Chapter VIII The Moon in the Apple-bough

During all our conversation we had stood in plain view of the windows, so that our friendly parting must have been visible to all the house. On my return within doors I found Yvonne walking up and down in a graceful impatience, her black lace shawl thrown lightly about her head.

“If you want to,” said she, “you may come out on the porch with me for a little while, monsieur. I want you to talk to me.”

“Yvonne,” exclaimed her mother, in a rebuking voice, “will not this room do as well?”

“No, indeed, little mamma,” said she wilfully. “Nothing will do as well as the porch, where the moonlight is, and the smell of the apple-blossoms. You know, dear, Grand Pré is not Paris!”

“Nor yet is it Quebec,” said I pointedly.

Monsieur de Lamourie smiled. Whatever Yvonne would was in his eyes good. But her mother yielded only with a little gesture of protest.

51“Yvonne is always a law unto herself,” she murmured.

“And to others, I judge,” said I, following the light figure out upon the porch, and closing the door behind me.

I praised the saints for the freedom of Grand Pré. At Quebec Mademoiselle would have been the most formal of the formalists, because in Quebec it was easy to be misjudged.

In the corner of the porch, where a huge apple-bough thrust its blossoms in beneath the roof, was slung a stout hammock such as sailors use on shipboard. Mademoiselle de Lamourie had seen these during a voyage down the Gulf from Quebec, and had so fancied them that her father had been impelled to have one netted for her by the shad-fishers. It was her favoured lounging-place, and thither she betook herself now without apology. In silence I held the tricksy netting for her. In silence I placed the cushion beneath her head. Then she said:

“You may sit there,” and she pointed, with a little imperious motion, to a stout bench standing against the wall.

I accepted the seat, but not its location. I brought it and placed it as close as I dared to the hammock. In doing so I clumsily set the hammock swinging.

“Please stop it,” said Mademoiselle; and as I 52seated myself I laid my hand on the side of the hammock to arrest its motion. My fingers found themselves in contact with other fingers, very slim and warm and soft. My breath came in a quick gasp, and I drew away my hand in a strange and overwhelming perturbation. The hammock was left to stop of itself—and, indeed, its swinging was but slight. As for me, I was possessed by an infinite amazement to find myself thus put to confusion by a touch. I had no word to say, but sat gazing dumbly at the white figure in the moonlight.

Her face was very pallid in that colorless light, and her eyes greater and darker than ever, deeps of mystery,—and now, I thought, of grave mockery as well. She watched me for a little in silence, and then said:

“I let you come out here to talk to me, monsieur!”

I straightened myself upon the bench, and tried my voice. My misgivings were justified. It trembled, beyond a doubt. The witch had me at a grave disadvantage. But I spoke on quietly.

“From my two years in the woods of the West, mademoiselle,” said I, “I brought home to Grand Pré certain wonderful dreams. Of these I find some more than realized; but one, which gave all meaning to the rest, has been put to death this night.”

53“Even in Grand Pré dreams are no new thing,” she said in haste. “I want to hear of deeds, of brave and great action. Tell me what you have done—for I know that will be brave.” And she smiled at me such kind encouragement that my heart began thumping with vehemence. However, I made shift to tell her a little of my wanderings—of a bush fight here, a night march there, of the foiling of a foe, of the timely succour of a friend—till I saw that I was pleasing her. Her face leaned a little toward me. Her eyes spoke, dilating and contracting. Her lips were slightly parted as she listened. And into every adventure, every situation, every movement, I contrived to weave a suggestion of her influence, of the thought of her guiding and upholding me. These things, touched lightly and at once let pass, she did not rebuke. She feigned not to understand them.

At last I paused and looked at her, waiting for a word of praise or blame.

“And your poetry, monsieur?” she said gently. “Surely that was not all the time forgotten. This Acadian land, with its wonder and its beauty, has found no interpreter but you, and your brave work in the field would be a misfortune, not a benefit, if it cost us your song.”

