CHAPTER IX
But Winslow was in error. The wife of Marin came alone, and Gabriel’s yearning eyes traveled in vain beyond the sturdy figure of the Acadian peasant woman for the slight one of his cousin.
The meeting took place in the general’s private parlor.
“Ah, you expected la petite!” began Julie volubly, “but that may not be—not yet.”
“Where is she, friend Julie?” interrupted the young man impatiently. “How did she escape from the priest? Is she well? Is she happy? Does she think of me? Only tell me.”
“But that is much to tell, my brave boy,” laughed Julie. “Listen now to me, who am indeed thy friend. Thou shalt see her, and she shall answer those many questions with her own lips, but on one condition: the marriage must be at once—on the instant. Otherwise, Marin——” she shrugged her shoulders expressively. “It is not well, seest thou, to fall out with a husband. Now, Marin is a prisoner, therefore am I a weak woman left alone to deal with a young man of violence, seest thou? Thou dost seize thy bride, thou dost carry her to thy priest, who am I? But shouldst thou delay, and I bring la petite to visit thee once, twice, many times, Marin, he will say, ‘Thou, bonne femme, wast the guardian of this child, and thou didst take her to visit a heretic, allowing her also to neglect the duties she owes thee.’ But once thy wife, M. le Capitain, and all is over.”
Gabriel listened to this harangue with eyes upon the ground and the red color slowly flushing to his fair face. He continued silent so long that the woman lost patience.
“Mon Dieu!” she ejaculated under her breath, “is it the English blood that makes him so dull?”
At last he spoke hesitatingly:
“Good friend, thou sayest, ‘Seest thou?’ I reply, ‘Seest thou not also?’ There has been no talk of marriage betwixt Margot and myself. Truly do I desire it,” his eyes flashed, and he raised his head. “I desire it with all the strength that is in me, but with Margot, the maiden, it may be otherwise.”
Again the wife of Marin laughed. So loudly did she laugh that the general, pacing the vicarage garden, paused at the open window to acquaint himself with the cause of her mirth.
“It is the brave garçon, my general. He knows nothing. Let him but arrange for the marriage, and I, even I, Julie, will answer for the maiden.”
Then, on being questioned by Winslow, she went over her tale once more, and the two gossips would have promptly settled the whole affair out of hand had not one of the principals interposed.
“Let me but see her once—only once—first,” implored Gabriel.
The general, promptly won over to the side of Julie, hesitated, in such haste was he for the pleasurable excitement of a wedding; but finally it was resolved that the young lover should go the following morning to Julie’s little cabin, and there win his fair young bride for himself.
As Julie drew on her hood preparatory to departure, Winslow inquired of her how it fared with the women, remarking that she herself seemed to bear her fate with much cheer.
“For the others—well, while many lament, all do not. For myself I care not. I weary of the French rule and the fighting and wandering and the savage Indians. Anywhere I go willingly where there is peace, and the soil is fruitful—v’ là tout!”
So she went; and the early sun was glistening on meadows yet dewy when Gabriel, forgetful for the moment of the sorrows around him and his own distasteful duties, strode along the same dusty road he had traversed the previous day, arriving in the course of an hour or so at the small hut inhabited by the Marins. Julie, hastening forth to milk, greeted him with a broad smile, and waved to him to enter.
Enter he did, and in a second, neither knew how, he held Margot close to his heart.
It was long before a word was spoken. It was enough that they were together; and when at length Gabriel found voice, it was at first only for expressions of pity and endearment for the frail little creature who seemed lost within his large embrace.
“They sat down side by side . . . before the empty hearth.”
“But I am not so frail, mon cousin,” she protested. “I can work and endure, ah, thou knowest not how much!”
“But never again, chérie!” was Gabriel’s reply; and grown strangely and suddenly bold, he added: “and remember, it must be ‘mon cousin’ no longer, for from this very day there shall be an end of ‘cousin’—it will be ‘wife’ and ‘husband.’ Hearest thou?”
Yes, Margot heard, but had nothing to say. Finally she remarked in a low voice:
“I would be baptized into thy faith first.”
“What?” cried Gabriel joyfully. “Is that really so, my Margot? What glad news! Now is all indeed well with us! There is a chaplain at Fort Edward; he will baptize thee, and marry us.”
They sat down side by side upon the rude bench before the empty hearth, and talked and made plans as lovers have done since lovers first began. Gabriel’s mind, as we know, worked quickly, and he soon had beautiful schemes mapped out for being transferred to Washington’s command in Virginia, that rising young general having been recently appointed commander-in-chief of the army there.
“My noble captain is now stationed at Winchester,” he concluded, “and with him is that grand old soldier Fairfax, the lord lieutenant of the county. They are engaged in subduing the Indians. At Winchester we will live, and then shall I be ever at hand to protect my wife.”
News traveled slowly in those days, and Gabriel had heard nothing of the panic at Winchester, and with the confidence and faith of youth believed that his hero, George Washington, could accomplish even the impossible.
But duty called, and Julie returned, and Gabriel had to depart; yet not before it was arranged that, with Winslow’s permission, assured in advance, Julie should bring Margot that evening to the church, there to meet the chaplain from Fort Edward, who would perform the two sacraments of baptism and marriage.
