Shadows on the Rock (5 page)

“Jacques,” Cécile asked wonderingly, “do you know Monseigneur Laval? Did he ever talk to you?”

“I think once he did.”

“What about?”

“I don’t remember.”

They went hand in hand up the hill.

He both did and did not remember; it came back to him in flashes, unrelated pictures, like a dream. Perhaps it was a
dream. He could never have told Cécile about it, since it was hard for him to talk even about things he knew very well. But
whenever he chanced to see old Bishop Laval, he felt that once, long ago, something pleasant had happened between them.

It had happened two years ago, when he was only four, before he knew the Auclairs at all. It was in January. A light,
sticky snow had fallen irresolutely, at intervals, all day. Toward evening the weather changed; the sun emerged, just
sinking over the great pine forest to the west, hung there, an angry ball, and all the snow-covered rock blazed in orange
fire. The sun became a half-circle, then a mere red eyebrow, then dropped behind the forest, leaving the air clear blue, and
much colder, with a pale lemon moon riding high overhead. There was no wind, it was a night of still moonlight, and within
an hour after sunset the wet snow had frozen fast over roofs and spires and trees. Everything on the rock was sheathed in
glittering white ice. It was a sight to stir the dullest blood. Some trappers from Three Rivers were in town. They had
supper with La Grenouille, and afterwards persuaded her to go for a ride in their dog-sledges up the frozen St. Lawrence.
Jacques was in bed asleep. ‘Toinette threw an extra blanket over him and put an armful of wood in the stove, then went off
with the young men, taking L’Escargot with her. She meant to be out only an hour or two; but they had plenty of brandy along
to keep them warm, and so they made a night of it. Dog-sledging by moonlight on that broad marble highway, with no wind, was
fine sport.

After she had been gone a couple of hours, Jacques wakened up very cold and called for his mother. Presently he got up
and went to look for her. He went to L’Escargot’s bed, and that, too, was empty. The moonlight shone in brightly, but the
fire had gone out, and all about him things creaked with the cold. He found his shoes and an old shawl and went out into the
snow to look for his mother. The poor neighbour houses were silent. He went behind the King’s storehouse and up Notre Dame
street to the market square. The worthy merchants were long ago in bed, and all the houses were dark except one, where the
mother of the family was very sick. The statue of King Louis, with a cloak and helmet of snow, looked terrifying in the
moonlight. Jacques already knew better than to knock at that solid, comfortable house where he saw a lighted window; he knew
his mother wasn’t well thought of by these rich people. Not knowing where to turn, he took the only forward way there was,
up Mountain Hill.

Luckily, one other person was abroad that night. Old Bishop Laval, who never spared himself, had been down to the square
to sit with the sick woman. He came toiling up the hill in his fur cloak and his tall fur cap, which was almost as imposing
as his episcopal mitre, a cane in one hand, a lantern in the other. His valet followed behind. They were passing the new
Bishop’s Palace, now cold and empty, as Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier was in France. Just as they wound under the retaining
wall of the terrace, they heard a child crying. The Bishop stopped and flashed his lantern this way and that. On the flight
of stone steps that led up through the wall to the episcopal residence, he saw a little boy, almost a baby, sitting in the
snow, crouching back against the masonry.

“Where does he belong?” asked the Bishop of his donné.

“Ah, that I cannot tell, Monseigneur,” replied Houssart.

“Pick him up and bring him along,” said the Bishop.

“Unbutton your coat and hold him against your body.” The lantern moved on.

The old Bishop lived in the Priests’ House, built as a part of his Seminary. His private rooms were poor and small. All
his silver plate and velvet and linen he had given away little by little, to needy parishes, to needy persons. He had given
away the revenues of his abbeys in France, and had transferred his vast grants of Canadian land to the Seminary. He lived in
naked poverty.

When they reached home, he commanded Houssart to build a fire in the fireplace at once (had he been alone he would have
undressed and gone to bed in the cold) and to heat water, that he might give the child a warm bath.

“Is there any milk?” he asked.

Houssart hesitated. “A little, for your chocolate in the morning, Monseigneur.”

“Get it and put it to warm on the hearth. Pour a little cognac in it, and bring any bread there is in the house.”

