had taken the young Repentigny daily to his father's camp,
but this was the first time he had seen the guard along the heights.
Montcalm's soldiers knew him. He was permitted to handle arms. Many
a boy of fifteen was then in the ranks, and children of his age were
growing used to war. His father called it his apprenticeship to the
trade. A few empty houses stood some distance back of the tents; and
farther along the precipice, beyond brush and trees, other guards were
posted. Seventy men and four cannon completed the defensive line which
Montcalm had drawn around the top of the rock. Half the number could
have kept it, by vigilance. And it was evident that the officer in
charge thought so, and was taking advantage of his general's bounty.
"Remember I am sending you to my field as well as to your own," the
boy overheard him say. Nearly all his company were gathered in a
little mob before his tent. He sat there on a camp stool. They were
Canadians from Lorette, anxious for leave of absence, and full of
promises.
"Yes, monsieur, we will remember your field." "Yes, Captain Vergor,
your grain as soon as we have gathered ours in." "It shall be done,
captain."
Jacques had heard of Vergor. A few years before, Vergor had been put
under arrest for giving up Fort Beauséjour, in Acadia, to the English
without firing a shot. The boy thought it strange that such a man
should be put in charge of any part of the defensive cordon around
Quebec. But Vergor had a friend in the intendant Bigot, who knew
how to reinstate his disgraced favorites. The arriving cart drew the
captain's attention from his departing men. He smiled, his depressed
nose and fleshy lips being entirely good-natured.
"A load of provisions, and a recruit for my company," he said.
"Monsieur the captain needs recruits," observed Jacques.
"Society is what I need most," said Vergor. "And from appearances I
am going to have it at my supper which the cook is about to set before
me."
"I think I will stay all night here," said Jacques.
"You overwhelm me," responded Vergor.
"There are so many empty tents."
"Fill as many of them as you can," suggested Vergor. "You are
doubtless much away from your mother, inspecting the troops; but what
will madame say if you fail to answer at her roll call to-night?"
"Nothing. I should be in my father's tent at Montreal, if she had been
able to go when he was ordered back there."
"Who is your father?"
"Le Gardeur de Repentigny."
Vergor drew his lips together for a soft whistle, as he rose to direct
the storing of his goods.
"It is a young general with whom I am to have the honor of messing. I
thought he had the air of camps and courts the moment I saw his head
over the side of the cart."
Many a boy secretly despises the man to whose merry insolence he
submits. But the young Repentigny felt for Vergor such contempt as
only an incompetent officer inspires.
No sentinels were stationed. The few soldiers remaining busied
themselves over their mess fires. Jacques looked down a cove not quite
as steep as the rest of the cliff, yet as nearly perpendicular as any
surface on which trees and bushes can take hold. It was clothed with
a thick growth of sere weeds, cut by one hint of a diagonal line.
Perhaps laborers at a fulling mill now rotting below had once climbed
this rock. Rain had carried the earth from above in small cataracts
down its face, making a thin alluvial coating. A strip of land
separated the rock from the St. Lawrence, which looked wide and gray
in the evening light. Showers raked the far-off opposite hills. Leaves
showing scarlet or orange were dulled by flying mist.
The boy noticed more boats drifting up river on the tide than he had
counted in Quebec Basin.
"Where are all the vessels going?" he asked the nearest soldier.
"Nowhere. They only move back and forth with the tide."
"But they are English ships. Why don't you fire on them?"
"We have no orders. And besides, our own transports have to slip down
among them at night. One is pretty careful not to knock the bottom out
of the dish which carries his meat."
"The English might land down there some dark night."
"They may land; but, unfortunately for themselves, they have no
wings."
The boy did not answer, but he thought, "If my father and General
Levis were posted here, wings would be of no use to the English."
