When Monsieur Doltaire entered the salon, and, dropping lazily
into a chair beside Madame Duvarney and her daughter, drawled out,
"England's Braddock--fool and general--has gone to heaven, Captain
Moray, and your papers send you there also," I did not shift a jot,
but looked over at him gravely--for, God knows, I was startled--and
I said,
"The General is dead?"
I did not dare to ask, Is he defeated? though from Doltaire's
look I was sure it was so, and a sickness crept through me, for
at the moment that seemed the end of our cause. But I made as if
I had not heard his words about my papers.
"Dead as a last years courtier, shifted from the scene," he
replied; "and having little now to do, we'll go play with the rat
in our trap."
I would not have dared look towards Alixe, standing beside her
mother then, for the song in my blood was pitched too high, were it
not that a little sound broke from her. At that, I glanced, and saw
that her face was still and quiet, but her eyes were shining, and
her whole body seemed listening. I dared not give my glance meaning,
though I wished to do so. She had served me much, had been a good
friend to me, since I was brought a hostage to Quebec from Fort
Necessity. There, at that little post on the Ohio, France threw
down the gauntlet, and gave us the great Seven Years War. And though
it may be thought I speak rashly, the lever to spring that trouble
had been within my grasp. Had France sat still while Austria and
Prussia quarreled, that long fighting had never been. The game of
war had lain with the Grande Marquise--or La Pompadour, as she was
called--and later it may be seen how I, unwillingly, moved her to
set it going.
Answering Monsieur Doltaire, I said stoutly, "I am sure he made
a good fight; he had gallant men."
"Truly gallant," he returned--"your own Virginians among others"
(I bowed); "but he was a blunderer, as were you also, monsieur, or
you had not sent him plans of our forts and letters of such candour.
They have gone to France, my captain."
Madame Duvarney seemed to stiffen in her chair, for what did
this mean but that I was a spy? and the young lady behind them now
put her handkerchief to her mouth as if to stop a word. To make
light of the charges against myself was the only thing, and yet I
had little heart to do so. There was that between Monsieur Doltaire
and myself--a matter I shall come to by-and-bye--which well might
make me apprehensive.
"My sketch and my gossip with my friends," said I, "can have
little interest in France."
"My faith, the Grande Marquise will find a relish for them," he
said pointedly at me. He, the natural son of King Louis, had played
the part between La Pompadour and myself in the grave matter of
which I spoke. "She loves deciding knotty points of morality," he
added.
"She has had chance and will enough," said I boldly, "but what
point of morality is here?"
"The most vital--to you," he rejoined, flicking his handkerchief a
little, and drawling so that I could have stopped his mouth with my
hand. "Shall a hostage on parole make sketches of a fort and send
them to his friends, who in turn pass them on to a foolish general?"
"When one party to an Article of War brutally breaks his sworn
promise, shall the other be held to his?" I asked quietly.
I was glad that, at this moment, the Seigneur Duvarney entered,
for I could feel the air now growing colder about Madame his wife.
He, at least, was a good friend; but as I glanced at him, I saw his
face was troubled and his manner distant. He looked at Monsieur
Doltaire a moment steadily, stooped to his wife's hand, and then
offered me his own without a word; which done, he went to where
his daughter stood. She kissed him, and, as she did so, whispered
something in his ear, to which he nodded assent. I knew afterwards
that she had asked him to keep me to dinner with them.
Presently turning to Monsieur Doltaire, he said inquiringly,
"You have a squad of men outside my house, Doltaire?"
Doltaire nodded in a languid way, and answered, "An escort--for
Captain Moray--to the citadel."
I knew now, as he had said, that I was in the trap; that he had
begun the long sport which came near to giving me the white
shroud of death, as it turned white the hair upon my head ere
I was thirty-two. Do I not know, the indignities, the miseries
I suffered, I owed mostly to him, and that at the last he
nearly robbed England of her greatest pride, the taking of New
France?--For chance sometimes lets humble men like me balance
the scales of fate; and I was humble enough in rank, if in
spirit always something above my place.
I was standing as he spoke these words, and I turned to him and
said, "Monsieur, I am at your service."
