I had just arrived at this significant determination when I was roused from my reverie by Anderson making his farewells. He was holding out his hand to me.
“Your face is stern, monsieur,” he said. “Were you fighting your old battles o’er again?”
“No—new ones!” I laughed, springing up and seizing his hand.
“May you win them, as of old!” he exclaimed, with great heartiness.
“You are generous, monsieur,” I said gently, looking him in the eyes.
But this remark he took as quite the ordinary reply, and with a bright glance for us all he moved toward the door. Yvonne followed him, as it seemed was expected of her.
“Must you go so early?” she asked, with a kindness in her voice which pierced me.
“Yes,” he said, looking down at her upturned face. “The tide is just right now, and this fair 44wind must not be lost. It will be a fine run under this moon; and Pierre has the new boat over to-night.”
“It is a good night,” she assented, peering through the open door with a gesture of gay inquiry; “and how sweet the apple-blossoms smell! Have you as good air as this, Monsieur Grande, on those western rivers of yours, or at Trois Pistoles?”
As she did not turn her head or seem to require an answer, I made none. And, indeed, I was spared the necessity, for Anderson intervened with matter of his own.
“Come down to the gate with me, won’t you?” I heard him beg in a low voice.
But for some reason Mademoiselle was not disposed to be kind that night. She drew back, and looked down pointedly at her dainty embroidered moccasins.
“Oh,” she cried lightly and aloud, with a tantalizing ring in her voice, “just think how wet the path is!”
Anderson turned away with a disappointed air, whereupon she reached out her hand imperiously for him to kiss. Then she waved him a gay bon voyage, and came back into the room with a quick lightness of step which seemed like laughter in itself. Her eyes were a dancing marvel, with some strange excitement.
45“Monsieur,” she began, coming straight toward me. But I just then awoke to my purpose.
“A thousand pardons, mademoiselle and madame!” I cried, springing to my feet and hastening to the door. “I will be back in two moments; but I have a word for Monsieur Anderson before he goes.”
That I should interrupt her in this way, and rush off when she was about to speak to me, fetched a sudden little cloud of astonishment over Yvonne’s face. But I would not be delayed. I made haste down the path and caught Anderson before he reached the gate. He paused with an air of genial surprise.
“Your pardon, monsieur,” said I; “but with your permission I will accompany you a few steps, as I have something to say to you.”
“I am glad to have your company, monsieur,” said he, with a manner that spoke sincerity.
“Are you?” said I abruptly. “Well, somehow I take your words as something more than the thin clink of compliment. I like you—I liked you the moment my eyes fell upon you.”
His face flashed into a rare illumination, and without a word he held out his hand.
I could not but smile responsively, though I thrust my hand behind my back and shook my head.
“Wait!” said I. “I want to say to you that—I love—I love Mademoiselle de Lamourie!”
46His face clouded a little, and he withdrew his hand, but not angrily.
“We are very much of one mind in that, I assure you,” he said.
“The very ground she walks upon is sacred to me,” I continued.
He smiled ever so little at the passion of my speech, but answered thoughtfully:
“It is but natural, I suppose. I do not think we will quarrel upon that score, monsieur.”
“For two years,” said I, in a low voice, speaking coldly and evenly, “I have been moved night and day by this love only. It has supported me in hunger and in weariness; it has led me in the wilderness; it has strengthened me in the fight; it has been more to me than all ambition. Even my love of my country has been second to it. I came here to-day for one reason only. And I find—you!”
“None can know so well as I what you have lost, monsieur,” said he very gravely, “as none can know so well as I what I have gained.”
His kindness, no less than his confidence, hurt me.
“Are you so sure?” I asked.
“The discussion is unusual, monsieur,” said he, with a sudden resentment. “I will only remind you that Mademoiselle de Lamourie has accepted my suit.”
47No man’s sternness has ever troubled me, and I smiled slightly in acknowledgment of his very reasonable remark.
“The situation is unusual, so you must pardon me,” said I, “if I arrogate to myself a somewhat unusual freedom. I tell you now frankly that by all open and honorable means I will strive to win the love of Mademoiselle de Lamourie. I have hope that she has not yet clearly found the wisdom of her heart. I believe that I, not you, am the man whom she will love. Laugh at my vanity as much as you will. I am not yet ready to say my hope is dead, my life turned to nothingness.”
“You are weak,” said he, with some severity, “to hold your life thus, as it were, in jeopardy of a woman’s whim.”
I could hardly restrain my voice from betraying a certain triumph which I felt at this sign of imperfection in his love.
“If you hold it a weakness,” said I, “there is a point at last in which we differ. If it be a weakness, then it is one which, up to two years ago, I had scarce dared hope to attain. Few, indeed, are the women, and as few men, strong enough for the full knowledge of love.”
“Yet the greatest love is not the whole of life,” he averred disputatiously.
“You speak but coldly,” said I, “for the lover of Mademoiselle de Lamourie.”
48He started. I had stung him. “I am of the Society of Friends—a Quaker!” said he harshly. “I do not fight. I lift not my hand against my fellow-man. Yet did I believe that you would succeed in winning her love, I think I would kill you where you stand!”
I liked the sharp lines of his face as he said it, fronting me with eyes grown suddenly cruel. I felt that he meant it, for the moment at least.
“Say, rather,” said I, smiling, “that you would honestly try your best to kill me. It would be an interesting experiment. Well, now we understand each other. I will honestly try my best to do you what will be, in my eyes, the sorest injury in the world. But I will try by fair means only, and if I fail I will bear you no grudge. In all else, however, believe that I do greatly desire your welfare, and will seize with eagerness any occasion of doing you a service. You are perhaps less unworthy of Mademoiselle de Lamourie than I am, save that you cannot love her so well. And now,” I added with a smile, “will you take my hand?”
As I held it out to him he at first drew back and seemed disposed to repulse me. Then his face cleared.
“You are honest!” he exclaimed, and wrung my hand with great cordiality. “I rather like you—and I am very sorry for you. I have her promise.”
49“Well,” said I, “if also you have her love you are the most fortunate man on God’s earth!”
“I have it!” said he blithely, and strode off down the path between the apple-trees, his fine shoulders held squarely, and a confidence in all his bearing. But a wave of pity for him, and strange tenderness, went over me in that moment, for in that moment I felt an assurance that I should win.
