The Golden Dog/Chapter XI
Chapter XI: The Soldier's Welcome[edit]
The voices of the gentlemen mingled with her aunt's in eager greetings. She well knew which must be the voice of Colonel Philibert--the rest were all so familiar to her ear. Suddenly footsteps ran up the grand stair, clearing three at a time. She waited, trembling with anticipation. Le Gardeur rushed into the room with outstretched arms, embraced her, and kissed her in a transport of brotherly affection.
"Oh, Le Gardeur!" cried she, returning his kiss with fond affection, and looking in his face with tenderness and joy. "O my brother, how I have prayed and longed for your coming. Thank God! you are here at last. You are well, brother, are you not?" said she, looking up with a glance that seemed to betray some anxiety.
"Never better, Amelie," replied he, in a gayer tone than was quite natural to him, and shyly averting his eyes from her tender scrutiny. "Never better. Why, if I had been in my grave, I should have risen up to welcome a friend whom I have met to-day after years of separation. Oh, Amelie, I have such news for you!"
"News for me, Le Gardeur! What can it be?" A blush stole over her countenance, and her bosom heaved, for she was very conscious of the nature of the news her brother was about to impart.
"Guess! you unsuspecting queen of shepherdesses," cried he, archly twisting a lock of her hair that hung over her shoulder. "Guess, you pretty gipsy, you!"
"Guess? How can I guess, Le Gardeur? Can there be any news left in the city of Quebec after an hour's visit from Madame de Grandmaison and Madame Couillard? I did not go down, but I know they inquired much after you, by the way!" Amelie, with a little touch of feminine perversity, shyly put off the grand burst of Le Gardeur's intelligence, knowing it was sure to come.
"Pshaw! who cares for those old scandal-mongers! But you can never guess my news, Amelie, so I may as well tell you." Le Gardeur fairly swelled with the announcement he was about to make.
"Have mercy then, brother, and tell me at once, for you do now set my curiosity on tiptoe." She was a true woman, and would not for anything have admitted her knowledge of the presence of Colonel Philibert in the house.
"Amelie," said he, taking her by both hands, as if to prevent her escape, "I was at Beaumanoir--you know the Intendant gave a grand hunting party," added he, noticing the quick glance she gave him; "and who do you think came to the Chateau and recognized me, or rather I recognized him? A stranger--and not such a stranger, either Amelie."
"Nay; go on, brother! Who could this mysterious stranger and no stranger have been?"
"Pierre Philibert, Amelie! Pierre--our Pierre, you know! You recollect him, sister!"
"Recollect Pierre Philibert? Why, how could I ever forget him while you are living? since to him we are all indebted for your life, brother!"
"I know that; are you not glad, as I am, at his return?" asked Le Gardeur, with a penetrating look.
She threw her arms round him involuntarily, for she was much agitated. "Glad, brother? Yes, I am glad because you are glad."
"No more than that, Amelie? That is a small thing to be glad for."
"Oh, brother! I am glad for gladness's sake! We can never overpay the debt of gratitude we owe Pierre Philibert."
"O my sweet sister," replied he, kissing her, "I knew my news would please you. Come, we will go down and see him at once, for Pierre is in the house."
"But, Le Gardeur!" She blushed and hesitated. "Pierre Philibert I knew--I could speak to him; but I shall hardly dare recognize him in the stately soldier of to-day. Voila la difference!" added she, repeating the refrain of a song very popular both in New France and in Old at that period.
Le Gardeur did not comprehend her hesitation and tone. Said he,-- "Pierre is wonderfully changed since he and I wore the green sash of the seminary. He is taller than I, wiser and better,--he was always that,--but in heart the same generous, noble Pierre Philibert he was when a boy. Voila la ressemblance!" added he, pulling her hair archly as he repeated the antistrophe of the same ditty.
Amelie gave her brother a fond look, but she did not reply, except by a tight pressure of the hand. The voices of the Chevalier La Corne and the Lady de Tilly and Colonel Philibert were again heard in animated conversation. "Come, brother, we will go now," said she; and quick in executing any resolution she had formed, she took the arm of her brother, swept with him down the broad stair, and entered the drawing-room.
