THE MILL AT PETIT CAP
August night air, sweet with a half salt breath from the St. Lawrence, met the miller of San Joachim as he looked out; but he bolted the single thick door of the mill, and cast across it into a staple a hook as long as his body and as thick as his arm. At any alarm in the village he must undo these fastenings, and receive the refugees from Montgomery; yet he could not sleep without locking the door. So all that summer he had slept on a bench in the mill basement, to be ready for the call.
All the parishes on the island of Orleans, and on each side of the river, quite to Montmorenci Falls, where Wolfe's army was encamped, had been sacked by that evil man, Captain Alexander Montgomery, whom the English general himself could hardly restrain. San Joachim du Petit Cap need not hope to escape. It was really Wolfe's policy to harry the country which in that despairing summer of 1759 he saw no chance of conquering.
The mill was grinding with a shuddering noise which covered all country night sounds. But so accustomed was the miller to this lullaby that he fell asleep on his chaff cushion directly, without his usual review of the trouble betwixt La Vigne and himself. He was sensitive to his neighbors' claims, and the state of the country troubled him, but he knew he could endure La Vigne's misfortunes better than any other man's.
Loopholes in the hoary stone walls of the basement were carefully covered, but a burning dip on the hearth betrayed them within. There was a deep blackened oven built at right angles to the fireplace in the south wall. The stairway rose like a giant's ladder to the vast dimness overhead. No other such fortress-mill was to be found between Cap Tourmente and the citadel, or indeed anywhere on the St. Lawrence. It had been built not many years before by the Seminaire priests of Quebec for the protection and nourishment of their seigniory, that huge grant of rich land stretching from Beaupré to Cap Tourmente, bequeathed to the church by the first bishop of Canada.
The miller suddenly dashed up with a shout. He heard his wife scream above the rattle of the mill, and stumbling over basement litter he unstopped a loophole and saw the village already mounting in flames.
The mill door's iron-clamped timbers were beaten by a crowd of entreating hands, and he tore back the fastenings and dragged his neighbors in. Children, women, men, fell past him on the basement floor, and he screamed for help to hold the door against Montgomery's men. The priest was the last one to enter and the first to set a shoulder with the miller's. A discharge of firearms from without made lightning in the dim inclosure, and the curé, Father Robineau de Portneuf, reminded his flock of the guns they had stored in the mill basement. Loopholes were soon manned, and the enemy were driven back from the mill door. The roaring torch of each cottage thatch showed them in the redness of their uniforms,—good marks for enraged refugees; so they drew a little farther westward still, along the hot narrow street of San Joachim du Petit Cap.
At an unoccupied loophole Father Robineau watched his chapel burning, with its meagre enrichments, added year by year. But this was nothing, when his eye dropped to the two or three figures lying face downward on the road. He turned himself toward the wailing of a widow and a mother.
The miller's wife was coming downstairs with a candle, leaving her children huddled in darkness at the top. Those two dozen or more people whom she could see lifting dazed looks at her were perhaps of small account in the province; but they were her friends and neighbors, and bounded her whole experience of the world, except that anxiety of having her son Laurent with Montcalm's militia. The dip light dropped tallow down her petticoat, and even unheeded on one bare foot.
"My children," exhorted Father Robineau through the wailing of bereaved women, "have patience." The miller's wife stooped and passed a hand across a bright head leaning against the stair side.
"Thy mother is safe, Angèle?"
"Oh, yes, Madame Sandeau."
"Thy father and the children are safe?"
"Oh, yes," testified the miller, passing towards the fireplace, "La
Vigne and all his are within. I counted them."
"The saints be praised," said his wife.
"Yes, La Vigne got in safely," added the miller, "while that excellent Jules Martin, our good neighbor, lies scalped out there in the road."[1]
"He does not know what he is saying, Angèle," whispered his wife to the weeping girl. But the miller snatched the candle from the hearth as if he meant to fling his indignation with it at La Vigne. His worthy act, however, was to light the sticks he kept built in the fireplace for such emergency. A flame arose, gradually revealing the black earthen floor, the swarm of refugees, and even the tear-suspending lashes of little children's eyes.