It was an assurance doomed to swift ruin. It was an assurance destined soon to be hidden under such a vast wreckage of my hopes that even memory marvelled when she dragged it forth to light.
During all our conversation we had stood in plain view of the windows, so that our friendly parting must have been visible to all the house. On my return within doors I found Yvonne walking up and down in a graceful impatience, her black lace shawl thrown lightly about her head.
“If you want to,” said she, “you may come out on the porch with me for a little while, monsieur. I want you to talk to me.”
“Yvonne,” exclaimed her mother, in a rebuking voice, “will not this room do as well?”
“No, indeed, little mamma,” said she wilfully. “Nothing will do as well as the porch, where the moonlight is, and the smell of the apple-blossoms. You know, dear, Grand Pré is not Paris!”
“Nor yet is it Quebec,” said I pointedly.
Monsieur de Lamourie smiled. Whatever Yvonne would was in his eyes good. But her mother yielded only with a little gesture of protest.
51“Yvonne is always a law unto herself,” she murmured.
“And to others, I judge,” said I, following the light figure out upon the porch, and closing the door behind me.
I praised the saints for the freedom of Grand Pré. At Quebec Mademoiselle would have been the most formal of the formalists, because in Quebec it was easy to be misjudged.
In the corner of the porch, where a huge apple-bough thrust its blossoms in beneath the roof, was slung a stout hammock such as sailors use on shipboard. Mademoiselle de Lamourie had seen these during a voyage down the Gulf from Quebec, and had so fancied them that her father had been impelled to have one netted for her by the shad-fishers. It was her favoured lounging-place, and thither she betook herself now without apology. In silence I held the tricksy netting for her. In silence I placed the cushion beneath her head. Then she said:
“You may sit there,” and she pointed, with a little imperious motion, to a stout bench standing against the wall.
I accepted the seat, but not its location. I brought it and placed it as close as I dared to the hammock. In doing so I clumsily set the hammock swinging.
“Please stop it,” said Mademoiselle; and as I 52seated myself I laid my hand on the side of the hammock to arrest its motion. My fingers found themselves in contact with other fingers, very slim and warm and soft. My breath came in a quick gasp, and I drew away my hand in a strange and overwhelming perturbation. The hammock was left to stop of itself—and, indeed, its swinging was but slight. As for me, I was possessed by an infinite amazement to find myself thus put to confusion by a touch. I had no word to say, but sat gazing dumbly at the white figure in the moonlight.
Her face was very pallid in that colorless light, and her eyes greater and darker than ever, deeps of mystery,—and now, I thought, of grave mockery as well. She watched me for a little in silence, and then said:
“I let you come out here to talk to me, monsieur!”
I straightened myself upon the bench, and tried my voice. My misgivings were justified. It trembled, beyond a doubt. The witch had me at a grave disadvantage. But I spoke on quietly.
“From my two years in the woods of the West, mademoiselle,” said I, “I brought home to Grand Pré certain wonderful dreams. Of these I find some more than realized; but one, which gave all meaning to the rest, has been put to death this night.”
53“Even in Grand Pré dreams are no new thing,” she said in haste. “I want to hear of deeds, of brave and great action. Tell me what you have done—for I know that will be brave.” And she smiled at me such kind encouragement that my heart began thumping with vehemence. However, I made shift to tell her a little of my wanderings—of a bush fight here, a night march there, of the foiling of a foe, of the timely succour of a friend—till I saw that I was pleasing her. Her face leaned a little toward me. Her eyes spoke, dilating and contracting. Her lips were slightly parted as she listened. And into every adventure, every situation, every movement, I contrived to weave a suggestion of her influence, of the thought of her guiding and upholding me. These things, touched lightly and at once let pass, she did not rebuke. She feigned not to understand them.
At last I paused and looked at her, waiting for a word of praise or blame.
“And your poetry, monsieur?” she said gently. “Surely that was not all the time forgotten. This Acadian land, with its wonder and its beauty, has found no interpreter but you, and your brave work in the field would be a misfortune, not a benefit, if it cost us your song.”
“The loss of my verses were no great loss,” said I.
“Indeed, monsieur,” she said earnestly, “I do 54not think you can be as modest as you pretend. But I am sincere. Since we have known your song of them, I think that mamma and I have watched only through your eyes the great sweep of the Minas tides. And only the other day I heard papa, who cares for no poetry but his old ‘Chansons de Gestes,’ quoting you to Father Fafard with evident enthusiasm.” She paused—but I said nothing. I had talked long; and I wished her to continue. What she was saying, the manner of her saying it, were such as I could long listen to.
“As for me,” she went on, “I never walk down the orchard in summer time without saying over to myself your song of the apple-leaves.”
“You do, really, remember my verses?” said I, flushing with surprise and joy. I was not used to commendation for such things, my verses being wont to win no more approval than they merited, which I felt to be very little.
She laughed softly, and began to quote:
“O apple leaves, so cool and green
Against the summer sky,
You stir, although the wind is still
And not a bird goes by!
You start,
And softly move apart
In hushed expectancy.
Who is the gracious visitor
Whose form I cannot see?
55“O apple leaves, the mystic light
All down your dim arcade!
Why do your shadows tremble so,
Half glad and half afraid?
The air
Is an unspoken prayer;
Your eyes look all one way.
Who is the secret visitor
Your tremors would betray?”
It was a slight thing, which I had never thought particularly well of; but on her lips it achieved a music unimagined before.
“Your voice,” said I, “makes it beautiful, as it makes all words beautiful. Yes, I have written some small bits of verse during my exile, but they have been different from those of mine which you honour with your praise. They have had another, a more wonderful, theme—a theme all too high for them, which nevertheless spurred them to their best. They have at least one merit—they speak the truth from my heart.” As I spoke I felt myself leaning forward, though not of set purpose, and my voice sank almost to a whisper.
“One of them,” I continued, begins in this way:
“A moonbeam or a breath, above thine eyes I bow,
Silent, unseen,
But not, ah! not unknown”—
“Wait!” she interrupted, in a voice that sounded a little faint. “Wait! I want to hear them all, 56monsieur; but not to-night. You shall say them to me to-morrow. I must not stay to listen to them to-night. I am a little—cold, I think! Help me out, please!” And she rashly gave me her hand.
