The Span o' Life Part 20

"Tell me first, are you not Madame de Maxwell?"

"Yes, yes," I cried, in desperation, eager to seize any chance of escape.

"Then, madame, believe me, you were very foolish not to say so at once. I guessed it the very first night I saw you. Now I know the Chevalier intimately; in fact, I am under obligation to him for much good advice; but I will confess he has never seen fit to impart to me the fact of his marriage, which will be a surprise to many."

"O, monsieur, I beg of you that you will never mention it," I cried, in an agony of shame and self-reproach.

"Never, madame; believe me, it was too disappointing a piece of news in my own case, for me to have any desire to place others in the like unhappy position. But allow me first to apologise for frightening you; pardon me that I cannot look upon it as an insult; and now that I have made the amende honorable, I will go back and answer your first question. I shall start for Quebec in two days; I shall be back in a week, and then leave for Louisbourg at once, if you feel you can trust yourself with me."

I was so completely in his power that I mastered up all my courage, and replied, bravely enough: "M. de Sarennes, I cannot but believe I am safe in the charge of one whom I know as so loving a son, so fond a brother. I trust you, too, as the friend of M. de Maxwell; and I trust you, most of all, because you have learned my secret, and, being a gentleman, I believe you will not betray it."

"I don't know how far I accept the compliment, but at all events, madame, I shall say nothing of your affairs. Remember, though, it rests chiefly with you to prevent suspicion. You must keep the same free intercourse with me, and never allow my mother or sister to gather by word, or sign, that the nature of our conference to-day has been otherwise than pleasant. Now that we have come to an understanding, no doubt some news of Louisbourg will be welcome."

As he spake we turned back towards the manor; his whole bearing so changed in a moment that it was hard to believe the bright, pleasant-spoken man by my side was the same creature of rough, brutal instincts and feelings who had tortured and alarmed me so cruelly. Little by little I recovered my composure, as he told of the life in the fortress, of the probable investment by the English in the spring--if they could then muster a sufficient fleet--of M.

de Drucour, of M. Prevost, and, best of all, of Hugh, though he tried to disturb my peace by hinting at some understanding between him and Madame Prevost.

"It all depends on you now, madame," he said, significantly, as he held the door open for me to enter, and fortunately I had firmness enough to control myself through the long evening and until I could gain my room.

There I broke down utterly, as I knelt beside my bed, unable to rise, or to control the sobs which shook my whole body.

Lucy was beside me in a moment.

"Dear heart! Dear heart! Let me help you," she murmured, raising me to my feet, and beginning to undress me like a child, crooning over me and quieting me with tender touches and gentle words.

"Oh, Lucy, speak to me, say something to comfort me. I am the most unhappy woman alive."

"My dear, dear mistress, no one can be so unhappy that our Father cannot comfort her. This is the time of all others when He is nearest to you. You have but to stretch forth your hand to touch His robe; you have but to open your heart to have Him come in and fill it with the Peace which pa.s.seth understanding. I am an ignorant woman, but I have this knowledge. I went through a sorrow, and what I believed to be a disgrace, helpless and alone, and knew of no comfort till He sent me His.

"I do not know your sorrow, I might not understand it if you told me, but beside this bed is standing One who knew what it was to be alone more than any other, and He is saying to you, 'Come, and I will give you rest.'"

"Dear Lucy, you are such a comfort to me. I do not understand these things in the way you do. I have never heard them so spoken of; but oh! I feel so safe while you speak!"

"Now, mistress, I will sing to you"--and she sang her sweet songs of comfort in trouble, of deliverance in danger, of love awaiting us, until my sorrow was stilled and I fell asleep.

M. de Sarennes kept his word in so far as further annoyance was concerned, but he displayed a familiarity towards me which called forth laughing comments from Angelique, and kept me constantly on the rack. At the end of the week he left on his mission to Quebec, promising to return within ten days, and charging us to prepare for our long journey.

