Chapter XXI Beauséjour, and After

Now, while I was arranging in my mind a fresh and voluminous series of interrogations, my singular host arose abruptly and went off without a word, leaving me to rebuild a new image of him out of the shattered fragments of the old.

I saw that he was not mad, but possessed. One intolerably dominant purpose of revenge making all else little in his eyes, he was mad but in relation to a world of complex impulses; in relation to his great aim, sane, and ultimately effective, I could not doubt. But the mad grotesquerie of the part he had assumed had come to cling to him as another self, no longer to be quite sloughed off at will. To play his part well he had resolved to be it; and he was it, with reservation. Just now, Acadie fallen and his enemy for the time in eclipse, I concluded that he found his occupation gone. Therefore, after solitary and tongue-tied years, his speech flowed freely to me, as a stream broken 150loose. That he had a purpose with me, I divined, would excuse him in his own sight for descending to the long unwonted relief of direct and simple utterance. I expected to find out from him many things of grave import during the few days of inaction that yet lay ahead of me. Then I would be able to act—without, perhaps, the follies of the past. Meanwhile this tender, icy, extravagant, colossal, all but omniscient character had bound me to him with the irrefragable bonds of mystery, gratitude, and trust. I was Yvonne’s first, but next I felt myself fast in leash to the posturing madman Gr?l.

Returning soon to my couch, I dozed and mused away the morning. At noon came no sign of my host, so I went to the niche in the wall, found food, and made my meal alone, feeling myself hourly growing in strength. Toward sunset Gr?l strode in, wafted, as my convalescent nostrils averred, upon a most savoury smell. It proved to be a still steaming collop of roast venison, and after that feast I know the blood ran redder and swifter in my pulses.

“O best physician!” said I, leaning back. “And now, I beg you, assuage a little the itching of my ears.”

He sat, his mantle and wizard wand flung by, upon a billet of wood against the wall, and looked not all unlike familiar mortals of the finest. Leaning 151his chin in his long, clutching hands, as if to make gesture impossible, he leaped straight into the story:

“That fighting fire in your Anderson, when he killed the savage with his hands, died out. He is still the Quaker farmer. He went to Grand Pré, and cleared your name, and told how you had saved him for Mademoiselle de Lamourie. With some inconsequence, Mademoiselle was thereupon austere with him because he had not in turn saved you for her. He went to Halifax and did deeds with the council—for he secured further and greater grants of land for himself and further and greater grants of land for Giles de Lamourie, with compensations for the burnings which English rule should have prevented, and with, last of all, an English guard for Grand Pré, in order that scalps of English inclination might be secure upon their owners’ heads. All this was wise, and indeed plain sense—better than fighting. And he remains at Grand Pré, and waits upon Mademoiselle de Lamourie, patient on crumbs.

“In June things happened, while you slept here. The English came in ships, sailing up Chignecto water and startling the slow fools at Beauséjour. The English landed on their own side of the Missiguash. The black ruins of Beaubassin cried out to them for vengeance on La Garne.” (The name, upon his lips, snarled like a wolf.)

152“Vergor, the public thief, called in the men of the villages to help his garrison. Beauséjour was a nest of beavers mending the walls—but not till the torrent was already tearing through. The invaders, wading the deep mud, forced the Missiguash, and drove back the white-coat regiments. They seized the long ridge behind the fort, and set up their batteries. Fort guns and field guns bowled at each other across the meadows.

“Meanwhile the English governor at Halifax sent for the heads of the villages, the householders of Piziquid, Grand Pré, Annapolis. He said the time was come, the final time, and they must swear fealty to King George of England. He bade them choose between that oath, with peace, or a fate he did not name. A few, wise like Giles de Lamourie, took oath. The rest feared La Garne, trusted France, and accounted England an old woman. They refused, and went home.

“The siege went on, and many balls were wasted. The English were all on one side of the fort, so those of the garrison who got tired of being besieged walked out the other side and went home. These were the philosophers. Vergor lived in his bomb-proof casemate, and was at ease. But one morning while he sat at breakfast with other officers a shell came through the roof and killed certain of them.

“That ended it. If the bomb-proof was not 153bomb-proof, Vergor might get hurt. He capitulated. His officers broke their swords, but in vain. La Garne spat upon him.”

Here he stopped, his eyes veered, and his face twisted. In a strange voice he went on:

“In La Garne yet flickers one spark of good—his courage. Till that is eaten out by his sins he lives, not being fully ripe for the final hell.”

He stopped again, moistening his lips with his tongue.

I put my hand to my head.

“Give me a drink of water, I pray you!” said I to divert him, fearing lest that swift and succinct narrative had come to an end.

He gave it to me, and in a moment began again.

“So Beauséjour fell,” said he. “La Garne left early, for him the English wanted to hang. The rest marched out with honours of war. The English found them an inconvenience as prisoners, and sent them to Louisbourg. And Beauséjour is now Fort Cumberland.”

“So fades the glory of France from Acadie—forever!” I murmured, weighed down with prescience.

“Just as it was fading,” continued Gr?l, with a hint of the cynic in his voice, “your cousin, Marc de Mer, came from Quebec with despatches. The garrison was marching out. He, being already out, judged it unnecessary to go in. He 154took boat down Chignecto water, and up through Minas to Grand Pré. Here he busied himself with your uncle’s affairs, laying aside his uniform and passing unmolested as a villager.

“For a little there was stillness. Then the great doom fell.

“To every settlement went English battalions. What I saw at Grand Pré is what others saw at Annapolis, Piziquid, Baie Verte. An English colonel, one Winslow, smooth and round and rosy of countenance, angry and anxious, little in love with his enterprise, summoned the men of Grand Pré to meet him in the chapel and hear the last orders of the king. There had been “last orders” before, and they had exploded harmlessly enough. The men of Grand Pré went—and your cousin Marc, having a restless curiosity, went with them. Thereupon the doors were shut. They were as rats in a trap, a ring of fire about them.

“They learned the king’s decree clearly enough. They were to be put on ships,—they, their families, such household gear as there might be place for,—and carried very far from their native fields, and scattered among strangers of an alien speech and faith.

“Well, the mountains had fallen upon them. Who could move? They lay in the chapel, and their hearts sweat blood. Daily their weeping women, 155their wide-eyed children, came bringing food. But the ships were not ready. The agony has dragged all summer. At last two small ship-loads are gone; the crowd is less in the chapel; some houses stand empty in the village, waiting to burn. The year grows old; the task is nearly done.”

There was a dark silence.

“Has my cousin Marc gone yet?” I asked heavily.

“He waits and wastes in the chapel.”

“And my almost-father, Father Fafard?”

“No,” said Gr?l, “his trouble is but for others. He has ever counselled men to keep their oaths. He has opposed a face of steel to Quebec intrigue. The English reverence him. He blesses those who are taken away. He comforts those who wait.”

Of Yvonne I had no excuse for asking more. What more I would know I must go and learn. To go and learn I must get strong. To get strong I must sleep. I turned my face to the wall.