Now, it was my honest intention at that instant to do just her bidding and no more; but when I touched her fingers reason and judgment flowed from me. I bowed my head over them to the edge of the hammock, and with both my hands crushed them to my lips. She sank back upon her cushion, with a little catching of her breath.
After a few moments I raised my head—but with no speech and with no set purpose—and looked at her face. It was very grave, and curiously troubled, but I detected no reproach in the great eyes that met mine. A fierce impulse seized me to gather her in my arms—but I durst not, and my eyes dropped as I thought of it. By chance they rested upon her feet—upon the tiny, quill-worked, beaded white moccasins, demurely crossed, the one over the other. Her skirt was so closely gathered about her ankles that just an inch or two of one arched instep was visible over the edge of the low-cut moccasin. Before I myself could realize what I was about to do, or half the boldness of the act, in a passion that was all worship I threw myself down beside her feet and kissed them.
57It was for an instant only that my daring so prevailed. Then she suddenly slipped away. In a breathless confusion I sprang to my feet, and found her standing erect at the other side of the hammock. Her eyes blazed upon me; but one small hand was at her throat, as if she found it hard to speak.
“How could you dare?” she panted. “What right did I give you? What right did I ever give you?”
I leaned against the pillar that supported one end of the hammock.
“Forgive me! I could not help it. I have loved you, worshipped you, so long!” I said in a very low voice.
“How dare you speak so?” she cried. “You forget that”—
“No, I remember!” I interrupted doggedly. “I forget nothing. You do not love him. You are mine.”
“Oh!” she gasped, lifting both hands sharply to her face and dropping them at once. “I shall never trust you again.”
And in a moment she had flashed past me, with a sob, and disappeared into the house.
De Lamourie himself showed me to my room, a low chamber under the eaves, very plainly furnished. In the houses of the few Acadian gentry there was little of the luxury to be found in the seigneurial mansions of the St. Lawrence. In the De Lamourie house, for example, there were but two serving-maids, with one man to work the little farm.
If De Lamourie had noted any excitement on Yvonne’s part, or any abstraction on mine, he said nothing of it. With simple kindness he set down the candle on my dressing-table and wished me good sleep. But at the door he turned.
“Are you well assured that the abbé will not attempt to carry out his threat?” he asked, with a tinge of anxiety in his voice.
“I am confident of it,” I answered boldly. “That worthy ecclesiastic will not try issues with me, when I hold the king’s commission.”
Just why I should have been so overweeningly 59secure is not clear to me now that I look back upon it. That I should have expected the terrible La Garne to bow so pliantly to my command appears to me now the most fatuous of vain follies. In truth I was thinking only of Yvonne. But De Lamourie seemed to take my assurance as final, and went away in blither mood.
My room was lighted by a narrow, high-peaked dormer window, through which I could look out across the moonlit orchards, the level dyke lands, the wide and winding mouth of the Gaspereau, and the far-glimmering breast of Minas. Upon these my eyes rested long—but the eyes of my soul saw quite another loveliness than that of the moon-flooded landscape. They brooded upon Yvonne’s face—the troubled, changing, pleading look in her eyes—her sharp and strange emotion at the last. Over and over it all I went, reliving each moment, each word, each look, each breath. Then, being deeply wearied by my long day’s tramp, but with no hint of sleep coming to my eyes, I threw myself down upon the bed to deliciously think it all over yet again. I had grown sure that Yvonne loved me. Yet once more, in a still ecstasy of reverence and love, I fell at her feet and kissed them. Then I thought about the stone which Mother Pêche had given me, and its mystic virtues, which I would explain to Yvonne on the morrow in the apple-orchard. Then I found myself 60fancying that it was Yvonne who had given me the talisman, bidding me guard it well if I would ever hope to win her from my English rival. And then—the sunlight lay in a white streak across my bed-foot, the morning sky was blue over the dyke lands, and the robins were joyous in the apple-blooms under my window. What a marvellous air blew in upon my face, sweet with all freshness and cleanness and wholesome strength! I sprang up, deriding myself. I had slept all night in my clothes.
At breakfast I found myself in plain favour; I had made good my boast and shielded the house from the Black Abbé. Yvonne met my eager looks with a baffling lightness. She was all gay courtesy to me, but there was that in her face which well dashed my hopes. Some faint encouragement, indeed, I drew from the thought that her pallor (which became her wonderfully) seemed to tell the tale of a sleepless night. Had she, then, lain awake, wearily reproaching herself, while I slept like a clod? If so, my punishment was not long delayed. Before the breakfast was over I was in a fever of despairing solicitude. At last I achieved a moment’s speech with Yvonne while the others were out of earshot.
“This morning,” said I, “in the apple-orchard, by an old tree which I shall all my life remember, 61I am to read you those verses, am I not? That was your decree.”
She faced me with laughter in her eyes, but the eyes dropped in spite of her, and the colour came a little back to her cheeks.
“I decree otherwise this morning,” she said, in a voice whose lightness was not perfect. “I am busy to-day, and shall not hear your poems at all, unless you read them to us this evening.”
“I will read them to you alone,” I muttered, “who alone are the source of them, or I will burn them at once!”
“Don’t burn them,” she said, flashing one radiant glance at me.
“Then when may I read them to you?” I begged.
“When you are older, and a little wiser, and a great deal better,” she laughed, turning away with a finality in her air that convinced me my day was lost.
Putting my bravest face on my defeat, I said to Madame de Lamourie:
“If you will pardon me, Madame, I shall constrain myself and attend to certain duties in and about Grand Pré to-day. I must see the curé; and I have a commission to execute for the Sieur de Briart, which will take me perhaps as far as Pereau. In such case I shall not be back here before to-morrow noon.”
62“If our pleasure concerns you,” said Madame very graciously, “make your absence as brief as you can.”
“I was born with a nice regard for self,” I replied. “You may be sure I shall return as quickly as possible.”
“And what if the Black Abbé should come while you are away?” questioned Yvonne, in mock alarm.
“If that extraordinary priest makes my presence here a long necessity I shall come to regard him as my best friend,” said I, laughing, as I bowed myself out to join De Lamourie in a stroll over the farm.
