The Tune Mcgilveray Played

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Title:     The Tune Mcgilveray Played
Author: Gilbert Parker [More Titles by Parker]

McGilveray has been dead for over a hundred years, but there is a parish in Quebec where his tawny-haired descendants still live. They have the same sort of freckles on their faces as had their ancestor, the bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment, and some of them have his taste for music, yet none of them speak his language or with his brogue, and the name of McGilveray has been gallicised to Magille.

In Pontiac, one of the Magilles, the fiddler of the parish, made the following verse in English as a tribute of admiration for an heroic deed of his ancestor, of which the Cure of the parish, the good M. Santonge, had told him:

"Piff! poem! ka-zoon, ka-zoon!
That is the way of the organ tune--
And the ships are safe that day!
Piff! poum! kazoon, kazoon!
And the Admiral light his pipe and say:
'Bully for us, we are not kill!
Who is to make the organ play
Make it say zoon-kazoon?
You with the corunet come this way--
You are the man, Magillel
Piff! poum! kazoon, kazoon!'"

Now, this is the story of McGilveray the bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment:

It was at the time of the taking of Quebec, the summer of 1759. The English army had lain at Montmorenci, at the Island of Orleans, and at Point Levis; the English fleet in the basin opposite the town, since June of that great year, attacking and retreating, bombarding and besieging, to no great purpose. For within the walls of the city, and on the shore of Beauport, protected by its mud flats--a splendid moat--the French more than held their own.

In all the hot months of that summer, when parishes were ravaged with fire and sword, and the heat was an excuse for almost any lapse of virtue, McGilveray had not been drunk once--not once. It was almost unnatural. Previous to that, McGilveray's career had been chequered. No man had received so many punishments in the whole army, none had risen so superior to them as had he, none had ever been shielded from wrath present and to come as had this bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment. He had no rivals for promotion in the regiment--perhaps that was one reason; he had a good temper and an overwhelming spirit of fun--perhaps that was another.

He was not remarkable to the vision--scarcely more than five feet four; with an eye like a gimlet, red hair tied in a queue, a big mouth, and a chest thrown out like the breast of a partridge--as fine a figure of a man in miniature as you should see. When intoxicated, his tongue rapped out fun and fury like a triphammer. Alert-minded drunk or sober, drunk, he was lightning-tongued, and he could play as well drunk as sober, too; but more than once a sympathetic officer altered the tactics that McGilveray might not be compelled to march, and so expose his condition. Standing still he was quite fit for duty. He never got really drunk "at the top." His brain was always clear, no matter how useless were his legs.

But the wonderful thing was that for six months McGilveray's legs were as steady as his head was right. At first the regiment was unbelieving, and his resolution to drink no more was scoffed at in the non-com mess. He stuck to it, however, and then the cause was searched for--and not found. He had not turned religious, he was not fanatical, he was of sound mind--what was it? When the sergeant-major suggested a woman, they howled him down, for they said McGilveray had not made love to women since the day of his weaning, and had drunk consistently all the time.

Yet it was a woman.

A fortnight or so after Wolfe's army and Saunders's fleet had sat down before Quebec, McGilveray, having been told by a sentry at Montmorenci where Anstruther's regiment was camped, that a French girl on the other side of the stream had kissed her hand to him and sung across in laughing insolence:

"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre,"

he had forthwith set out to hail this daughter of Gaul, if perchance she might be seen again.

At more than ordinary peril he crossed the river on a couple of logs, lashed together, some distance above the spot where the picket had seen Mademoiselle. It was a moonlight night, and he might easily have been picked off by a bullet, if a wary sentry had been alert and malicious. But the truth was that many of these pickets on both sides were in no wise unfriendly to each other, and more than once exchanged tobacco and liquor across the stream. As it chanced, however, no sentry saw McGilveray, and presently, safely landed, he made his way down the stream. Even at the distance he was from the falls, the rumble of them came up the long walls of firs and maples with a strange, half-moaning sound--all else was still. He came down until he was opposite the spot where his English picket was posted, and then he halted and surveyed his ground.