I was at my wits' end to know what to do. I could not refuse to go with him, no matter what my distrust. I could not make any explanation to his mother or sister which would not expose me to a position I shuddered even to contemplate. Would Charles, their idol, behave towards any woman worthy of respect as he had behaved to me? I was completely in his power; no matter what he had done or might do, he had but to appear and say, "Come!" and I must follow, no matter how my heart might fail me.

All too late I realised what I had brought upon myself by my cowardly evasion of le pere Jean's commands. I had deceived myself, or rather, I had pretended to be led by outward chance, instead of honestly following our compact, and now, I was reaping my reward.

That this man was in love with me I could not doubt, but it was a love that made me sick to my very soul when I thought of it. Yet, he was a gentleman, by birth at least; he was answerable to the Marquis for my safe-keeping; and no matter what uneasiness or unquiet I might suffer on the journey, he would not dare to offer me any indignity with Lucy by me and Hugh awaiting me at its end.

With this I was forced to be content, and busied myself with Angelique and Lucy in our preparations. Angelique chattered merrily, regretting she could not take the journey with us; her brother knew the woods as others knew the town; he could tell every track, whether of bird or beast; he was so cunning that no storm surprised him, and so tender he would care for us like children.

"No one is so good to women as Charles! He never gets out of patience with me or maman. Let me tell you, you are a lucky girl, 'Mademoiselle' Marguerite, to have such a beau cavalier for your escort. Really, I am jealous of your opportunity; my brother is nearly as fine a man as I am, and I am sure any woman would be proud of my attentions." Thus she ran on, while I listened, heart-sick at the thought of being in the power of that brother, whom I knew far, far better than she.

But my fort.i.tude was not put to any test, for, on the very evening of M. de Sarennes's return, Lucy fell ill of some violent fever, and by the morning it was clear that our departure was an impossibility.

"Never mind, madame," said M. de Sarennes, evidently not ill pleased; "I can as well go to my post at Miramichi. I have business there which will detain me about a month; no doubt by that time you will be ready to start."

"Will you take a letter for Louisbourg?" I asked.

He laughed. "You are like all Paris-bred folk, madame! Miramichi is a good hundred leagues from Louisbourg as the crow flies, and more than twice that as a man can travel. No, no, madame! You must keep your letter until you can deliver it in person."

He made a pretence of laughing heartily at my discomfiture, and Angelique innocently joined in, thinking the jest to be my ignorance of the country, while my heart was bursting with indignation that he should thus make a mock of my helplessness, for he knew well what it meant to me that Hugh should be ignorant of my whereabouts.

CHAPTER XVIII

I AM RESCUED FROM A GREAT DANGER

Lucy's illness proved so serious that all thought of Louisbourg had to be abandoned during the long weeks she lay between life and death. Now it was that I realised the full dreariness of winter.

The snow-covered fields and woods had a stillness and emptiness that weighed upon me; my eyes grew weary of the dead whiteness; and that the earth should again be green, and warm, and living, seemed to call for something little short of a miracle. By the water-side it was worse: the drift-ice was piled along the sh.o.r.e in the wildest confusion, magnified and distorted by great banks and fantastic wreaths of snow. Beyond this was the black, open water, bearing the floating ice backward and forward with the changing tides, never at rest, grinding ceaselessly against the frozen barrier between it and the sh.o.r.e, and heralding a coming change of weather with strange, hollow explosions and moanings.

The shortness of the days, the desolation of the sweeping storms which imprisoned us, the unbroken isolation, and the disappointment of long delay told heavily on my spirits, which might have failed me had it not been for the constant care demanded by Lucy.

Before she gained strength to be about once more, the feeling of spring was in the air, crows were calling to one another, here and there a rounded hill-top showed a dun, sodden patch under the strengthening sun, and a trickling and gurgling told that, underneath the snow, the waters were gathering to free the rivers and send their burthen of ice sweeping into the St. Lawrence.

M. de Sarennes had come and gone with promises of return. He won my grat.i.tude by his forbearance to me as well as by his unlooked-for gentleness towards poor Lucy, whose heart he filled with admiration by kindly words of her boy, and a.s.surances of his safety.