During this walk I learned much of the state of unrest and painful dread under which Acadie was laboring. De Lamourie told me how the English governor at Halifax was bringing a mighty pressure to bear upon all the Acadian householders, urging them to swear allegiance to King George. This, he said, very many were willing to do, as the English had governed them with justice and a most patient indulgence. For his own part, while he regretted to go counter to opinions which I held well-nigh sacred, he declared that, in his judgment, the cause of France was forever lost in Acadie, if not in all Canada. He felt it his duty to give in his allegiance to the English throne, under whose protection he had prospered these 63many years. But strong as the English were, he said, the prospect was not reassuring; for many of those who had taken the oath had been brought to swift repentance by the Black Abbé’s painted and yelling pack, the very Christian Micmacs of Shubenacadie; while others had been pillaged, maltreated, and even in some cases murdered, by the band of masquerading cut-throats who served the will of the infamous Vaurin.
At this I grew hot within, realizing as I had not done before the vile connection into which the Commandant Vergor had cast me. But I said nothing, being unwilling to interrupt De Lamourie’s impassioned story. He told of horrid treacheries on the part of the Micmacs, disavowed, indeed, by La Garne, but unquestionably winked at by him as a means of keeping the Acadians in hand. He told of whole villages wiped out by the Black Abbé’s order, the houses burned, the trembling villagers removed to Ile St. Jean or across the isthmus, that they might be beyond the reach of English seductions. He told, too, of the hideous massacre at Dartmouth, the infant English settlement across the harbor from Halifax. This had come to my ears, but he gave me the reeking particulars.
“And this, too,” I asked in horror, “is it La Garne’s work?”
“He is accused of it by the English,” said 64he, “but for once he is accused unjustly, I do believe. It was Vaurin who planned it; Vaurin and his cut-throats, disguised as Indians and with a few of La Garne’s flock to help, who carried it out. It was too purposeless for La Garne. He rules his savages with a rod of iron, and it is said that his displeasure lay heavy for a time upon the braves who had taken part in that outrage. They went without pay or booty for many months. But at length he forgave them—he had work for them to do.”
When the tale was done, and it was a tale that filled me with shame for my country’s cause, I said:
“It is well my word carried such weight with the good abbé last night. It is well indeed, and it is wonderful!”
“I cannot even yet quite understand it,” said De Lamourie, “but the essential part is the highly satisfactory result. I am going to Halifax next Monday, Paul, with a half score followers who feel as I do; and though I cannot expect you to sympathize with my course, I dare to hope you may be able to prolong your visit so as to keep my wife and daughter under your effective protection.”
I think I must have let the eagerness with which I accepted this trust betray itself in voice or face, for Monsieur de Lamourie looked at me 65curiously. But I really cared little what his suspicions might be. If I could win Yvonne I thought I might be sure of Yvonne’s father.
Having well admired the orchard, and tried to distinguish the “pippin” trees from the “belle-fleurs,” the “Jeannetons” from the “Pride of Normandie;” having praised the rich and even growth of the flax field; having talked with an excellent assumption of wisdom on the well-bred and well-fed cattle which were a hobby with this courtier farmer, this Versailles Acadian, I stepped forth into the main street of Grand Pré and turned toward the house of Father Fafard. I was curiously troubled by an uneasiness as to the Black Abbé, and I knew no better antidote to a bad priest than a good one.
When I stepped off the wide grounds of Monsieur de Lamourie I was at the extreme eastern end of the village. How little did I dream that this fairest of Acadian towns was lying even now beneath the shadow of doom! I am never superstitious in the morning. Little did I dream how near was the fulfilment of Gr?l’s grim prophecy, or how, in that fulfilment, Grand Pré was presently to fade like an exhalation from the face of this wide green Acadian land! It pleases me, since no mortal eye shall ever again see Grand Pré as she was, to find that now I recall with clear-edged memory the picture which she made that June morning. Not only do I see her, but I hear her pleasant sounds—the shallow rushing of the Gaspereau at ebb; the mooing of the cattle on the uplands; the mellow tangle of small bell-music from the bobolinks a-hover over the dyke meadows; now and then a neighbour call from roadside to barn or porch or window; and ever 67the cheery cling-clank, cling-clank from the forge far up the street. Not only do I hear the pleasant sounds, but the clean smells of that fragrant country come back continually with wholesome reminiscence. Oh, how the apple-blossoms breathed their souls out upon that tender morning air! How the spring wind, soft with a vital moisture, persuaded forth the obscure essences of grass and sod and thicket! How good was the salty sea-tang from the uncovered flats, and the emptied channels, and the still-dripping lines of tide-mark sedge! There was a faint savour of tar, too, at intervals, evasively pungent; for some three furlongs distant, at the end of a lane which ran at right angles to the main street, a little creek fell into the Gaspereau, and by the wharf at the creek-mouth were fishermen mending their boats for the shad-fishing.
Oh, that unjustly ignored member, the nose! How subtle and indestructible are its memories! They know the swiftest way to the sources of joy and tears. The eye, the ear, the nice nerves of the finger tip,—these have no such sway over the mysteries of remembrance. They have never been quite so intimate, for a sweet smell duly apprehended becomes a part of the very brain and blood. I have a little cream-yellow kerchief of silk laid away in many folds of scentless paper. Sometimes I untie it and look at it. How well I remember it as once it clung about the fair hair of 68my young mother! I see myself, a thin, dark, grave-faced little boy, leaning against her knee and looking up with love into her face. The memory moves me—but as a picture. “Was it I?” I am able to wonder. “And did I, that dark boy, have a mother like that?” But when I bury my face in the kerchief, and inhale the faint savour it still wonderfully holds, I know, I feel it all. Once more I am in her arms, strained to her breast, my small face pressed close to her smooth neck where the tiny ripples of silken gold began; and I smell the delicate, intimate sweetness that seemed to be her very self; and my eyes run over with hot tears of longing for her kiss. I have a skirt of hers, too, laid away, and an apron; but these do not so much move me, for as a child I spoiled them with weeping into them, I think. The kerchief was not then large enough to attract the childish vehemence of my sorrow, so it was spared, till by and by I came to know and guard the priceless talisman of memory which it held.