Nothing human in sight, no sound of life, no sign of habitation. At this moment, however, his stupidity in thus rushing into danger, the foolishness of pursuing a woman whom he had never seen, and a French woman at that, the punishment that would be meted out to him if his adventure was discovered--all these came to him.

They stunned him for a moment, and then presently, as if in defiance of his own thoughts, he began to sing softly:

"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre."

Suddenly, in one confused moment, he was seized, and a hand was clapped over his mouth. Three French soldiers had him in their grip-stalwart fellows they were, of the Regiment of Bearn. He had no strength to cope with them, he at once saw the futility of crying out, so he played the eel, and tried to slip from the grasp of his captors. But though he gave the trio an awkward five minutes he was at last entirely overcome, and was carried away in triumph through the woods. More than once they passed a sentry, and more than once campfires round which soldiers slept or dozed. Now and again one would raise his head, and with a laugh, or a "Sapristi!" or a "Sacre bleu!" drop back into comfort again.

After about ten minutes' walk he was brought to a small wooden house, the door was thrown open, he was tossed inside, and the soldiers entered after. The room was empty save for a bench, some shelves, a table, on which a lantern burned, and a rude crucifix on the wall. McGilveray sat down on the bench, and in five minutes his feet were shackled, while a chain fastened to a staple in the wall held him in secure captivity.

"How you like yourself now?" asked a huge French corporal who had learned English from an English girl at St. Malo years before.

"If you'd tie a bit o' pink ribbon round me neck, I'd die wid pride," said McGilveray, spitting on the ground in defiance at the same time.

The big soldier laughed, and told his comrades what the bandmaster had said. One of them grinned, but the other frowned sullenly, and said:

"Avez vous tabac?"

"Havey you to-ba-co?" said the big soldier instantly--interpreting.

"Not for a Johnny Crapaud like you, and put that in your pipe and shmoke it!" said McGilveray, winking at the big fellow, and spitting on the ground before the surly one, who made a motion as if he would bayonet McGilveray where he sat.

"He shall die--the cursed English soldier," said Johnny Crapaud.

"Some other day will do," said McGilveray. "What does he say?" asked Johnny Crapaud.

"He says he'll give each of us three pounds of tobacco, if we let him go," answered the corporal. McGilveray knew by the corporal's voice that he was lying, and he also knew that, somehow, he had made a friend.

"Y'are lyin', me darlin', me bloody beauty!" interposed McGilveray.

"If we don't take him to headquarters now he'll send across and get the tobacco," interpreted the corporal to Johnny Crapaud.

"If he doesn't get the tobacco he'll be hung for a spy," said Johnny Crapaud, turning on his heel. "Do we all agree?" said the corporal.

The others nodded their heads, and, as they went out, McGilveray said after them:

"I'll dance a jig on yer sepulchrees, ye swobs!" he roared, and he spat on the ground again in defiance. Johnny Crapaud turned to the corporal.

"I'll kill him very dead," said he, "if that tobacco doesn't come. You tell him so," he added, jerking a thumb towards McGilveray. "You tell him so."

The corporal stayed when the others went out, and, in broken English, told McGilveray so.

"I'll play a hornpipe, an' his gory shroud is round him," said McGilveray.

The corporal grinned from ear to ear. "You like a chew tabac?" said he, pulling out a dirty knob of a black plug.

McGilveray had found a man after his own heart. "Sing a song a-sixpence," said he, "what sort's that for a gintleman an' a corporal, too? Feel in me trousies pocket," said he, "which is fur me frinds for iver." McGilveray had now hopes of getting free, but if he had not taken a fancy to "me baby corporal," as he called the Frenchman, he would have made escape or release impossible, by insulting him and every one of them as quick as winking.