"I have sometimes wished," he said instantly, and with a courteous
if ironical gesture, "that you were in my service--that is, the King's."
I bowed as to a compliment, for I would not see the insolence,
and I retorted, "Would I could offer you a company in my Virginia
regiment!"
"Delightful! delightful!" he rejoined. "I should make as good a
Briton as you a Frenchman, every whit."
I suppose he would have kept leading to such silly play, had I
not turned to Madame Duvarney and said, "I am most sorry that
this mishap falls here; but it is not of my doing, and in colder
comfort, Madame, I shall recall the good hours spent in your
home."
I think I said it with a general courtesy, yet, feeling the eyes
of the young lady on me, perhaps a little extra warmth came into
my voice, and worked upon Madame, or it may be she was glad of my
removal from contact with her daughter; but kindness showed in her
face, and she replied gently, "I am sure it is only for a few days
till we see you again."
Yet I think in her heart she knew my life was perilled: those
were rough and hasty times, when the axe or the rope was the surest
way to deal with troubles. Three years before, at Fort Necessity, I
had handed my sword to my lieutenant, bidding him make healthy use
of it, and, travelling to Quebec on parole, had come in and out of
this house with great freedom. Yet since Alixe had grown towards
womanhood there had been strong change in Madame's manner.
"The days, however few, will be too long until I tax your
courtesy again," I said. "I bid you adieu, Madame."
"Nay, not so," spoke up my host; "not one step: dinner is nearly
served, and you must both dine with us. Nay, but I insist," he
added, as he saw me shake my head. "Monsieur Doltaire will grant
you this courtesy, and me the great kindness. Eh, Doltaire?"
Doltaire rose, glancing from Madame to her daughter. Madame was
smiling, as if begging his consent; for, profligate though he was,
his position, and more than all, his personal distinction, made him
a welcome guest at most homes in Quebec. Alixe met his look without
a yes or no in her eyes--so young, yet having such control and
wisdom, as I have had reason beyond all men to know. Something,
however, in the temper of the scene had filled her with a kind of
glow, which added to her beauty and gave her dignity. The spirit of
her look caught the admiration of this expatriated courtier, and I
knew that a deeper cause than all our past conflicts--and they were
great--would now, or soon, set him fatally against me.
"I shall be happy to wait Captain Moray's pleasure," he said
presently, "and to serve my own by sitting at your table. I was
to have dined with the Intendant this afternoon, but a messenger
shall tell him duty stays me.... If you will excuse me!" he added,
going to the door to find a man of his company. He looked back
for an instant, as if it struck him I might seek escape, for he
believed in no man's truth; but he only said, "I may fetch my men
to your kitchen, Duvarney? 'Tis raw outside."
"Surely. I shall see they have some comfort," was the reply.
Doltaire then left the room, and Duvarney came to me. "This is a
bad business, Moray," he said sadly. "There is some mistake, is
there not?"
I looked him fair in the face. "There is a mistake," I answered.
"I am no spy, and I do not fear that I shall lose my life, my
honour, or my friends by offensive acts of mine."
"I believe you," he responded, "as I have believed since you came,
though there has been gabble of your doings. I do not forget you
bought my life back from those wild Mohawks five years ago. You
have my hand in trouble or out of it."
Upon my soul, I could have fallen on his neck, for the blow to
our cause and the shadow on my own fate oppressed me for the
moment.
At this point the ladies left the room to make some little
toilette before dinner, and as they passed me the sleeve of Alixe's
dress touched my arm. I caught her fingers for an instant, and to
this day I can feel that warm, rich current of life coursing from
finger-tips to heart. She did not look at me at all, but passed on
after her mother. Never till that moment had there been any open
show of heart between us. When I first came to Quebec (I own it to
my shame) I was inclined to use her youthful friendship for private
and patriotic ends; but that soon passed, and then I wished her
companionship for true love of her. Also, I had been held back
because when I first knew her she seemed but a child. Yet how
quickly and how wisely did she grow out of her childhood! She had a
playful wit, and her talents were far beyond her years. It amazed
me often to hear her sum up a thing in some pregnant sentence
which, when you came to think, was the one word to be said. She had
such a deep look out of her blue eyes that you scarcely glanced
from them to see the warm sweet colour of her face, the fair broad
forehead, the brown hair, the delicate richness of her lips, which
ever were full of humour and of seriousness--both running together,
as you may see a laughing brook steal into the quiet of a
river.
