At Gaspereau Lower Ford
On the following day, being Tuesday, November 16, 1855, and my
twenty-seventh birthday, I went down to Grand Pré. I am thus precise
about the date, for I felt as I set forth that the issues of life and
death hung upon my going. Right here, it seemed to me, was a very
knife-edge of a day, which should sever and allot to me for all the
future my part of joy or ruin. Surely, thought I,—to justify my
expectation of colossal events,—I have not lain these long months dead,
that action, once more started, should dribble like a spent stream.
Therefore I went, like a careful strategist, equipped with all the
knowledge Grûl could give. I had planned how to reach Father Fafard, and
through him how to reach Yvonne. And as the day was to be a great one, I
thought well it should be a long one. I set out upon the palest promise
of daybreak.
My strength, under one compelling purpose, had come back; and it seemed
to me that I saw events and their chances with radiating clearness. So
up-strung were my nerves that the long tramp seemed over in a few
minutes, and I found myself, almost with surprise, at the lower ford of
the Gaspereau, just under the hill which backs Grand Pré. Here was the
thick wood wherein I planned to lie perdu, in the event of dangerous
passers. In a little while there came in view a woman, heavy-eyed and
dishevelled, carrying a basket of new-baked barley bread, very sweet to
smell. It was clear she was one with an interest in the prisoners at the
chapel. In such a case I could have no fear of stumbling upon a traitor.
I stepped out to her.
“Would that he, too,” said I significantly, “had gone to the woods in
time!”
Her eyes ran over with the ready and waiting tears; but she jerked her
apron jealously over the loaves, and looked at me with a touch of
resentment, as if to say, “Why had you such foresight, and not he?”
“He went to hear the reading, and they took him,” she moaned. “And who
will keep the little ones from starving in the winter coming on?”
“It is where I, too, would be now—in the chapel prison yonder,” said I
gently. “But I lay in the woods, wounded, too sick to go to the reading,
so I escaped.”
The resentment faded out. She saw that I was not one of those who shamed
her husband’s credulity. I might have been caught too, had I been given
the same chance.
“For the little ones, I pray you accept this silver, and count it a loan
to your husband in his prison,” said I, slipping two broad Spanish
pieces into her hand.
She looked grateful and astonished, but had no words ready.
“And do, I beg of you, a kindness to one in bitter need of it,” I went
on. “You know Father Fafard?”
Her face lightened with love.
“He grieves for me, thinking me dead,” said I. “Tell him, I beg of you,
that one who loves him waits to see him in the wood by the lower ford.”
Her face clouded with suspicion.
“How shall I know—how shall he know—you are honest?” she asked.
I was troubled.
“_You_ must judge by your woman’s wit,” said I. “And he will come. He
fears no one. But no, tell him Paul Grande waits at the lower ford.”
“The traitor!” she blazed out; and, recoiling, hurled the money in my
face. It stung strangely.
“You are wrong,” said I, in a low voice. “But as you will. Tell him, if
you will, that Paul Grande, the traitor, waits for him at the lower
ford. But if you do not tell him, be sure _he_ will not soon forgive
you. And for the money, he shall keep it for your children—and you will
be sorry to have unjustly accused me.”
She laughed with bitter mockery, and turned away.
“But I will tell him; that can do no harm,” she said. “I’ll tell him the
traitor who loves him waits at the ford.”
I withdrew into the wood, beyond all reason pained at the injustice.
The unpleasant peasant woman was as good as her word, however; for in
little more than the space of an hour I saw Father Fafard approaching.
Plainly he had come hot upon the instant.
“My dear, dear boy! Where have you been, and what suffered?” he cried,
catching me hard by the two arms, and looking into my eyes.
“It was Grûl saved me,” said I.
Beyond earshot, deep in the wood, where no wind hindered the noon sun
from warming a little open glade, I told my story briefly.
“Paul,” said he, when I had finished, “my heart has now the first
happiness it has known through all these dreadful months. But you must
slip out of this doomed country without an hour’s delay. Quebec, of
course! And then, when an end is made here, I will join you. Have you
money for the journey?”
I laughed softly.
“My plans are not quite formed. I must see Yvonne. Will you fetch her to
me?”
He rose in anger—a little forced, I thought.
“No!” said he.
“Then, I beseech you, give her a message from me, that I may see her for
a little this very day.”
“Paul,” he cried passionately, “it is a sin to talk of it. She has
pledged her troth. She is at peace. I will not have her disturbed.”
“Does she love him?” I asked.
“I—I suppose so. Or she will, doubtless,” he stammered.
“Oh, doubtless!” said I. “And meanwhile, does she show readiness to
carry out her promise? Does she listen kindly to her impatient lover—her
anxious father?”
“The Englishman has displeased her, for a time,” said he, “but that will
pass. She knows the duty of obedience; she respects the plighted word.
There can be but one ending; though you may succeed in making her very
unhappy—for a time.”
“I will make her very happy,” I said quietly, “so long as time endures
for her and me.”
He flashed round upon me with sharp scorn.
“What can _you_ do for her? You, hiding for your life, the ruined
upholder of a lost cause! Here she is safe, protected, wealth and
security before her. And with you?”
“_Life_, I think!” said I, rising too, and stretching out my arms. “But
listen, father,” I went on more lightly. “I am not so helpless. I have
some little _rentes_ in Montreal, you know. And moreover, I am not
planning to carry her off to-night. By no means anything so finely
irregular. I am not ready. Only, see her I will before I go. If you will
not help me, I will stay about this place, about your house indeed, till
I meet her. That is all. If you dote upon my going, you know the way to
speed me.”
His kind, round face puckered anxiously. But he hit upon a compromise.
“I will have no hand in it,” said he. “But if you are resolved to stay,
you may as well find her without loss of time. The house we occupy is
crowded, and she affects a solitary mood. She walks over the hill and
down this way, of an evening, to visit some unhappy ones along by the
river. You may see her, perhaps, to-night.”
I grasped his hand and kissed it, but he drew it away, vexed at himself.
“We will talk of other things now,” I said softly. “But do not be angry
if I say I love you, father.”
He smiled with an air of reproach; and thereafter talk we did through
hours, save for a little time when he was absent fetching me a meal. All
that Grûl had told me of the ruin of the French cause he told me in
another colour, and more besides of the doom of the Acadians—but upon
Yvonne’s name we touched no more by so much as the lightest breath.
At my cousin Marc’s rashness in going to the chapel he glanced with some
severity, grieving for the sorrow of the young wife at Quebec. But for
the English he had many good words—they were pitiful, he said, in the
act of carrying out cruel orders. And they neither robbed nor
terrorized. Not they, said he, but a wicked priest and the intriguers of
a rotten government at Quebec, were the scourge of Acadie.
When the sun got low over the Gaspereau Ridge he called to mind some
duties too long forgotten, and bade me farewell with a loving
wistfulness. I think, however, it was the imminent coming of Yvonne that
drove him away. He feared lest he should meet her, and in seeming to
know of my purpose seem to sanction it. I could not help believing in my
heart that in this matter, perhaps for the first time in his priesthood,
the kind curé’s conscience was a little tremulous in its admonitions.
I watched him out of sight; and then, posting myself in a coign of
vantage behind a great willow that overhung the stream, I waited with a
thumping heart, and with a misgiving that all other organs within my
frame had slumped away to nothing but a meagre and contemptible jelly.