“AS WATER UNTO WINE”
Three months afterwards George Gering was joyfully preparing to take two
voyages. Perhaps, indeed, his keen taste for the one had much to do
with his eagerness for the other--though most men find getting gold as
cheerful as getting married. He had received a promise of marriage
from Jessica, and he was also soon to start with William Phips for the
Spaniards’ country. His return to New York with the news of the capture
of the Hudson’s Bay posts brought consternation. There was no angrier
man in all America than Colonel Richard Nicholls; there was perhaps
no girl in all the world more agitated than Jessica, then a guest at
Government House. Her father was there also, cheerfully awaiting her
marriage with Gering, whom, since he had lost most traces of Puritanism,
he liked. He had long suspected the girl’s interest in Iberville; if
he had known that two letters from him--unanswered--had been treasured,
read, and re-read, he would have been anxious. That his daughter should
marry a Frenchman--a filibustering seigneur, a Catholic, the enemy of
the British colonies, whose fellow-countrymen incited the Indians to
harass and to massacre--was not to be borne.
Besides, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was
now often in peril because of his Cavalier propensities, and whose
losses had aged him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his
daughter with him. Jessica was the apple of his eye; for her he would
have borne all, sorts of trials; but he could not bear to see her called
on to bear them. Like most people out of the heyday of their own youth,
he imagined the way a maid’s fancy ought to go.
If he had known how much his daughter’s promise to marry Gering would
cost her, he would not have had it. But indeed she did not herself guess
it. She had, with the dreamy pleasure of a young girl, dwelt upon an
event which might well hold her delighted memory: distance, difference
of race, language, and life, all surrounded Iberville with an engaging
fascination. Besides, what woman could forget a man who gave her escape
from a fate such as Bucklaw had prepared for her? But she saw the
hopelessness of the thing, everything was steadily acting in Gering’s
favour, and her father’s trouble decided her at last.
When Gering arrived at New York and told his story--to his credit with
no dispraise of Iberville, rather as a soldier--she felt a pang greater
than she ever had known. Like a good British maid, she was angry at
the defeat of the British, she was indignant at her lover’s failure and
proud of his brave escape, and she would have herself believe that she
was angry at Iberville. But it was no use; she was ill-content while
her father and others called him buccaneer and filibuster, and she
joyed that old William Drayton, who had ever spoken well of the young
Frenchman, laughed at their insults, saying that he was as brave,
comely, and fine-tempered a lad as he had ever met, and that the capture
of the forts was genius: “Genius and pith, upon my soul!” he said
stoutly; “and if he comes this way he shall have a right hearty welcome,
though he come to fight.”
In the first excitement of Gering’s return, sorry for his sufferings and
for his injured ambition, she had suddenly put her hands in his and had
given her word to marry him.
She was young, and a young girl does not always know which it is that
moves her: the melancholy of the impossible, from which she sinks in
a kind of peaceful despair upon the possible, or the flush of a deep
desire; she acts in an atmosphere of the emotions, and cannot therefore
be sure of herself. But when it was done there came reaction to Jessica.
In the solitude of her own room--the room above the hallway, from which
she had gone to be captured by Bucklaw--she had misgivings. If she had
been asked whether she loved Iberville, she might have answered no.
But he was a possible lover; and every woman weighs the possible lover
against the accepted one--often, at first, to fluttering apprehensions.
In this brief reaction many a woman’s heart has been caught away.
A few days after Gering’s arrival he was obliged to push on to Boston,
there to meet Phips. He hoped that Mr. Leveret and Jessica would
accompany him, but Governor Nicholls would not hear of it just yet.
Truth is, wherever the girl went she was light and cheerfulness,
although her ways were quiet and her sprightliness was mostly in her
looks. She was impulsive, but impulse was ruled by a reserve at once
delicate and unembarrassed. She was as much beloved in the town of New
York as in Boston.
Two days after Gering left she was wandering in the garden, when the
governor joined her.
“Well, well, my pretty councillor,” he said--“an hour to cheer an old
man’s leisure?”
“As many as you please,” she answered daintily, putting her hand within
his arm. “I am so very cheerful I need to shower the surplus.” There was
a smile at her lips, but her eyes were misty. Large, brilliant, gentle,
they had now also a bewildered look, which even the rough old soldier
saw. He did not understand, but he drew the hand further within his arm
and held it, there, and for the instant he knew not what to say. The
girl did not speak; she only kept looking at him with a kind of inward
smiling. Presently, as if he had suddenly lighted upon a piece of news
for the difficulty, he said: “Radisson has come.”
“Radisson!” she cried.
“Yes. You know ‘twas he that helped George to escape?”
