But to me awaking in the raw of the morning, a prisoner, the comfort seemed less sure. All through the weary, soul-sapping weeks that followed, it paled and shrank, till nothing was left of it but a hopeless sort of obstinacy, so rooted in the central fibre-knots of my being that to the very teeth of fate my pulses still kept beating out the vow, “I will win! I will win!”
For cheer, all my cousin’s sober and well-considered confidence could not keep that in my heart. Of Yvonne, I could get not one word directly. I saw her hand in the fact that nothing more was heard of the charge of “spy” against me. Yet this benefit had a bitterness in it, for I knew she must have done it through Anderson. Intolerably did that knowledge grate.
Mother Pêche came daily to the wicket, but could never boast a message for my ear—and in this reticence of Yvonne’s I saw a hardness of resolve which made my heart sink. Father Fafard, 192too, came daily with food for me, and with many a little loving kindness; but of Yvonne he would not speak. Marc, one day, encountered him on the subject, but prevailed not at all, in so much that they two parted in some heat.
At last from Mother Pêche came word that my dear maid was ill, obscurely ailing, pale-lipped, and with no more of the fathomless light in her great eyes. The reassurance that this gave me on the score of her love was beyond measure overbalanced by the new fear that it bred and nourished. Would not the strain become too great for her—so great that either her promise to wait would break down, or else her health? Here was a dilemma, and upon one or the other of the horns of it I writhed hourly. It cost little to feed me, those weeks in the Grand Pré chapel prison.
Meanwhile, it is but just to our English jailers—they were men of New England chiefly, from Boston, Plymouth, Salem, and that vicinage—to record it of them that they were kind and little loved their employment. They held the doom of banishment to be just, but they deplored the inescapable harshness of it. As I came to learn, it was for New England’s sake chiefly, and at her instance, that old England had ordained the great expulsion. Boston would not trust the Acadians, and vowed she could no longer endure a wasp’s nest at her door. Thus it was that the 193decree had at last gone forth; and even I could not quite deny the justice of it. I knew that patient forbearance had long been tried in vain; and I bethought me, too, of the great Louis’ once plan, to banish and utterly purge away all the English of New England and New York.
Of affairs and public policy in the world outside our walls I learned from Lieutenant Waldron, who came in often among us and made me his debtor by many kindly courtesies. He had an interest in me from the first—in the beginning, as I felt, an interest merely of curiosity, for he doubtless wondered that Mademoiselle de Lamourie should stoop to be entangled with two lovers. But soon he conceived a friendship for me, which I heartily reciprocated. I have ever loved the English as a brave and worthy enemy; and this young officer from Plymouth town presented to my admiration a fair epitome of the qualities I most liked in his race. In appearance he was not unlike Anderson, but of slimmer build, with the air of the fighter added, and a something besides which I felt, but could not name. This something Anderson lacked—and the lack was subtly conspicuous in a character which even my jealous rivalry was forced to call worthy of love.
The reservation in my own mind I found to lie in Waldron’s also, and with even more consequence attached to it. Anderson having chanced 194to be one day the subject of our conversation, I let slip hint of the way it galled me to feel myself in his debt for exemption from the charge of spying.
“I can easily understand,” said he, “that you feel it intolerable. I am surprised, more and more daily, at Mademoiselle de Lamourie’s acceptance of his suit. Oh, you French,—may I say it, monsieur?—what a merchandise you make of your young girls!”
“You put it unpleasantly, sir,” said I; “but too truly for me to resent it. You surprise me, however, in what you imply of Anderson. I liked him heartily at first sight. I know him to be brave, though he does not carry arms. He is capable and clear-sighted, kind and frank; and surely he has beauty to delight a woman’s eyes. I am in despair when I think of him.”
“He is all you say,” acknowledged Waldron, with a shrewd twinkle in his sharp blue eyes; “nevertheless there is something he is not, which damns him for me. I don’t quite like him, and that’s a fact. At the same time I know he’s a fine fellow, and I ought to like him. I don’t mind telling you, for your discomfort, that he has done all that man could do to get you out of this place. He has been to Halifax about it, and dared to make himself very disagreeable to the governor when he was refused. It is not his fault you are not out and off by this time.”
195“Thank God, he failed!” said I, with fervour.
“So should I say in your case, monsieur,” he replied, with a kind of dry goodwill.
To this obliging officer—in more kindly after-years, I am proud to say, destined to become my close friend—I owed some flattering messages from Madame de Lamou............