The False Chevalier Part 1

The False Chevalier.

by William Douw Lighthall.

PREFATORY NOTE

This story is founded on a packet of worm-eaten letters and doc.u.ments found in an old French-Canadian house on the banks of the St. Lawrence.

The romance they rudely outline, its intrigues, its brilliancy of surroundings, its intensity of feelings, when given the necessary touches of history and imagination, so fascinated the writer that the result was the present book. A packet of doc.u.ments of course is not a novel, and the reader may be able to guess what is mine and what is likely to have been the scanty limit of the original hint.

The student of history will recognise my debt to many authorities; among whom the chief are Paul Lacroix and Taine. I wish it distinctly understood that the person attacked in the doc.u.ments in question is not the hero of this narrative.

W. D. L.

THE FALSE CHEVALIER

CHAPTER I

THE FUR-TRADER'S SON

The son of the merchant Lecour was a handsome youth, and there was great joy in the family at his coming home to St. Elphege. For he was going to France on the morrow; it was with that object that his father had sent to town for him--the little walled town of Montreal.

It was evening, early in May, of the year 1786. According to an old custom of the French-Canadians, the merchant, surrounded by his family, was bestowing upon his son the paternal blessing. It was a touching sight--the patriarchal ceremony of benediction.

The father was a fine type of the peasant. His features might, in the strong chiaroscuro of the candle-light, have stood as model for some church fresco of a St. Peter. His dress was of grey country homespun, cut in a long coat, and girded by a many-coloured arrow-pattern sash, and on his feet he wore a pair of well-worn beef-skin moca.s.sins.

The son was some twenty years of age, and his mien and dress told of the better social advantages of the town. Indeed, his costume, though somewhat worn, had marks of good fashion.

His younger sister (for he had two, of whom one was absent), and his mother, a lively, black-eyed woman, who dressed and bore herself ambitiously for her station, gazed on him in fond pride as he knelt.

"My son," the merchant said reverently, his hands outstretched over his boy, "the Almighty keep and guard thee; may the blessing of thy father and thy mother follow thee wherever thou goest."

"Amen," the son responded.

He rose and stood before his parent with bent head.

The old man exhorted him gravely on the dangers before him--on the ruffians and lures of Paris, and the excitements of youth. He warned him to attend to his religious duties, and to do credit to his family and their condition in life by respectful and irreproachable conduct. "Never forget," he concluded, in words which the young man remembered in after years, "that the Eternal Justice follows us everywhere, and calls us to exact account, either on earth or in the after life, for all our acts."

But here Lecour's solemn tone ceased, and he continued--"Now, Germain, I must explain to you more closely the business on which I have sent for you so suddenly. The North-West Company, who, as you know, command the fur-trade of Canada, have word that a new fashion just introduced into Paris has doubled the demand for beaver and tripled the price. They are hurrying over all their skins by their ship which sails in ten days to London from Quebec. I have s.p.a.ce on a vessel which goes direct to Dieppe the day after to-morrow, and can therefore forestall them by about two weeks. I have gathered my winter stock into the boats you will see at our landing; and your mother, who has always been so eager to send you to France, has persuaded me to have you as my supercargo. Go, my boy; it is a great opportunity to see the world."

"Yes, my Germain, at last," wife Lecour exclaimed joyfully, throwing her arms around his neck, "at last you will set eyes on Versailles, and my dreams about you will come true!"

The youth himself was in a daze of smiles and tears.

The chamber in which they were was the living-room of the house. Its low ceiling of heavy beams, its spotlessly sanded floor, carpeted with striped _catalogne_, its pine table, and home-made chairs of elm, were common sights in the country. But a tall, bra.s.s-faced London clock in one corner, a cupboard fuller than usual of blue-pattern stone-ware in another, a large copper-plate of the "Descent from the Cross," and an ebony and ivory crucifix on the walls, were indications of more than average prosperity.

So thin was population throughout Canada in those days that to leave the banks of the St. Lawrence almost anywhere was to leave human habitation.

