I.
HUDSON RIVER.
"Il reviendra-z a Paques, Ou--a la Trinite!"
On a summer's afternoon of the year 1818, in the deep veranda of ahouse terraced high above the Hudson, a small company stoodexpectant. Schuylers and Livingstones were there, with others of thegreat patroon families; one or two in complete black, and all wearingsome badge of mourning. Some were young, others well advanced inmiddle life; but amidst them, and a little apart, reclined a lady towhose story the oldest had listened in his childhood.
She lay back in an invalid chair, with her face set toward the nobleriver sweeping into view around the base of a wooded bluff, andtoward the line of its course beyond, where its hidden watersfurrowed the forests to the northward and divided hill from hill.Yet to her eyes the landscape was but a blur, and she saw it only inmemory.
For forty-three years she had worn black and a widow's goffered cap.The hair beneath it was thin now, and her body frail and very far onits decline to the grave. On the table at her elbow lay a letterbeside a small field-glass, towards which, once and again, shestretched out a hand.
"It is heavy for you, aunt," said her favourite grand-niece, whostood at the back of her chair--a beautiful girl in a white frock,high-waisted and tied with a broad, black sash. "We will tell youwhen they come in sight."
"I know, my dear; I know. It was only to make sure."
"But you tried yesterday, and with the glass your sight was as goodas mine, almost."
"Even so short a while makes a difference, now. You cannotunderstand that, Janet; you will, some day."
"We will tell you," the girl repeated, "as soon as ever they come insight; perhaps before. We may see the smoke first between the trees,you know."
"Ay," the old lady answered, and added, "There was no such thing inthose days." Her hand went out toward the field-glass again, andrested, trembling a little, on the edge of the table. "I thought--yesterday--that the trees had grown a good deal. They have closedin, and the river is narrower; or perhaps it looks narrower, througha glass."
The men at the far end of the veranda, who had been talking apartwhile they scanned the upper bends of the river, lowered their voicessuddenly. They had heard a throbbing sound to the northward; eitherthe beat of a drum or the panting stroke of a steamboat's paddles.
All waited, with their eyes on the distant woods. By and by a filmof dark smoke floated up as through a crevice in the massedtree-tops, lengthened, and spread itself in the sunlight.The throbbing grew louder--the beat of a drum, slow and funereal,with the clank of paddle-wheels filling its pauses. And now--hark!--a band playing the Dead March!
The girl knelt and lifted the glass, ready focused. The failingwoman leaned forward, and with fingers that trembled on the tube,directed it where the river swept broadly around the headland.
What did she see? At first an ugly steamboat nosing into view andbelching smoke from its long funnel; then a double line of soldierscrowding the deck, and between their lines what seemed at first to bea black mound with a scarlet bar across it. But the mound was theplumed hearse of her husband, and the scarlet bar the striped flag ofthe country for which he had died--his adopted country, long sinceinvited to her seat among the nations.
The men in the veranda had bared their heads. They heard a bell ringon board the steamboat. Her paddles ceased to rotate, and after amoment began to churn the river with reversed motion, holding theboat against its current. The troops on her deck, standing withreversed arms; the muffled drums; the half-masted flag; all saluted ahero and the widow of a hero.
So, after forty-three years, Richard Montgomery returned to the wifehe had left with a promise that, come what might, she should be proudof him.
Proud she was; she, a worn old woman sitting in the shadow of death,proud of a dry skeleton and a handful of dust under a crape pall.And they had parted in the hey-day of youth, young and ardent, witharms passionately loth to untwine.
What did her eyes seek beneath the pall, the plumes, the flag?Be sure she saw him laid there at his manly length, inert, withcheeks only a little paler than they had been as he stood lookingdown into her eyes a moment before he strode away. In truth, thesearchers, opening his grave in Quebec, had found a few bones, and askull from which, as they lifted it, a musket-ball dropped back intothe rotted coffin; these, and a lock of hair, tied with a leathernthong.
They did not bring him ashore to her. Even after forty years hisreturn must be for a moment only; his country still claimed him.The letter beside her was from Governor Clinton, written incourtliest words, telling her of the grave in New York prepared forhim beneath the cenotaph set up by Congress many years before.
