Chapter XV Ashes as it were Bread

All this had come and gone as it were in a dream, and it seemed to me that I yet panted from my long race. I had seen nothing, meanwhile, of the Black Abbé or of his painted pack. Spies, however, he had doubtless in plenty among those gaping onlookers; and his devilish work yet lighted me effectually on my way across the wet fields. The glow was like great patches of blood upon the apple-trees, where the masses of bloom fairly fronted the light. The hedgerow thickets took on a ruddy bronze, a sparkle here and there as a wet leaf set the unwonted rays rebounding. The shadows were sharply black, and strangely misleading when they found themselves at odds with those cast by the moon. The scene, as I hastened over the quiet back lots, was like the unreal phantasmagoria of a dream. I found myself playing with the idea that it all was a dream, from my meeting with old Mother Pêche here—yes, in this very field—the 106night before to the present breathless haste and wild surmising. Then the whole bitter reality seemed to topple over, and fall upon me and crush me down. Not only was Yvonne pledged to another, but through grossest over-confidence I had failed her in her need, and worst of all, the thought that made my heart beat shakingly, she believed me a traitor. It forced a groan to my lips, but I ran on, and presently emerged upon the lane a few paces from Father Fafard’s gate.

As I turned in the good priest came and stood in the doorway, peering down the lane with anxious eyes. Seeing me, he sprang forward and began to speak, but I interrupted him, crying:

“Are they here? I must see them.”

“They will not see you, Paul. They would curse you and shut their ears. They believe you did it.”

“But you, father, you,” I pleaded, “can undeceive them. Come with me.” And I grasped him vehemently by the arm.

But he shook me off, with a sort of anxious impatience.

“Of course, Paul, I know you did not do it. I know you, as she would, too, if she loved you,” he cried, in a voice made high and thin by excitement. “I will tell them you are true. But—where is Yvonne?” And he pushed past me to the gate, where he paused irresolutely.

107“Don’t tell me she is not with you!” I cried.

“She ran out a minute ago, not telling us what she was going to do,” he answered.

“But what for? What made her? She must have had some reason! What was it?” I demanded, becoming cold and stern as I noted how his nerves were shaken.

He collected himself with a visible effort, and then looked at me with a kind of slow pity.

“I had but now come in,” said he, “and thoughtlessly I told Madame a word just caught in the crowd. You know that evil savage, Etienne le Batard. Or you don’t, I see; but he’s the red right-hand of La Garne, and it was he executed yonder outrage. As he was leading his cut-throats away in haste, plainly upon another malignant enterprise, I heard him tell one of my parishioners what he would do. The man is suspected of a leaning to the English; and the savage said to him with significance:

“I go now to Kenneticook, to the yellow-haired English Anderson. Neither he nor his house will see another sun.

“I had thought perhaps you were right, Paul, and that Yvonne had promised herself to the Englishman more in esteem than love; but she cried out, with a piteous, shaken voice, that he must be warned—that some one must go to him and save him. With that she rushed from the 108house, and we have not seen her since. But stay—what have you said or done to her, Paul? Now that I see her face again, I see remorse in it. What have you done to her?”

I made no answer to this sharp question, it being irrelevant and my haste urgent. But I demanded:

“Where could she go for help?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, “unless, perhaps, to the landing.”

“The tide is pretty low,” said I, pondering, “but the wind serves well enough for the Piziquid mouth. Where do you suppose the savages left their canoes?”

“Oh,” said he positively, “well up on the Piziquid shore, without doubt. They came over on the upper trail, and they must be now hurrying back the same way. They cannot get up the Kenneticook, by that route, till a little before dawn.”

“I have time, then!” I exclaimed, and rushed away.

“Where are you going? Paul! Paul! What will you do?” he cried after me.

“I will save him!” I shouted as I went. “Come you down to the landing, the Gaspereau wharf, and get Yvonne if she’s there.”

Glancing back, I saw that he followed me.

My heart was surging with gratitude to God for this chance. I vowed to save Anderson, though it 109cost me my own life. If Yvonne loved him she should then owe her happiness to me. If she did not love him she would see that I was quite other than the traitor she imagined. Strange to say, I felt no bitterness against her for so misjudging me. It seemed to me that my folly had been so great that I had deserved to be misjudged. But now, here was my opportunity. I swore under my breath that it should not slip from my grasp.

It was a good two-thirds of a mile from the parsonage to the wharf, and I had time to scheme as I ran. I thought at once of Nicole, the smith,—of his boat, and his brawn, and his loyal fidelity. His boat would assuredly be at the wharf, but where should I find his brawn and his fidelity?

At his cottage, beside the forge, I stopped to ask for him.

“At the fire, monsieur,” quavered his old mother, poking a troubled face from the window in answer to my thundering on the door. “What would you with him? Do not lead him into harm, Master Paul!”

But I was off without answering; and the poor, creaking, worried old voice followed in my ears:

“He takes no sides. He hurts no one, Master Paul!”

Passing the De Lamourie gate I paused to shout at the height of my lungs:

110“Nicole! Nicole Brun! I want you! Nicole! Nicole!”

“Coming, Master Paul!” was the prompt reply, out of the heart of the crowd; and in a moment the active, thick-set form appeared, bareheaded as usual, for I had never known Nicole to cover his black shock with cap or hat.

I was leaning on the fence to get my breath.

“You were there, Nicole, when I was looking for a friend?” said I, eying him with sharp question and reproach as he came up.

“You did not seem to need any one just then, Master Paul; leastwise, no one that was thereabouts,” he answered, with a sheepish mixture of bantering and apology.

I ignored both. I knew him to be true.

“Will you come with me, right now, Nicole Brun?” I asked, starting off again toward the river.

“You know I will, Master Paul,” said he, close at my side. “But where? What are we up to?”

“The boat!” said I. “The wind serves. I’m going to the Kenneticook to warn Anderson that the Black Abbé is to cut his throat this night!”

I turned and looked him in the eyes as I spoke.

His long, determined upper lip drew down at my words, but his little grey eyes flashed upon mine a half-resigned, half-humorous acquiescence.

“It’s risky, Master Paul. And no good, like as 111not,” he answered. “We’ll be just about in time to get our own throats slit, I’m thinking,—to say nothing of the hair,” he added, rubbing his crown with rueful apprehension.

“Let me have your boat, and I go alone,” said I curtly. But I was sure of him nevertheless.

“I’m with you, sure, Master Paul, if you will go,” he rejoined. “And maybe it’s worth while to disturb his reverence’s plans, if it be only an Englishman that we’re taking so much trouble about.”

“We must and shall save him, Nicole,” I said, as deliberately as my panting breath would permit, “or I will die in the trying. He is betrothed to Mademoiselle de Lamourie, you know.”

“I should say, rather, let him die for her, that a better man may live for her,” he retorted shrewdly. “But as you will, Master Paul, of course!”

In the privacy of my own heart I thought extremely well of Nicole’s discrimination; but I said nothing, for by this we were come to the wharf; and I saw—Yvonne!