The Divine Right of Queens
When Yvonne stood at last upon the deck of the ship of her desire, her
heart, without warning, began a far too vehement gratulation. Her cloak
oppressed her. She dropped it, and stood leaning upon Mother Pêche’s
shoulder. She grew suddenly pale, breathing with effort; and one hand
caught at her side.
The apparition made a wondrous stir on deck. To those who had ever heard
of such a being, it appeared that the Witch of the Moon, in all the
indescribable magic of her beauty, had been translated into flesh. Men
seemed upon the instant to find an errand to that quarter of the ship.
Captain Eliphalet Wrye, who had been watching with great unconcern a
transfer whose significance seemed to him quite ordinary, came forward
in haste, eager to do the honours of his ship, and marvelling beyond
measure at such a guest. Captain Eliphalet had traded much among the
French of Acadie and New France. He knew well the difference between the
seigneurial and the _habitant_ classes; and this knowledge was just what
he needed to make his bewilderment complete.
“Here’s the captain of the ship coming to see you, _chérie_!” whispered
Mother Pêche, squeezing the girl’s arm significantly. Yvonne steadied
herself with an effort, and turned a brilliant glance upon this
important stranger. With his rough blue reefing-jacket, extremely broad
shoulders, and excessively broad yellow-brown beard, Captain Eliphalet
looked to her just as she thought a merchant-captain ought to look. She
therefore approved of him, and awaited his approach with a smile that
put him instantly at ease. As he came up, however, hat in hand and with
considered phrases on his lips, the old woman forestalled him.
“Let me present you, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said she, stepping forward
with a courtesy, “to my mistress, Mademoiselle de Lamourie, of Lamourie
Place.”
“It is but ashes, alas! monsieur,” interrupted Yvonne, holding out her
hand.
“The ship is yours, Mademoiselle de Lamourie!” he exclaimed, and bowed
with a gesture of relinquishing everything to her command. It was not
for nothing Captain Eliphalet had visited Montreal and Quebec.
Yvonne dropped her lids for a second, and shook her head rebukingly.
“That is not English, monsieur,” she protested, “but it is very nice of
you. I should not know what to do with a ship just now; but I like our
little pleasant French fictions.”
Captain Eliphalet, however, could be French for a moment only.
“But you, mademoiselle, you—how comes such a one as you to be sailing
away into exile?”
Yvonne’s long lashes drooped again, and this time did not rise so
quickly.
“I have reason to think, monsieur,” she answered gravely, “that dear
friends and kinsfolk of mine are on this ship, themselves going,
fettered, into exile. I could not stay behind and let them go so. But
enough of myself, monsieur, for the present,” she went on, speaking more
rapidly. “I want to ease the anxieties of these poor souls who have come
with me. Is there among your prisoners a young man known as ‘Petit
Joliet’? Here is his mother come to look for him.”
Captain Eliphalet summoned a soldier who stood near, and put the
question to him in English.
“There is one by the name of Franse Joliet on the roll, captain,”
answered the red-coat, saluting.
“That’s he! That’s my boy!” cried his mother, catching the name. She had
been waiting close by with a strained, fixed face, which now went to
pieces in a medley of smiles and tears, like a reflection on still water
suddenly broken. She clutched Yvonne’s hands, blessed and kissed them,
and then rushed off vaguely as if to find Petit Joliet in durance behind
some pile of ropes or water-butt.
“And Lenoir—Tamin Lenoir,” continued Yvonne, her voice thrilling with
joy over her task, “and Michel Savarin. Are they, too, in the hold?”
“Yes, miss,” said the soldier, saluting again, and never taking his eyes
from her face. She turned to the two women in their restless fringe of
clingers; and they, more sober because more hampered in their delight,
thanked her devoutly, and moved off to learn what more they could
elsewhere.
Meanwhile another figure had drawn near—a figure not unknown to Yvonne’s
eyes.
When she first appeared Lieutenant Shafto, the English officer in
command of the guard, was pacing the quarter deck, stiffly remote and
inexpressibly bored. He had two ambitions in life—the one, altogether
laudable and ordinary, to be a good officer in the king’s service; the
other, more distinguished and uncommon, to be quoted as an example of
dress and manners to his fellow-men. In London he had achieved in this
direction sufficient success to establish him steadfastly in his
purpose. Ordered to Halifax with his regiment, he had there found the
field for his talent sorely straitened. At Grand Pré, far worse: it was
reduced to the dimensions of a back-door plot. Here on shipboard it
seemed wholly to have vanished. Nevertheless, for practice, and for the
preservation of a civil habit, he had clung to his niceties. Now, when
he saw Yvonne, his first thought was to thank Heaven he had been as
particular with his toilet that morning as if about to walk down
Piccadilly.
