Chapter XXXIII The Divine Right of Queens

When Yvonne stood at last upon the deck of the ship of her desire, her heart, without warning, began a far too vehement gratulation. Her cloak oppressed her. She dropped it, and stood leaning upon Mother Pêche’s shoulder. She grew suddenly pale, breathing with effort; and one hand caught at her side.

The apparition made a wondrous stir on deck. To those who had ever heard of such a being, it appeared that the Witch of the Moon, in all the indescribable magic of her beauty, had been translated into flesh. Men seemed upon the instant to find an errand to that quarter of the ship. Captain Eliphalet Wrye, who had been watching with great unconcern a transfer whose significance seemed to him quite ordinary, came forward in haste, eager to do the honours of his ship, and marvelling beyond measure at such a guest. Captain Eliphalet had traded much among the French of Acadie and New France. He knew well the difference 247between the seigneurial and the habitant classes; and this knowledge was just what he needed to make his bewilderment complete.

“Here’s the captain of the ship coming to see you, chérie!” whispered Mother Pêche, squeezing the girl’s arm significantly. Yvonne steadied herself with an effort, and turned a brilliant glance upon this important stranger. With his rough blue reefing-jacket, extremely broad shoulders, and excessively broad yellow-brown beard, Captain Eliphalet looked to her just as she thought a merchant-captain ought to look. She therefore approved of him, and awaited his approach with a smile that put him instantly at ease. As he came up, however, hat in hand and with considered phrases on his lips, the old woman forestalled him.

“Let me present you, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said she, stepping forward with a courtesy, “to my mistress, Mademoiselle de Lamourie, of Lamourie Place.”

“It is but ashes, alas! monsieur,” interrupted Yvonne, holding out her hand.

“The ship is yours, Mademoiselle de Lamourie!” he exclaimed, and bowed with a gesture of relinquishing everything to her command. It was not for nothing Captain Eliphalet had visited Montreal and Quebec.

Yvonne dropped her lids for a second, and shook her head rebukingly.

248“That is not English, monsieur,” she protested, “but it is very nice of you. I should not know what to do with a ship just now; but I like our little pleasant French fictions.”

Captain Eliphalet, however, could be French for a moment only.

“But you, mademoiselle, you—how comes such a one as you to be sailing away into exile?”

Yvonne’s long lashes drooped again, and this time did not rise so quickly.

“I have reason to think, monsieur,” she answered gravely, “that dear friends and kinsfolk of mine are on this ship, themselves going, fettered, into exile. I could not stay behind and let them go so. But enough of myself, monsieur, for the present,” she went on, speaking more rapidly. “I want to ease the anxieties of these poor souls who have come with me. Is there among your prisoners a young man known as ‘Petit Joliet’? Here is his mother come to look for him.”

Captain Eliphalet summoned a soldier who stood near, and put the question to him in English.

“There is one by the name of Franse Joliet on the roll, captain,” answered the red-coat, saluting.

“That’s he! That’s my boy!” cried his mother, catching the name. She had been waiting close by with a strained, fixed face, which now went to pieces in a medley of smiles and tears, like a reflection on still water suddenly broken. She 249clutched Yvonne’s hands, blessed and kissed them, and then rushed off vaguely as if to find Petit Joliet in durance behind some pile of ropes or water-butt.

“And Lenoir—Tamin Lenoir,” continued Yvonne, her voice thrilling with joy over her task, “and Michel Savarin. Are they, too, in the hold?”

“Yes, miss,” said the soldier, saluting again, and never taking his eyes from her face. She turned to the two women in their restless fringe of clingers; and they, more sober because more hampered in their delight, thanked her devoutly, and moved off to learn what more they could elsewhere.

Meanwhile another figure had drawn near—a figure not unknown to Yvonne’s eyes.

When she first appeared Lieutenant Shafto, the English officer in command of the guard, was pacing the quarter deck, stiffly remote and inexpressibly bored. He had two ambitions in life—the one, altogether laudable and ordinary, to be a good officer in the king’s service; the other, more distinguished and uncommon, to be quoted as an example of dress and manners to his fellow-men. In London he had achieved in this direction sufficient success to establish him steadfastly in his purpose. Ordered to Halifax with his regiment, he had there found the field for his talent 250sorely straitened. At Grand Pré, far worse: it was reduced to the dimensions of a back-door plot. Here on shipboard it seemed wholly to have vanished. Nevertheless, for practice, and for the preservation of a civil habit, he had clung to his niceties. Now, when he saw Yvonne, his first thought was to thank Heaven he had been as particular with his toilet that morning as if about to walk down Piccadilly.

