John Beatty - "The Citizen Soldier"

HUTTON WEBSTER - "EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY"

Thomas Henry Huxley - "This is Essay #3 from Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Maurice Hewlett - "The Forest Lovers"

Editorial
This article explores Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance (1996), alongside his short story "Lend Me Your Light" (1987), focussing on the tensions between the politically-distanced cosmopolitan migrant and the socially-committed local activist. My readings draw on Radhakrishnan's notion of diasporic "double duty" — of accountability to, rather than irresponsible detachment from, the homeland. Mistry's representations of migrants, I contend, are centrally concerned not only with the necessity, but also the difficulty, of performing such "double duty" through a sustained engagement with India's history and politics. In this light, I argue that Mistry offers representations of migrants whose attempts to distance themselves from local and national politics are revealed as impossible and irresponsible. Moreover, I suggest that Mistry's representations reveal an anxiety over his position as a migrant writer, and his work seems to mobilize writing as a means of avoiding a problematically apolitical detachment from India. Thus, Mistry establishes a tension between his representation of the migrant within his fiction and his negotiation of his own migrant position through his fiction.

Fort Amity

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity




John lay still and dozed fitfully, waking up now and then to brush
away the mosquitoes that came with the first falling shadows to
plague him.

By and by in the twilight Menehwehna returned and stood above the
bank. He tossed a bundle into the canoe, stepped after it, and
pushed off without hurry.

John laughed, as a child might laugh, guessing some foolish riddle.

"You have killed him!"

"He did wickedly," answered Menehwehna. "He was a fool and past
bearing."

John laughed again; and, being satisfied, dropped asleep.



CHAPTER X.


BOISVEYRAC.

Along the river-front of Boisveyrac, on the slopes between the stone
walls of the Seigniory and the broad St. Lawrence, Dominique Guyon,
the Seigneur's farmer, strode to and fro encouraging the harvesters.

"Work, my children! Work!"

He said it over and over again, using the words his father had always
used at this season. But the harvesters--old Damase Juneau and his
wife La Marmite, Jo Lagasse, the brothers Pierre and Telesphore
Courteau, with Telesphore's half-breed wife Leelinau (Lelie, in
French)--all knew the difference in tone. It had been worth while in
former times to hear old Bonhomme Guyon say the words, putting his
heart into them, while the Seigneur himself would follow behind,
echoing, "Yes, that is so. Work, my children: work is the great
cure!" But Bonhomme Guyon was dead these two months--rest his soul;
and the Seigneur gone up the river to command a fortress for the King
of France; and no one left at Boisveyrac but themselves and half a
dozen militiamen and this young Dominique Guyon, who would not smile
and was a skinflint.

It was as if the caterpillars had eaten the mirth as well as the
profits out of this harvest which (if folks said true) the Seigneur
needed so badly. Even the children had ceased to find it amusing,
and had trooped after the priest, Father Launoy, up the hill and into
the courtyard of the Chateau.

"Work, my friends!" said Dominique. He knew well that they detested
him and would have vastly preferred his brother Bateese for overseer.
For his part, he took life seriously: but no one was better aware of
the bar between him and others' love or liking.

They respected him because he was the best _canotier_ on the river; a
better even than his malformed brother Bateese, now with the army.
When he drew near they put more spirit into their pitchforking.

"But all the same it breaks the back, this suspense," declared La
Marmite. "I never could work with more than one thing in my mind.
Tell us, Dominique Guyon: the good Father will be coming out soon,
will he not?--that is, if he means to shoot the falls before sunset."

"What can it matter to you, mother?"

"Matter? Why if he doesn't come soon, I shall burst myself with
curiosity, that is all!"

"But you know all that can be told. There has been a great victory,
for certain."

"Eh? Eh? You are clever enough, doubtless; but you don't think you
can question and cross-question a man the way that Father Launoy does
it? Why the last time I confessed to him he turned me upside down
and emptied me like a sack."