Duvarney and I were thus alone for a moment, and he straightway
dropped a hand upon my shoulder. "Let me advise you," he said,
"be friendly with Doltaire. He has great influence at the Court
and elsewhere. He can make your bed hard or soft at the citadel."
I smiled at him, and replied, "I shall sleep no less sound because
of Monsieur Doltaire."
"You are bitter in your trouble," said he.
I made haste to answer, "No, no, my own troubles do not weigh so
heavy--but our General's death!"
"You are a patriot, my friend," he added warmly. "I could well
have been content with our success against your English army
without this deep danger to your person."
I put out my hand to him, but I did not speak, for just then
Doltaire entered. He was smiling at something in his thought.
"The fortunes are with the Intendant always," said he. "When
things are at their worst, and the King's storehouse, the dear
La Friponne, is to be ripped by our rebel peasants like a sawdust
doll, here comes this gay news of our success on the Ohio; and in
that Braddock's death the whining beggars will forget their empty
bellies, and bless where they meant to curse. What fools, to be
sure! They had better loot La Friponne. Lord, how we love fighting,
we French! And 'tis so much easier to dance, or drink, or love."
He stretched out his shapely legs as he sat musing.
Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, smiling. "But you, Doltaire--there's
no man out of France that fights more."
He lifted an eyebrow. "One must be in the fashion; besides, it
does need some skill to fight. The others--to dance, drink, love:
blind men's games!" He smiled cynically into the distance.
I have never known a man who interested me so much--never one so
original, so varied, and so uncommon in his nature. I marvelled at
the pith and depth of his observations; for though I agreed not with
him once in ten times, I loved his great reflective cleverness and
his fine penetration--singular gifts in a man of action. But action
to him was a playtime; he had that irresponsibility of the Court
from which he came, its scornful endurance of defeat or misery,
its flippant look upon the world, its scoundrel view of women. Then
he and Duvarney talked, and I sat thinking. Perhaps the passion
of a cause grows in you as you suffer for it, and I had suffered,
and suffered most by a bitter inaction. Governor Dinwiddie, Mr.
Washington (alas that, as I write the fragment chapters of my life,
among the hills where Montrose my ancestor fought, George leads
the colonists against the realm of England!), and the rest were
suffering, but they were fighting too. Brought to their knees, they
could rise again to battle; and I thought then, How more glorious to
be with my gentlemen in blue from Virginia, holding back death from
the General, and at last falling myself, than to spend good years a
hostage at Quebec, knowing that Canada was for our taking, yet doing
nothing to advance the hour!
In the thick of these thoughts I was not conscious of what the
two were saying, but at last I caught Madame Cournal's name; by
which I guessed Monsieur Doltaire was talking of her amours, of
which the chief and final was with Bigot the Intendant, to whom
the King had given all civil government, all power over commerce
and finance in the country. The rivalry between the Governor and
the Intendant was keen and vital at this time, though it changed
later, as I will show. At her name I looked up and caught Monsieur
Doltaire's eye.
He read my thoughts. "You have had blithe hours here, monsieur,"
he said--"you know the way to probe us; but of all the ladies who
could be most useful to you, you left out the greatest. There you
erred. I say it as a friend, not as an officer, there you erred.
From Madame Cournal to Bigot, from Bigot to Vaudreuil the Governor,
from the Governor to France. But now--"
He paused, for Madame Duvarney and her daughter had come, and we
all rose.
The ladies had heard enough to know Doltaire's meaning. "But
now--Captain Moray dines with us," said Madame Duvarney quietly
and meaningly.
"Yet I dine with Madame Cournal," rejoined Doltaire, smiling.
