Читать книгу By the Marshes of Minas - Charles George Douglas Roberts - Страница 8

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As the sun, dropping through a raw and fire-edged slit in the cloud, sank behind South Mountain, some three miles off to my right, I snuggled my head deeper into the fold of my thick cloak, and spurred my good sorrel to a trot.

This wind, drawing down the long valley of the Port Royal stream, had a bleaker unfriendliness than even the bleak east wind which I imagined whistling at this moment over my own hill pastures of Salem. Across the harsh, salty smells that blew in gusts from the half-uncovered mud-flats of the river, my memory of old Thanksgivings at home called up most rich and tender savours of roast goose, till an appetite of huge anticipation began to riot beneath my waistcoat.

Should I be in time? For my sake the hour had been set late, far beyond the ordinary; but it was even now near, and the roofs of Port Royal were yet a good six miles distant. With dejection I remembered the Major's parting words:

"Punctuality, remember! Be on hand at the minute! Not even for you, Mark, my boy, shall such a goose as Tamin has brought in be suffered to spoil by waiting."

Though the good sorrel was tired, and owed me naught on that day's journeying, I pushed him to his utmost. I could not contemplate with equanimity the loss of such a dinner as might make me forget my long months of Acadian exile.

It was five months since I had left Salem, coming to Acadia with the Boston expedition for the capture of Port Royal. In the taking of it there had been some spirit, some diversion, in truth; but the holding of it was a daily-growing monotony. The Acadians seemed passably content with their new masters. No peril menaced the green-sodded ramparts of our prize; the townsfolk trafficked in an established peace, selling us their fish and flax; and, in the dearth of matters more stirring for discussion, the Major's Thanksgiving dinner had been for days a theme of grave import.

I thought of the gravity with which the Major, on Monday of the preceding week, had announced his purpose. With his little council of five officers, among whom I had the honour to be his secretary and aide, he had been considering certain weighty matters of his government, when suddenly, swerving from questions of toll and tax, his voice took on a deeper tone, and he said:

"Gentlemen, since duty dooms us to this exile, even upon the approaching day of Thanksgiving, I have resolved that New England shall, in a sense, upon that day, be brought to us!"

He paused for a moment, and approbation shone in our faces.

"These good people of Acadia," he went on, "do not observe our feast, but I have noted that they can supply the wherewithal for its proper observance. Their ducks and geese feed fat upon these marshes. Their gardens are instructed in the growth of sage and onions. They are not unskilled in the subtleties of apple sauce; and I have found pumpkins! You observe the possibilities! Well, I may add that our good Josephte, who has ruled our kitchen so capably these months past, has acquired, with suggestions from myself, the art of making such a pumpkin pie as might pass for the product of Duxbury or Dedham." (The Major hailed from Duxbury.) "Oh, her pies will pass, I assure you! But mince I have not suffered her to essay, for failure there, you will agree, would be a desecration!"

The memory of this speech appealed now most potently to my imagination. The Major's face, too, as he leaned forward over the council table to note the effect of his words, came pleasantly before me. It was a strange face, but I loved it well. The forehead, broad, low-arched, and bald far back to the very crown of the skull, was fenced, as it were, with a stiff, forward bristling fringe of red hair, recalcitrant to the brush. The eyes, small but deeply clear, beamed sweet humour; but the mouth, little better than a long crevice across the bleak and stony promontory of his chin, was such as men make haste to conciliate. The nose, large and much awry, gave me ever a notion that the rest of the face had been finished earlier, and this feature added afterward, lavishly but hastily, in the dark.

It came upon me now, as I mused, that herein lay the incongruity which ever sat upon our good Major's face--this nose, a ceaseless entertainment to the tolerantly mirthful eyes, was a ceaseless affront to the uncompromising mouth. Thence conflict perennial in the Major's countenance!