His distinct little figure, outlined against the sky, could be seen
from the prisoners' ship. One prisoner saw him without taking any note
that he was a child. Her eyes were fierce and red-rimmed. She was
the only woman on the deck, having come up the gangway to get rid of
habitantes. These fellow-prisoners of hers were that moment putting
their heads together below and talking about Mademoiselle Jeannette
Descheneaux. They were perhaps the only people in the world who took
any thought of her. Highlanders and seamen moving on deck scarcely
saw her. In every age of the world beauty has ruled men. Jeannette
Descheneaux was a big, manly Frenchwoman, with a heavy voice. In
Quebec, she was a contrast to the exquisite and diaphanous creatures
who sometimes kneeled beside her in the cathedral, or looked out of
sledge or sedan chair at her as she tramped the narrow streets. They
were the beauties of the governor's court, who permitted in a new
land the corrupt gallantries of Versailles. She was the daughter of
a shoemaker, and had been raised to a semi-official position by the
promotion of her brother in the government. Her brother had grown rich
with the company of speculators who preyed on the province and the
king's stores. He had one motherless child, and Jeannette took charge
of it and his house until the child died. She was perhaps a masculine
nourisher of infancy; yet the upright mark between her black eyebrows,
so deep that it seemed made by a hatchet, had never been there before
the baby's death; and it was by stubbornly venturing too far among the
parishes to seek the child's foster mother, who was said to be in some
peril at Petit Cap, that Jeannette got herself taken prisoner.
For a month this active woman had been a dreamer of dreams. Every day
the prison ship floated down to Quebec, and her past stood before her
like a picture. Every night it floated up to Cap Rouge, where French
camp fires flecked the gorge and the north shore stretching westward.
No strict guard was kept over the prisoners. She sat on the ship's
deck, and a delicious languor, unlike any former experience, grew
and grew upon her. The coaxing graces of pretty women she never
caricatured. Her skin was of the dark red tint which denotes a testy
disposition. She had fierce one-sided wars for trivial reasons, and
was by nature an aggressive partisan, even in the cause of a dog or a
cat. Being a woman of few phrases, she repeated these as often as
she had occasion for speech, and divided the world simply into two
classes: two or three individuals, including herself, were human
beings; the rest of mankind she denounced, in a voice which shook the
walls, as spawn. One does not like to be called spawn.
Though Jeannette had never given herself to exaggerated worship, she
was religious. The lack of priest and mass on the prison transport
was blamed for the change which came over her. A haze of real feminine
softness, like the autumn's purpling of rocks, made her bones less
prominent. But the habitantes, common women from the parishes, who had
children and a few of their men with them, saw what ailed her. They
noticed that while her enmity to the English remained unchanged, she
would not hear a word against the Highlanders, though Colonel Fraser
and his Seventy-Eighth Highland regiment had taken her prisoner. It is
true, Jeannette was treated with deference, and her food was sent to
her from the officer's table, and she had privacy on the ship which
the commoner prisoners had not. It is also true that Colonel Fraser
was a gentleman, detesting the parish-burning to which his command was
ordered for a time. But the habitantes laid much to his blue eyes and
yellow hair, and the picturesqueness of the red and pale green Fraser
tartan. They nudged one another when Jeannette began to plait her
strong black locks, and make a coronet of them on her sloping head.
She was always exact and neat in her dress, and its mannishness stood
her in good stead during her month's imprisonment. Rough wool was
her invariable wear, instead of taffetas and silky furs, which Quebec
women delighted in. She groomed herself carefully each day for
that approach to the English camp at Point Levi which the tide
accomplished. Her features could be distinguished half a mile. On the
days when Colonel Fraser's fezlike plumed bonnet was lifted to her in
the camp, she went up the river again in a trance of quiet. On other
days the habitantes laughed, and said to one another, "Mademoiselle
will certainly break through the deck with her tramping."
There was a general restlessness on the prison ship. The English
sailors wanted to go home. The Canadians had been patient since the
middle of August. But this particular September night, as they drifted
up past the rock, and saw the defenses of their country bristling
against them, the feeling of homesickness vented itself in complaints.
