18 A Fight for a Kingdom

Devizac had just lifted the bottle to fill up the glasses again. He stopped with his elbow bent, and the wine continued to flow in a thin red thread into his glass.

A priest, tall, French, elderly, and seemingly severe of countenance, had entered the room. He stood for a few moments regarding us with what was at first a gaze of disapproval, tempered at last by a slight twinkle of the eye. Then he said:

“It is scarce fit for an officer of France and his prisoner to be roystering together in this unseemly and unholy fashion.”

Devizac replaced the bottle upon the table. Then he said in a tone of deprecation:

“What would you have. Father Michel? It is true that Lieutenant Charteris is my prisoner. Now what are the duties of an officer to his prisoner? Should I kill him? If such are your views, good father, I will even perform the task at once, lest I suffer in your opinion for dereliction of duty.—Charteris, prepare for death!”

He rose from the table and began to draw his sword. I guessed that Devizac knew his man.

“No,” said Father Michel, advancing, “you ask me what I would have, and I say I will not have that. But what I will have is a glass of that red wine, which must have a noble flavor, for I see it has been sadly reduced in quantity.”

“Your choice lay between the wine and the sword, father,” returned Devizac, bowing, “and you have chosen wisely. Father Michel, this, as you know, is our prisoner, who, I may add, is Lieutenant Charteris, one of the English colonials, and a heretic who is beyond all hope of your saving.”

“Then, since he is beyond the hope of salvation, we will even let him go to the devil in a comfortable way, and take our own ease meanwhile,” said Father Michel.

Then he sat down at the table, and Devizac poured a glass of wine for him. I looked at him with interest, and I said in my mind that he was a man of the world, of a cheerful heart, and ready to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. He drank his wine slowly, and evidently with a relish, though he did not smack his lips or depart otherwise from the gravity that is becoming a churchman and a man of years.

Devizac filled the priest’s glass again. Father Michel sipped it a little and then replaced it upon the table, but retained his hold upon the glass as if he intended to keep it ready for any quick call upon it that might be made by his palate. Then he turned his gaze, still with the faint twinkle in his eye, upon me and said:

“Thou art a descendant of the English, which is bad, and a heretic, which is worse. What hast thou to say in thine own defense?”

My head was tingling with the wine that I had drank, and there was a roaring in my ears, which caused me to resent his words, though I ought to have known better.

“It is you, not I, who are the heretic, if you will pardon me for speaking in terms of plainness, good father,” I replied.

“Add not the sin of blasphemy to all thy other sins,” said the priest, his look becoming severe. “The proof that thou art wrong lies in the fact that the Lord hath delivered thee into our hands.”

“Then,” said I, “if that be proof, St. Paul was a very great sinner, for the Lord delivered him into the hands of his enemies, and they did their will upon him.”

“Darest thou compare thyself to St. Paul?” asked the priest, who I think was becoming somewhat offended at my manner.

“Nay, nay. Father Michel,” said Devizac deprecatingly, “remember that even if our prisoner be of the Protestant faith, he is not devout enough in it to hurt.—Is it not so, lieutenant? Is your religion any great burden upon your mind?”

I was about to protest against Devizac’s defense of me, as well as Father Michel’s attack upon me, when I was interrupted by the return of the seigneur, who joined us at the table. Devizac poured a glass of wine for him. He drank it slowly, and I noticed how wonderfully similar his manner of drinking was to Father Michel’s. One was the soldier and huntsman and the other the priest, but the one, I knew not which, had caught much of his manner from the other.

“What was the matter in here, Father Michel?” at length asked the seigneur. “I thought I heard voices raised to an unusual pitch of loudness when I came in at the door.”

“I was seeking to arouse this youthful heretic to a true perception of his wickedness and lost condition,” replied Father Michel, “for into whatever depths one may sink there is yet a chance to rescue him so long as life lasts.”

“A most worthy purpose! A most worthy purpose, father, and it proceeds from the goodness of your heart,” said the seigneur, smiling at me, and then shaking his head as if in sadness, “but I fear that the task is hopeless. The men from the English colonies are strangely set in the ways of perversion and wickedness, and are given up to greed and to the new democracy, which is a compound of all crimes and follies, with no spice of any virtue.”

“Your words are harsh, but none too harsh, I fear,” replied the priest gloomily.

“They mock at our holy religion,” said the seigneur, and whether he was now speaking in jest or earnest I could not tell, “and at the divine right of the Lord’s anointed, our most gracious King Louis, Holy Virgin protect him! Nay, they mock even at their own King, and nothing that is old and honoured is sacred from their profaning touch.—Don’t be offended, lieutenant; I am merely speaking of the English collectively, and not of you individually.”