Philibert rose to his feet in admiration of the vision of loveliness that suddenly beamed upon his eyes. It was the incarnation of all the shapes of grace and beauty that had passed through his fervid fancy during so many years of absence from his native land. Something there was of the features of the young girl who had ridden with flying locks, like a sprite, through the woods of Tilly. But comparing his recollection of that slight girl with the tall, lithe, perfect womanhood of the half-blushing girl before him, he hesitated, although intuitively aware that it could be no other than the idol of his heart, Amelie de Repentigny.
Le Gardeur solved the doubt in a moment by exclaiming, in a tone of exultation, "Pierre Philibert, I bring an old young friend to greet you--my sister!"
Philibert advanced, and Amelie raised her dark eyes with a momentary glance that drew into her heart the memory of his face forever. She held out her hand frankly and courteously. Philibert bent over it as reverently as he would over the hand of the Madonna.
The greeting of the Lady de Tilly and La Corne St. Luc had been cordial, nay, affectionate in its kindness. The good lady kissed Pierre as a mother might have done a long-absent son.
"Colonel Philibert," said Amelie, straining her nerves to the tension of steel to preserve her composure, "Colonel Philibert is most welcome; he has never been forgotten in this house." She glanced at her aunt, who smiled approvingly at Amelie's remark.
"Thanks, Mademoiselle de Repentigny; I am indeed happy to be remembered here; it fulfils one of my most cherished hopes in returning to my native land."
"Ay, ay, Pierre," interrupted La Corne St. Luc, who looked on this little scene very admiringly, "good blood never lies. Look at Colonel Philibert there, with the King's epaulets on his shoulders. I have a sharp eye, as you know, Amelie, when I look after my pretty goddaughter, but I should not have recognized our lively Pierre in him, had Le Gardeur not introduced him to me, and I think you would not have known him either."
"Thanks for your looking after me, godfather," replied Amelie, merrily, very grateful in her heart for his appreciation of Pierre, "but I think neither aunt nor I should have failed to recognize him."
"Right, my Amelie!" said the Lady de Tilly. "We should not, and we shall not be afraid, Pierre,--I must call you Pierre or nothing,-- we shall not be afraid, although you do lay in a new stock of acquaintances in the capital, that old friends will be put aside as unfashionable remnants."
"My whole stock of friendship consists of those remnants, my Lady,-- memories of dear friends I love and honor. They will never be unfashionable with me: I should be bankrupt indeed, were I to part with one of them."
"Then they are of a truer fabric than Penelope's web, for she, I read, pulled in pieces at night what she had woven through the day," replied Lady de Tilly. "Give me the friendship that won't unravel."
"But not a thread of my recollections has ever unravelled, or ever will," replied Pierre, looking at Amelie as she clasped the arm of her aunt, feeling stronger, as is woman's way, by the contact with another.
"Zounds! What is all this merchant's talk about webs and threads and thrums?" exclaimed La Corne. "There is no memory so good as a soldier's, Amelie, and for good reason: a soldier on our wild frontiers is compelled to be faithful to old friends and old flannels; he cannot help himself to new ones if he would. I was five years and never saw a woman's face except red ones--some of them were very comely, by the way," added the old warrior with a smile.
"The gallantry of the Chevalier La Corne is incontestable," remarked Pierre, "for once, when we captured a convoy of soldiers' wives from New England, he escorted them, with drums beating, to Grand Pre, and sent a cask of Gascon wine for them to celebrate their reunion with their husbands."
"Frowzy huzzies! not worth the keeping, or I would not have sent them; fit only for the bobtailed militia of New England!" exclaimed La Corne.
"Not so thought the New Englanders, who had a three days feast when they remarried their wives--and handsome they were, too," said Philibert; "the healths they drank to the Chevalier were enough to make him immortal."
