Читать книгу Cameron of Lochiel - Philippe Aubert de Gaspé - Страница 7

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Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,

Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell.

Hamlet.

Ecoute comme les bois crient. Les hiboux fuient épouvantés.... Entends-tu ces voix dans les hauteurs, dans le lointain, ou près de nous?... Eh! oui! la montagne retentit, dans toute sa longueur, d'un furieux chant magique.

Faust.

Lest bogles catch him unawares....

Where ghaits and howlets nightly cry....

When out the hellish legion sallied.

Burns.

As soon as our young travelers, crossing the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec, have reached Point Lévis, José makes haste to harness a splendid Norman horse into one of those low sledges which furnish the only means of transport at this season, when the roads are only covered here and there with snow or ice, and when overflowing streams intercept the way at intervals. When they come to one of these obstacles José unharnesses the horse, all three mount, and the brook is speedily forded. It is true that Jules, who clasps José around the waist, tries every now and then to throw him off, at the risk of partaking with him the luxury of a bath at a little above zero. He might as well have tried to throw Cape Tourmente into the St. Lawrence. José, who, in spite of his comparatively small stature, is as strong as an elephant, laughs in his sleeve and pretends not to notice it. The brook forded, José goes back for the sledge, reharnesses the horse, climbs into the sledge with the baggage in front of him lest he should get it wet, and speedily overtakes his fellow-travelers, who have not halted a moment in their march.

Thanks to Jules, the conversation never flags during the journey. Archie does nothing but laugh over the witticisms that Jules perpetrates at his expense. He has long given up attempting any retort.

"We must hurry," exclaimed D'Haberville; "it is thirty-six miles from here to St. Thomas. My uncle De Beaumont takes supper at seven. If we get there too late, we shall probably make a poor meal. The good things will be all gobbled up. You know the proverb, tarde venientibus ossa."

"Scotch hospitality is proverbial," exclaimed Archie. "With us the welcome is the same day or night. That is the cook's business."

"Verily," said Jules, "I believe it as if I saw it with my own eyes; were it otherwise it would show a plentiful lack of skill or good-will on the part of your peticoated cooks. It is delightfully primitive, that Scotch cookery of yours. With a few handfuls of oatmeal sodden in cold water—since you have neither wood nor coal in your country—you can make an excellent soup at little cost and with no great expenditure of culinary science, and feast your guests as well in the night as in the daytime. It is quite true that, when some distinguished personage seeks your hospitality—which often happens, since Scotland is loaded down with enough coats-of-arms to crush a camel—it is true I say, that you set before him, in addition to your oatmeal soup, the head, feet, or nice, juicy tail of a sheep, with salt for sauce; the other parts of the animal never seem to grow in Scotland."

Lochiel contented himself with glancing at Jules over his shoulder and repeating:

"'Quis talia fando Myrmidonum, Dolopumve'—"

"What's that?" exclaimed Jules, in assumed indignation; "you call me a Myrmidon, a Dolopian—me, the philosopher! And, moreover, my worthy pedant, you abuse me in Latin—you who so murder the accent with your Caledonian tongue that Virgil must squirm in his grave! You call me a Myrmidon—me, the geometrician of my class! You remember that the Professor of Mathematics predicted that I should be another Vauban—"

"Yes, indeed," interrupted Archie, "in recognition of your famous perpendicular line, which leaned so much to the left that all the class trembled lest it should fall and crush its base; seeing which, our professor sought to console you by predicting that your services would be required in case of the reconstruction of the Tower of Pisa."

Jules struck a tragic attitude and cried:

"'Tu t'en souviens, Cinna! et veux m'assassiner.'

"You are going to stab me upon the king's highway, beside this mighty St. Lawrence, untouched by all the beauty of nature which surrounds us—untouched by yon lovely cascade of Montmorency, which the habitants call 'The Cow,' a title very much the reverse of poetic, but which, nevertheless, expresses well enough the exquisite whiteness of the stream which leaps from its bosom like the rich and foaming flow from the milch-cow's udder. You are going to stab me right in sight of the Isle of Orleans, which, as we go on, conceals from our view the lovely waterfall which I have so poetically described! Heartless wretch! will nothing make you relent—not even the sight of poor José here, who is touched by all this wisdom and eloquence in one so young, as Fénelon would have said could he have written my adventures?"

"Do you know," interrupted Archie, "you are at least as remarkable in poetry as you are in geometry?"

"Who can doubt it?" answered Jules. "No matter, my perpendicular made you all laugh and myself most of all. You know, however, that that was only another trick of that scamp De Chavigny, who had stolen my exercise and rolled up another in place of it, which I handed in to the teacher. You all pretended not to believe me, since you were but too glad to see the trickster tricked."