He fitted his glass to his eye.

“Gad!” he said to himself, “it really is!”

He removed the glass, and giving it a more careful readjustment, stared again.

“Gad!” said he, “it is none other! A devilish fine girl! She couldn’t be beat in all London for looks or wits. What does it mean? Given that cad Anderson the slip, eh? Discriminating, begad!”

Lieutenant Shafto had a definite contempt for Anderson, as a man who sat by the fire when he might have been fighting. If a man fought well or dressed well, Shafto could respect him. Anderson did neither. He was therefore easily placed.

“There’s something rich behind this,” went on the lieutenant to himself. “But, gad! there is a savour to this voyage, after all. There’s a pair of bright eyes—devilish bright eyes—to dress for!”

He hitched his sword to a more gallant angle 251as he stepped primly down the deck. He gave the flow of his coat an airy curve. He would have felt of his queue had he dared, to assure himself it was dressed to a nicety. He glanced with complaisance at his correct and entirely spotless ruffles. And by this he was come to mademoiselle’s side, where he stood, bowing low, his cap held very precisely across his breast.

“The honour, mademoiselle! Ah, the marvel of it!” he murmured. “The ship is transfigured. I was but now anathematizing it as a most especial hell: I looked up, and it had become a paradise—a paradise of one fair spirit!”

Yvonne looked at him with searching eyes as he delivered this fantasia, then a trifle imperiously gave him her hand to kiss.

She had spoken passingly with him twice or thrice before, at Father Fafard’s. She understood him—read him through: a man absurd, but never contemptible; to be quite heartily disliked, yet wholly trusted; to be laughed at, yet discreetly; vain, indomitable, a fighter and a fop; living for the field and the hair-dresser. Here was a man whom she would use, yet respect him the while.

“You do nobly, monsieur,” she said, with a faint, enigmatic smile, “to thus keep the light of courtly custom burning clear, even in our darknesses.”

252“There can be no darkness where your face shines, mademoiselle,” he cried, delighted not less with himself than with her.

It was a little obvious, but she accepted it graciously with a look, and he went on:

“I beg that you will let me place my cabin at your disposal during the voyage. You will find it narrow, but roomy enough to accommodate you and your maid.”

Here Captain Eliphalet interfered.

“I claim the privilege, mademoiselle,” said he, with some vexation in his tones, “of giving you the captain’s cabin, which is by all odds the most commodious place on the ship—the only place at all suitable for you.”

“The captain is right,” said Shafto reluctantly. “His cabin is the more comfortable; and I beg him to share mine.”

In this way, then, the difficulty was settled, and Yvonne found herself in quarters of unwonted comfort for a West India trader, Captain Eliphalet being given to luxury beyond the most of his Puritan kin. She was contented with her accomplishment so far as it went; and having two gallant men to deal with she felt already secure of her empire. She read approbation, too, in those enigmatic eyes of Mother Pêche, with their whites ever glancing and gleaming. Moreover, as she sat down to luncheon, to the condiment of a bounding 253heart and so much appetite as might nourish a pee-wee bird, she had two points gained to elate her. First, in passing the open hatchway which, as Captain Eliphalet told her, led to the prisoners’ quarters, she had shaken lightly from her lips enough clear laughter to reach, as she guessed, those ears attuned to hear it; and second, she had the promises both of the broad-bearded captain and the beautifully barbered lieutenant, that her cousins, Monsieur de Mer and Monsieur Paul Grande, should be brought on deck to see her that very day.

“You should be very good to them, gentlemen,” she said demurely, picking with dubious fork at brown strips of toasted herring on her plate. “My cousin Marc especially. He is half English, you know. He has the most adorable English wife, from Boston, with red hair wherein he easily persuades himself that the sun rises and sets.”

“If you would have us love them for your sake, mademoiselle, love them not too much yourself,” laughed the broad-bearded Captain Eliphalet, in vast good-humour; but the admirable lieutenant murmured:

“There is no hair but black hair—black with somehow a glint in it when the sun strikes—so.”

And Mother Pêche, passing behind them and catching a flash from Yvonne’s eye, smiled many thoughts.