Читать книгу The Heir to Grand-Pré - John Frederic Herbin - Страница 6

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"The garnet dulse and glistening curls of weed."

The tide is now almost at its lowest point. Over a mile of shining flat beach lay between the sea and Pierre Island rising into the bright air like an immense tower or castle. On the side nearest the main shore a steep slope gave access to the island by means of a winding road through the woods to the summit. Here, amid trees and cleared strips of garden and field, rose a stone house, dark against the blue sky.

On the outer or sea side jagged and precipitous cliffs, here and there indented by inlets where the high tide made small bays, composed the sea front of the island, impassable to man or animal. On the innumerable small shelves and ledges, showing white patches from the presence of seagulls and their young, clumps of green brush and small trees were thinly scattered over the face of the rock.

Between the cliffs and the road the sides of the island gradually increased in slope and became more and more wooded with the thick, gnarled, and stunted growth peculiar to the islands of this salt lake, the Basin of Minas.

The ox-teams had passed on with the tide, and the island folk were busy along the seaweed-covered fringe of dark beach that marked the junction of sea and land.

The yacht, perched on a broad, flat rock only a few feet high, lay helpless on its side. The busy figure of the young sailor often appeared as he passed in and out of the boat with implements of his craft. On the rock alongside a small fire burned and the smell of tar pervaded the air.

Pierre Gotro and his daughter, and their servant, old Suzanne, moved quickly among the seaweed, and with small forks were busy loading the carts with dulse. The tides were running low for a few days and the dulse-beds were fully exposed.

Light-hearted Marie laughed and jested with Suzanne, and often directed her words to her father.

"Suzanne, do you think that Len is dry yet? Poor fellow, he did get so wet." She smiled as she asked the question.

"He will tell you himself to-night when he comes to Bluff Castle," said the older woman, in reply.

"I hope he won't come, Suzanne; he is so strange now, since we have grown up."

"You are strange, too, perhaps. He says you have become proud since you have been going away to school," said Suzanne.

"I am not proud," cried Marie, quickly; "but he frightens me sometimes. He is changed," she continued, in a calmly positive tone.

"Why did the stranger wish to stay with us, Suzanne?" Marie asked, after some minutes of silence.

"I suppose to be near the cliffs," replied Suzanne.

"They will have all Pierre Island carried away some time if père does not ask them to stop pulling down the cliff." Her low, musical laughter rippled from her lips and filled her eyes with brown, warm light. Often a merrier peal reached out to where Len was at work and made him look towards the group.

"It is a wonder that Len is not here helping père," she said, as she saw him standing beside his boat.

"Marie! Marie!" Pierre would sometimes say, without looking up from his work.

This gentle admonishment restrained but little the overflow of healthy good-nature. Suzanne often laughed at the gay words of her young mistress.

The carts were now full of the wet dulse, trembling like jelly as the oxen moved over the beach. Marie had seated herself on the front of the cart, her feet resting on the pole to which the animals were yoked. Her father was leading his pair, and now carefully avoided the rocks and soft places, while Suzanne walked behind, not caring to trust herself to so precarious a seat as was left for her.

They filed slowly upward upon the long stretch of sand. Marie was now silent. Her large brown Acadian eyes became thoughtful. Suzanne had enough to do to walk after the slow team, while Pierre, though far beyond middle life, walked easily at the head of his team.

The old man, hardy and active, bronzed by a life of labor on the open shore or upon his island, made a venerable figure in the dignity and manliness of his bearing. His dress was rough, and wet from the labor he had been engaged in on the beach, but his commanding figure and kindly features, softened by time, and ripened by the great grief that had left him uncompanioned through the later years of his life, gave Pierre a bearing and dignity of face above the ordinary type of the workingman.

Pierre Gotro was the last of his name who had inhabited once the marsh country on the south of the Basin of Minas. His ancestors had been removed at the time of the great deportation, in 1755, by the harsh orders of Governor Lawrence. He was the highest type of the Acadian in form and feature, patriarchal in ripe old age, and calmly peaceful amid the conditions of a life removed from the bustling world, and faithful to the duties of his isolated existence. The sadness of his race he inherited as the only legacy bequeathed by an unfortunate people. This melancholy vein may be detected in the nature of the Acadians of to-day after a hundred and fifty years of transmission. This great inheritance of grief the generations must yet bear to mark their lives and to influence their living for another century.

