Fort Amity
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Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity
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"Monseigneur," Dominique answered simply, "you say some things that
are true; but you say them so that all seems false and vile. Yes, I
have dreamed dreams--even dreams of becoming a _gentilhomme_, as you
say; but my dreams were never wicked as you colour them, seeing that
they all flowed from love of Mademoiselle Diane, and returned to
her."
He glanced towards the window, through which the pair could see Diane
pacing the _terre-plein_ in the sunlight. The sight kindled the
elder man to fresh anger.
"If," said he harshly, "I tried to explain to you exactly how you
insult us, it would be wasting my time and yours; and, however much
you deserve it, I have no wish to wound your feelings beyond need.
Let us come to business." He unlocked a drawer and drew out three
bundles of notes. "As my farmer you will know better than I the
current discount on these. You come from Montreal. At what price
was the Government redeeming its paper there?"
As he unfolded them, Dominique glanced at the notes, and then let his
gaze wander out through the window.
"Is Monseigneur proposing to pay me the interest on his bonds?"
"To be sure I am."
"I do not ask for it."
"Devil care I if you ask or not! Count the notes, if you please."
Dominique took a packet in his hands for a moment, still with his
eyes bent absently on the window, fingered the notes, and laid them
back on the table.
"Monseigneur will do me the justice to own that in former times I
have given him good advice in business. I beg him to keep these
notes for a while. In a month or two their value will have trebled,
whichever Government redeems them."
The Commandant struck the table. "In a few hours, sir, I shall be a
dead man. My honour cannot wait so long; and since the question is
now of honour, not of business, you will keep your advice to
yourself. Be quick, please; for time presses, and I have some
instructions to leave to my brother. At my death he will sell the
Seigniory. The Government will take its quint of the purchase-money,
and out of the remainder you shall be paid. My daughter will then go
penniless, but at least I shall have saved her from a creditor with
such claims as you are like to press. And so, sir, I hope you have
your answer."
"No, Monseigneur, not my answer. That I will never take but from
Mademoiselle Diane herself."
"By God, you shall have it here and now!" The Commandant stepped to
the window and threw open the casement. "Diane!" he called.
She came. She stood in the doorway; and Dominique--a moment before
so bold--lowered his eyes before hers. At sight of him her colour
rose, but bravely. She was young, and had been making her account
with death. She had never loved Dominique; she had feared him at
times, and at times pitied him; but now fate had lifted her and set
her feet on a height from which she looked down upon love and fear
with a kind of wonder that they had ever seemed important, and even
her pity for him lost itself in compassion for all men and women in
trouble. In truth, Dominique looked but a miserable culprit before
her.
The Commandant eyed him grimly for a moment before turning to her.
"Diane," he said with grave irony, "you will be interested to learn
that Monsieur Dominique Guyon here has done you the honour to request
your hand in marriage."
She did not answer, but stood reading their faces.
"Moreover, on my declining that honour, he tells me that he will take
his answer from you alone."
Still for a few seconds she kept silence.
"Why should I not answer him, papa?" she said at length, and softly.
"It is not for us to choose what he should ask." She paused.
"All his life Dominique Guyon has been helping us; see how he has,
even in these few days, worn himself in our service!"
Her father stared at her, puzzled, not following her thought. He had
expected her to be shocked, affronted; he did not know that
Dominique's passion was an old tale to her; and as little did he
perceive that in her present mood she put herself aside and thought
only of Dominique as in trouble and needing help.
But apparently something in her face reassured him, for he stepped
toward the door.
"You prefer to give him his answer alone?"
She bent her head.
For a while after the door had closed upon the Commandant, Dominique
stood with eyes abased. Then, looking up and meeting the divine
compassion in hers, he fell on his knees and stretched out both hands
to her.
"Is there no hope for me, ma'amzelle?"
She shook her head. Looking down on him through tears, she held out
a hand; he took it between his palms and clung to it, sobbing like a
child.
Terrible, convulsive sobs they were at first, but grew quieter by
degrees, and as the outburst spent itself a deep silence fell upon
the room.
A tear had fallen upon his clasped knuckles. He put his lips to it
and, imprisoning her fingers, kissed them once, reverently.
He was a man again. He stood up, yet not releasing her hand, and
looked her in the face.
