Читать книгу The Power And The Glory - Gilbert Parker - Страница 12

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Tuke Darois had found employment in the offices of the Farmer of the King's revenue. He had been in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company. He spoke the French language perfectly and came as a spy on the doings of La Salle and the coureurs de bois, who were rivals in trade with the Hudson's Bay Company in the far West and North. With his combined origin, Darois was a capable man and had no morals. He had a good-looking and enterprising face, he was bearded, was about medium height, and had an attractive personality. He did not say he had been with the Hudson's Bay Company, but had been a trapper in the North, and he was welcomed to Quebec by officials of the Province, for he had the rare ability to write and keep accounts, and his services were welcome in the department of Rojet Ranard.

His daughter, Lya, with brown hair, brown eyes, rather a large mouth exquisitely shaped, and a broad, low, fine forehead, lived with him. Her hands were capable and fine and she had a long firm grip. From her hand you would judge her character. It told so much. She had been commanded not to say they had been with the Hudson's Bay Company; and this was to prevent prejudice against her father. She had no mother—her mother had died at giving her birth, and she had living with her an old black-eyed, lame Frenchwoman called Luce Hontard, who was devoted to her. She was one who might go far in the world, if aught could be judged by outer form.

One day after La Salle and Tonty had arrived from France with La Motte de Lussière, they were coming from the citadel where Frontenac had received them with cordiality, and La Salle saw Lya walking towards her father's office. She had so much spirit, yet was so modest, so simply yet becomingly dressed, with none of the hair-dressings and flounces of other girls of the city, and with a resolution of her slight figure at variance with her vivacious face. Somehow she arrested La Salle's attention. He had never been impressionable, and no woman ever had a hold on him. He drew Tonty's attention to her. Tonty was also attracted and was unable to say why.

“A newcomer and a beauty. Who?” said Tonty.

La Salle shook his head in negation. They saw her enter her father's office.

Tonty spoke. “Ah, Tuke Darois's daughter, no doubt! That is his office. I met him this morning. He is watching the coureurs de bois, of whom Du Lhut is chief. How do I know? I don't. It is only instinct, but I'm right, for I saw signs of it in his office. He does not ring true. He's got a twist somewhere. I saw on his table a manuscript marked Du Lhut. So, I made up my mind. He is working against the coureurs de bois and Du Lhut. But not his beautiful daughter—no, if that is she! She is as straight as the sun!”

La Salle nodded and gave a short, hasty laugh. “Perhaps you are right. Let us go to his office. I have some business with him. It concerns the accounts of Fort Frontenac. He is a man to know. We start for the West in two days, my friend. See! There is Rojet Ranard coming towards us. How cheerful—as though he had not a care in the world. But he is Mephistopheles—as black as a pan.”

Tonty nodded, and M. Ranard came towards them, smiling. He knew Tonty and had not seen him yet, as he had been in the West.

He raised a hand in greeting. “Ah, M. Tonty, I welcome you to Quebec. You would do much here, I know, and you have left much behind you.” He held out a hand and Tonty took it with a bow.

“I greet you well, M. Ranard, and. I left behind naught I could not afford to leave. I work with my friend Sieur de la Salle.”

M. Ranard turned slowly to La Salle. “Sieur de la Salle and I are old friends, and we meet as always—in good feeling.”

La Salle looked coldly at him. “It is as M. Ranard says, we meet in the feeling we had when I left for France.”

“I am told you met my wife there, Sieur de la Salle.”

“I had that felicity, monsieur—at the home of Comtesse de Frontenac, and before that at the palace of the Prince de Conti.”

“She was charmed by your success—you were received by the Grand Monarch at Versailles and were given your commission before the court. It was a triumph for you, Sieur de la Salle.” There was veiled sarcasm in Ranard's tone.

“It was a triumph for New France, let us say,” remarked Tonty. “It had the soul of exploration and trade.”

“It had the soul of Sieur de la Salle,” said Ranard, with a biting tongue.

“And his is the soul of New France,” said Tonty.

“May it flourish for the good of old France!” returned Ranard.

“If all here say Yea, who shall say Nay?” said La Salle, ironically.

“But all say Yea,” sneered Ranard.

“Then things have changed since I went to France,” said La Salle.

“What else could happen. Your absence is a vast event,” remarked Ranard maliciously.

“Especially when Madame Ranard was gone also, bent upon the good of Canada, and helpful to me in France!”

A dark light came into Ranard's eyes. “She will always help you in the same way, as you well know, Sieur de la Salle. She never changes, and if you but visited our house again, you would flourish more.”

“I have flourished because I did not remain in your house, monsieur, and I hope I shall never enter it again!”

“Yet we shall meet often in this small place, Quebec, and we cannot escape each other's influence, can we?”

“That is made plain by the difference between the Governor and the Intendant, and yet we know our influence on the Intendant,” said Tonty.

