CHAPTER XXVII.
PRES-DE-VILLE.
Fifteen years have gone by, and a few months. In December 1775, onthe rock of Quebec, Great Britain clung with a last desperate gripupon Canada, which on that September day in 1760 had passed socompletely into her hands.
All through December the snow had fallen almost incessantly; andalmost incessantly, through the short hours of daylight, the Americanriflemen, from their lodgings in the suburbs close under the walls,had kept up a fire on the British defenders of Quebec. For theassailants of Great Britain now were her own children; and the manwho led them was a British subject still, and but three years ago hadbeen a British officer.
Men see their duty by different lights, but Richard Montgomery hadalways seen his clearly. He had left the British Army for sufficientcause; had sought America, and married an American wife. He servedthe cause of political freedom now, and meant to serve it so as towin an imperishable name. The man whom King George had left for tenyears a captain had been promoted by Congress Brigadier-General at astroke. It recognised the greatness of which his own soul had alwaysassured him. "Come what will," he had promised his young wife atparting, "you shall never be ashamed of me." His men adored him forhis enthusiasm, his high and almost boyish courage, his dash, hisbright self-confidence.
And his campaign had been a triumph. Ticonderoga and Crown Point hadfallen before him. He had swept down the Richelieu, capturing St.John's, Chambly, Sorel. Montreal had capitulated without a blow.And so success had swept him on to the cliffs of Quebec--there todash itself and fail as a spent wave.
He would not acknowledge this; not though smallpox had broken outamong his troops and they, remembering that their term of servicewas all but expired, began to talk of home; not though his guns,mounted on frozen mounds, had utterly failed to batter a way into thecity. As a subaltern he had idolised Wolfe, and here on the groundof Wolfe's triumphant stroke he still dreamed of rivalling it.In Quebec a cautious phlegmatic British General sat and waited,keeping, as the moonless nights drew on, his officers ready againstsurprise. For a week they had slept in their clothes and with theirarms beside them.
From the lower town of Quebec a road, altered since beyondrecognition, ran along the base of Cape Diamond between the cliff andthe river. As it climbed it narrowed to a mere defile, known asPres-de-Ville, having the scarped rock on one hand and on the other aprecipice dropping almost to the water's edge. Across this defilethe British had drawn a palisade and built, on the edge of the passabove, a small three-pounder battery, with a _hangar_ in its rear toshelter the defenders.
Soon after midnight on the last morning of the year, a man camebattling his way down from the upper town to the Pres-de-Villebarrier. A blinding snow-storm raged through the darkness, andalthough it blew out of the north the cliff caught its eddies andbeat them back swirling about the useless lantern he carried.The freshly fallen snow encumbering his legs held him steady againstthe buffets of the wind; and foot by foot, feeling his way--for hecould only guess how near lay the edge of the precipice--he struggledtoward the stream of light issuing from the _hangar_.
As he reached it the squall cleared suddenly. He threw back hissnow-caked hood and gazed up at the citadel on the cliff. The wallsaloft there stood out brilliant against the black heavens, and hemuttered approvingly; for it was he who, as Officer of the Works, hadsuggested to the Governor the plan of hanging out lanterns andfirepots from the salient angles of the bastions; and he flatteredhimself that, if the enemy intended an assault up yonder, not a dogcould cross the great ditch undetected.
But it appeared to him that the men in the _hangar_ were not watchingtoo alertly, or they would never have allowed him to draw so nearunchallenged.
He was lifting a hand to hammer on the rough door giving entrancefrom the rear, when it was flung open and a man in provincial uniformpeered out upon the night.
"Is that you, Captain Chabot?" asked the visitor.
The man in the doorway smothered an exclamation. "The wind wasdriving the snow in upon us by the shovelful," he explained."We are keeping a sharp enough look-out down the road."
"So I perceived," answered John a Cleeve curtly, and stepped past himinto the _hangar_. About fifty men stood packed there in a steam ofbreath around the guns--the most of them Canadians and Britishmilitiamen, with a sprinkling of petticoated sailors.
"Who is working these?" asked John a Cleeve, laying his hand on thenearest three-pounder.
"Captain Barnsfare." A red-faced seaman stepped forward and salutedawkwardly: Adam Barnsfare, master of the _Tell_ transport.
"Your crew all right, captain?"
