Cameron of Lochiel

He had adopted it as his guiding principle, that he would never acknowledge himself beaten; and it was necessary, therefore, for his opponents, when weary of war, to make him proposals of peace.

The reader will doubtless conclude that the boy was cordially disliked; on the contrary, every one was fond of him; he was the pet of the college. The truth is, Jules had such a heart as pulses all too rarely in the breast of man. To say that he was generous to a fault, that he was ever ready to defend the absent, to sacrifice himself in order to conceal the faults of others, would not give an adequate description of his character. The following incident will reveal him more effectively: When he was about twelve years old, a senior student got out of patience and kicked him; with no intention, however, of hurting him much. It was contrary to Jules's code of honor to carry complaints to the masters. He contented himself with replying to his assailant: "You are too thick-headed, you big brute, for me to waste any sarcasm on you. You would not understand it. One must pierce your hide in some other way; but be patient, you will lose nothing by waiting!"

After rejecting certain more or less ingenious schemes of vengeance, Jules resolved to catch his enemy asleep and shave his eyebrows – a punishment which would be easy to inflict, as Dubuc, the youth who had kicked him, was a mighty heavy sleeper. This plan had the further advantage of touching him on a most sensitive point, for he was a handsome fellow and a good deal of a dandy.

Jules had just decided on this revenge, when he heard Dubuc say to one of his friends, who had rallied him on looking gloomy:

"Indeed, I have good reason to be, for I expect my father to-morrow. I have got into debt with the shop-keepers, hoping that my mother would come to Quebec ahead of him, and would relieve me without his knowing anything about it. Father is close-fisted and violent. He will probably strike me in the first heat of his anger; and I don't know where to hide my head. I have a mind to run away until the storm is over."

"Oh," said Jules, "why don't you let me help you out of the scrape?"

"The devil you say!" exclaimed Dubuc, shaking his head.

"Why," said Jules, "do you think that on account of a kick, more or less, I would leave a fellow-student in a scrape and exposed to the violence of his amiable papa? To be sure, you almost broke my back, but that is another affair, which we will settle later. How much cash do you want?"

"My dear fellow," answered Dubuc, "that would be abusing your kindness. I need a large sum, and I know you are not in funds just now; for you emptied your purse to help that poor woman whose husband was killed the other day."

"A pretty story," said Jules. "As if one could not always find money to save a friend from the wrath of a father who is going to break his neck! How much do you want?"

"Fifty francs!"

"You shall have them this evening," said the boy.

Jules, an only son, belonging to a rich family, indulged by everybody, had his pockets always full of money. Father and mother, uncles and aunts, godfathers and godmothers, they all kept loudly proclaiming that boys should not have too much money to spend. At the same time they outdid each other in surreptitiously supplying his purse!

Dubuc, however, had spoken truly; the boy's purse was empty for the moment. Fifty francs was, moreover, quite a sum in those days. The King of France was paying his red allies only fifty francs for an English scalp. His Britannic Majesty, richer or more generous, was paying a hundred for the scalp of a Frenchman!

Jules did not care to apply to his uncles and his aunts, the only relations he had in the city. His first thought was to borrow fifty francs by pawning his gold watch, which was worth at least twenty-five louis. Revolving the matter, however, he bethought himself of a certain old woman, a servant of the house, whom his father had dowered at her marriage, and to whom he had afterward advanced enough money to set her up in business. The business had prospered in her hands. She was a widow, rich and childless.

There were difficulties to surmount, however. The old dame was rather avaricious and crusty; and on the occasion of Jules's last visit they had not parted on the best terms possible. She had even chased him into the street with a broomstick. The boy had done nothing more, however, than play her a little trick. He had given her pet spaniel a dose of snuff, and when the old lady ran to the help of her dog, who was conducting himself like a lunatic, he had emptied the rest of the snuff-box into a dandelion salad which she was carefully picking over for her supper.

"Hold on, mother," he cried, as he ran away, "there is a good seasoning for you."

Jules saw that it was very necessary to make his peace with the good dame, and hence these preliminaries. He threw his arms about her neck on entering, in spite of the old woman's attempt to shield herself from these too ardent demonstrations, after the way he had affronted her.

"See, my dear Madeleine," he cried, "I am come to pardon thine offenses as thou must pardon all who have offended against thee. Everybody says thou art stingy and revengeful, but that is no business of mine. Thou wilt get quit of it by roasting a little while in another world. I wash my hands of it entirely."