After the corporal had emptied one pocket, "Now the other, man-o-wee-wee!" said McGilveray, and presently the two were drinking what the flask from the "trousies pocket" contained. So well did McGilveray work upon the Frenchman's bonhomie that the corporal promised he should escape. He explained how McGilveray should be freed--that at midnight some one would come and release him, while he, the corporal, was with his companions, so avoiding suspicion as to his own complicity. McGilveray and the corporal were to meet again and exchange courtesies after the manner of brothers--if the fortunes of war permitted.

McGilveray was left alone. To while away the time he began to whistle to himself, and what with whistling, and what with winking and talking to the lantern on the table, and calling himself painful names, he endured his captivity well enough.

It was near midnight when the lock turned in the door and presently stepped inside--a girl.

"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre," said she, and nodded her head to him humorously.

By this McGilveray knew that this was the maid that had got him into all this trouble. At first he was inclined to say so, but she came nearer, and one look of her black eyes changed all that.

"You've a way wid you, me darlin'," said McGilveray, not thinking that she might understand.

"A leetla way of my own," she answered in broken English.

McGilveray started. "Where did you learn it?" he asked, for he had had two surprises that night.

"Of my mother--at St. Malo," she replied. "She was half English--of Jersey. You are a naughty boy," she added, with a little gurgle of laughter in her throat. "You are not a good soldier to go a-chase of the French girls 'cross of the river."

"Shure I am not a good soldier thin. Music's me game. An' the band of Anstruther's rigimint's mine."

"You can play tunes on a drum?" she asked, mischievously.

"There's wan I'd play to the voice av you," he said, in his softest brogue. "You'll be unloosin' me, darlin'?" he added.

She stooped to undo the shackles on his ankles. As she did so he leaned over as if to kiss her. She threw back her head in disgust.

"You have been drink," she said, and she stopped her work of freeing him.

"What'd wet your eye--no more," he answered. She stood up. "I will not," she said, pointing to the shackles, "if you drink some more--nevare some more--nevare!"

"Divil a drop thin, darlin', till we fly our flag yander," pointing towards where he supposed the town to be.

"Not till then?" she asked, with a merry little sneer. "Ver' well, it is comme ca!" She held out her hand. Then she burst into a soft laugh, for his hands were tied. "Let me kiss it," he said, bending forward.

"No, no, no," she said. "We will shake our hands after," and she stooped, took off the shackles, and freed his arms.

"Now if you like," she said, and they shook hands as McGilveray stood up and threw out his chest. But, try as he would to look important, she was still an inch taller than he.

A few moments later they were hurrying quietly through the woods, to the river. There was no speaking. There was only the escaping prisoner and the gay-hearted girl speeding along in the night, the mumbling of the quiet cascade in their ears, the shifting moon playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. They came out on the bank a distance above where McGilveray had landed, and the girl paused and spoke in a whisper. "It is more hard now," she said. "Here is a boat, and I must paddle--you would go to splash. Sit still and be good."

She loosed the boat into the current gently, and, holding it, motioned to him to enter.

"You're goin' to row me over?" he asked, incredulously.

"'Sh! get in," she said.

"Shtrike me crazy, no!" said McGilveray. "Divil a step will I go. Let me that sowed the storm take the whirlwind." He threw out his chest.

"What is it you came here for?" she asked, with meaning.

"Yourself an' the mockin' bird in yer voice," he answered.

"Then that is enough," she said. "You come for me, I go for you. Get in."

A moment afterwards, taking advantage of the obscured moon, they were carried out on the current diagonally down the stream, and came quickly to that point on the shore where an English picket was placed. They had scarcely touched the shore when the click of a musket was heard, and a "Qui-va-la?" came from the thicket.

McGilveray gave the pass-word, and presently he was on the bank saluting the sentry he had left three hours before.

"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre!" said the girl again with a gay insolence, and pushed the boat out into the stream.

"A minnit, a minnit, me darlin'," said McGilveray.

"Keep your promise," came back, softly.

"Ah, come back wan minnit!"

"A flirt!" said the sentry.

"You will pay for that," said the girl to the sentry, with quick anger.

