Fort Amity

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity

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But by and by the grip relaxed as dismay gave room to rage, and with
rage came courage.

He laughed again fiercely. Up to this moment he had always shrunk
from touch of the thing; but now he pulled it from its peg, held it
at arm's length for a moment, and flung it contemptuously on the
floor.

"You, at least, I am not going to fear any longer!"

As he cast it from him something crackled under his fingers. For a
second or two he stood over the tunic, eyeing it between old disgust
and new surmise. Then, dropping on one knee, he fumbled it over,
found the inner breast-pocket, and pulled from it a paper.

It was of many sheets, folded in a blue wrapper, sealed with a large
red seal, and addressed in cipher.

Turning it over in his hand, he caught sight, in the lower left-hand
corner, of a dark spot which his thumb had covered. He stared at it;
then at his thumb, to the ball of which some red dust adhered; then
at the seal. The wax bore the impress of a flying Mercury, with cap,
caduceus and winged sandals. The ciphered address he could not
interpret; it was brief, written in two lines, in a bold clear hand.

This, then, was the missive which Barboux had carried.

Had Menehwehna discovered it and placed it here for him to discover?
Yes, undoubtedly. And this was a French dispatch; and at any cost he
must intercept it! His soldier's sacrament required no less.
He must conceal it--seek his opportunity to escape with it--go on
lying meanwhile in hope of an opportunity.

Where now was the prospects of his soul's deliverance?

He crept back to bed and was thrusting the letter under his pillow
when a slight sound drew his eyes towards the door.

In the doorway stood Menehwehna with a breakfast-tray. The Indian's
eyes travelled calmly across the room as he entered and set the tray
down on the bed next to John's. Without speaking he picked up the
tumbled tunic from the floor and set it back on its peg.

CHAPTER XIV.

AGAIN THE WHITE TUNIC.

"But touching this polygon of M. de Montcalm's--"

Within the curtain-wall facing the waterside the ground had been
terraced up to form a high platform or _terre-plein_, whence six
guns, mounted in embrasures, commanded the river. Hither John had
crept, with the support of a stick, to enjoy the sunshine and the
view, and here the Commandant had found him and held him in talk,
walking him to and fro, with pauses now and again beside a gun for a
few minutes' rest.

"But touching this polygon of M. de Montcalm's, he would doubtless
follow Courmontaigne rather than Vauban. The angles, you say, were
boldly advanced?"

"So they appeared to me, monsieur; but you understand that I took no
part--"

"By advancing the angles boldly"--here the Commandant pressed his
finger-tips together by way of illustration--"we allow so much more
play to enfilading fire. I speak only of defence against direct
assault; for of opposing such a structure to artillery the General
could have had no thought."

"Half a dozen six-pounders, well directed, could have knocked it
about his ears in as many minutes."

"That does not detract from his credit. Every general fights with
two heads--his own and his adversary's; and, for the rest, we have to
do what we can do with our material." The Commandant halted and
gazed down whimsically upon the courtyard, in the middle of which his
twenty-five militiamen were being drilled by M. Etienne and Sergeant
Bedard. "My whole garrison, sir! Eh? you seem incredulous.
My whole garrison, I give you my word! Five-and-twenty militiamen to
defend a post of this importance; and up at Fort Frontenac, the very
key of the West, my old friend Payan de Noyan has but a hundred in
command! I do not understand it, sir. Stores we have in abundance,
and ammunition and valuable presents to propitiate the Indians who no
longer exist in this neighbourhood. Yes, and--would you believe
it?--no longer than three months ago the Governor sent up a boatload
of women. It appeared that his Majesty had forwarded them all the
way from France, for wives for his faithful soldiers. I packed them
off, sir, and returned them to M. de Vaudreuil. 'With all submission
to his Majesty's fatherly wisdom,' I wrote, 'the requirements of New
France at this moment are best determined by sterner considerations';
and I asked for fifty regulars to man our defences. M. de Vaudreuil
replied by sending me up one man, and _he_ had but one arm! I made
Noyan a present of him; his notions of fortification were
rudimentary, not to say puerile."

