The last sad scenes in the sad story of the Acadians in Acadie are now
drawing near. Possibly had those two patient gentlemen, Cornwallis and
Hopson, continued in command of the country, such scenes might never
have come to pass, or at least might have been long delayed. But, as we
know, Governor Lawrence was soon worn out by what he described as “the
obstinacy, treachery, and ingratitude” of the Acadians, and he and
Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, determined to settle this
troublesome affair once and for all. The two governors knew, moreover,
that the French were merely waiting for a good excuse to attack the
English, whose defenses in Acadie were of the feeblest, and that if they
hoped to be successful they themselves must strike the first blow.
The result of their decision was an act which has been well described as
being “too harsh and indiscriminate to be wholly justified,” but which
is explained by the fact that the Acadians “while calling themselves
neutrals, were an enemy encamped in the heart of the province.”[1]
-----
[1] “Montcalm and Wolfe.” Francis Parkman.
The first step was to lay siege to Beauséjour; and to the aid of the
regulars flocked volunteers under the command of that warlike farmer,
John Winslow. These men enrolled themselves under the orders of General
Monckton, having responded to the call of the New England governor.
It was the afternoon of a June day when the two deputies wearied, cowed,
and helpless returned home. Their passage through the settlements had
been greatly delayed by the questions showered upon them by anxious
habitans, and it was late ere they arrived. Then again the tale of
failure had to be told, and listened to with tears and lamentations.
“If the Acadians are miserable, remember that the priests are the cause
of it,” wrote a French officer to a French missionary.
News had quite recently come to Chipody, the adjacent settlement, that
many of the Acadians banished by Le Loutre to Isle St. Jean had found
their way to Halifax, had taken the oath of allegiance to the British,
were reinstated in their former homes, and were being provided
temporarily with supplies by the English government. Yet it was not love
for the English that had drawn them back again—simply the love of home
and peace. The returned deputies had scarcely finished their tale when
the women began to try and persuade them to remove to Halifax,
immediately if possible.
Margot alone neither wept nor argued. There was a hope within her breast
that would not die, a hope aroused by Gabriel’s letter. She stole away
from the clatter of tongues down to the edge of the marsh-grass. The sun
was near its setting, as it had been when she had waited in vain for
Gabriel so long, so very long, as it seemed to her, ago. Where was he
now? When would he—— Then suddenly her heart stood still, to beat
again with mingled dread and expectation.
[Illustration: “Far away, at the mouth of the inlet . . . lay three small
ships.”]
Far away, at the mouth of the inlet, where it broadens into Chignecto
Bay, lay three small ships, English beyond a doubt.
For a minute Margot lingered, giving herself up to speculation. Then
like a bird she flew back to one of the rude and simple dwellings of the
kind which even in happier days fulfilled the frugal Acadian’s highest
idea of home. Flinging open the door without ceremony she cried,
“English ships in the bay!” and sped upon her homeward course.
Herbes and Marin and their wives were still planning and discussing, but
the words on their lips were checked by Margot’s breathless ejaculation.
In silence they gazed at one another, with the characteristic slowness
of their race. What was now to be done?
Margot, whose mind moved more swiftly than those of most of her
country-people, soon spoke again, with as much impatience as the habit
of respect for her elders permitted.
“What shall we do, you say? Oh, good friends, let us escape to the
English ships, they will help us to Halifax! But oh, quick, quick!”
“You forget, maiden,” said Marin with pompous rebuke. “There is the oath
of allegiance in the way.”
“And what of that?” cried all three women this time. Marie Herbes
continuing:
“What hurt did the oath do us in the past? Did we not till our own land
and gather in our crops unaffrighted and undisturbed?—untaxed too? Did
not our own priests minister to us?”
A crafty gleam crept into the little eyes of Marin.
“Yes,” he said, “and if we broke faith with our rulers for our good or
advancement, why—pfui! What matter!” He shrugged his shoulders and
spread his hands. “A small matter! Let the habitan take the oath anew,
said the governor. But now—now it is otherwise. As we came through the
settlement the new proclamation was made known to us. Should the
French—and verily are they not of our own blood? make fair offers,
such, for instance, that under their rule too, we should live in peace,
and it became the duty of a good habitan to give ear to them, what then?
