John Lespérance

“ The presence of Pauline would have been no obstacle. The presence of her father would have been no obstacle. The presence of her father would have been rather an incentive. But at the supreme moment, the shadow of Batoche fell upon the lighted door, like a blight of fate, the current of all their thoughts were turned elsewhere, and the exquisite opportunity was lost.
And now he was gone. Alas! It was only too true to say that neither he nor she knew what future lay in store for him. The soldier always carries his life in his hands, and the chances of death are tenfold in his case. ”

“ But Batoche had no thought for Velours to-night. His mind was entirely occupied with little Blanche who, having gone into Quebec upon some errands, as was her wont, had not yet returned.
The wind moaned dismally around the little hut, at times giving it a wrench as if it would topple it from its foundations. The spruces and firs in the neighborhood creaked and tossed in the breath of the tempest, and there was a dull, heavy roar from the head of the Falls. Suddenly, amid all these sounds, the solitary old man's quick ear caught a peculiar cry coming from the direction of the road. ”

“ How often it stands in good stead the headlong rashness of man amid the wildering strokes of fate!
Genuine gaiety resumed its sway, and the work of taffy-making was taken up again. Cary was fed with choice titbits until he was fairly satisfied and had to beg for quarter. Then, taking up a large roll of the tire, Zulma twisted it into a series of elegant and intricate plaits. The long coil flashed like a beautiful brazen serpent, as she held it up to the light, and set it beside her own golden hair.
"These are Saint Catherine's tresses!" she cried. "Who will wear them, you or I, Pauline?" ”

“ He felt that it would be a mockery of fate that he should have travelled so far through the forests of Maine and over the desert plains of the Chaudière, suffering hunger, thirst and fatigue, and facing death in every shape, to see what he had seen, to hear what he had heard, the night before, and then be denied the fruition of eye and ear forever.
It must be remembered that Cary Singleton was barely one-and-twenty years of age, and that in him the enthusiasm of youth was intensified by an exuberant vigor of health. ”

“ I have seen this beautiful country snatched from France. For sixteen long years I have seen the wolves at work tearing from us the last shreds of our patrimony. They killed my daughter. They have made an outcast of me. I have prayed that the day of vengeance might come. I knew it would come. I heard it coming like distant thunder in the voice of the waterfall. I heard it coming in the wild throbbings of my violin. And, thank God, it has come at last! These Americans advance to meet us. They stretch out the right hand of fraternity. They unfurl the flag of liberty. ”

“ I have heard the boom of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the hiss of rockets, the wail of the wounded, the shriek of the dying, the malediction over the dead. Then a long interval, and after it, I have heard the crackling of flames, the cry of the hungry, the moan of those who suffered, the lamentation of the sick, and the loud, terrible voice of insurrection. And all this in the camp of our friends, while within the city, where the Wolves are gathered, I have heard the clink of glasses, the song of revelry, the shout of defiance, the threat against treason,—mark the word, my friends. ”

“ That smothered, saucy laugh which bubbled on her red, ripe lips was an echo of the peal which greeted Hardinge when he pronounced the name of "Zulma," at the road gate. And as she rolled her fine head slowly to and fro on the velvet bosses of the back of her chair, was she not meditating some further design on the heart of the loyal soldier? Conspiracies deeper than that, designs of love that have rocked kingdoms to their foundation have been formed by languid beauties, recumbent in the soft recesses of their easy chairs. ”

“ Batoche seemed to divine the secret thought of his guest, and put him immediately at his ease by saying:
"I am a poor solitary being, M. Belmont, severed from all the world, cut off from the present, living only in the past, and hoping for nothing in the future except the welfare of this little orphan girl. Nobody cares for me, and I have cared for nobody, but I am ready to do you any service in my power. I have learned a secret to-night, and—who knows?—perhaps life has changed for me during the last hour." ”

“ The seasons for him were marked by the variation of these sounds—the thunderous roar when the spring freshets or the autumn rain-falls came, the gentle purling when the summer droughts parched the stream to a narrow thread, and the plaintive moan, as of electric wires, when the ice-bound cascade was touched upon by certain winter winds.
Batoche's devotion to this cataract may have been exaggerated, although only in keeping, as we shall see, with his whole character, but really the Falls of Montmorenci are among the most beautiful works of Nature on this continent. ”

