CHAPTER V
In that hurried meeting and parting Margot had been unable to learn from Gabriel the history of his life since they had looked upon one another last. Of his conversion to the Protestant faith she already knew, and of his sojourn in the fort of Halifax, but of the rest nothing. Most of all, nothing of his miraculous escape from the treacherous Micmacs during the voyage from Halifax. Le Loutre, too well acquainted with his lambs to repose trust in them, and writhing under the knowledge that he could not bend the white boy to his will, had made use of a well-known half-breed spy to keep him informed of the doings at the fort. This man was instructed, should the murderous plot fail or the Micmacs be once more won over to the English, to offer the savages yet higher bribes, so that they should at the last moment turn again to France. These higher bribes of course prevailed, and reinforced by members of their own tribe, who boarded the vessel under cover of the darkness, the English crew was overpowered, and all, with one exception, massacred. The exception, needless to say, was Gabriel. When the priest heard of the boy’s escape he scarce knew whether to mourn or to rejoice; for, until he had seen him actually in English uniform, he had still hoped to win over this choice spirit to his service.
Gabriel, being an expert swimmer, had contrived to make his way to the shore, and from thence by a toilsome route to the fort. Arrived there, all hesitation was at an end. Once and forever he threw in his lot with his father’s race; and chiefly in the hope of rescuing the gran’-père and Margot, but also because his natural bent was to a soldier’s career, he offered his services to the government. Cornwallis accepted them gladly, placing him advantageously from the first, and recommending him strongly to his successor, to make way for whom he shortly after crossed the ocean. Cornwallis carried with him at best a heavy heart, but it was in some degree lightened by the gratitude of the many to whom he had shown kindness.
It is doubtful whether the French government invariably approved of the lengths to which the zeal of Le Loutre carried him. At all events, the home ministers occasionally found it advisable to shut their eyes to his method of interpreting their instructions; which were, in brief, to keep Acadie at any price, or rather to keep their share of the unhappy country and take all the rest that was not theirs.
When Jean Jacques told Gabriel of the gran’-père’s death, and of the privations he and the girl had endured, even the new hope for Margot could not keep back the tears. For Gabriel had loved and revered the good old man; therefore he wept and was not ashamed. But doubly necessary was it now to carry Margot away, though where to bestow her in the English camp he hardly knew—only he felt sure that a way would be opened. Major Lawrence was acquainted with his story and would certainly aid him. Moreover, the smallness of the force caused him to believe that their stay on the Missaguash would be brief, and once at Halifax, Margot would find refuge with her country-people assembled there. Perhaps there too, she might learn to love his faith and be turned wholly from the Romish Church, and then perhaps—perhaps—who could say?
But Gabriel’s daydreams were rudely dispelled, and the struggle betwixt love and duty was not yet at an end.
The very next day, when he, with the aid of the faithful Micmac, was about to carry out his carefully laid scheme, Major Lawrence, having satisfied himself that his force was too small for the work it would have to accomplish, gave orders for immediate re-embarkation.
“The fortunes of war, my lad,” he said, with a shrug, and gave the matter no further thought; for Lawrence was made of very different stuff from Cornwallis, as the Acadians were to discover when he became governor of the province soon after. Not by nature a patient man, such patience as he had acquired soon vanished when appointed to direct a people who, it must be confessed, were not without trying characteristics. Already he marveled at the leniency of Cornwallis. To plead with Lawrence for a few hours grace, therefore, Gabriel knew to be unavailing; probably it would have been so with Cornwallis also, for after all “discipline must be maintained.” But at least the governor would have shown some sympathy. There came a moment when the young soldier was inclined to rebel, then duty triumphed, and he had learned his hardest lesson in self-restraint, which if a man fails to learn he becomes little better than a castaway. So duty and honor prevailed, and Gabriel confided his cousin to the care of Jean Jacques for as long a time as the Protestant convert dared to remain in that dangerous neighborhood; thereafter, if possible, the Indian was to convey the girl to the fort at Halifax, where were gathered many of her countrymen. Nevertheless, Gabriel leaned with straining eyes and an almost breaking heart over the bulwarks of the vessel that bore him rapidly away from all he loved best on earth, his only consolation being that he was keeping faith and doing his duty, and that the God of love and faith would not forsake either him or Margot.