Then would we be called traitors, and meet the fate of such!”
Marie lifted her eyebrows, and made a little sound of dissension in her
throat.
“It is true,” he persisted doggedly.
“The good friend is in the right,” put in Herbes, speaking for the first
time. “This Governor Lawrence is not as the others, he is not to be
cajoled.”
“But why should we break faith with the English?” It was Margot who
spoke in a low voice. “With the Acadians the French have never yet kept
faith.”
“What knows a young maid of great affairs such as these?” growled Marin;
while his wife added with a taunting laugh:
“But thou must remember, _mon ami_, that the child has an English lover;
what wouldst thou, then?”
The color dyed Margot’s cheek, then fled, leaving her very pale. But she
was, as we know, no moral coward, so she quickly controlled herself, and
replied quietly:
“Pardon, madame, thou hast forgotten that my cousin’s mother was an
Acadian, even as we are, and that he himself was my cousin ere he was my
lover. The country of his birth is dear to him, though whether he be yet
alive I know not, or whether I shall ever see him more.”
Her voice choked, and her dark eyes filled. The good Marie clapped her
briskly on the shoulder crying vehemently:
“Be of a better courage, _mon enfant_! Thou and thy heretic will meet
again, never fear!”
“Sometimes it misgives me that our Margot is already part heretic
herself,” said Louis with a suspicious glare.
“Shame on thee, shame on thee!” protested his wife. “And hast thou so
soon forgotten to be grateful? Could the maiden not have left us that
day on the banks of the Missaguash—you a mere helpless burden hindering
her flight?” Then, while Louis hung his head in abashed silence, she
hastily brought the conversation back to its former subject. It was
finally decided that the whole party should proceed to the house of the
neighbor whom Margot had warned of the arrival of the ships, there to
discuss the advisability of further action. Thus slowly did the minds of
Acadians work. The result was that the commandant at the fort received
no notice of the enemy’s approach until the small hours of the morning.
The attacking force was then at the very doors, and all was confusion
and alarm. Messengers were sent in hot haste to Louisbourg for aid, and
by alternate threats and promises the poor Acadians, who so much
preferred to have their fighting done for them, were forced either to
assist in the defense of the fort, or worse still, oppose the enemy in
the open.
It was a case of English regulars and provincials against French
regulars and Acadians—on the one side the whole heart, on the other but
half a heart; for the French soldiers corrupted by corrupt officials,
were no match either in resolution for the stout New Englanders, or in
discipline for the British troops. The Acadians and Indians sent out of
the fort were as mere puppets in the path of Monckton’s army, and the
second night beheld the invaders safely across the river and encamped
within a mile of Beauséjour.
Herbes and Marin had of course been pressed into the service, but unlike
their neighbors had decided to leave their families in the farmhouse
instead of hiding them in the woods. The crafty Marin declared that the
home was far enough from the scene of the conflict to insure safety, but
in truth he depended far more upon the almost certain hope that Margot’s
English lover would take care that she, therefore they, would not be
molested. By this it may be seen how vague were his notions concerning
army regulations, discipline, and so forth. Depending on this hope,
however, the women and the two half-grown sons of Marin were left
behind, to listen to the distant roar and rattle of the bombardment of
Beauséjour,—for the attack was not long in beginning. The wives told
their beads, weeping and praying for the safety of their husbands, while
Margot, pale and still, and alternating betwixt hope and fear, turned
now consciously in her petitions to the faith of him whom she loved. For
Margot’s nature like that of Gabriel, was clear and straightforward; and
now that the forms of the Catholic religion were getting to mean little
to her, she faced the knowledge bravely, dropping these forms one by
one, striving to wait patiently until light and help should come; and
this lonely waiting amounted to heroism in a timid Acadian maid. But the
length of the loneliness, the yearning for counsel and support, was
forming the girl’s character, and ripening it as the seed ripens within
the pod. It was Margot, the woman, who now awaited the return of
Gabriel, and such a woman as she might never have become had she led the
effortless, unaspiring existence of the average Acadian peasant, without
mental struggle or any higher object than that of living from day to
day.
