A Sister to Evangeline
[Illustration]
A Sister to Evangeline
_Being the Story of Yvonne de Lamourie, and how she went into exile with
the villagers of Grand Pré_
By
Charles G. D. Roberts
Author of _The Forge in the Forest_, _A History of Canada_, _Earth’s
Enigmas_, _New York Nocturnes_, &c.
[Illustration]
Lamson, Wolffe and Company
Boston, New York, London
MDCCCXCVIII
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1898
By Lamson, Wolffe and Company
_All rights reserved_
PRESS OF
Rockwell and Churchill
BOSTON
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_To_
MY MOTHER
EMMA WETMORE BLISS ROBERTS
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Contents
Chapter Page
I. Paul Grande’s Home-coming to Grand Pré 1
II. Grûl’s Warning 11
III. Charms and Counter-charms 15
IV. “Habet!” 23
V. The Black Abbé Defers 31
VI. A New England Englishman 36
VII. Guard! 43
VIII. The Moon in the Apple-bough 50
IX. In Sleep a King; but Waking, no such Matter 58
X. A Grand Pré Morning 66
XI. Father Fafard 77
XII. Le Fûret at the Ferry 87
XIII. Unwilling to be Wise 94
XIV. Love Me, Love My Dog 100
XV. Ashes as it were Bread 105
XVI. The Way of a Maid 112
XVII. Memory is a Child 117
XVIII. For a Little Summer’s Sleep 125
XIX. The Borderland of Life 135
XX. But Mad Nor-nor-west 142
XXI. Beauséjour, and After 149
XXII. Grûl’s Case 156
XXIII. At Gaspereau Lower Ford 161
XXIV. “If you love me, leave me” 168
XXV. Over Gaspereau Ridge 177
XXVI. The Chapel Prison 182
XXVII. Dead Days and Withered Dreams 191
XXVIII. The Ships of her Exile 200
XXIX. The Hour of her Desolation 208
XXX. A Woman’s Privilege 218
XXXI. Young Will and Old Wisdom 229
XXXII. Aboard the “Good Hope” 238
XXXIII. The Divine Right of Queens 246
XXXIV. The Soul’s Supremer Sense 254
XXXV. The Court in the Cabin 260
XXXVI. Sword and Silk 268
XXXVII. Fire in Ice 279
XXXVIII. Of Long Felicity Brief Word 285
A Sister to Evangeline
Chapter I
Paul Grande’s Home-coming to Grand Pré
“R_evenant à la Belle Acadie_”—the words sang themselves over and over
in my brain, but I could get no further than that one line, try as I
might. I felt that it was the beginning of a song which, if only I could
imprison it in my rhyme, would stick in the hearts of our men of Acadie,
and live upon their lips, and be sung at every camp and hearth fire, as
“_À la Claire Fontaine_” is sung by the _voyageurs_ of the St. Lawrence.
At last I perceived, however, that the poem was living itself out at
that moment in my heart, and did not then need the half-futile
expression that words at best can give. But I did put it into words at a
later day, when at last I found myself able to set it apart and view it
with clear eyes; and you shall judge, maybe, when I come to put my
verses into print, whether I succeeded in making the words rhyme fairly
and the volatile syllables march at measured pace. The art of verse has
never been much practised among us Acadians, and it is a matter of some
pride to me that I, a busy soldier, now here at Grand Pré and anon at
Mackinaw or Natchez, taking in my hand my life more often than a pen,
should have mastered even the rudiments of an art so lofty and exacting.
So, for awhile, “Home again to Acadie the Fair” was all that I could
say.
It was surely enough. I had come over from Piziquid afoot, by the upper
trail, and now, having crossed the Gaspereau where it narrows just above
tide-water, I had come out upon the spacious brow of the hill that
overlooks Grand Pré village.
Not all my wanderings had shown me another scene so wonderful as that
wide prospect. The vale of the Five Rivers lay spread out before me,
with Grand Pré, the quiet metropolis of the Acadian people, nestling in
her apple-bloom at my feet. There was the one long street, thick-set
with its wide-eaved gables, and there its narrow subsidiary lane
descending from the slopes upon my left. Near the angle rose the spire
of the village church, glittering like gold in the clear flood of the
sunset. And everywhere the dear apple-blossoms. For it was spring in
Acadie when I came home.