Madeleine hardly knew whether to laugh or be angry at this fantastic preamble; but, as she was fond of the boy, for all his tricks, she took the wiser course and smiled good-naturedly.

"Now that we are in a better humor," continued Jules, "let us proceed to business. I have been a little foolish and have got into debt, and I dread to trouble my good father about it. In fact, I want fifty francs to settle the unfortunate business. Can you lend me that much?"

"Indeed, now, Master D'Haberville," answered the old dame, "if that were all I had in the world, I would give it all to save your father any trouble. I owe so much to your father."

"Tut!" said Jules, "if you talk of those ha'pennies, there's an end of business. But listen, my good Madeleine, since I might break my neck when I least expect it, or still more probably when climbing on the roof or among the city bells, I must give you a bit of writing for security. I hope, however, to pay you back in a month at latest."

At this Madeleine was seriously offended. She refused the note, and counted him out the money. Jules almost choked her with his embrace, sprang through the window into the street and hurried back to the college.

At recess time that evening Dubuc was freed from all anxiety on the score of his amiable papa.

"But remember," said D'Haberville, "I still owe you for that kick."

"Hold on, dear boy," exclaimed Dubuc, with feeling. "I wish you would settle that right now. Break my head or my back with the poker, only let us settle it. To think that, after all you have done for me, you are still bearing me a grudge, would be nothing less than torture."

"A fine idea that," exclaimed the boy, "to think that I bear any one a grudge because I am in his debt in regard to a little exchange of compliments! So that is how you take it, eh? Shake, then, and let us think no more about it. You may brag of being the only one to scratch me without my having drawn his blood in return."

With these words he sprang upon the young man's shoulders like a monkey, pulled out a few hairs to satisfy his conscience, and scampered off to join the merry group which was waiting for him.

Archibald of Lochiel, matured by bitter experiences, and on that account more self-contained and more reserved than other boys of his age, on his first coming to college hardly knew whether to smile or be angry at the frolics of the little imp who seemed to have taken him for his special butt, and who hardly left him any peace. He could not be expected to divine that this was Jules's manner of showing his affection for those he loved the most. One day, driven to the end of his forbearance, Archie said to him:

"Do you know, you would try the patience of a saint! Verily I don't know what to do with you."

"But you have a way out of your difficulties," answered Jules. "My skin itches; give me a good hiding, and I'll leave you in peace. That will be easy enough for you, you young Hercules."

Lochiel, indeed, accustomed from his infancy to the trying sports of the young Highlanders, was at fourteen marvelously strong for his years.

"Do you think," exclaimed Archie, "that I am such a coward as to strike a boy younger and weaker than myself?"

"Oh, no," said Jules; "I see we agree on that score – never a knock for a little fellow. What suits me is a good tussle with a fellow of my own age, or even a little older; then shake hands and think no more about it. By the way," continued Jules, "you know that comical dog De Chavigny? He is older than I am, but so weak and miserable that I have never had the heart to punch him, although he has played me such a trick as even St. Francis himself would hardly pardon. Just think of him running to me all out of breath and exclaiming: 'I've just snatched an egg from that greedy Letourneau, who had stolen it out of the refectory. Here, hide it; he's after me!'

"'Where do you want me to hide it?' said I.

"'Oh, in your hat,' he answered; 'he'll never think of looking for it there.'

"As for me, I was fool enough to do it. I ought to have mistrusted him.

"In a moment Letourneau came up and jammed my cap down over my eyes. The accursed egg nearly blinded me, and I swear did not smell like a rose-garden! It was an addled egg found by Chavigny in a nest which the hen had probably abandoned a month before. I got out of that mess with the loss of a cap, a vest, and other garments. Well, after the first of my fury was over, I could not help laughing; and if I bear him any grudge at all, it is for having got ahead of me with so neat a trick. I should love to get it off on Derome, who keeps his hair so charmingly powdered. As for Letourneau, since he was too stupid to have invented the trick myself, I contented myself with saying to him, 'Blessed are they of little wit'; and he professed himself proud of the compliment, being glad enough, after all, to get off so cheaply.

