Charles G. D. Roberts

“ The face was a face for which some men would die a hundred deaths and dream all beauty in dying, while other men, blind fools, and many women, of the envious sort, would protest it to be not even passable; a face small, thin, clear, and very dark; the chin obstinate; the mouth full, somewhat large, sorrowful, mocking, maddening, unforgettably scarlet; the nose whimsical, dainty; the eyes of a strange green radiance, very large and trustfully wide open, frank as a child's, yet unfathomable; a face to trust, to adore, yet not to understand. ”

“ It was about sunset, and a fierce, orange-red gleam thrusting itself through a rift in the clouds that blackened the sky, cast a strange glow over the wide, desolate marshes. A mile back rose the dark line of the uplands, with small, white farm-houses already hidden in shadow.
Captain Joe Boultbee had just left bis wagon standing in the dyke-road, with his four-year-old boy on the seat. He was on the point of crossing the dyke, to visit the little landing-place where he kept his boat, when above the rush and whistle or the gale he heard Jamie's voice. ”

“ Said I to myself, "If I put my wits or my heart against hers it is all up with me. Blank truth is my only hope." Aloud I said, "I will be your guest, mademoiselle, though the debt in which I so overwhelm myself is one from which I can never again get free."
For this acquiescence my reward was just a look of brilliancy that made me catch my breath with pleasure. With a gesture that bade me to her side she turned and moved slowly up the path, between the shining copiousness of roses.
"I will send a servant with your orderly to the inn, monsieur," she said, "to fetch your things. ”

“ One beat of its wide, gorgeous wings uplifted its light body as a breath softly uplifts a tuft of thistle-down. The baffled shrew jumped straight into the air, but in vain; and the great butterfly went flickering aimlesly over the pasture to find some less perilous basking-place.
Angered by this failure, the shrew descended the stone heap and scurried over to the fence, poking his nose under every tussock of weeds in search of the nest of some ground-bird. Along parallel with the fence he hunted, keeping out about a foot from the lowest rail. He found no nest ”

“ There he devoted himself to Jamie and the farm, but to Jamie especially; and in the summer, partly for amusement, partly for profit, he was accustomed to spend a few weeks in drifting for shad on the wild tides of Chignecto Bay. Wherever he went, Jamie went. If the weather was too rough for Jamie, Captain Joe stayed at home. As for the child, petted without being spoiled, he was growing a tough and manly little soul, and daily more and more the delight of his father's heart.
Why should he leave him curled up in his tub on the edge of the marshes, on a night so wild? ”

“ The bear, to be sure, at five months old, was more grown-up, more self-sufficing and efficient, than the baby at five years; but he had the disadvantage of feeling himself an intruder. He had come to the raft quite uninvited, and found the baby in possession! On that account, of course, he rather expected the baby to show her white, little teeth, and snarl at him, and try to drive him off into the water. In that case, he would have resisted desperately, because he was in mortal fear of the boiling, seething flood. ”

“ My first thought in the morning, when the level sun streaming through the hop vines brought me on the sudden wide awake—as a soldier should wake, slipping cleanly and completely out of his sleep-heaviness—my first thought, I say, was of a shadowed face vanishing into the night-glimmer, and something enchantingly mysterious to be sought for in this remote Acadian village. Then, remembering my business and hoping that my indiscretion had not muddled it, I resolutely put the folly from me and sprang up. ”

“ He remembered also that mole which had so inexplicably evaded him. Keeping close to the fence, he hurried back to the stone heap, on the other side of which lay the entrance to the burrows. He was just about to make a hurried and final investigation of the pile, when his nose caught a strong scent which made him stop short and seem to shrink into his skin. At the same instant a slim, long, yellow-brown animal emerged from the stones, cast a quick, shifting glance this way and that, then darted at him as smoothly as a snake. ”

“ We cannot let you put a slight upon our hospitality."
I was in sore embarrassment; and the parchment deed conveying to me the Seigneury of Cheticamp began to burn my pocket. I felt a vehement desire to accept the sweetly proffered hospitality of this enchanting witch. The temptation dragged at my heartstrings. There was nothing to do but take it by the throat rudely if I would save any shreds of honour. "Alas! mademoiselle," I said, avoiding her eyes, "I am here on a rough errand, and your courtesy pierces me. I am here to arrest your brother and carry him a prisoner to Halifax." ”