Beyond the village and its one black wharf my eyes ranged the green,
wind-ruffled marshes, safe behind the sodded circumvallations of their
dykes. Past the dykes, on either side of “the island’s” wooded rampart,
stretched the glowing miles of the flats; for the tides of Minas were at
ebb. How red in the sunset, molten copper threaded with fire, those
naked reaches gleamed that night! Their color was like a blare of
trumpets challenging the peace of the Five Rivers.
Past the flats, smooth and dazzling to the eye at such a distance, lay
the waters of Minas. Well I knew how their unsleeping eddies boiled and
seethed about the grim base of Blomidon. Such tricks does memory serve
one that even across that wide tranquillity I seemed to hear the
depredating clamour of those tides upon the shingle.
Though it was now two years since I had seen the gables and apple-trees
of Grand Pré, I was in no haste to descend into the village. There came
a sudden sinking at my heart, as my heart inquired, with unseasonable
pertinence, by what right I continued to call Grand Pré “home”? The
thought was new to me; and that I might fairly consider it I seated
myself upon the broad stump of a birch-tree, felled the preceding
winter.
By far the smaller portion of my life had been spent in the Acadian
village—only my early boyhood, before the years of schooling at Quebec;
and afterwards the fleeting sweetness of some too brief visits, that lay
in my memory like pools of enchanted leisure in a desert of emulous
contentions. My father, tenderest and bravest of all men that I have
known, rested in an unmarked grave beside the northern wash of the
Peribonca. My uncle, Jean de Mer, Sieur de Briart, was on the Ohio,
fighting the endless battle of France in the western wildernesses. His
one son, my one cousin, the taciturn but true-hearted Marc, was with his
father, spending himself in the same quarrel. I thought with a longing
tenderness of these two—the father full of high faith in the triumph of
New France, the son fighting obstinately in what he held a lost cause,
caring mainly that his father still had faith in it. I wished mightily
that their brave hands could clasp mine in welcome back to Grand Pré. I
thought of their two fair New England wives, left behind at Quebec to
shame by their gay innocence the corruption of Bigot’s court. Kindred I
had none in Grand Pré, unless one green grave in the churchyard could be
called my kin—the grave wherein my mother’s girlish form and laughing
eyes had been laid to sleep while I was yet a child.
Yes, I had no kinsfolk to greet me back to Grand Pré; no roof of mine
that I should call it home. But friends, loyal friends, would welcome
me, I knew. There was Father Fafard, the firm and gentle old priest, to
whom, of course, I should go just as if I were of his flesh and blood.
Then there were the De Lamouries—
Yes, to be sure, the De Lamouries. And here I took myself by the chin
and laughed. I know that, for all my verses, I am in the main a soldier,
yet I am so far a poet as to suffer myself to befool myself at times,
and get a passing satisfaction out of it. But I always face the fact
before I express it in act. I acknowledged to myself that I had been
thinking of the De Lamouries’ pleasant farmhouse, and of somewhat that
it contained, when I sang “Home again to Acadie the Fair.”
I remembered with a pleasant warmth the tall, bent figure, fierce eyes,
and courtly air of Giles de Lamourie, the broken gentleman, who through
much misfortune and some fault had fallen from a high place at
Versailles and been fain to hide himself on an Acadian farm. I thought
also of Madame, his wife, a wizened little woman with nothing left, said
the villagers, to remind one of the loveliness which had once dazzled
Louis himself. To me she seemed an amazingly interesting woman, whose
former beauty could still be guessed from its ruins.
Both of these good people I remembered with a depth of concern far
beyond the deserts of such casual friendlinesses as they had shown me.
As I looked down toward their spacious apple-orchard, on the furthest
outskirts of the village, it was borne in upon me that they had one
claim to distinction beyond all others.
They had achieved Yvonne.
