Chapter II Gr?l’s Warning

“These ten years,” I exclaimed to myself angrily (for I love not to have a dream rudely broken), “has Gr?l been prophesying woe; and I see not that aught comes of it save greater strength to his lungs.”

I turned my back upon the valley and watched the singular figure that drew near. It was a shrewd and mysterious madman whom all Acadie had known for the past ten years as “Gr?l.” Whether that was his real name or a pseudonym of his own adoption no one knew. Whence he had come no one knew. Wherefore he stayed in Acadie, and so faithfully prophesied evil to our fair land, no one knew. The reason of his madness—and the method which sometimes seemed to lurk beneath it—no one could confidently guess. At least, such ignorance in regard to this fantastic fool seemed general throughout the country. But there lay here and there a suspicion that the Black Abbé, the indomitable La Garne, Bigot’s tool and 12the people’s dread, knew more of Gr?l’s madness than other folk might dream. It was whispered that La Garne, who seemingly feared no man else, feared Gr?l. It was certain that whenever any scheme of the Black Abbé’s came to naught Gr?l’s hand would appear somewhere in the wreck of it.

Now, as he came down from the maple grove, he looked and was dressed just as I had seen him years before. The vicissitudes of time and of the weather seemed to have as little effect upon the staring black and yellow of his woollen cloak as upon his iron frame, his piercing light-blue eyes, the snowy tangle of his hair and beard. Only his pointed cap betrayed that its wearer dwelt not altogether beyond the pale of mutability. Its adornments seemed to recognize the seasons. I had seen it stuck with cornflowers in the summer, with golden-rod and asters in the autumn, with feathers and strange wisps of straw in winter; and now it bore a spray of apple-blossom, with some dandelions, those northern sun-worshippers, whose closing petals now declared that even in death they took note of the passing of their lord.

In his hand Gr?l carried the same quaint wand of white wood, with its grotesque carven head dyed scarlet, which had caught my eye with an uneasy fascination the first time I met its possessor. That little stick, which Gr?l wielded with 13authority as if it were a sceptre, still caused me some superstitious qualms. I remembered how at my first sight of it I had looked to see a living spark leap from that scarlet head.

“It has been a long time coming,” said I, as Gr?l paused before me, searching my face curiously with his gleaming eyes. “And meanwhile I have come. I think, monsieur, I should esteem a welcome somewhat more cordial than your words of dolorous omen.”

Whether he were displeased or not at my forwardness in addressing him I cannot tell. He was without doubt accustomed to choose his own time for speech. His eyes danced with a shifting, sharp light, and after thrusting his little wand at me till, in spite of myself, I felt the easy smile upon my lips grow something mechanical, he said with withering slowness:

“To the boy and the fool how small a handful of years may seem a lifetime! You think it is long coming? It is even now come. The shadow of the smoke of her burning even now lies upon Acadie. The ships of her exile are near.”

He stopped; and I had no word of mocking wherewith to answer him. Then his eyes and his voice softened a little, and he continued:

“And you have come back—poor boy, poor fool!—with joy in your heart; and your joy even now is crumbling to ashes in your mouth.”

14He turned away, leaving me still speechless; but in an instant he was back and his wand thrust at me with a suddenness that made me recoil in childish apprehension. In a voice indescribably dry and biting he cried swiftly:

“But look you, boy. Whether she be yours or another’s, there is an evil hand uplifted against her this night. See you to it!”

“What do you mean?” I cried, my heart sinking with a sudden fear. “Nay, you shall tell me!” I went on fiercely, making as if to restrain him by force as he turned away. But he bent upon me one look of such scorn that I felt at once convicted of folly; and striding off, with something of a dignity in his carriage which all his grotesquerie of garb could not conceal, he left me to chew upon his words. As for the warning, that was surely plain enough. I was to go to Yvonne, and be by her in case of any need. The business thus laid upon me was altogether to my liking. But that pitying word—of joy that should turn to ashes in my mouth! It filled me with black foreboding. As I stepped down briskly toward Grand Pré my joy was already dead, withered at a madman’s whisper. And that great-growing cloud from over Blomidon had swallowed up all the village in a chill shadow.