Shadows on the Rock (16 page)

Count Frontenac sat at the writing-table in his long room, driving his quill across sheets of paper. He was finishing a
report to Pontchartrain, the Minister, which was to go by Le Soleil d’Afrique, sailing now in three days. Auclair stood by
the fireplace, where the birch logs were smouldering, — it was now the end of October. He was remarking to himself that his
master, often so put about by trifles, could bear with calmness a crushing disappointment.

All summer the Count had been waiting for his release from office, had confidently expected a letter summoning him to
return to France to fill some post worthy of his past services.

When the King had sent him out here nine years ago, it had been to save Canada — nothing less. The fur trade was
completely demoralized, and the Iroquois were murdering French colonists in the very outskirts of Montreal. The Count had
accomplished his task. He had chastised the Indians, restored peace and order, secured the safety of trade. He was now in
his seventy-eighth year, and although he had repeatedly asked for his recall to France, the King had made no recognition of
his services beyond sending him the Cross of St. Louis last autumn.

It was sometimes hinted that there was a personal reason for the King’s neglect. There was an old story that because
Madame de Montespan had been Count Frontenac’s mistress before she became King Louis’s, His Majesty disliked the sight of
the Count. But Madame de Montespan had long ago fallen out of favour; she had been living in retirement for many years and
never came to Court. The King himself was no longer young. Auclair doubted whether one old man would remember an affair of
youthful gallantry against another old man, — when the woman herself was old and long forgotten.

He was thinking of this as he stood by the fire, awaiting his master’s pleasure. At last the Governor pushed back his
papers and turned to him.

“Euclide,” he began, “I am afraid I cannot promise you much for the future. When the last ships came in, I had no doubt
that I should go home on one of them, — and you and your daughter with me. By La Vengeance the Minister sends me a letter
concerning the peace of Rijswijk, but ignores my petition for recall. He assures me of His Majesty’s esteem, and of his
desire to reward my services more substantially in the future. The future, for a man of my age, is an inconsiderable matter.
His Majesty prefers that I shall die in Quebec.”

The Count rose and walked to the window behind his desk, where he stood looking down at the ships anchored in the river,
already loading for departure. As he stood there lost in reflection, Auclair thought he seemed more like a man revolving
plans for a new struggle with fortune than one looking back upon a life of brilliant failures. The Count had the bearing of
a fencer when he takes up the foil; from his shoulders to his heels there was intention and direction. His carriage was his
unconscious idea of himself, — it was an armour he put on when he took off his night-cap in the morning, and he wore it all
day, at early mass, at his desk, on the march, at the Council, at his dinner-table. Even his enemies relied upon his
strength.

“I have never been a favourite,” he said, turning round suddenly. “I have not the courtier’s address. Without that, a
military man cannot go far nowadays. Perhaps I offended His Majesty by trying to teach him geography. Nothing is more
unpopular at Court than the geography of New France. They like to think of Quebec as isolated, French, and Catholic. The
rest of the continent is a wilderness, and they prefer to disregard it. Any advance to the westward costs money — and Quebec
has already cost them enough.”

The Count returned to his desk, sat down, and went on talking in the impersonal, remote tone which he often adopted with
his apothecary. Indeed, Auclair’s chief service to his patron was not to administer drugs, but to listen occasionally, when
the Governor felt lonely, to talk of places and persons, — talk which would have been incomprehensible to anyone else in
Kebec.

“After my reappointment to Canada I had two audiences with His Majesty. The first was at Versailles, when he was full of
a project to seize New York and the Atlantic seaports from the English. I was not averse to such an enterprize, but I
explained some of the difficulties. With a small fleet and a few thousand regulars, I would gladly have undertaken it.