For some minutes I stood at the street-foot, looking down the river-bank to the wharf and the boats, steeping my brain in those pleasant smells of Grand Pré. Then I turned up the street. It was all as I had left it two years before, save that then the apple-trees were green like the willows by the marsh edge; while now they were white and pink, a foam of bee-thronged sweetness surging 69close about the village roofs. The cottages on either side the street were low, and dazzling white with lime-wash from the Piziquid quarries. Their wide-flaring gables were presented with great regularity to the street. The roofs of the larger cottages were broken by narrow dormer windows; and all, large and small alike, were stained to a dark purplish-slate color with a wash which is made, I understand, by mixing the lime with a quantity of slaked hard-wood ash. The houses stood each with a little space before it, now neatly tilled and deeply tufted with young green, but presently to become a mass of colour when the scarlet lychnis, blue larkspur, lavender, marigolds, and other summer-blooming plants should break into flower. Far up the street, at the point where a crossroad led out over the marshes to the low, dark-wooded ridge of the island, stood the forge; and as I drew nearer the warm, friendly breath of the fire purred under the anvil’s clinking. Back of the forge, along the brink of the open green levels, stood a grove of rounded willow-trees. Further on, a lane bordered with smaller cabins ran in a careless, winding fashion up the hillside; and a little way from the corner, dwarfing the roofs, loftily overpeering the most venerable apple-trees, and wearing a conscious air of benignant supervision, rose the church of Grand Pré, somewhat squatly capacious in the body, but with a spire 70that soared very graciously. Just beyond, but hidden by the church, I could see in my mind’s eye the curé’s cottage. My footsteps hastened at the thought of Father Fafard and his greeting.
The men of the village were at that hour mostly away in the fields; but there were enough at home about belated barnyard business to halt me many times with their welcomes before I got to the forge. These greetings, in the main, had the old-time heartiness, making me feel my citizenship in Grand Pré. But there was much eager interrogation as to the cause of my presence, and a something of suspicion, at times, in the acceptance of my simple answer, which puzzled and vexed me. It was borne in upon me that I was thought to be commissioned with great matters, and my frankness but a mask for grave and dubious affairs.
Outside the forge, when at last I came to it, stood waiting two horses, while another was inside being shod. The acrid smell of the searing iron upon the hoof awoke in my breast a throng of boyish memories, which, however, I had not time to note and discriminate between; for the owners of the two horses hailed and stopped me. They were men of the out-settlements, whom I knew but well enough to pass the weather with. Yet I saw it in their eyes that they had heard something of my arrival. Question hung upon their lips. I gave them no time for it, but with as little patience as 71consisted with civility I hastened into the forge and seized the hand of the smith, my old friend and my true friend, Nicole Brun.
“Master Paul!” he cried, in a voice which meant a thousand welcomes; and stood gripping my fingers, and searching me with his eyes, while the iron in his other hand slowly faded from pink to purple.
“Well,” I laughed presently, “there is one man in Grand Pré, I perceive, who is merely glad to greet me home, and not too deeply troubled over the reasons for my coming.”
“Hein! You’ve seen it and heard it already,” said Nicole, releasing my fingers from his knotty grasp, and throwing back his thick shoulders with a significant shrug. “Mother Pêche told me last night of your coming; and last night, too, the Black Abbé passed this way. The town is all of a buzz with reasons, this way and that. And some there be that are for you, but more that fear you, Master Paul.”
“Fear me?” I asked, incredulous.
“Along of the Black Abbé and Vaurin!” answered Nicole, as if explaining everything.
“That Vaurin—curse him!” I exclaimed angrily. “But what say you, Nicole? I give you my word, as I have told every one, I come to Grand Pré on my own private business, and mix not at all with public matters.”
72“So?” said he, lifting his shaggy eyebrows in plain surprise. “But in any case it had been all the same to me. I’m a quiet man, and bide me here, taking no part but to forge an honest shoe for the beast of friend or foe; but I’m your man, Master Paul, through thick and thin, as my father was your father’s. ‘Tis a hard thing to decide, these days, what with Halifax and the English governor pulling one way, Quebec and the Black Abbé pulling the other, and his reverence’s red devils up to Lord knows what! But I follow you, Master Paul, come what may! I’m ready.”
I laid my hand laughingly on his shoulder, and thanked him.
“I believe you, my friend,” said I. “And there’s no man I trust more. But I’ve no lead to set you just now. Be true to France, in all openness, and lend no ear to treachery, is all I say. I am the king’s man, heart and soul; but the English are a fair foe, and to be fought with fair weapons, say I, or not at all.”
“Right you are, Master Paul,” grunted Nicole in hearty approval. There was a triumphant grin on his square and sooty face, which I marked with a passing wonder.
“And as for this Vaurin,” I continued, “I spit on all such sneaking fire-in-the-night, throat-slitting, scalp-lifting rabble, who bring a good cause to bitter shame!”
73I spoke with unwonted heat; for I was yet wroth at the commandant for his misuse of my ignorance, and smarting raw at the notion of being classed in with Vaurin.
I observed that at my words Nicole’s triumphant grin was shot across with a sort of apprehension; and at the same moment I observed, too, a sturdy stranger, apparently the owner of the horse now being shod. He sat to the right of the forge fire, far back against the wall; but as I finished he sprang to his feet and came briskly forward.
“Blood of God,” he snarled blasphemously, “but this is carrying the joke too far! You play your part a trifle too well, young man. Let me counsel you to keep a respectful tongue in your head when you speak of your betters.”
“Faith, and I do that!” said I pleasantly, taking note of him with care. From his speech I read him to be a Gascon of the lower sort; while from his dress I judged that he played the gentleman adventurer. But I set him down for a hardy rogue.
“But from whom do I receive in such ill language such excellent good advice?” I went on.
“One who can enforce it!” he cried roughly, misled by my civil air. “I’m a friend of Captain Vaurin, whom I have the honour to serve. It seems to suit some purpose of yours just now to deny it, but you were with him yesterday, in counsel 74with him, a messenger from Colonel Vergor to him; and you came on here at his orders.”
“That is a lie!” said I very gently, smiling upon him. “The other rascal, Vergor, tricked me with his letter; and he shall pay for it!”
Thus given the lie, but so softly, the fellow uttered a choking gurgle betwixt astonishment and rage, and I calculated the chance of his rushing upon me without warning. He was, as I think I said, a very sturdy figure of a man, though not tall; and he gave sign of courage enough in his angry little eyes and jutting chin. A side glance at Nicole showed me that he was pleased with the turn of affairs, and had small love for the stranger. I caught at the doorway the faces of the two men from the out-settlements, with eyes and ears all agog.