And, indeed, he was to be yet further tried. Upon his arrival at Halifax he found great changes. Cornwallis had departed, and his place was already taken by Hopson, his immediate successor. In the excitement of new arrangements, heightened by the information that the French were invading the colonies, the recruit was suddenly plunged into another existence. By the special recommendation of the late governor he was attached to a lately arrived regiment marching south, and thereupon his boyhood’s dreams of escaping from the dull Acadian round, and of making himself of some account in the world, began to show signs of future fulfillment. Courage, fidelity, and intelligence, were virtues then as now sure to make their mark. The day came when the young soldier served under Washington himself, sharing with him the failure that made the fourth of July, 1754, the darkest day, perhaps, of his whole eventful life. But Gabriel’s relations with the Father of his country belong to a part of his career with which Acadie had nothing to do, and which therefore does not belong to this story. For him the long separation was in truth less hard than for the girl. He at least could drown the torturing sense of powerlessness to aid her in constant activity, and in a succession of duties and dangers; and the hours of his saddest thought were often interrupted by some stirring call to arms.
Far other was poor Margot’s lot. Hers was that of endurance—the hardest of all.
The day of her parting from Gabriel went heavily by; and when in the waning afternoon she crouched in the long marsh grass while the tide fell lower and lower and still no craft appeared upon the waters, she wrung her hands in helpless anguish, knowing that in two short hours neither boat nor canoe could pass up or down the river; for of the Missaguash nothing would remain but deep red mud. Yet Gabriel came not, and the precious minutes flew.
The Herbes and herself, pressing far into the woods in the hope of returning ere long to peaceful English soil, had missed the weighing of the anchor at early dawn and the skimming seaward of the white-winged ship bearing Margot’s fondest hope with it. So the girl crouched in the grass and waited, while the wife of Louis built a fire upon the firmer land and cooked from their scanty store of provisions.
Then at last, breasting the falling tide, a canoe came creeping up the Missaguash; and though it came not down, as it should have done from the English camp, Margot rose to her feet, and shading her eyes from the westering sun, watched it with beating heart and a prayer on her lips. Nearer and nearer—but that was no bright head bending over the paddle, but a dark and swarthy one—the head of an Indian; and it was Jean Jacques who presently grounded his little vessel, and slipped through the long grass toward Margot, who was waiting sick at heart. The Micmac spoke first.
“Maiden,” he said, “Wild Deer has sailed toward the setting of the sun. The braves of his nation commanded and it was for Wild Deer to obey. But the Micmac has found for thee a shelter until the youth comes again. Let us go quickly, ere the river too follow the sun.”
Bitter indeed was the disappointment, but Margot faced it bravely. After all, though their fashion of faith was no longer the same, were not she and Gabriel both in the hands of the one God?
“I will go with thee, Jean Jacques,” she said, after a moment’s struggle with her grief; “but Louis and Marie, they too desire to go. Whither do we follow thee?”
The Indian pointed down the Missaguash, where upon the opposite shore, removed from the burned settlement some two or three miles and concealed from it by a bend in the river, pleasant farmhouses and cultivated acres brooded in the hush of evening.
“And those good people will receive me?”
The Indian nodded.
“And I can work,” she added eagerly. “I can work well, Jean Jacques.”
It was true. The slender, dark-eyed maiden, though of a frailer build than the majority of Acadian women, possessed the ambition they so often lacked.
“Come, then,” urged Jean Jacques. “The white man and his squaw they must wait. The waters of the Missaguash droop in their bed.”
