“The boat is not the question, my dear madame; it is yourself I am thinking of.”
“Well, I am ready. I will have everything in readiness, if the capitulation be not signed by nightfall, it will be by the morning, and the moment it is determined on, you are free. We can easily pass out by the wicket near the Brouillon Bastion, and the Gourdeau will be at their post. I have thought of everything.”
“Pardon me, madame; you have thought of everything save yourself. Have you thought of what the world will say to your flight with me? It will only credit you with motives of which I know you have never dreamed.”
“Oh, mon Dieu, monsieur I this is cruel of you!” she cried, much distressed. “I was thinking as much of you as of myself.”
“You were, I am sure, thinking more of me than of yourself, and for this I speak plainly, madame. I am overcome with your generosity, but my appreciation of it is too high to allow you, an honourable woman, to wreck your good name for my sake. I cannot go among the English, where you might be unrecognised, but where I am still a proscribed rebel; you cannot go among your own people to Quebec, where you would but suffer a martyrdom for your courage and sacrifice. No, no, my dear madame, believe me, it is not to be thought of!”
Here she began to cry again, somewhat to my relief, for I saw that her resolution was giving way.
“Oh, mon ami! I have been nothing but a silly fool of a woman all my life! Since my husband married me out of a convent, no man has spoken to me but to flatter, or to make love, until you came. You are the only one who has treated me as an equal, and because of this, I would do anything for you. I care nothing for what the world says!”
“Probably not, madame, because you have no idea what extremely cruel things it can say,” I returned, for enthusiasm is a bad beginning for argument. “But suppose I were willing. I have only my sword to depend upon, and you know how much that is worth nowadays! If I turned it into a spit, I could not even provide a capon to roast upon it. But long before we came to that pass we would infallibly be captured or starved, for a woman cannot put up with the hardships of such a venture. I had some months of it in Scotland after the Forty-five, and I know what it means. To lodge à la belle étoile, and to dine with Duke Humphrey, as we English put it, may be the highest romance, but I assure you the quarters are draughty in the one, and the table bare with the other.”
As I spake her face brightened, and by the time I made an end she took both my hands and said, determinedly: “Then, mon ami, you shall go alone. I will have everything in readiness, and I do it for you with all my heart—the more so that your refusal makes it better worth the doing,” she added, with an attempt at a laugh, and then turned and ran off, that she might not discover her feelings further.
It was a surprising outcome, and much as I regretted the seemingly ungracious part I was forced to play, I could not but rejoice at the opportunity offered of escaping from English hands, particularly those of such regiments as Lee's, Lascelles's, or Warburton's, my old opponents in Scotland. There was no difficulty in carrying out the simple plan, for, in providing the boat and the men, Madame Prévost had overcome the one obstacle. Hostilities would be suspended, vigilance would be relaxed, and if the capitulation were not signed before nightfall, it would be an easy matter to gain the harbour, and under cover of the night to pass the enemy's batteries and make some unguarded point on the coast beyond their lines before day.