"Do you love me, Irishman?" she added, to McGilveray.

"I do--aw, wurra, wurra, I do!" said McGilveray. "Then you come and get me by ze front door of ze city," said she, and a couple of quick strokes sent her canoe out into the dusky middle of the stream; and she was soon lost to view.

"Aw, the loike o' that! Aw, the foine av her-the tip-top lass o' the wide world!" said he.

"You're a fool, an' there'll be trouble from this," said the sentry.

There was trouble, for two hours later the sentry was found dead; picked off by a bullet from the other shore when he showed himself in the moonlight; and from that hour all friendliness between the pickets of the English and the French ceased on the Montmorenci.

But the one witness to McGilveray's adventure was dead, and that was why no man knew wherefore it was that McGilveray took an oath to drink no more till they captured Quebec.

From May to September McGilveray kept to his resolution. But for all that time he never saw "the tip-top lass o' the wide world." A time came, however, when McGilveray's last state was worse than his first, and that was the evening before the day Quebec was taken. A dozen prisoners had been captured in a sortie from the Isle of Orleans to the mouth of the St. Charles River. Among these prisoners was the grinning corporal who had captured McGilveray and then released him.

Two strange things happened. The big, grinning corporal escaped from captivity the same night, and McGilveray, as a non-com said, "Got shameful drunk." This is one explanation of the two things. McGilveray had assisted the grinning corporal to escape. The other explanation belongs to the end of the story. In any case, McGilveray "got shameful drunk," and "was going large" through the camp. The end of it was his arrest for assisting a prisoner to escape and for being drunk and disorderly. The band of Anstruther's regiment boarded H.M.S. Leostaf without him, to proceed up the river stealthily with the rest of the fleet to Cap Rouge, from whence the last great effort of the heroic Wolfe to effect a landing was to be made. McGilveray, still intoxicated but intelligent, watched them go in silence.

As General Wolfe was about to enter the boat which was to convey him to the flag-ship, he saw McGilveray, who was waiting under guard to be taken to Major Hardy's post at Point Levis. The General knew him well, and looked at him half sadly, half sternly.

"I knew you were free with drink, McGilveray," he said, "but I did not think you were a traitor to your country too."

McGilveray saluted, and did not answer.

"You might have waited till after to-morrow, man," said the General, his eyes flashing. "My soldiers should have good music to-morrow."

McGilveray saluted again, but made no answer.

As if with a sudden thought the General waved off the officers and men near him, and betkcned McGilveray to him.

"I can understand the drink in a bad soldier," he said, "but you helped a prisoner to escape. Come, man, we may both be dead to-morrow, and I'd like to feel that no soldier in my army is wilfully a foe of his country."

"He did the same for me, whin I was taken prisoner, yer Excillincy, an'--an', yer Excillincy, 'twas a matter of a woman, too."

The General's face relaxed a little. "Tell me the whole truth," said he; and McGilveray told him all. "Ah, yer Excillincy," he burst out, at last, "I was no traitor at heart, but a fool I always was! Yer Excillincy, court-martial and death's no matter to me; but I'd like to play wan toon agin, to lead the byes tomorrow. Wan toon, Gineral, an' I'll be dacintly shot before the day's over-ah, yer Excillincy, wan toon more, and to be wid the byes followin' the Gineral!"

The General's face relaxed still more.

"I take you at your word," said he. He gave orders that McGilveray should proceed at once aboard the flag-ship, from whence he should join Anstruther's regiment at Cap Rouge.

The General entered the boat, and McGilveray followed with some non-com. officers in another. It was now quite dark, and their motions, or the motions of the vessels of war, could not be seen from the French encampment or the citadel. They neared the flag-ship, and the General, followed by his officers, climbed up. Then the men in McGilveray's boat climbed up also, until only himself and another were left.

At that moment the General, looking down from the side of the ship, said sharply to an officer beside him: "What's that?"

He pointed to a dark object floating near the ship, from which presently came a small light with a hissing sound.