“Wilt thou come for the white man and his wife at the rising of the tide?”
The Indian grunted in acquiescence.
“And thou, Jean Jacques, whither wilt thou go?”
He pointed southward.
“Ah, to the new fort! There thou wilt be safe.”
“And thither am I to bear thee, maiden, when the trail is safe for thee.”
“It is well. And now, wait but the flashing of an arrow,” cried the girl, and was gone.
Then, as Jean Jacques squatted in the marsh grass, there was borne to him a sound which caused him to fall prone upon his stomach and crawl as the snake crawls toward the woods. For the sound was the cry of the paleface maiden, and had not Wild Deer delivered her into the faithful keeping of the Micmac?
Now it was not sweet to the heart of Jean Jacques to turn his hand against those of his own tribe, well as he knew that the lambs of Le Loutre, with whom he had before his conversion, slain and pillaged many a time, were in disposition rather birds of prey than lambs.
On the edge of the marsh he paused, lifting his head and gazing. To see was to act. With the swift and silent motion of the true Indian the arrow was on the string, and in a moment more buried in the heart of the feathered brave with whom Margot was struggling. In the background knelt a woman, clasping a crucifix to her bosom; beside her the prostrate form of a white man—Louis Herbes and Marie, his wife.
As Jean Jacques sprang forward Marie screamed again, whilst Margot uttered a cry of joy.
“Jean Jacques! It is our good Jean Jacques! Hasten, Marie! We will lift Louis, and bear him to the river. He is but wounded, he is not dead.”
With the taciturnity of his race at a crisis Jean Jacques spoke not. Wiser than Margot, he knew that the Micmacs never hunted singly, and that if their coveted prey reached the river in safety—well, the attempt could at least be made. As for the wounded man, he also knew that, though enjoined by Le Loutre to do the Acadians no injury, the lambs constantly employed means more in keeping with their savage natures than persuasion.
Motioning to the women to take the feet of Louis, who was unconscious, he raised him by the shoulders, and the small party began a hurried retreat through the marsh grass. Instinctively they all stooped as they walked, and well it was for them that they did so, for more than one arrow whistled over their heads.
“The brave is now alone,” grunted Jean Jacques in tones of satisfaction. “Alone he fears Jean Jacques.”
Margot, panting and breathless, made no reply, but she rejoiced, knowing that the Indian spoke truth. So doughty a warrior as he would not be attacked single-handed.
The canoe was already stranded by the falling tide, and the red mud was over ankle deep. Plunging into it, Jean Jacques, ably assisted by the strong, thick-set Acadian Marie, laid Louis in the canoe, and all three proceeded to push it toward the sluggish, ever-narrowing river.
“God and the Holy Mother be praised,” ejaculated Marie, as impelled by the paddle of the Indian the little vessel glided at last down the stream.
The words had scarcely left her lips when the air at her ear was cut by an arrow, which swept on to bury itself in the back of Jean Jacques.
The women uttered an exclamation of dismay, but the Indian, though his swarthy face went ashen gray, said not a word; only when Marie would have extricated the arrow, muttered, “Touch it not.”
Fortunately there was a spare paddle in the canoe, and both women in turn put their whole strength into the work, so that aided by the tide they made rapid progress. And well that so it was, for as the canoe bore up against a green promontory, upon which houses and groups of people were visible, Jean Jacques fell forward on his face, the life-blood gushing from his nose and mouth. Willing arms lifted him and laid him upon the green turf, for the habitans had for some time been anxiously watching the approaching canoe, and were ready with their aid. But Margot’s first and only thought was for the faithful Micmac. Carefully as the arrow was withdrawn, the shock was too great; and as the girl bent weeping over him, it was but glazing eyes he raised to hers.
“Wild Deer; tell Wild Deer.”
Then he fell back upon her arm and spoke no more.
