The Mississippi Bubble Part 28

"How did you know--?"

"Why, easily. You do not yet understand the ways of the wilderness, where news travels as fast as in the cities. You were hardly below the foot of Michiganon before runners from the Illini had spread the news along the Chicaqua, where I was then in camp. For the rest, the runners brought also news of the Big Peace. I reasoned that the Iroquois would not dare to destroy their captives, that in time the agents of the Government would receive the captives of the Iroquois--that these captives would naturally come to the settlements on the St. Lawrence, since it was the French against whom the Iroquois had been at war; that having come to Montreal, you would naturally remain here for a time. The rest was easy. I fared on to the Straits this spring, and then on down the Lakes. I have sold our furs, and am now ready to account to you with a sum quite as much as we should have expected.

"Now, Monsieur," and Du Mesne stretched out his arm again, pointing to the down-coming flood of the St. Lawrence, "Monsieur, will you come? I see not the St. Lawrence, but the Messasebe. I can hear the voices calling!"

Law dashed his hand across his eyes and turned his head away. "Not yet, Du Mesne," said he. "I do not know. Not yet. I must first go across the waters. Perhaps sometime--I can not tell. But this, my comrades, my brothers, I do know; that never, until the last sod lies on my grave, will I forget the Messasebe, or forget you. Go back, if you will, my brothers; but at night, when you sit by your fireside, think of me, as I shall think of you, there in the great valley. My friends, it is the heart of the world!"

"But, Monsieur--"

"There, Du Mesne--I would not talk to-day. At another time. Brothers, adieu!"

"Adieu, my brother," said the _coureur_, his own emotion showing in his eyes; and their hands met again.

"Monsieur is cast down," said Du Mesne to Pierre Noir later, as they reached the beach. "Now, what think you?

"Usually, as you know, Pierre, it is a question of some woman. It reminds me, Wabana was remiss enough when I left her among the Illini with you. Now, G.o.d bless my heart, I find her--how think you? With her crucifix lost, cooking for a dirty Ojibway!"

"Mary Mother!" said Pierre Noir, "if it be a matter of a woman--well, G.o.d help us all! At least 'tis something that will take Monsieur L'as over seas again."

"'Tis mostly a woman," mused Du Mesne; "but this pa.s.seth my wit."

"True, they pa.s.s the wit of all. Now, did I ever tell thee about the mission girl at Michilimackinac--but stay! That for another time. They tell me that our comrade, Greysolon du L'hut, is expected in to-morrow with a party from the far end of Superior. Come, let us have the news."

"_Tous les printemps, Tant des nouvelles_,"

hummed Du Mesne, as he flung his arm above the shoulder of the other; and the two so disappeared adown the beach.

Dully, apathetically, Law lived on his life here at Montreal for yet a time, at the edge of that wilderness which had proved all else but Eden.

Near to him, though in these guarded times guest by necessity of the good sisters of the Convent, dwelt Mary Connynge. And as for these two, it might be said that each but bided the time. To her Law might as well have been one of the corded Sulpician priests; and she to him, for all he liked, one of the nuns of the Convent garden. What did it all mean; where was it all to end? he asked himself a thousand times; and a thousand times his mind failed him of any answer. He waited, watching the great encampment disappear, first slowly, then swiftly and suddenly, so that in a night the last of the lodges had gone and the last canoe had left the sh.o.r.e. There remained only the hurrying flood of the St.

Lawrence, coming from the West.

The autumn came on. Early in November the s.h.i.+ps would leave for France.

Yet before the beginning of November there came swiftly and sharply the settlement of the questions which racked Law's mind. One morning Mary Connynge was missing from the Convent, nor could any of the sisters, nor the mother superior, explain how or when she had departed!

Yet, had there been close observers, there might have been seen a boat dropping down the river on the early morning of that day. And at Quebec there was later reported in the books of the intendant the s.h.i.+pping, upon the good bark Dauphine, of Lieutenant Raoul de Ligny, sometime officer of the regiment Carignan, formerly stationed in New France; with him a lady recently from Montreal, known very well to Lieutenant de Ligny and his family; and to be in his care _en voyage_ to France; the name of said lady illegible upon the records, the spelling apparently not having suited the clerk who wrote it, and then forgot it in the press of other things.

Certain of the governor's household, as well as two or three _habitants_ from the lower town, witnessed the arrival of this lady, who came down from Montreal. They saw her take boat for the bark Dauphine, one of the last s.h.i.+ps to go down the river that fall. Yes, it was easily to be established. Dark, with singular, brown eyes, _pet.i.te_, yet not over small, of good figure--a.s.suredly so much could be said; for obviously the king, kindly as he might feel toward the colony of New France, could not send out, among the young women supplied to the colonists as wives, very many such demoiselles as this; otherwise a.s.suredly all France would have followed the king's s.h.i.+ps to the St. Lawrence.

John Law, a grave and saddened man, yet one now no longer lacking in decision, stood alone one day at the parapet of the great rock of Quebec, gazing down the broad expanse of the stream below. He was alone except for a little child, a child too young to know her mother, had death or disaster at that time removed the mother. Law took the little one up in his arms and gazed hard upon the upturned face.

"Catharine!" he said to himself. "Catharine! Catharine!"

"Pardon, Monsieur," said a voice at his elbow. "Surely I have seen you before this?"

Law turned. Joncaire, the amba.s.sador of peace, stood by, smiling and extending his hand.

"Naturally, I could never forget you," said Law.

"Monsieur looks at the s.h.i.+pping," said Joncaire, smiling. "Surely he would not be leaving New France, after so luckily escaping the worst of her dangers?"

"Life might be the same for me over there as here," replied Law. "As for my luck, I must declare myself the most unfortunate man on earth."