Jeannette was in her cabin, and heard them abuse Colonel Fraser and
his Highlanders as kidnapers of women and children, and burners of
churches. She came out of her retreat, and hovered over them like a
hawk. The men pulled their caps off, drolly grinning.
"It is true," added one of them, "that General Montcalm is to blame
for letting the parishes burn. And at least he might take us away from
the English."
"Do you think Monsieur de Montcalm has nothing to do but bring you in
off the river?" demanded Jeannette.
"Mademoiselle does not want to be brought in," retorted one of the
women. "As for us, we are not in love with these officers who wear
petticoats, or with any of our enemies."
"Spawn!" Jeanette hurled at them. Yet her partisan fury died in her
throat. She went up on deck to be away from her accusers. The seamed
precipice, the indented cove with the child's figure standing at the
top, and all the panorama to which she was so accustomed by morning
light or twilight passed before her without being seen by her fierce
red-rimmed eyes.
Jeannette Descheneaux had walked through the midst of colonial
intrigues without knowing that they existed. Men she ignored; and she
could not now account for her keen knowledge that there was a colonel
of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders. Her entanglement had taken her in
the very simplicity of childhood. She could not blame him. He had
done nothing but lift his bonnet to her, and treat her with deference
because he was sorry she had fallen into his hands. But at first she
fought with silent fury the power he unconsciously held over her. She
felt only the shame of it, which the habitantes had cast upon her.
Nobody had ever called Jeannette Descheneaux a silly woman. In early
life it was thought she had a vocation for the convent; but she drew
back from that, and now she was suddenly desolate. Her brother had his
consolations. There was nothing for her.
Scant tears, oozing like blood, moistened her eyes. She took hold of
her throat to strangle a sob. Her teeth chattered in the wind blowing
down river. Constellations came up over the rock's long shoulder.
Though it was a dark night, the stars were clear. She took no heed
of the French camp fires in the gorge and along the bank. The French
commander there had followed the erratic motions of English boats
until they ceased to alarm him. It was flood tide. The prison ship sat
on the water, scarcely swinging.
At one o'clock Jeannette was still on deck, having watched through the
midnight of her experience. She had no phrases for her thoughts. They
were dumb, but they filled her to the outermost layer of her skin, and
deadened sensation.
Boats began to disturb her, however. They trailed past the ship with
a muffled swish, all of them disappearing in the darkness. This
gathering must have been going on some time before she noticed it. The
lantern hanging aloft made a mere warning spot in the darkness, for
the lights on deck had been put out. All the English ships, when she
looked about her, were to be guessed at, for not a port-hole cast
its cylinder of radiance on the water. Night muffled their hulls, and
their safety lights hung in a scattered constellation. In one place
two lanterns hung on one mast.
Jeannette felt the pull of the ebbing tide. The ship gave way to it.
As it swung, and the monotonous flow of the water became constant, she
heard a boat grate, and directly Colonel Fraser came up the vessel's
side, and stood on deck where she could touch him. He did not know
that the lump of blackness almost beneath his hand was a breathing
woman; and if he had known, he would have disregarded her then. But
she knew him, from indistinct cap and the white pouch at his girdle to
the flat Highland shoes.
Whether the Highlanders on the ship were watching for him to appear as
their signal, or he had some private admonition for them, they started
up from spots which Jeannette had thought vacant darkness, probably
armed and wrapped in their plaids. She did not know what he said to
them. One by one they got quickly over the ship's side. She did not
form any resolution, and neither did she hesitate; but, drawing tight
around her the plaidlike length of shawl which had served her nearly a
lifetime, she stood up ready to take her turn.
Jeannette seemed to swallow her heart as she climbed over the rail.