One strange thing Jacques could remember afterwards. He was sitting on the edge of a narrow bed, wrapped in a blanket, in
the light of a blazing fire. He had just been washed in warm water; the basin was still on the floor. Beside it knelt a very
large old man with big eyes and a great drooping nose and a little black cap on his head, and he was rubbing Jacques’s feet
and legs very softly with a towel. They were all alone then, just the two of them, and the fire was bright enough to see
clearly. What he remembered particularly was that this old man, after he had dried him like this, bent down and took his
foot in his hand and kissed it; first the one foot, then the other. That much Jacques remembered.

When the servant returned, they gave the child warm milk with a little bread in it, and put him into the Bishop’s bed,
though Houssart begged to take him to his own.

“No, we will not move him. He is falling asleep already. I do not know if that flush means a fever or not.”

“Monseigneur,” Houssart whispered, “now that I have seen him in the light, I recognize this child. He is the son of that
‘Toinette Gaux, the woman they call La Grenouille.”

“Ah!” the old man nodded thoughtfully. “That, too, may have a meaning. Throw more wood on the fire and go. I shall rest
here in my arm-chair with my fur coat over my knees until it is time to ring the bell.” The Bishop got up at four o’clock
every morning, dressed without a fire, went with his lantern into the church, and rang the bell for early mass for the
working people. Many good people who did not want to go to mass at all, when they heard that hoarse, frosty bell clanging
out under the black sky where there was not yet even a hint of daybreak, groaned and went to the church. Because they
thought of the old Bishop at the end of the bell-rope, and because his will was stronger than theirs. He was a stubborn,
high-handed, tyrannical, quarrelsome old man, but no one could deny that he shepherded his sheep.

When his donné had gone and he was left with the sleeping child, the Bishop settled his swollen legs upon a stool,
covered them with his cloak, and sank into meditation. This was not an accident, he felt. Why had he found, on the steps of
that costly episcopal residence built in scorn of him and his devotion to poverty, a male child, half-clad and crying in the
merciless cold? Why had this reminder of his Infant Saviour been just there, under that house which he never passed without
bitterness, which was like a thorn in his flesh? Had he been too much absorbed in his struggles with governors and
intendants, in the heavy labour of founding and fixing his church upon this rock, in training a native priesthood and
safeguarding their future?

Monseigneur de Laval had not always been a man of means and measures. Long ago, in Bernières’s Hermitage at Caen, his
life had been wholly given up to meditation and prayer. Not until he was sent out to Canada to convert a frontier mission
into an enduring part of the Church had he become a man of action. His life, as he reviewed it, fell into two even periods.
The first thirty-six years had been given to purely personal religion, to bringing his mind and will into subjection to his
spiritual guides. The last thirty-six years had been spent in bringing the minds and wills of other people into subjection
to his own, — since he had but one will, and that was the supremacy of the Church in Canada. Might this occurrence tonight
be a sign that it was time to return to that rapt and mystical devotion of his earlier life?

In the morning, after he returned from offering early mass in the church, before it was yet light, the Bishop sent his
man about over the hill, to this house and that, wherever there were young children, begging of one shoes, of another a
little frock, — whatever the mother could spare from the backs of her own brood.

‘Toinette Gaux had returned home meanwhile, and was frightened at missing her son. But she was ashamed to go out and look
for him. Some neighbour would bring him back, she thought, — and, insolent as she was, she dreaded the moment. She got her
deserts, certainly, when two long, black shadows fell upon the glistening snow before her door; the Bishop in his tall fur
cap, prodding the icy crust with his cane, and behind him Houssart, carrying the little boy.

The Bishop came in without knocking, and motioned his man to put the child down and withdraw. He stood for some moments
confronting the woman in silence. ‘Toinette was no fool; she felt all his awfulness; the long line of noble blood and
authority behind him, the power of the Church and the power of the man. She wished the earth would swallow her. Not a shred
of her impudence was left her. Her tongue went dry. His silence was so dreadful that it was a relief when he began to
thunder and tell her that even the beasts of the forest protected their young (Les ourses et les louves protègent leurs
petits). He meant to watch over this boy, he said; if she neglected him, he would take the child and put him with the
Sisters of the Congregation, not here, but in Montreal, to place him as far as possible from a worthless mother.

