A Woman’s Privilege
I did not sleep that night—not one eye-wink—in the hold of the New
England ship. Neither could I think, nor even greatly suffer. Rather I
lay as it were numbly weltering in my despair. What if I had known all
that was going on meanwhile in that other ship, a league behind us,
sailing under the lurid sky!
The events which I am now about to set down were not, as will be seen,
matter of my own experience. I tell what I have inferred and what has
been told me—but told me from such lips and in such fashion that I may
indeed be said to have lived it all myself. It is more real to me than
if my own eyes had followed it. It is sometimes true that we may see
with the eyes of others—of one other—more vividly than with our own.
In the biggest house of that “Colony of Compromise” on the hill—the
house nearest the chapel prison—a girl stood at a south window watching
the flames in the village below. The flames, at least, she seemed to be
watching. What she saw was the last little column of prisoners marching
away from the chapel; and her teeth were set hard upon her under lip.
She was not thinking; she was simply clarifying a confused resolve.
White and thin, and with deep purple hollows under her great eyes, she
was nevertheless not less beautiful than when, a few months before,
joyous mirth had flashed from her every look and gesture, as colored
lights from a fire-opal. She still wore on her small feet moccasins of
Indian work; but now, in winter, they were of heavy, soft, white
caribou-skin, laced high upon the ankles, and ornamented with quaint
pattern of red and green porcupine quills. Her skirt and bodice were of
creamy woollen cloth; and over her shoulders, crossed upon her breast
and caught in her girdle, was spread a scarf of dark-yellow silk. The
little black lace shawl was flung back from her head, and her hands,
twisted tightly in the ends of it, were for a wonder quite still—tensely
still, with an air of final decision. Close beside her, flung upon the
back of a high wooden settee, lay a long, heavy, hooded cloak of grey
homespun, such as the peasant women of Acadie were wont to wear in
winter as an over-garment.
A door behind her opened, but Yvonne did not turn her head. George
Anderson came in. He came to the window, and tried to look into her
eyes. His face was grave with anxiety, but touched, too, with a curious
mixture of impatience and relief. He spoke at once, in a voice both
tender and tolerant.
“There go the last of them, poor chaps!” he said. “Captain Grande went
some hours ago—quite early. I pray, dear, that now he is gone—to exile
indeed, but in safety—you will recover your peace of mind, and throw off
this morbid mood, and be just a little bit kinder to—some people!” And
he tried, with an awkward timidity, to take her hand.
She turned upon him a sombre, compassionate gaze, but far-off, almost as
if she saw him in a dream.
“Don’t touch me—just now,” she said gently, removing her hand. “I must
go out into the pastures for air, I think. All this stifles me! No,
alone, _alone_!” she added more quickly, in answer to an entreaty in his
eyes. “But, oh, I am sorry, so sorry beyond words, that I cannot seem
kind to—some people! Good-by.”
She left the room, and closed the door behind her. The door shut
smartly. It sounded like a proclamation of her resolve. So—that was
settled! In an instant her whole demeanour changed. A fire came back
into her eyes, and she stepped with her old, soft-swaying lightness. In
the room which she now entered sat her father and mother. The withered
little reminiscence of Versailles watched at a window-side, her black
eyes bright with interest, her thin lips slightly curved with an acerb
and cynical compassion. But Giles de Lamourie sat with his back to the
window, his face heavy and grey.
“This is too awful!” he said, as Yvonne came up to him, and, bending
over, kissed him on the forehead and the lips.
“It is like a nightmare!” she answered. “But, would you believe it,
papa, the very shock is doing me good? The suspense—_that_ kills! But I
feel more like myself than I have for weeks. I must go out, breathe, and
walk hard in the open.”
De Lamourie’s face lightened.
“Thou _art_ better, little one,” said he. “But why go alone at such a
time? Where’s George?”
But Yvonne was already at her mother’s side, kissing her, and did not
answer her father’s question; which, indeed, needed no answer, as he had
himself seen Anderson go into the inner room and not return.
“But where will you go, child?” queried her mother. “There are no longer
any left of your sick and your poor and your husbandless to visit.”