The stranger gulped down his rage and set himself to ape my coolness.
“Whatever your business with my captain,” said he, “we are here now as private gentlemen, and you must give me satisfaction. Be good enough to draw, monsieur.”
Now, I was embarrassed and annoyed by this encounter, for I certainly could not fight one of Vaurin’s crew, and I was in haste to see Father Fafard. I cursed my folly in having been led into such an unworthy altercation. How most quickly should I get out of it?
75“I am a captain in the king’s service,” said I abruptly, “and I cannot cross swords but with a gentleman.”
The fellow spluttered in a fine fury, more or less assumed, I must believe. His oaths were of a sort which grated me, but having delivered himself of them he said:
“I too serve the king. And I too, I’d have you know, am a gentleman. None of your Canadian half-breed seigneurs, but a gentleman of Gascony. Out with your sword, or I spit you!”
“I’m very sorry,” I answered smoothly, “that I cannot fight with one of Vaurin’s cut-throats, for I perceive you to be a stout-hearted rascal who might give me a good bout. But as for the gentleman of Gascony, faith, my credulity will not stand so great a tax. From your accents, Monsieur, I could almost name the particular sty by the Bordeaux waterside which must claim the distinction of your birth.”
As I had calculated, this insult brought it. My prod had struck the raw. With a choking curse the fellow sprang at me, naked handed, blind in his bull strength.
I dropped one foot to the rear, met and stopped the rush by planting my left fist in his face, then gave him my right under his jaw, with the full thrust of my body, from the foot up. It was a beautiful trick, learned of an English prisoner at 76Montreal, who had trained me all one winter in the fistic art of his countrymen. My impetuous antagonist went backward over the anvil, and seemed in small haste to pick himself up. The spectators gaped at the strange tactics; and Nicole, as I bade him good-by, chuckled:
“There’ll be trouble for this somewhere, Master Paul! Watch out sharp—and don’t go ‘round o’ nights without taking me along. Le F?ret is not nicknamed ‘The Ferret’ for nothing!”
“All right, my friend,” said I; “when I want a guard I’ll send for you.”
I went off toward Father Fafard’s, pleased with myself, pleased with the English captain who had taught me such a useful accomplishment, and pleased, I confess, with Vaurin’s minion for having afforded me such a fair chance to display it.
The incident at the forge, as it seemed to me, was one to scatter effectually any rumours of my connection with Vaurin, and I congratulated myself most heartily upon it. It could not fail, I thought, to look well in Yvonne’s eyes. It confirmed me in my resolve to go to Canard that afternoon, and perhaps to Pereau, getting my uncle’s business off my hands, and not returning to De Lamourie Place till I might be sure that the circumstances had been heard and well digested there. Having this course settled in my mind, I passed the church, entered the gate between its flowering lilac-bushes, and hastened up the narrow path to Father Fafard’s door. Ere I could reach it the good priest stood upon his threshold to greet me, both hands out, his kind grey eyes half closed by the crowding smiles that creased his round and ruddy face.
“My boy!” he said. “I have looked for you 78all the morning. Why didn’t you come to me last night?”
His voice, big, yet low and soft, had ever quaintly reminded me of a ripe apple in its mellow firmness.
Both hands in his, I answered, bantering him:
“But, father, the church gave me work to do last night. Could I neglect that? I had to see that the Reverend Father La Garne did not turn aside from his sacred ministrations to burn down the houses of my friends.”
The kind face grew grave and stern.
“I know! I know!” he said. “This land of Acadie is in an evil case. But come, let us eat, and talk afterwards. I have waited for you far past my hour.”
He turned into his little dining-room, a very plainly furnished closet off the kitchen.
I was hungry, so for a space there was no talk, while the fried chicken and barley cakes which the brown old housekeeper set before us made rapid disappearance. Then came sweet curds with thick cream, and sugar of the maple grated over them,—a dish of which delectable memories had clung to me from boyhood. This savory and wholesome meal done, Father Fafard brought out some dark-red West Indian rum which smelled most pleasantly. As he poured it for me he tapped the bottle and said:
“This comes to us by way of Boston. These 79English have an excellent judgment in liquor, Paul. It is one of our small compensations.”
I laughed, thinking of the scant concern it was to Father Fafard, ever, for all his fineness of palate, one of the most abstemious of men. As we sat at ease and sipped the brew he said:
“I hear you faced down the Black Abbé last night, and fairly drove him off the field.”
“I had that satisfaction,” said I, striving to look modest over it.
“He gave way to you, the Black Abbé himself, who browbeats the commandant at Beauséjour, and fears no man living,—unless it be that mad heretic Gr?l, perchance! And he yielded to your authority, my boy? How do you account for the miracle?”
Now it had not hitherto seemed to me so much of a miracle, and I was a shade nettled that it should seem one to others. I was used to controlling violent men, and why not meddling priests?
“I suppose he saw I meant it. Perhaps he respected the king’s commission. I know not,” said I with indifference.
Father Fafard smiled dryly.
“I grant,” said he, “that you are a hard man to cross, Paul, for all your graciousness. But La Garne would risk that, or anything; and he cares for the king’s commission only when it suits him to care for it. Oh, no! If he gave way to you he 80believed you were doing his work, and he would not interfere. What is your errand to Acadie, Paul?” he added, suddenly leaning forward and searching my face.
I felt myself flush with indignation, and half rose from my seat. Then I remembered that he knew nothing of my reasons for coming, and that his question was but natural. This cooled me. But I looked him reproachfully in the eyes.
“Do you think me a conspirator and a companion of cut-throats?” I asked. “I have no public business to bring me here to Grand Pré, father. I got short leave from my general, my first in two years, and I have come to Acadie for my own pleasure and for no reason else. My word!”
He leaned back with an air of relief.
“It is, of course, enough, Paul,” said he heartily. “But in these bad days one knows not what to expect, nor whence the bolt may fall. There is distrust on all sides. As for my unhappy people, they are like to be ground to dust between the upper stone of England and the lower stone of France.” He sighed heavily, looking out upon his dooryard lilacs as if he thought to bid them soon farewell. Then the kindly glance came back into his eyes, and he turned them again upon me.
“But why,” he inquired, “did you go first to Monsieur de Lamourie’s, instead of coming, as of old, at once to me?”
