Shadows on the Rock (17 page)

One dark afternoon in November Cécile was sitting in the front shop, knitting a stocking. She sat in her own little
chair, placed beside her father’s tall stool, on which she had put a candle, as the daylight was so thick. Though the street
outside was wet and the fog brown and the house so quiet, and though the Count was ill up in the Château, she was not
feeling dull, but happy and contented. As she knitted and watched the shop, she kept singing over Captain Pondaven’s old
song, about the three ships that came

No more boats from France would come to Quebec as late as this, even her father admitted that, and his herbarium had been
put back on the high shelves of the cabinet, where it belonged. As soon as those dried plants were out of sight, the house
itself changed; everything seemed to draw closer together, to join hands, as it were. Cécile had polished the candlesticks
and pewter cups, rubbed the table and the bed-posts and the chair-claws with oil, darned the rent in her father’s
counterpane. A little more colour had come back into the carpet and the curtains, she thought. Perhaps that was only because
the fire was lit in the salon every evening now, and things always looked better in the fire-light. But no, she really
believed that everything in the house, the furniture, the china shepherd boy, the casseroles in the kitchen, knew that the
herbarium had been restored to the high shelves and that the world was not going to be destroyed this winter.

A life without security, without plans, without preparation for the future, had been terrible. Nothing had gone right
this fall; her father had not put away any wood-doves in fat, or laid in winter vegetables, or bought his supply of wild
rice from the Indians. “But we will manage,” she sometimes whispered to her trusty poêle when she stuffed him with birch and
pine.

Cécile tended the shop alone every afternoon now. A notice on the door requested messieurs les clients to be so good as
to call in the morning, as the pharmacien was occupied elsewhere in the afternoon. Nevertheless clients came in the
afternoon, especially country people, and her father placed all the most popular remedies on one shelf and marked them
clearly, so that Cécile could dispense them when they were called for.

This afternoon, just as she was about to go for another candle, she thought she heard her father coming home; but it
proved to be Noël Pommier, the cobbler, who wanted a mixture of rhubarb and senna that M. Auclair sometimes made up for his
mother.

Cécile sprang up and told him it was ready at hand, plainly marked. “Et préféreriez-vous les pilules, ou le liquide,
Monsieur Noël?”

“Les pilules, s’il vous plaît, mademoiselle. Et votre père?”

“He is always at the Château after three o’clock. The Governor had been indisposed for two weeks now.”

“Everyone knows that, mademoiselle,” said the cobbler with a sigh. “Everyone is offering prayers for his recovery. It
will be bad for all of us if anything goes wrong with the Count.”

“Never fear, monsieur! My father is giving him every care, and he grows a little stronger each day.”

“God grant it, mademoiselle. Picard is very much discouraged about his master. He says he cannot shave himself any more
and does not look like himself. Picard thinks he ought to be bled.”

“Oh, Monsieur Pommier, I wish you could hear what my father has to say to that! And what does Picard know about medicine?
But he is not the only one. Other people have tried to persuade my father to bleed the Governor, but he is as firm as a
rock.”

“I have no doubt Monsieur Auclair knows best, Mademoiselle Cécile; but people will talk at such times, when a public man
is ill.”

Pommier had scarcely gone when her father came in, with a dragging step and a mournful countenance.

“Papa,” said Cécile as she brought him his indoor coat, “I know you are tired, but the dinner will soon be ready. Sit
down by the fire and rest a little. And, Father, won’t you try to look a little more confident these days? The people watch
you, and when you have a discouraged air, they all become discouraged.”

“You think so?” He spoke anxiously.

“I am sure of it, Papa. I can tell by the things they say when they call here in your absence. You must look as if the
Governor were much, much better.”

“He is not. He is failing all the time.” Her father sighed. “But you are right. We must put on a better face for the
public.”

Cécile kissed him and went into the kitchen. Just as she was moving the soup forward to heat, she heard a sharp knock at
the shop door. Her father answered it, and Bishop de Saint–Vallier entered. Auclair hurriedly brought more candles into the
shop and set a chair for his visitor. After preliminary civilities the Bishop came to the point.