Pleased at this whimsical solution of an ancient enigma, I chuckled aloud. The patient sorrel cocked his ears at the sound, and cheerily bettered his pace. He doubtless reasoned that, if his master were pleased, some good thing for both must be close at hand.

I looked carefully about me. There, behind a screen of fir trees, a stone's throw back from the road, rose three sharp gables in a row. It was the place of the Sieur de Belleisle, a very great man among the Acadians. I perceived that, in my musings of Thanksgiving meats and the Major's nose, I had beguiled a good mile of the journey. My appetite was furious, but my humour was mending.

"The Major will wait a half-hour for me!" I said confidently, in my heart.

As I passed the wide-open gate of the De Belleisle place, the sorrel swerved obstinately to enter, as if here, in his opinion, were the fitting termination to his journey. Reining him back to the road, I could not but laugh again, for I recalled another word of the Major's to me as I was setting out on my journey.

"Better not stop at the De Belleisle place on your way," he had said, his eyes twinkling askance over the biased nose; "if you do you will be sure to miss the goose!"

"Why, sir?" I had inquired with interest.

"There is a witch there!" And he had turned away into the barracks, very stiff and soldierly in his well-kept uniform. Had he been a Salem man, he would not have spoken so lightly of witches.

I had heard of Mademoiselle de Belleisle, but I had never seen her. She had been in Quebec, and was but lately returned to Acadia with her uncle. I had heard of her strange beauty, of her mocking gayety, the warmth of her great eyes, the illimitable coldness of her heart.

Now, as I passed her uncle's gates, a sense of the wonder and the nearness of her beauty came upon me in a fashion that made me marvel. My interest in the Major's dinner went out like a snuffed candle, so inconsistent an organ is the stomach of a man who has brains and imagination. The fat goose, at that moment being discreetly basted at Port Royal, was forgotten, just because I had apprehended that a woman's eyes were beautiful. I regretted that I had not let my sorrel carry me through the gate. But the notion of turning back was not for a moment entertained. Never have I accounted myself a candidate for the fellowship of Lot's wife.

Then of a sudden the face of Mademoiselle de Belleisle flashed upon the eyes of my soul. Her face--it could be none other; yet never, as I have already said, had I seen the maiden; and never had she been described to me, save in a general shining confusion of mobile features and unfathomable eyes. It did not occur to me to doubt that the face which now so curiously crossed my brain could be any face but hers; and I found myself muttering:

"Renée de Belleisle. It is a name of music, very fitting to so fair a face!"

Then I remembered that, to the best of my knowledge, I had never been told her name was Renée!

"Fool!" I snapped aloud, pulling myself together and sitting erect in the saddle. "Fool! These are the hallucinations of the fasting! Her name is most like to be Ninette, Babette, Lisette, or such light nonsense. Renée, indeed! Why should I think of that for a name! Let me return to thoughts of the Major's goose, well stuffed with sage and onions!"

But there was a witchcraft in the air, and do what I would my thoughts flew wild, dispersed like a covey of birds. I noted now particularly--though why it was matter for particular notice I could not have told--that I had come to the limit of the thick spruce hedge which fronted the garden of the De Belleisle place. Beyond this limit I passed with a dragging, incomprehensible reluctance, and I perceived, to my astonishment, that my hand upon the rein had brought the good sorrel to a stop.

As if to give me a reason for my stopping, pat upon the moment came a sharp cry of distress from behind the covert of the hedge. It was not loud, but it was imperative.

"Who's there? What's the matter?" I demanded brusquely.

There was a moment of silence, thrilled by the passing phantom of a sob. Then came a voice, so close that I started:

"I am afraid, monsieur, that it is very much that I need your help. I fear it is that I have sprained my poor ankle, for I have not the power to at all stand up."

The voice was very low and quiet, but penetratingly clear. The quaintly accented and foreignly ordered syllables seemed to me the sweetest music I had ever heard. The blood throbbed up into my temples.