"One may use more option with enemies and prisoners," she said
keenly, and the shot ought to have struck home. In so small a place
it was not easy to draw lines close and fine, and it was in the
power of the Intendant, backed by his confederates, to ruin almost
any family in the province if he chose; and that he chose at times
I knew well, as did my hostess. Yet she was a woman of courage and
nobility of thought, and I knew well where her daughter got her
good flavor of mind.
I could see something devilish in the smile at Doltaire's lip's,
but his look was wandering between Alixe and me, and he replied
urbanely, "I have ambition yet--to connive at captivity"; and
then he looked full and meaningly at her.
I can see her now, her hand on the high back of a great oak chair,
the lace of her white sleeve falling away, and her soft arm showing,
her eyes on his without wavering. They did not drop, nor turn aside;
they held straight on, calm, strong--and understanding. By that look
I saw she read him; she, who had seen so little of the world, felt
what he was, and met his invading interest firmly, yet sadly; for I
knew long after that a smother was at her heart then, foreshadowings
of dangers that would try her as few women are tried. Thank God that
good women are born with greater souls for trial than men; that,
given once an anchor for their hearts, they hold until the cables
break.
When we were about to enter the dining-room, I saw, to my joy,
Madame incline towards Doltaire, and I knew that Alixe was for
myself--though her mother wished it little, I am sure. As she took
my arm, her finger-tips plunged softly into the velvet of my sleeve,
giving me a thrill of courage. I felt my spirits rise, and I set
myself to carry things off gaily, to have this last hour with her
clear of gloom, for it seemed easy to think that we should meet no
more.
As we passed into the dining-room, I said, as I had said the
first time I went to dinner in her father's house, "Shall we be
flippant, or grave?"
I guessed that it would touch her. She raised her eyes to mine
and answered, "We are grave; let us seem flippant."
In those days I had a store of spirits. I was seldom dismayed,
for life had been such a rough-and-tumble game that I held to
cheerfulness and humour as a hillsman to his broadsword, knowing it
the greatest of weapons with a foe, and the very stone and mortar
of friendship. So we were gay, touching lightly on events around us,
laughing at gossip of the doorways (I in my poor French), casting
small stones at whatever drew our notice, not forgetting a throw or
two at Chateau Bigot, the Intendant's country house at Charlesbourg,
five miles away, where base plots were hatched, reputations soiled,
and all clean things dishonoured. But Alixe, the sweetest soul
France ever gave the world, could not know all I knew; guessing
only at heavy carousals, cards, song, and raillery, with far-off
hints of feet lighter than fit in cavalry boots dancing among the
glasses on the table. I was never before so charmed with her swift
intelligence, for I never had great nimbleness of thought, nor
power to make nice play with the tongue.
"You have been three years with us," suddenly said her father,
passing me the wine. "How time has flown! How much has happened!"
"Madame Cournal's husband has made three million francs," said
Doltaire, with dry irony and truth.
Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, stiffened; for, oblique as the
suggestion was, he did not care to have his daughter hear it.
"And Vaudreuil has sent bees buzzing to Versailles about Bigot
and Company," added the impish satirist.
Madame Duvarney responded with a look of interest, and the
Seigneur's eyes steadied to his plate. All at once by that I saw
the Seigneur had known of the Governor's action, and maybe had
counseled with him, siding against Bigot. If that were so--as it
proved to be--he was in a nest of scorpions; for who among them
would spare him: Marin, Cournal, Rigaud, the Intendant himself?
Such as he were thwarted right and left in this career of knavery
and public evils.
"And our people have turned beggars; poor and starved, they beg at
the door of the King's storehouse--it is well called La Friponne,"
said Madame Duvarney, with some heat; for she was ever liberal to
the poor, and she had seen manor after manor robbed, and peasant
farmers made to sell their corn for a song, to be sold to them again
at famine prices by La Friponne. Even now Quebec was full of pilgrim
poor begging against the hard winter, and execrating their spoilers.
Doltaire was too fond of digging at the heart of things not to
admit she spoke truth.
"La Pompadour et La Friponne!
Qu'est que cela, mon petit homme?"
"Les deux terribles, ma chere mignonne,
Mais, c'est cela--
La Pompadour et La Friponne!"