“I have called, Monsieur Auclair, to inquire concerning the Governor’s condition. Do you consider his illness
mortal?”

“Not necessarily. If he were ten years younger, I should not consider it serious. However, he has great vitality and may
very easily rally from this attack.”

The Bishop frowned and stroked his narrow chin. He was clearly in some perplexity. “When I called upon the Comte de
Frontenac some days ago, he stated that his recovery would be a matter of a week, at most. In short, he refused to consider
his indisposition seriously, though to my eyes the mark of death was clearly upon him. Does he really believe he will
recover?”

“Very probably. And that is a good state of mind for a sick man.”

“Monsieur Auclair,” Saint–Vallier spoke up sharply, “I feel that you evade me. Do you yourself believe that the Count
will recover?”

“I must ask your indulgence, Monseigneur, but in a case like the Count’s a medical adviser should not permit himself to
believe in anything but recovery. His doubts would affect the patient. If the Count still has the vital force I have always
found in him, he will recover. His organs are sound.”

Saint–Vallier seemed to pay little heed to this reply. His eyes had been restlessly sweeping the room from floor to
ceiling and now became fixed intently upon one point — on the stuffed alligator, as it happened. He began to speak rapidly,
with gracious rise and fall of the voice, but in his most authoritative manner.

“If the Governor’s illness is mortal, and he does not realize the fact, he should be brought to realize it. He has a
great deal to put right with Heaven. He has used his authority and his influence here for worldly ends, rather than to
strengthen the kingdom of God in Septentrional France!” For the first time he flashed a direct glance at the apothecary.

Auclair bowed respectfully. “Such matters are beyond me, Monseigneur. The Governor does not discuss his official business
with me.”

“But there is always open discussion of these things! Of the Governor’s stand on the brandy traffic, for example, which
is destroying our missions. I have denounced his policy openly from the pulpit, and on occasions when I noted that you were
present in the church. You cannot be ignorant of it.”

“Oh, upon that subject the Governor has also spoken publicly. Everyone knows that he considers it an unavoidable
evil.”

Saint–Vallier drew himself up in his chair and adopted an argumentative tone. “And why unavoidable? You doubtless refer
to his proposition that the Indians will sell their furs only to such traders as will supply them with brandy?”

“Yes, Monseigneur; and since the English and Dutch traders give them all the brandy they want, and better prices for
their skins as well, we must lose the fur trade altogether if we deny them brandy. And our colony exists by the fur trade
alone.”

“That is our unique opportunity, Monsieur l’apothicaire, to sacrifice our temporal interests for the glory of God, and
impress by our noble example the Dutch and English.”

“If Monseigneur thinks the Dutch traders can be touched by a noble example — ” Auclair smiled and shook his head. “But
these things are all beyond me. I know only what everyone knows, — though I have my own opinions.”

“If the Count’s illness is as serious as it seems to me, Monsieur Auclair, he should be given an opportunity to
acknowledge his mistakes before the world as well as to Heaven. Such an admission might have a salutary influence upon the
administration which will follow his. Since he relies upon you, it is your duty to apprise him of the gravity of his
condition.”

Auclair met Saint–Vallier’s glittering, superficial glance and plausible tone rather bluntly.

“I shall do nothing to discourage my patient, Monseigneur, any more than I shall bleed him, as many good people urge me
to do. The mind, too, has a kind of blood; in common speech we call it hope.”

The Bishop flushed — his sanguine cheeks were apt to become more ruddy when he was crossed or annoyed. He rose and
gathered the folds of his cloak about him. “It is time your patient dropped the stubborn mask he has worn so long, and began
to realize that none of his enterprises will benefit him now but such as have furthered the interests of Christ’s Church in
this Province. I have seen him, and I believe he is facing eternity.”

Auclair expressed himself as much honoured by the Bishop’s visit and accompanied him to the door, holding it open that
the light might guide him across the street to the steps of his episcopal Palace. When he returned to the salon, Cécile was
bringing in the soup.