Winslow, naturally of a cheerful disposition, rejoiced in this break in the monotony of misery, hastily dispatched a messenger to Fort Edward, and but for Gabriel’s entreaties would have made the marriage as jovial an affair as Puritanical principles admitted of. Discipline forbade that a woman could be received as an inmate of a fortified camp, neither could Gabriel be spared often from duties destined to become daily more onerous and troublesome; but to the two, scarcely more than boy and girl, who stood that evening with bowed heads before the chaplain, there was more than common comfort in the solemn words: “Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”
Joy and thankfulness, deep and unutterable, swelled the heart of the young husband as, from the gate in the stockade, he watched the slight form of his girl-wife disappear into the gathering shades of night. She was his now—his to claim, to protect, to have and to hold till death did them part.
In the excitement and rapture of meeting, Gabriel had hardly bethought him to ask her how she had escaped from Le Loutre. The fact that she had escaped, that she was alive and well and with him, filled his mental horizon. The tale, however, was short. The priest, hard pressed, had been compelled to give her up to a party of fugitives hastening to Halifax to take the oath. This party had come upon the Marins, and thinking they also were bound for Halifax, Margot had willingly joined them, finding out when it was too late Marin’s change of view.
In those last sad days for her country-people Margot showed of what stuff she was made. Consoling, upholding, encouraging, she seemed to have arrived suddenly at a noble womanhood. This, however, was not the case. She had been growing toward it slowly but surely through years of adversity.
The continued delay in the coming of the transports bred trouble betwixt the soldiers and the Acadians. “The soldiers,” we are told, “disliked and despised them,” the Acadians, and the general found it necessary not only to enforce discipline more sternly among his troops, but to administer the lash also on occasion.
At last, one October day, Winslow had four transports at his disposal. Orders and counter-orders, lamentation and weeping, disturbed the clear, still air. Villages had to be arranged to go together in the same transport as well as families; and this, with so few troops at his command, was no easy task for the general, who naturally was possessed of very little experience as regarded organization. Gabriel, who while under Washington had received of necessity some training, was his right hand man. The male prisoners were removed from the ships to land while the mustering went forward.
As the women filed past the spot where for a moment the harassed general and his subordinate had come together, and the pair gazed upon the melancholy confusion of young and old, and household belongings in carts, Winslow groaned: “I know they deserve all and more than they feel; yet it hurts me to hear their weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!”
At Fort Edward, as well as at many other places in the province, the same terrible scenes were being enacted—those in command, without one single authentic exception, carrying out the stern decree as mercifully as possible. Beside the long train of women walked the priest of each village, encouraging and upholding his flock. A few of these priests accompanied the exiles, but most of them returned to Canada.
Not all the women, however, were “weeping and wailing.” Some, as has been remarked, appeared to be wholly undisturbed. Among these latter was Julie, in the cart with whom was Margot, bound to see the last of her benefactress. As they passed, both women waved their hands to the two officers, Julie calling gayly to Gabriel:
“It is well, M. le mari! Our ship goes to Virginia, where we shall again meet. Is it not so?”
For weary weeks the misery was prolonged, and it was the close of the year before Winslow’s and Murray’s bitter task about the Basin of the Mines was completed. But improved organization rendered even difficult things easier, and by the last of October the general was able to part, though with extreme reluctance, with his most efficient subordinate. Gabriel, promoted to a captaincy, set sail with his wife on one of the transports for Virginia.
The poor exiles, with comparatively few exceptions, were scattered around in the various States from Massachusetts southward, meeting with no cruelty certainly, but also with no welcome from the struggling colonials, and only in Louisiana thriving and becoming a permanent colony. Canada, and even France and England, were also forced to receive them, and in Canada, among the people of their own faith, their lot was the hardest. Help in their own church they found none, and indeed in many instances implored to be taken back to the English Colonies, where at least they were not treated with actual inhumanity. The war at last at an end, many, the Herbes amongst the number, found their way back to their own country. A large portion of the fertile province lay waste, however, for years, the New England soldier-farmers refusing either part or lot in it, and English settlers finally being brought from over sea.
It is doubtful if the Acadians ever learned the fate of their leader and tyrant. Captured on the ocean by the English, Le Loutre died in prison, after having been nearly assassinated by one of the soldiers of the guard, who swore that the holy father had once in Acadie tried to take his scalp!
And Gabriel and Margot? Their lives were happy, although the pain of separation was sometimes theirs, and they were often exposed to perils and dangers. As an officer under Washington through stirring times, both in the Indian wars and the war of the Revolution, Gabriel’s could not be other than the life of sacrifice and self-devotion demanded by the life of a true patriot. Margot seconded him bravely, cheering him on at the trumpet-call of duty and never restraining him by selfish fears and interests. She kept around her a few of her country people; and there in Virginia she reared a family of brave boys to follow in their father’s steps.
Transcriber’s Notes:
List of Illustrations for Gabriel the Acadian was moved from the front of the book to the start of the novel.
A few obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note.
A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public domain.
[End of The Angel of His Presence by G.L. Hill and Gabriel the Acadian by E.M.N. Bowyer]