THE PASSING OF OLD QUEBEC
They ate their last crumbs for breakfast. A fine, cutting sleet was in the air, but they kept quite inside of the forest, except when they were afraid of losing the trail. There was no stop for a midday meal, and they pushed on, carrying Destournier in a litter. Must they spend another night in the woods?
Suddenly a shout reaches them, the sound of familiar French voices, and every heart thrilled with joy, as they answered it. Blessed relief was at hand.
Being alarmed at the long delay, a party had been sent out to search for them. They halted, for indeed it seemed as if they could go no further. Weak and hungry, some of the men sat down and cried, for very joy.
"I have hardly been worth all the trouble," Destournier said, in a broken voice.
"It was not altogether you," replied one of the men. "And to have rescued some of our men from those fiendish Hurons was worth while. Savignon must have had some wonderful power to make them give up their prey."
The relief party were provided with food, dried meat that had come down from some friendly Indians. After they had eaten, they resolved to push on, and started with good courage. The storm had ceased and the stars were pricking through the blue. The moon would rise later on. But it was midnight when they came in sight of the fort. The warm welcome made amends for all.
Wanamee took Rose under her protection. She was nearly exhausted. M. de Champlain insisted upon caring for Destournier, and examining the leg, which was much swollen, but had been very well set. The story of the wonderful escape was told over, to interested listeners.
"We owe Savignon a great debt, and are too poor to pay it," said the Governor sorrowfully.
Poor indeed they were. It was the hardest winter the colony had known. The dearth of news was most trying, and the fear of the English descent upon them racked the brave heart of the Commandant, who saw his dream of a great city vanishing. Jealousy had done some cruel work, and the misgovernment of the mother country stifled the best efforts.
Rose lay listless in bed for many days. How could she meet Savignon, who haunted the place hourly, to inquire, and begged to see her? One day she told Wanamee to send him in, and braced herself for the interview.
Semi-famine had not told on him, unless it had added an air of refinement. That he was superior to most of his race, was evident.
He was not prepared for the white wraith-like being who did not rise from her chair, but nodded and motioned him to a seat at a distance.
"Oh, Mam'selle, you have been truly ill," he said, and there was a tender sort of pity in his tone. "I have been wild to see you, to hear you speak. Mam'selle, you must not die. I cannot give you up. I have been starved, I have been half-crazy with impatience. Oh, can you not have a little pity on me, when I love you so? And you have no one who has a right to protest. You will keep your promise? For I swear to you that I will kill any man who marries you. I cannot help if it brings grief upon you. It would be the sorrow of my life not to have you! Oh, let me touch your little white hand"—and he started from his seat with an eager gesture.
She put both behind her. "I do not love you," she began bravely. "It would take time——"
"I said I would wait, Rose of Quebec, wait months, for your sweetness to blossom for me. But I cannot see you go to another."
"There is no other. There will be no other." She was sure she told the whole truth. "But if you insist now, I shall die before a marriage comes. I could slip out of life easily. Perhaps when I am strong again, courage may come back to me. You must go away and let me be quite by myself, and think how brave you were, how patient you are. Then when you come again——"
She would be in her white winding sheet, then, and he would be afraid to kiss her.
"But I won you fairly, Mam'selle. And I had great trembling of heart, for the Huron chief was obdurate. I succeeded at length. He has had a wife, he does not need another. He might be your father. And you have repaid him for all care by giving him back his life, by saving him from torture you know little about. For if the party joining them had discovered the robbery of their storehouse, there would have been little mercy. Oh, Mam'selle, how can so sweet a being be so cold and unyielding?"
"I have told you the secret of it. I do not love you. I do not want you for a husband. But I will keep my promise. Give me time to get well. It may not look so terrible to me then."
How lovely she was in her pleading, even if it did deny. He could have snatched her to his heart and stifled her with kisses, yet he did not dare to touch so much as her little finger. What strange power held her aloof? But if she was once his wife——
"A month," he pleaded.
"Longer than that. Three months. Three whole moons. Then you may come again and I will answer you."
His face paled with anger, his eyes were points of flame, his blood was hot within him.
"I will not wait."