Marie had suddenly become silent. Her large brown eyes suggested the sway of active thought, dominated by some strong emotion tinged with melancholy. In the limpid depth of her look could be read the play of imagination. Her eyes made her a part of everything in the warm love of her heart; and everything became a part of her. The blue of the sky gave of its glorious color to her being. The long stretch of bluff and cliff and wooded crest, and the magnificent sweep of the tide, though now fallen to its lowest ebb, and the dim blue line of Blomidon, and the rich, salty air, entered into her nature as an essence, and filled her with an exaltation of melancholy gladness, of happy intensity of feeling that almost led to tears. So is that intimate commingling of spirit and nature in the exquisite moments of pure physical existence.

The carts had now reached the foot of the bluff, upon the clean pebbles, free of sand, heated by the sun, and on these the wet dulse was thrown and spread to dry. In the course of a few hours the two large loads would be reduced by the process of drying to less than half the original bulk.

The teams now returned to the beds for another load before the tide covered the shore again. They had gone but a short distance down the red sand when there came a sudden interruption to the quiet of the afternoon and the calm of the proceedings. A slight, warm breeze was coming out of the west, and borne up against it from some part of the island came the dull roar of falling stone. This was heard by Pierre and Suzanne, and the old man stopped the oxen in wonder at the unusual sound, but the cry of a human voice that followed upon the noise was heard only by the young ears of Marie.

"Père, père!" she cried to her father, "did you hear the voice?"

"No, child. What did you hear?"

"I heard a man's voice at the bluffs back of the island, where the sound of the falling stone came from."

They all listened for a moment, Marie's face pale with uncertainty and fear.

"There, there it is again!" the girl cried, and without another word she ran towards the bluffs. Pierre turned the head of the teams towards the island again, and giving some directions to Suzanne, took the direction now followed by his daughter with fleet feet. As he hurried along he thought of Len, and stopping for a moment, he put his hands to his mouth and sent his voice ringing out over the beach to the boat. Len stood up and saw the old man beckoning him. He also observed the figure of Marie making her way among the smaller boulders, and in another moment her flying feet carried her out of sight. He noted that for some reason the teams were returning and Pierre was now moving rapidly towards the point where his daughter had disappeared. He cried out that he could not leave the boat, for the tide was coming.

Marie was meanwhile approaching the place where she had detected a faint cloud of dust among the huge fragments of rock which must have fallen from the face of the island and rolled out on the rocky beach which formed this part of the shore, centuries before, perhaps.

Again she heard the man's voice, but louder now, as the sounds were brought to her ears from among the piled-up masses of stone. The voice electrified her into increased activity. There was hope in the sound to her, where previously the silence had filled her with a vague terror of something awful that would suddenly confront her vision. The slight sound of her light feet darting over the sand, or the beds of trap even, echoed back to her ears with a warning tone. Only once did she hear the voice again. It was yet some distance ahead, but it lent wings to her feet. Panting and pale in spite of her exertions, and with wide, scared eyes, and teeth set in determination to go on, though in expectation of something shocking to her senses at every turn of her path and around every projecting point of the cliff, she now approached an inlet or small ravine cut into the cliff about fifty yards, whose bottom sloped down from each side. After every rain a brook, fed by the waters caught on the island, would run down the cliff and find its way to the sea by means of this cove, lessening gradually till it fell drop by drop. At the head of this cove was a large vein of red mineral known as acadialite, which formed part of the cliff to a great height, following the irregular surface of the rock. This vein was in the bed of the brook, at this time with no water running. Through centuries the cove had been gradually deepened, the softer mineral yielding to the action of the elements more easily than other parts of the rock. The action of frost had loosened the adjacent stone, and in many places it was broken and ready to fall. The flow of the water had worn down the bottom of the cove, leaving a depression of some depth.

Marie was drawn to this cove because she knew of the large vein, and also because she was aware of the dangerous character of the place, made so by the looseness of the formation. She saw from the mouth of the inlet a large mass of stone that had recently fallen, piled up near the head of the cove. She examined it quickly from her position at the opening of the cove, and seeing nothing of Winslow she was about to pass on farther around the island, when her quick eye caught the faded colors of the coat which the young man had worn when he left the boat. It lay near the heap of stone, and a few pieces of rock had rolled upon it. At this discovery Marie cried out with terror at the first thought that came to her, that the voice she had heard was of the stranger now buried under the stone, and either unconscious or dead. Half fainting from the effect of this thought upon her, she had to force herself to return by the way she came, to meet her father and to hurry him on to the rescue. Her weakened strength did not permit her to move quickly, but she met her father but a short distance away, and after telling Pierre what she had seen she fell to the sand utterly helpless.

