Chapter XXIII At Gaspereau Lower Ford

On the following day, being Tuesday, November 16, 1855, and my twenty-seventh birthday, I went down to Grand Pré. I am thus precise about the date, for I felt as I set forth that the issues of life and death hung upon my going. Right here, it seemed to me, was a very knife-edge of a day, which should sever and allot to me for all the future my part of joy or ruin. Surely, thought I,—to justify my expectation of colossal events,—I have not lain these long months dead, that action, once more started, should dribble like a spent stream.

Therefore I went, like a careful strategist, equipped with all the knowledge Gr?l could give. I had planned how to reach Father Fafard, and through him how to reach Yvonne. And as the day was to be a great one, I thought well it should be a long one. I set out upon the palest promise of daybreak.

My strength, under one compelling purpose, had 162come back; and it seemed to me that I saw events and their chances with radiating clearness. So up-strung were my nerves that the long tramp seemed over in a few minutes, and I found myself, almost with surprise, at the lower ford of the Gaspereau, just under the hill which backs Grand Pré. Here was the thick wood wherein I planned to lie perdu, in the event of dangerous passers. In a little while there came in view a woman, heavy-eyed and dishevelled, carrying a basket of new-baked barley bread, very sweet to smell. It was clear she was one with an interest in the prisoners at the chapel. In such a case I could have no fear of stumbling upon a traitor. I stepped out to her.

“Would that he, too,” said I significantly, “had gone to the woods in time!”

Her eyes ran over with the ready and waiting tears; but she jerked her apron jealously over the loaves, and looked at me with a touch of resentment, as if to say, “Why had you such foresight, and not he?”

“He went to hear the reading, and they took him,” she moaned. “And who will keep the little ones from starving in the winter coming on?”

“It is where I, too, would be now—in the chapel prison yonder,” said I gently. “But I lay in the woods, wounded, too sick to go to the reading, so I escaped.”

The resentment faded out. She saw that I was 163not one of those who shamed her husband’s credulity. I might have been caught too, had I been given the same chance.

“For the little ones, I pray you accept this silver, and count it a loan to your husband in his prison,” said I, slipping two broad Spanish pieces into her hand.

She looked grateful and astonished, but had no words ready.

“And do, I beg of you, a kindness to one in bitter need of it,” I went on. “You know Father Fafard?”

Her face lightened with love.

“He grieves for me, thinking me dead,” said I. “Tell him, I beg of you, that one who loves him waits to see him in the wood by the lower ford.”

Her face clouded with suspicion.

“How shall I know—how shall he know—you are honest?” she asked.

I was troubled.

“You must judge by your woman’s wit,” said I. “And he will come. He fears no one. But no, tell him Paul Grande waits at the lower ford.”

“The traitor!” she blazed out; and, recoiling, hurled the money in my face. It stung strangely.

“You are wrong,” said I, in a low voice. “But as you will. Tell him, if you will, that Paul Grande, the traitor, waits for him at the lower ford. But if you do not tell him, be sure he will not soon 164forgive you. And for the money, he shall keep it for your children—and you will be sorry to have unjustly accused me.”

She laughed with bitter mockery, and turned away.

“But I will tell him; that can do no harm,” she said. “I’ll tell him the traitor who loves him waits at the ford.”

I withdrew into the wood, beyond all reason pained at the injustice.

The unpleasant peasant woman was as good as her word, however; for in little more than the space of an hour I saw Father Fafard approaching. Plainly he had come hot upon the instant.

“My dear, dear boy! Where have you been, and what suffered?” he cried, catching me hard by the two arms, and looking into my eyes.

“It was Gr?l saved me,” said I.

Beyond earshot, deep in the wood, where no wind hindered the noon sun from warming a little open glade, I told my story briefly.

“Paul,” said he, when I had finished, “my heart has now the first happiness it has known through all these dreadful months. But you must slip out of this doomed country without an hour’s delay. Quebec, of course! And then, when an end is made here, I will join you. Have you money for the journey?”

I laughed softly.

165“My plans are not quite formed. I must see Yvonne. Will you fetch her to me?”

He rose in anger—a little forced, I thought.

“No!” said he.

“Then, I beseech you, give her a message from me, that I may see her for a little this very day.”

“Paul,” he cried passionately, “it is a sin to talk of it. She has pledged her troth. She is at peace. I will not have her disturbed.”

“Does she love him?” I asked.

“I—I suppose so. Or she will, doubtless,” he stammered.

“Oh, doubtless!” said I. “And meanwhile, does she show readiness to carry out her promise? Does she listen kindly to her impatient lover—her anxious father?”

“The Englishman has displeased her, for a time,” said he, “but that will pass. She knows the duty of obedience; she respects the plighted word. There can be but one ending; though you may succeed in making her very unhappy—for a time.”

“I will make her very happy,” I said quietly, “so long as time endures for her and me.”

He flashed round upon me with sharp scorn.

“What can you do for her? You, hiding for your life, the ruined upholder of a lost cause! Here she is safe, protected, wealth and security before her. And with you?”

166“Life, I think!” said I, rising too, and stretching out my arms. “But listen, father,” I went on more lightly. “I am not so helpless. I have some little rentes in Montreal, you know. And moreover, I am not planning to carry her off to-night. By no means anything so finely irregular. I am not ready. Only, see her I will before I go. If you will not help me, I will stay about this place, about your house indeed, till I meet her. That is all. If you dote upon my going, you know the way to speed me.”

His kind, round face puckered anxiously. But he hit upon a compromise.

“I will have no hand in it,” said he. “But if you are resolved to stay, you may as well find her without loss of time. The house we occupy is crowded, and she affects a solitary mood. She walks over the hill and down this way, of an evening, to visit some unhappy ones along by the river. You may see her, perhaps, to-night.”

I grasped his hand and kissed it, but he drew it away, vexed at himself.

“We will talk of other things now,” I said softly. “But do not be angry if I say I love you, father.”

He smiled with an air of reproach; and thereafter talk we did through hours, save for a little time when he was absent fetching me a meal. All that Gr?l had told me of the ruin of the French cause he told me in another colour, and more 167besides of the doom of the Acadians—but upon Yvonne’s name we touched no more by so much as the lightest breath.

At my cousin Marc’s rashness in going to the chapel he glanced with some severity, grieving for the sorrow of the young wife at Quebec. But for the English he had many good words—they were pitiful, he said, in the act of carrying out cruel orders. And they neither robbed nor terrorized. Not they, said he, but a wicked priest and the intriguers of a rotten government at Quebec, were the scourge of Acadie.

When the sun got low over the Gaspereau Ridge he called to mind some duties too long forgotten, and bade me farewell with a loving wistfulness. I think, however, it was the imminent coming of Yvonne that drove him away. He feared lest he should meet her, and in seeming to know of my purpose seem to sanction it. I could not help believing in my heart that in this matter, perhaps for the first time in his priesthood, the kind curé’s conscience was a little tremulous in its admonitions.

I watched him out of sight; and then, posting myself in a coign of vantage behind a great willow that overhung the stream, I waited with a thumping heart, and with a misgiving that all other organs within my frame had slumped away to nothing but a meagre and contemptible jelly.