“My second audience was at Fontainebleau, shortly before we embarked from La Rochelle. The King received me very
graciously in his cabinet, but he was no longer in a conqueror’s mood; he had consulted the treasury. When I referred to the
project he had advanced at our previous meeting, he glanced at the clock over his fireplace and remarked that it was the
hour for feeding the carp. He asked me to accompany him. An invitation to attend His Majesty at the feeding of the carp is,
of course, a compliment. We went out to the carp basins. I like a fine pond of carp myself, and those at Fontainebleau are
probably the largest and fiercest in France. The pages brought baskets of bread, and His Majesty threw in the first loaves.
The carp there are monsters, really. They came grunting and snorting like a thousand pigs. They piled up on each other in
hills as high as the rim of the basin, with all their muzzles out; they caught a loaf and devoured it before it could touch
the water. Not long before that, a caretaker’s little girl fell into the pond, and the carp tore her to pieces while her
father was running to the spot. Some of them are very old and have an individual renown. One old creature, red and rusty
down to his belly, they call the Cardinal.

“Well, after the ravenous creatures had been fed by the royal hand, the King accompanied me a little way down the
chestnut avenue. He wished me God-speed and said adieu. I took my departure by the great gate, where my carriage waited, and
the King went back to the carp pond. That was my last interview with my royal master. That was the end of his bold project
to snatch the seaports from the English and make this continent a French possession, as it should be. I sailed without
troops, without money, to do what I could. Unfortunately for you, I brought you with me.” The Count unlocked a drawer of his
desk. He took out a leather bag and dropped it on his pile of correspondence. From its weight and the sound it made, Auclair
judged it contained gold pieces.

“When I persuaded you to come out here,” the Governor continued, “I promised you a return. I have already seen the
captain of Le Soleil d’Afrique and bespoken his best cabin in case I have need of it. As you know, I am always poor, but in
that sack there is enough for you to begin a modest business at home. If I were in your place, I should get my belongings
together and embark the day after tomorrow.”

“And you, Monsieur le Comte?”

“It is just possible that I may follow you next year. If not, Kebec is as near heaven as any place.”

“Then I prefer to wait until next year also.” Auclair spoke quietly, but without hesitation. “I came to share your
fortunes.”

The Governor frowned. “But you have your daughter’s future to consider. At the present moment, I can in some degree
assure you another start in the world. But if I terminate my days here, you will be adrift, and I doubt if you will ever get
home at all. You are not very adept in practical matters, Euclide.”

Auclair flushed faintly. “I have made my choice, patron. I remain in Kebec until you leave it. And I have no need for
that,” indicating the leather bag. “You pay me well for my services.”

When the apothecary left the chamber, the Count looked after him with a shrug, and a smile in which there was both
contempt and kindness. He remembered an incident very long ago: He had just come home from the foreign wars, and had nearly
ruined himself providing a new coach and horses and liveries to make a suitable reentrance in the world. The first time he
went abroad in his new carriage, to pay calls in the fashionable part of Paris, the occupants of every coach he passed
either were looking the other way, or saluted him carelessly, as if they had seen him only the day before. Not even a driver
or a footman glanced twice at his fine horses. The gatekeepers and equerries at the houses where he stopped were insolently
indifferent. Late in the afternoon, when he was crossing the Pont–Neuf at the crowded hour, in a stream of coaches, he saw
among the foot-passengers the first admirers of his splendour: an old man and a young boy, gazing up and following his
carriage with eager eyes — the grandfather and grandson who lived in the pharmacy next his stables and were his tenants.

The Count de Frontenac awoke suddenly out of a curious dream — a dream so vivid that he could not at once shake it off,
but lay in the darkness behind his bed-curtains slowly realizing where he was. The sound of a church-bell rang out hoarse on
the still air: yes, that would be the stubborn old man, Bishop Laval, ringing for early mass. He knew that bell like a
voice. He was, then, in Canada, in the Château on the rock of Kebec; the St. Lawrence must be flowing seaward beneath his
windows.