La Corne always brushed aside compliments to himself: "Tut, my Lady! it was more Pierre's good-nature than mine--he out of kindness let the women rejoin their husbands; on my part it was policy and stratagem, of war. Hear the sequel! The wives spoiled the husbands, as I guessed they would do, taught them to be too late at reveille, too early at tattoo. They neglected guards and pickets, and when the long nights of winter set in, the men hugged their wives by the firesides instead of their muskets by their watch- fires. Then came destruction upon them! In a blinding storm, amid snow-drifts and darkness, Coulon de Villiers, with his troops on snow-shoes, marched into the New England camp, and made widows of the most of the poor wives, who fell into our hands the second time. Poor creatures! I saw that day how hard it was to be a soldier's wife." La Corne's shaggy eyelash twinkled with moisture. "But it was the fortune of war!--the fortune of war, and a cruel fortune it is at the best!"
The Lady de Tilly pressed her hand to her bosom to suppress the rising emotion. "Alas, Chevalier! poor widows! I feel all they suffered. War is indeed a cruel fortune, as I too have had reason to learn."
"And what became of the poor women, godfather?" Amelie's eyes were suffused with tears: it was in her heart, if ever in any mortal's, to love her enemies.
"Oh, we cared for them the best we could. The Baron de St. Castin sheltered them in his chateau for the winter, and his daughter devoted herself to them with the zeal and tenderness of a saint from Heaven--a noble, lovely girl, Amelie!" added La Corne, impressively; "the fairest flower in all Acadia, and most unfortunate, poor girl! God's blessing rest upon her, wherever she may be!" La Corne St. Luc spoke with a depth of emotion he rarely manifested.
"How was she unfortunate, godfather?" Philibert watched the cheek flush and the eyelid quiver of the fair girl as she spoke, carried away by her sympathy. His heart went with his looks.
"Alas!" replied La Corne, "I would fain not answer, lest I distrust the moral government of the universe. But we are blind creatures, and God's ways are not fashioned in our ways. Let no one boast that he stands, lest he fall! We need the help of the host of Heaven to keep us upright and maintain our integrity. I can scarcely think of that noble girl without tears. Oh, the pity of it! The pity of it!"
Lady de Tilly looked at him wonderingly. "I knew the Baron de St. Castin," said she. "When he came to perform homage at the Castle of St. Louis, for the grant of some lands in Acadia, he was accompanied by his only daughter, a child perfect in goodness, grace, and loveliness. She was just the age of Amelie. The ladies of the city were in raptures over the pretty Mayflower, as they called her. What, in heaven's name, has happened to that dear child, Chevalier La Corne?"
La Corne St. Luc, half angry with himself for having broached the painful topic, and not used to pick his words, replied bluntly,-- "Happened, my Lady! what is it happens worst to a woman? She loved a man unworthy of her love--a villain in spite of high rank and King's favor, who deceived this fond, confiding girl, and abandoned her to shame! Faugh! It is the way of the Court, they say; and the King has not withdrawn his favor, but heaped new honors upon him!" La Corne put a severe curb upon his utterance and turned impatiently away, lest he might curse the King as well as the favorite.
"But what became of the poor deceived girl?" asked the Lady de Tilly, after hastily clearing her eyes with her handkerchief.
"Oh, the old, old story followed. She ran away from home in an agony of shame and fear, to avoid the return of her father from France. She went among the Indians of the St. Croix, they say, and has not been heard of since. Poor, dear girl! her very trust in virtue was the cause of her fall!"
Amelie turned alternately pale and red at the recital of her godfather. She riveted her eyes upon the ground as she pressed close to her aunt, clasping her arm, as if seeking strength and support.
Lady de Tilly was greatly shocked at the sad recital. She inquired the name of the man of rank who had acted so treacherously to the hapless girl.
"I will not utter the name to-day, my Lady! It has been revealed to me as a great secret. It is a name too high for the stroke of the law, if there be any law left us but the will of a King's mistress! God, however, has left us the law of a gentleman's sword to avenge its master's wrong. The Baron de St. Castin will soon return to vindicate his own honor, and whether or no, I vow to heaven, my Lady, that the traitor who has wronged that sweet girl will one day have to try whether his sword be sharper than that of La Corne St. Luc! But pshaw! I am talking bravado like an Indian at the war post. The story of those luckless New England wives has carried us beyond all bounds."