“ The baby, on the other hand, was momentarily expecting that the bear would come over and bite her. Why else, if not from some such sinister motive, had he come aboard her raft, when he had been traveling on a perfectly good tree? The tree looked so much more interesting than her bare raft, on which she had been voyaging for over an hour, and of which she was now heartily tired. To be sure, the bear was not much bigger than her own Teddy bear at home, which she was wont to carry around by one leg, or to slap without ceremony whenever she thought it needed discipline. ”

“ But such a mistake on the part of any creature not larger than a ground-sparrow or wood-mouse or lizard would have resulted in instant doom; for this tiny beast, indomitable as a terrier and greedy for meat as a mink, was the mole-shrew.
Having devoured the fat grub, and finding his appetite still unappeased, the shrew at once resumed his vehement digging. His marvellously developed nostrils had assured him that a little farther on beneath the turf were more grubs, or well-conditioned earthworms, or the stupid big red-brown beetles called "Maybugs." ”

“ Michel le Fevre de Cheticamp, rehearsing his full name with care as I went, in order that there should be no lack of courteous ceremony to disguise the rudeness of my errand.
I needed none to point me out the house of the le Fevres. On the crest of a dark-wooded knoll at the south-east end of the one long village street, it spread its cluster of grey gables, low and of a comfortable air. Fir groves sheltered it to north and east. On the west gathered the cool, green ranks of its apple orchard. ”

“ Tail and hind legs had been nimbly drawn in just in time, as if forewarned of the swooping peril; and the hawk flew off heavily, to resume his quartering of the pasture. Unruffled by his narrow escape, the shrew went on with his burrowing. He ran his gallery close under the roots of the turf, where the grubs and beetles were most numerous. Sometimes he would dip an inch or more to avoid a bit of difficult excavation, but more often he would press so closely to the surface that the thin layer of sod above him would heave with every surging motion. ”

“ Right across the marsh the strange craft drifted before the wind, never getting into the region where the waves were violent. Such motion as there was—and at times it was somewhat lively—seemed only to lull the child to sounder slumber. ”

“ Forgive me, I beg you on my knees, for the stupid mistake, the unpardonable mistake I made this morning. And oh, count it something that I did my best to remedy the error, so that no harm came of it."
The anger that flamed into her eyes was of a beauty that did not delight me.
"Doubtless you did your duty, monsieur, as a servant of your Government. Doubtless honour required that you should betray the trust so foolishly reposed in you by a silly girl. You would have taken my brother, and through his sister's folly. ”

“ Having thus effectually established his lordship of the burrows, this small champion might have reasonably expected to enjoy an undisturbed and unanxious slumber. But fate is pitilessly whimsical. It chanced at this time that a red fox came trotting down along the pasture fence. He seemed to have a very vague idea of where he was going or what he wanted to do. Presently his keen, investigating nose sniffed the sod just at the point whereunder the sleeping shrew lay hidden. The turf that formed the little fighter's ceiling was not more than half an inch in thickness. ”

“ In all this sudden turmoil of my wits, however, I fear that I was near forgetting my manners.
"But, mademoiselle," I demanded bluntly, "how do you know who I am?"
"It is the part of the conquered to know their conquerors, monsieur," she answered, in a manner that eluded the bitterness of the words. "But, indeed, the place of an English officer, on duty that is doubtless official, is here at the Seigneury and not at the village inn. ”

“ The boat reached the raft, bumped hard upon it, and the baby’s mother leaped out, while the man, with his boat-hook, held the two craft close together. The woman, thrusting the cub angrily aside, clutched the baby to her breast, sobbing over her, and threatening to punish her when she got her home for giving so much trouble. The baby did not seem in the least disturbed by these threats, to which the man in the boat was listening with a grin, but when her mother started to carry her to the boat, she reached out her arms rebelliously for the cub. ”

“ Yet my inclination must have shown in my eyes, plainly enough for one less keen than Mademoiselle Irene le Fevre to decipher it. A little air of confidence flitted over her face. Nevertheless, I shook my head.
"Most gracious lady," I protested, "you honour me too much. It will delight me to learn that your brother has been maligned"—and in this, faith, I spoke true, forgetting the contingent peril to my pocket—"but were he never so innocent it would be my duty to take him to Halifax, for the Governor himself to weigh the evidence. The irony of life has sent me as your foe, not as your guest." ”

“ Most cubs, and some older bears, would have relinquished the adventure at this point; for, as a rule, it takes a wise old bear to handle a bee-tree successfully. But Teddy Bear was no ordinary cub, let me tell you,—or we would never have called him ‘Teddy.’ He lay nursing his anger and his nose till he had made up his mind what to do. And then he set out to do it.
“Hauling himself up softly from branch to branch, he made no more noise than a shadow. As soon as he was right behind the bees’ hole, he reached around, dug his claws into the edge of it, and pulled with all his might. ”

