“Pardon, ma cousine, pardon,” exclaimed Gabriel remorsefully. “Thou knowest how it is with me; my heart beats, and the words rush, and it is all over.”
“Wilt thou never learn prudence?” she retorted, smiling. “We Acadians have learned it in nigh forty years of lying helpless like a lamb betwixt two snapping wolves.”
“Prudence, dost thou call it, Margot? My father called it by a harsher name; and even my mother said that was a poor thing we did, to live, a free people, under one flag; untaxed, ministered to by our own priests, the very necessaries of life supplied to us, and yet intriguing, forever intriguing, with those of the other flag.”
“The flag under which we live is an alien flag,” said gentle Margot.
“That may be; but have we ever been called upon to fight for it? And now that we are summoned to swear the full oath of allegiance, we have richly deserved this mild rebuke. The French are cruel; we go with them only through fear of the Indians.”
“The gran’-père, he goes with none,” interposed the girl with a flash of spirit. “He tills the soil in peace, meddling not with French or English.”
“Ah, but even he will have to choose ere many days are past; the abbé does not bring here his flock for naught. And,” cried the lad, clenching his fists, “who would be a neutral? Not I!” Then more quietly: “Hast thou not heard them tell, Margot, how when France yielded Acadia to England we were free, all of us, to move within the year to French soil if we would? But we would neither go nor remain and take the oath of fealty; nevertheless we were permitted to stay unsworn for seventeen years, intriguing then even as we do now. At last the oath was won from us, and more than twenty years since then have come and gone, and once again, because of our untruth and the cruelties practised upon English settlers, the word has gone forth that we must swear anew. What kind of a people, then are we, Margot, to be thus double-faced? Thirteen thousand souls, and withal afraid of priests and Indians! Not daring, not one of us, to play the man and come out boldly for the one flag or the other. Oh, we are cowards—cowards all!”
He flung himself upon the ground and covered his face with his hands.
To simple, yet wise little Margot these bursts of passion on the part of her cousin were almost incomprehensible. Her nature was a still, clear pool, whilst his was as the young torrent leaping down the rocks, unconscious of its own power, but eager to join the strong and swelling stream beneath, upon whose bosom the great ships float down to the deep sea. But although she did not understand, love gave her sympathy. She kneeled beside him, and once more laid her hand upon his shoulder; but the words she would have uttered died in her throat, and instead she exclaimed in accents of terror:
“O Gabriel, Gabriel, arise. It is the gran’-père who calls, and with him is still the abbé.”