He said this with cool drollery and point, in the patois of the
native, so that he set us all laughing, in spite of our mutual
apprehensions.
Then he continued, "And the King has sent a chorus to the play, with
eyes for the preposterous make-believe, and more, no purse to fill."
We all knew he meant himself, and we knew also that so far as
money went he spoke true; that though hand-in-glove with Bigot, he
was poor, save for what he made at the gaming-table and got from
France. There was the thing that might have clinched me to him, had
matters been other than they were; for all my life I have loathed
the sordid soul, and I would rather, in these my ripe years, eat
with a highwayman who takes his life in his hands than with the
civilian who robs his king and the king's poor, and has no better
trick than false accounts, nor better friend than the pettifogging
knave. Doltaire had no burning love for France, and little faith in
anything; for he was of those Versailles water-flies who recked not
if the world blackened to cinders when their lights went out. As
will be seen by-and-bye, he had come here to seek me, and to serve
the Grande Marquise.
More speech like this followed, and amid it all, with the flower of
the world beside me at this table, I remembered my mother's words
before I bade her good-bye and set sail from Glasgow for Virginia.
"Keep it in mind, Robert," she said, "that an honest love is the
thing to hold you honest with yourself. 'Tis to be lived for, and
fought for, and died for. Ay, be honest in your loves. Be true."
And there I took an oath, my hand clenched beneath the table, that
Alixe should be my wife if better days came; when I was done with
citadel and trial and captivity, if that might be.
The evening was well forward when Doltaire, rising from his seat
in the drawing-room, bowed to me, and said, "If it pleases you,
monsieur?"
I rose also, and prepared to go. There was little talk, yet we
all kept up a play of cheerfulness. When I came to take the
Seigneur's hand, Doltaire was a distance off, talking to Madame.
"Moray," said the Seigneur quickly and quietly, "trials portend
for both of us." He nodded towards Doltaire.
"But we shall come safe through," said I.
"Be of good courage, and adieu," he answered, as Doltaire turned
towards us.
My last words were to Alixe. The great moment of my life was come.
If I could but say one thing to her out of earshot, I would stake
all on the hazard. She was standing beside a cabinet, very still, a
strange glow in her eyes, a new, fine firmness at the lips. I felt
I dared not look as I would; I feared there was no chance now to
speak what I would. But I came slowly up the room with her mother.
As we did so, Doltaire exclaimed and started to the window, and the
Seigneur and Madame followed. A red light was showing on the panes.
I caught Alixe's eye, and held it, coming quickly to her. All backs
were on us. I took her hand and pressed it to my lips suddenly. She
gave a little gasp, and I saw her bosom heave.
"I am going from prison to prison," said I, "and I leave a loved
jailer behind."
She understood. "Your jailer goes also," she answered, with a
sad smile.
"I love you! I love you!" I urged.
She was very pale. "Oh, Robert!" she whispered timidly; and then,
"I will be brave, I will help you, and I will not forget. God
guard you."
That was all, for Doltaire turned to me then and said, "They've
made of La Friponne a torch to light you to the citadel, monsieur."
A moment afterwards we were outside in the keen October air, a
squad of soldiers attending, our faces towards the citadel heights.
I looked back, doffing my cap. The Seigneur and Madame stood at
the door, but my eyes were for a window where stood Alixe. The
reflection of the far-off fire bathed the glass, and her face had
a glow, the eyes shining through, intent and most serious. Yet how
brave she was, for she lifted her handkerchief, shook it a little,
and smiled.
As though the salute were meant for him, Doltaire bowed twice
impressively, and then we stepped forward, the great fire over
against the Heights lighting us and hurrying us on.
We scarcely spoke as we went, though Doltaire hummed now and then
the air La Pompadour et La Friponne. As we came nearer I said,
"Are you sure it is La Friponne, monsieur?"
"It is not," he said, pointing. "See!"
The sky was full of shaking sparks, and a smell of burning grain
came down the wind.
"One of the granaries, then," I added, "not La Friponne itself?"
To this he nodded assent, and we pushed on.