The Highlanders were all in the boat except their colonel. He drew in
his breath with a startled sound, and she knew the sweep of her skirt
must have betrayed her. She expected to fall into the river; but her
hand took sure hold of a ladder of rope, and, creeping down backward,
she set her foot in the bateau. It was a large and steady open boat.
Some of the men were standing. She had entered the bow, and as Colonel
Fraser dropped in they cast off, and she sat down, finding a bench
as she had found foothold. The Highland officer was beside her. They
could not see each other's faces. She was not sure he had detected
her. The hardihood which had taken her beyond the French lines in
search of on whom she felt under her protection was no longer in her.
A cowering woman with a boatload of English soldiers palpitated under
the darkness. It was necessary only to steer; both tide and current
carried them steadily down. On the surface of the river, lines of dark
objects followed. A fleet of the enemy's transports was moving towards
Quebec.
To most women country means home. Jeannette was tenaciously fond
of the gray old city of Quebec, but home to her was to be near that
Highland officer. Her humiliation passed into the very agony of
tenderness. To go wherever he was going was enough. She did not want
him to speak to her, or touch her, or give any sign that he knew
she was in the world. She wanted to sit still by his side under the
negation of darkness and be satisfied. Jeannette had never dreamed
how long the hours between turn of tide and dawn may be. They were the
principal part of her life.
Keen stars held the sky at immeasurable heights. There was no mist.
The chill wind had swept the river clear like a great path. Within
reach of Jeannette's hand, but hidden from her, as most of us are
hidden from one another, sat one more solitary than herself. He had
not her robust body. Disease and anxiety had worn him away while he
was hopelessly besieging Quebec. In that last hour before the 13th of
September dawned, General Wolfe was groping down river toward one of
the most desperate military attempts in the history of the world.
There was no sound but the rustle of the water, the stir of a foot as
some standing man shifted his weight, and the light click of metal
as guns in unsteady hands touched barrels. A voice, modulating rhythm
which Jeannette could not understand, began to speak. General Wolfe
was reciting an English poem. The strain upon his soul was more
than he could bear, and he relieved it by those low-uttered rhymes.
Jeannette did not know one word of English. The meaning which reached
her was a dirge, but a noble dirge; the death hymn of a human being
who has lived up to his capacities. She felt strangely influenced,
as by the neighborhood of some large angel, and at the same time the
tragedy of being alive overswept her. For one's duty is never all
done; or when we have accomplished it with painstaking care, we are
smitten through with finding that the greater things have passed us
by.
The tide carried the boats near the great wall of rock. Woods made
denser shade on the background of night. The cautious murmur of the
speaker was cut short.
"Who goes there?" came the sharp challenge of a French sentry.
The soldiers were silent as dead men.
"France!" answered Colonel Fraser in the same language.
"Of what regiment?"
"The Queen's."
The sentry was satisfied. To the Queen's regiment, stationed at Cap
Rouge, belonged the duty of convoying provisions down to Quebec. He
did not further peril what he believed to be a French transport by
asking for the password.
Jeannette breathed. So low had she sunk that she would have used her
language herself to get the Highland colonel past danger.
It was fortunate for his general that he had the accent and readiness
of a Frenchman. Again they were challenged. They could see another
sentry running parallel with their course.
"Provision boats," this time answered the Highlander. "Don't make a
noise. The English will hear us."
That hint was enough, for an English sloop of war lay within sound of
their voices.
With the swift tide the boats shot around a headland, and here was a
cove in the huge precipice, clothed with sere herbage and bushes and
a few trees; steep, with the hint of a once-used path across it, but
a little less perpendicular than the rest of the rock. No sentinel was
stationed at this place.