“ The forenoon thus wore away. The sky kept on thickening and lowering until it broke into a snow-storm. A light east wind arose, and the white flakes tossed and whirled, blotting out the lines of the horizon. The heights of Levis melted in the distance, the bed of the river was surmounted by a wall of vapor, and the tall rock of the citadel wavered like a curtain of gauze. What a delicious sense of isolation is produced by an abundant snowfall. It hems you in from all the world. You extend your hand feeling for your neighbor, and you touch nothing but a palpable mist. ”

“ Here Sieur Sarpy reined in his horse.
"Do you see them?" exclaimed Eugene, standing up in the sleigh, and pointing across the river.
"I see nothing," responded his father. "The snow is blowing in our faces, and my old eyes are very feeble."
Zulma remained buried in her buffalo robes and said nothing, but her eyes were fixed intently at the distant summits, and her face bore an expression of the most earnest interest.
"They are moving up and down," resumed Eugene, "as if busy storing their provisions and ammunition. But they are very indistinct. I wonder if they see us better than we see them?" ”

“ Stories are told, songs are sung, tricks are played. There is dancing in the lighted hall; there is love making in the dark corners; and to crown the festival there is a sleigh-ride under the cold moon, when the music of the bells, the tramping of the hoofs, the shouts of the drivers, and the shrill whistle of the Northern blast, are to the buoyant spirits of the young promenaders like draughts of exhilarating wine.
In Canada, all these pleasant rural ceremonies of the old countries are well preserved. And it is the only portion of this continent where they are to be met with. ”

“ The lady should have waved her kerchief in token of a tryst and cantered down the path to meet her cavalier. Instead of which he sat dazed in his saddle, and she quietly walked her pony away from the opening of the avenue, and slowly passed along a narrow road through her father's grounds.
There is often a revelation in disappearance, as there is a light in darkness. Scarcely had he lost sight of the lady rider than Cary felt an irresistible impulse to meet her and discover who she was. Now that she was gone, the suspicion arose again that perhaps she was the loved one whom he sought. ”

“ Sometimes I hear the owl's cry or the bark of the wolf. At other times, I hear the great noise of the tempest. Sometimes again there is not a sound outside, except that of the waterfall. While I am awake I see at the foot, of my bed the image of my mother. She smiles on me and blesses me. Then I lie down and sleep till morning."
The above is a cold rehearsal of the words which the child uttered. There was a pathos in them beyond all words that caused Zulma to shed copious tears.
"Dear little thing," she exclaimed, clasping her to her bosom. "You shall be no longer alone. ”

“ It is only true to say that nobody in the Menuet elicited more sympathy and admiration than Pauline Belmont. The perfection of her dancing, the sweetness of her face, the modesty of her demeanour, and the childlike reliance which she seemed to place on the cooperation of her stalwart partner, Roderick Hardinge, were traits which could not pass unobserved, and more than once when she swung back into position after the culmination of a figure, she was greeted with murmurs of applause. ”

“ The stay of the Continental army at Pointe-aux-Trembles was only temporary. Its stay around Quebec, after it returned there, would be at least rather precarious. It was, therefore, hardly desirable that one of its officers should be known to have contracted other than military engagements which might bind his good name among the vicissitudes of a most hazardous war. Thus there was a dash of calculation in the romance of Cary's love, a reserve of good sense amid all the impetuousness which buoyed his heart. It is ever thus with men. They are rarely whole lovers. ”

“ Pauline had few or no misgivings. Her little being was all heart, and her mind could not grasp the significance of the political events which passed before her eyes, and on which her future more or less depended. For her, loyalty to France consisted simply in reverence and obedience towards her father. For her, fealty to the King did not extend much beyond love for his handsome, manly representative, Roderick Hardinge. Happy woman that need not walk beyond the beautiful round of the affections. Noble woman whose heroism is purely of the heart, not of the head. ”

“ Zulma did not understand, but Sieur Sarpy understood very well.
"Yes, the Wolves, my dear," he said with a sad smile.
"Oh, my grandfather does not fear the Wolves. The Wolves fear him. They cannot catch him, no matter what great dangers he may be in. He may suffer, he may be wounded, but he will not die except near our cabin at the Falls, under the eye of my mother and with a blessing for me. He has often told me this at night as he held me on his knee, and I believe all that my grandfather says. No, Mademoiselle, he is not dead and will soon arrive to console you." ”

“ There are many species of martyrdom, but that of mere love is the grandest in the concentration of its own singleness.
After Roderick's departure, Pauline felt the need of being alone for a brief period in order to go over quietly in her own conscience all the varied pathetic scenes of that evening. It was not a process of analysis. Her mind was incapable of that. It was merely a quiet rehearsal of all the facts, that their vividness might be made more vivid, and their effect brought home more tenderly to her heart. ”

