Fort Amity | Page 4

you, this is Pitt's
consulship, and promotion henceforth comes to men as they deserve it.
Look at Wolfe, sir--a man barely thirty-two--and the ball but just set
rolling! Wherefore I too am resolved to enter Quebec a

Brigadier-General, who now go carrying the colours of the 17th to
Louisbourg. We but wait Genl. Amherst, who is expected daily, and
then yeo-heave-ho for the nor'ard! Farewell, dearest Jack! Given in this
our camp at Halifax, the twelfth of May, 1758, in the middle of a
plaguy fog, by your affect. cousin-- R. Montgomery."
John smiled as he folded up the letter, so characteristic of Dick. Dick
was always in perfect spirits, always confident in himself. It was
characteristic of Dick, too, to call himself Romulus and his friend
Remus, meaning no slight, simply because he always took himself for
granted as the leading spirit. It had always been so even in the days
when they had gone birds'-nesting or rook-shooting together in the
woods around John's Devonshire home. Always John had yielded the
lead to this freckled Irish cousin (the kinship was, in fact, a remote one
and lay on their mother's side through the Ranelagh family); and years
had but seemed to widen the three months' gap in their ages.
Dick's parents were Protestant; and Dick had gone to Trinity College,
Dublin, passing thence to an ensigncy in the 17th (Forbes') Regiment.
The a Cleeves, on the other hand, had always been Roman Catholics,
and by consequence had lived for generations somewhat isolated
among the Devon gentry, their neighbours. When John looked back on
his boyhood, his prevailing impressions were of a large house set low
in a valley, belted with sombre dripping elms and haunted by Roman
Catholic priests--some fat and rosy--some lean and cadaverous--but all
soft-footed; of an insufficiency of light in the rooms; and of a sad lack
of fellow-creatures willing to play with him. His parents were old, and
he had been born late to them--twelve years after Philip, his only
brother and the heir. From the first his mother had destined him for the
priesthood, and a succession of priests had been his tutors: but--What
instinct is there in the sacerdotal mind which warns it off some cases as
hopeless from the first? Here was a child, docile, affectionate, moody at
times, but eager to please and glad to be rewarded by a smile; bred
among priests and designed to be a priest; yet amid a thousand
admonishments, chastisements, encouragements, blandishments, the
child--with a child's sure instinct for sincerity--could not remember
having been spoken to sincerely, with heart open to heart. Years later,

when in the seminary at Douai the little worm of scepticism began to
stir in his brain and grow, feeding on the books of M. Voltaire and
other forbidden writings, he wondered if his many tutors had been, one
and all, unconsciously prescient. But he was an honest lad. He threw up
the seminary, returned to Cleeve Court, and announced with tears to his
mother (his father had died two years before) that he could not be a
priest. She told him, stonily, that he had disappointed her dearest hopes
and broken her heart. His brother--the Squire now, and a prig from his
cradle--took him out for a long walk, argued with him as with a
fractious child, and, without attending to his answers, finally gave him
up as a bad job. So an ensigncy was procured, and John a Cleeve
shipped from Cork to Halifax, to fight the French in America. At Cork
he had met and renewed acquaintance with his Irish cousin, Dick
Montgomery. They had met again in Halifax, which they reached in
separate transports, and had passed the winter there in company. Dick
clapped his cousin on the back and laughed impartially at his doubts
and the family distress. Dick had no doubts; always saw clearly and
made up his mind at once; was, moreover, very little concerned with
religion (beyond damning the Pope), and a great deal concerned with
soldiering. He fascinated John, as the practical man usually fascinates
the speculative. So Remus listened to Romulus and began to be less
contrite in his home-letters. To the smallest love at home (of the kind
that understands, or tries to understand) he would have responded
religiously; but he had found such nowhere save in Dick--who, besides,
was a gallant young gentleman, and scrupulous on all points of honour.
He took fire from Dick; almost worshipped him; and wished now, as
the flotilla swept on and the bands woke louder echoes from the
narrowing shore, that Dick were here to see how the last few weeks had
tanned and hardened him.
The troops came to land before nightfall at Sabbath Day Point,
twenty-five miles down the lake; stretched themselves to doze