The Commandant paused and dug the surface of the _terre-plein_
indignantly with his heel. "As for fortification, do I not know
already what additional defences we need? Fort Amitie, monsieur, was
constructed by the great Frontenac himself, and with wonderful
sagacity, if we consider the times. Take, for example, the towers.
You are acquainted, of course, with the modern rule of giving the
bastions a salient angle of fifteen degrees in excess of half the
angle of the figure in all figures from the square up to the
dodecagon? Well, Fort Amitie being a square--or rather a
right-angled quadrilateral--the half of its angle will be forty-five
degrees; add fifteen, and we get sixty; which is as nearly as
possible the salience of our flanking towers; only they happen to be
round. So far, so good; but Frontenac had naturally no opportunity
of studying Vauban's masterpieces, and perhaps as the older man he
never digested Vauban's theories. He did not see that a
quadrilateral measuring fifty toises by thirty must need some
protection midway in its longer curtains, and more especially on the
riverside. A ravelin is out of the question, for we have no
counterscarp to stand it on--no ditch at all in fact; our glacis
slopes straight from the curtain to the river. I have thought of a
tenaille--of a flat bastion. We could do so much if only
M. de Vaudreuil would send us men!--but, as it is, on what are we
relying? Simply, M. a Clive, on our enemies' ignorance of our
weakness."

John turned his face away and stared out over the river. The walls
of the fort seemed to stifle him; but in truth his own breast was the
prison.

"Well now," the Commandant pursued, "your arrival has set me
thinking. We cannot strengthen ourselves against artillery; but they
say that these English generals learn nothing. They may come against
us with musketry, and what served Fort Carillon may also serve Fort
Amitie. A breastwork--call it a lunette--half-way down the slope
yonder, so placed as to command the landing-place at close musket
range--it might be useful, eh? There will be trouble with Polyphile
Cartier--'Sans Quartier,' as they call him. He is proud of his
cabbages, and we might have to evict them; yes, certainly our lunette
would impinge upon his cabbages. But the safety of the Fort would,
of course, override all such considerations."

He caught John by the arm and hurried him along for a better view of
Sans Quartier's cabbage-patch. And just then Mademoiselle Diane came
walking swiftly towards them from the end of the _terre-plein_ by the
flagstaff tower. An instant later the head and shoulders of
Dominique Guyon appeared above the ascent.

Clearly he was following her; and as she drew near John read, or
thought he read, a deep trouble in the child's eyes. But from her
eyes his glance fell upon a bundle that she carried, and his own
cheek paled. For the bundle was a white tunic, and it took a second
glance to assure him that the tunic was a new one and not Sergeant
Barboux's!

"Eh? What did I tell you? She has been rifling the stores already!"
Here the Commandant caught sight of Dominique and hailed him.
"Hola, Dominique!"

Dominique halted for a moment and then came slowly forward; while the
girl, having greeted John with a grown woman's dignity, stood close
by her father's elbow.

"Dominique, how many men can you spare me from Boisveyrac, now that
the harvest is over?"

"For what purpose do you wish men, Monseigneur?"

"Eh? That is my affair, I hope."

The young man's face darkened, but he controlled himself to say
humbly, "Monseigneur rebukes me with justice. I should not have
spoken so; but it was in alarm for his interests."

"You mean that you are unwilling to spare me a single man?
Come, come, my friend--the harvest is gathered; and, apart from that,
my interests are the King's. Positively you must spare me half a
dozen for his Majesty's _corvee_."

"The harvest is gathered, to be sure; but no one at Boisveyrac can be
trusted to finish the stacks. They are a good-for-nothing lot; and
now Damase, the best thatcher among them, has, I hear, been sent up
to Fort Frontenac along with 'Polyte Latulippe."

"By my orders."

Dominique bent his eyes on the ground.

"Monseigneur's orders shall be obeyed. May I have his permission to
return at once to Boisveyrac?--at least, as soon as we have discussed
certain matters of business?"

"Business? But since it is not convenient just now--" It seemed to
John that the old gentleman had suddenly grown uneasy.

"I speak only of certain small repairs: the matter of Lagasse's
holding, for example," said Dominique tranquilly. "The whole will
not detain Monseigneur above ten minutes."

"Ah, to be sure!" The Commandant's voice betrayed relief. "Come to
my orderly-room, then. You will excuse me, M. a Clive?"

He turned to go, and Dominique stepped aside to allow the girl to
accompany her father. But she made no sign. He shot a look at her
and sullenly descended the terrace at his seigneur's heels.

Mademoiselle Diane's brow grew clear again as the sound of his
footsteps died away, and presently she faced John with a smile so gay
and frank that (although, quite involuntarily, he had been watching
her) the change startled him. There was something in this girl at
once innocently candid and curiously elusive; to begin with, he could
not decide whether to think of her as child or woman. Last night her
eyes had rested on him with a child's open wonder, and a minute ago
in Dominique's presence she had seemed to shrink close to her father
with a child's timidity. Now, gaily as she smiled, her bearing had
grown dignified and self-possessed.