Lady de Tilly looked admiringly, without a sign of reproof, at the old soldier, sympathizing with his honest indignation at so foul a wrong to her sex. "Were that dear child mine, woman as I am, I would do the same thing!" said she, with a burst of feeling. She felt Amelie press her arm as if she too shared the spirit of her bolder aunt.
"But here comes Felix Baudoin to summon us to dinner!" exclaimed Lady de Tilly, as an old, white-headed servitor in livery appeared at the door with a low bow, announcing that dinner was served.
Le Gardeur and La Corne St. Luc greeted the old servitor with the utmost kindness, inquired after his health, and begged a pinch from his well-worn snuff-box. Such familiarities were not rare in that day between the gentlemen of New France and their old servants, who usually passed their lifetime in one household. Felix was the majordomo of the Manor House of Tilly, trusty, punctilious, and polite, and honored by his mistress more as an humble friend than as a servant of her house.
"Dinner is served, my Lady!" repeated Felix, with a bow. "But my Lady must excuse! The kitchen has been full of habitans all day. The Trifourchettes, the Doubledents, and all the best eaters in Tilly have been here. After obeying my Lady's commands to give them all they could eat we have had difficulty in saving anything for my Lady's own table."
"No matter, Felix, we shall say grace all the same. I could content myself with bread and water, to give fish and flesh to my censitaires, who are working so willingly on the King's corvee! But that must be my apology to you, Pierre Philibert and the Chevalier La Corne, for a poorer dinner than I could wish."
"Oh, I feel no misgivings, my Lady!" remarked La Corne St. Luc, laughing. "Felix Baudoin is too faithful a servitor to starve his mistress for the sake of the Trifourchettes, the Doubledents, and all the best eaters in the Seigniory! No! no! I will be bound your Ladyship will find Felix has tolled and tithed from them enough to secure a dinner for us all--come, Amelie, with me."
Lady de Tilly took the arm of Colonel Philibert, followed by Le Gardeur, La Corne, and Amelie, and, marshalled by the majordomo, proceeded to the dining-room--a large room, wainscotted with black walnut, a fine wood lately introduced. The ceiling was coved, and surrounded by a rich frieze of carving. A large table, suggestive of hospitality, was covered with drapery of the snowiest linen, the product of the spinning-wheels and busy looms of the women of the Seigniory of Tilly. Vases of china, filled with freshly-gathered flowers, shed sweet perfumes, while they delighted the eye with their beauty, etherializing the elements of bread and meat by suggestions of the poetry and ideals of life. A grand old buffet, a prodigy of cabinet-maker's art, displayed a mass of family plate, and a silver shield embossed with the arms of Tilly, a gift of Henry of Navarre to their ancient and loyal house, hung upon the wall over the buffet.
In spite of the Trifourchettes and the Doubledents, Felix Baudoin had managed to set an excellent dinner upon the table of his lady, who looked archly at the Chevalier La Corne, as if assenting to his remark on her old servitor.
The lady remained standing at the head of her table until they all sat down, when, clasping her hands, she recited with feeling and clearness the old Latin grace, "Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona," sanctifying her table by the invocation of the blessing of God upon it and upon all who sat round it.
A soup, rich and savory, was the prelude at all dinners in New France. A salmon speared in the shallows of the Chaudiere, and a dish of blood-speckled trout from the mountain streams of St. Joachim, smoked upon the board. Little oval loaves of wheaten bread were piled up in baskets of silver filigree. For in those days the fields of New France produced crops of the finest wheat--a gift which Providence has since withheld. "The wheat went away with the Bourbon lilies, and never grew afterwards," said the old habitans. The meat in the larder had all really been given to the hungry censitaires in the kitchen, except a capon from the basse cour of Tilly and a standing pie, the contents of which came from the manorial dovecote. A reef of raspberries, red as corals, gathered on the tangled slopes of Cote a Bonhomme, formed the dessert, with blue whortleberries from Cape Tourment, plums sweet as honey drops, and small, gray-coated apples from Beaupre, delicious as those that comforted the Rose of Sharon. A few carafes of choice wine from the old manorial cellar, completed the entertainment.