"Your wife, perhaps, is ill?"

"Pardon, I have none."

"Pardon, in turn, Monsieur--but, you see--the child?"

"It is the child of a savage woman," said Law.

Joncaire pulled aside the infant's hood. He gave no sign, and a nice indifference sat in his query: "_Une belle sauvage_?"

"_Belle sauvage_!"

BOOK III

FRANCE

CHAPTER I

THE GRAND MONARQUE

On a great bed of state, satin draped, flanked with ancient tapestries, piled sickeningly soft with heaps of pillows, there lay a thin, withered little man--old, old and very feeble. His face was shrunken and drawn with pain; his eyes, once bright, were dulled; his brow, formerly imperious, had lost its arrogance. Under the coverings which, in the unrest of illness, he now pulled high about his face, now tossed restlessly aside, his figure lay, an elongated, shapeless blot, scarce showing beneath the silks. One limb, twitched and drawn up convulsively, told of a definite seat of pain. The hands, thin and wasted, lay out upon the coverlets; and the thumbs were creeping, creeping ever more insistently, under the cover of the fingers, telling that the battle for life was lost, that the surrender had been made.

It was a death-bed, this great bed of state; a death-bed situated in the heart of the greatest temple of desire ever built in all the world. He who had been master there, who had set in order those miles of stately columns, those seas of glittering gilt and crystal, he who had been magician, builder, creator, perverter, debaser--he, Louis of France, the Grand Monarque, now lay suffering like any ordinary human being, like any common man.

Last night the four and twenty violins, under the king's command, had shrilled their chorus, as had been their wont for years while the master dined. This morning the cordon of drums and hautboys had pealed their high and martial music. Useless. The one or the other music fell upon ears too dull to hear. The formal tribute to the central soul for a time continued of its own inertia; for a time royalty had still its wors.h.i.+p; yet the custom was but a lagging one. The musicians grimaced and made what discord they liked, openly, insolently, scorning this weak and withered figure on the silken bed. The cordon of the white and blue guards of the Household still swept about the vast pleasure grounds of this fairy temple; yet the officers left their posts and conversed one with the other. Musicians and guards, spectators and populace, all were waiting, waiting until the end should come. Farther out and beyond, where the peaked roofs of Paris rose, back of that line which this imperious mind had decreed should not be pa.s.sed by the dwellings of Paris, which must not come too near this temple of luxury, nor disturb the king while he enjoyed himself--back of the perfunctorily loyal guards of the Household, there reached the ragged, shapeless ma.s.ses of the people of Paris and of France, waiting, smiling, as some animal licking its chops in expectation of some satisfying thing. They were waiting for news of the death of this shrunken man, this creature once so full of arrogant l.u.s.t, then so full of somber repentance, now so full of the very taste of death.

On the great tapestry that hung above the head of the curtained bed shone the double sun of Louis the Grand, which had meant death and devastation to so much of Europe. It blazed, mimicking the glory that was gone; but toward it there was raised no sword nor scepter more in vow or exaltation. The race was run, the sun was sinking to its setting.

Nothing but a man--a weary, worn-out, dying man--was Louis, the Grand Monarque, king for seventy-two years of France, almost king of Europe.

This death-bed lay in the center of a land oppressed, ground down, impoverished. The hearts and lives of thousands were in these colonnades. The people had paid for their king. They had fed him fat and kept him full of loves. In return, he had trampled the people into the very dust. He had robbed even their ancient n.o.bles of honors and consideration. Blackened, ruined, a vast graveyard, a monumental starving-ground, France lay about his death-bed, and its people were but waiting with grim impatience for their king to die. What France might do in the future was unknown; yet it was unthinkable that aught could be worse than this glorious reign of Louis, the Grand Monarque, this crumbling clod, this resolving excrescence, this phosph.o.r.escent, disintegrating fungus of a diseased life and time.

Seventy-two years a king; thirty years a libertine; twenty years a repentant. Son, grandson, great-grandson, all gone, as though to leave not one of that once haughty breed. For France no hope at all; and for the house of Bourbon, all the hope there might be in the life of a little boy, sullen, tiny, timid. Far over in Paris, busy about his games and his loves, a jesting, long-curled gallant, the Duke of Orleans, nephew of this king, was holding a court of his own. And from this court which might be, back to the court which was, but which might not be long, swung back and forth the fawning creatures of the former court.

This was the central picture of France, and Paris, and of the New World on this day of the year 1715.

In the room about the bed of state, uncertain groups of watchers whispered noisily. The five physicians, who had tried first one remedy and then another; the rustic physician whose nostrum had kept life within the king for some unexpected days; the ladies who had waited upon the relatives of the king; some of the relatives themselves; Villeroy, guardian of the young king soon to be; the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and the wife of that b.a.s.t.a.r.d, who hoped for the king's shoes; the mistress of his earlier years, for many years his wife--Maintenon, that peerless hypocrite of all the years--all these pa.s.sed, and hesitated, and looked, waiting, as did the hungry crowds in Paris toward the Seine, until the double sun should set, and the crawling thumbs at last should find their shelter.

The Grand Monarque was losing the only time in all his life when he might have learned human wisdom.

"Madame!" whispered the dry lips, faintly.

She who was addressed as madame, this woman Maintenon, pious murderer, unrivaled hypocrite, unspeakably self-contained dissembler, the woman who lost for France an empire greater than all France, stepped now to the bed-side of the dying monarch, inclining her head to hear what he might have to say. Was Maintenon, the outcast, the widow, the wife of the king, at last to be made ruler of the Church in France? Was she to govern in the household of the king even after the king had departed?

The woman bent over the dying man, the covetousness of her soul showing in her eyes, struggle as she might to retain her habitual and unparalleled self-control.