"You are not to leave me, please, M. a Clive--seeing that I came
expressly to find you."

John lifted his hat with mock gravity. "You do me great honour,
mademoiselle. And Dominique?" he added. "Was he also coming in
search of me?"

She frowned, and turning towards a cannon in the embrasure behind
her, spread the white tunic carefully upon it. "Dominique Guyon is
tiresome," she said. "At times, as you have heard, he speaks with
too much freedom to my father; but it is the freedom of old service.
The Guyons have farmed Boisveyrac for our family since first the
Seigniory was built." She seemed about to say more, but checked
herself, and stood smoothing an arm of the tunic upon the gun.
"Ah, here is Felicite!" she exclaimed, as a stout middle-aged woman
came bustling along the terrace towards them. "You have kept me
waiting, Felicite. And, good heavens! what is that you carry?
Did I not tell you that I would get Jeremie to find me a tunic from
the stores? See, I have one already."

"But this is not from the stores, mademoiselle!" panted Felicite, as
she came to a halt. "It appears that monsieur brought his tunic with
him--Jeremie told me he had seen it hanging by his bed in the sick
ward--and here it is, see you!" She displayed it triumphantly,
spreading its skirts to the sunshine. "A trifle soiled! but it will
save us all the trouble in the world with the measurements--eh,
mademoiselle?"

Diane's eyes were on John's face. For a moment or two she did not
answer, but at length said slowly:

"Nevertheless you shall measure monsieur. Have you the tapes? Good:
give me one, with the blue chalk, and I will check off your
measurements."

She seated herself on the gun-carriage and drew the two tunics on to
her lap. John shivered as she touched the dead sergeant's.

Felicite grinned as she advanced with the tape. "Do not be shy of
me, monsieur," she encouraged him affably. "You are a hero, and I
myself am the mother of eight, which is in its way heroic.
There should be a good understanding between us. Raise your arms a
little, pray, while I take first of all the measure of your chest."

Her two arms--and they were plump, not to say brawny--went about him.
"Thirty-eight," she announced, after examining the tape. It's long
since I have embraced one so slight."

"Thirty-eight," repeated Mademoiselle Diane, puckering up her lips
and beginning to measure off the _pouces_ across the breast and back
of Sergeant Barboux's tunic. "Thirty-eight, did you say?"

"Thirty-eight, mademoiselle. We must remember that these brave
defenders of ours sometimes pad themselves a little; it will be
nothing amiss if you allow for forty. Eh, monsieur?" Felicite
laughed up in John's face. "But you find some difficulty,
mademoiselle. Can I help you?"

"I thank you--it is all right," Diane answered hurriedly.

"Waist, twenty-nine," Felicite continued. "One might even say
twenty-eight, only monsieur is drawing in his breath."

"Where are the scissors, Felicite?" demanded her mistress, who had
carefully smuggled them beneath her skirt as she sat.

"The scissors? Of a certainty now I brought them--but the sight
of that heathen Ojibway, when he gave me the tunic, was enough to
make any decent woman faint! I shook like an aspen, if you will
credit me, all the way across the drill-ground, and perhaps the
scissors . . . no, indeed, I cannot find them . . . but if
mademoiselle will excuse me while I run back for another pair. . . ."
She bustled off towards the Commandant's quarters.

Mademoiselle Diane reached down a hand to the tunic which had fallen
at her feet, and drew it on to her lap again, as if to examine it.
But her eyes were searching John's face.

"Why do you shiver?" she asked.

"I beg of you not to touch it, mademoiselle. It--it hurts to see you
touching it."

"Did you kill him?"

"Of whom is mademoiselle speaking?"

"Pray do not pretend to be stupid, monsieur. I am speaking of that
other man--the owner of this tunic--the sergeant who took you into
the forest. Did you kill him?"

"He died in fair fight, mademoiselle."

"It was a duel, then?" He did not answer, and she continued, "I can
trust your face, monsieur. I am sure it was only in fair fight.
But why should you think me afraid to touch _this_? Oh, why,
M. a Clive, will men take it so cruelly for granted that we women are
afraid of the thought of blood--nay, even that we owe it to ourselves
to be afraid? If we are what you all insist we should be, what right
have we to be born in these times? Think of New France fighting now
for dear life--ah! why should I ask _you_ to think, who have bled for
her? Yet you would have me shudder at the touch of a stained piece
of cloth; and while you hold these foolish prejudices, can you wonder
that New France has no Jeanne d'Arc? When I was at the Ursulines at
Quebec, they used to pray to her on this side of sainthood, and ask
for her intercession; but what they taught was needlework."