“It is so! it is so!” said the priest, the twinkle returning to his eye. “Can not we convert them with powder and the sword? The Marquis de Montcalm well knows the use of both.”

And nobly he uses them, “replied the seigneur; but these sons of the English swarm in their colonies as plentiful as the wild geese that sometimes darken the air in their flight. When we slay one, ten take his place.”

“They come like the locusts in Egypt,” said the father.

Then taking the bottle in his own hand, the seigneur filled his glass and that of Father Michel. They raised them high until the firelight flickered on their ruddy sides, and then drank their contents in silence. The wine having warmed them as well as us, we began a lively discussion of the war. Devizac was confident that the French would win. I think they began it to tease me, but soon we became very serious.

“Both our King and our Church seem to keep a firm grasp upon their own,” said Devizac.

“For the time,” said the seigneur, “for the time, but will it last? I would have all this mighty continent Catholic and French, but wherever the sons of France go the sons of England go too. The Frenchman is a soldier and the Englishman a trader. The soldier is a fine fellow, and worth his price against another soldier, but he is not fit to carry on war against the trader. Though he may always have sword and musket in hand, yet the trader will beat him in the end.”

“In particular when the trader knows how to use the musket and the sword also, and fears not to take them up,” I said, annoyed at the evident slur upon our people. The seigneur had known me so long now that he could talk to me as to an acquaintance and not as to a prisoner.

“They have not yet shown the proof of their knowledge,” said the priest.

“But neither is there an end to the war,” I replied. “They will yet come to Quebec. You will yet feel the edge of their sword.”

I was flushed with wine, or I would not have spoken in such a high fashion.

“Are you a good swordsman?” asked the seigneur.

“I have some acquaintance with the weapon,” I said, remembering with secret pride my duel with Spencer.

The seigneur knocked loudly upon the table with his fist.

Pierre entered.

“Bring me the two swords that hang in my bedroom,” said the seigneur.

Pierre returned in a few moments with the weapons, fine, well-made swords they were, too, for the French, I believe, have always been very skilled in the production of such things. The seigneur took them and handled them lovingly, bending the blades over his strong wrists, and running his forefinger lightly along the edges. Then he put them upon the table.

“They are just alike,” he said to me, “and you can take your choice. You say you are a swordsman. I am one, too, though in these later days I am more given to the use of the rifle than the blade, and we shall see who will win, English or French, Canadian or American. It is a quiet and peaceable test, such as two friends like you and I can make. See, I put these buttons upon the ends of the rapiers, and we can do each other no harm.”

I was willing, thinking it an honor to face him, and we prepared for the bout.

“Devizac,” said the seigneur, “look after Lieutenant Charteris; Father Michel, you will bear me up in this affair.”

Then we took the swords and faced each other.

“Take the south end of the room,” said the seigneur, “for your colonies lie to the south, while I take the north, which is Canada.”

Devizac and the priest cleared away the chairs and the table, and assumed their respective stations. Devizac, who seemed to have a fine appreciation of the situation, took a piece of charred wood from the fire and drew a black line down the middle of the room.

“This is the boundary line of Canada and the English colonies,” he said. “Now we shall see how each defends his own.”

The thing appealed to me in a much more forcible manner than it would have done had my head been cooler.

“Very well,” I said, “and let victory rest with the better man.”

“So be it,” said the seigneur, holding his weapon with a practiced hand.

I perceived that I had a formidable antagonist. But I was determined to win, for I felt the hot blood in my head.

We stood facing the black line, and the seigneur made a quick thrust at me. He was almost within my guard, and the button of his rapier would have countered upon my chest, but I managed barely in time to catch his edge upon my own. Then I made a return thrust, but he guarded well, and my blade was turned aside.

“Well done for both!” said Father Michel, who was watching the play of our weapons with the utmost interest. “We shall have a fierce war, it seems. An old head against young muscles.”

Our positions were unchanged.

Then occurred some rapid sword play, the blades flashing back and forth and gleaming like lightnings in the ruddy firelight. But nothing came of it. Neither could thrust the other back an inch. Then we paused to take breath and strength.

“A half glass of wine for each,” said Father Michel, matching word with action and pouring the wine for us. We drank it without taking our eyes off each other, and then resumed the contest.

The seigneur showed an abundance of agility for one of his years, and two or three times I thought I was about to force him back to save himself, but a leap aside or a twisting of the body would avert my triumph. Presently I saw a most excellent opening, and thrust straight at his breast. But with a sudden and dexterous turn of the wrist he swept my blade aside, and drove the button of his sword against my chest with such force that I almost fell, and when I recovered my balance my antagonist was across the line.