The world was just beginning to come out of positive shadow into the
indistinctness of dawn. Current and tide were so strong that the boats
could not be steered directly to shore, but on the alluvial strip at
the base of this cove they beached themselves with such success as
they could. Twenty-four men sprung out and ran to the ascent. Their
muskets were slung upon their backs. A humid look was coming upon the
earth, and blurs were over the fading stars. The climbers separated,
each making his own way from point to point of the slippery cliff, and
swarms followed them as boat after boat discharged its load. The cove
by which he breached the stronghold of this continent, and which was
from that day to bear his name, cast its shadow on the gaunt, upturned
face of Wolfe. He waited while the troops in whom he put his trust,
with knotted muscles and panting breasts, lifted themselves to the
top. No orders were spoken. Wolfe had issued instructions the night
before, and England expected every man to do his duty.
There was not enough light to show how Canada was taken. Jeannette
Descheneaux stepped on the sand, and the single thought which took
shape in her mind was that she must scale that ascent if the English
scaled it.
The hope of escape to her own people did not animate her labor. She
had no hope of any sort. She felt only present necessity, which was to
climb where the Highland officer climbed. He was in front of her, and
took no notice of her until they reached a slippery wall where there
were no bushes. There he turned and caught her by the wrist, drawing
her up after him. Their faces came near together in the swimming
vapors of dawn. He had the bright look of determination. His eyes
shone. He was about to burst into the man's arena of glory. The woman,
whom he drew up because she was a woman, and because he regretted
having taken her prisoner, had the pallid look of a victim. Her tragic
black eyes and brows, and the hairs clinging in untidy threads
about her haggard cheeks instead of curling up with the damp as the
Highlandman's fleece inclined to do, worked an instant's compassion
in him. But his business was not the squiring of angular Frenchwomen.
Shots were heard at the top of the rock, a trampling rush, and then
exulting shouts. The English had taken Vergor's camp.
The hand was gone from Jeannette's wrist,--the hand which gave her
such rapture and such pain by its firm fraternal grip. Colonel Fraser
leaped to the plain, and was in the midst of the skirmish. Cannon
spoke, like thunder rolling across one's head. A battery guarded by
the sentinels they had passed was aroused, and must be silenced. The
whole face of the cliff suddenly bloomed with scarlet uniforms. All
the men remaining in the boats went up as fire sweeps when carried
by the wind. Nothing could restrain them. They smelled gunpowder and
heard the noise of victory, and would have stormed heaven at that
instant. They surrounded Jeannette without seeing her, every man
looking up to the heights of glory, and passed her in fierce and
panting emulation.
Jeannette leaned against the rough side of Wolfe's Cove. On the
inner surface of her eyelids she could see again the image of the
Highlandman stooping to help her, his muscular legs and neck showing
like a young god's in the early light. There she lost him, for he
forgot her. The passion of women whom nature has made unfeminine, and
who are too honest to stoop to arts, is one of the tragedies of the
world.
Daylight broke reluctantly, with clouds mustering from the inverted
deep of the sky. A few drops of rain sprinkled the British uniforms as
battalions were formed. The battery which gave the first intimation
of danger to the French general, on the other side of Quebec, had been
taken and silenced. Wolfe and his officers hurried up the high plateau
and chose their ground. Then the troops advanced, marching by files,
Highland bagpipes screaming and droning, the earth reverberating with
a measured tread. As they moved toward Quebec they wheeled to form
their line of battle, in ranks three deep, and stretched across the
plain. The city was scarcely a mile away, but a ridge of ground still
hid it from sight.
From her hiding-place in one of the empty houses behind Vergor's
tents, Jeannette Descheneaux watched the scarlet backs and the tartans
of the Highlanders grow smaller. She could also see the prisoners that
were taken standing under guard. As for herself, she felt that she
had no longer a visible presence, so easy had it been for her to move
among swarms of men and escape in darkness. She never had favored her
body with soft usage, but it trembled now in every part from muscular
strain. She was probably cold and hungry, but her poignant sensation
was that she had no friends. It did not matter to Jeannette that
history was being made before her, and one of the great battles of the
world was about to be fought. It only mattered that she should discern
the Fraser plaid as far as eye could follow it. There is no more
piteous thing than for one human being to be overpowered by the god in
another.