In his dream, too, he had been asleep and had suddenly awakened; awakened a little boy, in an old farm-house near
Pontoise, where his nurse used to take him in the summer. He had been awakened by fright, a sense that some danger
threatened him. He got up and in his bare feet stole to the door leading into the garden, which was ajar. Outside, in the
darkness, stood a very tall man in a plumed hat and huge boots — a giant, in fact; the little boy’s head did not come up to
his boot-tops. He had no idea who the enormous man might be, but he knew that he must not come in, that everything depended
upon his being kept out. Quickly and cleverly the little boy closed the door and slid the wooden bar, — he had no trouble in
finding it, for he knew the house so well. But there was the front door, — he was sleeping in the wing of the cottage, and
that front door was three rooms away. Still barefoot, he went softly and swiftly through the kitchen and the living-room to
the hallway behind that main door, which could be fastened by an iron bolt. It was pitch-dark, but he did not fumble, he
found the bolt at once. It was rusty, and stuck. He felt how small and weak his hands were — of that he was very conscious.
But he turned the bolt gently back and forth in its hasp to loosen the rust-flakes, and coaxed it into the iron loop on the
door-jamb which made it fast. Then he felt suddenly faint. He wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his
night-gown, and waited. That terrible man on the other side of the door; one could hear him moving about in the currant
bushes, pulling at the rose-vines on the wall. There were other doors — and windows! Every nook and corner of the house
flashed through his mind; but for the moment he was safe. The broad oak boards and the iron bolt were between him and the
great boots that must not cross the threshold. While he stood gathering his strength, he awoke in another bed than the one
he had quitted a few moments ago, but he was still covered with sweat and still frightened. He did not come fully to himself
until he heard the call of the old Bishop’s bell-clapper. Then he knew where he was.

Of all the houses he had slept in all over the world, in Flanders, Holland, Italy, Crete, why had he awakened in that one
near Pontoise, and why had he remembered it so well? His bare feet had avoided every unevenness in the floor; in the dark he
had stepped without hesitation from the earth floor of the kitchen, over the high sill, to the wooden floor of the
living-room. He had known the exact position of all the furniture and had not stumbled against anything in his swift flight
through the house. Yet he had not been in that house since he was eight years old. For four summers his nurse, Noémi, had
taken him there. It was her property, but on her son’s marriage the daughter-inlaw had become mistress, according to custom.
Noémi had taken care of him from the time he was weaned until he went to school. His own mother was a cold woman and had
little affection for her children. Indeed, the Count reflected, as he lay behind his bed-curtains recovering from his dream,
no woman, probably, had ever felt so much affection for him as old Noémi. Not all women had found him so personally
distasteful as his wife had done; but not one of his mistresses had felt more than a passing inclination for him.
Tenderness, uncalculating, disinterested devotion, he had never known. It was in his stars that he was not to know it. Noémi
had loved his fine strong little body, grieved when he was hurt, watched over him when he was sick, carried him in her arms
when he was tired. Now, when he was sick indeed, his mind, in sleep, had gone back to that woman and her farm-house on the
Oise.

It struck him that a dream of such peculiar vividness signified a change in himself. A change had been coming on all
summer — during the last few months it had progressed very fast. When from his windows he saw the last sail going out
between the south shore and the Île d’Orléans, he knew he would never live to see those boats come back. Now, after this
dream, he decided to make his will before another night fell.

Of late the physical sureness and sufficiency he had known all his life had changed to a sense of limitation and
uncertainty. He had no wish to prolong this state. There was no one in this world whom he would be sorry to leave. His wife,
Madame de la Grange Frontenac, he had no desire to see again, though he would will to her the little property he had, as was
customary. Once a year she wrote him a long letter, telling him all the gossip of Paris and informing him of the changes
which occurred there. From her accounts it appeared that the sons of most of his old friends had turned out badly enough. He
could not feel any very deep regret that his own son had died in youth, — killed in an engagement in the Low Countries many
years ago.

The Count himself was ready to die, and he would be glad to die here alone, without pretence and mockery, with no troop
of expectant relatives about his bed. The world was not what he had thought it at twenty — or even at forty.

He would die here, in this room, and his spirit would go before God to be judged. He believed this, because he had been
taught it in childhood, and because he knew there was something in himself and in other men that this world did not explain.
Even the Indians had to make a story to account for something in their lives that did not come out of their appetites:
conceptions of courage, duty, honour. The Indians had these, in their own fashion. These ideas came from some unknown
source, and they were not the least part of life.