"It's a fire-organ, sir," was the reply.

A fire-organ was a raft, carrying long tubes like the pipes of an organ, and filled with explosives. They were used by the French to send among the vessels of the British fleet to disorganise and destroy them. The little light which the General saw was the burning fuse. The raft had been brought out into the current by French sailors, the fuse had been lighted, and it was headed to drift towards the British ships. The fleet was now in motion, and apart from the havoc which the bursting fire-organ might make, the light from the explosion would reveal the fact that the English men-o'-war were now moving towards Cap Rouge. This knowledge would enable Montcalm to detect Wolfe's purpose, and he would at once move his army in that direction. The west side of the town had meagre military defenses, the great cliffs being thought impregnable. But at this point Wolfe had discovered a narrow path up a steep cliff.

McGilveray had seen the fire-organ at the same moment as the General. "Get up the side," he said to the remaining soldier in his boat. The soldier began climbing, and McGilveray caught the oars and was instantly away towards the raft. The General, looking over the ship's side, understood his daring purpose. In the shadow, they saw him near it, they saw him throw a boat-hook and catch it, and then attach a rope; they saw him sit down, and, taking the oars, laboriously row up-stream toward the opposite shore, the fuse burning softly, somewhere among the great pipes of explosives. McGilveray knew that it might be impossible to reach the fuse--there was no time to spare, and he had set about to row the devilish machine out of range of the vessels which were carrying Wolfe's army to a forlorn hope.

For minutes those on board the man-o'-war watched and listened. Presently nothing could be seen, not even the small glimmer from the burning fuse.

Then, all at once, there was a terrible report, and the organ pipes belched their hellish music upon the sea. Within the circle of light that the explosion made, there was no sign of any ship; but, strangely tall in the red glare, stood McGilveray in his boat. An instant he stood so, then he fell, and presently darkness covered the scene. The furious music of death and war was over. There was silence on the ship for a time as all watched and waited. Presently an officer said to the General: "I'm afraid he's gone, sir."

"Send a boat to search," was the reply. "If he is dead"--the General took off his hat "we will, please God, bury him within the French citadel to-morrow."

But McGilveray was alive, and in half-an-hour he was brought aboard the flag-ship, safe and sober. The General praised him for his courage, and told him that the charge against him should be withdrawn.

"You've wiped all out, McGilveray," said Wolfe. "We see you are no traitor."

"Only a fool of a bandmaster who wanted wan toon more, yer Excillincy," said McGilveray.

"Beware drink, beware women," answered the General.

But advice of that sort is thrown away on such as McGilveray. The next evening after Quebec was taken, and McGilveray went in at the head of his men playing "The Men of Harlech," he met in the streets the woman that had nearly been the cause of his undoing. Indignation threw out his chest.

"It's you, thin," he said, and he tried to look scornfully at her.

"Have you keep your promise?" she said, hardly above her breath.

"What's that to you?" he asked, his eyes firing up. "I got drunk last night--afther I set your husband free--afther he tould me you was his wife. We're aven now, decaver! I saved him, and the divil give you joy of that salvation--and that husband, say I."

"Hoosban'--" she exclaimed, "who was my hoosban'?"

"The big grinning corporal," he answered.

"He is shot this morning," she said, her face darkening, "and, besides, he was--nevare--my hoosban'."

"He said he was," replied McGilveray, eagerly.

"He was alway a liar," she answered.

"He decaved you too, thin?" asked McGilveray, his face growing red.

She did not answer, but all at once a change came over her, the half-mocking smile left her lips, tears suddenly ran down her cheeks, and without a word she turned and hurried into a little alley, and was lost to view, leaving McGilveray amazed and confounded.

It was days before he found her again, and three things only that they said are of any moment here. "We'll lave the past behind us," he said-"an' the pit below for me, if I'm not a good husband t' ye!"

"You will not drink no more?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Not till the Frenchies take Quebec again," he answered.

[The end]
Gilbert Parker's short story: Tune Mcgilveray Played

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