"There has been a great victory: that is all we need to know.
Work, my friends, work with a good heart!"

But when his back was turned they drew together and talked, glancing
now towards the Seigniory above the slope, now towards the river bank
where a couple of tall Etchemin Indians stood guard beside a canoe,
and across the broad flood to the woods on the farther shore
stretching away southward in a haze of blue. Down in the south
there, far beyond the blue horizon, a battle had been fought and a
great victory won.

Jo Lagasse edged away towards Corporal Chretien, who kept watch,
musket in hand, on the western fringe of the clearing. Harvests at
Boisveyrac had been gathered under arms since time out of mind, with
sentries posted far up the shore and in the windmill behind the
Seigniory, to give warning of the Iroquois. To-day the corporal and
his men were specially alert, and at an alarm the workers would have
plenty of time to take shelter within the gateway of the Chateau.

"Well, it seems that we may all lift up our hearts. The English are
done for, and next season there is to be a big stamping-out of the
Iroquois."

"Who told you that, Jo Lagasse?"

"Everyone is saying it. Pierre Courteau has even some tale that two
thousand of them were slaughtered after the battle yonder--
Onnontagues and Agniers for the most part. At this rate you idlers
will soon be using your bayonets to turn the corn with the rest of
us."

"Yes; that's right--call us idlers! And the Iroquois known to be
within a dozen miles! You would sing to another tune, my friend, if
we idlers offered to march off and leave you just now." The corporal
swung round on his thin legs and peered into the belt of trees.

Jo Lagasse grinned.

"No, no, corporal; I was jesting only. To think of me undervaluing
the military! Why often and often, as a single man with no ties,
I have fancied myself enlisting. But now it will be too late."

"If M. de Montcalm has really swallowed the English," answered the
other drily, "it will be too late, as you say."

"But these English, now--I have always had a curiosity to see them.
Is it true, corporal, that they have faces like devils, and that he
who has the misfortune to be killed by one will assuredly rise the
third day? The priests say so."

Corporal Chretien had never actually confronted his country's foes.
"Much would depend," he answered cautiously, "upon circumstances, and
upon what you mean by a devil."

While Jo Lagasse scratched his head over this, the wicket opened in
the great gate of the Seigniory, and Father Launoy came forth with a
troop of children at his heels. The harvesters crowded about him at
once.

He lifted a hand. He was a tall priest and square-shouldered, with
the broad brow and set square chin of a fighting man.

"My children," he announced in a voice clear as a bell, "it is
certain there has been a great battle at Fort Carillon. The English
came on, four to one, gnashing their teeth like devils of the pit.
But the host of the faithful stood firm and overcame them, and now
they are flying southward whence they came. Let thanks be given to
God who giveth us the victory!"

The men bared their heads.

"When I met 'Polyte Latulippe and young Damase on my way down the
river, I could scarcely believe their tale. But the Ojibway puts it
beyond doubt; and the few answers I could win from the wounded
sergeant all confirm the story."

"His name, Father?" asked La Marmite. "We can get nothing out of
Dominique Guyon, who keeps his tongue as close as his fist."

"His name is a Clive, and he is of the regiment of Beam. He has come
near to death's door, poor fellow, and still lies too near to it for
talking. But I think he is strong enough to bear carrying up to Fort
Amitie, where the Seigneur--who, by the way, sends greeting to you
all--"

"And our salutations go back to him. Would he were here to-day to
see the harvest carried!"