News of the siege came but fitfully to the three women, bereft as they
were of neighbors and the usual neighborly gossip; for the inhabitants
of the scattered houses, or rather huts, within reach had all fled to
the shelter of the woods. Now and then some head of a family, wearied of
what seemed to him profitless combat, having succeeded in eluding the
unwelcome task, paused at the farmhouse to drink a cup of milk on his
way to rejoin wife and babes, and shake his head over the news he
brought; or a fugitive Indian, prowling along the river’s bank, bade the
paleface squaws make ready for flight, declaring that the great
medicine-man could not much longer induce the braves to hold the fort
against the foe. But secure in their simple faith that Marin would
contrive to see Gabriel, and that Gabriel would protect them, the women
refused to face the perils of the forest.
The day was the sixteenth of June. For several days they had heard
nothing, and growing hourly more anxious, the three would once and again
drop their household tasks, and stepping one by one to the door, call to
the boys perched upon the tall trees to know if aught might be seen or
heard. When at last a shout went up, it chanced that all the women were
in the house. As they ran out into the open, young François cried:
“They come, they come! a host of them!”
“Who come?” inquired his mother impatiently. “Speak, boy!”
“I cannot yet tell, _ma mère_; but yes, yes!”
And little Jules took up the cry:
“Yes, yes! It is our own dear Acadians. And they laugh, they are glad,
they carry bundles and shout!”
“And see the _bon père_, Jules; he waves his cap, he espies us!”
And sliding down the tree, François was off and away, deaf to his
mother’s calls and commands, followed as promptly as the shortness of
his legs would permit by his little brother.
What did it all mean? The three women left behind looked into one
another’s eyes, with the unspoken query on their lips. Then, with an air
of determination, the wife of Marin threw her homespun apron over her
head and went after her sons. Marie Herbes dropped upon the rude bench
before the door, and began rapidly telling her beads, tapping her foot
upon the ground meanwhile in an agony of impatience and anxiety.
And Margot? For the lonely girl how much was now at stake! Leaning
against the wall of the house, her hands idle for the reason that she no
longer owned beads to tell, her dark lashes resting on her pale cheeks,
and a prayer in her heart for resignation if the worst was to be, she
waited.
Then it was that for the first time she fully understood that she was
ever hoping and praying for the success of the alien race; that she had
ceased merely to tolerate them for the sake of the peace they gave, but
that she had in very truth gone over,—as a few others of her race had
done, and were doing,—heart and soul to the enemy.
Undoubtedly the siege of Beauséjour was at an end; the question
trembling on the lips of the waiting women was, In whose hands was the
victory? For peaceful Acadians, released from the perils and toils of
war, would for the moment rejoice in either victory or defeat; both
would sound alike to them.
Without, the sun burned more and more hotly. Within, the soup in the
iron pot, hung above the crackling sticks, boiled—presently boiled
over. None heeded.
Half an hour dragged by, the minutes ticking slowly along in the old
clock in the corner. Then Marie sprang to her feet.
“They come!” she cried.
Verily they came—a strange spectacle. Out of the woods and across the
bridge poured a little horde of Acadians—all Acadians, Margot saw in
one swift glance, many of them excited by the red French wine, but every
man of them singing and shouting, as they tramped along laden with what
was evidently plunder from the fort.
“Beauséjour has fallen—has fallen!”
Thus they sang, as if exulting in the defeat of an enemy.
The wife of Marin, almost as wild as the men, had loaded herself down
with part of her husband’s burden, and her voice rang shrill above the
tumult in response to Marie’s vociferous queries:
“Beauséjour has fallen, I tell thee. And the English have pardoned our
men because they said they but fought under compulsion. All is well.”
“But whence came this, and this?” persisted the more practical Marie,
pointing to the motley collection of food, wearing apparel, wines, and
even furniture, with which the ground was now littered.