“I began to think Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier would never go, Papa. How people do bother us about everything since the
Count is ill! I am glad we can keep them away from him, at least.”

Her father sat down and took a few spoonfuls of soup. “Why, I find I am quite hungry!” he declared. “And when I came
home, I did not think I could eat at all. For some reason, our neighbour’s visit seems to have made me more cheerful.”

“That is because you were so resolute with him, Father!”

He smiled at her between the candles.

“What restless eyes he has, Cécile; they run all over everything, like quicksilver when I spill it. He kept looking in
again and again at your glass fruit, there on the mantel. Do you know, I believe he drew some conclusion from that; he has
seen it at the Château, of course. These men who are trained at Court all become a little crafty; they learn to put two and
two together. I have always believed that is why our patron never got advancement at Versailles: he is too downright.”

It was late afternoon, and Cécile was alone — as she was nearly always now. The Count had died last night. Today her
father had gone to the Château to seal his heart up in a casket, so that it could be carried back to France according to his
wish. It was already arranged that Father Joseph, Superior of the Récollets, should take the casket to Montreal, then to
Fort Orange, and down the river to New York, where the English boats came and went all winter. On one of those boats he
would go to England, cross over to France, and journey to Paris with the Count’s heart, to bury it in the Montmort chapel at
Saint–Nicholas-desChamps.

Auclair had been gone all the afternoon, and Cécile knew that he would come home exhausted from sorrow, from his night of
watching, and from the grim duty which had taken him today to the Count’s death-chamber. Cécile regarded this rite with awe,
but not with horror; autopsies, she knew, must be performed upon kings and queens and all great people after death. That was
the custom. Her father would have the barber-surgeon to help him, — though they were not very good friends, because they
disagreed about bleeding people. The barber complained that the meddlesome apothecary took the bread out of his mouth.

Many times that afternoon Cécile went out to the doorstep and looked up at the Château. A light snow was falling, and the
sky was grey. It was very strange to look up at those windows in the south end, and to know that there was no friend, no
protection there. She felt as if a strong roof over their heads had been swept away. She was not sure that they would even
have a livelihood without the Count’s patronage. Their sugar and salt and wine, and her father’s Spanish snuff, had always
come from the Count’s storehouses. The colonists paid very little for their remedies; if they brought a basket of eggs, or a
chicken, or a rabbit, they thought they were treating their medical man very handsomely. But what she most dreaded was her
father’s loneliness. He had lived under the Count’s shadow. The Count was the reason for nearly everything he did, — for his
being here at all.

About four o’clock, as the darkness began to close in, Cécile put more wood on the fire in the salon and set some milk to
warm before it. There was very little to eat in the house. Her father had not been to market for a week. Running to the door
every few minutes, she at last saw him coming down the hill, with his black bag full of deadly poisons. He looked grey and
sick as she let him in. Before he threw his black bag into the cupboard, he took out of it a lead box, rudely soldered over.
She looked at it solemnly.

“Yes,” he said, “it is all we have left of him. Father Joseph will set out for France in two days. I am in charge of this
box until it starts upon its journey.”

He placed it in the cabinet where he kept his medical books, then went into the salon and sank down in his chair by the
fire. Cécile knelt on the floor beside him, resting her arms upon his knee. He bent and leaned his cheek for a moment on her
shingled brown hair.

“So it is over, my dear,” he sighed softly. “It has lasted a lifetime, and now it is over. Since I was six years old, the
Count has been my protector, and he was my father’s before me. To my mother, and to your mother, he was always courteous and
considerate. He belonged to the old order; he cherished those beneath him and rendered his duty to those above him, but
flattered nobody, not the King himself. That time has gone by. I do not wish to outlive my time.”

“But you wish to live on my account, don’t you, Father? I do not belong to the old time. I have got to live on into a new
time; and you are all I have in the world.”