"The world has altered since her time, mademoiselle," said John,
falsely and lamely.

"Has it? It burnt her; even in those days it did its best according
to its lights," she answered bitterly. "Only in these days there are
no heroines to burn. No heroines . . . no fires . . . and even in
our needlework we must be demure, and not touch a garment that has
been touched with blood! Monsieur, was this man a coward?"
She lifted the tunic.

"He was a vain fellow and a bully, mademoiselle, but by no means a
coward."

"He fought for France?"

"Yes; and, I believe, with credit."

"Then, monsieur, because he was a bully, I commend the man who killed
him fairly. And because he was brave and fought for France, I am
proud to handle his tunic."

As John a Cleeve gazed at her kindled face, the one thought that rose
above his own shame was a thought that her earnestness marvellously
made her beautiful.

CHAPTER XV.

THE SECOND DISPATCH.

Dominique Guyon departed shortly before noon; and a week later half a
dozen _habitants_ arrived from Boisveyrac to work at the entrenchment
which the Commandant had already opened across Sans Quartier's
cabbage plot. The Commandant himself donned a blouse and dug with
the rest; and M. Etienne; and even old Jeremie Tripier, though
grumbling over his rheumatism almost as bitterly as Sans Quartier
over his wasted cabbages. Every one, in fact, toiled, and with a
will, at the King's _corvee_: every one, that is, except the women,
and John, and Menehwehna (whose Indian dignity revolted against
spade-work), and old Father Joly, the chaplain of the fort, who was
too infirm.

From him, as they sat together and watched the diggers, John learned
much of the fort's history, and something, too, of his hosts'; for
Father Joly delighted in gossip, and being too deaf to derive much
profit from asking questions kept the talk to himself--greatly to
John's relief. His gossip, be it said, was entirely innocent.
The good man seemed to love every one in his small world, except
Father Launoy. And again this exception was fortunate; for on
learning that John had been visited and exhorted at Boisveyrac by
Father Launoy, Father Joly showed no further concern in his spiritual
health. He was perhaps the oldest parochial priest in New France,
and since leaving the seminary at Quebec had spent almost all his
days at Boisveyrac. He remembered the Seigneur's father (he always
called the Commandant "the Seigneur"). "Such a man, monsieur!
He stood six feet four inches in his stockings, and could lift and
cast a grown bullock with his own hands." John pointed out that the
present Seigneur--in his working blouse especially--made a fine
figure of a man; but this the old priest could hardly be brought to
allow. "A heart of gold, I grant you; but to have seen his father
striding among his _censitaires_ on St. Martin's Feast! It may be
that, having watched the son from childhood, I still think of him as
a boy. . . ."

Of Fort Amitie itself Father Joly had much to tell. It dated from
the early days of the great Frontenac, who had planted a settlement
here--a collection of wooden huts within a stockade--to be an
_entrepot_ of commerce with the Indians of the Upper Lakes. Later it
became a favourite haunt of deserters from the army and _coureurs de
bois_ outlawed by royal edict; and, strangely enough, these had been
the days of its prosperity. Its real decline began when the
Governor, toward the end of his rule, replaced the wooden huts with a
fortress of stone. The traders, trappers, ne'er-do-wells and Indians
deserted the lake-head, which had been a true camp of amity, and
moved their rendezvous farther west, leaving the fortress to its
Commandant and a sleepy garrison.

From that time until the war the garrison had been composed of
regulars, who lived on the easiest terms with their Commandant and
his officers, and retired at the age of forty or fifty, when King
Louis presented them with a farm and farm stock and provisions for
two or three years, and often completed the outfit with a wife.

"A veritable Age of Gold, monsieur! But war has put an end to it
all--war, and the greed of these English, whom God will confound!
The regulars went their ways, leaving only Sergeant Bedard; who had
retired upon a farm, but was persuaded by the Seigneur to come back
and drill the recruits of the militia."

--"Who take very kindly to garrison life, so far as I can see."