La Vigne appeared, sitting with his hands in his hair. And the miller's wife saw there was a strange young demoiselle among the women of the côte, trying to quiet them. She had a calm dark beauty and an elegance of manner unusual to the provinces, and even Father Robineau beheld her with surprise.
"Mademoiselle, it is unfortunate that you should be in Petit Cap at this time," said the priest.
"Father, I count myself fortunate," she answered, "if no worse calamity has befallen me. My father is safe within here. Can you tell me anything about my husband, Captain De Mattissart, of the Languedoc regiment, with General Montcalm?"
"Madame, I never saw your husband."
"He was to meet me with escort at Petit Cap. We landed on a little point, secretly, with no people at all, and my father would have returned in his sailboat, but my husband did not meet us. These English must have cut him off, father."
"These are not times in which a woman should stir abroad," said the priest.
"Monsieur the curé, there is no such comfortable doctrine for a man with a daughter," said a figure at the nearest loophole, turning and revealing himself by face and presence a gentilhomme. "Especially a daughter married to a soldier. I am Denys of Bonaventure, galloping hither out of Acadia at her word of command."
The priest made him a gesture of respect and welcome.
"One of the best men in Acadia should be of advantage to us here. But I regret madame's exposure. You were not by yourselves attempting to reach Montcalm's camp?"
"How do I know, monsieur the curé? My daughter commanded this expedition." Denys of Bonaventure shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms with a smile.
"We were going to knock at the door of the curé of Petit Cap," said the lady. "There was nothing else for us to do; but the English appeared."
Successive shots at the loopholes proved that the English had not yet disappeared. Denys seized his gun again, and turned to the defense, urging that the children and women be sent out of the way of balls.
Father Robineau, on his part, gave instant command to the miller's wife, and she climbed the stairs again, heading a long line of distressed neighbors.
The burrs were in the second story, and here the roaring of the mill took possession of all the shuddering air. Every massive joist half growing from dimness overhead was hung with ghostly shreds of cobweb; and on the grayish whiteness of the floor the children's naked soles cut out oblongs dotted with toe-marks.
Mother Sandeau made her way first to an inclosed corner, and looked around to invite the attention of her followers. Such violence had been done to her stolid habits that she seemed to need the sight of her milk-room to restore her to intelligent action. The group was left in half darkness while she thrust her candle into the milk-room, showing its orderly array of flowered bowls amidst moist coolness. Here was a promise of sustenance to people dependent for the next mouthful of food. "It will last a few days, even if the cows be driven off and killed!" said the miller's good wife.
But there was the Acadian lady to be first thought of. Neighbors could be easily spread out on the great floor, with rolls of bedding. Her own oasis of homestead stood open, showing a small fireplace hollowed in one wall, two feet above the floor; table and heavy chairs; and sleeping rooms beyond. Yet none of these things were good enough to offer such a stranger.
"Take no thought about me, good friend," said the girl, noticing Mother Sandeau's anxiously creased face. "I shall presently go back to my father."
"But, no," exclaimed the miller's wife, "the priest forbids women below, and there is my son's bridal room upstairs with even a dressing-table in it. I only held back on account of Angèle La Vigne," she added to comprehending neighbors, "but Angèle will attend to the lady there."
"Angèle will gladly attend to the lady anywhere," spoke out Angèle's mother, with a resentment of her child's position which ruin could not crush. "It is the same as if marriage was never talked of between your son Laurent and her."
"Yes, neighbor, yes," said the miller's wife appeasingly. It was not her fault that a pig had stopped the marriage. She gave her own candle to Angèle, with a motherly look. The girl had a pink and golden prettiness unusual among habitantes. Though all flush was gone out of her skin under the stress of the hour, she retained the innocent clear pallor of an infant. Angèle hurried to straighten her disordered dress before taking the candle, and then led Madame De Mattissart up the next flight of stairs.
The mill's noise had forced talkers to lift their voices, and it now half dulled the clamp of habitante shoes below, and the whining of children longing again for sleep. Huge square wooden hoppers were shaking down grain, and the two or three square sashes in the thickness of front wall let in some light from the burning côte.