"I am coming, mademoiselle!" I cried, a sort of thickness in my tones; and whirling my sorrel I put him at a fast gallop back to the gate.

Along the hedge just within ran a broad path. In but a handful of seconds, so to speak, I had flung myself from the saddle and was standing beside a girl whose downcast, half-averted face made me think of the flower of a white lily. A heavy lock of dark hair had fallen far forward, hiding half the rondure of her cheek and chin. She was dressed all in black, save for a scarf of orange-coloured silk flung carelessly about her shoulders. She sat in an attitude of tense constraint, as if resolved upon no weak feminine outcry; and with both white hands she clasped a slippered foot of exceeding smallness and grace, at glimpse of which the old saw came across my memory:

"The littlest foot may be heaviest on a man's neck!"

"Do you think, mademoiselle, you could walk with my assistance?" I inquired, bending over her, cap in hand.

She lifted her face, she lifted her drooping white lids, and gave me one darkly brilliant look. Eyes so large, so enigmatic, so mysteriously deep, I had never before imagined. The look dropped again upon the moment; but in that moment I experienced a swift and breathless sinking of the heart, and it seemed that life rushed by me dizzily. The sensation was incomprehensible to me then; but afterward I knew that it was a sensation very proper to one falling a great depth; for in that moment my spirit fell into the deeps of her eyes. After a little hesitation, she gave me her hand and tried to rise; but I took her gently by the arms and lifted her. For an instant so she stood, leaning upon me, then she sank to the ground again with a catching of the breath.

"I am afraid it is no use, monsieur!" she said, speaking now in French, as I had addressed her in that tongue. "It hurts too much. Perhaps--though I am afraid I am terribly heavy--you could lift me into the saddle, and in that way, monsieur, you could get me to the house!"

How had I deserved that Fate should so favour me? The blood hummed in my ears, and I think a foolish grin of ecstasy came upon my face. But I managed to stammer: "Permit me, then, mademoiselle!" and, stooping low, I lifted her in my arms with reverent care. I carried her as if she were a child. In truth, she was no great weight to carry; for among women of English blood she would have been accounted small, and her body was of a very slender, delicate mould, girlish, but not thin.

I lifted her, but I did not put her into the saddle. Whistling the horse to follow me, which he did at the heel, like a dog, with his nose down, I strode up a narrow path which led direct to the house.

"But--but, monsieur!" she exclaimed in a voice of surprise and protest, "you are not going to try to carry me all that distance. Indeed, you must not. Put me on the horse's back, please!"

This last was spoken with a touch of imperiousness--quite lost upon me!

"You must, please! And you can hold me on!" she continued, less assuredly.

"No, mademoiselle," said I; "this, believe me, is the only way. Suffering so, you could not sit in the saddle. And the jolting would hurt you. For the moment, I am your physician, and you must obey. It is only for a minute. See, we are almost there--unfortunately!" I added in my heart.

She made no answer; and I wondered uneasily if she were vexed at my positive air. But no, she was not vexed, for presently she said:

"But how strong you are, monsieur!"

The simple, unaffected admiration in her words thrilled me.

"If I am strong, mademoiselle," said I, "the present enchanted enterprise were no proof of it. A flower, a dream, and a prayer make no great weight to carry!"

"Oh, monsieur!" she said rebukingly, "I had heard you English were rough and direct of speech; but no Frenchman dare flatter me so extravagantly as that!"

"I cannot flatter at all, mademoiselle. But I can tell merely some poor fragments of the truth, as my own heart sees it!" I rejoined with dogged earnestness.

At this she kept silence. Her wit was accustomed to skilled fence. I guessed that my sudden plainness perplexed her. She kept her eyes cast down. Wonderful to me were those long lashes sweeping the clear pallor of her skin.

With one hand I flung open the door. Into a spacious hall I stepped, and closed the door behind me--to the disappointment of my faithful sorrel, who seemed ready to follow me in! No candles were lit; but from a large room upon my right came the red flicker of a fire upon the hearth. I paused irresolutely on the threshold.