The meal was not a protracted one, but to Pierre Philibert the most blissful hour of his life. He sat by the side of Amelie, enjoying every moment as if it were a pearl dropped into his bosom by word, look, or gesture of the radiant girl who sat beside him.
He found Amelie, although somewhat timid at first to converse, a willing, nay, an eager listener. She was attracted by the magnetism of a noble, sympathetic nature, and by degrees ventured to cast a glance at the handsome, manly countenance where feature after feature revealed itself, like a landscape at dawn of day, and in Colonel Philibert she recognized the very looks, speech, and manner of Pierre Philibert of old.
Her questioning eyes hardly needed the interpretation of her tongue to draw him out to impart the story of his life during his long absence from New France, and it was with secret delight she found in him a powerful, cultivated intellect and nobility of sentiment such as she rightly supposed belonged only to a great man, while his visible pleasure at meeting her again filled her with a secret joy that, unnoticed by herself, suffused her whole countenance with radiance, and incited her to converse with him more freely than she had thought it possible when she sat down at table.
"It is long since we all sat together, Mademoiselle, at the table of your noble aunt," remarked Philibert. "It fulfills an often and often repeated day-dream of mine, that I should one day find you just the same."
"And do you find me just the same?" answered she, archly. "You take down the pride of ladyhood immensely, Colonel! I had imagined I was something quite other than the wild child of Tilly!"
"I hardly like to consider you as in the pride of ladyhood, Mademoiselle, for fear I should lose the wild child of Tilly, whom I should be so glad to find again."
"And whom you do find just the same in heart, mind, and regard too!" thought she to herself, but her words were,--"My school mistresses would be ashamed of their work, Colonel, if they had not improved on the very rude material my aunt sent them up from Tilly to manufacture into a fine lady! I was the crowned queen of the year when I left the Ursulines, so beware of considering me 'the child of Tilly' any longer."
Her silvery laugh caught his heart, for in that he recognized vividly the gay young girl whose image he was every instant developing out of the tall, lovely woman beside him.
La Corne St. Luc and the Lady de Tilly found a thousand delights in mutual reminiscences of the past. Le Gardeur, somewhat heavy, joined in conversation with Philibert and his sister. Amelie guessed, and Philibert knew, the secret of Le Gardeur's dulness; both strove to enliven and arouse him. His aunt guessed too, that he had passed the night as the guests of the Intendant always passed it, and knowing his temper and the regard he had for her good opinion, she brought the subject of the Intendant into conversation, in order, casually as it were, to impress Le Gardeur with her opinion of him. "Pierre Philibert too," thought she, "shall be put upon his guard against the crafty Bigot."
"Pierre," said she, "you are happy in a father who is a brave, honorable man, of whom any son in the world might be proud. The country holds by him immensely, and he deserves their regard. Watch over him now you are at home, Pierre. He has some relentless and powerful enemies, who would injure him if they could."
"That has he," remarked La Corne St. Luc; "I have spoken to the Sieur Philibert and cautioned him, but he is not impressible on the subject of his own safety. The Intendant spoke savagely of him in public the other day."
"Did he, Chevalier?" replied Philibert, his eyes flashing with another fire than that which had filled them looking at Amelie. "He shall account to me for his words, were he Regent instead of Intendant!"
La Corne St. Luc looked half approvingly at Philibert.
"Don't quarrel with him yet, Pierre! You cannot make a quarrel of what he has said."
Lady de Tilly listened uneasily, and said,--
"Don't quarrel with him at all, Pierre Philibert! Judge him and avoid him, as a Christian man should do. God will deal with Bigot as he deserves: the crafty man will be caught in his own devices some day."
"Oh, Bigot is a gentleman, aunt, too polite to insult any one," remarked Le Gardeur, impatient to defend one whom he regarded as a friend. "He is the prince of good fellows, and not crafty, I think, but all surface and sunshine."