Many a time had I wondered how my cousin Marc could have had eyes for
his ruddy-haired Puritan lily when there was Yvonne de Lamourie in the
world. On my last two visits to Grand Pré I had seen her; not many
times, indeed, nor much alone; and never word of love had passed between
us. In truth, I had not known that I loved her in those days. I had
taken a wondering delight in her beauty and her wit, but of the pretty
trifles of compliment and the careless gallantries that so often
simulate love I had offered her none at all. This surprised me the more
afterward, as women had ever found me somewhat lavish in such light
coin. I think I was withheld by the great love unrealized in my heart,
which found expression then only in such white reverence as the devotee
proffers to his saint. I think, too, I was restrained by the
consciousness of a certain girl at Trois Pistoles on the St. Lawrence,
who, if I might believe my vanity, loved me, and to whom, if I might
believe my conscience, I had given some sort of claim upon my honor. I
cared naught for the girl. I had never intended anything but a light and
passing affair; but somehow it had not seemed to me light when Yvonne de
Lamourie’s eyes were upon me. A little afterward, revisiting Trois
Pistoles on my way to the western lakes, I had found the maiden married
to a prosperous trader of Quebec. In the leaping joy that seized my
heart at the news I perceived how my fetters had galled; and I knew
then, though at first but dimly, that if anywhere in the world there
awaited me such a love as I had dreamed of sleeping, but ever doubted
waking,—the love that should be not a pastime, but a prayer, not an
episode, but an eternity,—it awaited me in Grand Pré village.
In my heart these two years I had carried two clear visions of my
mistress. Strange to tell, they were not bedimmed by the much handling
which they had endured. They but seemed to grow the brighter and fresher
from being continually pressed to the kisses of my soul.
In one of these I saw her as she stood a certain morning in the orchard,
prying with insistent little finger-tips into the heart of a young
apple-flower, while I watched and said nothing. I know not to this day
whether she were thinking of the apple-flower or wondering at the
dumbness of her cavalier; but she feigned, at least, to concern herself
with only the blossom’s heart. Her wide white lids downcast over her
great eyes, her long lashes almost sweeping the rondure of her cheek,
she looked a Madonna. The broad, low forehead; the finely chiselled
nose, not too small for strength of purpose; the full, firm chin—all
added to this sweet dignity, which was of a kind to compel a lover’s
worship. There was enough breadth to the gracious curve below the ear to
make me feel that this girl would be a strong man’s mate. But the mouth,
a bow of tenderness, with a wilful dimple at either delectable corner
always lurking, spoke her all woman, too laughing and loving to spend
her days in sainthood. Her hair—very thick and of a purply-bronze, near
to black—lay in a careless fulness over her little ears. On her head,
though in all else she affected the dress of the Grand Pré maids, she
wore not the Acadian linen cap, but a fine shawl of black Spanish lace,
which became her mightily. Her bodice was of linen homespun, coarse, but
bleached to a creamy whiteness; and her skirt, of the same simple stuff,
was short after the Acadian fashion, so that I could see her slim
ankles, and feet of that exceeding smallness and daintiness which may
somehow tread right heavily upon a man’s heart.
The other vision cherished in my memory was different from this, and
even more enchanting. It was a vision of one look cast upon me as I left
the door of her father’s house. In the radiance of her great eyes,
turned full upon me, all else became indistinct, her other features
blurred, as it were, with the sudden light of that look, which meant—I
knew not what. Indeed, it was ever difficult to observe minutely the
other beauties of her face as long as the eyes were turned upon one, so
clear an illumination from her spirit shone within their lucid deeps.
Hence it was, I suppose, that few could agree as to the colour of those
eyes—the many calling them black, others declaring with confidence that
they were brown, while some even, who must have angered her, averred
them to be of a very cold dark grey. I, for my part, knew that they were
of a greenish hazel of indescribable depth, with sometimes amber lights
in them, and sometimes purple shadows very mysterious and unfathomable.
As I sat now looking down into the village I wondered if Yvonne would
have a welcome for me. As I remembered, she had ever shown goodwill
toward me, so far as consisted with maidenly reserve. She had seemed
ever ready for tales of my adventure, and even for my verses. As I
thought of it there dawned now upon my heart a glimmering hope that
there had been in that last unforgotten look of hers more warmth of
meaning than maid Yvonne had been willing to confess.
This thought went to my heart and I sprang up in a kind of sudden
intoxication, to go straightway down into the village. As I did so I
caught the flutter of a white frock among the trees of the De Lamourie
orchard. Thereupon my breath came with a quickness that was troublesome,
and to quiet it I paused, looking out across the marshes and the tide
toward Blomidon. Then for the first time I observed a great bank of
cloud that had arisen behind the Cape. It was black and menacing, ragged
and fiery along its advancing crest. Its shadow lay already upon the
marshes and the tide. It crept smoothly upon the village. And at this
moment, from the skirts of a maple grove on the summit of the hill
behind me, came a great and bell-like voice, crying:
“Woe, woe to Acadie the Fair, for the hour of her desolation cometh!”