In spiritual matters the Count had always accepted the authority of the Church; in governmental and military matters he
stoutly refused to recognize it. He had known absolute unbelievers, of course; one, a witty and blasphemous scapegrace, the
young Baron de La Hontan, he had sheltered here in the Château, under the noses of two Bishops. But it was for his clever
conversation, not for his opinions, that the Count offered La Hontan hospitality.

When the grey daylight began to sift through the hangings of his bed, Count Frontenac rang for Picard to bring his
coffee.

“I shall not get up today, Picard,” he remarked. “You may shave me in bed. Afterwards, go to the notary and fetch him
here to transact some business with me. Stop at the apothecary shop on your way, and tell Monsieur Auclair I shall not need
him until four o’clock.”

When Auclair arrived in the afternoon, he found his patron still in bed, in his dressing-gown. To his inquiries the Count
replied carelessly:

“Oh, I do very well indeed! I find myself so comfortable that I have almost decided to stay in bed for the rest of my
life. I have been making my will today, and that reminded me of a promise I once gave your daughter. That bowl of glass
fruit on the mantel: do not forget to take it to her when you go home tonight, with my greetings. She has always admired it.
And there is another matter. In the leather chest in my dressing-room you will find a large package wrapped in brown
Holland. It is table linen that I brought out from Île Savary. Tonight, when you will not be observed, I wish you to take it
home with you for safe keeping. Upon Cécile’s marriage, you will present it to her from me. Why do you look sober, Euclide?
You know very well that I must soon change my climate, as the Indians say, and this Château will be in other hands. I merely
arrange to dispose of my personal belongings as I wish.”

“Monsieur le Comte, if you would permit me to try the remedy I suggested yesterday — ”

“Tut-tut! We will have no more remedies. A little repose and comfort. The machine is worn out, certainly; but if we let
it alone, it may go a little longer, from habit. When you come up tonight, you may bring me something to make me sleep,
however. These long hours of wakefulness do a man no good. Draw up a chair and sit down by the fire, where I can speak to
you without shouting. If you are to be in constant attendance here, you cannot be forever standing.”

Picard was called to put more wood on the fire, and after he withdrew the Governor lay quiet for a time. The grey light
of the rainy afternoon grew so pale that Auclair could no longer see his patient’s face, and supposed he had fallen asleep.
But suddenly he spoke.

“Euclide, do you know the church of Saint–Nicholas-desChamps, out some distance?”

“Certainly, Monsieur le Comte. I remember it very well.”

“Many of my family are buried there; a sister of whom I was fond. I shall be buried here, in the chapel of the Récollets,
but I should like my heart to be sent back to France, in a box of lead or silver, and buried near my sister in
Saint–Nicholas-desChamps. I have left instructions to that effect in my will, but I prefer to tell you, as I suppose you
will have to attend to it. That is all we need say on the subject.

“Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier called here today, but as I was engaged with the notary, he left word that he would make
his visit of ceremony tomorrow. I should be pleased if some indisposition were to keep him at home. If he looks for any
apologies or recantations from me, he will be disappointed. The old one will not bother me with civilities.” Auclair heard
the Count chuckle. “The old one knows where he stands, at least, and never bends his neck. All the same, a better man for
this part of the world than the new one. Saint–Vallier belongs at the Court — where he came from.”

The Count fell into reflection, and his apothecary sat silent, waiting for his dismissal. Both were thinking of a scene
outside the windows, under the low November sky — but the river was not the St. Lawrence. They were looking out on the
Pont–Marie, and the hay-barges tied up at the Port-au-Foin. On an afternoon like this the boatmen would be covering the
hay-bales with tarpaulins, Auclair was thinking, and about this time the bells always rang from the Célestins’ and the
church of Saint–Paul.

When the fire fell apart and Auclair got up to mend it, the Count spoke again, as if he knew perfectly well what was in
the apothecary’s mind. “The Countess de Frontenac writes me that the Île Saint–Louis has become a very fashionable quarter.
I can remember when it was hardly considered a respectable place to live in, — when they first began building there,
indeed!”

“And my grandfather could remember when it was a wood-pile, patron; before the two islands were joined into one. He was
never reconciled to the change, poor man. He always thought it the most convenient place for the wood-supply of our part of
Paris.”