The abbe shook his head musingly at Perrot, took the violin, and gathered it to his chin. At first he played as if in wait of something that eluded him. But all at once he floated into a powerful melody, as a stream creeps softly through a weir, and after many wanderings broadens suddenly into a great stream. He had found his theme. Its effect was striking. Through Iberville’s mind there ran a hundred incidents of his life, one chasing upon the other without sequence—phantasmagoria out of the scene—house of memory:
The light upon the arms of De Tracy’s soldiers when they marched up Mountain Street many years before—The frozen figure of a man standing upright in the plains—A procession of canoes winding down past Two Mountains, the wild chant of the Indians joining with the romantic songs of the voyageurs—A girl flashing upon the drawn swords of two lads—King Louis giving his hand to one of these lads to kiss—A lady of the Court for whom he might easily have torn his soul to rags, but for a fair-faced English girl, ever like a delicate medallion in his eye—A fight with the English in the Spaniards’ country—His father blessing him as he went forth to France—A dark figure taking a hundred shapes, and yet always meaning the same as when he—Iberville—said over the governor’s table in New York, “Foolish boy!”—A vast stretch of lonely forest, in the white coverlet of winter, through which sounded now and then the boom-boom of a bursting tree—A few score men upon a desolate northern track, silent, desperate, courageous; a forlorn hope on the edge of the Arctic circle, with the joy of conquest in their bones, and at their thighs the swords of men.
These are a few of the pictures, but the last of them had not to do with the past: a dream grown into a fact, shaped by the music, become at once an emotion and a purpose.
Iberville had now driven home the first tent-peg of a wonderful adventure. Under the spell of that music his body seemed to grow larger. He fingered his sword, and presently caught Perrot by the shoulder and said “We will do it, Perrot.”
Perrot got to his feet. He understood. He nodded and seized Iberville’s hand. “Bravo! There was nothing else to do,” he replied.
De Casson lowered his violin. “What do you intend?” he asked gravely.
Iberville took his great hand and pressed it. “To do what you will commend, abbe: at Hudson’s Bay to win back forts the English have taken, and get those they have built.”
“You have another purpose,” added De Casson softly.
“Abbe, that is between me and my conscience. I go for my king and country against our foes.”
“Who will go with you? You will lead?”