She sat on the ground in the unfloored hut, watching through broken
chinking. There was a back door as well as a front door, hung on
wooden hinges, and she had pinned the front door as she came in. The
opening of the back door made Jeannette turn her head, though with
little interest in the comer. It was a boy, with a streak of blood
down his face and neck, and his clothes stained by the weather. He
had no hat on, and one of his shoes was missing. He put himself at
Jeannette's side without any hesitation, and joined her watch through
the broken chinking. A tear and a drop of scarlet raced down his
cheek, uniting as they dripped from his chin.
"Have you been wounded?" inquired Jeannette.
"It isn't the wound," he answered, "but that Captain Vergor has let
them take the heights. I heard something myself, and tried to wake
him. The pig turned over and went to sleep again."
"Let me tie it up," said Jeannette.
"He is shot in the heel and taken prisoner. I wish he had been shot in
the heart. He hopped out of bed and ran away when the English fired on
his tent. I have been trying to get past their lines to run to General
Montcalm; but they are everywhere," declared the boy, his chin shaking
and his breast swelling with grief.
Jeannette turned her back on him, and found some linen about her
person which she could tear. She made a bandage for his head. It
comforted her to take hold of the little fellow and part his clotted
hair.
"The skin of my head is torn," he admitted, while suffering the
attempted surgery. "If I had been taller, the bullet might have killed
me; and I would rather be killed than see the English on this rock,
marching to take Quebec. What will my father say? I am ashamed to look
him in the face and own I slept in the camp of Vergor last night. The
Le Moynes and Repentignys never let enemies get past them before. And
I knew that man was not keeping watch; he did not set any sentry."
"Is it painful?" she inquired, wiping the bloody cut, which still
welled forth along its channel.
The boy lifted his brimming eyes, and answered her from his deeper
hurt:--
"I don't know what to do. I think my father would make for General
Montcalm's camp if he were alone and could not attack the enemy's
rear; for something ought to be done as quickly as possible."
Jeannette bandaged his head, the rain spattering through the broken
log house upon them both.
"Who brought you here?" inquired Jacques. "There was nobody in these
houses last night, for I searched them myself."
"I hid here before daybreak," she answered briefly.
"But if you knew the English were coming, why did you not give the
alarm?"
"I was their prisoner."
"And where will you go now?"
She looked towards the Plains of Abraham and said nothing. The open
chink showed Wolfe's six battalions of scarlet lines moving forward or
pausing, and the ridge above them thronging with white uniforms.
"If you will trust yourself to me, mamoiselle," proposed Jacques, who
considered that it was not the part of a soldier or a gentleman to
leave any woman alone in this hut to take the chances of battle, and
particularly a woman who had bound up his head, "I will do my best to
help you inside the French lines."
The singular woman did not reply to him, but continued looking through
the chink. Skirmishers were out. Puffs of smoke from cornfields and
knolls showed where Canadians and Indians hid, creeping to the flank
of the enemy.
Jacques stooped down himself, and struck his hands together at these
sights.
"Monsieur de Montcalm is awake, mademoiselle! And see our
sharpshooters picking them off! We can easily run inside the French
lines now. These English will soon be tumbled back the way they came
up."
In another hour the group of houses was a roaring furnace. A
detachment of English light infantry, wheeled to drive out the
bushfighters, had lost and retaken it many times, and neither party
gave up the ready fortress until it was set on fire. Crumbling red
logs hissed in the thin rain, and smoke spread from them across the
sodden ground where Wolfe moved. The sick man had become an invincible
spirit. He flew along the ranks, waving his sword, the sleeve falling
away from his thin arm. The great soldier had thrown himself on this
venture without a chance of retreat, but every risk had been thought
of and met. He had a battalion guarding the landing. He had a force
far in the rear to watch the motions of the French at Cap Rouge. By
the arrangement of his front he had taken precautions against being
outflanked. And he knew his army was with him to a man. But Montcalm
rode up to meet him hampered by insubordinate confusion.