José, who ordinarily took little part in the young men's conversation, and who, moreover, had been unable to understand what they had just been talking about, now began to mutter under his breath:

"What a queer kind of a country that, where the sheep have only heads, feet, and tails, and not even a handful of a body! But, after all, it is none of my business; the men who are the masters will fix things to suit themselves; but I can't help thinking of the poor horses!"

José, who was a regular jockey, had a most tender consideration for these noble beasts. Then, turning to Archie, he touched his cap and said:

"Saving your presence, sir, if the gentry themselves eat all the oats in your country, which is because they have nothing better to eat, I suppose, what do the poor horses do? They require to be well fed if they do much hard work."

The young men burst out laughing. José, a little abashed by their ridicule, exclaimed:

"Excuse me if I have said anything foolish. One may make mistakes without being drunk, just like Master Jules there, who was telling you that the habitants call Montmorency Falls 'The Cow' because their foam is white as milk. Now, I have a suspicion that it is because they bellow like a cow in certain winds. At least that is what the old bodies say when they get chattering."

"Don't be angry, old boy," answered Jules, "you are probably quite right. We were laughing because you thought there were horses in Scotland. The animal is unknown in that country."

"What! no horses, sir? What do the folks do when they want to travel?"

"When I say no horses," answered D'Haberville, "you must not understand me too literally. They have an animal resembling our horses, but not much taller than my big dog Niger. It lives in the mountains, wild as our caribous, and not altogether unlike them. When a Highlander wants to travel, he sounds his bagpipe; all the villagers gather together and he unfolds to them his project. Then they scatter through the woods, or rather through the heather, and after a day or two of toil and tribulation they succeed, occasionally, in capturing one of these charming beasts; then, after another day or two, if the brute is not too obstinate, and if the Highlander has enough patience, he sets out on his journey, and sometimes even succeeds in coming to the end of it."

"Well, I must say," retorted Lochiel, "you are a pretty one to be making fun of my Highlanders! You have good right to be proud of this princely turn-out of your own! It will be hard for posterity to believe that the high and mighty lord of D'Haberville sends for his son and heir in a sort of dung-cart without wheels! Doubtless he will send some outriders on ahead of us, in order that nothing shall be lacking in our triumphal approach to the manor of St. Jean Port Joli!"

"Well done, Lochiel! you are saved, brother mine," cried Jules. "A very neat home thrust. Claws for claws, as one of your Scottish saints exclaimed one day, when he was having a scrimmage with the devil."

José, during this discussion, was scratching his head disconsolately. Like Caleb Balderstone, in The Bride of Lammermoor, he was very sensitive on all subjects touching his master's honor.

"What a wretched fool I am!" he cried in a piteous voice. "It is all my fault. The seigneur has four carryalls in his coach-house, of which two are brand new and varnished up like fiddles, so that I used one for a looking-glass last Sunday. So, then, when the seigneur said to me yesterday morning, 'Get ready, José, for you must go to Quebec to fetch my son and his friend Mr. de Lochiel; see that you take a proper carriage'—I, like a fool, said to myself that when the roads were so bad the only thing to take was a sled like this! Oh, yes, I'm in for a good scolding! I shall get off cheap if I have to do without my brandy for a month! At three drinks a day," added José, "that will make a loss of ninety good drinks, without counting extras. But it's all the same to me; I'll take my punishment like a man."

The young men were greatly amused at José's ingenious lying for the honor of his master.

"Now," said Archie, "since you seem to have emptied your budget of all the absurdities that a hair-brained French head can contain, try and speak seriously, and tell me why the Isle of Orleans is called the Isle of the Sorcerers."

"For the very simple reason," answered Jules, "that a great many sorcerers live there."

"There you begin again with your nonsense," said Lochiel.

"I am in earnest," said Jules. "These Scotch are unbearably conceited. They can't acknowledge any excellence in other nations. Do you think, my dear fellow, that Scotland has the monopoly of witches and wizards? I would beg you to know that we too have our sorcerers; and that two hours ago, between Point Lévis and Beaumont, I might as easily as not have introduced you to a very respectable sorceress. I would have you know, moreover, that on the estate of my illustrious father you shall see a witch of the most remarkable skill. The difference is, my dear boy, that in Scotland you burn them, while here we treat them in a manner fitting their power and social influence. Ask José if I am not telling the truth?"

José did not fail to confirm all he said. In his eyes the witches of Beaumont and St. Jean Port Joli were genuine and mighty sorceresses.

"But to speak seriously," continued Jules, "since you would make a reasonable man of me, nolens volens, as my sixth-form master used to say when he gave me a dose of the strap, I believe the fable takes its rise from the fact that the habitants on the north and south shores of the river, seeing the islanders on dark nights go out fishing with torches, mistake their lights for will-o'-the-wisps. Then, you know that our country folk regard the will-o'-the-wisps as witches, or as evil spirits who endeavor to lure the wandering wretch to his death. They even profess to hear them laugh when the deluded traveler falls into the quagmire. The truth is, that there is an inflammable gas continually escaping from our bogs and swampy places, from which to the hobgoblins and sorcerers is but a single step."