Her father went on sadly: “The Count and the old Bishop were both men of my own period, the kind we looked up to in my
youth. Saint–Vallier and Monsieur de Champigny are of a different sort. Had I been able to choose my lot in the world, I
would have chosen to be like my patron, for all his disappointments and sorrows; to be a soldier who fought for no gain but
renown, merciful to the conquered, charitable to the poor, haughty to the rich and overbearing. Since I could not be such a
man and was born in an apothecary shop, it was my good fortune to serve such a man and to be honoured by his
confidence.”

Cécile slipped quietly away to pour the warm milk into a cup, and with it she brought a glass of brandy. Her father drank
them. He said he would want no dinner tonight, but that she must prepare something for herself. Without noticing whether she
did so or not, he sat in a stupor of weariness, dreaming by the fire. The scene at the Château last night passed again
before his eyes.

The Count had received the Sacrament in perfect consciousness at seven o’clock. Then he sank into a sleep which became a
coma, and lay for three hours breathing painfully, with his eyes rolled back and only a streak of white showing between the
half-open lids. A little after ten o’clock he suddenly came to himself and looked inquiringly at the group around his bed;
there were two nursing Sisters from the Hôtel Dieu, the Intendant and Madame de Champigny, Hector de Callières, Auclair, and
Father Joseph, the Récollets’ Superior, who had heard the Count’s confession and administered the last rites of the Church.
The Count raised his eyebrows haughtily, as if to demand why his privacy was thus invaded. He looked from one face to
another; in those faces he read something. He saw the nuns upon their knees, praying. He seemed to realize his new position
in the world and what was now required of him. The challenge left his face, — a dignified calm succeeded it. Father Joseph
held the crucifix to his lips. He kissed it. Then, very courteously, he made a gesture with his left hand, indicating that
he wished every one to draw back from his bed.

“This I will do alone,” his steady glance seemed to say.

All drew back.

“Merci,” he said distinctly. That was the last word he spoke. While the group of watchers stood four or five feet away
from the bed, wondering, they saw that his face had become altogether natural and lost all look of suffering. He breathed
softly for a few moments, then breathed no more. One of the nuns held a feather to his lips. Madame de Champigny got a
mirror and put it close to his mouth, but there was no cloud on it. Auclair laid his head down on his patron’s chest; there
all was still.

As Auclair was returning home after midnight, under the glitter of the hard bright northern stars, he felt for the first
time wholly and entirely cut off from France; a helpless exile in a strange land. Not without reason, he told himself
bitterly as he looked up at those stars, had the Latin poets insisted that thrice and four times blessed were those to whom
it befell to die in the land of their fathers.

While Auclair sat by the fire thinking of these things, numb and broken, Cécile was lying on the sofa, wrapped up in the
old shawl Madame Auclair had used so much after she became ill. She, too, was thinking of what they had lost. They would
indeed have another winter in Quebec; but everything was changed almost as much as if they had gone away. That sense of a
strong protector had counted in her life more than she had ever realized. To be sure, they had not called upon the Count’s
authority very often; but to know that they could appeal to him at any moment meant security, and gave them a definite place
in their little world.

The hours went by. Her father did not speak or move, not even to fix the fire, which was very low. For once, Cécile
herself had no wish to set things right. Let the fire burn out; what of it?

At last there came a knock at the door, not very loud, but insistent, — urgent, as it were. Auclair got up from his
chair.

“Whoever it is, send him away. I can see no one tonight.” He went into the kitchen and shut the door behind him.

Cécile was a little startled, — death made everything strange. She took a candle into the shop, set it down on the
counter, and opened the door. Outside there, against the snow, was the outline of a man with a gun strapped on his back. She
had thrown her arms around him before she could really see him, — the set of his shoulders told her who it was.

“Oh, Pierre, Pierre Charron!” She began to cry abandonedly, but from joy. Never in all her life had she felt anything so
strong and so true, so real and so sure, as that quick embrace that smelled of tobacco and the pine-woods and the fresh
snow.

“Petite tête de garçon!” he muttered running his hand over her head, which lay on his shoulder. “There, don’t try to tell
me. I know all about it. I started for Kebec as soon as I heard the Count was sinking. Today, on the river, I passed the
messengers going to Montreal; they called the word to me. And your father?”