Again a bell rang sharply, the paddles ceased backing and ploughedforward again. To the sound of muffled drums he passed down theriver, and out of her sight for ever.
II.
THE PHANTOM GUARD.
Just a hundred years have passed since the assault on Pres-de-Ville.It is the last day of 1875, and in the Citadel above the cliff theCommandant and his lady are holding a ball. Outside the warm roomswinter binds Quebec. The St. Lawrence is frozen over, and thecopings and escarpments of the old fortress sparkle white under aflying moon.
The Commandant's lady had decreed fancy dress for her dancers, andfurther, that their costumes shall be those of 1775. The Commandanthimself wears the antique uniform of the Royal Artillery, and some ofhis guests salute him in the very coats, and carry the very swords,their ancestors wore this night a hundred years ago. They pass upthe grand staircase hung with standards--golden leopards of England,golden irises of France, the Dominion ensign, the Stars and Stripes--and come face to face with a trophy, on the design of which CaptainLarne of the B Battery has spent some pious hours. Here, abovestacks of muskets piled over drums and trumpets, is draped the redand black "rebel" pennant so that its folds fall over the escutcheonof the United States; and against this hangs a sword, heavily craped,with the letters R.I.P. beneath it.
It is the same thin blade of steel which dropped on the snow, itshilt warm from Richard Montgomery's hand, as he turned to waveforward his men. His enemies salute it to-night.
They pass into the upper ballroom. They are met to dance a new yearin, and the garrison band is playing a waltz of Strauss's--"Die gutenalten Zeiten." So dance follows dance, and the hours fly by tomidnight--outside, the moon in chase past the clouds and over fieldsand wastes of snow--inside, the feet of dancers warming to their workunder the clustered lights.
But on the stroke of midnight a waltz ceases suddenly. From thelower ballroom the high, clear note of a trumpet rings out, silencingthe music of the bandsmen. A panel has flown open there and atrumpeter steps forth blowing a call which, as it dies away, isanswered by a skirl of pipes and tapping of drums from a remotecorner of the barracks. The guests fall back as the sound swells onthe night, drawing nearer. Pipes are shrieking now; the rattle ofdrums shakes the windows. Two folding doors fall wide, and throughthem stalks a ghostly guard headed by the ghost of Sergeant HughMcQuarters, in kilt and tartan and cross-belt yet spotted with theblood of a brave Highlander who died in 1775, defending Quebec.The guard looks neither to right nor to left; it passes on throughhall and passage and ballroom, halts beneath Montgomery's sword,salutes it in silence, and vanishes.
Some of the ladies are the least bit scared. But the men arepronouncing it a brilliant _coup de theatre_, and presently crowdabout the trophy, discussing Montgomery and what manner of man hewas.
Down in St. Louis Street the windows have been illuminated in the oldhouse in which his body lay. Up in the Citadel the boom of gunssalutes his memory.
So the world commemorates its heroes, the brave hearts and high mindsthat never doubted but pressed straight to their happy or unhappygoals. But some of us hear the guns saluting those who doubted andwere lost, or seemed to achieve little; whose high hopes perished bythe way; whom fate bound or frustrated; whom conscience or dividedcounsel drove athwart into paths belyin
g their promise; whom,wrapping both in one rest, earth covers at length indifferently withits heroes.
So let these guns, a hundred years late, salute the meeting of twolovers who, before they met and were reconciled, suffered much.The flying moon crosses the fields over which they passed forthtogether, and a hundred winters have smoothed their tracks on thesnow. There is a tradition that they sought Boisveyrac; thatchildren were born to them there; and that they lived and died asordinary people do. But a thriving town hides the site of theSeigniory, and their graves are not to be found.
And north of Lake Michigan there long lingered another tradition--butit has died now--of an Englishman and his wife who came at rareintervals and would live among the Ojibways for a while, accepted bythem and accepting their customs; that none could predict the time oftheir coming or of their departure; but that the man had, in histime, been a famous killer of bears.
THE END.
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