A Sister to Evangeline by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts
Chapter XXXVII
Fire in Ice
Some while after, as in my passing to and fro I went by the cabin forthe fiftieth time, my expectation came true: the door opened, andYvonne, close wrapped in her great cloak, stood beside me. I drew herunder the lee of the cabin, where the bitter wind blew less witheringly.The first of dawn was just creeping bleakly up the sky, and the ship wasunder way.
“You are cold, dear,” exclaimed Yvonne beneath her breath, catching myhand in her two little warm ones; and, faith! I was, though I had nothad time to notice it till she bade me. The next moment, careless of theeyes of La Mouche, who stood by the rail not ten paces off, she openedher cloak, flung the folds of it about my neck, and drew my face down,in that enchanted darkness, to the sweet warmth of hers.
There were no words. What could those vain things avail in such amoment, when our pulses beat together, and our souls met at the lips,and in silence was plighted that great troth which shall last, it is myfaith, through other lives than this? Then she drew softly away, and,with eyes cast down, left me, and went back into her cabin.
I lifted my head. La Mouche stood by the rail, looking off across thefaintly lightening water. As I passed near him he turned and grasped myhand hard.
“I am most glad for you, my captain!” he said quietly. But I saw that myjoy was an emphasis to his own sorrow, and his very lips were grey forremembrance of the woman who had stricken him.
* * * * *
When it was full daylight we could see the other ship, a white speck onthe horizon far ahead. Long before noon she was out of sight. The windfavouring us all day, before sunset we arrived off the grim portalthrough which the great river of St. John, named by Champlain, emptiesforth its floods into the sea. The rocky ridges that fence the havenwere crested gloriously with rose and gold, and toward this invitingharbourage we steered—not without misgivings, however, for we knew notthe channel or the current. In this strait we received unlooked-for aid.Captain Eliphalet, excited by some error in the course which we wereshaping, and all in a tremble lest his loved ship fall upon a reef,offered his services as pilot. They were at once accepted. We knew hewas as incapable of a treachery as his situation was of turning atreachery to profit. Himself he took the wheel; and on the slack of tidehe steered us up to a windless anchorage at the very head of theharbour, beside the ruins of an old fort. The only sign of life was thehuts of a few Acadian fishermen, so miserable as to have been quiteoverlooked by the doom that had descended on their race.
Our plan was to scatter the greater part of our company among the smallAcadian settlements up the river—at Jemseg, Pointe Ste. Anne, andMedoctec; while the rest of us, the trained men who would be needed inNew France, accompanied by a half dozen women with daring and vitalityfor such a journey, would make our way on sledges and snow-shoesnorthward, over the Height of Land, down into the St. Lawrence valley,and thence to Quebec.
The two carronades on the deck of our ship we dropped into the harbour.We helped ourselves to all the arms and ammunition, with tools for thebuilding of our sledges, and such clothing as our prisoners could wellspare. Of the ship’s stores we left enough to carry the ship safely toBoston. Yvonne gave Lieutenant Shafto a letter for her father andmother, which he undertook to forward to Halifax at the earliestopportunity. Then, three days after our arrival in the St. John, weloosed our captives every one, bade Captain Eliphalet a less eventfulremainder to his voyage, and turned our back upon the huts of thefishermen. We crossed the Kennebeccasis River on the ice, where it joinsthe St. John, just back of the ridge which forms the northern rampart ofthe harbour. Thence we pushed straight up the main river, keeping closealong the eastern shore.
The rough sledges which we had hastily thrown together were piled withour stores. They carried also such of the women and children as were notcapable of enduring the march. The sledges ran easily on the level wayafforded by the river, which was now frozen to the depth of a foot. Inspots the ice was covered by a thin, hard-packed layer of snow; but forthe most part it had been swept clean by the wind.
For my own part, I drew a light sledge, of which I had myself directedthe construction, that it might be comfortable for Yvonne. It _was_comfortable, with a back and arms, and well lined with blankets. But shechose rather, for the most of the journey, to walk beside me, secretlyproud to show her activity and endurance. It was Mother Pêche who, understrenuous protest, chiefly occupied my sledge. Her protests were vainenough; for Yvonne told her quietly that if she would not let herself betaken care of she would not trust her to face the Quebec journey, butwould leave her behind at Jemseg. Though the old dame was a witch,Yvonne had the will to have her way; and protest ended.
As we marched, a little aside from the main body, Yvonne now laying hermittened hand upon my arm, and now drawing with me upon the sledge-rope,we had exhaustless themes of converse, but also seasons for thatrevealing silence when the great things get themselves uttered betweentwo souls.
There were some practical matters, however, not without importance,which silence was not competent to discuss.
“Do you know any one at the Jemseg settlement, Paul?” she chanced to askme, that first day of our marching.
“Yes,” said I, with significance, taking merciless advantage of thequestion, “I know an excellent priest, dear heart!”
She reddened, and turned upon me deep eyes of reproach. But I was notabashed.
“Am I too precipitate, sweet?” I asked. “But do not think so. I know youwill not. Consider all the strangeness of the situation, most dear, andgive me the right to guard you, to keep you, to show openly my reverenceand my love.”