“ At that favored period of existence so little appreciated while it lasts, and which, when it is gone, is the object of bitter lamentation for the rest of life, even hardship gives zest to enjoyment when the heart is buoyed—as what youthful heart is not?—by the sweet potency of woman's love. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, disease, and poverty are only trifles that are laughed at, so long as there is seen in the background of it all the lambent light of tender eyes speaking, as nothing else can, the language of the devoted heart. ”

“ Zulma was seemingly in her usual health, and as she stood with her grey felt Montespan hat and azure plume, and brilliant cashmere shawl tightly drawn across her shoulders, her beauty shone in its queenliest aspects. No fitter companion for a soldier could well be pictured. Cary evidently felt this, as his frequent glances of admiration testified, and there were moments when to the observer he would have appeared as making the most ardent declarations of love. ”

“ They stepped out of the house and joined a crowd of men, women and children bending their steps to the ramparts. When they reached the walls, they found them already lined with people talking and gesticulating in the most excited manner. Some spoke aloud, some shouted at the top of their lungs, some waved their hats, some fluttered their handkerchiefs attached to the end of their walking sticks, like flags, and some openly beckoned a welcome to the rebel host. There stood Arnold's army spread out before them, deployed into a loose double column on the Plains of Abraham. ”

“ Little did Pauline know of the great world outside. Her home was all the universe to her, and that home centred in her father. Mother she had none. Sisters and brothers had died when she was a child. She had spent her youth in the convent of the gentle Ursulines, and now that she had finished her education, she had come to dedicate her life to the solace of her father. M. Belmont was still in the prime of life, being barely turned of fifty, but he had known many sorrows, domestic, social and political, and the only joy of his life was his darling daughter. ”

“ Marriage for woman seems to alter the form, color, scent and effect of material things, giving them a character of pathos, if not of sadness, which they never wore in the pleasant days when the body owed no service to a master, and the mind was, in very literalness, fancy-free.
With her child in her arms—the flesh-and-blood pledge of her altered life—the young woman strayed away along the avenues of the forest, and out into the open spaces, until she reached the skirt of the high road, fully half a mile from Batoche's hut. ”

“ In spite of the cheering words of the pastor, Zulma drove homeward with a heavy heart. She spoke not a word to her servant. Instead of raising her face to the storm and allowing the flakes to beat upon it, as was her wont, when her spirits were high, she kept her veil down, and the handkerchief which she frequently drew from under it gave proof that she was silently weeping. It often happens, that the most boisterous, lofty women bear their grief in unostentatious quiet, giving it a more forcible relief from contrast. Thus was it in the present instance with Zulma. ”

“ From the far off mountains, the clouds of murky vapour that lifted and rolled away, leaving the purple summits towering up to receive the first kiss of the rosy dawn and the last embrace of the golden sunset, were emblems of the winter's gloom replaced by that spring-tide brightness which aroused new hopes and a revived interest in the souls of men. The crocus of the glen, the anemone of the prairie, the cress of the sheltered waters, the hum of the first insect, the twitter from the mossy nest, the murmur of forest streams, were all so many types of human rejuvenescence and animation. ”

“ As she began the descent, the gloom and solitude of the gorge rather agitated the nerves of Zulma, and she stimulated her horse in order to pass through the bridge as rapidly as possible. Her eyes glanced over every point of the ravine, and it was with a sigh of relief that she approached the bridge without seeing any human being. But suddenly, as the horse's hoofs touched the edge of the planked floor, the animal grew restive, tossed up his head, balanced right and left in the traces, and gave other unmistakeable signs of danger ahead. ”

“ At times a shadow would flit over the delicate features, but it would soon be replaced by a glamor of serenity, until finally her whole demeanor settled into an air of prayerful content. Her hands joined upon her knee, her brow was bent, and her lips murmured words of gratitude. Beautiful Pauline! Sitting there with inclined body, and her whole being divided between her love on the earth and her duty to heaven, she was the true type of the loveable woman.
It was eleven o'clock at the small ivory clock over the mantel, when a scratch was heard at the door. ”

“ Unseen through the storm, the riflemen of Virginia advanced towards the grey walls of the devoted town. Unheard through the tempest, the garrison of the ancient capital moved to the gates and ramparts. Unseen and unheard, the armies of Arnold and Montgomery, which had now combined, were making their last preparations to depart from Pointe-aux-Trembles and march for the final catastrophe in this dread tragedy of war. ”