The Seats of the Mighty, Complete. Gilbert Parker
God didn’t make him. The devil laughed, and that laugh grew into M’sieu’ Doltaire. But brave!—no kicking pulse is in his body.”
“You will send for Voban—now?” I asked softly.
He was leaning against the door as he spoke. He reached and put the tumbler on a shelf, then turned and opened the door, his face all altered to a grimness.
“Attend here, Labrouk!” he called; and on the soldier coming, he blurted out in scorn, “Here’s this English captain can’t go to supper without Voban’s shears to snip him. Go fetch him, for I’d rather hear a calf in a barn-yard than this whing-whanging for ‘M’sieu’ Voban!’ ”
He mocked my accent in the last two words, so that the soldier grinned, and at once started away. Then he shut the door, and turned to me again, and said more seriously, “How long have we before Monsieur comes?”—meaning Doltaire.
“At least an hour,” said I.
“Good,” he rejoined, and then he smoked while I sat thinking.
It was near an hour before we heard footsteps outside; then came a knock, and Voban was shown in.
“Quick, m’sieu’,” he said. “M’sieu’ is almost at our heels.”
“This letter,” said I, “to Mademoiselle Duvarney,” and I handed four: hers, and those to Governor Dinwiddie, to Mr. Washington, and to my partner.
He quickly put them in his coat, nodding. The soldier—I have not yet mentioned his name—Gabord, did not know that more than one passed into Voban’s hands.
“Off with your coat, m’sieu’,” said Voban, whipping out his shears, tossing his cap aside, and rolling down his apron. “M’sieu’ is here.”
I had off my coat, was in a chair in a twinkling, and he was clipping softly at me as Doltaire’s hand turned the handle of the door.
“Beware—to-night!” Voban whispered.
“Come to me in the prison,” said I. “Remember your brother!”
His lips twitched. “M’sieu’, I will if I can.” This he said in my ear as Doltaire entered and came forward.
“Upon my life!” Doltaire broke out. “These English gallants! They go to prison curled and musked by Voban. VOBAN—a name from the court of the King, and it garnishes a barber. Who called you, Voban?”
“My mother, with the cure’s help, m’sieu’.”
Doltaire paused, with a pinch of snuff at his nose, and replied lazily, “I did not say ‘Who called you VOBAN?’ Voban, but who called you here, Voban?”
I spoke up testily then of purpose: “What would you have, monsieur? The citadel has better butchers than barbers. I sent for him.”
He shrugged his shoulders and came over to Voban. “Turn round, my Voban,” he said. “Voban—and such a figure! a knee, a back like that!”
Then, while my heart stood still, he put forth a finger and touched the barber on the chest. If he should touch the letters! I was ready to seize them—but would that save them? Twice, thrice, the finger prodded Voban’s breast, as if to add an emphasis to his words. “In Quebec you are misplaced, Monsieur le Voban. Once a wasp got into a honeycomb and died.”
I knew he was hinting at the barber’s resentment of the poor Mathilde’s fate. Something strange and devilish leapt into the man’s eyes, and he broke out bitterly,
“A honey-bee got into a nest of wasps—and died.”
I thought of the Scarlet Woman on the hill.
Voban looked for a moment as if he might do some wild thing. His spirit, his devilry, pleased Doltaire, and he laughed. “Who would have thought our Voban had such wit? The trade of barber is double-edged. Razors should be in fashion at Versailles.”
Then he sat down, while Voban made a pretty show of touching off my person. A few minutes passed so, in which the pealing of bells, the shouting of the people, the beating of drums, and the calling of bugles came to us clearly.
A half hour afterwards, on our way to the Intendant’s palace, we heard the Benedictus chanted in the Church of the Recollets as we passed—hundreds kneeling outside, and responding to the chant sung within:
“That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hands of all that hate us.”
At the corner of a building which we passed, a little away from the crowd, I saw a solitary cloaked figure. The words of the chant, following us, I could hear distinctly:
“That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve Him without fear.”
And then, from the shadowed corner came in a high, melancholy voice the words:
“To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Looking closer, I saw it was Mathilde.
Doltaire smiled as I turned and begged a moment’s time to speak to her.
“To pray with the lost angel and sup with the Intendant, all in one night—a liberal taste, monsieur; but who shall stay the good Samaritan!”
They stood a little distance away, and I went over to her and said, “Mademoiselle—Mathilde, do you not know me?”
Her abstracted eye fired up, as there ran to her brain some little sprite out of the House of Memory and told her who I was.
“There were two lovers in the world,” she said: “the Mother of God forgot them, and the devil came. I am the Scarlet Woman,” she went on; “I made this red robe from the curtains of Hell—”
Poor soul! My own trouble seemed then as a speck among the stars to hers. I took her hand and held it, saying again, “Do you not know me? Think, Mathilde!”
I was not sure that she had ever seen me, to know me, but I thought it possible; for, as a hostage, I had been much noticed in Quebec, and Voban had, no doubt, pointed me out to her. Light leapt from her black eye, and then she said, putting her finger on her lips, “Tell all the lovers to hide. I have seen a hundred Francois Bigots.”
I looked at her, saying nothing—I knew not what to say. Presently her eye steadied to mine, and her intellect rallied. “You are a prisoner, too,” she said; “but they will not kill you: they will keep you till the ring of fire grows in your head, and then you will make your scarlet robe, and go out, but you will never find It—never. God hid first, and then It hides. … It hides, that which you lost—It hides, and you can not find It again. You go hunting, hunting, but you can not find It.”
My heart was pinched with pain. I understood her. She did not know her lover now at all. If Alixe and her mother at the Manor could but care for her, I thought. But alas! what could I do? It were useless to ask her to go to the Manor; she would not understand.
Perhaps there come to the disordered mind flashes of insight, illuminations and divinations, greater than are given to the sane, for she suddenly said in a whisper, touching me with a nervous finger, “I will go and tell her where to hide. They shall not find her. I know the woodpath to the Manor. Hush! she shall own all I have—except the scarlet robe. She showed me where the May-apples grew. Go,”—she pushed me gently away—“go to your prison, and pray to God. But you can not kill Francois Bigot, he is a devil.” Then she thrust into my hands a little wooden cross, which she took from many others at her girdle. “If you wear that, the ring of fire will not grow,” she said. “I will go by the woodpath, and give her one, too. She shall live with me: I will spread the cedar branches and stir the fire. She shall be safe. Hush! Go, go softly, for their wicked eyes are everywhere, the were-wolves!”
She put her fingers on my lips for an instant, and then, turning, stole softly