“But I will be my own sick, little mamma,” she cried nervously, “and my
own poor—and my own husbandless. I will visit myself. Don’t be troubled
for me, dearies!” she added, in a tender voice. “I am so much better
already.”
The next moment she was gone. The door shut loudly after her.
“Wilful!” said her mother.
“Yes, more like she used to be. Much better!” exclaimed Giles de
Lamourie, rising and looking out at the fires in a moment of brief
absent-mindedness. “Yes, much better, George,” he added, as Anderson
appeared from the inner room.
But the Englishman’s face was full of discomfort. “I wish she would not
go running out alone this way,” said he.
“Curious that she should prefer to be alone, George,” said Madame de
Lamourie, with deliberate malice. She was beginning to dislike this man
who so palpably could not give her daughter happiness.
* * * * *
Yvonne, meanwhile, was speeding across the open fields, in the teeth of
the wind. The ground was hard as iron, but there was little snow—only a
dry, powdery covering deep enough to keep the stubble from hurting her
feet. She ran straight for the tiny cabin of Mother Pêche, trusting to
find her not yet gone. None of the houses at the eastern end of the
village were as yet on fire. That of Mother Pêche stood a little apart,
in a bushy pasture-lot. Yvonne found the low door swinging wide, the
house deserted; but there were red embers still on the hearth, whereby
she knew the old woman had not been long away.
The empty house seemed to whisper of fear and grief from every corner.
She turned away and ran toward the landing, her heart chilled with a
sudden apprehension that she might be too late. Before she was clear of
the bushes, however, she stopped with a cry. A man who seemed to have
risen out of the ground stood right in her path. He was of a sturdy
figure, somewhat short, and clad in dull-coloured homespun of peasant
fashion. At sight of her beauty and her alarm his woollen cap was
snatched from his head and his cunning face took on the utmost
deference.
“Have no fear of me, mademoiselle,—Mademoiselle de Lamourie, if I may
hazard a guess from your beauty,” said he smoothly. “It is I who am in
peril, lest you should reveal me to my enemies.”
“Who are you, monsieur?” she asked, recovering her self-possession and
fretting to be gone.
“A spy,” he whispered, “in the pay of the King of France, who must know,
to avenge them later, the wrongs of his people here in Acadie. I have
thrown myself on your mercy, that I might ask you if the families who
have found favour with the English will remain here after this work is
done, or be taken elsewhere. I pray you inform me.”
“Believe me, I do not know their plans, monsieur,” answered Yvonne. “And
I beg you to let me pass, for my haste is desperate.”
“Let me escort you to the edge of the bush, then, mademoiselle,” said he
courteously, stepping from the path. “And not to delay you, I will
question you as we go, if you will permit. Is the Englishman, Monsieur
George Anderson, still here?”
“He is, monsieur. But now leave me, I entreat you.”
She was wild with fear lest the stranger’s presence should frustrate her
design.
The man smiled.
“I dare go no farther with you than the field edge, mademoiselle,” said
he regretfully. “To be caught would mean”—and he put his hand to his
throat with ghastly suggestion.
Relieved from this anxiety, Yvonne paused when she reached the open.
“I must ask you a question in turn, monsieur,” said she. “Have you
chanced to learn on which of the two ships Captain de Mer and Captain
Grande were placed?”
“I have been so fortunate,” replied the stranger, and the triumph in his
thought found no expression in his deferential tone or deep-set eyes.
Here was the point he had been studying to approach. Here was a chance
to worst a foe and win favour from the still powerful, though
far-distant, Black Abbé.
He paused, and Yvonne had scarce breath to cry “Which?”
“They are in the ship this way,” he said calmly. “The one still at
anchor.”
“Thank you, monsieur!” she cried, with a passion in the simple words;
and was straightway off across the red-lit snow, her cloak streaming out
behind her.
“The beauty!” said the man to himself, lurking in the bushes to follow
her with his eyes. “Pity to lie to her. But she’s leaving—and that stabs
Anderson; and she’s going on the wrong ship—and that stabs Grande. Both
at a stroke. Not bad for a day like this.”
