“Be of a better courage, mon enfant! Thou and thy heretic will meet again, never fear!”
“Sometimes it misgives me that our Margot is already part heretic herself,” said Louis with a suspicious glare.
“Shame on thee, shame on thee!” protested his wife. “And hast thou so soon forgotten to be grateful? Could the maiden not have left us that day on the banks of the Missaguash—you a mere helpless burden hindering her flight?” Then, while Louis hung his head in abashed silence, she hastily brought the conversation back to its former subject. It was finally decided that the whole party should proceed to the house of the neighbor whom Margot had warned of the arrival of the ships, there to discuss the advisability of further action. Thus slowly did the minds of Acadians work. The result was that the commandant at the fort received no notice of the enemy’s approach until the small hours of the morning. The attacking force was then at the very doors, and all was confusion and alarm. Messengers were sent in hot haste to Louisbourg for aid, and by alternate threats and promises the poor Acadians, who so much preferred to have their fighting done for them, were forced either to assist in the defense of the fort, or worse still, oppose the enemy in the open.
It was a case of English regulars and provincials against French regulars and Acadians—on the one side the whole heart, on the other but half a heart; for the French soldiers corrupted by corrupt officials, were no match either in resolution for the stout New Englanders, or in discipline for the British troops. The Acadians and Indians sent out of the fort were as mere puppets in the path of Monckton’s army, and the second night beheld the invaders safely across the river and encamped within a mile of Beauséjour.
Herbes and Marin had of course been pressed into the service, but unlike their neighbors had decided to leave their families in the farmhouse instead of hiding them in the woods. The crafty Marin declared that the home was far enough from the scene of the conflict to insure safety, but in truth he depended far more upon the almost certain hope that Margot’s English lover would take care that she, therefore they, would not be molested. By this it may be seen how vague were his notions concerning army regulations, discipline, and so forth. Depending on this hope, however, the women and the two half-grown sons of Marin were left behind, to listen to the distant roar and rattle of the bombardment of Beauséjour,—for the attack was not long in beginning. The wives told their beads, weeping and praying for the safety of their husbands, while Margot, pale and still, and alternating betwixt hope and fear, turned now consciously in her petitions to the faith of him whom she loved. For Margot’s nature like that of Gabriel, was clear and straightforward; and now that the forms of the Catholic religion were getting to mean little to her, she faced the knowledge bravely, dropping these forms one by one, striving to wait patiently until light and help should come; and this lonely waiting amounted to heroism in a timid Acadian maid. But the length of the loneliness, the yearning for counsel and support, was forming the girl’s character, and ripening it as the seed ripens within the pod. It was Margot, the woman, who now awaited the return of Gabriel, and such a woman as she might never have become had she led the effortless, unaspiring existence of the average Acadian peasant, without mental struggle or any higher object than that of living from day to day.
News of the siege came but fitfully to the three women, bereft as they were of neighbors and the usual neighborly gossip; for the inhabitants of the scattered houses, or rather huts, within reach had all fled to the shelter of the woods. Now and then some head of a family, wearied of what seemed to him profitless combat, having succeeded in eluding the unwelcome task, paused at the farmhouse to drink a cup of milk on his way to rejoin wife and babes, and shake his head over the news he brought; or a fugitive Indian, prowling along the river’s bank, bade the paleface squaws make ready for flight, declaring that the great medicine-man could not much longer induce the braves to hold the fort against the foe. But secure in their simple faith that Marin would contrive to see Gabriel, and that Gabriel would protect them, the women refused to face the perils of the forest.
The day was the sixteenth of June. For several days they had heard nothing, and growing hourly more anxious, the three would once and again drop their household tasks, and stepping one by one to the door, call to the boys perched upon the tall trees to know if aught might be seen or heard. When at last a shout went up, it chanced that all the women were in the house. As they ran out into the open, young François cried:
“They come, they come! a host of them!”
“Who come?” inquired his mother impatiently. “Speak, boy!”
“I cannot yet tell, ma mère; but yes, yes!”