The eyes of Ranard grew sullen, for he felt what Tonty would convey, but with a sneer he said:

“Monsieur Duchesneau is not like you or me—or he would take return for your insolence, M. Tonty.”

He laid his hand angrily upon his sword, and Tonty shrugged a shoulder. “I was not insolent to the Intendant, monsieur.”

“You were insolent to me—then draw, monsieur, and see which can uphold his honor best.”

A cold light blazed in Tonty's eyes. “I do not care to fight you, monsieur, but you have ways I do not like. I would find what is inside you—blood or ditch water.”

They at once began to fight, and had made but a few strokes, in which Tonty was at an advantage, when Bishop Laval came upon them on his way from the Church council. He was, as always, plainly dressed, and his striking face with long nose and piercing eyes gave him a singular personality. He had been master of New France in other days.

“Messieurs, messieurs,” the bishop said, in amazement, “what do you broiling in the street! Is Canada to be governed thus! Stop fighting, messieurs!”

“He insulted the Intendant,” said Ranard.

“I did not insult the Intendant, Monsieur de Quebec. I said what monsieur thought reflected on the Intendant, but it was not meant so. I came with Sieur de la Salle from France.”

The Bishop turned towards La Salle and smiled in a frigid way. “The Sieur de la Salle has a high place in the heart of Canada, M. Tonty.”

He held out his hand, this spare, almost emaciated bishop, but there was power in his whole bearing and authority in all he said. He lived a life of abject poverty, had been a Jesuit in his youth, and had brought to Canada two things—self-effacement physically, and the ever-present love of his Church—its advancement. He had no love for La Salle, for he would extend immigration in the West, and that he and the Church did not wish. His Church had once been all-powerful, and received four-fifths of the revenue sent by the King, but of late years that power had declined, and the old man resented it in so far as his nature could. The Bishop had done much for Canada, and his thin lips now drew tighter as he turned to M. Ranard.

“It is not seemly, M. Ranard, that you should act so—an officer of the Government; yet maybe your temper took umbrage where none was meant.”

At first Tonty would say that umbrage was meant to Ranard, but he abstained; and all seemed settled, for the two men put up their swords, but La Salle said:

“M. Tonty took up the quarrel on his own part, but the difference of opinion was with me, monseigneur, and I would gladly have fought with M. Ranard, for a reason which he and you will understand. I do not forget what happened in his house and what was said at the Saint Famille. These things should not be handed over to one's friends. M. Tonty said what I would have said with more point.”

The Bishop's face flushed slightly at the mention of Saint Famille, for he knew what had been said there, and he had given this society of Jesuit ladies his approval; but he said:

“Sieur de la Salle, we have no knowledge of your difference with M. Ranard—”

“And his wife,” interrupted La Salle.

“And his wife; but this is a small place and we should live in peace. There have been misunderstandings, no doubt, but we should overcome our feelings for the sake of unity in this pioneer land. Why should we not all be friends?”

“Why not?” said Ranard.

“I will say, why not, then!” said La Salle. “The greatest Governor Canada ever had is opposed by good men like Le Moyne and his sons, and Le Ber and La Chesnaye; Damours, De Villeray and De Lotbinière, and many others, and they are all against me because I open new territory and advance new trade in furs. I know what forces are against me, and what intrigue goes to hurt good things, but the good will prevail, monseigneur. I will help advance that, but I will yield naught in all I do to open up the West and South.”

He held himself modestly, firmly erect, for this was the first time he had opened his mind to the Bishop, and he wished it to be plain what sort of man he was and what he meant to do. Bishop Laval liked La Salle—he knew him as one who never spared himself and fought with clean hands. But his ambitions clashed with those of the Church and the Intendant, and that was against him sorely.

He said, quietly: “Your designs have support from all who care for Canada, but your methods are not those we all approve. Our ways are not your ways, and we work by different rules. Yet”—he raised his hand in benediction, and the men dropped to their knees—“I give you blessing in your work, for I know your heart is full of high purpose.”

As they all stood up, Ranard said: “Monsieur de Quebec, I shall wipe this dark thing from my mind. I will be a friend to Sieur de la Salle. I offer him my hand.”

La Salle instantly said: “I have no faith in the friendship of M. Ranard. I cannot take his hand.”

The Bishop looked at him sternly for a moment, then his face cleared and he said, “At least the Sieur de la Salle is an honest man,” and he turned and went towards his palace.

Habitants and rivermen and a few coureurs de bois and a burgher or two had gathered, but they came not among them, and though they wondered what the quarrel and the consultation were, they were too much in awe of Bishop Laval to come too near. Quebec was too often roused by combats to be astonished.

Ranard looked at La Salle with grim irony. “You have refused my hand; be sure you can justify that.”

