Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

“ At a most knowingly calculated moment there descended between us, entangling and diverting the points of our weapons,—what but a flutter of black lace!
“I will not have either of you defeated!” came Yvonne’s voice, gayly imperious. “You shall both of you surrender at once, to me! There is no dishonour, gentlemen, in surrendering to a woman!”
It was a most gracious thought on her part, to save a brave man from humiliation; and my worship of her deepened, if that were possible. As for the elegant Mr. Shafto, he was palpably taken aback, and glowered rudely for a space of some seconds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I see Yvonne’s eyes, which had swiftly sought my face as the words were spoken, change and warm to mine for the least fraction of a second. I see all this now, and her slim form unspeakably graceful against the dark wainscoting of the chimney side. Then it all seemed to swim, and I knew that it was with great effort of will I steadied myself; and at last I perceived that Yvonne was holding both Anderson and her father in rapt attention by a sort of radiance of light speech and dainty gesture. ”

“ She found the ship already well past Blomidon, the vale of desolation quite shut from view. To west and north the sky was clear, of a hard, steely pallor. The wind was light, but enough to control the dense smoke which still choked the greater half of the heavens. It lay banked, as it were, sluggishly and blackly revolving itself along the wooded ridge that runs southward from Blomidon. Straight ahead, across a wintry reach of sea, sped the other ship, with all sail set. It seemed to Yvonne’s eyes that she was much farther ahead than the night before, and sailing with a dreadful swiftness. ”

“ One gunwale dipped; an icy flood poured in; there was imminent peril of swamping.
Women jumped up with screams, and children caught at them, terror-stricken by the looming black wall of the ship’s side. The boatmen cursed fiercely. The two soldiers in the boat shouted: “Sit down! damn you! sit down!” with such authority that all obeyed at once. The shrill clamour ceased; the peril was over; the embarkation went on. Mother Pêche, with nerves of steel, had but gripped the more firmly upon Yvonne’s hand. As for Yvonne, she had apparently taken no note of the disturbance. ”

“ A Grand Pré Morning 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 Grûl’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! ”

“ Then Mother Pêche’s soothsaying over the lines of my palm came back to me: “Your heart’s desire is nigh your death of hope!”
Wonderful old woman! How came such wisdom to your simple heart, with no teachers but herbs, and dews, and stillnesses of the open marsh, and hill-whispers, and the unknown stars? Out of some deep truth you spoke, surely; for even as my hope died, had not my heart’s desire come? And I said to myself, “It is but a narrow and shallow heart that expects to understand all it believes. Do we not walk as men blindfolded in the citadel of mystery? ”

“ I am no traitor. I have been a fool; or my sword would have been at your father’s side to-night. I swear to you that I go now to expiate my mistake by saving your lover for you.”
The first wave of doubt as to my treason came into her eyes at this; but her lips curled in bitter unbelief. Before she could speak, I went on:
“I swear to you by—by the soul of my dead mother I will save George Anderson or die fighting beside him! You shall have your lover,” I added, as I stepped toward the boat, which was now fairly afloat on the swirling current. ”

“ As we reached the open hatch I turned for a last look at Grand Pré.
The whole valley was now as it were one seething lake of smoke and flame, the high, half-shrouded spire of the chapel rising impregnable on the further brink. The conflagration was fiercest now along the eastern half of the main street, toward the water side. Even at this distance we heard the great-lunged roar of it. High over the chaos, like a vaulted roof upheld by the Gaspereau Ridge, arched an almost stationary covering of smoke-cloud, impenetrable, and red as blood along its under side. ”

“ The apparition made a wondrous stir on deck. To those who had ever heard of such a being, it appeared that the Witch of the Moon, in all the indescribable magic of her beauty, had been translated into flesh. Men seemed upon the instant to find an errand to that quarter of the ship. Captain Eliphalet Wrye, who had been watching with great unconcern a transfer whose significance seemed to him quite ordinary, came forward in haste, eager to do the honours of his ship, and marvelling beyond measure at such a guest. ”

“ I think my anger was plain enough to every one, for the old friendliness—as I afterwards remembered—came back to the faces of Monsieur and Madame de Lamourie, and Yvonne’s eyes shone upon me for an instant with a wistfulness which I could not understand. Yet this, as I said, is but what came back to me afterwards. I felt Yvonne’s eyes but as in a dream at that moment.
“Vergor shall answer to me,” I cried bitterly. “It is ill work serving under the public thieves whom the intendant puts in power to-day. One never knows what baseness may not be demanded of him. ”