"Ma'amzelle, you will leave the Fort? You will let Bateese carry you
out of danger? For me, of course, I stay with the Seigneur."
"No, Dominique. All New France is dying around us, and I stay with
my father to see the end. Perhaps at the last I shall need you to
help me." She smiled bravely. "You have been trying to persuade my
father, I know."
"I have been trying to persuade him, and yet--yet--Oh, I will tell to
you a wickedness in my heart that I could not tell even to Father
Launoy! There was a moment when I thought to myself that even to
have you die here and to die beside you were better than to let you
go. Can you forgive me such a thought as that?"
"I forgive."
"And will you grant one thing more?"
"What is it, Dominique?"
"A silly favour, ma'amzelle--but why not? The English will be here
soon, maybe in a few hours. Let me call Bateese, and we three will
be children again and go up to the edge of the forest and watch for
our enemies. They will be real enemies, this time; but even that we
may forget, perhaps."
She stood back a pace and laughed--yes, laughed--and gaily, albeit
with dewy eyes. Her hands went up as if she would have clapped them.
"Why, to be sure!" she cried. "Let us fetch Bateese at once!"
They passed out into the sunlight together, and she waited in the
courtyard while Dominique ran upstairs to fetch Bateese. In five
minutes' time the two brothers appeared together, Bateese with his
pockets enormously bulging--whereat Diane laughed again.
"So you have brought the larder, as ever. Bateese was always
prudent, and never relied on the game he killed in hunting.
You remember, Dominique?"
"He was always a poor shot, ma'amzelle," answered Dominique gravely.
"But this is not the larder!" Bateese began to explain with a queer
look at his brother.
"Eh?"
"Never mind explanations! Come along, all three!" cried Dominique,
and led the way. They passed out by the postern unobserved--for the
garrison was assembled in the lunette under the river wall--and
hurried toward the shade of the forest.
How well Diane remembered the old childish make-believe! How many
scores of times had they played it together, these three, in the
woods around Boisveyrac!--when Dominique and Bateese were bold
huntsmen, and she kept house for them, cooking their imaginary spoils
of the chase.
"We must have a fire!" she exclaimed, and hurried off to gather
sticks. But when she returned with the lap of her gown well filled,
a fire was already lit and blazing.
"How have you managed it so quickly?" she asked, and with that her
eyes fell on a scrap of ashes. "Where did you get this? You have
been lighting with paper, Bateese--and that is not playing fair!"
Bateese, very red in the face, stooped in the smoke and crammed
another handful upon the blaze.
"They were papers, ma'amzelle, upon which Dominique and I for a long
time could not agree. But now "--he turned to Dominique--"there is
no longer any quarrel between us. Eh, brother?"
"None, Bateese; none, if you forgive."
"What did I tell you?" cried Bateese triumphantly. "Did I not always
tell you that your heart would be lighter, with this shadow gone?
And there was never any shadow but this; none--none!"
"That is all very well," Diane remonstrated; "but you two have no
business to hide a secret from me to-day, even though it make you
happier."
"We have burnt it for a propitiation, ma'amzelle; it no longer
exists." Bateese cast himself on his back at full length in the
herbage and gazed up through the drifting smoke into the tree-tops
and sky. "A-ah!" said he with a long sigh, "how good God has been to
me! How beautiful He has made all my life!" He propped himself on
one elbow and continued with shining eyes: "What things we were going
to do, in those days! What wonders we looked forward to! And all
the while we were doing the most wonderful thing in the world, for we
loved one another." He stretched out a hand and pointed. "There, by
the bend, the English boats will come in sight. Suppose, Dominique,
that as they come you launched out against them, and fought and sank
the fleet single-handed, like the men in the old tales--"
"He would save New France, and live in song," Diane put in.
"Would that not content any man, Bateese?" She threw back her head
with a gesture which Dominique noted; a trick of her childhood, when
in moments of excitement her long hair fell across her eyes and had
to be shaken back.
"Ma'amzelle," he pleaded, "there is yet one favour."
"Can I grant it easily?"
"I hope so; it is that you will let down your hair for us."
Diane blushed, but put up a hand and began to uncoil the tresses.
"Bateese has not answered me," she insisted. "I tell him that a man
who should do such a feat as he named would live in song for ever and
ever."
