A New England Englishman
I have said that the room grew brighter for the going of the Black Abbé.
To me, at least, it seemed so. Yet, after his departure, there fell a
palpable air of constraint. Monsieur de Lamourie regarded me with
something almost like suspicion. Madame eyed me with a curious scrutiny,
tolerant, yet as it were watchful. As for Yvonne, her face was coldly
averted. All this troubled me. Only the New Englander came to my rescue.
With a smile of frank satisfaction he remarked:
“You dealt very effectively and expeditiously with that black-frocked
firebrand, monsieur. You must have great influence at headquarters to be
able to treat La Garne with so little ceremony.”
Now, puzzled though I was, I was marvellously elated by my easy victory
over the notorious Black Abbé. There was doubtless a vainglorious ring
in the would-be modest voice with which I answered.
“Yes,” said I, “I did not expect quite so swift a triumph. I thought I
might even be driven to threats ill fitting the dignity of his office.
But doubtless he saw that I was rather in earnest.”
“He certainly seemed to regard you as one having authority,” said De
Lamourie gravely.
“Or even,” murmured Madame, with that dryness in her voice, “as in some
way his confederate.”
“Or Vaurin’s,” came a cold suggestion from Mademoiselle. Her eyes were
gazing steadily into the fire; but I caught the scornful curl of her
lip.
At this I felt myself flush hotly, I knew not just why. It seemed as if
I lay under some obscure but disgraceful imputation. With sudden warmth
I cried:
“I have no authority, save as an officer of the king, with a clean
record and a sword not unproven. I have no confederate, nor am I like to
be engaged in such work as shall make one needful. And as for this
Vaurin,” I demanded, turning to Yvonne, “who is he? He seems a personage
indeed; yet never had I heard of him till the commandant of Beauséjour
gave me a letter for his hand.”
“I cannot doubt you, monsieur,” interposed Anderson heartily. “This
Vaurin is a very sorry scoundrel, a spy and an assassin, who does the
dirty work of those who employ him. I think it was ill done of Vergor to
give to any gentleman a commission to that foul cur.”
I sprang to my feet and walked thrice up and down the room, while all
sat silent. I think my anger was plain enough to every one, for the old
friendliness—as I afterwards remembered—came back to the faces of
Monsieur and Madame de Lamourie, and Yvonne’s eyes shone upon me for an
instant with a wistfulness which I could not understand. Yet this, as I
said, is but what came back to me afterwards. I felt Yvonne’s eyes but
as in a dream at that moment.
“Vergor shall answer to me,” I cried bitterly. “It is ill work serving
under the public thieves whom the intendant puts in power to-day. One
never knows what baseness may not be demanded of him. Vergor shall clear
himself, or meet me!”
“What hope is there for your cause,” asked Anderson, “when they who
guide New France are so corrupt?”
“They are not all corrupt!” I declared with vehemence. “The governor is
honest. The general is honour itself. But, alas, the most grievous
enemies of New France are those within her gate! Bigot is the prince of
robbers. His hands and those of his gang are at her throat. It is he we
fear, and not you English, brave and innumerable though you are.”
And with this my indignation at Vergor, who, it was plain, had put upon
me an errand unbecoming to a gentleman and an officer of the king,
spread out to include the whole corrupt crew of which the intendant
Bigot was the too efficient captain. Seating myself again by the hearth,
I gave bitter account of the wrong and infamy at Quebec, and showed how,
to the anguish of her faithful sons, New France was being stripped and
laid bare to the enemy. My heart being as dead with my own sudden
sorrow, the story which I told of my country’s plight was steeped in
dark forebodings.
When I had finished, the conversation became general, and I presently
withdrew into my heaviness. I remember that Madame rallied me, at last,
on my silence; but Yvonne came quickly and sweetly to my help, recalling
my long day’s journey and insisting upon my drinking a cup of spiced
brandy—“very sound and good,” she declared, “and but late from
Louisburg, no thanks to King George!”
As I sat sipping of the fragrant brew—though it had been wormwood it had
seemed to me delicate from her hand—I tried to gather together the
shattered fragments of my dream.
There she sat—of all women the one woman, as I had in the long, solitary
night-watches come to know, whom my soul needed and my body needed. My
inmost thought, speaking with itself in nakedest sincerity, declared
that it was she only whom God had made for me—or for whom God had made
me. The whole truth, as I felt it, required both statements to perfect
its expression. There she sat, so near that her voice was making a
wonder of music in my ears, so near that her eyes from time to time
flashed a palpable radiance upon my face; yet further away than when I
lightened with dreams of her the long marches beside the Miami or lay
awake to think of her, in the remote huts of the Natchez. So far away
had a word, a brief word, put her; yet here she sat where I could grasp
her just by stretching out my hand.
As I thought of it her eyes met mine. I swear that I made no motion. My
grasp never relaxed from the arm of the black old chair where it had
fixed itself. Yet the thought must have cried out to her, for a look of
alarm, yet not wholly of denial, flickered for one heart-beat in her
gaze. She rose, with a little aimless movement, looked at me, swayed her
body toward me almost imperceptibly, then sat down again in her old
place with her face averted. At once she began talking with a whimsical
gayety that engrossed all ears and left me again in my gloom.
I scrutinized this man, the New Englander, who sat drinking her with his
eyes. For the joy that was in his face as he watched her I cursed
him—yet ere the curse had gone forth I blessed him bitterly. How could I
curse him when I saw that his soul was on its knees to her, as mine was.
I felt myself moved toward him in a strange affection. Yet—and yet!
He was a tall man, well over six feet in height, of a goodly breadth of
shoulder,—taller than myself by three inches at least, and heavier in
build. He had beauty, too, which I could not boast of; though before
love taught me humility I had been vain enough to deem my face not all
ill-favored. His abundant light hair, slightly waving; his ruddy,
somewhat square face, with its good chin and kind mouth; his frank and
cheerful blue eyes, fearless but not aggressive; his air of directness
and good intention—all compelled my tribute of admiration, and made me
think little of my own sombre and sallow countenance, with its straight
black hair, straight black brows, straight black moustache; its mouth
large and hard set; its eyes wherein mirth and moroseness were at
frequent strife for mastery. Being, as I have reluctantly confessed, a
vain man without good cause for vanity, I knew the face well—and it was
with small satisfaction I remembered it now, while looking upon the
manly fairness of George Anderson.
Yet, such is the inconsistency of men, I was conscious of a faint,
inexplicable pity for him. I felt myself stronger than he, and wiser in
the knowledge of life. But he had the promise of that which to me was
more than life. He had, as I kept telling myself, Yvonne’s love; yet—had
he? So obstinate is hope, I would not yield all credence to this
telling. At least I had one advantage, if no other. I was wiser than he
in this, that I knew my love for Yvonne, and he did not know it. Yet
this was but a poor vantage, and even upon the moment I had resolved to
throw it away. I resolved that he should be as wise as I on this point,
if telling could make him so.