Questions for long brought no coherent reply, and it was not until late
in the afternoon, their comrades having scattered in search of their
respective families, that either Herbes or Marin was able to give a
clear account of all that had happened.
It was significant of the religious dependence and docility of the
Acadian nature that one of the first questions asked and answered should
be concerning the fate of Le Loutre. At the query the two men, who since
their vain trip to Quebec had wavered somewhat in their allegiance to
the tyrannical _abbé_, shrugged their shoulders and spread their hands
as those who knew nothing.
“But, Louis,” Marie cried, “it is important that we know, for without
him are we not but lost sheep in the wilderness?”
“As to that, good wife, I cannot tell thee,” answered Louis. “When we
left that villainous fort _M. l’Abbé_ was nowhere to be seen. Depend on
it, he was with the commandant. All was hurry and confusion from the
moment the shell fell upon the officers’ table while they sat at meat,
killing six of them, yes, six!” Here he crossed himself, shuddering, and
Marin took up the tale:
“Yes, and the _bon Dieu_ alone knows how great was the wonder of the
English, who expected to fight many more days, when the white flag flew
from the ramparts. _M. l’Abbé_ I beheld everywhere then. He ran from one
to the other, pleading that the flag of the coward, for so our brave
_abbé_ called it, be taken in. Well, we Acadians know that he hath the
gift of speech, but now it was in vain. The French were glad to cease
this foolish killing of men for naught, glad even as we were. So
presently it was arranged that they should march out with the honors of
war,—whatever honor there be in slaying and quarreling,—and proceed at
once to Louisbourg. Then the officers fell to drinking and plundering
ere they departed, and we gathered up what little we could lay hands on,
and so took leave with our pardon. Of the priest I saw no more. That is
all that has happened.”
Margot, who during this recital had been leaning forward with clasped
hands, at last ventured timidly, addressing Louis Herbes:
“And _mon cousin_; of him you saw nothing?”
“No, little one,” replied Louis kindly; “but, I learned that one
Gabriel, with another name that cracks the jaws even to think of, was
much spoken of during the attack by reason of his valor, and that he
fought well. Rather he than I,” he concluded with a grimace.
Margot fell back and said no more. She had all for which she had dared
to hope; again she must wait, it was true, but this time not wholly
uncheered.
The sun sank and the moon rose and the wearied household was wrapped in
slumber, all but Margot, who leaned from the window of the shedroom she
occupied apart from the common sleeping apartment, which according to
Acadian custom also served for a kitchen. She had tried to sleep and had
failed.
Secure in the pardon granted them by the English, heedless of the
future, the Acadians were once more collected under their own rooftrees,
and as Margot’s eyes roamed along the banks of the Missaguash they
rested with a sense of sympathetic peace upon the little farmhouses
containing so many re-united families.
Yet it was strange how constantly on this night of apparent peace her
mind reverted to the relentless priest who had caused herself and others
so much misery. Involuntarily her mind strayed backward to the days when
they had all hung on every glance of that strong, imperious man, whose
word was law to a weak and vacillating people, and who represented to
the simple villagers salvation here and hereafter. Now, in his hour of
defeat, how would it be? His influence had already waned, she thought.
Her window was raised only a few feet from the ground and, unseen by
her, a figure came gliding along in the shadow of the wide eaves.
Another moment and her quick ear had caught the sound of hushed steps,
but before the flashing thought had had time to concentrate in the cry,
“Gabriel!” a grasp of iron was laid upon her shoulder and a hand crushed
down upon her mouth.
There was a hideous interval before a word was spoken, after her
terrified eyes had taken in the fact that she was in the clutches of one
of the dreaded Micmacs. Then, was it with increased horror or with
relief that she recognized the voice which at last spoke?
“Margot! maiden!” The whisper was harsh. “It is thy priest and father in
God who commands thy service.”
The shock temporarily deprived the girl of power to reply, but finding
that she made neither struggle nor outcry, Le Loutre, for it was indeed
he, released her.