"But I say to you humbly, ma'amzelle, that though he lived in song
for ever and ever, the true sweetness of his life would be unknown to
the singers; for he found it here under the branches, and, stepping
forth to his great deed, he left the memory for a while, to meet him
again and be his reward in Heaven."
"And I say to you 'no,' and 'no,' and again 'no'!" cried Diane,
springing to her feet--the childish, impetuous Diane of old.
"It is in the great deed that he lives--the deed, and the moment that
makes him everlasting! If Dominique now, or I, as these English came
round the bend--"
She paused, meeting Dominique's eyes. She had not said "or you,"
and could not say it. Why? Because Bateese was a cripple.
"Bateese's is a cripple's talk," said their glances one to another,
guiltily, avoiding him.
Dominique's gaze, flinching a little, passed down the splendid coils
of her hair and rested on the grass at her feet. She lifted a tress
on her forefinger and smoothed it against the sunlight.
"There was a war once," said she, "between the Greeks and the
Persians; and the Persians overran the Greeks' country until they
came to a pass in the mountains where a few men could stand against
many. There three hundred of the Greeks had posted themselves,
despising death, to oppose an army of tens and hundreds of thousands.
The Persian king sent forward a horseman, and he came near and looked
along the pass and saw but a few Greeks combing their hair and
dressing it carefully, as I am dressing mine."
"What happened, ma'amzelle?"
"They died, and live in song for ever and ever!"
She faced them, her cheeks glowing, and lifted a hand as the note of
a sweet-toned bell rose upon the morning air above the voices of the
birds; of the chapel-bell ringing the garrison to Mass.
The two young men scrambled to their feet.
"Come!" said Diane, and they walked back to the Fort together.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FLAGSTAFF TOWER.
Time pressing, the Commandant had gone straight from the orderly-room
in search of Father Joly. As a soldier and a good Catholic he
desired to be shriven, and as a man of habit he preferred the old
Cure to Father Launoy. To be sure the Cure was deaf as a post, but
on the other hand the Commandant's worst sins would bear to be
shouted.
"There is yet one thing upon my conscience," he wound up. "The fact
is, I feel pretty sure of myself in this business, but I have some
difficulty in trusting God."
It is small wonder that a confession so astonishing had to be
repeated twice, and even when he heard it Father Joly failed to
understand.
"But how is it possible to mistrust God?" he asked.
"Well, I don't know. I suppose that even in bringing New France so
near to destruction He is acting in loving mercy; but all the same it
will be a wrench to me if these English pass without paying us the
honour of a siege. For if we cannot force them to a fight, Montreal
is lost." The Commandant believed this absolutely.
Father Joly was Canadian born and bred; had received his education in
the Seminary of Quebec; and knowing nothing of the world beyond New
France, felt no doubt upon which side God was fighting. If it were
really necessary to New France that the English should be delayed--
and he would take the Commandant's word for it--why then delayed they
would be. This he felt able to promise. "And I in my heart of
hearts am sure of it," said the Commandant. "But in war one has to
take account of every chance, and this may pass sometimes for want of
faith."
So, like an honest gentleman, he took his absolution, and afterwards
went to Mass and spent half an hour with his mind withdrawn from all
worldly care, greatly to his soul's refreshment. But with the
ringing of the sanctus bell a drum began to beat--as it seemed, on
the very ridge of the chapel roof, but really from the leads of the
flagstaff tower high above it. Father Launoy paused in the
celebration, but was ordered by a quiet gesture to proceed. Even at
the close the garrison stood and waited respectfully for their
Commandant to walk out, and followed in decent order to the porch.
Then they broke into a run pell-mell for the walls.
But an hour passed before the first whaleboat with its load of red
uniforms pushed its way into sight through the forest screen.
Then began a spectacle--slow, silent, by little and little
overwhelming. It takes a trained imagination to realise great
numbers, and the men of Fort Amitie were soon stupefied and ceased
even to talk. It seemed to them that the forest would never cease
disgorging boats.
"A brave host, my children! But we will teach them that they handle
a wasps' nest."
His men eyed the Commandant in doubt; they could scarcely believe
that he intended to resist, now that the enemy's strength was
apparent. To their minds war meant winning or losing, capturing or
being captured. To fight an impossible battle, for the mere sake of
gaining time for troops they had never seen, did not enter into their
calculations.