As she did not reply, it was clear enough that she found my reasoningcogent. I went on, with a kind of singing elation in my brain:
“Truly, in my eyes, you are my wife now, as—do you remember?—I dared tocall you that night as we came over the ridge, I to prison, you to—Butno! I will not think of that. In deed and in truth, dear, I believe thatGod joined together us two, inalienably and forever, not months ago, butyears ago—that day in the orchard, when our spirits met in our eyes. Thematerial part of us was slow in awaking to the comprehension of thatmystery, but”—
“Speak for yourself, Paul,” she interrupted, with tantalizingsuggestion.
I stopped short, forgetting all my eloquence.
“And you loved me then—and knew it!” I exclaimed, in a voice poignantwith the realization of lost years.
She came very close against my side, and held my arm tightly, as shesaid, in a voice ‘twixt mocking and caressing:
“I think I _might_ have known it, Paul, had you helped me the leastlittle bit—had the material part of you, let us say, been the least bitquicker of comprehension.”
She forbore to hint at all that might have been different; but thethought of it kept me long silent.
On the next day, about sunset, we reached the Jemseg settlement. Thatsame day Yvonne became my wife.
Chapter XXXVIII
Of Long Felicity, Brief Word
“How many years, dear heart, since we made that winter journey, thou andI, from Jemseg to Quebec, through the illimitable snows?”
“Ten!” answers Yvonne; and the great eyes which she lifts from herwriting and flashes gayly upon me grow tender with sweet remembrance.During those ten years the destinies of thrones have shifted strangelyin the kaleidoscope of fate. Empires have changed hands. New France hasbeen erased from the New World. Louisbourg has been levelled to a sheeppasture. Quebec has proved no more impregnable. The flag of Englandflies over Canada. My uncle, the Sieur de Briart, sleeps in a gloriousgrave, having fallen with Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. My cousinMarc and I, having fought and bled for France in all the last battles,and lain for months in an English hospital, have accepted the newmasters of our country and been confirmed in our little estates besidethe Ottawa.
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Much, then, have I endured in these ten years. But the remembrance of itappears to me but as a tinted glass, through which I am enabled tocontemplate the full sun of my happiness.
Yvonne in these ten years has changed but to grow more beautiful.Bodily, there was, I think, no room for that change; but growth is thelaw of such a spirit as hers, and so into her perfect eyes, wells oflight as of old, has come a deeper and more immeasurable wisdom. As tothis perennial potency of her beauty, I know that I am not deluded by mypassion; for I perceive the homage it compels from all who come withinits beneficent influence. Even her mother, a laughingly maliciouscritic, tells me that my eyes see true in this—(for Giles de Lamourie,having sold his ample acres in Nova Scotia, and forgiven ancientgrudges, has come here to live with Yvonne). Father Fafard, when hevisits us from his Bonaventure parish, says the same; but _his_ eyes areblind with loving prejudice. When we go into Montreal for the months ofDecember and January, exchanging for a little the quiet of our countryhome for the glitter of rout and function, no other court so choice, soloyal, 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 byher beauty, rise to a worship of her wit and worth.
Yvonne’s small hands are white and alive and restless as on that day inthe 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. Butthis life of mine, given into the keeping of their sweet restlessness,has found the secret of rest.
One thing more of her, and I have done with this narrative; for they wholive blest have little need or power to depict their happiness. It seemsto me, in looking back and forward, that my wife delights particularlyin setting at naught the cheap wisdom of the maxim-mongers. Howcontinually are men heard to declare, with the tongue of Sir Oracle: “Wedon’t woo what is well won”!
But Yvonne, well won these ten years back, I woo again continually, andour daily life together is never without the spur of fresh interest andfurther possibilities.
“The familiar is held cheap,” say the disappointed; and “Use dulls theedge of passion,” say they whose passion has never known the edge whichfinely tempered spirits take on.
But familiarity, the crucial intimacy of day by day companionship, onlyreveals to me in Yvonne the richer reasons for my reverence; whilepassion grows but the more poignant as it realizes the exhaustlessdepths of the nature which responds to it.
The mean poverty of these maxims I had half suspected even before I knewYvonne. But one, more universally accepted, to the effect that“Anticipation beggars reality,” had ever caused me a certain fear, lestit might prove true. The husband of my dear love has fathomed itsfalsehood, and anticipation, in my case, was little moderate in itsdemands. If there be any germ of truth under that long-triumphant lie,then the reason we two have not discovered it must be sought in anotherlife than this. This life cannot be the full reality. Even so, myconfident faith is that the lying adage will but seem to lie the moreshamelessly under a fuller revelation. Many times have I told Yvonnethat to me one life seemed not enough for love of her.
As I conclude, I look across the room to where the beautiful, dark,proud head bends over her desk; for she has outstripped me in my own artof letters, and only my old achievements with the sword enable me tomaintain that dominance which the husband, even of Yvonne, ought tohave.
She will not approve these last few pages. She will demand theirerasure, declaring them extravagant and an offence against the reticenceof true art.
But not one line will I expunge, for they are true.
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.