"In there, if you please, monsieur," said mademoiselle. "You may put me on the divan in the corner."

I set her down with a slow, and, I fear, too obvious reluctance. Then I arranged the cushions that she might lie at ease. This done, I paused beside the couch, wavering. What excuse had I to stay longer? Plainly, I must make my adieu. But she did not help me to go. She raised her eyes to mine for the least part of a moment, and said gratefully:

"How kind you are, monsieur! I feel better already!"

"But your ankle must be bathed at once, or bandaged! Something must be done for it at once!" I exclaimed. "Whom shall I call to attend you, mademoiselle?"

"I am afraid there is no one, monsieur!" she said very sweetly, as if the situation were the most usual in the world. "But, truly, my ankle needs no attendance at all. I could not bear to have it touched--at least yet. It needs only that I should lie quite still for the present!"

"Do you mean to say, mademoiselle, that you are all alone in this house?" I cried in amazement.

"Why, it is nothing!" she replied. "My uncle, with his guest, Captain Duchesne, and with our two men, has gone away--shooting, not to be back before midnight. The maids, Lize and Susette, I have foolishly allowed to go and visit friends down the valley for an hour or two. But I am not at all afraid to be alone!"

"It is out of the question, mademoiselle," said I, with an air of virtuous decision (my heart the while thumping mightily), "that you should be left alone! If you will excuse me for a moment, I will go and stand my beast out of the wind! He has served me faithfully to-day, and I must not forget him."

"Since you are so decided, monsieur, I will not try to dissuade you," said she smiling. "But you are undertaking a stay of perhaps some hours, so you must stand the good beast in the stables, and bait him. May I stay alone so long?"

At this there was a laughter about her mouth, triumphant and mysterious. It confused me, and I retired without reply.

The sorrel, awaiting impatiently, whinnied at my approach. I led him around to the back of the many-gabled house, and found the barns, a little village in themselves. The horse-stalls were all empty, whereat I might have wondered had my brain not been dazed with the vision of mademoiselle's eyes. I found oats for the horse, and hay and a blanket, yet moved the while as one in a dream. Then I made haste back to the firelit room.

Mademoiselle apparently had not stirred from her cushions. She did not look up as I entered, but she spoke at once.

"I very well know, monsieur, what you are sacrificing for me," she murmured musingly. "It is wonderful to me that an Englishman should give up a dinner for a woman! Your brother officers will miss you sorely at their Thanksgiving feast; and me, I know, they never, never, will forgive!"

"How did you know," I asked in astonishment, "that we were having a Thanksgiving dinner at Port Royal to-night?"

"All the master's doings are of consequence to the slave! The conqueror sits in a fierce light, Lieutenant Hanworthy," she said, deliciously stumbling at my name, and turning, as she spoke it, the full glory of her eyes upon my face.

"You know my name too? But how, mademoiselle?" I stammered, amazement making my own eyes wide.

"Oh, I am a kind of witch!" she laughed merrily. "I know all about you, and I have seen you before, Lieutenant Hanworthy! Have you not seen me--a glimpse of me--once, in Port Royal? Think!"

"No, never, mademoiselle, save in my dreams!" I declared boldly.

A slight flush crept up into her pale face--or was it the firelight?

"Monsieur--" she began.

"Mademoiselle--" said I, patiently expecting a rebuke.

"Being an Englishman, and surely hungry, you must eat!"

"Yes, mademoiselle," I assented very cheerfully, as I should have done to any proposition that she might have made, save one--that I should leave her.

"Please go into the next room and light the candles. Then you may help me in there also. It is the dining-room. On the buffet you will find some wine of Bordeaux which is good, if my good uncle be not deceived; and some cakes of the country; and a pasty which your politeness, monsieur, shall swear to be unsurpassable, for my own hands made it. You shall have your Thanksgiving dinner, but translated into French!"