“I am ready to sustain it,” answered La Salle, with bitter coolness, for this man and his wife were the limit of endurance—so clever, so corrupt, so bad, and yet outwardly so fair.

Lifting his hand in courtesy La Salle moved away with Tonty, while Ranard stood for a moment in furtive mood, and then walked on with malign purpose.

As they passed along the street there came to their ears a song of the pioneers of France, brought to Canada by the Carignan-Sallières Regiment. It floated out on the clear air with sweet melody and happy resonance:

“I am a very good knife-grinder,

I am a very good knife-grinder,

And for my daughter I have great fear—

And in the islands I have a great fear

When I am there,

As she is very good.”

“If I go on the sea,

If I go on the sea,

It will be never to return,

And, in the islands I have a great fear,

When I am there,

For she is very good.”

As they listened, Tonty laughed: “He may be a good knife-grinder but I doubt it, and for his daughter, he may well have a great fear, for she is good! That's so, isn't it?”

La Salle nodded. “He's bad enough, I doubt not, and she's good, I doubt not, and we shall see them both soon. Here we are at his door.” La Salle flow said to Tonty: “We are on the bank of a turbulent river, but we shall cross it safely. Our heaviest trials are before us. Naught borne in the past can equal what I must bear—what we must bear—in the future. As I open this door, I open a new and horrible chapter of life. This I know.”

He opened the door and Father Louis Hennepin stepped out. Hennepin was clothed in a coarse gray capote and peaked hood, with sandaled feet, a crucifix at his side, and a cord of St. Francis at his waist. From a convent at Artois he had gone to Calais at the herring-fishing season, had made friends of sailors and become enamored of foreign lands. After many requests there came permission to go to Canada, and he sailed in the same ship as La Salle, and scolded a party of girls who were enjoying themselves with officers and passengers on deck. La Salle had told him he was acting like a pedagogue, and Hennepin retorted that La Salle had once been a pedagogue in a Jesuit school! This La Salle resented, for his foes were now Jesuits and he wished not to be linked with them. Besides, he pierced the hollowness of Hennepin's character.

Hennepin had a quick, cheerful spirit, and his enthusiasm, physical health, and stature were great. Now when he saw La Salle, he bowed and smiled, and said:

“I am deeply glad to see you, Sieur de la Salle. I would join you in your explorations. If I had permission from my superior— Ah, may I not go?”

La Salle had mind to see all sides of a question, and, while he had not faith in him, Hennepin was not a Jesuit. After studying the friar briefly, he said:

“I will get you permission, and you must start at once. We shall meet at Fort Frontenac.”

Hennepin raised hands in joy.

“You give me great news, and I will serve you to my life's end.”

It was clear Hennepin wished to stand well with him, and that was much in Canada where so many were against him. La Salle said:

“Be ready to start to-morrow.”

With an exclaimed blessing Hennepin paced away, bold and hardy and daring, but as fake a friar as ever wore the gray capote, who would grossly exaggerate, a conscious but contented liar.

As Hennepin walked away, Tonty said: “Are you sure of that man, La Salle? What is he doing here with Darois?”

“He is strong, he has a vivid mind, and he will succeed with the Indians, and we need that. He is a Recollet, and not a Jesuit. Who knows what he has been doing here? One is sure of this—he is not deliberately my foe! That is not in his mind now.”

By this time they were inside the office of Darois. He was standing with back to them, talking to a clerk in a silky voice with ragged edges. At last, the clerk disappearing, he swung slowly on La Salle and Tonty, and looking at them softly said:

“I welcome Sieur de la Salle and M. de Tonty.”

La Salle bowed: “I have come upon business, Monsieur Darois—the accounts of Fort Frontenac. They are not complicated, and they are few.”

Darois bowed, and his bearded face showed no apparent feeling, yet his eyes had a furtive look which did not escape Tonty.

“Will you sit down, messieurs?” he said.

In Tonty's mind was the thought about the girl, Lya Darois. She was not here, but she had evidently gone into another room—that into which the clerk had entered. Tonty liked the face and figure of the girl. It did not seem possible she was the daughter of this smooth and subtle man who was now examining accounts of La Salle. It is clear he had a mind of business capacity, and a tongue that did its work well, but he was sure he was a spy on the coureurs de bois.

These coureurs de bois were indocile, debauched, wearing the sword and decked out with lace. They would not cultivate the soil, swaggered like lords, spent all their gains in dress and revelry, and despised the peasants. Yet they were a wonderful body of men, brave, chivalrous, carrying all before them when properly led, and expert traders with the Indians, and that was why the Hudson's Bay Company had sent Darois—he did not yet know that Darois had been sent to spy upon La Salle as well. But he disliked Darois' face as he bent over the papers with La Salle.

Lya Darois, that unusual and reliant girl, that pure product of the northern plains—where was she? Tonty wished to know.