"Impossible," said Archie; "your logic is at fault, as the professor so often had to tell you. You see the inhabitants of the north and south shores themselves go fishing with torches, whence, according to your reasoning, the islanders should have called them sorcerers; which is not the case."

While Jules was shaking his head, with no answer ready, José took up the word.

"If you would let me speak, gentlemen, I might explain your difficulty by telling you what happened to my late father who is now dead."

"Oh, by all means, tell us that; tell us what happened to your late father who is now dead," cried Jules, with a marked emphasis on the last four words.

"Yes, my dear José, do us the favor of telling us about it," added Lochiel.

"I can't half tell the story," answered José, "for, you see, I have neither the fine accent nor the splendid voice of my lamented parent. When he used to tell us what happened to him in his vigil, our bodies would shake so, as if with ague, as would do you good to see. But I'll do my best to satisfy you:

"It happened one day that my late father, who is now dead, had left the city for home somewhat late. He had even diverted himself a little, so to speak, with his acquaintances in Point Lévis. Like an honest man, he loved his drop; and on his journeys he always carried a flask of brandy in his dogfish-skin satchel. They say the liquor is the milk for old men."

"Lac dulce," interjected Archie, sententiously.

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Archie," answered José, with some warmth, "it was neither sweet water (de l'eau douce) nor lake-water (eau de lac), but very good, unadulterated brandy which my late father, now dead, was carrying in his satchel."

"Capital, upon my word!" cried Jules. "It serves you right for your perpetual Latin quotations!"

"I beg your pardon, José," said Lochiel, very seriously. "I intended not the shadow of disrespect to your late father."

"You are excused, sir," said José, entirely mollified. "It happened that it was quite dark when my father at last got under way. His friends did their best to keep him all night, telling him that he would have to pass, all by himself, the iron cage wherein La Corriveau did penance for having killed her husband.

"You saw it yourselves, gentlemen, when leaving Point Lévis at one o'clock. She was quiet then in her cage, the wicked creature, with her eyeless skull. But never you trust to her being blind. She is a cunning one, you had better believe! If she can't see in the daytime, she knows well enough how to find her way to torment poor folks at night. Well, as for my late father, who was as brave as his captain's sword, he told his friends that he didn't care—that he didn't owe La Corriveau a farthing—with a heap more reasons which I can not remember now. He put the whip to his horse, a fine brute that could travel like the wind, and was gone in a second.

"As he was passing the skeleton, he thought he heard a noise, a sort of wailing; but, as a heavy southwest wind was blowing, he made up his mind it was only the gale whistling through the bones of the corpse. It gave him a kind of a start, nevertheless, and he took a good pull at the flask to brace himself up. All things considered, however, as he said to himself, Christians should be ready to help each other; perhaps the poor creature was wanting his prayers. He took off his cap and devoutly recited a de profundis for her benefit, thinking that, if it didn't do her any good, it could at least do her no harm, and that he himself would be the better for it. Well, then he kept on as fast as he could; but, for all that, he heard a queer sound behind him—tic-tac, tic-tac, like a piece of iron striking on the stones. He thought it was the tire of his wheel, or some piece of the wagon, that had come unfastened. He got out to see, but found everything snug. He touched the horse to make up for lost time, but after a little he heard again that tic-tac, tic-tac, on the stones. Being brave, he didn't pay much attention.

"When he got to the high ground of St. Michel, which we passed a little way back, he grew very drowsy. 'After all,' said my late father, 'a man is not a dog! let us take a little nap; we'll both be the better for it, my horse and I.' Well, he unharnessed his horse, tied his legs so he would not wander too far, and said: 'There, my pet, there's good grass, and you can hear the brook yonder. Good-night.'

"As my late father crawled himself into the wagon to keep out of the dew, it struck him to wonder what time it was. After studying the 'Three Kings' to the south'ard and the 'Wagon' to the north'ard, he made up his mind it must be midnight. 'It is time,' said he, 'for honest men to be in bed.'