So they eyed him, while still the flotilla increased against the far
background and came on--whaleboats, gunboats, bateaux, canoes; and
still in the lessening interval along the waterway the birds sang.
For the British moved, not as once upon Lake George startling the
echoes with drums and military bands, but so quietly that at half a
mile's distance only the faint murmur of splashing oars and creaking
thole-pins reached the ears of the watchers.
The Commandant suddenly lowered his glass and closed it with a snap,
giving thanks to God. For at that distance the leading boats began
heading in for shore.
"Etienne, he intends at least to summon us!"
So it proved. General Amherst was by no means the man to pass and
leave a hostile post in his rear. His detractors indeed accused him
of spending all his time upon forts, either in building or in
reducing them. But he had two very good reasons for pausing before
Fort Amitie; he did not know the strength of its defenders, and he
wanted pilots to guide his boats down the rapids below.
Therefore he landed and sent an officer forward to summon the
garrison.
The officer presented himself at the river-gate, and having politely
suffered Sergeant Bedard to blindfold him, was led to the
Commandant's quarters. A good hour passed before he reappeared, the
Commandant himself conducting him; and meantime the garrison amused
itself with wagering on the terms of capitulation.
At the gate the Englishman's bandage was removed. He saluted, and
was saluted, with extreme ceremony. The Commandant watched him out
of earshot, and then, rubbing his hands, turned with a happy smile.
"To your guns, my children!"
They obeyed him, while they wondered. He seemed to take for granted
that they must feel the compliment paid them by a siege in form.
The day was now well advanced, and it seemed at first
that the British meant to let it pass without a demonstration.
Toward nightfall, however, four gunboats descended the river,
anchored and dropped down the current, paying out their hawsers and
feeling their way into range. But the Fort was ready for them,
and opened fire before they could train their guns; a lucky shot
cut the moorings of one clean and close by the stem; and, the
current carrying her inshore, she was hulled twice as she drifted
down-stream. The other three essayed a few shots without effect in
the dusk, warped back out of range, and waited for daylight to
improve their marksmanship.
And with daylight began one of the strangest of sieges, between an
assailant who knew only that he had to deal with stout walls, and a
defender who dared not attempt even a show of a sortie for fear of
exposing the weakness of his garrison. The French had ammunition
enough to last for a month, and cannon enough to keep two hundred men
busy; and ran from one gun to another, keeping up pretences but doing
little damage in their hurry. Their lucky opening shots had
impressed Amherst, and he was one to cling to a notion of his enemy's
strength. He solemnly effected a new landing at six hundred yards'
distance, opened his lines across the north-western corner of the
fort, kept his men entrenching for two days and two nights, brought
up thirty guns, and, advancing them within two hundred yards, began
at his leisure to knock holes in the walls. Meantime, twenty guns,
anchored out in the river, played on the broad face of the fort and
swept the Commandant's lunette out of existence. And with all this
prodigious waste of powder but five of the garrison had fallen, and
three of these by the bursting of a single shell. The defenders
understood now that they were fighting for time, and told each other
that when their comedy was played out and the inevitable moment came,
the British General would not show himself fierce in revenge--
"provided," they would add, "the Seigneur does not try his patience
too far." It was Father Launoy who set this whisper going from lip
to lip, and so artfully that none suspected him for its author;
Father Launoy, who had been wont to excite the patriotism of the
faithful by painting the English as devils in human shape. He was a
brave man; but he held this resistance to be senseless and did not
believe for an instant that Montreal would use the delay or, using
it, would strike with any success.
At first the tremendous uproar of the enemy's artillery and its
shattering effect on the masonry of their fortress, had numbed the
militiamen's nerves; they felt the place tumbling about their ears.
But as the hours passed they discovered that round-shot could be
dodged and that even bursting shells, though effective against stones
and mortar, did surprisingly small damage to life and limb; and with
this discovery they began almost to taste the humour of the
situation. They fed and rested in bomb-proof chambers which the
Commandant and M. Etienne had devised in the slope of earth under the
_terre-plein_; and from these they watched and discussed in safety
the wreckage done upon the empty buildings across the courtyard.
One of these caves had at the beginning of the siege been assigned
to Diane; and from the mouth of it, seated with Felicite beside her,
she too watched the demolition; but with far different thoughts.
She knew better than these militiamen her father's obstinacy, and
that his high resolve reached beyond the mere gaining of time.
