Читать книгу High Towers - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 22

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Charles le Moyne accompanied his famous brother to the Southwest gate from which the path led to the mouille-pieds. They lingered under the stone arch and looked about them.

A tenant named Charron took advantage of their presence to bustle up with a piece of news. “Old Kirkinhead tried to hang himself this morning,” he announced. “I was passing by his house and it was a very lucky thing indeed. I heard a sound like a chair falling over and I went to the door. Palsambleu! He was hanging from a hook in the ceiling! I cut the rope with my knife and down he went on the floor.”

“How long had he been hanging?” asked Charles.

“A few seconds only, m’sieur. The rope hadn’t even cut into his neck.”

The seigneur indulged in a grunt of doubt. “It could have been a coincidence that he did it just as you were passing,” he said, “but somehow I don’t think it was. He’s been threatening to hang himself for years.”

The tenant nodded his head in sudden agreement. “Now that you mention it, I too remember the things he has been saying. And, M’sieur Charles, I thought as I approached the house that I saw him squinting out of the corner of a window. Of course I was sure I had been mistaken about it when I went in and found him swinging from the ceiling.”

“If I had the time,” growled D’Iberville, “I would go and teach that fellow a lesson.”

“He’d left a letter for Cécile,” went on Charron, enjoying his momentary importance. “He said they’d driven him to it and he knew they would regret it when they looked on his face in death.”

“And how were things when you left?” asked the seigneur.

“He was eating a plate of soup. And he was grinning and winking and nodding at Cécile’s back as though proud of himself.” The witness was beginning to see the light. “That badaud, that great fool! Was it all a trick?”

“I think,” said the seigneur, exchanging a glance with his brother, “that I must have a talk with Monsieur Girard.”

“The foot,” declared D’Iberville, “can be more eloquent than the tongue.”

The witness was now completely convinced. “By St. Christophe, he saw me and waited until he could be sure I would rescue him! Much better it will be for him not to try it a second time when I’m the one to be there! If I catch him at it again I’ll just stand in front of him and laugh in his face while he strangles to death. Is it to be expected that I’ll make a habit of saving him?”

D’Iberville laughed. “When you see him again, tell him that the devil keeps pitchforks heated to give a rousing welcome to suicides.” He shook his head. “It’s indeed a misfortune that our stout little Philippe has to live in the house of this crackbrain.”

The two brothers passed through the gate after the keeper dropped the chains. “May God and all the kind saints look down on you, M’sieur Pierre,” said the keeper, “and bring you safely home.”

D’Iberville had changed his plum-colored coat for a more comfortable capot of ratteen which flared out stiffly from the waist. He still had the birch-bark case around his neck but it was empty. Having a tendency to carelessness in such matters, he had left many knives about the countryside. Charles noticed what had happened and said that he would have the missing article found and sent to Montreal.

When they had gone about halfway to the landing place they stopped and faced each other in silence for several moments.

“Well, Pierrot, we begin.”

“Yes, Charles. The next two years at least will be both busy and bloody. I expect to be fighting all the time. And you, my shrewd elder brother, will be having a hard time of it providing me with the sinews of war.”

“It won’t be easy for any of us.” The seigneur glanced back over his shoulder at the high walls of the château. “We must see to it, Pierre, that the strong places on the great river are strengthened so we can hold all the West for France.”

D’Iberville began to quote from the First Book of Maccabees: “ ‘Then Simon built up the strongholds in Judea, and fenced them about with high towers, and great walls, and gates, and bars.’ That’s what you were about, my brother, when you built the high towers of Longueuil. They couldn’t see what you were doing, the blind fools who criticized you. Now that we’re all going to have empty pockets, I suppose they’ll start at it again.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the seigneur easily. “Perhaps they’ll begin to understand when we have forts along the Mississippi. I pay no attention to the talk of pinchpenny neighbors.”

D’Iberville was looking at the walls of the château with an air of deep regret. Then he turned to the river and studied the deep cover of trees on the island of Ste. Hélène, which belonged to the family.

“I’ve always loved Longueuil,” he said. “I should never come back here because it puts thoughts in my head. Always when I come I wonder if it’s the last time. At this moment the presentiment is on me heavily. I never expect to see Longueuil again.”