The Hour of her Desolation
Returning from a brief word with the ship-captain,—a very broad-bearded,
broad-chested man, in a very rough blue coat,—Lieutenant Waldron passed
us hastily, and signified that it was all right. With this sanction we
pushed along the crowded deck in order to gain a post of vantage at the
bow. The vessel, whose hold was now to be our new and narrow cage, was
one of those ordinarily engaged in the West Indian trade. Our noses told
us this. To the savours of fish and tar which clung in her timbers she
added a foreign tang of molasses, rum, and coffee. As we stumbled up the
cluttered deck, lacking the balance of free hands, these shippy smells
were crossed in curious, pathetic fashion by the homely odours of the
blankets, clothes, pillows, and other household stuff that lay about
waiting for storage. Here a woman sat stolidly upon her own pile, with a
mortgage on the future so long as she kept her bedding in possession;
and there a youngster, already homesick, for his wide-hearthed cabin,
sobbed heavily, with his face buried in an old coat of his father’s.
For hours, in the bitter cold, we held our post in the bow of the ship
and watched the boats go back and forth. Of the old mother of Petit
Joliet we saw nothing. We judged perforce that she had been moved early
and carried to the other ship, which swung at anchor a little up the
channel. We were able—I say we, though Marc did all, I being, as it
were, drowned in my own dejection—we were able to be of service in
divers instances. When, for example, young Violet was brought aboard
with another boat-load from the chapel prison, we made haste to tell the
guards that we had seen his mother and sisters taken to the other ship.
As a consequence, when the boat went back to the wharf it carried young
Violet; so he and his were not divided in their exile.
By the very next boat there came to us a black-browed, white-lipped
woman, from whose dry eyes the tears seemed all drained out. She carried
a babe-at-breast, while two thin little ones clung to her homespun
skirt. As soon as she reached the deck she stared around in wild
expectation, as if she thought to find her husband waiting to receive
her. Not seeing him, she straightway fainted in a heap. It chanced I
knew the woman’s face. She was the wife of one Caspar Besnard, of
Pereau, whom I had seen taken, early in the day, to the other ship. He
was conspicuous by reason of having red hair, a marvel in Acadie; and
therefore my memory had retained him, though he concerned me not. Now,
however, he did concern me much. A few words to the officer of the
guard, and the poor woman, with her children, was transferred to where
she doubtless found her husband.
Such cases justified, in our jailers’ eyes, the favour that had been
shown us. Meanwhile our ship had filled up. We had seen Long Philibert
and La Mouche brought aboard, but had not spoken with them. “Time for
that later,” Marc had said. I had watched for Petit Joliet’s mother; and
I had watched eagerly for old Mother Pêche; but in vain. While yet the
boats were plying, heavy laden, between the shore and the other ship, we
found ourselves ready for departure. Our boats were swung aboard; and
the English _Yeo, heave ho!_ arose as the sailors shoved on the capstan.
Lieutenant Waldron, after an all but wordless farewell, went ashore in
the gig with two soldiers. The rest of the red-coats stayed aboard. They
had been reënforced by a fresh squad who were marched down late to the
landing. These, plainly, were to be our guard during the voyage; and I
saw with a sort of vague resentment that a tall, foppish exquisite of an
officer, known to me by sight, was to command this guard. He was one
Lieutenant Shafto, whom we had seen two or three times at the chapel
prison; and I think all disliked him for a certain elaborate loftiness
in his air. It came to my mind dimly that I should well rejoice to cross
swords with him, and I hinted as much to Marc.
“Who knows?” said my unruffled cousin; “we may live to see him look less
complacent.” His smile had a meaning which I could not fathom. I could
see no ground for his sanguine satisfaction; and I dared not question
where some enemy might overhear. I thought no more of it, therefore, but
relapsed into my apathy. As we slipped down the tide I saw, in a
boat-load just approaching the other ship, a figure with a red shawl
wrapped round head and shoulders. This gave me a pang, as I had hoped to
have Mother Pêche with me, to talk to me of Yvonne and help me to build
up the refuge of a credulous hope. But since even that was denied
me—well, it was nothing, after all, and I was a child! I turned my eyes
upon the house, far up the ridge, where the Lamouries had lodging. It
was one of four, standing well aloof from the rest of the village; and I
knew they all were occupied by those prudent ones of the neighbourhood
who had been wise in time and now stood safe in English favour. The doom
of Grand Pré, I knew, would turn aside from them.
But on the emptied and desolated village it was even now descending.
Marc and I, unnoticed in our place, were free to watch. So dire was even
yet the confusion on our deck, so busy seamen and soldiers alike, that
we were quite forgotten for a time. The early winter dark was gathering
upon Blomidon and the farther hills; but there was to be no dark that
night by the mouth of Gaspereau.
The house of Petit Joliet, upon the hill, burned long alone. It was
perhaps a signal to the troops at Piziquid, twenty miles away, telling
them that the work at Grand Pré was done. Not till late in the afternoon
was the torch set to the village itself. Then smoke arose suddenly on
the westernmost outskirts, toward the Habitants dyke. The wind being
from the southeast, the fire spread but slowly against it. As the smoke
drove low the flames started into more conspicuous brilliance, licking
lithely over and under the rolling cloud that strove to smother them.
These empty houses burned for the most part with a clear, light flame;
but the barns, stored with hay and straw, vomited angry red, streaked
with black. Up the bleak hillside ran the terrified cattle, with wildly
tossing horns. At times, even on shipboard, we caught their bellowings.
They had been turned loose, of course, before the fires were started,
but had remained huddled in the familiar barnyards until this horrible
and inexplicable cataclysm drove them forth. Far up the slope we saw
them turn and stand at gaze.