He fitted his glass to his eye.
“Gad!” he said to himself, “it really is!”
He removed the glass, and giving it a more careful readjustment, stared
again.
“Gad!” said he, “it is none other! A devilish fine girl! She couldn’t be
beat in all London for looks or wits. What does it mean? Given that cad
Anderson the slip, eh? Discriminating, begad!”
Lieutenant Shafto had a definite contempt for Anderson, as a man who sat
by the fire when he might have been fighting. If a man fought well or
dressed well, Shafto could respect him. Anderson did neither. He was
therefore easily placed.
“There’s something rich behind this,” went on the lieutenant to himself.
“But, gad! there is a savour to this voyage, after all. There’s a pair
of bright eyes—devilish bright eyes—to dress for!”
He hitched his sword to a more gallant angle as he stepped primly down
the deck. He gave the flow of his coat an airy curve. He would have felt
of his queue had he dared, to assure himself it was dressed to a nicety.
He glanced with complaisance at his correct and entirely spotless
ruffles. And by this he was come to mademoiselle’s side, where he stood,
bowing low, his cap held very precisely across his breast.
“The honour, mademoiselle! Ah, the marvel of it!” he murmured. “The ship
is transfigured. I was but now anathematizing it as a most especial
hell: I looked up, and it had become a paradise—a paradise of one fair
spirit!”
Yvonne looked at him with searching eyes as he delivered this fantasia,
then a trifle imperiously gave him her hand to kiss.
She had spoken passingly with him twice or thrice before, at Father
Fafard’s. She understood him—read him through: a man absurd, but never
contemptible; to be quite heartily disliked, yet wholly trusted; to be
laughed at, yet discreetly; vain, indomitable, a fighter and a fop;
living for the field and the hair-dresser. Here was a man whom she would
use, yet respect him the while.
“You do nobly, monsieur,” she said, with a faint, enigmatic smile, “to
thus keep the light of courtly custom burning clear, even in our
darknesses.”
“There can be no darkness where your face shines, mademoiselle,” he
cried, delighted not less with himself than with her.
It was a little obvious, but she accepted it graciously with a look, and
he went on:
“I beg that you will let me place my cabin at your disposal during the
voyage. You will find it narrow, but roomy enough to accommodate you and
your maid.”
Here Captain Eliphalet interfered.
“I claim the privilege, mademoiselle,” said he, with some vexation in
his tones, “of giving you the captain’s cabin, which is by all odds the
most commodious place on the ship—the _only_ place at all suitable for
you.”
“The captain is right,” said Shafto reluctantly. “His cabin is the more
comfortable; and I beg him to share mine.”
In this way, then, the difficulty was settled, and Yvonne found herself
in quarters of unwonted comfort for a West India trader, Captain
Eliphalet being given to luxury beyond the most of his Puritan kin. She
was contented with her accomplishment so far as it went; and having two
gallant men to deal with she felt already secure of her empire. She read
approbation, too, in those enigmatic eyes of Mother Pêche, with their
whites ever glancing and gleaming. Moreover, as she sat down to
luncheon, to the condiment of a bounding heart and so much appetite as
might nourish a pee-wee bird, she had two points gained to elate her.
First, in passing the open hatchway which, as Captain Eliphalet told
her, led to the prisoners’ quarters, she had shaken lightly from her
lips enough clear laughter to reach, as she guessed, those ears attuned
to hear it; and second, she had the promises both of the broad-bearded
captain and the beautifully barbered lieutenant, that her _cousins_,
Monsieur de Mer and Monsieur Paul Grande, should be brought on deck to
see her that very day.
“You should be very good to them, gentlemen,” she said demurely, picking
with dubious fork at brown strips of toasted herring on her plate. “My
cousin Marc especially. _He_ is half _English_, you know. He has the
most adorable English wife, from Boston, with red hair wherein he easily
persuades himself that the sun rises and sets.”
“If you would have us love them for your sake, mademoiselle, love them
not too much yourself,” laughed the broad-bearded Captain Eliphalet, in
vast good-humour; but the admirable lieutenant murmured:
“There is no hair but black hair—black with somehow a glint in it when
the sun strikes—so.”
And Mother Pêche, passing behind them and catching a flash from Yvonne’s
eye, smiled many thoughts.