She, poor thing, had not recovered her full mental condition with her strength, and was possessed of an idea that Christopher was at Quebec, and that she should be on her way there to meet him. This idea I did my utmost to dissipate, but M. de Sarennes, possibly to quiet or please her, had let fall something which she had taken as an a.s.surance that the English troops were there, and her son with them, and however successfully I might persuade her at the moment of the truth, she would as regularly come back to her delusion when alone.

Distressing as this was as an indication of her condition, it was the more disturbing to me as it was the last blow to my hopes for Louisbourg. It would be sheer madness to trust myself to M. de Sarennes without her protection; a protection which had vanished now, in the complete ascendency he had gained over her by his ready acquiescence in her imaginings, and I could not but feel he was skilfully withdrawing her affections from me.

However, he was called away to his post so suddenly that I was spared the difficulty of a decision, and I had almost determined that I would go on to Quebec and place myself under the care of M.

de Montcalm, when, towards the end of May, he returned, unexpected by any of us, even by his mother, who, it was patent, was much disturbed; but her unwavering belief in his superior judgment kept her silent. "He is my son, and knows his duty better than we," was her only reply to Angelique's questionings at any time, and it did not fail her now. It was touching to mark her effort to carry things off, to cover his preoccupation, and, distraught though he was, he remitted nothing of his attentions towards her, and so each comforted and s.h.i.+elded the other. I felt like an intruder, and when Angelique proposed a visit to the porpoise-fishery for the afternoon, I eagerly accepted the chance of escape.

We wandered off towards the beach, and by it made our way round to the great bay where the porpoise-fis.h.i.+ng once took place.

"Look at the bones of the old days, and you can imagine what it meant to us," said Angelique, pointing to the line of great ribs, and skulls, and skeletons which made a grotesque barrier to the highest tides, almost completely round the wide semicircle of the bay. "We fought for this many a long year, both with men and at law, and now, alas, we have neither men nor law to work it for us.

The porpoise can swim in and out of the broken park unharmed. There, just as that fellow is doing now I Look at him!" As she spoke, a huge white ma.s.s rose slowly above the water within the bounds of the fishery, and then came forward with a rush in pursuit of the smelts and capelans, shooting up showers of spray, which broke into rainbows in the brilliant sunlight.

"It is like everything else, going to rack and ruin; with the people starving in the sight of plenty, because this wretched war must drag on," sighed Angelique. "The men feel nothing of it; they have all the fighting and glory, while we sit at home helpless, good for nothing."

"Don't say that, ma belle!" called out her brother, cheerily; and we turned to find him behind us. "Do you think we could have the heart to keep it up, if it were not for the thought of you? But there, you are tired and out of sorts, little one. Go back to the mother, and I will take madame round by the end of the bay and back by the sucrerie."

It was impossible for me to object, and Angelique left us, while we took our way along the sands. M. de Sarennes seemed to have thrown aside his former cares, and rattled on in his natural way, noting and explaining everything which might interest me, and had I not known him better, I might have been misled by his openness; but all the time I kept asking myself: "When will he speak? What will he say?" So that it was a relief when, as we turned away from the sh.o.r.e into the woods, he suddenly dropped his former tone, and addressed me without pretence:

"Well, madame, are you as anxious as before to get to Louisbourg?"

"No; I have decided not to go. It is too late."

"Why too late? Are you fearful M. de Maxwell may have wearied waiting for you?"

"Monsieur, your words are an insult! If this be all you have to say to me, I beg you will let me return to the house."

"Not so fast, madame. I have a question or two yet which require to be answered, unless you prefer I should put them before my mother and sister. No? Then will you tell me who this boy Christophe really is? From his first appearance below there I was much puzzled why M. de Maxwell should have taken so unusual an interest in him. He was as jealous of the boy's liking for me as a doting mother could be, and was more distressed over his capture than many a father would have been over the loss of his son."