"Suddenly, however, it seemed to him as if Isle d'Orléans was on fire. He sprang over the ditch, leaned on the fence, opened his eyes wide, and stared with all his might. He saw at last that the flames were dancing up and down the shore, as if all the will-o'-the-wisps, all the damned souls of Canada, were gathered there to hold the witches' sabbath. He stared so hard that his eyes which had grown a little dim grew very clear again, and he saw a curious sight; you would have said they were a kind of men, a queer breed altogether. They had a head big as a peck measure, topped off with a pointed cap a yard long; then they had arms, legs, feet, and hands armed with long claws, but no body to speak of. Their crotch, begging your pardon, gentlemen, was split right up to their ears. They had scarcely anything in the way of flesh; they were kind of all bone, like skeletons. Every one of these pretty fellows had his upper lip split like a rabbit's, and through the split stuck out a rhinoceros tusk a foot long, like you see, Mr. Archie, in your book of unnatural history. As for the nose, it was nothing more nor less, begging your pardon, than a long pig's snout, which they would rub first on one side and then on the other of their great tusk, perhaps to sharpen it. I almost forgot to say that they had a long tail, twice as long as a cow's, which they used, I suppose, to keep off the flies.

"The funniest thing of all was that there were but three eyes to every couple of imps. Those that had but one eye, in the middle of the forehead, like those Cyclopes that your uncle, who is a learned man, Mr. Jules, used to read to us about out of that big book of his, all Latin, like the priest's prayer-book, which he called his Virgil—those that had but one eye held each by the claw two novices with the proper number of eyes. Out of all these eyes spurted the flames which lit up Isle d'Orléans like broad day. The novices seemed very respectful to their companions, who were, as one might say, half blind; they bowed down to them, they fawned upon them, they fluttered their arms and legs, just like good Christians dancing the minuet.

"The eyes of my late father were fairly starting out of his head. It was worse and worse when they began to jump and dance without moving from their places, and to chant in a voice as hoarse as that of a choking cow, this song:

"Hoary Frisker, Goblin gay,

Long-nosed Neighbor, come away!

Come my Grumbler in the mud,

Brother Frog of tainted blood!

Come, and on this juicy Christian

Let us feast it while we may!"

"'Ah! the accursed heathens,' exclaimed my late father, 'an honest man can not be sure of his property for a moment! Not satisfied with having stolen my favorite song, which I always keep to wind up with at weddings and feasts, just see how they've played the devil with it! One would hardly recognize it. It is Christians instead of good wine that they are going to treat themselves to, the scoundrels!'

"Then the imps went on with their hellish song, glaring at my late father, and curling their long snouts around their great rhinoceros tusks:

"Come, my tricksy Traveler's Guide,

Devil's Minion true and tried.

Come, my Sucking-Pig, my Simple,

Brother Wart and Brother Pimple;

Here's a fat and juicy Frenchman

To be pickled, to be fried!"

"'All that I can say to you just now, my darlings,' cried my late father, 'is that if you get no more fat to eat than what I'm going to bring you on my lean carcass you'll hardly need to skim your broth.'

"The goblins, however, seemed to be expecting something, for they kept turning their heads every moment. My late father looked in the same direction. What was that he saw on the hill-side? A mighty devil, built like the rest, but as long as the steeple St. Michel, which we passed awhile back. Instead of the pointed bonnet, he wore a three-horned hat, topped with a big thorn bush in place of a feather. He had but one eye, blackguard that he was, but that was as good as a dozen. He was doubtless the drum-major of the regiment, for he held in his hand a saucepan twice as big as our maple-sugar kettles, which hold twenty gallons, and in the other hand a bell-clapper, which no doubt the dog of a heretic had stolen from some church before its consecration. He pounded on his saucepan, and all the scoundrels began to laugh, to jump, to flutter, nodding to my late father as if inviting him to come and amuse himself with them.

"'You'll wait a long time, my lambs,' thought my late father to himself, his teeth chattering in his head as if he had the shaking fever—'you will wait a long time, my gentle lambs. I'm not in any hurry to quit the good Lord's earth to live with the goblins!'

"Suddenly the tall devil began to sing a hellish round, accompanying himself on the saucepan, which he beat furiously, and all the goblins darted away like lightning—so fast, indeed, that it took them less than a minute to go all the way around the island. My poor late father was so stupefied by the hubbub that he could not remember more than three verses of the song, which ran like this:

"Here's the spot that suits us well

When it gets too hot in hell—

Toura-loura;

Here we go all round,

Hands all round,

Here we go all round.

"Come along and stir your sticks,

You jolly dogs of heretics—

Toura-loura;

Here we go all round,

Hands all round,

Here we go all round.

"Room for all, there's room for all

That skim or wriggle, bounce or crawl—

Toura-loura;

Here we go all round,

Hands all round,

Here we go all round."

"My late father was in a cold sweat; he had not yet, however, come to the worst of it."

Here José paused. "But I am dying for a smoke, and, with your permission, gentlemen, I'll light my pipe."

"Quite right, my dear José," answered D'Haberville. "For my own part, I am dying for something else. My stomach declares that this is dinner-hour at college. Let's have a bite to eat."

Jules enjoyed the privilege of aristocratic descent—he had always a magnificent appetite. This was specially excusable to-day, seeing that he had dined at noon, and had had an immense deal of exercise since.