"Fort Amitie has its amenities, monsieur," said Father Joly, catching
John's glance rather than hearing the words. "There are the
allotments, to begin with--the fences between them, you may not have
observed, are made of stakes from the original palisade; the mould is
excellent. The Seigneur, too, offers prizes for vegetable-growing
and poultry-raising; he is an unerring judge of poultry, as one
has need to be at Boisveyrac, where the rents are mostly paid in
fowls. Indeed, yes, the young recruits are well enough content.
The Seigneur feeds them well, and they can usually have a holiday for
the asking and go a-hunting in the woods or a-fishing in the river.
But, for my part, I regret Boisveyrac. A man of my years does not
readily bear transplanting. And here is a curious thing, monsieur;
deaf though I am, I miss the sound of the rapids. I cannot tell you
how; nevertheless it seems to me that something has gone out of my
daily life, and the landscape here is still and empty."

"And how," John managed to make him hear, "did the Seigneur come to
command Fort Amitie?"

Father Joly glanced nervously down the slope and lowered his voice.
"That was M. Armand's doing, monsieur." Then, seeing that John did
not understand, "M. Armand--mademoiselle's brother and the Seigneur's
only son. He went to Quebec, when the Governor had given him a post
in his household; a small post, but with good prospects for a young
man of his birth and address. He had wits, monsieur, and good looks;
everything in short but money; and there is no better blood in the
province than that of the des Noel-Tilly. They have held Boisveyrac
now for five generations, and were Seigneurs of Deuxmanoirs and
Preaux-Sources even before that. Well, as I say, the lad started
with good prospects; but by and by he began to desert the Chateau
Saint-Louis for the Intendant's Palace. Monsieur has heard of the
Intendant Bigot--is perhaps acquainted with him? No? Then I may say
without hurting any one's feelings what I would say to the Intendant
himself were he here--that he is a corrupter of youth, and a
corrupter of the innocence of women, and a corrupter of honest
government. If New France lie under the scourge to-day, it is for
the sins of such men as he." The old man's voice shook with sudden
anger, but he calmed himself. "In brief, there was a gambling debt--
a huge sum owing; and the Seigneur was forced to travel to Quebec and
fetch the lad home. How he paid the amount I cannot tell you; belike
he raised the money on Boisveyrac; but pay he did. Dominique Guyon
went with him to Quebec, having just succeeded his father, old
Bonhomme Guyon, as Boisveyrac's man of business; and doubtless
Dominique made some arrangements with the merchants there. He has a
head on his shoulders, that lad. M. de Vaudreuil, too, taking pity
on a distressed gentleman of New France, gave the Seigneur the
command of this fort, to grow fat on it, and hither we have all
migrated. But our good Seigneur will never grow fat, monsieur; he is
of the poor to whom shall belong the Kingdom of God."

John did not clearly understand this, being unacquainted with the
official system of peculation by false vouchers--a system under which
the command of a backwoods fort was reckoned to be worth a small
fortune. His mind recurred to Dominique and to the Commandant's
uneasiness at Dominique's mention of business.

"A queer fellow, that Dominique!" he muttered, half to himself; "and
a queer fate that made him the brother of Bateese."

The priest heard, as deaf men sometimes will hear a word or two
spoken below ordinary pitch.

"Ah!" said he, shaking his head. "You have heard of Bateese?
A sad case--a very sad case!"

"There was an accident, I have heard."

Father Joly glanced at John's face and, reading the question, bent
his own dim eyes on the river. John divined at once that the old man
knew more than he felt inclined to tell.

"It was at Bord-a-Loup, a little above Boisveyrac, four years ago
last St. Peter's tide. The two brothers were driving some timber
which the Seigneur had cleared there; the logs had jammed around a
rock not far from shore and almost at the foot of the fall.
The two had managed to get across and were working the mass loose
with handspikes when, just as it began to break up, Bateese slipped
and fell between two logs."

"Through some careless push of Dominique's, was it not?"

But Father Joly did not hear, or did not seem to.

"He was hideously broken, poor Bateese. For weeks it did not seem
possible that he could live. The _habitants_ find Dominique a queer
fellow, even as you do; and I have observed that even Mademoiselle
Diane treats him somewhat impatiently. But in truth he is a lad
grown old before his time. It is terrible when such a blow falls
upon the young. He and Bateese adored one another."

And this was all John learned at the time. But three days later he
heard more of the story, and from Mademoiselle Diane.

She was seated in an embrasure of the terrace--the same, in fact, in
which she had taken measurements for John's new tunic. She was
embroidering it now with the Bearnais badge, and had spread Barboux's
tunic on the gun-breach to give her the pattern. John, passing along
the terrace in a brown study, while his eyes followed the evolutions
of Sergeant Bedard's men at morning parade in the square below, did
not catch sight of her until she called to him to come and admire her
handiwork.

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