“ I simply let myself feel; and, turning mechanically, I walked in a daze down the winding road through the rose garden.
"Of course," said I to myself, and half aloud to the roses, "she means that I am to act upon her word and take my men safely out of the way to South Cove before noon, leaving the North Harbour, where the ship has gone, perfectly secure. She knows that I can act with a clear conscience on so definite a piece of information as that. She knows that there is nothing else for me to do. She sees that I love her. She trusts me. ”

“ Fettered completely by the narrowness of the tunnel, unable to lash or coil or strike, the snake could only writhe impotently and struggle to drag his adversary farther down the burrow toward some roomier spot where his own tactics would have a chance. But the shrew was not to be dislodged from his point of vantage. ”

“ All night the wind raged on, wrecking the smacks and schooners along the coast, breaking down tho dykes in a hundred places, flooding all the marshes, and drowning many cattle in the salt pastures. All night the Captain, hopeless and mute in his agony of grief, lay c1utchin the grasses on the dyke-top, not noticing when at length the waves started to drench him with their spray. All night, too, slept Jamie in his tub. ”

“ He fished out a letter from his pocket, rolled himself a cigarette as thick as his finger with his heavy pipe tobacco, and fell to puffing such huge clouds as would discourage other bees from prying into the thicket. Then he remarked consolingly:
“It is n’t always, by any means, that the bees get the best of it this way. Mostly it ’s the other way about. This bear was a fool. But there was Teddy Bear, now, a cub over in the foot-hills of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and he was not a fool. When he tackled his first bee-tree—and he was nothing but a cub, mind you—he pulled off the affair in good shape. ”

“ The business which gained me the privilege of coming where I might be once more blessed by the light of your sweet eyes, provoking one, was the need conceived in the heart of our good Governor of putting a stop to certain transactions with the French at Louisbourg, which, as you doubtless know very well, have laid all this Cheticamp coast under grave suspicion. Your people, I dare wager, are too wise to be mixed up in such perilous enterprises. ”

“ He was tired, moreover, and wanted to go to sleep. So he snuggled his glossy, roguish face down into the baby’s lap, and shut his eyes. And the baby, filled with delight over such a novel and interesting plaything, shook her yellow hair down over his black fur and crooned to him a soft babble of endearment.
“The swollen flood was comparatively quiet now, rolling full and turbid over the drowned lands, and gleaming sullenly under a blaze of sun. ”

“ The body of the dead snake was soon a centre of teeming, hungry, busy life, toiling to remove all traces of what had happened. For Nature, though she works out almost all her ends by tragedy, is ceaselessly attentive to conceal the red marks of her violence. ”

“ I had caught a stealthy rustling in the hop vines about the window. Could these Acadians be planning any mischief against me? It was not probable, for they were an open-dealing and courageous folk, and had shown themselves civil during the few hours since my coming to Cheticamp village. Nevertheless, I knew that in a certain sense I might count myself to be in an enemy's country, and vigilance my best comrade. ”

“ Moreover, there did not seem to be so many bees buzzing about the hole.”
The Babe’s eyes grew so round with inquiry at this point that Uncle Andy felt bound to explain. °
“You see, as soon as the bees got it into their cunning heads that their enemy was going to succeed in breaking into their storehouse, they decided that it was more important to save their treasures than to fight the enemy. It was just as it is when one’s house is on fire. At first one fights to put the fire out. When that ’s no use, then one thinks only of saving the things. That’s the principle the bees generally go upon. ”

“ Come with your hands free to arrest my brother at any moment on his own hearthstone (he is far away from it now, praise Mary!) , or to arrest your hostess either, if your duty should demand that unkindness. Come as one who graciously accepts what he could, if he would, take as his right. Let us play that you come here as our friend, monsieur—and give me the hope of winning an advocate for my brother against the evil day that may bring him before the cold English judges at Halifax. ”

“ For a few moments he stood his ground obstinately, wrinkling back his long snout and jumping at his bewildering assailants. Then, realizing that he could do nothing against such nimble foes, he drew back and ran under the fence. ”

“ But what do you suppose I came to Cheticamp for?" I pleaded.
"Not merely to see me—that I know, Jacques," came the decided answer. "You could never get leave of absence just for that. You cold-blooded English could never make a woman's wishes so important."
"Couldn't we, indeed?" I protested. In my eagerness I leaned forward into the glimmer, seeking closer proximity to the fair enshadowed face that seemed to waver off alluringly just beyond my reach. ”