"No, mademoiselle; rather translated, like Elijah, into Heaven!" I cried extravagantly, springing up in a kind of intoxication to do her bidding.

The candles lighted, I found the dining-room, a large, low-ceiled chamber, with walls of dark oak, a long table in the centre, and all one side occupied by a buffet which bore a lavish profusion of wines and viands. The pasty, fresh-cut and sweet-smelling, I set upon the table, and a dish of Acadian cakes--a kind of sweet dough fried in lard and rolled in maple sugar, which I liked. Then, pulling a couch from the wall to the table, I went to get my hostess.

"I can walk now, monsieur!" she said, giving me her hand.

I ignored it.

"One step now, and you may be helpless for weeks! It is impossible, mademoiselle, that such a hurt should be so soon recovered!" said I decisively; and before she could find words of effective protest I had carried her to the couch in the dining-room. Her face flushed this time most unmistakably, and she bit her lips--but whether in amusement or in anger I could not tell.

"Allow me to give you a glass of wine, mademoiselle!" said I, pouring and presenting it.

"I never touch it, monsieur," said she, lightly waving the glass aside.

"Then I do not want it," I exclaimed, replacing the decanter on the buffet. "But hungry I am, strange as it may seem. I have not eaten since breakfast."

"I pray you make a good meal, monsieur," she said gently.

I dug from the delectable depths of the pasty a plump pigeon-breast for her. She picked at it, while I set myself vigorously to break my long fast. But eating, for me, then, was a business to be got through with. I scarce knew what I ate, and in a few minutes I had enough. I turned my chair so as to face her squarely. She was looking at me through the fringe of her lashes, but dropped her gaze at once, and began a frowning scrutiny of her hands, as if displeased at their snowy slenderness.

"Thanks, mademoiselle," said I slowly, "for dropping your eyes. I am thus enabled to observe, not utterly blinded, the rest of your beauty."

"As I suppose you will never see my face again, monsieur," said she, "I am flattered that you should be at such pains to note and remember my poor features."

"I will surely see your face again, mademoiselle!" I said very quietly, but through set teeth. At the passion which crept into my voice her eyelids fluttered; but she did not look up.

"You do not even know my name!" said she.

"I have never heard it!" I assented.

"I am Mademoiselle de Belleisle."

"Your name is--Renée!" said I.

She opened her eyes widely upon me, and my veins tingled under the look.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"It came into my heart that it was Renée," said I, "when I was riding past, just before you called me!"

Was it joy sent that warm wave over her face and neck? It left her all the paler in a moment. I sat and looked at her, and for some minutes no word was said. The silence was big with wonder and destiny.

Suddenly she flushed again and sat up from her cushions.

"Stop, monsieur!" she cried, a kind of desperation in her voice. "Do not look at me so! I know what you are thinking of. You are thinking of me! You must not!"

"I could never deceive you," I said very slowly. "I was thinking of you!"

"But I can deceive you!" she cried, with something like a sob. "I have deceived you!" she added. And, springing to her feet, she ran across the room and back, lightly as a blown leaf. I was dumbfounded.

"But what--" I began.

"What does it mean?" she interrupted. "It means that I wanted you here--to keep you here--I could think of no other way. Oh, do not think me all unmaidenly, monsieur! But a great danger, a terrible danger, threatened you on the road to Port Royal! I had to save you. And there was no other way!"

"What danger?" I asked, suddenly suspecting. "If danger for me, then danger for my comrades? I must go at once. Have you betrayed me, mademoiselle?"

"Oh, do not go. It can do no good. It could do no good. Wait. It was already too late. I will explain." And she clung so firmly to my arm that I could not, without violence, undo the tense grip of those fine and nervous fingers.