"Then you may have my dead body."
"But you break your promise."
"I ask you to wait," she said, in a steady tone. "That is all."
"And you will not seek to die, Mam'selle?"
"I will be your wife then. Now go. I am too tired to argue any more."
A sudden ray of hope kindled in the Indian's heart. He would see M. Destournier, and lay the case before him, and beg his assistance. Surely he could not refuse, when his life had been saved!
Rose leaned back in a half-faint. Oh, surely God would take her before that time. But she had promised in good faith. Matters might look different to her when she was strong once more.
Savignon meant to be armed at all points. He went up to the St. Charles and laid his case before one of the fathers. His fine bearing and intelligence won him much favor.
"Men often married Indian women, who made good wives. In this case if the woman desired to take him for her husband, there could be no real objection; it was between the two parties. No over-persuasion was to be used. And if her friends or parents consented, it would be right enough. Only they must truly love each other."
He knew now she did not truly love him. You might beat an Indian woman into obedience—he had never struck one since he had come to manhood. But this beautiful being, who was like a bit of flame, would be blown out by harshness or force, and one would have only the cold body left. If he could not make her love him at the end of the three months——
Then he sought Destournier, and laid the tale before him. He had won Mademoiselle honorably. She had given her promise. At the end of the three months he would come for her. Now he had resolved to go to the islands, since it would be wretched to stay here and not see Mam'selle.
"Yes, the best thing," Destournier said, but he was stunned by the bargain. Was his life to cost that sacrifice? There must be some way of preventing it.
As the days went on he considered various plans. This was why Rose was so languid and unlike herself. Perhaps the hard winter and poor food had something to do with it. She had bought his life at too great a sacrifice. And then came the sweet, sad knowledge that he loved her, also.
The spring was quite early. Men began to work in their gardens and mend the damages of the winter, but with a certain fear of what was to come. And one day Destournier found Rose sitting in the old gallery, where she had run about as a child. But she was a child no longer. The indescribable change had come. There were womanly lines in her figure, although it was thinner than of yore, and the light in her eyes deeper.
He had given up the house to her and the two Indian women, with Pani for attendant. M. Pontgrave had been a great invalid through the winter, and besought the younger man's company. The Sieur often came in and they talked over the glowing plans and dreams of the earlier days, when they were to rear a city that the mother country could be proud of.
He understood why Rose had shunned him, and whenever he resolved to take up this troublous subject his courage failed him. Saved from this marriage she surely must be. In a short time Savignon would return. He had known of two women who had cast in their lots with the better-class Indians at Tadoussac, and were happy enough. But they were not Rose.
He came slowly over to her now. She looked up and smiled. Much keeping indoors of late had made her skin fair and fine, but her soft hair had not shed all its gold.
"Rose," he began, then paused.
She flushed, but made a little gesture, as if he might be seated beside her.
"Rose," he said again, "in the winter you saved my life. I have known it for some time."
Her breath came with a gasp. How had he learned this, unless Savignon had come before the time?
"And you paid a great price for it."
"Oh, oh!" she clasped her hands in distress. "How did you know it?"
"Savignon told me before he went away. He asked my consent to your marriage. I could not give it then. He will soon return. I cannot give it now."
"But it was a promise. Monsieur, your life was of more account than mine."
"Do you think I will accept the sacrifice? I have been weak and cowardly not to settle this matter before, not to give you the assurance that I will make a brave fight for your release."
"I was very sad and frightened at first, partly ill, as well, and I hoped not to live. But the good God did not take me. And if He meant me to do this thing, keep my word, I must do it. I asked Father Jamay one time about promises, and he said when one had vowed a vow it must be kept. And I have prayed for courage when the time comes. See, I am quite tranquil."
She raised her face and he read in it a nobly spiritual expression. He recalled now that she had gone up to the convent quite often with Wanamee, and that more than once she had slipped into Madame de Champlain's prie-dieu, that her husband never would have disturbed. Was she finding fortitude and comfort in a devotion to religion that would strengthen her to meet this tremendous sacrifice? She looked like a saint already.
She could not tell him that he knew only half, that he might still be the object of Savignon's vengeance, if she failed to keep her word.