"All right, sir."
"The Governor sends me down with word that he believes the enemymeans business to-night. Where's your artilleryman?"
"Sergeant McQuarters, sir? He stepped down, a moment since, to thebarrier, to keep the sentry awake."
John a Cleeve glanced up at the lamp smoking under the beam.
"You have too much light here," he said. "If McQuarters has the gunswell pointed, you need only one lantern for your lintstocks."
He blew out the candle in his own, and reaching up a hand, loweredthe light until it was all but extinct. As he did so his hood fellback and the lamp-rays illumined his upturned face for two or threeseconds; a tired face, pinched just now with hard living andwakefulness, but moulded and firmed by discipline. Fifteen years hadbitten their lines deeply about the under-jaw and streaked thetemples with grey. But they had been years of service; and, whateverhe had missed in them, he had found self-reliance.
He stepped out upon the pent of the _hangar_, and, with another glanceup at the night, plunged into the deep snow, and trudged his way downto the barricade.
"Sergeant McQuarters!"
"Here sir!" The Highlander saluted in the darkness, "Any word fromup yonder, sir?" A faint glow touched the outline of his face as helifted it toward the illuminated citadel.
"The Governor looks for an assault to-night. So you know me,McQuarters?"
"By your voice, sir," answered McQuarters, and added quaintly,"Ah, but it was different weather in those days!"
"Ay," said John, "we have come around by strange roads; you anartilleryman, and I--" He broke off, musing. For a moment, standingthere knee-deep in snow, he heard the song of the waters, saw theforests again, the dripping ledges, the cool, pendant boughs, andsmelt the fragrance of the young spruces. The spell of the woodlandsilence held him, and he listened again for the rustle of wild lifein the undergrowth.
"Hist! What was that?"
"Another squall coming, sir. It's on us too, and a rasper!"
But, as the snow-charged gust swept down and blinded them in itswhirl, John leaned towards McQuarters and lifted his voice sharply.
"It was more than that--Hark you!" He gripped McQuarters' arm andpointed to the barricade, over which for an instant a point of steelhad glimmered. "Back, man!--back to the guns!" he yelled to thesentry. But the man was already running; and together the threefloundered back to the _hangar_. Behind them blows were alreadysounding above the howl of the wind; blows of musket-butts hammeringon the wooden palisade.
"Steady, men," grunted McQuarters as he reached the pent. "Give themtime to break an opening--their files will be nicely huddled bythis."
John a Cleeve glanced around and was satisfied. Captain Chabot hadhis men lined up and ready: two ranks of them, the front rankkneeling.
"Give the word, my lad," said Captain Barnsfare cheerfully, lintstockin hand.
"Fire then!--and God defend Quebec!"
The last words were lost in an explosion which seemed to lift theroof off the _hangar_. In the flare of it John saw the facesof the enemy--their arms outstretched and snatching at the palisade.Down upon them the grape-shot whistled, tearing through the gale itoutstripped, and close on it followed the Canadians' volleys.
Barnsfare had sprung to the second gun. McQuarters nodded tohim. . . .
For ten minutes the
guns swept the pass. The flame of them lit up nofaces now by the shivered palisade, and between the explosions cameno cheering from down the road. The riflemen loaded, fired, andreloaded; but they aimed into darkness and silence.
Captain Chabot lifted a hand.
The squall had swept by. High in the citadel, drums were beating;and below, down by the waterside to the eastward, volleys of musketrycrackled sharply. But no sound came up the pass of Pres-de-Ville.
"That will be at the Sault-au-Matelot barrier," said McQuarters,nodding his head in the direction of the musketry.
"We've raked decks here, anyhow," Captain Barnsfare commented,peering down the road; and one or two Canadians volunteered todescend and explore the palisade. For a while Captain Chabotdemurred, fearing that the Americans might have withdrawn around theangle of the cliff and be holding themselves in ambush there.
"A couple of us could make sure of that," urged John. "They haveleft their wounded, at all events, as you may hear by the groans.With your leave, Captain--"
Captain Chabot yielded the point, and John with a corporal and adrummer descended the pass.
A dozen bodies lay heaped by the palisade. For the moment he couldnot stay to attend to them, but, passing through, followed the roaddown to the end of its curve around the cliff. Two corpses lay hereof men who, mortally wounded, had run with the crowd before droppingto rise no more. The tracks in the snow told plainly enough that theretreat had been a stampede.