“The French are over the border,” said Father Michel joyfully. “The French invasion of the English provinces has begun, and may the invasion speedily become a conquest.”

He took another drink of the red wine and watched us with eager eyes.

I set my teeth hard and resolved to drive the enemy out of my territory. But I saw that it behooved me to be very wary. There was a satisfied twinkle in the seigneur’s eye, and that incited me to further effort. But he began again with such a furious assault upon me that, despite my best efforts at defense, I was driven back several feet farther. The priest’s ruddy countenance shone with satisfaction.

“It is a most prosperous invasion,” he cried, “and fortune as well as skill attends the righteous arms of France! Our vanguard is almost within sight of their town of Albany! We shall take that, and then New York, too, shall fall before our arms.”

Even Devizac, my second, looked pleased. But I had no right to find fault with him for it, as he was a Frenchman and an official enemy.

The pleased twinkle in the seigneur’s eyes deepened, and he attacked again with great vigor, but I was too cautious for him, and it should not be forgotten also that I possessed a fair modicum of skill. Presently, in his anxiety to penetrate farther into the enemy’s country, he lunged rashly, and I came back at him with much force and such directness of aim that I struck him on the chest and drove him halfway back to the boundary line.

Father Michel frowned.

“Caution, France, caution!” he said.

The twinkle disappeared from the seigneur’s eye. I think it must have reappeared in mine, for I felt a flush of satisfaction and returning confidence.

The severe exertion had partially cleared the effects of the wine from my head, which, however, had put more strength for the time in my muscles. My wrist felt like steel.

I began now to push him, handling my weapon warily, but giving him no rest nevertheless. I noticed that his breath was becoming somewhat shorter, and I redoubled my efforts against him, for now I saw that my youthful strength would overmatch him, seasoned and well preserved though he was. I pressed him back with certainty, though it was by inches. But the distance between us and the boundary line across which he had driven me at first narrowed steadily, and Father Michel’s face clouded more and more.

“Courage, France, courage!” he said. “Never relinquish your hold on the enemy’s territory! Thrust him back! Thrust him back!”

The seigneur was willing enough to thrust me back, but the ability was lacking then, for I pushed him so fiercely that he was hard put to it to defend himself. Our rapiers rang across each other until the room was filled with the whirring noise of steel against steel. But he could not withstand my advance. Presently he stood upon the boundary line, and if my success continued I would soon have him back in Canada, and then I would be the invader. My strength was now superior to his.

“Retreat no farther! retreat no farther!” exclaimed the priest in his excitement. “France never yields! Strike hard for King and Holy Church!”

The seigneur’s face was overcast, and chagrin lurked in his eye, but nevertheless I did not spare him. I drove him across the line and entered his territory. I was well into Canada, and was pushing him farther and farther back. He put all his strength into a last effort, and the sparks of fire leaped from our weapons as steel warded off steel. Then I caught his sword with mine and twisted it from his weakening hand.

As the sword rattled upon the floor I heard a loud shriek. There was the quick flutter of a woman’s dress, and the next moment Mlle. Louise, whom I had supposed to be elsewhere, rushed into the room and gazed at me with indignant eyes.

“What are you doing. Lieutenant Charteris?” she cried. “Fighting! You and my father!”

I had not looked forward to any such meeting as this; quite the contrary. I was confused, and my eyes fell before her gaze, while I protested that we were but trying the foils in sport. The seigneur backed me up in fair and honest style. So did Devizac and the good father, and there we all stood explaining and apologizing to one girl. She gave a glance or two at the empty bottles and glasses, and then seemed to understand our explanations quite well. She held out her hand to me and welcomed me as a guest, and not as a prisoner, to the Chateau de St. Maur. I was egotist enough to believe that my welcome was sincere, for she gave me a warm smile. We talked for awhile very gayly of New York and the people we knew there. Her presence seemed to bring a new atmosphere into the room—an atmosphere that was of the sunshine and summer roses. Presently she went away, taking the seigneur with her. When they had gone, Father Michel turned a gloomy gaze upon me.

“You have won in the fencing bout,” he said, “but, pish! there is nothing in such things. I have always despised omens and signs as handicraft of the devil, designed to cheat the minds of honest men.”

Then he, too, went out, and Devizac laughed as the door closed behind him.

“The good father will soon recover,” he said, and I knew that Devizac was right.

Then he asked Pierre to escort me to my room, or my cell, as he took pleasure in calling it, saying with a sly look or two that it was a pity I had fallen into the hands of such harsh jailers.

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