“Indeed, no!” she answered. “Mr. Gering did not tell me.” She was
perplexed, annoyed, yet she knew not why.
Gering had not brought Radisson into New York had indeed forbidden him
to come there, or to Boston, until word was given him; for while he felt
bound to let the scoundrel go with him to the Spaniards’ country, it was
not to be forgotten that the fellow had been with Bucklaw. But Radisson
had no scruples when Gering was gone, though the proscription had never
been withdrawn.
“We will have to give him freedom, councillor, eh? even though we
proclaimed him, you remember.” He laughed, and added: “You would demand
that, yea or nay.
“Why should I?” she asked.
“Now, give me wisdom all ye saints! Why--why?
“Faith, he helped your lover from the clutches of the French coxcomb.”
“Indeed,” she answered, “such a villain helps but for absurd benefits.
Mr. Gering might have stayed with Monsieur Iberville in honour and
safety at least. And why a coxcomb? You thought different once; and you
cannot doubt his bravery. Enemy of our country though he be, I am surely
bound to speak him well--he saved my life.”
Anxious to please her, he answered: “Wise as ever, councillor. What an
old bear am I: When I called him coxcomb, ‘twas as an Englishman hating
a Frenchman, who gave our tongues to gall--a handful of posts gone, a
ship passed to the spoiler, the governor of the company a prisoner,
and our young commander’s reputation at some trial! My temper was
pardonable, eh, mistress?”
The girl smiled, and added: “There was good reason why Mr. Gering
brought not Radisson here, and I should beware that man. A traitor is
ever a traitor. He is French, too, and as a good Englishman you should
hate all Frenchmen, should you not?”
“Merciless witch! Where got you that wit? If I must, I kneel;” and he
groaned in mock despair. “And if Monsieur Iberville should come knocking
at our door you would have me welcome him lovingly?”
“Surely; there is peace, is there not? Has not the king, because of his
love for Louis commanded all goodwill between us and Canada?”
The governor laughed bitterly. “Much pity that he has! how can we live
at peace with buccaneers?” Their talk was interrupted here; but a few
days later, in the same garden, Morris came to them. “A ship enters
harbour,” he said, “and its commander sends this letter.”
An instant after the governor turned a troubled face on the girl and
said: “Your counsel of the other day is put to rapid test, Jessica. This
comes from monsieur, who would pay his respects to me.”
He handed the note to her. It said that Iberville had brought prisoners
whom he was willing to exchange for French prisoners in the governor’s
hands.
Entering New York harbour with a single vessel showed in a strong light
Iberville’s bold, almost reckless, courage. The humour of it was not
lost on Jessica, though she turned pale, and the paper fluttered in her
fingers.
“What will you do?” she said.
“I will treat him as well as he will let me, sweetheart.” Two hours
afterwards, Iberville came up the street with Sainte-Helene, De Casson,
and Perrot,--De Troyes had gone to Quebec,--courteously accompanied by
Morris and an officer of the New York Militia. There was no enmity shown
the Frenchmen, for many remembered what had once made Iberville popular
in New York. Indeed, Iberville, whose memory was of the best, now and
again accosted some English or Dutch resident, whose face he recalled.
The governor was not at first cordial; but Iberville’s cheerful
soldierliness, his courtier spirit, and his treatment of the English
prisoners, soon placed him on a footing near as friendly as that of
years before. The governor praised his growing reputation, and at last
asked him to dine, saying that Mistress Leveret would no doubt be glad
to meet her rescuer again.
“Still, I doubt not,” said the governor, “there will be embarrassment,
for the lady can scarce forget that you had her lover prisoner. But
these things are to be endured. Besides, you and Mr. Gering seem as
easily enemies as other men are friends.”
Iberville was amazed. So, Jessica and Gering were affianced. And the
buckle she had sent him he wore now in the folds of his lace! How could
he know what comes from a woman’s wavering sympathies, what from her
inborn coquetry, and what from love itself? He was merely a man with
much to learn.
He accepted dinner and said: “As for Monsieur Gering, your excellency,
we are as easily enemies as he and Radisson are comrades-in-arms.”
“Which is harshly put, monsieur. When a man is breaking prison he
chooses any tool. You put a slight upon an honest gentleman.”
“I fear that neither Mr. Gering nor myself is too generous with each
other, your excellency,” answered Iberville lightly.
This frankness was pleasing, and soon the governor took Iberville into
the drawing-room, where Jessica was. She was standing by the great
fireplace, and she did not move at first, but looked at Iberville in
some thing of her old simple way. Then she offered him her hand with a
quiet smile.
“I fear you are not glad to see me,” he said, with a smile. “You cannot
have had good reports of me--no?”