This man was her enemy, so ran her swift thought; he had robbed her of
all that made life dear.
Now Margot, though gentle in heart and deed, was human and intolerant,
as the young usually are. Forgiveness of cruel wrong could only come
through prayer and striving. She remembered the destroyed and abandoned
home, made desolate by this man; the beloved _gran’-père_, dead from
exposure and want; the beloved cousin, an outcast and a wanderer; and it
was this man who had done it.
Yes, she guessed what the priest wanted. He was a hunted fugitive. But
why did he come to her, whom he had so greatly wronged?
Then she remembered also the words Gabriel had once read to her from an
ancient printed page treasured by his mother as having been the property
of his father: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that
trespass against us.”
She was so long silent that the voice of Le Loutre had in it a quaver of
apprehension when he again addressed her, and when she looked up and
saw, even in the moonlight, how almost craven were the glances the once
arrogant priest cast over his shoulder into the dim, wide-stretching
woods, compassion as well as higher emotions was aroused, and her
resolve taken.
“_M. l’Abbé_,” she said simply, “there are none here who would harm
their priest, even should they awake. As for me, I will do what I can,
and God will teach me to forgive you.”
At the sound of such words from one of the least of his flock, the
priest’s imperious temper sprang to his lips. But the situation was too
perilous for anger.
None here who would harm him? He was not over sure of that. The men, did
not they both believe he had harmed them? Yet all that he had done had
been for their souls’ good. And of a surety he knew his dear Acadians,
who for the sake of peace and freedom from alarms would hesitate, even
though the life of the guardian of those souls were at stake. But this
maiden, with her it was otherwise. True, she was half-heretic, but she
was made of sterner stuff than most of her compatriots. Her he felt sure
that he might trust.
Minds work quickly in hours of danger, and it was but a minute before he
replied:
“I will pray for the salvation of thy soul, maiden, if yet it may be
won. But now,” his voice in spite of him trembling with anxiety, “where
wilt thou conceal me until such time as my trusty Cope arrives to go
with me to Baye-Verte? There tarries my brother in God, Manach, and
together we seek safety at Quebec.”
At the name of Jean Baptiste Cope, the Micmac at whose hands Gabriel had
endured so much, Margot’s heart contracted with something like hatred.
There was a short, sharp struggle within her. This, then, was what
forgiving your enemies meant? Oh, it was hard, hard! And this priest and
this Indian had injured so many, was it right to help them to escape?
Little did she guess the thoughts pouring forth from the _abbé’s_
fertile imagination as he watched her—new thoughts, new ideas. Anxiety
for the maiden’s soul, he would have said, was the mainspring of his
intended actions, the desire to make one final effort to save her from
perdition. Like many another too sure of his own holiness, the taint of
personal malice, personal revenge, ran like a dark and dirty thread
through the whiteness of his own soul’s garment. Le Loutre was as honest
with himself as he was able to be, and certainly his fanaticism was real
and true.
Yet he judged Gabriel entirely by himself, by his own capacity for
righteous (?) hatred: Gabriel was at the head of the party searching for
him betwixt Beauséjour and Baye-Verte, and it was for this reason that
he had made a wide détour, appointing the meeting with his factotum,
Cope, at a house where dwelt one who could be depended upon not to
betray him. Her influence over the young heretic, he believed, could
also be depended upon, should the fugitives be intercepted by him in
their flight. Honor, loyalty to duty, counted for nothing in the
estimation of the religious fanatic.
“It is for her soul’s salvation,” he repeated to himself with pious
emphasis. From the woods near by floated the quavering cry of a night
owl.
“Await me here, Margot,” exclaimed the priest authoritatively, and
stepping backward was lost in the shadows.
Force of habit was strong, and still leaning from the window she
instinctively obeyed.
A few minutes elapsed, and then the terrifying Indian, who no longer had
terrors for her, re-appeared.
But this time no words passed. A brawny arm seized her by the waist,
while at the same time a cloth was pushed into her mouth. Unable to
utter a sound, she was dragged from the window, and borne away.