The hamlet of St. Elphege was part of the half-wild parish of Repentigny. The cause of its existence was its position some miles up the a.s.sumption, as a gateway of many smaller rivers tributary to the latter, which itself was tributary to the River of Jesus; and that in turn, less than a mile further on, to the vast St Lawrence. It flourished on the trade of wandering tribes from up the Achigan, the Lac-Ouareau, the St Esprit, and the Rouge, and on the sale of supplies to rude settlers above and the farmers below. It flourished by the energy of one man--this man, its founder, the Merchant Lecour. He had started life with small prospects; his ideas were of the simplest, and he was at first even a complete stranger to writing and figures. In his youth a common soldier in the levies of the Marquis de Montcalm on the campaigns towards lake Champlain, he had acquired favour with his colonel by his steadiness, had been given charge of a canteen, and in dispensing brandy to his comrades had found it possible to sell a few small articles. The defence of New France against the British collapsed on the invest.i.ture of Montreal by Sir Jeffrey Amherst in 1760. The French army surrendered, and part of it was shipped back to the motherland. Lecour remained, and shouldering a pedlar's pack, plodded about the country selling red handkerchiefs, sashes, and jack-knives to the peasantry. Being attracted by the convenience of the portage for dealings with the Indians of the north, he selected a spot in the forest and built a little log dwelling. Success followed from the first.

Beaver-skins rose into fabulous demand in Europe for c.o.c.ked hats, and made the fortunes of all who supplied them. The streams behind Lecour's post were teeming with beaver-dams. He easily kept his monopoly of the trade, and several times a year would send a fleet of boats down to Quebec, which returned with goods imported from Europe. Finally he extended his dealings throughout the Province into varied branches of business, and "the Merchant of St. Elphege" became a household name with the French-Canadians. The home of the Lecours--half dwelling, half vaulted warehouse--was one of four capacious provincial stone cottage buildings, standing about a quadrangular yard, each bearing high up on its peak a date and brief inscription, one of which read "a Dieu la Gloire!"--"To G.o.d the Glory."

Just at the end of the family scene previously described, a noise was heard without, the latch was lifted, and a troop of Lecour's neighbours and dependants pushed in, an old fiddler at their head, who, clattering forward in _sabots_, removed his blue _tuque_ from his head, and politely bowed to Lecour.

"Father," he said, "these young people ask your permission to give a dance in honour of Monsieur Germain."

The Lecours appreciated the honour; the room was cleared, music struck up, and festivity was soon in progress. What a display of neat ankles and deft feet in moca.s.sins! What a clattering of _sabots_ and shuffling of "beefs"! The perspiration rolled off the brow of the musician, and young Lecour was whirling round like a madcap with the daughter of the ferryman of Repentigny, when the latch was again lifted, and the door silently opened.

Every woman set up a shriek. The threshold was crowded with Indians in warpaint!

All the settlers knew that paint and its dangers.

The dancers drew back to one side of the room, and some opened the door of the warehouse adjoining and took refuge in its vaulted shadows. But Lecour himself, the former soldier, was no man to tremble. "Come in," he said, without betraying a trace of any feeling.

Seven chiefs stalked grimly across the floor in single file, carrying their tomahawks and knives in their hands, their great silver treaty medals hanging from their necks, and their brightly dyed eagle feathers quivering above their heads, and six sat down opposite Lecour on the floor. Their leader, Atotarho, Grand Chief of Oka, stood erect and silent, an expression of warlike fierceness on his face.

"Atotarho!" exclaimed the merchant.

"It is I," the Grand Chief answered. "Where is the young man?"

"Here," replied Germain, stepping forward with a sangfroid which pleased his father. He faced the powerful Indian.

Atotarho shook his tomahawk towards the ceiling, uttered a piercing war-whoop, and commenced to execute the war-dance, chanting this song in his native Six-Nation tongue--

"Our forefathers made the rule and said: 'Here they are to kindle a fire; here at the edge of the woods.'"

One of the chiefs drummed on a small tom-tom. The chant continued--

"Show me the man!

"Hail, my grandsires; now hearken while your grand-children cry unto you, you who established the Great League. Come back, ye warriors, and help us.

"Come back, ye warriors, and sit about our Council. Lend us your magic tomahawks. Lend us your arrows of flint. Lend us your knives of jade. I am the Great Chief, but ye are greater chiefs than I.

"Of old time the nations wandered and warred.

"Ye were wonderful who established the Great Peace.

"a.s.suredly six generations before the pale-faces appeared, ye smoked the redstone pipe together, giving white wampum to show that war would cease.

"Thenceforth ye bound the nations with a Silver Chain; ye built the Long House; ye established the Great League.

"First Hiawatha of the Onondaga nation proposed it; then Dekanawidah of the Mohawks joined him; then Atotarho, my mighty ancestor.

"First the Mohawks; then their younger brothers, the Oneidas, joined them; then the Cayugas; then the Onondagas, then the Senecas; and then the Tuscaroras were added. Victorious were the SIX NATIONS!"