Marguerite De Roberval: A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier

by Thomas Guthrie Marquis

Then followed many weeks of agony. Through the long nights the wind howled about her hut, and she imagined she heard the voices of the demons of the island clamouring for her soul. With fiendish fury they yelled and shrieked round her frail little shelter, and often she fancied she could hear them trying to force an entrance. In the morning, with her child wrapped close and warm at her breast, she would go out and pace the cliff in all weathers, finding in the worst tumult of the elements a relief from the terrors of the night. Madness seemed settling down upon her, but the thought of her child bore her through it all, and the iron will of the De Robervals stood her in good stead.

Her vitality was marvellous. Something of the nature of her warrior ancestors seemed to have entered into her veins, and she was able to endure hardships such as had caused many a hardy soldier to succumb. The winter, which closed in upon her, bade fair to be no less severe than the preceding one, and now she had no one to help her in her daily tasks. With her own hands she had to break the bare branches, carry in fire-logs, and even cut down trees.

Her efforts to obtain fish were unsuccessful, although the ice, which occasionally formed about the shore, was soon broken up by the wind, and the birds, which still hovered about their island haunts, seemed to have no difficulty in procuring their food. Fortunately, the powder and shot, which they had carefully husbanded, still held out, and she had a sufficient supply to carry her through the winter. She was loth to destroy the only living creatures left upon the island. The hares, which leaped across her path, she had learned to love, and the warmly-clad northern birds had become very dear companions to her in her loneliness. But the terrible necessity that stared her in the face knew naught of mercy, and the winter stillness often re-echoed to the sound of her arquebuse. So expert had she become that she rarely wasted a charge of powder.

December passed, and January was nearly over, when the crowning sorrow which Fate had in store for this heroic woman fell upon her. She woke one morning to find her child cold and lifeless at her side. She seized him in her arms, pressed the little icy form close to her warm breast, but felt no answering warmth. Madly she kissed his lips and eyes and cheeks; she would not believe that he was dead. When at length she became convinced of the truth, she rushed wildly from the hut.

There had been a heavy snowfall during the night. She was in her bare feet, but she heeded not the cold. She rushed to the cliff, her child in her arms, her hair streaming about her shoulders. The end had at last come; there was nothing further to live for. Fate had conquered. She could but throw herself into the sea, and, with her baby in her arms, confront the good God who had seen fit to pursue her with such suffering. But as she stood upon the cliff, the rolling waves beating against the rocky hollows in the grey dawn seemed to her the hoarse voices of the demons. Once more she heard them calling for her soul, and for the soul of her child. She turned, and retraced her steps to her empty hut.

Laying the baby's body on the bed, she sat down beside it on the floor, her hands clasped about her knees. Silent she sat there, beside the fire she had heaped up to try to revive the child, till night fell, and the stars shone out bright and clear in the frosty sky. Silent she sat till they faded again before the grey light of dawn, and the morning of a new day broke. The wind had risen during the night, and the waves had been bellowing up the beach; but she heard neither wind nor waves. Dry-eyed she sat beside her long-dead fire, and felt not cold nor fear. Her faculties were deadened, her brain numbed, and it was not till her faithful companion, François the bear, tired of waiting to be taken notice of, pressed his nose against her clasped hands, and breathed his warm breath into her face, that she awoke from her trance.

She rose mechanically, turned to her brush heap, selected some dry sticks for her fire, and was about to place them on the embers when she noticed that it had long been dead. Her hands were like ice; she was chilled to the very bone; but the physical pain she now began to feel saved her. It called forth her energies; quickly she went to work to renew the fire, and the exertion drew her out of herself. As the flames blazed up and crackled through the dry branches, the life began to come back to her frozen limbs, and she roused herself to face her situation.

Her baby must be buried, and she must perform the task. She fashioned a rough coffin out of some planks, and tenderly laid the tiny body in it. As she fastened down the lid it seemed to her that every nail went through her own heart, but she did not weep. Her eyes had long since ceased to know the comfort of tears. Wearily she climbed the hillside with her little burden, wondering within herself how much longer it would be before she could lay her worn-out limbs beside those three rude graves, and be done with suffering for ever.

The baby must not lie alone; she would open Claude's grave, and lay him beside his father. The frozen ground was almost impenetrable, and it was long before she succeeded in digging a hole deep enough to admit the coffin. But patiently she toiled; slowly, with weak hands, hacking the soil, and scraping the lumps out of the grave. At last she had made a shallow opening which would hold the box, and when it was placed within she knelt beside it, holding the crucifix which had saved Claude from the waves, and prayed that their souls might rest in peace. A sudden impulse seized her. All that she had treasured, all that she had lived for, was in that grave. The crucifix was the last precious thing left to her, and she laid it upon the coffin of her child. Then, without trusting herself to kneel there longer, she rose hurriedly, cast back the frozen soil into the double grave, and piled large stones in a heap over the top, to prevent any animal scratching away the earth. Then she went back to her hut, and resumed the weary round of her hopeless, solitary life.

To a modern mind it may seem strange that reason did not utterly desert her; but the age in which she lived may help to account for the strength which sustained her. Though of noble blood, and tenderly nurtured, she had been accustomed to view scenes of death and hardship with a calm eye. Young as she was, she had beheld death in many forms; and the sieges which her uncle's castle had several times resisted had taught her something of a man's strength and endurance, which, coupled with a woman's tenacious vitality, made her doubly strong. Then, too, she had not been unfamiliar with loneliness. In her youthful days, before Marie de Vignan had come to live with her, she had often been left alone for weeks, with no one to relieve the monotony of her existence save old Bastienne and the other servants; and during these periods she had rarely spoken to any human being, save to issue some command. And now, though she was absolutely alone, the struggle for existence, and the presence of the young bear, her sole living companion, saved her reason. Sometimes, however, the unwonted sound of her own voice made her start and wonder if she who had spoken could really be one with the desolate creature who trod this snow-clad island, hopelessly scanning the horizon for some sign that there was a world other than the narrow one within whose limits she was hemmed.