"And now, my dear Archie," continued Jules, "let us come to terms. I am a kindly potentate, and my conditions shall be most easy. To please you, I undertake, on the word of a gentleman, to diminish by one third those tricks of mine which you lack the good taste to appreciate. Come, now, you ought to be satisfied with that if you are not utterly unreasonable, for you see, my dear boy, I love you. I would not have made peace with any one else on such advantageous terms."

Lochiel could not help laughing as he shook the irrepressible lad. It was from this conversation that the friendship between the two boys took its beginning – on Archie's part with a truly Scottish restraint, on the side of Jules with the passionate warmth of which the French heart is capable.

A few weeks later, about a month before the vacation, which began then on the 15th of August, Jules seized his friend's arm and whispered:

"Come into my room. I have just had a letter from father which concerns you."

"Concerns me!" exclaimed the other in astonishment.

"Why are you surprised?" retorted D'Haberville. "Do you think you are not of sufficient importance for any one to concern himself about you? Why, all New France is talking about the handsome Scotchman. The mammas, fearing your influence on the inflammable hearts of their daughters, talk seriously of petitioning our principal never to let you appear in public except with a veil on, like the women of the East."

"Come, stop your fooling, and let me go on with my reading."

"But I am very much in earnest," said Jules. And, dragging his friend along with him, he read him part of a letter from his father, which ran as follows:

"What you tell me about your young friend, Master de Lochiel, interests me very much. I grant your request with the greatest pleasure. Give him my compliments, and beg him to come and spend his next vacation with us, and all his vacations so long as he is attending college. If he does not consider this invitation sufficiently formal, I will write to him myself. His father sleeps upon a glorious field. Soldiers are brothers everywhere; so should their sons be likewise. Let him come to our own hearth-stone, and our hearts shall open to him as to one of our own blood."

Archie was so affected by the warmth of this invitation that for some moments he could not answer.

"Come, my haughty Scotlander, will you do us the honor?" said his friend. "Or must my father send, on a special embassy, his chief butler, José Dubé, with the bagpipes slung on his back in the form of a St. Andrew's cross – as is the custom, I believe, among your Highland chiefs – to present you his invitation with all due formality?"

"As, fortunately, I am no longer in my Highlands," said Archie, laughing, "we can dispense with these formalities. I shall write at once to Captain D'Haberville, and thank him with my whole heart for his noble generosity to the exiled orphan."

"Then, let us speak reasonably for once," said Jules, "if only for the novelty of the thing. You think me very light, silly, and scatter-brained. I acknowledge that there is a little of all that in me, which does not prevent me from being in earnest more often than you think. I have long been seeking a friend, a true and high-hearted friend. I have watched you very closely, and I find you all I could wish. Lochiel, will you be my friend?"

"Without a moment's question, my dear boy," answered Archie, "for I have always felt strongly attracted toward you."

"Well, then," cried Jules, grasping his hand warmly, "it is for life and death with us Lochiel!"

Thus, between a boy of twelve and a boy of fourteen, was ratified a friendship which in the sequel will be exposed to the crudest tests.

"Here's a letter from mother," said Jules, "in which there is a word for you":

"I hope your friend, Master de Lochiel, will do us the pleasure of accepting your father's invitation. We are all eager to meet him. His room is ready, alongside of your own. In the box which José will hand you there is a parcel for him which he would grieve me greatly by refusing. In sending it I am thinking of the mother he has lost."

The box contained equal shares for the two boys of cakes, sweetmeats, jams, and other dainties.

The friendship between the two boys grew stronger day by day. They became inseparable. Their college-mates dubbed them variously Damon and Pythias, Orestes and Pylades, Nisus and Euryalus. At last they called them the brothers.

All the time Lochiel was at college he spent his vacations with the D'Habervilles, who made no difference between the two boys unless to lavish the more marked attentions upon the young Scotchman who had become as it were a son of the house. It was most natural, then, that Archie, before sailing for Europe, should accompany Jules on his farewell visit to his father's house.

The friendship between the two young men, as we have already said, is destined to be put to the bitterest trial, when that code of honor which has been substituted by civilization for the truest sentiments of the human heart, shall come to teach them the obligations of men who are fighting under hostile flags. But why anticipate the dark future? Have they not enjoyed during almost ten years of college life the passing griefs, the little jealousies, the eager pleasures, the differences and ardent reconciliations which characterize a boyish friendship?

CHAPTER II.

A NIGHT WITH THE SORCERERS

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."