“ It was La Garne, the Black Abbé, master of the Micmac tribes, and terror of the English in Acadie. He was a devoted servant to the flag I served, the lilied banner of France; but I dreaded and detested him, for I held that he brought dishonour on the French cause, as well as on his priestly office, by his devious methods, his treacheries, and his cruelties. War, I cannot but think, becomes a gross and hideous thing whensoever it is suffered to slip out of the control of gentlemen, who alone know how to maintain its courtesies. ”

“ My welcome was not such as is commonly accorded to the tax-gatherer. These retainers of my uncle’s made me feel that I was myself their seigneur; and their rents, paid voluntarily and upon their own reckonings, were in effect a love-gift. I supped—chiefly upon buckwheat cakes—at the cottage of Le Marchand père, and then, dark having fallen softly upon the quiet fields, I set out at a gentle pace for Grand Pré village.
Soon after I got into the still dark of the woods the moon rose clear of the Gaspereau hills, and thrust long white fingers toward me through the leafage. ”

“ He was an iron-grey, close-bearded man, this New England captain, with a stern mouth and half-shut, twinkling eyes. Rough toward men, he was gentle toward women, children, and animals. His name was John Stayner; and in Machias, Maine, whence he hailed, he had a motherless daughter of eighteen, the core of his heart, who was commonly said to rule him as the moon rules ocean. When John Stayner went to the cabin and saw Yvonne in his berth, her white eyelids just stirring to the first return of consciousness, there was small need of Mother Pêche’s explanations. ”

“ A little afterward, revisiting Trois Pistoles on my way to the western lakes, I had found the maiden married to a prosperous trader of Quebec. In the leaping joy that seized my heart at the news I perceived how my fetters had galled; and I knew then, though at first but dimly, that if anywhere in the world there awaited me such a love as I had dreamed of sleeping, but ever doubted waking,—the love that should be not a pastime, but a prayer, not an episode, but an eternity,—it awaited me in Grand Pré village. ”

“ Straightway, my mood changing, I moved swiftly hither and thither, calling them by name. There was the whole clan of the Le Marchands, black, fearless, melancholy for their flax-fields; the three Le Boutilliers; the brave young slip, Jacques Violet, whom I had liked as a boy; a Landry or two; the lad Petit Joliet; several of the restless Labillois; long Philibert Trou, the moose-hunter; and, to my regretful astonishment, that wily fox, La Mouche.
“You here, too!” I cried, shaking him by the arm. “If they have caught you, who has escaped!”
“I came in on business, my captain,” said he grimly. ”

“ Mother Pêche sat beside her, watching for a while in silence. Then she seemed to think the passionate outburst should be checked. But she was far too wise to say so.
“That’s right, dearie,” murmured the subtle old dame at the girl’s ear. “Just cry as hard as you like, if it does you good. There’s so many women crying on this ship, poor souls, that you’re no ways noticeable.”
So many women crying! True, they had not the same to cry about that she had, but Yvonne felt that her grief was suddenly cheapened. She must try to be less weak than those others. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we go into Montreal for the months of December and January, exchanging for a little the quiet of our country home for the glitter of rout and function, no other 287court so choice, so loyal, and so revering as that which Yvonne gathers about her. The wise, drawn by her wit, are held fast by her beauty; while the gay, drawn by her beauty, rise to a worship of her wit and worth.
Yvonne’s small hands are white and alive and restless as on that day in the Grand Pré orchard when, prying into the heart of the apple-blossom, they pried into and set fast hold upon the strings of my heart also. ”

“ 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? ”

“ While yet the main street of Grand Pré was dolorous with the tears of the women and children, the doors of our prison opened and names were called. I heeded them not; but the sound of my own name pierced my gloom; and I went out. In the tingling air I awoke a little, to gaze up the hill at the large house where Yvonne had lodged since the parsonage had been taken for a guard-house. No message came to me from those north windows. Then I turned, to find Marc at my side.
“Courage, cousin mine,” he whispered. “We are not beaten yet. Better outside than in there. ”

“ Every sight and every sound bore the significance of an omen, to which I lacked interpreter. The roofs of the village itself, and the marshes, the sea, and the far-off bulk of Blomidon, appeared like the tissue of a dream, ready to vanish upon a turn of thought, and leave behind I knew not what of terrible reality.
I am not by nature superstitious at all beyond the point of convenience. Such superstitions as please me I have ever been wont to cherish for the interest to be had out of them. ”

“ Now I found myself looking with a foolish affection at the arms which had been guilty of that sacrilege—and straightway, coming to my wits again, I glanced at 119Nicole to see if he had divined the vast dimensions of my folly.
From this I passed to wondering what was truly now my hope or my despair. During all my talk with Yvonne—from the moment, indeed, when Father Fafard had told me of her agitation over Anderson’s peril—I had been as one without hope, in darkness utterly. Only a great love—the great love, as I had told myself—could inspire this desperate and daring solicitude. ”

“ 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. ”