Beauséjour, and After
Now, while I was arranging in my mind a fresh and voluminous series of
interrogations, my singular host arose abruptly and went off without a
word, leaving me to rebuild a new image of him out of the shattered
fragments of the old.
I saw that he was not mad, but possessed. One intolerably dominant
purpose of revenge making all else little in his eyes, he was mad but in
relation to a world of complex impulses; in relation to his great aim,
sane, and ultimately effective, I could not doubt. But the mad
grotesquerie of the part he had assumed had come to cling to him as
another self, no longer to be quite sloughed off at will. To play his
part well he had resolved to be it; and he was it, with reservation.
Just now, Acadie fallen and his enemy for the time in eclipse, I
concluded that he found his occupation gone. Therefore, after solitary
and tongue-tied years, his speech flowed freely to me, as a stream
broken loose. That he had a purpose with me, I divined, would excuse him
in his own sight for descending to the long unwonted relief of direct
and simple utterance. I expected to find out from him many things of
grave import during the few days of inaction that yet lay ahead of me.
Then I would be able to act—without, perhaps, the follies of the past.
Meanwhile this tender, icy, extravagant, colossal, all but omniscient
character had bound me to him with the irrefragable bonds of mystery,
gratitude, and trust. I was Yvonne’s first, but next I felt myself fast
in leash to the posturing madman Grûl.
Returning soon to my couch, I dozed and mused away the morning. At noon
came no sign of my host, so I went to the niche in the wall, found food,
and made my meal alone, feeling myself hourly growing in strength.
Toward sunset Grûl strode in, wafted, as my convalescent nostrils
averred, upon a most savoury smell. It proved to be a still steaming
collop of roast venison, and after that feast I know the blood ran
redder and swifter in my pulses.
“O best physician!” said I, leaning back. “And now, I beg you, assuage a
little the itching of my ears.”
He sat, his mantle and wizard wand flung by, upon a billet of wood
against the wall, and looked not all unlike familiar mortals of the
finest. Leaning his chin in his long, clutching hands, as if to make
gesture impossible, he leaped straight into the story:
“That fighting fire in your Anderson, when he killed the savage with his
hands, died out. He is still the Quaker farmer. He went to Grand Pré,
and cleared your name, and told how you had saved him for Mademoiselle
de Lamourie. With some inconsequence, Mademoiselle was thereupon austere
with him because he had not in turn saved _you_ for her. He went to
Halifax and did deeds with the council—for he secured further and
greater grants of land for himself and further and greater grants of
land for Giles de Lamourie, with compensations for the burnings which
English rule should have prevented, and with, last of all, an English
guard for Grand Pré, in order that scalps of English inclination might
be secure upon their owners’ heads. All this was wise, and indeed plain
sense—better than fighting. And he remains at Grand Pré, and waits upon
Mademoiselle de Lamourie, patient on crumbs.
“In June things happened, while you slept here. The English came in
ships, sailing up Chignecto water and startling the slow fools at
Beauséjour. The English landed on their own side of the Missiguash. The
black ruins of Beaubassin cried out to them for vengeance on La Garne.”
(The name, upon his lips, snarled like a wolf.)
“Vergor, the public thief, called in the men of the villages to help his
garrison. Beauséjour was a nest of beavers mending the walls—but not
till the torrent was already tearing through. The invaders, wading the
deep mud, forced the Missiguash, and drove back the white-coat
regiments. They seized the long ridge behind the fort, and set up their
batteries. Fort guns and field guns bowled at each other across the
meadows.
“Meanwhile the English governor at Halifax sent for the heads of the
villages, the householders of Piziquid, Grand Pré, Annapolis. He said
the time was come, the final time, and they must swear fealty to King
George of England. He bade them choose between that oath, with peace, or
a fate he did not name. A few, wise like Giles de Lamourie, took oath.
The rest feared La Garne, trusted France, and accounted England an old
woman. They refused, and went home.
“The siege went on, and many balls were wasted. The English were all on
one side of the fort, so those of the garrison who got tired of being
besieged walked out the other side and went home. These were the
philosophers. Vergor lived in his bomb-proof casemate, and was at ease.
But one morning while he sat at breakfast with other officers a shell
came through the roof and killed certain of them.
“That ended it. If the bomb-proof was not bomb-proof, Vergor might get
hurt. He capitulated. His officers broke their swords, but in vain. La
Garne spat upon him.”
Here he stopped, his eyes veered, and his face twisted. In a strange
voice he went on:
“In La Garne yet flickers one spark of good—his courage. Till that is
eaten out by his sins he lives, not being fully ripe for the final
hell.”
He stopped again, moistening his lips with his tongue.
I put my hand to my head.
“Give me a drink of water, I pray you!” said I to divert him, fearing
lest that swift and succinct narrative had come to an end.
He gave it to me, and in a moment began again.
“So Beauséjour fell,” said he. “La Garne left early, for him the English
wanted to hang. The rest marched out with honours of war. The English
found them an inconvenience as prisoners, and sent them to Louisbourg.
And Beauséjour is now Fort Cumberland.”
“So fades the glory of France from Acadie—forever!” I murmured, weighed
down with prescience.
“Just as it was fading,” continued Grûl, with a hint of the cynic in his
voice, “your cousin, Marc de Mer, came from Quebec with despatches. The
garrison was marching out. He, being already out, judged it unnecessary
to go in. He took boat down Chignecto water, and up through Minas to
Grand Pré. Here he busied himself with your uncle’s affairs, laying
aside his uniform and passing unmolested as a villager.
“For a little there was stillness. Then the great doom fell.
“To every settlement went English battalions. What I saw at Grand Pré is
what others saw at Annapolis, Piziquid, Baie Verte. An English colonel,
one Winslow, smooth and round and rosy of countenance, angry and
anxious, little in love with his enterprise, summoned the men of Grand
Pré to meet him in the chapel and hear the last orders of the king.
There had been “last orders” before, and they had exploded harmlessly
enough. The men of Grand Pré went—and your cousin Marc, having a
restless curiosity, went with them. Thereupon the doors were shut. They
were as rats in a trap, a ring of fire about them.
“They learned the king’s decree clearly enough. They were to be put on
ships,—they, their families, such household gear as there might be place
for,—and carried very far from their native fields, and scattered among
strangers of an alien speech and faith.
“Well, the mountains had fallen upon them. Who could move? They lay in
the chapel, and their hearts sweat blood. Daily their weeping women,
their wide-eyed children, came bringing food. But the ships were not
ready. The agony has dragged all summer. At last two small ship-loads
are gone; the crowd is less in the chapel; some houses stand empty in
the village, waiting to burn. The year grows old; the task is nearly
done.”
There was a dark silence.
“Has my cousin Marc gone yet?” I asked heavily.
“He waits and wastes in the chapel.”
“And my almost-father, Father Fafard?”
“No,” said Grûl, “his trouble is but for others. He has ever counselled
men to keep their oaths. He has opposed a face of steel to Quebec
intrigue. The English reverence him. He blesses those who are taken
away. He comforts those who wait.”
Of Yvonne I had no excuse for asking more. What more I would know I must
go and learn. To go and learn I must get strong. To get strong I must
sleep. I turned my face to the wall.