The building's mighty stone hollows were as cool as the dew-pearled and river-vapored landscape outside. Occasional shots from below kept reverberating upward through two more floors overhead.
Laurent's bridal apartment was of new boards built like a deck cabin at one side of the third story. It was hard for Angèle to throw open the door of this sacred little place which she had expected to enter as a bride, and the French officer's young wife understood it, restraining the girl's hand.
"Stop, my child. Let us not go in. I came up here simply to quiet the others."
"But you were to rest in this chamber, madame."
"Do you think I can rest when I do not know whether I am wife or widow?"
The young girls looked at each other with piteous eyes.
"This is a terrible time, madame."
"It will, however, pass by, in some fashion."
"But what shall I do for you, madame? Where will you sit? Is there nothing you require?"
"Yes, I am thirsty. Is there not running water somewhere in this mill?"
"There is the flume-chamber overhead," said Angèle. "I will set the light here, and go down for a cup, madame."
"Do not. We will go to the flume-chamber together. My hands, my throat, my eyes burn. Go on, Angèle, show me the way."
Laurent's room, therefore, was left in darkness, holding unseen its best furniture, the family's holiday clothes of huge grained flannel, and the little yellow spinning-wheel, with its pile of unspun wool like forgotten snow.
In the fourth story, as below, deep-set swinging windows had small square panes, well dusted with flour. Nothing broke the monotony of wall except a row of family snow-shoes. The flume-chamber, inclosed from floor to ceiling, suggested a grain's sprouting here and there in its upright humid boards.
As the two girls glanced around this grim space, they were startled by silence through the building, for the burrs ceased to work. Feet and voices indeed stirred below, but the sashes no longer rattled. Then a tramping seemed following them up, and Angèle dragged the young lady behind a stone pillar, and blew out their candle.
"What are you doing?" demanded Madame De Mattissart in displeasure.
"If the door has been forced, should we desert our fathers?"
"It is not that," whispered Angèle. And before she could give any reason for her impulse, the miller's head and light appeared above the stairs. It was natural enough for Angèle La Vigne to avoid Laurent's father. What puzzled her was to see her own barefooted father creeping after the miller, his red wool night-cap pulled over dejected brows.
These good men had been unable to meet without quarreling since the match between Laurent and Angèle was broken off, on account of a pig which Father La Vigne would not add to her dower. Angèle had a blanket, three dishes, six tin plates, and a kneading-trough; at the pig her father drew the line, and for a pig Laurent's father contended. But now all the La Vigne pigs were roasted or scattered, Angèle's dower was destroyed, and what had a ruined habitant to say to the miller of Petit Cap?
Father Robineau had stopped the mill because its noise might cover attacks. As the milder ungeared his primitive machinery, he had thought of saving water in the flume-chamber. There were wires and chains for shutting off its escape.
He now opened a door in the humid wall and put his candle over the clear, dark water. The flume no longer furnished a supply, and he stared open-lipped, wondering if the enemy had meddled with his water-gate in the upland.
The flume, at that time the most ambitious wooden channel on the north shore, supported on high stilts of timber, dripped all the way from a hill stream to the fourth story of Petit Cap mill. The miller had watched it escape burning thatches, yet something had happened at the dam. Shreds of moss, half floating and half moored, reminded him to close the reservoir, and he had just moved the chains when La Vigne startled him by speaking at his ear.
The miller recoiled, but almost in the action his face recovered itself. He wore a gray wool night-cap, and its tassel hung down over one lifted eyebrow.
"Pierre Sandeau, my friend," opened La Vigne with a whimper, "I followed you up here to weep with you."
"You did well," replied the miller bluntly, "for I am a ruined man with the parish to feed, unless the Seminaire fathers take pity on me."
"Yes, you have lost more than all of us," said La Vigne.
"I am not the man to measure losses and exult over my neighbors," declared the miller; "but how many pigs would you give to your girl's dower now, Guillaume?"
"None at all, my poor Pierre. At least she is not a widow."
"Nor ever likely to be now, since she has no dower to make her a wife."
"How could she be a wife without a husband? Taunt me no more about that pig. I tell you it is worse with you: you have no son."