In an hour we observed that the wharf was empty, and the other ship
hoisting sail. Then the fires sprang up in every part of the village at
once. They ran along the main street below the chapel; but they came not
very near the chapel itself, for all the buildings in its immediate
neighbourhood had been long ago removed, and it stood in a safe
isolation, towering in white solemnity over the red tumult of ruin.
“The chapel will be a camp to-night, instead of a prison,” said Marc at
my ear, his grave eyes fixed and wide. “It will be the last thing to
go—it and the Colony of Compromise yonder up the hill.”
“But who shall blame them for the compromise?” I protested, unwilling to
hear censure that touched the father of Yvonne.
Marc shrugged his shoulders at this. He never was a lover of vain
argument.
“I wonder where the Black Abbé is at this moment!” was what he said,
with no apparent relevancy.
“Not yet in his own place, I fear!” said I.
“The implication is a pious one,” said Marc. “Yonder is the work of him,
and of no other. He should be roasting now in the hottest of it.”
I really, at this moment, cared little, and was at loss for reply. But a
bullying roar of a voice just behind us saved me the necessity of
answering.
“Here, you two! What are ye doin’ here on deck? Git, now! Git, quick!”
The speaker was a big, loose-jointed man, ill-favoured and palpably
ill-humoured. I was pleased to note that the middle two of his obtrusive
front teeth were wanting, and that his nose was so misshapen as to
suggest some past calamitous experience. As I learned afterwards, this
was our ship’s first mate. I was too dull of mood—too sick, in fact—to
be instantly wroth at his insolence. I looked curiously at him; but Marc
answered in a quiet voice:
“Merely waiting here, sir, on parole and by direction, till the proper
authorities are ready to take us below!” And he thrust out his manacled
hands to show how we were conditioned.
“Well, here’s proper authority, ye’ll find out. Git, er I’ll jog ye!”
And he made a motion to take me by the collar.
I stepped aside and faced him. I looked him in the eyes with a sudden
rage so deadly that he must have felt it, for he hesitated. I cared
nothing then what befell me, and would have smashed him with my
iron-locked wrist had he touched me, or else so tripped him and fallen
with him that we should have gone overboard together. But he was a brute
of some perception, and his hesitancy most likely saved us both. It gave
Marc time to shout—“Guards! Guards! Here! Prisoner escaping!”
Instantly along the red-lit deck came soldiers running—three of them.
The mate had grabbed a belaying-pin, but stood fingering it, uncertain
of his status in relation to the soldiers.
“Corporal,” said Marc ceremoniously to one of them, discerning his rank
by the stripes on his sleeve, “pardon the false alarm. There was no
prisoner escaping. We were here on parole, by the favour of Lieutenant
Waldron—as you yourself know, indeed, for we helped you this afternoon
in getting scattered families together. But this man—we don’t know who
he is—was brutal, and threatening violence in spite of our defenceless
state. Please take us in charge!”
“Certainly, Captain de Mer,” said the man promptly. “I was just about
coming for you!”
Then he turned to the mate with an air of triumphant aversion, in which
lurked, perhaps, a consciousness of conflicting and ill-defined
authorities.
“No belaying-pins for the prisoners!” he growled. “Keep them for yer
poor swabs o’ sailor lads.”
As we marched down the deck under guard the sails overhead were all
aglow, the masts and spars gleamed ruddily. The menacing radiance was by
this time filling the whole heaven, and the small, quick-running surges
flashed under it with a sinister sheen. As we reached the open hatch I
turned for a last look at Grand Pré.
The whole valley was now as it were one seething lake of smoke and
flame, the high, half-shrouded spire of the chapel rising impregnable on
the further brink. The conflagration was fiercest now along the eastern
half of the main street, toward the water side. Even at this distance we
heard the great-lunged roar of it. High over the chaos, like a vaulted
roof upheld by the Gaspereau Ridge, arched an almost stationary covering
of smoke-cloud, impenetrable, and red as blood along its under side. The
smoke of the burning was carried off toward the Habitants and
Canard—where there was nothing left to burn. Between the red stillness
above and the red turbulence below, apart and safe on their high slope,
gleamed the cottages of the Colony of Compromise. With what eyes, I
wondered, does my beloved look out upon this horror? Do they strain
sadly after the departing ships—or does the Englishman stand by and
comfort her?
As I got clumsily down the ladder the last thing I saw—and the picture
bit its lines in strange fashion on my memory—was the other ship, a
league behind us, black-winged against the flame.
Then the hatch closed down. By the glimmer of a swinging lanthorn we
groped our way to a space where we two could lie down side by side. Marc
wanted to talk, but I could not. There was a throbbing in my head, a
great numbness on my heart. In my ears the voice of the Minas waves
assailing the ship’s timbers seemed to whisper of the end of things.
Grand Pré was gone. I was being carried, sick and in chains, to some
far-off land of strangers. My beloved was cared for by another.
“No!” said I in my heart (I thought at first I had spoken it aloud, but
Marc did not stir), “when my foot touches land my face shall turn back
to seek her face again, though it be from the ends of earth. It is vain,
but I will not give her up. I am not dead yet—though hope is!”
As I thought the words there came humming through my brain that foolish
saying of Mother Pêche’s. Again I saw her on that spring evening bending
over my palm and murmuring—“_Your heart’s desire is near your death of
hope_!”
“Here is my death of hope, mother,” said I to myself. “But where is my
heart’s desire?”
And with that I laughed harshly—aloud.
It was an ill sound in that place of bitterness, and heads were raised
to look at me. Marc asked, with a trace of apprehension in his voice:
“What’s the matter, Paul? Anything to laugh at?”
“Myself!” I muttered.
“The humour of the subject is not obvious,” said he curtly.