"You never explored the depths of him, Le Gardeur," remarked La Corne. "I grant he is a gay, jesting, drinking, and gambling fellow in company; but, trust me, he is deep and dark as the Devil's cave that I have seen in the Ottawa country. It goes story under story, deeper and deeper, until the imagination loses itself in contemplating the bottomless pit of it--that is Bigot, Le Gardeur."
"My censitaires report to me," remarked the Lady de Tilly, "that his commissaries are seizing the very seed-corn of the country. Heaven knows what will become of my poor people next year if the war continue!"
"What will become of the Province in the hands of Francois Bigot?" replied La Corne St. Luc. "They say, Philibert, that a certain great lady at Court, who is his partner or patroness, or both, has obtained a grant of your father's sequestered estate in Normandy, for her relative, the Count de Marville. Had you heard of that, Philibert? It is the latest news from France."
"Oh, yes, Chevalier! Ill news like that never misses the mark it is aimed at. The news soon reached my father!"
"And how does your father take it?"
"My father is a true philosopher; he takes it as Socrates might have taken it; he laughs at the Count de Marville, who will, he says, want to sell the estate before the year is out, to pay his debts of honor--the only debts he ever does pay."
"If Bigot had anything to do with such an outrage," exclaimed Le Gardeur warmly, "I would renounce him on the spot. I have heard Bigot speak of this gift to De Marville, whom he hates. He says it was all La Pompadour's doing from first to last, and I believe it."
"Well," remarked La Corne, "Bigot has plenty of sins of his own to answer for to the Sieur Philibert, on the day of account, without reckoning this among them."
The loud report of a cannon shook the windows of the room, and died away in long-repeated echoes among the distant hills.
"That is the signal for the Council of War, my Lady," said La Corne. "A soldier's luck! just as we were going to have music and heaven, we are summoned to field, camp, or council."
The gentlemen rose and accompanied the ladies to the drawing-room, and prepared to depart. Colonel Philibert took a courteous leave of the ladies of Tilly, looking in the eyes of Amelie for something which, had she not turned them quickly upon a vase of flowers, he might have found there. She plucked a few sprays from the bouquet, and handed them to him as a token of pleasure at meeting him again in his own land.
"Recollect, Pierre Philibert!" said the Lady de Tilly, holding him cordially by the hand, "the Manor House of Tilly is your second home, where you are ever welcome."
Philibert was deeply touched by the genuine and stately courtesy of the lady. He kissed her hand with grateful reverence, and bowing to both the ladies, accompanied La Corne St. Luc and Le Gardeur to the castle of St. Louis.
Amelie sat in the recess of the window, resting her cheek upon her tremulous hand as she watched the gentlemen proceed on their way to the castle. Her mind was overflowing with thoughts and fancies, new, enigmatical, yet delightful. Her nervous manner did not escape the loving eye of her aunt; but she spoke not--she was silent under the burden of a secret joy that found not vent in words.
Suddenly Amelie rose from the window, and seated herself, in her impulsive way, at the organ. Her fingers touched the keys timidly at first as she began a trembling prelude of her own fantasy. In music her pent-up feelings found congenial expression. The fire kindled, and she presently burst out with the voice of a seraph in that glorious psalm, the 116th:
"'Toto pectore diligam
Unice et Dominum colam,
Qui lenis mihi supplici
Non duram appulit aurem.
Aurem qui mihi supplici,
Non duram dedit; hunc ego
Donec pectora spiritus
Pulset semper, amabo.'"
The Lady de Tilly, half guessing the truth, would not wound the susceptibilities of her niece by appearing to do so; so rose quietly from her seat and placed her arms gently round Amelie when she finished the psalm. She pressed her to her bosom, kissed her fondly, and without a word, left her to find in music relief from her high-wrought feelings. Her voice rose in sweeter and loftier harmonies to the pealing of the organ as she sang to the end the joyful yet solemn psalm, in a version made for Queen Mary of France and Scotland when life was good, hope all brightness, and dark days as if they would never come.