‘Toinette knew that he would do it, too. When she was a little girl, she used to hear talk about just such a high-handed
proceeding of the Bishop’s. A rich man in Quebec had brought a girl over from France to work as a bonne in his family. The
Bishop thought she did not come to mass often enough and was not receiving proper religious training. So one day when he met
her on the street, he took her by the hand and led her to the Ursuline convent and put her with the cloistered Sisters.
There she stayed until the Governor gave her master a warrant to search the rock for his maid and take her wherever he found
her. But ‘Toinette knew that a woman of her sort, without money or good repute, had little chance of getting her boy back if
once the Bishop took him away.

She kept Jacques in the house all the rest of the winter, and never went out herself except L’Escargot was there to watch
him. It was not until the summer ships came, bringing new lovers and new distractions, that Jacques was allowed to go into
the streets to play.

Cécile was taking Jacques to Noël Pommier to be measured for his shoes. The cobbler lived half-way down Holy Family Hill,
the steep street that plunged from the Cathedral down toward the St. Lawrence. There were other shoemakers in Quebec, but
all persons of quality went to Pommier, unless they had had a short answer from him at some time. He would not hurry a piece
of work for anybody, — not for the Count or the Intendant or the Bishop. If anyone tried to hurry him, he became surly and
was likely to say something that a self-important person could not allow himself to overlook. It was rumoured that he had
spoken unbecomingly to the valet of Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier, and had told him it would be better if his master had all
his shoes made in Paris, where he spent so much of his time. Certainly the new Bishop had ceased to patronize him, which was
a grief to Pommier’s pious mother.

When the children entered the cobbler’s door, they found him seated at his bench with a shoe between his knees, sewing
the sole to the upper. Seeing that it was M. Auclair’s daughter, he rose and put down his work. He was a thick-set man with
stooped shoulders; his head was grown over with coarse black hair cut short like bristles, his fleshy face was dark red, and
seamed with hard creases. The purple veins that spread like little roots about his nostrils suggested an occasional
indulgence in brandy. When Pommier stood up, with his blackened hands hanging beside his leather apron, and his corded,
hairy arms bare to the elbow, he looked like a black bear standing upright. His eyes, too, were small like a bear’s, and
somewhat bloodshot.

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Cécile, what can I do for you?”

“If you please, Monsieur Pommier, I have brought little Jacques Gaux to be measured for his shoes. Has the Count’s valet
spoken to you about it?”

Pommier nodded. “Sit down there, little man, and let me see.” He put Jacques down on a straw-topped stool (an old one his
father had brought from Rouen, along with his bench and tools), took off the wretched foot-gear he had on, and began to
study his feet and to make measurements.

While this was going on in deep silence, a door at the back of the house opened, and Pommier’s mother, a thin, lively old
woman with a crutch, came tapping lightly across the living-room and into the shop. She embraced Cécile with delight, and
spoke very kindly to Jacques when he was presented to her.

“I have never seen this little fellow before, since I don’t get about much, but I like to know all the children in
Quebec. You will be very content with fine new shoes, my boy?”

“Oui, madame,” Jacques murmured.

“And you have quite neglected me of late, Cécile. I know you are busy enough down there, but I have been looking for you
every day since the ships sailed. My son saw your father at the market yesterday and observed that he was laying in good
supplies for you.” Madame Pommier seated herself on one of the wooden chairs without backs and rested her crutch across her
knees. She always came into the shop when there were clients, and she liked to know what her son was doing every minute of
the day.

