“What do you mean?” I cried, my heart sinking with a sudden fear. “Nay, you shall tell me!” I went on fiercely, making as if to restrain him by force as he turned away. But he bent upon me one look of such scorn that I felt at once convicted of folly; and striding off, with something of a dignity in his carriage which all his grotesquerie of garb could not conceal, he left me to chew upon his words. As for the warning, that was surely plain enough. I was to go to Yvonne, and be by her in case of any need. The business thus laid upon me was altogether to my liking. But that pitying word—of joy that should turn to ashes in my mouth! It filled me with black foreboding. As I stepped down briskly toward Grand Pré my joy was already dead, withered at a madman’s whisper. And that great-growing cloud from over Blomidon had swallowed up all the village in a chill shadow.
Chapter III
Charms and Counter-charms
Never may I forget that walking down from the Gaspereau Ridge to Grand Pré village. The very air seemed charged with mystery. Every sight and every sound bore the significance of an omen, to which I lacked interpreter. The roofs of the village itself, and the marshes, the sea, and the far-off bulk of Blomidon, appeared like the tissue of a dream, ready to vanish upon a turn of thought, and leave behind I knew not what of terrible reality.
I am not by nature superstitious at all beyond the point of convenience. Such superstitions as please me I have ever been wont to cherish for the interest to be had out of them. I have often been strengthened in a doubtful intention by omens that looked my way, and auspicious signs have many a time cheered me astonishingly when affairs have seemed to be going ill. But the most menacing of omens have ever had small weight when opposing themselves to my set purpose. When a superstition is on my side I show it much civility: when it is against me it seems of small account.
But that night I was more superstitious than usual. Of the new moon, a pallid bow just sinking, I caught first sight over my left shoulder, and I felt vaguely troubled thereat. One crow, croaking from a willow stump upon my right hand, got up heavily and flew across my path. I misliked the omen, and felt straightway well assured of some approaching rebuff. When, a few moments later, two crows upon my left hand flew over to my right I was not greatly comforted, for they were far ahead and I was forced to conclude that the felicity which they prophesied was remote.
Thus it came that presently I was in a waking and walking dream, not knowing well the substance from the shadow. Yet my senses did so continue to serve me that I went not down into the village, where I knew I should find many a handclasp, but followed discreetly along the back of the orchards, that I might reach the De Lamourie place as swiftly as possible.
By this hour a sweet-smelling mist, such as, I think, falls nowhere else as it does in the Acadian fields, lay heavy on the grasses. I bethought me that it was the dew of the new moon, and therefore endowed with many virtues; and I persuaded myself to believe that my feet, which were by now well drenched with it, must needs be set upon a fortunate errand.
As I came to this comforting conclusion I reached a little thicket at an orchard corner, where grew a deep tangle of early flowering herbs. There, gathering the wet and perfumed blooms, stooped an old woman with a red shawl wrapped over her head and shoulders. She straightened herself briskly as I came beside her, and I saw the haggard, high-boned, hawk-nosed face of old Mother Pêche, whose tales of wizardry I had often listened to in the years long gone by. She turned upon me her strange eyes, black points of piercing intelligence encircled by a startling glitter of wide white, and at once she stretched out to me a crooked hand of greeting.
“It is good for these old eyes, Master Paul, to see thee back in the village!” she exclaimed.
Now, any one will tell you that it is not well to be crossed in one’s path by an old woman, when on an errand of moment. I hurried past, therefore; and it shames me to say it. But then, remembering that one had better defy any omen than leave a kindness undone, I stopped, turned back, and hastily grasped the old dame’s wizened hand, slipping into it a silver piece as I did so.