81I hesitated; then decided to speak frankly, so far as might seem fitting.
“Gr?l warned me,” said I, “that Mademoiselle de Lamourie was in danger. I dared not delay.”
“Why she in especial?” he persisted, gravely teasing, as was his right and custom. “Were not monsieur and madame in like peril of the good abbé’s hand?”
“It was her peril that most concerned me,” I said bluntly.
He studied my face, and then, I suppose, read my heart, which I made no effort to veil. The smile went from his lips.
“I fear you love the girl, Paul,” said he very gently. “I am sorry for you, more sorry than I can say. But you are too late. Were you told about the Englishman?”
“I met him,” said I, with a voice less steady than I desired it to be, for my heart was straightway in insurrection at the topic. “Madame told me, incidentally. But it is not too late, father! I may call it so when she is dead, or I.”
“It is your hurt that speaks in haste,” said he rebukingly. “But you know you are wrong, and such words idle. Indeed, my dear, dear boy, I would you had her, not he. But her troth is solemnly plighted, and he is a good man and fair to look at; though I like him not over well. As he was a Protestant, I long stood out against him; 82but Giles de Lamourie is now half English at heart, and Yvonne is wilful. Why were you not here to help me a half year back, my boy?”
“Ay! why not?” I exclaimed bitterly, gripping my pewter mug till it lost all semblance of a mug. “And why was I a fool, a blind, blind dolt, when I was here, two years back? But I am here now. And you shall see I am not too late!”
“You speak rashly, Paul,” said he, with a trace of sternness. “You may be sure, however much I love you, I will not help you now in your wicked purpose. Would you make her false to her word?”
“Her word was false to her heart, that I know,” said I. “Better be false for a little than for a lifetime, and two lives made as one death for it.”
The round, kindly face smiled ironically at the passion which had crept into my voice.
“You speak now as a poet, I think, Paul,” said he. “I suppose I must allow for some hyperbole and not be too much alarmed at your passion. Yet I must confess you seem to me too old for this child-talk of life and death, as if they were both compassed in a woman’s loving or not loving.”
“I speak with all sobriety, father,” said I, “and I speak of that which I know. Forgive me if I suggest that you do less.”
The priest’s eyes shaded as with sorrowful remembrance, 83and he looked out across the apple-trees as he answered:
“You think I have always been a priest,” said he; “that I have always dwelt where the passions and pains of earth can touch me only as reflected from the hearts of others—the hearts into which I look as into a mirror. How should I understand what I see in such a mirror, if I had not myself once known these things that make storm in man’s life? I have loved, Paul.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Enough,” said he, “to lose her for her own good. I was a poor student with no prospects. She was beautiful and good, and her duty to her family required that she should marry as they wished. I had no right to her. I could not have her. For her love I vowed to live single—and I have come to know that the love of a woman is but one small part of life.”
“Plainly,” said I, watching him with interest, “there was no resistless compulsion in that love. But you are right; of most lives love is but an accident, the plaything of propinquity. It dimly feels its insignificance in the face of serious affairs, and gives place, as it should. But there is a love which is different. Few, indeed, are they who are born to endure the light of its uncovered face; but all have heard the dim tradition of it. I cannot make you understand it, father, any more than I 84could teach a blind man the wonder of that radiating blue up there. That old half-knowledge of yours has sealed your eyes more closely than if you had never known at all. I can only tell you there is a love to which life and death must serve as lackeys.”
As he listened, first astonishment marked his face; for never before had I spoken to him save as a boy to his trusted master. Then indignation struggled with solicitude. Then he seemed to remember that I was not a boy, but a man well hardened in the school of stern experience. Therefore he seemed to decide that I must be treated with mild banter. He lay back in his chair, folded his well-kept hands on his ample stomach, and chuckled indulgently before replying.
“The fever is upon you, Paul,” said he. “Poet and peasant alike must have it. In this form it is not often more dangerous or more lasting than measles; but unlike measles, alas, one attack grants no immunity from another!”
I loved him well, and his jibes stung me not at all. I fell comfortably into his mood.
“A frontier fighter must be his own physician,” I said lightly. “You shall see how I will medicine this fever.”
“I will trust Yvonne de Lamourie’s plighted word,” he said gravely, after a pause of some moments. Then a wave of strong feeling went over 85his face, and he broke out with a passion in his voice:
“Paul, do not misjudge me. I love you as my own son, and there is no one else in the world whom I love as I love Yvonne de Lamourie. Not her own father can love her as I do, a lonely old man to whom her face is more than sunshine. Do I not desire with all my heart that you should have her—you whom I trust, you whom I know to be a true son of the church? But as I must tell you again, though it grieves me to say it, you have come too late. The Englishman’s faithful and unselfish devotion has won her promise. She will keep it, and she will bring him into the church. Moreover, she owes him more than she can ever repay. Giles de Lamourie has long been under the suspicion of the English government, who accused him, unjustly, of having had a hand in the massacre of the New Englanders here. His estates were on the very verge of confiscation; but Anderson saved him and made him secure. That there is some dreadful fate even now hanging over this fair land I feel assured. What it may be I dare not guess; but in the hour of ruin George Anderson will see that the house of De Lamourie stands unscathed. For, Paul, I know that Heaven is with the English in this quarrel. Our iniquity in high places has not escaped unseen.”
86“Gr?l’s prophecy touches even you,” I remarked, rising. “But I must go, father. I have errands across the dyke, for my uncle; and I would be back for the night, if possible, to ease the fears of Monsieur de Lamourie. And as for her—be assured I will use none but fair means in the great venture of my life.”
“I am assured of it, Paul,” said he, grasping my outstretched hand with all affection. “And I am assured, too, that you will utterly and irremediably fail. Therefore I am the less troubled, my dear boy, though my heart is sore enough for you.”
“I can but thank God,” I retorted cheerfully, retreating down the path between the lilacs, “that the offices of priest and prophet do sometimes exist apart.”
As I looked back at him, before turning down the lane, his kind, round, ruddy face was puckered solicitously over a problem which grew but the harder as he pondered it.
