“It is cold here at night,” said Marc, “but the women have been allowed to bring us a few quilts and blankets. You wills hare mine—the gift of the good curé. Then we can talk.”
The early autumnal dark had been feebly lighted this while by a few candles; but candles were getting scarce in the stricken cottages of Grand Pré, and in Grand Pré chapel prison they were a hoarded luxury. The words “lights out” came early; and Marc and I laid ourselves in a corner of the sacristy by general consent reserved to him.
A cold glimmer of stars came in by the narrow window, and I thought of them looking down on Yvonne, awake, not sleeping, I well knew. Were the astrologers right, I wondered. Good men and great had believed in the jurisdiction of the stars. I remembered a very learned astrologer in Paris, during the year I spent there, and futilely I wished I had consulted him. But at the time I had been so occupied with the present as to make small question of the future.
Soon the sound of many breathings told that the prisoners were forgetting for a little their bars and walls. In a whisper, slowly, I told Marc of my coming to Grand Pré in the spring—of Yvonne’s bond to the Englishman—of the conversation at the hammock—of the fire, the scene at the boat, the saving of Anderson—and of all that had just been said and done at the ford of the Gaspereau.
He heard me through, in such silence that my heart sank, fearing he, too, was against me; and I passionately craved his support. I knew the lack of it would no jot alter my purpose; but I loved him, and hungered for the warmth of the comrade heart.
When he spoke, however, my fears straight fell dead.
“Only let us get safe out of this coil, Paul, and we will let my Prudence take the obstinate maid in hand,” said he, with an air that proclaimed all confidence in the result. “You must remember, dear old boy, the inevitable fetish which our French maids are wont to make out of obedience to parents—a fair and worshipful virtue, indeed, that obedience, but not one to exact the sacrifice of a woman’s life—and of what is yet more sacred to her. Prudence will make her understand some things that you could not.”
I felt for his hand and gripped it.
“You think I will win her?” I whispered. “And you will stand by me?”
“For the latter question, how can you ask it?” he answered, with a hint of reproach in his voice. “I fear I should stand by you in the wrong, Paul, let alone when, as now, I count you much in the right. I have but to think of Prudence in like case, you see. For the former question—why, see, you have time and her own heart on your side. She may be obstinate in that blindness of hers; and you may make blunders with your ancient facility, cousin mine. But I call to mind that trick you ever had of holding on—the trick of the English bulldog which you used so to admire. It is a strange streak, that, in a star-worshipping, sonnet-writing, wonder-wise freak like you, and makes me often doubt whether your verses, much as I like them, can be poetry, after all. But it is a useful characteristic to have about you, and, to my mind, it means you’ll win.”