"The Seigneur, having heard what 'Polyte and Damase have to tell,
will desire to hear more of this glorious fight. For myself, I must
hasten down to Montreal, where I have a message to deliver, and
perhaps I may reach there with these tidings also before the boats,
which are coming up by way of the Richelieu. Therefore I am going to
borrow Dominique Guyon of you, to pilot me down through the Roches
Fendues. And talking of Dominique"--here the Jesuit laid a hand on
the shoulder of the young man, who bent his eyes to the ground--
"you complain that he is close, eh? How often, my children, must I
ask you to judge a brother by his virtues? To which of you did it
occur, when these men came, to send 'Polyte and Damase up to Fort
Amitie with their news? No one has told me: yet I will wager it was
Dominique Guyon. Who sat up, the night through, with this wounded
stranger? Dominique Guyon. Who has been about the field all day, as
though to have missed a night's sleep were no excuse for shirking the
daily task? Dominique Guyon. Again, to whom do I turn now to steer
me down the worst fall in the river? To Dominique Guyon. He will
arrive back here to-night tired as a dog, but once more at daybreak
it will be Dominique who sets forth to carry the wounded man up to
Fort Amitie. And why? Because, when a thing needs to be done well,
he is to be trusted; you would turn to him then and trust him rather
than any of yourselves, and you know it. Do you grumble, then, that
the Seigneur knows it? I say to you that a man is born thus, or
thus; responsible or not responsible; and a man that is born
responsible, though he add pound to pound and field to field, is a
man to be thankful for. Moreover, if he keep his own counsel, you
may go to him at a pinch with the more certainty that he will keep
yours."

"What did I tell you?" whispered La Marmite to Jo Lagasse, who had
joined the little crowd. "The Father's eye turns you inside out: he
knows how we have been grumbling all day. But all the same," she
added aloud, "he is young and ought to laugh."

"I have told you," said Father Launoy, "that you should judge a man
by his virtues: but, where that is hard, at least you should judge
him by help of your own pity. All this day Dominique has been
copying his dead father; and the same remembrance that has been to
him a sorrowful incitement, has been to you but food for uncharitable
thoughts. If I am not saying the truth, correct me."

They were silent. The priest had a great gift of personal talk,
straight and simple; and treated them as brothers and sisters of a
family, holding up the virtues of this one, or the faults of that, to
the common gaze. They might not agree with this laudation of
Dominique: but no one cared to challenge it at the risk of finding
himself pilloried for public laughter. Father Launoy knew all the
peccadilloes of this small flock, and had a tongue which stripped
your clothes off--to use an expression of La Marmite's.

They followed him down to the shore where the Etchemins held the
canoe ready. There they knelt, and he blessed them before embarking.
Dominique stepped on board after him, and the two Indians took up
their paddles.

Long after the boat had been pushed off and was speeding down the
broad waterway, the harvesters stood and watched it. The sunset
followed it, gleaming along its wake and on its polished quarter,
flashing as the paddles rose and dipped; until it rounded the corner
by Bout de l'lsle, where the rapids began.

The distant voice of these rapids filled the air with its humming;
but their ears were accustomed to it and had ceased to heed. Nor did
they mark the evening croak of the frogs alongshore among the reed
beds, until Jo Lagasse imitated it to perfection.

"To work, my children!" he croaked. "Work is the only cure!"

They burst out laughing, and hurried back to gather the last load
before nightfall.



CHAPTER XI.


FATHER LAUNOY HAS HIS DOUBTS.

For a little while after leaving the shore the priest kept silence.

"Dominique," said he at length, "there is something in your guests
that puzzles me; and something too that puzzles me in the manner of
their coming to Boisveyrac. Tell me now precisely how you found
them."

"It was not I who found them, Father. Telesphore Courteau came
running to me, a little before sunset, with news that a man--an
Indian--was standing on the shore opposite and signalling with his
arms as if for help. Well, at first I thought it might be some trick
of the Iroquois--not that I had dreamed of any in the neighbourhood:
and Chretien got his men ready and under arms. But the glass seemed
to show that this was not an Iroquois: and next I saw a bundle, which
might be a wounded man, lying on the bank beside him. So we launched
a boat and pushed across very carefully until we came within hail:
and then we parleyed for some while, the soldiers standing ready to
fire, until the Indian's look and speech convinced me--for I have
been as far west as Michilimackinac, and know something of the
Ojibway talk. So when he called out his nation to me, I called back
to him to leave speaking in French and use his own tongue."