"Hurry, père, the gentleman may be saved yet!" she said, faintly.

"I will take you back to Suzanne first," replied the old man.

"Oh, no, père, I will be stronger soon. The running tired me." As she spoke she rose to her feet, though pale and trembling.

Pierre then hurried away, and in a few moments Marie turned toward the cove again. Just as she came in sight of her father, Len arrived with a rope in his hand, and the two men set to work at once to throw aside the stone from the pile which had fallen.

Marie looked on and heard the crash of rock after rock as it was cast from the desperate hands of the men, and the sounds echoed out of the cove and filled her heart with ominous fear and dread of something about to be revealed. Yet she could not take her eyes from the mass of rock. She watched with feverish interest her father lift huge stones, or help Len in removing those too large for the strength of one alone. In this way the intense strain upon her nerves continued. Once she went out of sight of them, but the sounds were more terrible to hear when out of sight of the cause of them than before. So she was forced to return again. It was a terrible sight for Marie, with her quick imagination and tender heart. Tears would often force themselves to her eyes, and her terror heightened more and more.

Suddenly the work was interrupted by a groan that filled the cove. The men looked about them with questioning eyes, and Marie, springing towards them, looked intently up the cliff for the cause of the sound.

Again the sound reached their ears, and the maiden shrieked wildly as she caught the motion of a hand and arm above a rocky shelf some distance above the place where the men stood.

Pointing to the place, she cried, "There, there he is, père!"

As if in reply to her words, Winslow rose to a sitting position, which brought him into sight of all of them below. He looked down upon them in a dazed way, his face pale and bleeding, and his clothes dusty and torn. He gave evidence in his appearance of having passed through a terrible experience.

"Ah, Len, is that you! I am glad to see you. And you also, good friend. What are you going to do for me?" said Winslow faintly, but smiling in spite of his condition.

"Are you much hurt, sir?" asked Pierre.

"A little bruised; and from the looks of things here I am likely to stay for awhile—at least, unless the rest of the rock goes down."

He began feeling his left arm as he spoke, which hung down helpless at his side.

"No bones broken, I think," said Winslow, "but pretty painful. My shoulder is stiff, and I can't lift my arm. I did not follow your advice, Mr. Gotro, so here I am, paying the penalty of rashness. I saw this vein of acadialite, and it seemed so fine above the shelf that I could not resist the temptation of coming up to get a piece of it. The way up was not difficult at all, but I did not realize how loose the stone is here. In getting out a piece of the vein I started some loose rock just above me, which fell and nearly broke my arm, knocked me down, and, worse of all, it started the rock below by which I came up, and left it difficult for me to return.

"It looks difficult," said Pierre, "but I think we can get you down. There is no chance from above," he continued, examining the cliff intently. "Can you move along the cliff a little?"

Winslow attempted to rise, but fell back again, putting his hand to his head as he did so.

"No use," he said. "I shall have to stay where I am for awhile. Something to drink would be in order just now, Len; can you pass me up something?"

The young man addressed looked more helpless than ever, being unable to appreciate the humor of Winslow in the trying and dangerous situation in which he was placed.

The sound of falling particles of stone warned the men below at this moment, and moving quickly back from the base of the cliff, they escaped a mass of rock that fell near the pile already down.

"Don't stand too near, friends," said Winslow, when the dust cleared away. "It would be suicide for you to attempt to come up here. I don't see just now how I can get down, with only one arm to aid me. I feel better, however, and if I can reach what looks like a small stream of water yonder, a taste of it will revive me."

He then rose slowly and carefully to his knees, and resting one hand on the rock, made his way inch by inch to the dripping water, the last of the brook that found its course out of the cliff above and lost itself in the loose material of the shelf.

After much difficulty he reached it, and stooping down, caught up the precious drops in his hand and raised them to his lips.

"Thank heaven for that!" he murmured, looking down again at the anxious faces below.