From the curé’s I cut across the fields to escape further delay, and so, avoiding the westerly skirts of the village, came out upon the Canard trail. I made the utmost haste, for the afternoon was already on the wane. For some three miles beyond the village the road runs through a piece of old woods, mostly of beech, birch, and maple, whose young greenery exhaled a most pleasant smell on the fresh June air. By the wayside grew the flowers of later spring, purple wake-robins, the pink and white wild honeysuckle, the solitary painted triangle of the trillium, and the tender pink bells of the linn?a, revealed by their perfume. Once I frightened a scurrying covey of young partridges. As for the squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits, so pert were they in their fearless curiosity that I was ready to pretend they were the same as those which of old in my boyish vagabondings I had taught to be unafraid of my approach. With the one half of 88my soul I was a boy again, retraversing these dear familiar woods; the other half of me, meanwhile, was bowed with a presentiment of disaster. The confidence in the priest’s tone still thrilled me with fear. But under whatever alternations of hope and despair, deep down in my heart where the great resolves take form deliberately my purpose settled into the shape which does not change. By the time I emerged from the wood I was ready to laugh at Father Fafard or anyone else who should tell me that success would not be mine at the last.
“She may not know it yet herself, but she is mine,” I declared to the open marshes, as I set foot out upon the raised way which led over to the Habitants Ferry.
The ferry-boat which crosses the deep and turbid tide of the Habitants is a clumsy scow propelled by a single oar thrust out from the stern. The river is hardly passable save for an hour on either side of full flood. The rest of the time it is a shrinking yet ever-turbulent stream which roars along between precipitous banks of red engulfing slime. When I reached the shore of this unstable water it lacked but a few minutes of flood. The scow was just putting off for the opposite shore, with one passenger. I recognized the ferryman, yellow Ba’tiste Chouan, ever a friend to me in the dear old days. I shouted for him to wait.
89The scow was already some half score feet from land, but Ba’tiste, seeing the prospect of more silver, stopped and made as if to turn back. At once, however, his passenger interfered, with vehement gestures, and eager speech which I could not hear. Eying him closely, I perceived that it was none other than that ruffian of Vaurin’s whom I had so incontinently discomfited at the forge. His haste I could now well understand, and I saw him urging it with such effective silvern argument that Ba’tiste began to yield.
“Ba’tiste,” I cried sharply, “don’t you know me? Take a good look at me; my haste is urgent.”
My voice caught him. “Tiens! It’s Master Paul,” he cried, and straightway thrust back to shore, calmly ignoring threats and bribes alike.
As I sprang aboard and grasped Ba’tiste’s gaunt claw I expected nothing less than a second bout with my adversary of the morning. But he, while I talked with the ferryman of this and that, according to the wont of old acquaintances long apart, kept a discreet silence at the other end of the scow, where, as I casually noted, he stood with folded arms looking out over the water. A scarlet feather stuck foppishly in his dark cap became him very well; and I could not but account him a proper figure of a man, though somewhat short.
Presently, at a pause in our talk, he turned and 90approached us. To my astonishment he wore a civil smile.
“I was in the wrong this morning, Monsieur Grande,” he said, in a hearty, frank voice such as I like, though well I know it is no certificate of an honest heart. “I interfered in a gentleman’s private business; and though your rebuke was something more sharp than I could have wished, I deserved it. Allow me to make my apologies.”
Now it is one of my weaknesses that I can scarce resist the devil himself if he speaks me fair and seeks to make amends.
“Well,” said I reluctantly, “we will forget the incident, monsieur, if it please you. I cannot but honour a brave man always; and you could not but speak up for your captain, he not being by to speak for himself. My opinion of him I will keep behind my teeth out of deference to your presence.”
“That’s fair, monsieur,” said he, apparently quite content. “And I will keep my nose out of another gentleman’s business. My way lies to Canard. May I hope for the honour of your company on the road—since fate, however rudely, has thrown us together?”
Another weakness of mine is to be uselessly frank—to resent even politic concealment. Here was one whom I knew for an enemy. I spoke him the plain truth with a childish carelessness.
91“I have affairs both at Canard and at Pereau,” said I. “But I know not if I shall get so far as the latter to-night.”
“Ah!” said he, “I might have known as much. Father La Garne will lie at Pereau to-night, and I am to meet Captain Vaurin there.”
I turned upon him fiercely, but his face was so devoid of malice that my resentment somehow stuck in my throat. Seeing it in my face, however, he made haste to apologize.
“Pardon me, monsieur, if I imply too much, or again trespass upon your private matters,” he exclaimed courteously. “But you will surely allow that, in view of your late visit to Piziquid, my mistake is a not unnatural one.”
I was forced to acknowledge the justice of this.
“But be pleased to remember that it is none the less a mistake,” said I with emphasis, “and one that is peculiarly distasteful to me.”
“Assuredly, monsieur,” he assented most civilly. And by this we were at the landing. As we stepped off I turned for a final word with Ba’tiste; and he, while giving me account of a new road to the Canard, shorter than the old trail, managed to convey a whispered warning that my companion was not to be trusted.
“It is Le F?ret,” he said, as if that explained.
“That’s all right, my friend,” I laughed confidently. “I know all about that.”
92Then I turned up the new road, striding amicably by the side of my late antagonist, and busily wondering how I was to be rid of him without a rudeness.
But I might have spared myself this foolish solicitude; for presently, coming to a little lane which led up to a fair house behind some willows, he remarked:
“I will call here, monsieur, while you are visiting at Machault’s yonder; and will join you, if I may, the other side of the pasture.”
With the word he had bowed himself off, leaving me wondering mightily how he knew I was bound for Simon Machault’s—as in truth I was, on matters pertaining to my uncle’s rents. I was sure I had made no mention of Machault, and I was nettled that the fellow should so appear to divine my affairs. I made up my mind to question him sharply on the matter when he should rejoin me.
But I was to see no more of him that day. After a pleasant interview with Machault, whence I departed with my pockets the heavier for some rentals paid ungrudgingly to the Sieur de Briart, I continued my way alone, my mind altogether at ease as to the house of De Lamourie, since I had learned that the Black Abbé and the blacker Vaurin would lie that night at Pereau. Then suddenly, as I was about to turn into the yard of another farmhouse, one of those strange things 93happened which we puzzle over for a time and afterward set down among the unaccountable. Some force, within or without, turned me sharp about and faced me back toward Grand Pré. Before I realized at all what I was up to, I was retracing my steps toward the ferry. But with an effort I stopped to take counsel with myself.