"Yes, yes--he is an Ojibway beyond doubt."

"Well, Father, while I was making sure of this, we had pushed
forward little by little and I saw the wounded man clearly.
He was half-naked, but lay with his tunic over him, as the Indian had
wrapped him against the chill. Indeed he was half-dead too, and past
speaking, when at length we took him off."

"And they had lost their boat in the Cedars?"

"So the Ojibway said. The wonder is that they ever came to shore."

"The wonder to my thinking is rather that, coming through the
wilderness from the Richelieu River, they should have possessed a
canoe to launch on the Great River here."

"Their tale is that they were four, and happened on a small party of
Iroquois by surprise: and that two perished while this pair possessed
themselves of the Iroquois' canoe and so escaped."

"Yes," mused the priest, "so again the Ojibway told me. A strange
story: and when I began to put questions he grew more and more
stupid--but I know well enough by this time, I should hope, when an
Indian pretends to be duller than he is. The sick man I could not
well cross-examine. He told me something of the fight at Fort
Carillon, where he, it appears, saw the main fighting upon the ridge,
while the Indians were spread as sharpshooters along the swamps
below. For the rest he refers me to his comrade." Father Launoy
fell to musing again. "What puzzles me is that he carries no
message, or will not own to carrying one. But what then brings him
across the Wilderness? The other boats with the wounded and
prisoners went down the Richelieu to its mouth, and will be
travelling up the Great River to Montreal--that is, if they have not
already arrived. Now why should this one boat have turned aside?
That I could understand, if the man were upon special service: the
way he came would be a short cut either down the river to Montreal,
or up-stream to Fort Amitie or Fort Frontenac. But, as I say, this
man apparently carries no message. Also he started from Fort
Carillon with two wounds; and who would entrust special service to a
wounded man?"

"Of a certainty, Father, he was wounded, as I myself saw when we drew
off his shirt. The hurt in his ribs is scarcely skinned over, and he
has a fresh scar on his wrist. But the blow on the head, from which
he suffers, is later, and was given him (he says) by an Indian."

"A bad blow--and yet he escaped."

"A bad blow. Either from that or from the drenching, towards morning
his head wandered and he talked at full speed for an hour."

"Of what did he talk?" asked the priest quickly.

"That I cannot tell, since he chattered in English."

"English? How do you know that it was English?"

"Why, since it was not French, nor like any kind of Indian! Moreover,
I have heard the English talk. They were prisoners brought down from
Oswego, twelve bateaux in all, and I took them through the falls.
When they talked, it was just as this man chattered last night."

"Then you, too, Dominique, find your guest a strange fellow?"

"Oh, as for that! He is a sergeant, and of the regiment of Bearn.
Your reverence saw his coat hanging by the bed."

"Even in that there is something strange. For Bearn lies in the
Midi, close to the Pyrenees; and, as I understand, the regiment of
Bearn was recruited and officered almost entirely from its own
province. But this Sergeant a Clive comes from the north; his speech
has no taste of the south in it, and indeed he owns to me that he is
a northerner. He says further that he comes from my own seminary of
Douai. And this again is correct; for I cross-questioned him on the
seminary, and he knows it as a hand knows its glove--the customs of
the place, the lectures, the books in use there. He has told me,
moreover, why he left it. . . . Dominique, you do right in misliking
your guest."

"I do not say, Father, that I mislike him. I fear him a little--I
cannot tell why."

"You do right, then, to fear him; and I will tell you why. He is an
atheist."

"An atheist? O--oh!"

"He has been of the true Faith. But he rejected me; he would make no
confession, but turned himself to the wall when I exhorted him.
_Voyons_--here is a Frenchman who talks English in his delirium; a
northerner serving in a regiment of the south; an infidel, from
Douai. Dominique, I do not like your guest."