"Perhaps the Sieur will have something to say, if my wishes fail. Unless you tell me you love this Indian, and that seems monstrous to me, this marriage shall never take place."
"It must, it must," she said, though her face was like marble, where it had been human before. "M'sieu, what is right must be done. I promised, and you were saved."
"Of your own free will? Rose," he caught both hands in a pressure that seemed to draw her soul along with it, "answer me truly."
"Of my will, yes, Monsieur." Her white throat swelled with the anguish she repressed.
"You have left out the 'free,'" but he knew well why she could not utter it.
"Monsieur, I think you would be noble enough to give your life for a friend"—she was about to say "whom you loved," but she caught her voice in time.
Was this heroic maiden the little girl who had run wild in the old town, and sung songs with the birds; who had been merry and careless, but always a sweet human Rose; the child he had taken to his heart long ago, the girl he had watched over, the woman—yes, the woman he loved with a man's first fervent passion! She should not go out of his life, now that God had made a space for her to come in it. Miladi he had given up to Laurent Giffard, she had never belonged to him in the deep sacredness of love. And as he watched her, his eyes seeming to look into her soul, through the motes of light that illumined them, he knew it was not simply that she had no love for the Indian, but that she loved him. It seemed the sublime moment of his life, the sweetest consciousness that he had ever known.
"You gave something greater than life. Listen," and he drew his brows into a resolute line. "When that man comes we will have it out between us. For I love you, too. I owe you a great reward that only a life's devotion can pay. I am much older, but I seem to have just awakened to the dream of bliss that sanctifies manhood. My darling, if a better man came, I could give you up, if I went hungering all the rest of my days. But you shall not go to certain wretchedness. And he must see the truth. That is the way a man should love."
Her slender, white throat rose and fell like a heartbeat. With Savignon she would be loved with a fierce passion, for the man's supreme joy; this man would love for the woman's joy.
"Monsieur, I have studied the subject, and I think it is right. I pray you, do not disturb my resolve. It has been made after many prayers. If the good Father should change His mind—but that is hardly to be thought of. Do not let us talk about it," and she rose.
For instead of throwing herself in the river, as she had thought in her wildness, she could cross to France, and enter a convent, if she could not endure it.
Ralph Destournier saw that argument was useless. When the time came, he would act.
But May passed without bringing the lover. Quebec was beginning to take courage, and what with hunting and fishing, semi-starvation was at an end. Emigrants came back and all was stir and activity in the little town.
There came a letter to Rose, after a long delay. Savignon had joined a party of explorers, who were pushing westward, and marvelled at the wonderful country. He had pondered much over his desires, and while his love was still strong, he did not want an unwilling bride. He would give her a longer time to consider—a year, perhaps. He had wrung a reluctant assent from her, he admitted, and taken an ungenerous advantage. For this he would do a year's penance, without sight of the face that had so charmed him.
Was he really brave enough to do that? Rose thought so. Destournier believed it some new attraction to the roving blood of the wilderness.
But Rose would not wholly accept her freedom. Still she was more like the Rose of girlhood, though she no longer climbed or ran races. The Sieur was whiling away the heavy hours of uncertainty by teaching several Indian girls, and Rose found this quite a pleasure.
The servant came in with some news. Not the French vessel they hoped for, but an English man-of-war, with two gunboats, was approaching.
If defence had been futile before, it was doubly so now. The fort was out of repair, the guns useless from lack of ammunition, there was no provision to sustain a siege. A small boat with a flag of truce rounded the point, and with a heavy heart Champlain displayed his on the fort.
The two brothers of Captain David Kirke, who was now at Tadoussac, had again been sent to propose terms of surrender. The English were to take possession in the name of their king.
It was a sad party that assembled around the large table, where so many plans and hopes had stirred the brave hearts of the explorers and builders-up of new France. Old men they were now, Pontgrave a wreck from rheumatism, a few dead, and Champlain, with the ruin of his ambitions before him. There was some vigorous opposition to the demands, but there was clearly no alternative but surrender. Hard as the terms were, they must be accepted. And on July 20, 1629, the lilies of France ceased to wave over Quebec, dear old Quebec, and Captain Louis Kirke took possession of the fort and the town, in the name of His Majesty, King Charles I, and the standard of England floated quite as proudly over the St. Lawrence.
