A Sister to Evangeline by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts
Chapter XXVIII
The Ships of her Exile
The days dragged till December was setting his hoar face toward death,and still delayed the last ships. The jailers grew sour-visaged. FromYvonne came no more word, only the tidings that she was not well, andthat her people were troubled for her. Father Fafard’s cheery wrinklesat mouth and eyes deepened from cheer to care; but still his lips lockedover the name of Yvonne.
My hope sank ever lower and lower. That old wound in my head, cured byGrûl’s searching simples, began to harass me afresh—whether from cold,the chapel being but barn-like, or from the circumstance that my heart,ceaselessly gnawing upon itself, gnawed also upon every tissue andnerve. I came strangely close to the ranger La Mouche in those bad days;for though I knew not, nor cared nor dared to ask, his story, I saw inhis eyes a something which he, too, doubtless saw in mine. So it camethat we sat much together, in a black silence. It was not that I lovedless than of old my true comrade Marc, but the fact that he possessedwhere he loved, and could with blissful confidence look forward, set himsome way apart from me. Upon La Mouche, with the deep hurt sullen in hiseyes, I could look and mutter to myself:
“Old, wily fox, is your foot, once so free, caught in the snare of awoman?”
So tortuous a thing in its workings is this red clot of a human heartthat I got a kind of perverted solace out of such thoughts as these.
At last the tired watchers at our south windows announced two ship inthe basin. They came up on the flood, and dropped anchor off theGaspereau mouth.
“This ends it,” I heard Marc say coolly. “All that’s left of Grand Précan go in those two ships.”
To me the words came as a knell for the burial of my last hope.
The embarkation had now to be pushed with a speed which wrought infiniteconfusion, for the weather had turned bitter, and it was not possiblefor women and children to long endure the cold of their dismantledhomes. The big wagons, watched by us from our windows, went creaking andrattling down the frozen roads. Wailing women, frightened and wonderingchildren, beds, chests, many-colored quilts, bright red and greenchairs,—to us it looked as if all these were tumbled into a narrowingvortex and swept with a piteous indiscriminacy into one ship or theother. The orderly method with which the previous embarkings had beenmanaged was now all thrown to the winds by the fierce necessity forhaste. We in the chapel were not left long to watch the scene from thewindows. While yet the main street of Grand Pré was dolorous with thetears of the women and children, the doors of our prison opened andnames were called. I heeded them not; but the sound of my own namepierced 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 theparsonage had been taken for a guard-house. No message came to me fromthose north windows. Then I turned, to find Marc at my side.
“Courage, cousin mine,” he whispered. “We are not beaten yet. Betteroutside than in there. This much means freedom—and, once free, we’llact.”
“No, Marc, I’m not beaten,” I muttered. “But—it _looks_ as if I were.”
“Chut, man!” said he crisply. “You couldn’t do a better thing to bringher to her senses than you are doing now.”
It was but a few steps down to the lane, and there we found ourselves ina jumble of heaped carts and blue-skirted, weeping women. My head waspaining me sorely—a numb ache that seemed to rise in the core of mybrain. But I remember noting with a far-off commiseration the blubberedfaces of the women, and their poor little solicitudes for this or thatbit of household gear which, from time to time, would fall crashing tothe ground from the hastily laden carts. I found spirit to wonder thatthe tears which had exhausted themselves over the farewell to fatherlandand hearthside should break out afresh over the cracking of a gildedglass or the shattering of a blue and silver jug. The women’slamentations in a little hardened me, so that my ears ignored them; butthe wide-eyed terrors of the children, their questions unanswered, theirwhimpering at the cold that blued their hands, all this pierced me.Tears for the children’s sorrow gathered in my heart, till it was nighto bursting; and this curbed passion of pity, I think, kept my sick bodyfrom collapse. It in some way threw me back from my own misery on to myold unroutable resolution.
“I _will_ win!” I said in my heart, as we came down upon the wharf atthe Gaspereau mouth. “Though there seems to be no more hope, there islife; and while there is life, I hold on.”