When Cécile was little, Madame Pommier used to come to see her mother very often. She was one of the first friends Madame
Auclair made in Quebec, and had given her a great deal of help in her struggle to keep house in a place where there were
none of the conveniences to which she was accustomed. The Pommiers themselves were old residents, had lived here ever since
this Noël was a young lad, and his father had been the Count’s shoemaker during his first governorship, twenty-odd years
ago. Just about the time that Madame Auclair’s health began to fail, Madame Pommier had fallen on the icy hill in front of
her own door and broken her hip. The good chirurgien Gervaise Beaudoin attended her, but though the bone knit, it came
together badly and left one leg much shorter than the other. M. Auclair had made a crutch for her, and as she was slight and
very active, she was soon able to get about in her own house and attend to her duties. Many a time Cécile had found her by
her stove, the crutch under her left arm, handling her pots and casseroles as deftly as if she were not propped up by a
wooden stick. Sometimes in winter she even got to mass. Her son had set an arm-chair upon runners, and in this he pushed her
up the hill over the snow to the Cathedral.

After the cobbler had made his measurements and noted them down, he took up his work again and began driving his awl
through the leather, drawing the big needle with waxed thread through after it. Tools of any sort had a fascination for
Cécile; she loved to watch a shoemaker or a carpenter at work. Jacques, who had never seen anything of the kind before,
followed Pommier’s black fingers with astonishment. They both sat quietly, and the old lady joined them in admiringly
watching her clever son. Suddenly she bethought herself of something, and pointed with her crutch to a little cabinet of
shelves covered by a curtain. There ladies’ shoes, sent in for repair or made to order, were kept, as being rather too
personal to expose on the open shelves with the men’s boots.

“Tirez, tirez,” whispered Madame Pommier. Cécile got up and drew back the curtain, and at once knew what the old lady
wished her to see: a beautiful pair of red satin slippers, embroidered in gold and purple, with leather soles and red
leather heels.

“Oh, madame, how lovely! To whom do they belong?”

“To Monseigneur l’Ancien. They are his house slippers. My son is to put new soles on them, — see, they are almost worn
through. Houssart says he paces his chamber in the night when he is at his devotions, so that he will not be overcome by
sleep.”

“But these are so small, can he possibly wear them? And his walk is so heavy, too.”

“Ah, that is because of his legs, which are bad. But he has a very slender foot, very distinguished. That is the
Montmorency in him; he is of noble blood, you know.”

Here Pommier himself reached up to a row of wooden lasts over his head and handed one of them to Cécile.

“That is his foot, mademoiselle.”

Cécile took the smoothly shaped wood in her hands and examined it curiously. On the sole Noël had scratched with his awl:
“Mgr. Lav’.”

“And next it,” said Madame Pommier, “you will find the Governor’s. He, too, has a fine foot, very high in the arch, but
large, as is needful for a soldier. And there to the left is the Intendant’s, and Madame de Champigny’s.”

“Oh, Monsieur Pommier, you have the feet of all the great people here! Did you make them all yourself?”

“Ah, no! Some are from my father’s time. Yes, you may look at them if it amuses you.”

Cécile took them down one after another. To be sure, they all looked a good deal alike to her, but she could guess the
original of each form from the awl scratches on the sole. On one she spelled the letters “R. CAV.” She was trying to think
whose that might be, when Pommier startled her a little by saying in a very peculiar tone of voice:

“That foot will not come back.”

She could not tell whether he was angry or sorry, — there was something so harsh in his tone.

“But why, Monsieur Noël, why not?”

“It went too far,” he replied with the same bitter shortness.

She stared at the letters. The old lady beckoned her and traced over the inscription with her finger. “That is my
husband’s marking; he always made capitals. It means Robert Cavelier de La Salle.”

Cécile drew a deep breath. “Monsieur Noël believes he is really dead, then?”

Noël looked up from his black threads. “Everyone knows he is dead, mademoiselle. The people who say he will come back are
fools. He was murdered, a thousand miles from here. Tonti brought the word. Robert de La Salle has come into this shop many
a time when I was a lad. He was a true man, mademoiselle, and nobody was true to him, except Monsieur le Comte; not his own
brother, nor his nephew, nor his King. It is always like that when there is a great one in a family. But I shall always keep
his last. That foot went farther than any other in New France.” He dropped his eyes and began driving his awl again.

Cécile knew it would be useless to question him, — such an outburst was most unusual from Pommier. But when she got home,
she brought the matter up to her father and asked him whether it was true that the Abbé Cavelier had turned against his
brother.

“I don’t know, my dear. Nobody knows what happened down there. The Count blames him, but then, the Count always hated the
Abbé.”