Faithful unto death, indeed, was this poor Indian. And, heretic though he was, they laid him in consecrated earth, blessed by one of the priests who, French assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, were always permitted to minister to their flocks upon English soil, unless detected in acts of treachery.
“ ‘Wild Deer; tell Wild Deer.’ ”
So for a time poor, little, hunted Margot found peace and a refuge with her country people, but only for a time. When in a few months news of Lawrence’s return with a larger force reached the ears of Le Loutre he sent forth his Micmacs to destroy the cluster of homes yet remaining on the English side of the water. The Acadians, caring not much for fighting any one, refused to obey his mandate and take arms against the redcoats, so fled in helpless terror, some to Halifax and Annapolis, but the larger number across the Missaguash. Whether Le Loutre honestly desired to found a settlement in this locality, or merely desired to vent his hatred for the English, cannot be rightly known; at all events his calculations were at fault regarding a new settlement. The French shore was already crowded, and if he really entertained hopes of filling up the marsh and turning it into fertile land for the benefit of the refugees, these hopes were defeated by the corrupt practices of his own government, which cared not at all for the welfare of the unhappy Acadians, but used them merely as tools. Half clothed and half starved, the men were at once put to hard, labor, with scanty or no remuneration. The strong new fort of Beauséjour, built in opposition to the less imposing one of Fort St. Lawrence, was the handiwork of Acadian refugees. Even then they might not have fared so ill had the supplies actually sent by the French government ever reached their rightful destination, but this was far from being the case. Official corruption, bad as it was throughout New France, was worse, probably, at Beauséjour than elsewhere. One of the most incompetent and unworthy of the numerous “office seekers,” to use a modern term, was in command there, and the “spoils system” was at its height upon the shores of the Missaguash. Vergor, the commandant, applied but a small portion of the food and clothing to the uses for which they were intended, and sent the large remainder back to Quebec, or to Louisbourg, where his confederates sold them, greatly to his and their profit, but not at all to that of the poor Acadians.
Terrified at Le Loutre, Vergor, the Micmacs, and French soldiers, not naturally loving the foreign race across the water, yet craving peaceful homes with them, the refugees dragged on a miserable existence, finding themselves becoming daily more of a burden to their countrymen in the settlements about Chipody. At length they resolved to inquire secretly of the English whether they would be allowed to return to their homes, could they make their escape? The answer was that they could return if they renewed the oath of fealty to the English crown, the oath they had so often broken in their weakness and vacillation. They would not be required by English law to bear arms, but if on the contrary they were found fighting for, or aiding the French, they would be dealt with as traitors. Among those who joined in this request were Margot’s guardians, the Herbes, also the family with whom the fugitives had found shelter on the south bank of the Missaguash close to the Pont-à-Buot.
Furious, indeed, was the anger of the abbé when he heard of the backsliding of his people. His ravings were rather those of a lunatic than of an anointed priest, as he flung himself hither and thither in the pulpit, calling down the wrath of God upon his recreant flock. And Le Loutre was a man who never stopped at mere words. So one night two things happened; one, however, which had nothing to do with him.
The people for whom Margot worked in return for bare sustenance were not unkind, but they found Louis and Marie of more service to them, being stronger and stouter, and little Margot, in losing heart and hope, was losing physical strength too. That night, as she crossed the meadows behind the home-going cows, she was very sad. Slowly, very slowly, her faith in the church of her fathers was being dragged up by the roots, and the fury of the abbé, his cruel words in the sacred building a few hours since, had uprooted it yet more. Yet she had no other spiritual guide but him—none to direct her in new, untrodden ways. Gabriel, who could have helped her, was far away. M. Girard she had not seen since the burning of Beaubassin, and she feared that the good old man was in trouble. It was working and waiting in the dark for Margot.
As she neared the marsh a sound struck on her ear.
“Tst!”
She glanced around fearfully, and her eyes fell on the head of an Indian, stealthily upreared.
