Part 1 (1/2)
The Lady of Fort St. John.
by Mary Hartwell Catherwood.
PREFACE.
How can we care for shadows and types, when we may go back through history and live again with people who actually lived?
Sitting on the height which is now topped by a Martello tower, at St.
John in the maritime province of New Brunswick, I saw--not the opposite city, not the lovely bay; but this tragedy of Marie de la Tour, the tragedy ”which recalls” (says the Abbe Casgrain in his ”Pelerinage au pays d'Evangeline”) ”the romances of Walter Scott, and forces one to own that reality is stranger than fiction.”
In ”Papers relating to the rival chiefs, D'Aulnay and La Tour,” of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Collection, vol. vii., may be found these prefatory remarks:--
”There is a romance of History as well as a History of Romance. To the former cla.s.s belong many incidents in the early periods of New England and its adjacent colonies. The following papers ... refer to two persons, D'Aulnay and La Tour, ... individuals of respectable intellect and education, of n.o.ble families and large fortune. While the first was a zealous and efficient supporter of the Roman Church, the second was less so, from his frequent connection with others of a different faith.
The scene of their ... prominent actions, their exhibition of various pa.s.sions and talents, their conquests and defeats, their career and end, as exerting an influence on their a.s.sociates as well as themselves, on other communities as well as their own--was laid in Nova Scotia. This phrase then comprised a territory vastly more extensive than it does now as a British Province. It embraced not only its present boundaries, which were long termed Acadia, but also about two thirds of the State of Maine.”
It startles the modern reader, in examining doc.u.ments of the French archives relating to the colonies, to come upon a letter from Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay, thanking that governor of Acadia for his good service at Fort St. John. Thus was that great race who first trod down the wilderness on this continent continually and cruelly hampered by the man who sat on the throne in France.
LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN.
PRELUDE.
AT THE HEAD OF THE BAY OF FUNDY.
The Atlantic rushed across a mile or two of misty beach, boring into all its channels in the neck of Acadia. Twilight and fog blurred the landscape, but the eye could trace a long swell of earth rising gradually from the bay, through marshes, to a summit with a small stockade on its southern slope. Sentinels pacing within the stockade felt the weird influence of that bald land. The guarded spot seemed an island in a sea of vapor and spring night was bringing darkness upon it.
The stockade inclosed a single building of rough logs clumsily put together, and c.h.i.n.ked with the hard red soil. An unhewn wall divided the house into two rooms, and in one room were gathered less than a dozen men-at-arms. Their officer lay in one of the cupboard-like bunks, with his hands clasped under his head. Some of the men were already asleep; others sat by the hearth, rubbing their weapons or spreading some garment to dry. A door in the part.i.tion opened, and the wife of one of the men came from the inner room.
”Good-night, madame,” she said.
”Good-night, Zelie,” answered a voice within.
”If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?”
”a.s.suredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather for our voyage home.”
The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened to her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.
This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.
Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service in the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the northern cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin and the sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his armor had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a chair of twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged out of the neighboring forest for the building of the outpost. His wife sat on a pile of furs beside his knee. Her Huguenot cap lay on the shelf above the fire. She wore a black gown slashed in the sleeves with white, and a kerchief of lace pushed from her throat. Her black hair, which Zelie had braided, hung down in two ropes to the floor.
”How soon, monsieur,” she asked, ”can you return to Fort St. John?”
”With all speed possible, Marie. Soon, if we can work the miracle of moving a peace-loving man like Denys to action.”
”Nicholas Denys ought to take part with you.”
”Yet he will scarce do it.”