“Yes, I am glad,” she answered gently. “You know, monsieur, mine is a
constant debt. You do not come to me, I take it, as the conqueror of
Englishmen.”
“I come to you,” he answered, “as Pierre le Moyne of Iberville, who had
once the honour to do you slight service. I have never tried to forget
that, because by it I hoped I might be remembered--an accident of price
to me.”
She bowed and at first did not speak; then Morris came to say that some
one awaited the governor, and the two were left alone.
“I have not forgotten,” she began softly, breaking a silence.
“You will think me bold, but I believe you will never forget,” was his
meaning reply.
“Yes, you are bold,” she replied, with the demure smile which had
charmed him long ago. Suddenly she looked up at him anxiously, and, “Why
did you go to Hudson’s Bay?” she asked.
“I would have gone ten times as far for the same cause,” he answered,
and he looked boldly, earnestly, into her eyes.
She turned her head away. “You have all your old recklessness,” she
answered. Then her eyes softened, and, “All your old courage,” she
added.
“I have all my old motive.”
“What is-your motive?”
Does a woman ever know how much such speeches cost? Did Jessica quite
know when she asked the question, what her own motive was; how much it
had of delicate malice--unless there was behind it a simple sincerity?
She was inviting sorrow. A man like Iberville was not to be counted
lightly; for every word he sowed, he would reap a harvest of some kind.
He came close to her, and looked as though he would read her through and
through. “Can you ask that question?” he said most seriously. “If you
ask it because from your soul you wish to know, good! But if you ask it
as a woman who would read a man’s heart, and then--”
“Oh, hush!--hush!” she whispered. Her face became pale, and her eyes had
a painful brightness. “You must not answer. I had no right to ask. Oh,
monsieur!” she added, “I would have you always for my friend if I could,
though you are the enemy of my country and of the man--I am to marry.”
“I am for my king,” he replied; “and I am enemy of him who stands
between you and me. For see: from the hour that I met you I knew that
some day, even as now, I should tell you that--I love you--indeed,
Jessica, with all my heart.”
“Oh, have pity!” she pleaded. “I cannot listen--I cannot.”
“You shall listen, for you have remembered me and have understood.
Voila!” he added, hastily catching her silver buckle from his bosom.
“This that you sent me, look where I have kept it--on my heart!”
She drew back from him, her face in her hands. Then suddenly she put
them out as though to prevent him coming near her, and said:
“Oh, no--no! You will spare me; I am an affianced wife.” An appealing
smile shone through her tears. “Oh, will you not go?” she begged. “Or,
will you not stay and forget what you have said? We are little more than
strangers; I scarcely know you; I--”
“We are no strangers,” he broke in. “How can that be, when for years I
have thought of you--you of me? But I am content to wait, for my love
shall win you yet. You--”
She came to him and put her hands upon his arm. “You remember,” she
said, with a touch of her old gaiety, and with an inimitable grace,
“what good friends we were that first day we met? Let us be the same
now--for this time at least. Will you not grant me this for to-day?”
“And to-morrow?” he asked, inwardly determining to stay in the port of
New York and to carry her off as his wife; but, unlike Bucklaw, with her
consent.
At that moment the governor returned, and Iberville’s question was never
answered. Nor did he dine at Government House, for word came secretly
that English ships were coming from Boston to capture him. He had,
therefore, no other resource but to sail out and push on for Quebec.
He would not peril the lives of his men merely to follow his will with
Jessica.
What might have occurred had he stayed is not easy to say--fortunes
turn on strange trifles. The girl, under the influence of his masterful
spirit and the rare charm of his manner, might have--as many another
has--broken her troth. As it was, she wrote Iberville a letter and sent
it by a courier, who never delivered it. By the same fatality, of the
letters which he wrote her only one was received. This told her that
when he returned from a certain cruise he would visit her again, for
he was such an enemy to her country that he was keen to win what did it
most honour. Gering had pressed for a marriage before he sailed for the
Spaniards’ country, but she had said no, and when he urged it she had
shown a sudden coldness. Therefore, bidding her good-bye, he had sailed
away with Phips, accompanied, much against his will, by Radisson.
Bucklaw was not with them. He had set sail from England in a trading
schooner, and was to join Phips at Port de la Planta. Gering did not
know that Bucklaw had share in the expedition, nor did Bucklaw guess the
like of Gering.
Within two weeks of the time that Phips in his Bridgwater Merchant,
manned by a full crew, twenty fighting men, and twelve guns, with
Gering in command of the Swallow, a smaller ship, got away to the south,
Iberville also sailed in the same direction. He had found awaiting him,
on his return to Quebec, a priest bearing messages and a chart from
another priest who had died in the Spaniards’ country.