When we reached the wharf the ebb was well advanced. The boats could notget near the wharf. Women had to wade ankle-deep in freezing slime toreach them. The slime was churned with the struggle of many feet. Thestuff from the carts was at times dropped in the ooze, to be recoveredor not as might chance. The soldiers toiled faithfully, and theirleggings to the knee were a sorry sight. They were patient, thesered-coats, with the women, who often seemed to lose their heads so thatthey knew not which boat they wanted to go in. To the children everyred-coat seemed tender as a mother. For any one, indeed, they would doanything, except endure delay. Haste, haste, haste was all—and thereforethere was calamitous confusion. While I stood on the wharf awaiting theorder to embark, I saw a stout girl in a dark-red stomacher and greypetticoat throw herself screaming into the water where it was aboutwaist deep, and scramble desperately to another boat near by. No effortwas made to restrain her. Dripping with tide and slime she climbed overthe gunwale; and belike found what she sought, for her cries ceased.Again I noted—Marc called my attention to it—a small child being passedfrom one boat to the other, as the two, bound for different ships, wereabout diverging. The mother had stumbled blindly into one boat while thechild had been tossed into the other. In the effort to remedy thisoversight the child was dropped into the water between the boats. Thescreams of the mother were like a knife in our ears. Two sailors wentoverboard at once, but there was some delay ere the little one wasrecovered. Then we saw its limp body passed in over the boatside;whether alive or dead we could not judge; but the screams ceased and ourear-drums blessed the respite.
With the next boat came our turn; and I found myself wading down theslope of icy ooze. I heard Marc, just behind me, mutter a carelessimprecation upon the needless defiling of his boots. He was everimperturbable, my cousin,—a hot heart, but in steel harness.
We loaded the roomy long-boat till the gunwale was almost awash. The bigoars creaked and thumped in the rowlocks. We moved laboriously out tothe ships, which swung on straining cable in the tide. As we came underher black-wall side, with the turbid red-grey current hissing past it,men on deck caught us with grapnels, and we swung, splashing, under thestern. Then, the tide being very troublesome, we were drawn againalongside.
Marc was at my elbow. “Look!” he cried, pointing to the ridge behind thevillage. I saw a wide-roofed cottage on the crest break into flame.There was a wind up there, though little as yet down here in the valley;and the flames streamed out to westward, the black smoke rolling low andragged above them.
“So goes all Grand Pré in a little!” muttered Marc.
“It is P’tit Joliet’s house!” said I.
“Yes,” said a steady young voice behind me; and I turned to see PetitJoliet himself, watching with undaunted eyes the burning of his home.“Yes, and it was a fine house. It would have hurt my father sorely, werehe alive now, to see it go up in smoke like that.”
“Well, you have a brave heart,” said I, liking him well as I saw hisfirmness.
“Oh,” said he, “the only thing that is troubling me is this—shall I findmy mother on this ship? They are making mistakes now, these English, intheir haste to be done with us. I’m worried.”
“If she is not on board,” said my kind Marc, “we’ll try and keep a watchon the boats; and if we see her bound for the wrong ship we’ll let theguard know. They _want_ to keep families together, if they can.”
This was Marc, ever careful of others. But his good purpose was like tohave been frustrated soon as formed; for
“Sorry, sir. Can’t help it. So many of you, you know,” said the red-coatapologetically, as I stretched out my wrists to him.
But glancing about the crowded deck I descried my good friend,Lieutenant Waldron, busily unravelling the snarl of things. In answer tomy hail he came at once, warm, friendly, and trying not to see my irons.
“One last little service, sir!” I cried. “Little to us, it may be greatto others. You see we are ironed, Captain de Mer and I. We will give ourword to neither attempt escape nor in any way interfere with this sorrywork. Let us two wait here on deck till the ship sails. We know allthese villagers; and we want to help you avoid the severance offamilies.”
“It is little to grant for you, my friend,” said he, in a feeling voice.“You cannot know how my heart is aching. I will speak to the captain ofthe ship, and you shall stay on deck till the ship sails.”
Marc thanked him courteously, but I with no more than a look, for wordsdid not at that time seem compliant to say what I desired them to say.They are false and treacherous spirits, these words we make so free withand trust so rashly with affairs of life and death. How often do theytake an honest meaning from the heart and twist it to the semblance of alie as it leaves the lips! How often do they take a flame from theinmost soul, and make it ice before it reaches the soul toward which itthrilled forth! It has been my calling to work with words in peace, aswith swords in time of war; and I know them. I do not trust them. Theswords are the safer.