“I don’t know what to do, Pierre. It is worse with him than when my mother died. There seems to be no hope for us.”

“I understand,” he stroked her soothingly. “I knew this would be a blow to him. I said to myself in Ville–Marie: ‘I must
be there when it happens.’ I came as quickly as I could. Never did I paddle so fast. The breeze was against me, there was no
chance of a sail. I had only a half-man to help me — Antoine Frichette, you remember? That poor fellow for whom your father
made the belly-band. He did his best, but since his hurt he has no wind. I’m here at last, to be of any use I can. Command
me.” He had loosed the big kerchief from his neck, and now he gently wiped her cheeks dry with it. Turning her face about to
the candlelight, he regarded it intently.

“I wish you would go to him, Pierre. He is in the kitchen.”

He kissed her softly on the forehead, unslung his gun, and went out into the kitchen. He, too, closed the door behind
him. In the few moments while she was left alone in the shop, Cécile opened the outer door again and looked up toward the
Château. The falling snow and the darkness hid it from sight; but she had once more that feeling of security, as if the
strong roof were over them again; over her and the shop and the salon and all her mother’s things. For the first time she
realized that her father loved Pierre for the same reason he had loved the Count; both had the qualities he did not have
himself, but which he most admired in other men.

When they came in from the kitchen, Charron had his arm over Auclair’s shoulder.

“Cécile” he called, “je n’ai pas de chance. Evidently I am too late for supper, and I have not had a morsel since I broke
camp before daybreak.”

“Supper? But we have had no supper here tonight. We had no appetite. I will make some for you, at once. There is not much
in the house, I am afraid; my father has not been to market. Smoked eels, perhaps?”

Charron made a grimace. “Detestable! Even I can do better than that. I shot a deer for our supper in the forest last
night, and I brought a haunch along with me, — outside, in my bag. What else have you?”

“Not much.” Cécile felt deeply mortified to confess this, though it was not her fault. “We have some wild rice left from
last year, and there are some carrots. We always have preserves, and of course there is soup.”

“Excellent; all that sounds very attractive to me at the moment. You attend to everything else, but by your leave I will
cook the venison in my own way. It’s enough for us all, and there will be good pickings left for Blinker.”

When Charron went out to get his game-bag, Auclair whispered to his daughter: “Are we really so destitute, my child? Do
the best you can for him. I will open a box of the conserves from France.”

He now seemed very anxious about his dinner, and she could not forbear a reproachful glance at the head of the house, who
had been so neglectful of his duties.

“And you, Monsieur Euclide,” said Pierre, when he came back with the haunch in his hand, “you ought to produce something
rather special from your cellar for us.”

“It shall be the best I have,” declared his host.

The supper lasted until late. After the dessert the apothecary opened a bottle of heavy gold-coloured wine from the
South.

“This,” he said, “is a wine the Count liked after supper. His family was from the South, and his father always kept on
hand wines that were brought up from Bordeaux and the Rhone vineyards. The Count inherited that taste.” He sighed
heavily.

“Euclide,” said Charron, “tomorrow it may be you or I; that is the way to look at death. Not all the wine in the Château,
not all the wines in the great cellars of France, could warm the Count’s blood now. Let us cheer our hearts a little while
we can. Good wine was put into the grapes by our Lord, for friends to enjoy together.”

When it was almost midnight, the visitor said he was too tired to go hunt a lodging, and would gladly avail himself of
the invitation, often extended, but never before accepted, of spending the night here and sleeping on the sofa in the
salon.

Cécile, in her upstairs bedroom, turned to slumber with the weight of doubt and loneliness melted away. Her last thoughts
before she sank into forgetfulness were of a friend, devoted and fearless, here in the house with them, as if he were one of
themselves. He had not a throne behind him, like the Count (it had been very far behind, indeed!), not the authority of a
parchment and seal. But he had authority, and a power which came from knowledge of the country and its people; from
knowledge, and from a kind of passion. His daring and his pride seemed to her even more splendid than Count Frontenac’s.