Jeannette Descheneaux, carried along, with the boy, by Canadians and
Indians from the English rear to the Côte Ste. Geneviève, lay dazed in
the withered grass during the greater part of the action which decided
her people's hold on the New World. The ground resounded like a drum
with measured treading. The blaze and crash of musketry and cannon
blinded and deafened her; but when she lifted her head from the shock
of the first charge, the most instantaneous and shameful panic that
ever seized a French army had already begun. The skirmishers in
the bushes could not understand it. Smoke parted, and she saw the
white-and-gold French general trying to drive his men back. But they
evaded the horses of officers.
Jacques rose, with the Canadians and Indians, to his knees. He had a
musket. Jeannette rose, also, as the Highlanders came sweeping on in
pursuit. She had scarcely been a woman to the bushfighters. They were
too eager in their aim to glance aside at a rawboned camp follower
in a wet shawl. Neither did the Highlanders distinguish from other
Canadian heads the one with a woman's braids and a faint shadowing of
hair at the corners of the mouth. They came on without suspecting
an ambush, and she heard their strange cries--"Cath-Shairm!" and
"Caisteal Duna!"--when the shock of a volley stopped the streaming
tartans. She saw the play of surprise and fury in those mountaineer
faces. They threw down their muskets, and turned on the ambushed
Canadians, short sword in hand.
Never did knight receive the blow of the accolade as that crouching
woman took a Highland knife in her breast. For one breath she grasped
the back of it with both hands, and her rapt eyes met the horrified
eyes of Colonel Fraser. He withdrew the weapon, standing defenseless,
and a ball struck him, cutting the blood across his arm, and again he
was lost in the fury of battle, while Jeannette felt herself dragged
down the slope.
She resisted. She heard a boy's voice pleading with her, but she got
up and tried to go back to the spot from which she had been dragged.
The Canadians and Indians were holding their ground. She heard their
muskets, but they were far behind her, and the great rout caught her
and whirled her. Officers on their horses were borne struggling along
in it. She fell down and was trampled on, but something helped her up.
The flood of men poured along the front of the ramparts and down to
the bridge of boats on the St. Charles, or into the city walls through
the St. Louis and St. John gates.
To Jeannette the world was far away. Yet she found it once more close
at hand, as she stood with her back against the lofty inner wall. The
mad crowd had passed, and gone shouting down the narrow streets.
But the St. Louis gate was still choked with fugitives when Montcalm
appeared, reeling on his horse, supported by a soldier on each side.
His white uniform was stained on the breast, and blood dripped from
the saddle. Jeannette heard the piercing cry of a little girl:
"Oh heavens! Oh heavens! The marquis is killed!" And she heard
the fainting general gasp, "It is nothing, it is nothing. Don't be
troubled for me, my children."
She knew how he felt as he was led by. The indistinctness of the
opposite wall, which widened from the gate, was astonishing. And she
was troubled by the same little boy whose head she had tied up in
the log house. Jeannette looked obliquely down at him as she braced
herself with chill fingers, and discerned that he was claimed by a
weeping little girl to whom he yet paid no attention.
"Let me help you, mademoiselle," he urged, troubling her.
"Go away," said Jeannette.
"But, mademoiselle, you have been badly hurt."
"Go away," said Jeannette, and her limbs began to settle. She thought
of smiling at the children, but her features were already cast. The
English child held her on one side, and the French child on the other,
as she collapsed in a sitting posture. Tender nuns, going from friend
to foe, would find this stoical face against the wall. It was no
strange sight then. Canada was taken.
Men with bloody faces were already running with barricades for the
gates. Wailing for Montcalm could be heard.
The boy put his arm abound the girl and turned her eyes away. They ran
together up towards the citadel: England and France with their hands
locked; young Canada weeping, but having a future.