Terror of the Micmacs amounted to an inborn instinct among the Acadians, and common sense alone intervened to stay Margot’s flying feet. Perhaps the man had some message for her, a message from him who was ever in her thoughts. She paused, therefore, with as fair a show of courage as she could muster.
“Be not afraid, maiden,” said the Indian in broken French. “Come nearer. Bent Bow carries a message for thee from one whom Jean Jacques called ‘Wild Deer.’ ”
Margot’s eyes brightened, and oblivious of fear she approached the Indian, who she now perceived was no Micmac. He held toward her a little billet which she eagerly took. Now the good curé at Annapolis, at Gabriel’s earnest entreaty, had taught the cousins to read and write, and never was Margot more thankful than at this moment for the blessed privilege, though she had often times found the lesson hour a toilsome one.
“Ah!” she cried. “I have nothing to give thee, Bent Bow, to reward thy faithfulness. The poor Acadians have not so much as a handful of beads.”
“It is enough that I bring thee the billet,” replied the Indian, “and that I serve Wild Deer. Together, many moons from here, we drove before us the foreign devils, and there came a night on which the paleface youth saved the life of the Indian brave.”
“Wilt thou see him again?” cried the girl eagerly.
Bent Bow shook his head, and with a sign of farewell began to crawl away through the marsh grass.
“Is it well with Wild Deer?” she called after him.
“It is well.” And she saw the messenger no more. Still walking behind the cows, she read the precious letter:
Ma Cousine: Would that I knew it was as well with thee as it is with me. But, alas! this I cannot know. Yet Jean Jacques is faithful, and he has vowed to care for my pearl of price. Long ere this he will have told thee why I failed to meet thee. Margot, I have for leader one of the noblest young men God ever created. It was a happy day for me when, through my father’s name, I was appointed to serve under such an one. Sad it is that a soldier’s life takes me far from thee, but I shall come again, sweet cousin, to find thee safe and sheltered beside the Missaguash, far from the cruel priest. The family to whom Jean Jacques was to carry thee are known by me, and will protect and cherish thee.
“Ah, Gabriel,” said Margot to herself, the tears upon her cheeks, “well is it that so much is hid from thee.”
For I am coming back. Little is said, but Washington himself thinks that some great move is to be made, and that the men of New England are gathering, and that the governor of Massachusetts and the governor of our poor distraught country are planning alike against the French. Then I and others who came southward with me will return. Till then, ma cherie, mon amie, adieu. In English, though I have grown to like my father’s tongue, methinks these words are not so sweet.
Gabriel.
And all the way along the meadows her heart sang, “He is coming back.”
But at home a scene of confusion and distress awaited her.
Le Loutre, not content with thunders from the pulpit, had been making a house to house visitation of those whom he considered the most rebellious members his flock. Among these were classed Louis Herbes and his host, François Marin. Banishment to Isle St. Jean, where many exiled Acadians were already in a fair way to starve, was the priest’s usual punishment; and should any man refuse to obey, refusal was met by a threat to permit the Micmacs to carry off, and possibly kill, his wife and children. A yet worse fate than banishment awaited Herbes and Marin.
That morning in the church Le Loutre had assured the signers of the two documents of appeal—to the French and to the English governments—that if they did not take their names from both papers they should “have neither sacraments in this life nor heaven in the next.” What could the poor, hunted Acadians do but obey? And even with obedience came banishment for many. As for Herbes and Marin, they were given the grievous permission to proceed to Quebec as deputies on behalf of the Acadians who desired to return to the English side of the river. Grievous permission, indeed! For even slow-witted Acadians were bright enough to understand that the abbé would prepare the way before them in such a manner as to make their mission not only useless, but terrifying. And truly they were correct in their anticipations, for after the visit Duquesne, the governor, wrote Le Loutre as follows:
“I think that the two rascals of deputies whom you sent me will not soon recover from the fright I gave them.”
Such was the heartlessness with which this unhappy race was treated.