“The business which gained me the privilege of coming where I might be once more blessed by the light of your sweet eyes, provoking one, was the need conceived in the heart of our good Governor of putting a stop to certain transactions with the French at Louisbourg, which, as you doubtless know very well, have laid all this Cheticamp coast under grave suspicion. Your people, I dare wager, are too wise to be mixed up in such perilous enterprises.”
No sooner had I spoken than I realised that, for once, Truth had tricked me. I had better have trusted to invention.
“Thank you, Jacques. That is just what I wanted to know. You are so kind. Good night.”
There was a mocking note in the sweet voice, a little ring of triumph and hostility. For one instant the face was raised, and I saw it plainly, as if by the radiance of the scornful eyes. Then, before I could in any way gather my wits, it vanished.
I thrust my head forward, heedless of concealment, and gained one glimpse of a shadow disappearing through the shrubbery. I sprang out to follow. But no, I forget myself. The window was somewhat small for one of my inches. I climbed out laboriously. The witch was nowhere to be seen. Then, still more laboriously, I climbed back again, cursing Fortune and my own stupidity which had bungled so sweet a game. I sat down on the edge of my bed to consider.
The errand which had brought me from Halifax to Cheticamp, with six soldiers to support me, was one of some moment, and here was I already in danger of distraction, thinking of a girl’s voice, of half-seen, mocking eyes, rather than of my undertaking. I got up, shook myself angrily, then sat down again to lay my plans for the morrow.
The old Seigneur of Cheticamp, Monsieur Raoul St. Michel le Fevre, had heartily accepted the English rule, and dwelt in high favour with the powers at Halifax. But he had died a year back, leaving his estates to his nephew, young St. Michel. It had come to the ears of the Government that this youth, a headstrong partisan of France, was taking advantage of his position as seigneur to prosecute very successfully the forbidden traffic with Louisbourg. Great and merited was the official indignation. It was resolved that the estates should be confiscated at once, and young Monsieur St. Michel le Fevre captured, if possible. Thereupon the estates were conferred upon myself, to whom the Governor was somewhat deeply indebted. It was passing comfortable to him to pay a debt out of a pocket other than his own. I was dispatched to Cheticamp to gather in Monsieur le Fevre for the Governor and the le Fevre estates for myself. They were fair estates, I had heard, and I vowed that I would presently teach them to serve well the cause of England’s king.
My first thought in the morning, when the level sun streaming through the hop vines brought me on the sudden wide awake—as a soldier should wake, slipping cleanly and completely out of his sleep-heaviness—my first thought, I say, was of a shadowed face vanishing into the night-glimmer, and something enchantingly mysterious to be sought for in this remote Acadian village. Then, remembering my business and hoping that my indiscretion had not muddled it, I resolutely put the folly from me and sprang up.
It is curious, when one looks back, to note what petty details stand forth in a clear light, as it were, upon the background of great and essential experience. I am no gourmand, but apt to eat whatever is set before me, with little concern save that it be cleanly and sufficient. Yet never do I hear or think of Cheticamp village without a remembered savour of barley cakes and brown honey, crossed delicately with the smell of bean blossoms blown in through a sunny window. At the time, I am sure, I took little heed of these things. My care was chiefly to see that two of my men set forth promptly to watch the two wharves on each side of the creek, which served the fleet of the fishermen. Then I dispatched two others to spy on the roadway entering and leaving the village, and a fifth to sentinel a hill at the back overlooking all the open country. With the remaining fellow, my orderly, at my heels, I set out for the dwelling of young Monsieur St. Michel le Fevre de Cheticamp, rehearsing his full name with care as I went, in order that there should be no lack of courteous ceremony to disguise the rudeness of my errand.
I needed none to point me out the house of the le Fevres. On the crest of a dark-wooded knoll at the south-east end of the one long village street, it spread its cluster of grey gables, low and of a comfortable air. Fir groves sheltered it to north and east. On the west gathered the cool, green ranks of its apple orchard. Down the slope in front unrolled a careless garden—thyme plots and hollyhock rows, gooseberry bushes and marigold beds, and a wide waste of blossoming roses—all as unlike the formal pleasances of France and England as garden-close could be, yet bewitching, like a fair and wilful woman.