“The loss of my verses were no great loss,” said I.

“Indeed, monsieur,” she said earnestly, “I do 54not think you can be as modest as you pretend. But I am sincere. Since we have known your song of them, I think that mamma and I have watched only through your eyes the great sweep of the Minas tides. And only the other day I heard papa, who cares for no poetry but his old ‘Chansons de Gestes,’ quoting you to Father Fafard with evident enthusiasm.” She paused—but I said nothing. I had talked long; and I wished her to continue. What she was saying, the manner of her saying it, were such as I could long listen to.

“As for me,” she went on, “I never walk down the orchard in summer time without saying over to myself your song of the apple-leaves.”

“You do, really, remember my verses?” said I, flushing with surprise and joy. I was not used to commendation for such things, my verses being wont to win no more approval than they merited, which I felt to be very little.

She laughed softly, and began to quote:
“O apple leaves, so cool and green
Against the summer sky,
You stir, although the wind is still
And not a bird goes by!
You start,
And softly move apart
In hushed expectancy.
Who is the gracious visitor
Whose form I cannot see?
55“O apple leaves, the mystic light
All down your dim arcade!
Why do your shadows tremble so,
Half glad and half afraid?
The air
Is an unspoken prayer;
Your eyes look all one way.
Who is the secret visitor
Your tremors would betray?”

It was a slight thing, which I had never thought particularly well of; but on her lips it achieved a music unimagined before.

“Your voice,” said I, “makes it beautiful, as it makes all words beautiful. Yes, I have written some small bits of verse during my exile, but they have been different from those of mine which you honour with your praise. They have had another, a more wonderful, theme—a theme all too high for them, which nevertheless spurred them to their best. They have at least one merit—they speak the truth from my heart.” As I spoke I felt myself leaning forward, though not of set purpose, and my voice sank almost to a whisper.

“One of them,” I continued, begins in this way:
“A moonbeam or a breath, above thine eyes I bow,
Silent, unseen,
But not, ah! not unknown”—

“Wait!” she interrupted, in a voice that sounded a little faint. “Wait! I want to hear them all, 56monsieur; but not to-night. You shall say them to me to-morrow. I must not stay to listen to them to-night. I am a little—cold, I think! Help me out, please!” And she rashly gave me her hand.

Now, it was my honest intention at that instant to do just her bidding and no more; but when I touched her fingers reason and judgment flowed from me. I bowed my head over them to the edge of the hammock, and with both my hands crushed them to my lips. She sank back upon her cushion, with a little catching of her breath.

After a few moments I raised my head—but with no speech and with no set purpose—and looked at her face. It was very grave, and curiously troubled, but I detected no reproach in the great eyes that met mine. A fierce impulse seized me to gather her in my arms—but I durst not, and my eyes dropped as I thought of it. By chance they rested upon her feet—upon the tiny, quill-worked, beaded white moccasins, demurely crossed, the one over the other. Her skirt was so closely gathered about her ankles that just an inch or two of one arched instep was visible over the edge of the low-cut moccasin. Before I myself could realize what I was about to do, or half the boldness of the act, in a passion that was all worship I threw myself down beside her feet and kissed them.

57It was for an instant only that my daring so prevailed. Then she suddenly slipped away. In a breathless confusion I sprang to my feet, and found her standing erect at the other side of the hammock. Her eyes blazed upon me; but one small hand was at her throat, as if she found it hard to speak.

“How could you dare?” she panted. “What right did I give you? What right did I ever give you?”

I leaned against the pillar that supported one end of the hammock.

“Forgive me! I could not help it. I have loved you, worshipped you, so long!” I said in a very low voice.

“How dare you speak so?” she cried. “You forget that”—

“No, I remember!” I interrupted doggedly. “I forget nothing. You do not love him. You are mine.”

“Oh!” she gasped, lifting both hands sharply to her face and dropping them at once. “I shall never trust you again.”

And in a moment she had flashed past me, with a sob, and disappeared into the house.