Did they dream then that this scene would be enacted over again when a new Quebec, proud of her improvements and defences, that were considered impregnable, should fight and lose one of the greatest of battles, and two of the bravest of men, and again lower the lilies! A greater romance than that of old Quebec, the dream of the Sieur de Champlain.
But it seemed a sad travesty that the mother country should send succor too late. A French vessel, with emigrants and supplies, came in sight only to fall into the hands of the victorious English.
Captain Emery de Caen insisted that peace had been declared two months before, but the Kirkes would not admit this. It was said that all conquests after that date were to be restored. A new hope animated the heart of the brave old Commandant. If it were true, the lilies might replace the flaunting standard.
Many of the citizens preferred to remain. They had their little homes and gardens, and the English proved not overbearing. Then there was an end to present want. A hundred and fifty men gave the town a new impetus, and when the next fleet came, with the large war-ships, there was a certain aspect of gayety, quite new to the place.
After some discussion, Champlain resolved to return to France, and thence to England, to understand the terms of peace, and if possible, to win New France once more.
Ralph Destournier was a Frenchman at heart, though a little English blood ran in his veins. He had a strong desire to see France.
"Will you go?" he asked of Rose.
"Not until the year is ended," she said gravely. "But if you will go—Wanamee and Pani can care for me. I am a little girl no longer."
It was true. There was no more little girl, but there was no more old Quebec. It had already taken on a different aspect. Officers and men in bright uniforms climbed the narrow, crooked streets, with gay jests, in what seemed their rough language; there were little taverns opened, where the fife and drum played an unmelodious part. Religion was free, for there had come to be a number of Huguenots, as well as of the new English church. The poor priests were at their wits' end, but they were well treated.
Eustache Boullé was to go with the Sieur, but he never returned. He took a rather fond farewell of Rose. "If you would go, we might find something of your family," he said. "I once had a slight clew."
"Is it not worth looking after?" asked Destournier, as he and Rose were walking the plateau, since known as the Plains of Abraham. "If you were proved of some notable family—there have been so many over-turns."
"Would you feel prouder of me?"
"No. Do you not know that you are dearer to me as the foundling of Quebec, and the little girl I knew and loved?"
She raised luminous eyes and smiled.
"Then I do not care. No place will seem like home but this."
He would not go to France, but busied himself with his fields and his tenants. He came back to the old house, altered a little, the room where miladi had spent her fretful invalid years was quite remodelled. Vines grew up about it. The narrow steps were widened.
Autumn came, and winter. The cold and somewhat careless living carried off many of the English. But Madame Hébert had married again, and Thérèse had found a husband. There was Nicolas Revert, with some growing children. Duchesne, a surgeon, they had been glad to welcome. Thomas Godefroy, Pierre Raye, and the Couillards formed quite a French colony. They met now and then, and kept the old spirit alive with their songs and stories.
June had come again, and the town had begun to bloom. There were still parties searching for the north sea, for the route to India, for the great river that was said to lie beyond the lakes. The priests, too, were stretching out their lines, especially the Jesuits, about whom still lingers the flavor of heroic martyrdom. Father Breibouf coming back for a short stay, to get some new word from France, told the fate of one unfortunate party. Among them he said "was that fine Indian interpreter, Savignon, who you must remember went to the rescue of a party the last time he was in Quebec. He was a brave man, and a great loss to us. He had come to an excellent state of mind, and was one of the few Indians that give me faith in the salvation of the race."
Rose's eyes were lustrous with tears as she listened to this eulogy. He had proved nobler than his first passion of love. She had some Masses said for his soul, but it pleased her better to give thanks to God for his redemption.
"Now you belong to no one but me," Destournier said to her some weeks later, when she had recovered from her sorrow. "Yet I feel that it is selfish to take your sweet youth. I am no longer young. I shall always be a little lame, and never perhaps realize my dream of prosperity. But I love you. I loved you as a little girl, you have always, in some fashion, belonged to me."