Returning to the palisade he shouted up that the coast was clear, andfell to work searching the faces of the fallen. The fresh snow, inwhich they lay deep, had already frozen about them; and his eye, ashe swung the lantern slowly round, fell on a hand and arm which stoodup stiffly above the white surface.
He stepped forward, flashing his lantern on the dead man's face--anddropped on his knees beside it.
"Do you know him, sir?" McQuarters' voice was speaking, close by.
"I know him," answered John dully, and groped and found a thin bladewhich lay beside the corpse. "He was my cousin, and once my bestfriend."
He felt the edge of the sword with his gloved hand, all the whilestaring at the arm pointing upwards and fixed in the rigor of death,frozen in its last gesture as Richard Montgomery had lifted it towave forward his men. And as if the last thirty or forty minutes hadnever been, he found himself saying to McQuarters:
"We have come around by strange roads, sergeant, and some of us haveparted with much on the way."
He looked up; but his gaze, travelling past McQuarters who stoopedover the corpse, fell on the figure of a woman who had approached andhalted at three paces' distance; a hooded figure in the dress of theHospitalieres.
Something in her attitude told him that she had heard. He arose,holding the lantern high; and stared, shaking, into a face which nouncomely linen swathings could disguise from him--into eyes whichdeath only would teach him to forget.
The fatigue-party lifted the corpse. So Richard Montgomery enteredQuebec as he had promised--a General of Brigade.
The drums had ceased to call the alarm from the Citadel; musketryno longer crackled in the riverside quarter of Sault-au-Matelot.The assault had been beaten off, and close on four hundred prisonerswere being marched up the hill followed by crowds of excitedQuebecers. But John a Cleeve roamed the streets at random, alone,unconscious that all the while he gripped the hilt of his cousin'snaked sword.
He was due to carry his report to the Governor. By and by heremembered this, and ploughed his way up the snowy incline to theCitadel. The sentry told him that the Governor was at the Seminary;had gone down half an hour ago, to number and take the names of theprisoners. John turned back.
Some two hundred prisoners were drawn up in the great hall of theSeminary, and from the doorway John spied the Governor at the farend, interrogating them.
"Eh?" Carleton turned, caught sight of him and smiled gaily."I fancy, Mr. a Cleeve, your post is going to be a sinecure afterto-night's work. Chabot reports that you were at Pres-de-Ville anddiscovered General Montgomery's body."
He turned at the sound of a murmur among the prisoners behind him.One or two had turned to the wall and were weeping audibly.Others stared at John and one or two pointed.
John, following their eyes, looked down at the sword in his hand andstammered an apology.
"Excuse me--I did not know that I carried it. . . . Sirs, believe me,I intended no offence! Richard Montgomery was my cousin."
From the Seminary he walked back to his quarters, meaning to snatch afew hours' sleep before daybreak. But having lit his candle, hefound that he could not undress. The narrow room stifled him.He flung the sword on his bed, and went down to the streets again.
Dawn found him pacing the narrow sidewalk opposite a small log housein St. Louis Street. Lights shone from the upper storey. In theroom to the right they had laid Montgomery's body, and were arrayingit for burial.
The house door opened, and a lamp in the passage behind it cast abroadening ray across the snow. A woman stepped out, and, in the actof closing the door, caught sight of him. He made no doubt that shewould pass up the street; but, after seeming to hesitate, she cameslowly over and stood before him.
"You knew me, then?" she asked.
He bent his head humbly.
"I have seen you many times, and heard of you," she continued."I heard what you said, down yonder. . . . Has life been so bitterfor you?"
"Diane!"
He turned towards the house. "He has a noble face," she said, gazingup at the bright window.
"He was a great man."
"And yet he fought in the end against his country."
"He believed that he did right."
"Should _you_ have believed it right?"
John was silent.
"John!"
He gave a start at the sound of his name and she smiled faintly.
"I have learnt to say it in English, you see."
"Do not mock me, mademoiselle! Fifteen years--"
"That is just what I was going to say. Fifteen years is a very longtime--and--and it has not been easy for me, John. I do not think Ican do without you any longer."
So in the street, under the dawn, they kissed for the first time.
EPILOGUE.