"Nor I, Father, since you tell me that he is an atheist."

While they talked they had been lifting their voices insensibly to
the roar of the nearing rapids; and were now come to Bout de l'lsle
and the edge of peril. Below Bout de l'lsle the river divided to
plunge through the Roches Fendues, where to choose the wrong channel
meant destruction. Yet a mile below the Roches Fendues lay the
Cascades, with a long straight plunge over smooth shelves of rock and
two miles of furious water beyond. Yet farther down came the
terrible rapids of La Chine, not to be attempted. There the
_voyageurs_ would leave the canoe and reach Montreal on foot.

Father Launoy was a brave man. Thrice before he had let Dominique
lead him through the awful dance ahead, and always at the end of it
had felt his soul purged of earthly terrors and left clean as a
child's.

Dominique reached out a hand in silence and took the paddle from the
Etchemin, who crawled aft and seated himself with an expressionless
face. Then with a single swift glance astern to assure himself that
the other Indian was prepared, the young man knelt and crouched, with
his eyes on the V-shaped ripple ahead, for the angle of which they
were heading.

On this, too, the priest's eyes were bent. He gripped the gunwale as
the current lifted and swept the canoe down at a pace past control;
as it sped straight for the point of the smooth water, and so,
seeming to be warned by the roar it met, balanced itself fore-and-aft
for one swift instant and plunged with a swoop that caught away the
breath.

The bows shot under the white water below the fall, lifted to the
first wave, knocking up foam out of foam, and so dived to the next,
quivering like a reed shaken in the hand. Dominique straightened
himself on his knees. In a moment he was working his paddle like a
madman, striking broad off with it on this side and that, forcing the
canoe into its course, zigzagging within a hand's breadth of rocks
which, at a touch, would have broken her like glass, and across the
edge of whirlpools waiting to drown a man and chase his body round
for hours within a few inches of the surface; and all at a speed of
fifteen to eighteen miles an hour, with never an instant's pause
between sight and stroke. The Indian in the stern took his cue from
Dominique; now paddling for dear life, now flinging his body back as
with a turn of the wrist he checked the steerage.

The priest sat with a white drenched face; a brave man terrified.
He felt the floor of the world collapsing, saw its forests reeling by
in the spray. It cracked like a bubble and was dissolved in
rainbows--wisps caught in the rocks and fluttering in the wind of the
boat's flight. Then, as the pressure on heart and chest grew
intolerable, the speed began to slacken and he drew a shuddering
breath; but his brain still kept the whirl of the wild minutes past
and his hand scarcely relaxed its grip on the gunwale. As a runaway
horse, still galloping, drops back to control, so the canoe seemed to
find her senses and leapt at the waves with a cunning change of
motion, no longer shearing through their crests, but riding them with
a long and easy swoop. Still Father Launoy did not speak. He sat as
one for whom a door has been held half-open, and closed again, upon a
vision.

Yet when he found his tongue--which was not until they reached the
end of the white water, and Dominique, after panting a while, headed
the canoe for shore--his voice did not shake.

"It was a bold thought of these men, or a foolhardy, to strike across
the Wilderness," he said meditatively, in the tone of one picking up
a talk which chance has interrupted.

"There are many ways through those woods," Dominique answered.
"Between here and Fort Niagara you may hear tell of a dozen perhaps;
and the Iroquois have their own."

"Let us hope that none of theirs crosses the one you and Bateese
taught to Monsieur Armand. The Seigneur will be uneasy about his son
when he hears what 'Polyte and Damase report; and Monsieur Etienne
and Mademoiselle Diane will be uneasy also."

"But this Ojibway saw nothing of M. Armand or his party."

"No news is good news. As you owe the Seigneur your duty, take your
guests up to Fort Amitie to-morrow and let them be interrogated."