"Captain Duchesne came," she went on, "with four hundred Indians. My uncle has two hundred French soldiers. They moved upon the fort this afternoon. Port Royal is surrounded. You could not get through. Had you gone on, you would have been a prisoner ere now--or scalped!" and she closed her eyes with a shudder. "Port Royal will fall to-night. Then I will hide you and get you away to your own people!"

I bowed my head. I could not upon the instant decide what I ought to do. She looked at me, a sort of fear growing in her eyes as I kept silence. At this moment came a tramping of feet outside, and a din of angry voices. Her face went ashen with terror.

"They are back!" she gasped. "They have failed. They will be in a fury, Oh, they will take you for a spy! Come! There is only one way. Come! Come!" And dragging me by the arm, she ran out of the dining-room, up the wide stairs, along a narrow corridor, and into a spacious room beneath the gable. Then she grasped both my arms, and looked me full in the face.

"You cannot escape alone!" she whispered. "The Indians will be all about the place. But I can take you through safely. I will set you free to-night. Give me your word that you will wait here till I come."

I laughed softly, seized her hands, and kissed them in turn.

"I give you my word," said I. "I am altogether in your power, dear--where I would ever be!"

The next instant she was gone. I heard the key turn quietly in the lock. Then I heard her laughter in gay greeting.

For a few seconds I stood motionless in the dusk. There was a faint sweetness in the air of the room--the breath of her hair and garments. The place was a-thrill with her. I knew it was her own room--the one sure sanctuary in that house. My head bowed in a passion of reverance. I groped my way noiselessly to a chair. The wonder that filled my brain prevented thought; the joy that filled my heart made thought seem idle. She loved me, or was on the way to loving me. That filled life's horizon. Aims, interest, ambitions, of a few hours back, seemed to me like matters read of in a story-book.

Downstairs the bustle and din of voices increased, but I heeded not. Perhaps two hours went by in my reverie. Then the key turned again, the door opened, and in the dark I felt Renée come in. I rose up, stretching out my hands. Instead of her own hands, she gave me a hat and cloak.

"What are these?" I asked.

"They belong to one of our officers," she answered. "Put them on, and we will go. Do not speak."

I followed her obediently down a narrow stairway and to a small door. This she opened. Then she took my arm, and we stepped boldly out into the garden. Here we walked up and down for several minutes. Twice we passed soldiers; but in the glimmering light Renée's face was plainly recognisable, and the men stepped aside.

From the garden we walked boldly forth into a lane which led down to the river. No one presumed to challenge us. The lane ended in a little wharf, with a clump of willows beside it. Here Renée pointed to a canoe. She had not spoken all this while--nor had I, my heart being too full. The tide was brimming high. I launched the canoe, pulled the prow up onto the grass a little, and turned to Renée.

She was weeping, shaken with deep sobs. I took both her hands in mine, pulling them down from her face. "I love you!" said I. "What is the matter, beloved?"

"Good-by. I shall never see you again!"

"What do you mean?" I asked, trembling. Then I went on passionately: "There can be no good-by between us in all my life. You are all my life. You are mine. I shall come back for you at once. These fellows will be gone to-morrow. They are beaten!"

"No! no!" she answered. "When they go, I shall go with them. My uncle has betrothed me to Captain Duchesne. Before Lent--I shall be his wife!"

The words came hard. I could scarce catch them.

"Do you love him?" I asked stiffly.

"No! no! no!" she said, lifting her face like a child who would be comforted. "You know whom I love."

I caught her into my arms, sharply, and held her very close for a moment.

"Before Lent, indeed!" said I with a low laugh. "Before to-morrow's sunset you are my wife, Renée. Come, beloved! We shall be a little late at Port Royal."

Lifting her into the canoe, I thrust off, and paddled down the full, still tide.

From Renée, in the prow of the canoe, came a little sigh, but not of sorrow.

"It is so nice, Mark," she said presently, "to have difficult questions decided for you."

I need only add that, owing to circumstances which had delayed the Major's dinner, we were in time for dessert, after all.