"What do you mean? I have half a dozen."
"But Laurent is shot."
"Laurent—shot?" whispered the miller, relaxing his flabby face, and letting the candle sink downward until it spread their shadows on the floor.
"Yes, my friend," whimpered La Vigne. "I saw him through my window when the alarm was given. He was doubtless coming to save us all, for an officer was with him. Jules Martin's thatch was just fired. It was bright as sunrise against the hill, and the English saw our Laurent and his officer, no doubt, for they shot them down, and I saw it through my back window."
The miller sunk to his knees, and set the candle on the floor; La
Vigne approached and mingled night-cap tassels and groans with him.
"Oh, my son! And I quarreled with thee, Guillaume, about a pig, and made the children unhappy."
"But I was to blame for that, Pierre," wept La Vigne, "and now we have neither pig nor son!"
"Perhaps Montgomery's men have scalped him;" the miller pulled the night-cap from his own head and threw it on the floor in helpless wretchedness.
La Vigne uttered a low bellow in response, and they fell upon each other's necks and were about to lament together in true Latin fashion, when the wife of Montcalm's officer called to them.
She stood out from the shadow of the stone column, dead to all appearances, yet animate, and trying to hold up Angèle whose whole body lapsed downward in half unconsciousness. "Bring water," demanded Madame De Mattissart.
And seeing who had overheard the dreadful news, La Vigne ran to the flume-chamber, and the miller scrambled up and reached over him to dip the first handful. Both stooped within the door, both recoiled, and both raised a yell which echoed among high rafters in the attic above. The miller thought Montgomery's entire troop were stealing into the mill through the flume; for a man's legs protruded from the opening and wriggled with such vigor that his body instantly followed and he dropped into the water.
His beholders seized and dragged him out upon the floor; but he threw off their hands, sprang astride of the door-sill, and stretched himself to the flume mouth to help another man out of it.
La Vigne ran downstairs shrieking for the priest, as if he had seen witchcraft. But the miller stood still, with the candle flaring on the floor behind him, not sure of his son Laurent in militia uniform, but trembling with some hope.
It was Madame De Mattissart's cry to her husband which confirmed the miller's senses. She knew the young officer through the drenching and raggedness of his white and gold uniform; she understood how two wounded men could creep through any length of flume, from which a miller's son would know how to turn off the water. She had no need to ask what their sensations were, sliding down that slimy duct, or how they entered it without being seen by the enemy. Let villagers talk over such matters, and shout and exclaim when they came to hear this strange thing. It was enough that her husband had met her through every danger, and that he was able to stand and receive her in his arms.
Laurent's wound was serious. After all his exertions he fainted; but Angèle took his head upon her knee, and the fathers and mothers and neighbors swarmed around him, and Father Robineau did him doctor's service. Every priest then on the St. Lawrence knew how to dress wounds as well as bind up spirits.
Denys of Bonaventure, notwithstanding the excitement overhead, kept men at the basement loopholes until Montgomery had long withdrawn and returned to camp.
He then felt that he could indulge himself with a sight of his son-in-law, and tiptoed up past the colony of women and children whom the priest had just driven again to their rest on the second floor; past that sacred chamber on the third floor, and on up to the flume loft. There Monsieur De Bonaventure paused, with his head just above the boards, like a pleasant-faced sphinx.
"Accept my salutations, Captain De Mattissart," he said laughing. "I am told that you and this young militia-man floated down the mill-stream into this mill, with the French flag waving over your heads, to the no small discouragement of the English. Quebec will never be taken, monsieur."
Long ago those who found shelter in the mill dispersed to rebuild their homes under a new order of things, or wedded like Laurent and Angèle, and lived their lives and died. Yet, witnessing to all these things, the old mill stands to-day at Petit Cap, huge and cavernous; with its oasis of home, its milk-room, its square hoppers and flume-chamber unchanged. Daylight refuses to follow you into the blackened basement; and the shouts of Montgomery's sacking horde seem to linger in the mighty hollows overhead.
[Footnote 1: Wolfe forbade such barbarities, but Montgomery did not always obey. It was practiced on both sides.]