Fire in Ice
Some while after, as in my passing to and fro I went by the cabin for
the fiftieth time, my expectation came true: the door opened, and
Yvonne, close wrapped in her great cloak, stood beside me. I drew her
under the lee of the cabin, where the bitter wind blew less witheringly.
The first of dawn was just creeping bleakly up the sky, and the ship was
under way.
“You are cold, dear,” exclaimed Yvonne beneath her breath, catching my
hand in her two little warm ones; and, faith! I was, though I had not
had time to notice it till she bade me. The next moment, careless of the
eyes of La Mouche, who stood by the rail not ten paces off, she opened
her cloak, flung the folds of it about my neck, and drew my face down,
in that enchanted darkness, to the sweet warmth of hers.
There were no words. What could those vain things avail in such a
moment, when our pulses beat together, and our souls met at the lips,
and in silence was plighted that great troth which shall last, it is my
faith, through other lives than this? Then she drew softly away, and,
with eyes cast down, left me, and went back into her cabin.
I lifted my head. La Mouche stood by the rail, looking off across the
faintly lightening water. As I passed near him he turned and grasped my
hand hard.
“I am most glad for you, my captain!” he said quietly. But I saw that my
joy was an emphasis to his own sorrow, and his very lips were grey for
remembrance of the woman who had stricken him.
* * * * *
When it was full daylight we could see the other ship, a white speck on
the horizon far ahead. Long before noon she was out of sight. The wind
favouring us all day, before sunset we arrived off the grim portal
through which the great river of St. John, named by Champlain, empties
forth its floods into the sea. The rocky ridges that fence the haven
were crested gloriously with rose and gold, and toward this inviting
harbourage we steered—not without misgivings, however, for we knew not
the channel or the current. In this strait we received unlooked-for aid.
Captain Eliphalet, excited by some error in the course which we were
shaping, and all in a tremble lest his loved ship fall upon a reef,
offered his services as pilot. They were at once accepted. We knew he
was as incapable of a treachery as his situation was of turning a
treachery to profit. Himself he took the wheel; and on the slack of tide
he steered us up to a windless anchorage at the very head of the
harbour, beside the ruins of an old fort. The only sign of life was the
huts of a few Acadian fishermen, so miserable as to have been quite
overlooked by the doom that had descended on their race.
Our plan was to scatter the greater part of our company among the small
Acadian settlements up the river—at Jemseg, Pointe Ste. Anne, and
Medoctec; while the rest of us, the trained men who would be needed in
New France, accompanied by a half dozen women with daring and vitality
for such a journey, would make our way on sledges and snow-shoes
northward, over the Height of Land, down into the St. Lawrence valley,
and thence to Quebec.
The two carronades on the deck of our ship we dropped into the harbour.
We helped ourselves to all the arms and ammunition, with tools for the
building of our sledges, and such clothing as our prisoners could well
spare. Of the ship’s stores we left enough to carry the ship safely to
Boston. Yvonne gave Lieutenant Shafto a letter for her father and
mother, which he undertook to forward to Halifax at the earliest
opportunity. Then, three days after our arrival in the St. John, we
loosed our captives every one, bade Captain Eliphalet a less eventful
remainder to his voyage, and turned our back upon the huts of the
fishermen. We crossed the Kennebeccasis River on the ice, where it joins
the St. John, just back of the ridge which forms the northern rampart of
the harbour. Thence we pushed straight up the main river, keeping close
along the eastern shore.
The rough sledges which we had hastily thrown together were piled with
our stores. They carried also such of the women and children as were not
capable of enduring the march. The sledges ran easily on the level way
afforded by the river, which was now frozen to the depth of a foot. In
spots the ice was covered by a thin, hard-packed layer of snow; but for
the most part it had been swept clean by the wind.
For my own part, I drew a light sledge, of which I had myself directed
the construction, that it might be comfortable for Yvonne. It _was_
comfortable, with a back and arms, and well lined with blankets. But she
chose rather, for the most of the journey, to walk beside me, secretly
proud to show her activity and endurance. It was Mother Pêche who, under
strenuous protest, chiefly occupied my sledge. Her protests were vain
enough; for Yvonne told her quietly that if she would not let herself be
taken care of she would not trust her to face the Quebec journey, but
would leave her behind at Jemseg. Though the old dame was a witch,
Yvonne had the will to have her way; and protest ended.
As we marched, a little aside from the main body, Yvonne now laying her
mittened hand upon my arm, and now drawing with me upon the sledge-rope,
we had exhaustless themes of converse, but also seasons for that
revealing silence when the great things get themselves uttered between
two souls.
There were some practical matters, however, not without importance,
which silence was not competent to discuss.
“Do you know any one at the Jemseg settlement, Paul?” she chanced to ask
me, that first day of our marching.
“Yes,” said I, with significance, taking merciless advantage of the
question, “I know an excellent priest, dear heart!”
She reddened, and turned upon me deep eyes of reproach. But I was not
abashed.
“Am I too precipitate, sweet?” I asked. “But do not think so. I know you
will not. Consider all the strangeness of the situation, most dear, and
give me the right to guard you, to keep you, to show openly my reverence
and my love.”
As she did not reply, it was clear enough that she found my reasoning
cogent. I went on, with a kind of singing elation in my brain:
“Truly, in my eyes, you are my wife now, as—do you remember?—I dared to
call you that night as we came over the ridge, I to prison, you to—But
no! I will not think of that. In deed and in truth, dear, I believe that
God joined together us two, inalienably and forever, not months ago, but
years ago—that day in the orchard, when our spirits met in our eyes. The
material part of us was slow in awaking to the comprehension of that
mystery, but”—
“Speak for yourself, Paul,” she interrupted, with tantalizing
suggestion.
I stopped short, forgetting all my eloquence.
“And you loved me then—and knew it!” I exclaimed, in a voice poignant
with the realization of lost years.
She came very close against my side, and held my arm tightly, as she
said, in a voice ‘twixt mocking and caressing:
“I think I _might_ have known it, Paul, had you helped me the least
little bit—had the material part of you, let us say, been the least bit
quicker of comprehension.”
She forbore to hint at all that might have been different; but the
thought of it kept me long silent.
On the next day, about sunset, we reached the Jemseg settlement. That
same day Yvonne became my wife.