IV.
Early in December, having just returned to Grand Pré from their wedding journey, Jack Desbra and his wife were standing one evening in a window that looked out across the marshes and the Basin. It was a wild night. A terrific wind had come up with the tide, and the waves raged in thunderously all along the Minas Dykes. There was nothing visible without, so thick was the loud darkness of the storm; but the young Englishman had suggested that they should look to see if the "Star" would shine a welcome to their home-coming.
"It is my Star, remember, Jack," said his wife, "and it will be guilty of no such irregularity as showing itself on a night like this."
"You forget, my lady," was the reply, "that the Star is now mine. The Marsh has the Star, and my lady has the Marsh; but I have my lady, and so possess all!"
"Oh, Jack," cried the girl, with a shudder, "there it is! I am sure something will happen. Let us sell the Marsh to-morrow, dear; for now that I belong to you I can no longer protect you from the spell. I had forgotten that!"
"Very well," said Desbra, lightly, "if you say so, we'll sell to-morrow."
As the two stood locked in each other's arms, and straining their eyes into the blackness, the violet ray gathered intensity, and almost seemed to reveal, by fits, the raving turmoil of the rapidly mounting tide.
In a few moments Desbra became absorbed, as it were, in a sort of waking dream. His frank, merry, almost boyish countenance took on a new expression, and his eyes assumed the strange, far-focused steadfastness of the seer's. His wife watched, with a growing awe which she could not shake off, the change in her husband's demeanor; and the fire-light in the cheerful room died away unnoticed.
At last the girl could bear no longer the ghostly silence, and that strange look in her husband's face. "What do you see, Jack?" she cried. "What do you see? Oh, how terribly it shines!"
When Desbra replied, she hardly recognized his voice.
"I see many ships," said he, slowly, and as if he heard not the sound of his own words. "They sail in past Blomidon. They steer for the mouths of the Canard and Gaspereau. Some are already close at hand. The strange light of the 'Eye of Gluskâp,' is on the sails of all. From somewhere I hear voices singing, 'Nos bonnes gens reviendront.' The sound of it comes beating on the wind. Hark! how it swells over the marshes!"
"I do not hear anything, Jack, dear, except these terrible gusts that cry past the corners of the house," said Jessie, tremulously.
"How light it grows upon the New Marsh, now!" continued her husband, in the same still voice. "The 'Eye' shines everywhere. I hear no more the children crying with the cold; but on the Marsh I see an old man standing. He is waiting for the ships. He waves his stick exultantly to welcome them. I know him,—it is old Remi Corveau. They told me he died and was buried when the ships sailed away from Grand Pré.
"There comes a great ship heading for Long Island shoal. Cannot the captain see how the waves break furiously before him? No ship will live a moment that strikes the shoal to-night. She strikes! God have—No! she sails straight through the breakers!—and not three feet of water on the shoal!
"Two ships have reached the creek," continued Desbra, speaking more rapidly. "How the violet light shines through their sails! How crowded the decks are! All the faces are turned toward shore, with laughter and with streaming eyes, and hands outstretched to the fields of Grand Pré. I know the faces. There is Evangeline, and there is Jaques Le May,—but why don't they drop anchor? They will ground if they come any nearer shore! And in this sea—Merciful Heaven, they are on the dikes! They strike—and the dike goes down before them! The great white waves throng in behind them—the Marsh is buried—and the light goes out!"
The young man started back and put his hand to his eyes, as if awaking from a dream. He caught the sound of his wife's sobbing, and, throwing both arms about her, he stooped to kiss her hair, which gleamed in the dark.
"What's the matter, darling?" he whispered, anxiously. "And what has become of our fire?"
"Oh, Jack, you have frightened me so!" replied the girl. "You have been dreaming or in a trance, and seeing dreadful things that I could not see at all! I could see nothing but that hateful 'Eye,' which has been shining as if all the fires of hell were in it. Come away! we will sell the Marsh to-morrow at any price!"
"But, dear," said Desbra, "the Star has gone out! There is not a sign of it to be seen. All outside is black as Egypt. Look!"
Reluctantly the girl turned toward the window. She gave a little cry. "That's just what you said a minute ago!" she exclaimed. "You said 'the light goes out,' and then you came to yourself. I believe the dike is washed away!"
"Well," said Desbra, "we'll see to-morrow." And they drew the curtains and lit the lamps and stirred the fire to a blaze; and between the shriekings of the wind they heard the roar of the breakers, trampling the low and naked coast.
When morning broke over the Gaspereau hills, and men looked out of their windows, every vestige of the dike that had inclosed the New Marsh was gone. The site of the Marsh was much eaten away, and a bank of sand was piled at the other side of the creek, near the mouth, in such a way as to divert the channel many feet from its old course.
Thereafter the tides foamed in and out with daily and nightly clamor across the spot where the "Star on the Marsh" had gleamed; and men made no new effort to reclaim the ruined acres.
THE END.