"I am glad to belong to you, to take your name. Do you remember that I have no other name but Rose? You are very good to shelter me thus. I think I could never have gone gladly to any one else. We are a part of old Quebec, we are still French," and there was a little triumph in her tone.
It was true the English had taken possession after peace had been declared, and had not the right to hold the country. When France demanded the recession King Charles held off, and the Kirkes were unwilling to yield up the government, as they found great profit in the fur trade. But needing money sorely, and as the Queen's dowry as a French princess had only been half paid, he made this a condition, and Richelieu accepted it.
So in 1632 Acadia, and all the important points in Canada, were ceded back to France.
In the spring of the next year Champlain was again commissioned Governor, and he set sail from Dieppe, with three vessels freighted with goods, provisions, and the farming implements of that day, clothing and some of the new hand-looms, beside seeds of all kinds. Two hundred persons, many of them married couples, and farmers were to found a new Quebec.
One May morning, just at sunrise, there was a great firing of bombards, and for a brief while all was consternation and fear. But persons sent out to explore, brought the welcome news of Champlain's return. Then went up a mighty shout of joy, and the lilies of France were once more unfurled to the breeze. There stood the stalwart old commander, whose life work was crowned with success. All was gratulation. He must have been touched by the ovation.
M. and Madame Destournier were among the throng, while Wanamee carried the little son, who stared about with wondering eyes, and smiled as if he enjoyed the glad confusion.
Even the Indians vied with the French, as he was triumphantly escorted up the cliff, with colors flying and drums beating, and once more received the keys of the fort. The spontaneous welcome showed how deep he was in the affections of the people. He had been thwarted in many of his plans, neglected, traduced, but this hour made amends.
"Little Rose," he said, "thou art a part of old Quebec, but thy son begins with the new régime. Heaven bless and prosper thee and thy husband. I should have missed thee sorely had any untoward event happened."
The settlement at the foot of the cliff had been burned, but the upper town, as it came to be called, had stretched out. The Héberts were on the summit of the cliff, that part of the town where the ancient bishops' palace stood for so long. Many of the former settlers had come up here.
"I had hoped Madame de Champlain would return with him," Rose said. "I wonder if any time will ever come when I shall love myself better than you."
He bent over and kissed her. He had never quite understood love or known what happiness was until now.
When the Indians learned of the return of their beloved white chief, they planned to come in a body, and salute him. Algonquins, Ottawas, Montagnais, and the more friendly Hurons, came with their gifts, and smoked the pipe of peace.
In the autumn Champlain commenced the first parochial church, called, appropriately, Notre Dame de Recouvrance. The Angelus was rung three times a day. For now the brave old soldier had grown more religious, there were no more exploring journeys, no more voyages across the stormy ocean. He had said good-bye to his wife for the last time, though now, perhaps, he understood her mystical devotion better.
It was indeed a new Quebec. There was no more starvation, no more digging of roots, and searches for edible food products. Their anxious faces gave way to French gayety. Up and down the steep road-way, leading from the warehouses to the rough, tumble-down tenements by the river, men passed and repassed with jests and jollity, snatches of song or a merry good-day, for it was indeed good. There were children of mixed parentage, playing about, for Indian mothers were no uncommon thing. The fort, the church, and the dwellings high up above, gave it a picturesque aspect. You heard the boatmen singing their songs of old France as they went up and down the beautiful river. Stone houses began to appear, though wigwams still remained. New streets were opened, but they were loth to level the hills, and some of them remain to this day.
Ralph and Rose Destournier had a happy life. Children grew up around them. A large, new house received them presently, but they kept a fond remembrance for the old one that seemed somehow to belong exclusively to Miladi and a dreamy sort of old life.
A mixed population it was, shaped by the sincerity of their religion. There were priests in their gray and black cassocks, officers in brave trappings, traders, Indians, farmers, stout and strong, and the picturesque coureurs de bois, that came to be a great feature, and added not a little to the romance of the place. They were not all mere adventurers, but they loved a roving life. Settlements were made here and there, an important one at Three Rivers, where the Récollets established a mission. The summers were given over to work and business, thronged with traders and trappers, but they found time in the winters for much social life.