"My Father, must I go?" There was anguish in Dominique's voice.
"Surely Jo Lagasse or Pierre Courteau will do as well?--and there is
much work at Boisveyrac which cannot be neglected."

They had come to shore, and the priest had stepped out upon the bank
after Dominique for a few parting words.

"But that is not your true reason?" He laid his hand on the young
man's shoulder and looked him in the eyes.

Dominique's fell. "Father," he entreated in a choking voice,
"you know my secret: do not be hard on me! 'Lead us not into
temptation'--"

"It will not serve you to run from yours. You must do battle with
it. Bethink you that, as through the Wilderness, there are more ways
than one in love, and the best is that of self-denial. Mademoiselle
Diane is not for you, Dominique, her father's _censitaire_: yet you
may love her your life through, and do her lifelong service.
To-morrow, by taking these men to Fort Amitie, you may ease her heart
of its fears: and will you fail in so simple a devoir? There is too
much of self in your passion, Dominique--for I will not call it love.
Love finds itself in giving: but passion is always a beggar."

"My Father, you do not understand--"

"Who told you that I do not understand?" the priest interrupted
harshly. "I too have known passion, and learnt that it is full of
self and comes of Satan. Nay, is that not evident to you, seeing
what mischief it has already worked in your life? Think of Bateese."

"Do I ever cease thinking of Bateese? Do I ever cease fighting with
myself?" Dominique's voice rose almost to a cry of pain. He stared
across the water with gloomy eyes and added--it seemed quite
inconsequently--"The Cascades is a bad fall, but I think it will be
the Roches Fendues that gets me in the end."

He said it calmly, wistfully: and, pausing for a moment, met the
priest's eyes.

"Your blessing, Father. I will go."

He knelt.

Generations of _voyageurs_, upward bound, and porting their canoes to
avoid the falls, had worn a track beside the river bank. Dominique
made such speed back along it that he came in sight of Boisveyrac as
the bell in the little chapel of the Seigniory began to ring the
Angelus. Its note came floating down the river distinct above the
sound of the falls. He bared his head, and repeated his _Aves_ duly.

"But all the same," he added, working out the train of his thoughts
as he gazed across the deserted harvest-fields, impoverished by
tree-stumps, to the dense forest behind the Chateau, "let God
confound the English, and New France shall belong to a new _noblesse_
that have learned, as the old will not, to lay their hands on her
wealth."



CHAPTER XII.


THE WHITE TUNIC.

John a Cleeve lay on his bed in the guest-room of the Seigniory,
listening to the sound of the distant falls.

That song was his anodyne. All day he had let it lull his
conscience, rousing himself irritably as from a drugged sleep to
answer the questions put to him by Dominique or the priest.
Dominique's questions had been few and easily answered, the most of
them relating to the battle.

"A brother of mine was there beyond doubt," he had wound up
wistfully. "He is a bateau-man, by name Baptiste Guyon. But of
course you will not know him?"

"Ils m'ont tire pour la battue, moi," John had fenced him off with a
feeble joke and a feeble laugh. (Why should he feel ashamed?
Was this not war, and he a prisoner tricking his captors?)

But the priest had been a nuisance. Heaven be praised for his going!

And now the shadows were closing upon the room, and in the hush of
sunset the voice of the waters had lifted its pitch and was humming
insistently, with but a semitone's fall and rise. During the
priest's exhortations he had turned his face to the wall; but now for
an hour he had lain on his other side, studying the rafters, the
furniture, the ray of sunlight creeping along the floor-boards and up
the dark, veneered face of an _armoire_ built into the wall.
Behind the doors of it hung Sergeant Barboux's white tunic; and
sometimes it seemed to him that the doors were transparent and he saw
it dangling like a grey ghost within.

It was to avoid this sight that he had turned to the wall when the
priest began to interrogate him. Heavens! how incurably, after all,
he hated these priests!

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