It seemed to her that God was drawing out the agony; and with the end
before her mind she prayed Him to shorten this cruel interval.
Early on the third morning the British guns had laid open a breach
six feet wide at the north-western angle, close by the foot of the
flagstaff tower; and Amherst, who had sent off a detachment of the
Forty-sixth with a dozen Indian guides to fetch a circuit through the
woods and open a feint attack in the rear of the fort, prepared for a
general assault. But first he resolved to summon the garrison again.
To carry his message he chose the same officer as before, a Captain
Muspratt of the Forty-fourth Regiment.
Now as yet the cannonade had not slackened, and it chanced that as
the General gave Muspratt his instructions, an artillery sergeant in
command of a battery of mortars on the left, which had been advanced
within two hundred yards of the walls, elevated one of his pieces and
lobbed a bomb clean over the summit of the flagstaff tower.
It was a fancy shot, fired--as the army learnt afterwards--for a
wager; but its effect staggered all who watched it. The fuse was
quick, and the bomb, mounting on its high curve, exploded in a direct
line between the battery and the flagstaff. One or two men from the
neighbouring guns shouted bravos. The sergeant slapped his thigh and
was turning for congratulations, but suddenly paused, stock-still and
staring upward.
The flagstaff stood, apparently untouched. But what had become of
the flag?
A moment before it had been floating proudly enough, shaking its
folds loose to the light breeze. Now it was gone. Had the explosion
blown it to atoms? Not a shred of it floated away on the wind.
A man on the sergeant's right called out positively that a couple of
seconds after the explosion, and while the smoke was clearing, he had
caught a glimpse of something white--something which looked like a
flag--close by the foot of the staff; and that an arm had reached up
and drawn it down hurriedly. He would swear to the arm; he had seen
it distinctly above the edge of the battlements. In his opinion the
fort was surrendering, and someone aloft there had been pulling down
the flag as the bomb burst.
The General, occupied for the moment in giving Captain Muspratt his
instructions, had not witnessed the shot. But he turned at the shout
which followed, caught sight of the bare flagstaff, and ordering his
bugler to sound the "Cease firing," sent forward the captain at once
to parley.
With Muspratt went a sergeant of the Forty-sixth and a bugler.
The sergeant carried a white flag. Ascending the slope briskly, they
were met at the gate by M. Etienne.
The sudden disappearance of the flag above the tower had mystified
the garrison no less thoroughly than the British. They knew the
Commandant to be aloft there with Sergeant Bedard, and the most of
the men could only guess, as their enemies had guessed, that he was
giving the signal of surrender.
But this M. Etienne could by no means believe; it belied his
brother's nature as well as his declared resolve. And so, while the
English captain with great politeness stated his terms--which were
unconditional surrender and nothing less--the poor gentleman kept
glancing over his shoulder and answering at random, "Yes, yes," or
"Precisely--if you will allow me," or "Excuse me a moment, until my
brother--" In short, he rambled so that Captain Muspratt could only
suppose his wits unhinged. It was scarce credible that a sane man
could receive such a message inattentively, and yet this old
gentleman did not seem to be listening!
Diane meanwhile stood at the mouth of her shelter with her eyes
lifted, intent upon the tower's summit. She, too had seen the flag
run down with the bursting of the bomb, and she alone had hit in her
mind on the true explanation--that a flying shard had cut clean
through the up-halliard close to the staff, and the flag--heavy with
golden lilies of her own working--had at once dropped of its own
weight. She had caught sight, too, of her father's arm reaching up
to grasp it, and she knew why. The flagstaff had a double set of
halliards.
She waited--waited confidently, since her father was alive up there.
She marvelled that he had escaped, for the explosion had seemed to
wrap the battlements in one sheet of fire. Nevertheless he was
safe--she had seen him--and she waited for the flag to rise again.
Minutes passed. She took a step forward from her shelter.
The firing had ceased and the courtyard was curiously still and
empty. Then four of the five militiamen posted to watch the back
of the building came hurrying across towards the gateway.
She understood--her senses being strung for the moment so tensely
that they seemed to relieve her of all trouble of thinking--she
understood that a parley was going forward at the gate and that these
men were hurrying from their posts to hear it. In her ears the
bugles still sounded the "Cease firing "; and still she gazed up at
the tower.
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