If the Sieur missed his old friend Hébert, there were others to take an active interest in horticulture. Pontgrave was no more, but his grandson kept up the name. A few years later the earnest young René de Robault gave his fortune for the building of a college, and this kept the young men from returning to old France for an education. Convent schools were established, and Indian girls were trained in the amenities and industries of social life. Montreal spread out her borders as well, the Beauport road came to be a place of fine estates. All the way to the mouth of the great river there were trading stations. The fur company's business was good, there were new explorations to Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, Lake Michigan, up to the Fox river.
Of the sons and daughters growing up in the Destournier household, Hélène, who should have been a devotee, was a merry madcap, who exceeded her mother in daring feats, a dark-eyed, laughing maid the Indian girls adored. She could manage a canoe, she could fly, they said, she took such wonderful leaps. Rose could sing like a bird and had a fondness for all animals. Little Barbe was a dainty, loving being, always clinging to her mother, and three sons were devoted to their father whose snowy white hair was like a crown of silver. They loved to hear the old tales, and fired with resentment when the lilies of France had to give way to the flag of England.
"But they will never do it again," Robert Destournier would exclaim, with flashing eyes.
But they did almost a century later. Robert was not there to strike a useless blow for his beloved land. That belongs to the story of a newer Quebec, and now all the romances are gathered up into history.
In the autumn of 1635 the brave, beloved Champlain passed away in the heart of the city that had been his love, his ambition, his life-dream. The explorer, the crusader, the sharer of toils and battles, his story is one of the knightly romances of that period, and his name is enshrined with that of old Quebec. Other heroes were to come, other battles to be fought, much work for priest and civilian, but this is the simplest, the bravest of them all, for its mighty work was done at great odds.
To-day you find the Citadel, the old French fort, but the wharves and docks run out in the river, and there are steamboats, instead of canoes. There is the Market Place and the City Hall, the Grande Allée St. Louis Place and Gate, the crowded business-point, with its ferries, the great Louise basin and embankment. The city runs out to St. Charles river, and stretches on and on until you reach the Convent of the Sacred Heart. There are still the upper and the lower town, and the steep ways, the heights that Wolfe climbed, the world-famed Plains of Abraham.
Everywhere is historic ground, monuments of courage, zeal, and religion. The streets have old names. Here on a height so steep you wonder how they are content to climb it, juts out a little stone eyrie, just as it stood a hundred years ago. Three or four generations have lived within its walls, and they are as French to-day as they were then. They want nothing of the modern gauds of the present. Grandmothers used the clumsy furniture, and it is almost worth a king's ransom, it has so many legends woven around it.
There is the Château Frontenac, that recalls romance and bravery. There are churches, with their stories. There are the old Jesuit barracks, out of which went many a heroic soul to face martyrdom, there is the Chien d'Or, with its stone dog gnawing a bone, and the romance of Nicolas Jaquin Philibert, the brave Huguenot.
There are old graveyards, where rest the pioneers who prayed, and hoped, and starved with Champlain. All the stories can never be written, all the monuments that speak of glory do not tell of the sufferings. Yet there were happy lives, and happy loves, as well. The storms die out, the light and sunshine dry up the tears, and courage is given to go on.
The old French days have left their impress. Champlain will always be a living memory, as the founder of one of the marvellous cities of the world. Gay little girls run about and climb the heights, they dance and sing, and have their festivals, and are happy in the thrice-renewed Quebec. Many a Rose has blossomed and faded since the days of Destournier.
THE END
The "Little Girl" Series
By AMANDA M. DOUGLAS
A Little Girl in Old New York
A Little Girl of Long Ago
A sequel to "A Little Girl in Old New York"
A Little Girl in Old Boston
A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia
A Little Girl in Old Washington
A Little Girl in Old New Orleans
A Little Girl in Old Detroit
A Little Girl in Old St. Louis
A Little Girl in Old Chicago
A Little Girl in Old San Francisco
A Little Girl in Old Quebec
A Little Girl in Old Baltimore
A Little Girl in Old Salem
A Little Girl in Old Pittsburg