And with a look of hearty satisfaction on his face Le Fûret[1] (for
Vaurin’s worthy lieutenant it was) withdrew to safer covert.
Footnote 1:
None of Vaurin’s villains were taken by the English at the time of the
great capture, for none dared come within a league of an English
proclamation lest it should turn into a rope to throttle them.—P. G.
Le Fûret smiled to himself; but Yvonne almost laughed aloud as she ran,
deaf to the growing roar at the farther end of the village and heedless
of the flaring crimson that made the air like blood. The wharf, when she
reached it, was in a final spasm of confusion, and shouted orders, and
sobbings. Now, she grew cautious. Drawing her cloak close about her
face, she pushed through the crowd toward the boat.
Just then a firm hand was laid upon her arm, and a very low voice said
in her ear,—with less surprise, to be sure, than on a former occasion by
Gaspereau lower ford,—
“_You_ here, Mademoiselle de Lamourie?”
Her heart stood still; and she turned upon him a look of such imploring,
desperate dismay that Lieutenant Waldron without another word drew her
to one side. Then she found voice.
“Oh, if you have any mercy, any pity, do not betray me,” she whispered.
“But what does this mean? It is my duty to ask,” he persisted, still
puzzled.
“I am trying to save my life, my soul, everything, before it’s too
late!” she said.
“Oh,” said he, comprehending suddenly. “Well, I think you had better not
tell me anything more. I think it is _not_ my duty to say anything about
this meeting. You may be doing right. I wish you good fortune and
good-by, mademoiselle!”—and, to her wonder, he was off among the crowd.
Still trembling from the encounter, she hastened to the boat.
She found it already half laden; and in the stern, to her delight, she
saw Mother Pêche’s red mantle. She was on the point of calling to her,
but checked herself just in time. The boat was twenty paces from the
wharf-edge; and those twenty paces were deep ooze, intolerable beyond
measure to white moccasins. Absorbed in her one purpose, which was to
get on board the ship without delay, she had not looked to one side or
the other, but had regarded women, children, soldiers, boatmen, as so
many bushes to be pushed through. Now, however, letting her hood part a
little from her face, she glanced hither and thither with her quick
imperiousness, and then from her feet to that breadth of slime, as if
demanding an instant bridge. The next thing she knew she was lifted by a
pair of stout arms and carried swiftly through the mud to the boatside.
After a moment’s hot flush of indignation at the liberty, she realized
that this was by far the best possible solution of the problem, as there
was no bridge forthcoming. She looked up gratefully, and saw that her
cavalier was a big red-coat, with a boyish, jolly face. As he gently set
her down in the boat she gave him a radiant look which brought the very
blood to his ears.
“Thank you very much indeed!” she said, in an undertone. “I don’t know
how I should have managed but for your kindness. But really it is very
wrong of you to take such trouble about _me_; for I see these other poor
things have had to wade through the mud, and their skirts are terrible.”
The big red-coat stood gazing at her in open-mouthed adoration,
speechless; but a comrade, busy in the boat stowing baggage, answered
for him.
“That’s all right, miss,” said he. “Don’t you worry about Eph. He’s been
carryin’ children all day long, an’ some few women because they was
sick. He’s arned the right to carry one woman jest fer her beauty.”
In some confusion Yvonne turned away, very fearful of being recognized.
She hurriedly squeezed herself down in the stern by Mother Pêche. The
old dame’s hand sought hers, furtively, under the cloak.
“I went to look for you, mother,” she whispered into the red shawl.
“I knew you’d come, poor heart, dear heart!” muttered the old woman,
with a swift peering of her strange eyes into the shadow of the girl’s
hood.
“I waited for you till they _dragged_ me away. But I knew you’d come.”
“How did you know that, mother?” whispered Yvonne, delighted to find
that this momentous act of hers had seemed to some one just the expected
and inevitable thing. “Why, I didn’t know it myself till half an hour
ago.”
Mother Pêche looked wise and mysterious.
“I knew it,” she reiterated. “Why, dear heart, I knew all along you
loved him.”
And at last, strange as it may appear, this seemed to Yvonne de
Lamourie, penniless, going into exile with the companionship of misery,
an all-sufficient and all-explicative answer.