M. de Sarennes had come and gone with promises of return. He won my gratitude by his forbearance to me as well as by his unlooked-for gentleness towards poor Lucy, whose heart he filled with admiration by kindly words of her boy, and assurances of his safety.
She, poor thing, had not recovered her full mental condition with her strength, and was possessed of an idea that Christopher was at Quebec, and that she should be on her way there to meet him. This idea I did my utmost to dissipate, but M. de Sarennes, possibly to quiet or please her, had let fall something which she had taken as an assurance that the English troops were there, and her son with them, and however successfully I might persuade her at the moment of the truth, she would as regularly come back to her delusion when alone.
Distressing as this was as an indication of her condition, it was the more disturbing to me as it was the last blow to my hopes for Louisbourg. It would be sheer madness to trust myself to M. de Sarennes without her protection; a protection which had vanished now, in the complete ascendency he had gained over her by his ready acquiescence in her imaginings, and I could not but feel he was skilfully withdrawing her affections from me.
However, he was called away to his post so suddenly that I was spared the difficulty of a decision, and I had almost determined that I would go on to Quebec and place myself under the care of M. de Montcalm, when, towards the end of May, he returned, unexpected by any of us, even by his mother, who, it was patent, was much disturbed; but her unwavering belief in his superior judgment kept her silent. “He is my son, and knows his duty better than we,” was her only reply to Angélique's questionings at any time, and it did not fail her now. It was touching to mark her effort to carry things off, to cover his preoccupation, and, distraught though he was, he remitted nothing of his attentions towards her, and so each comforted and shielded the other. I felt like an intruder, and when Angélique proposed a visit to the porpoise-fishery for the afternoon, I eagerly accepted the chance of escape.
We wandered off towards the beach, and by it made our way round to the great bay where the porpoise-fishing once took place.
“Look at the bones of the old days, and you can imagine what it meant to us,” said Angélique, pointing to the line of great ribs, and skulls, and skeletons which made a grotesque barrier to the highest tides, almost completely round the wide semicircle of the bay. “We fought for this many a long year, both with men and at law, and now, alas, we have neither men nor law to work it for us. The porpoise can swim in and out of the broken park unharmed. There, just as that fellow is doing now I Look at him!” As she spoke, a huge white mass rose slowly above the water within the bounds of the fishery, and then came forward with a rush in pursuit of the smelts and capelans, shooting up showers of spray, which broke into rainbows in the brilliant sunlight.
“It is like everything else, going to rack and ruin; with the people starving in the sight of plenty, because this wretched war must drag on,” sighed Angélique. “The men feel nothing of it; they have all the fighting and glory, while we sit at home helpless, good for nothing.”
“Don't say that, ma belle!” called out her brother, cheerily; and we turned to find him behind us. “Do you think we could have the heart to keep it up, if it were not for the thought of you? But there, you are tired and out of sorts, little one. Go back to the mother, and I will take madame round by the end of the bay and back by the sucrerie.”
It was impossible for me to object, and Angélique left us, while we took our way along the sands. M. de Sarennes seemed to have thrown aside his former cares, and rattled on in his natural way, noting and explaining everything which might interest me, and had I not known him better, I might have been misled by his openness; but all the time I kept asking myself: “When will he speak? What will he say?” So that it was a relief when, as we turned away from the shore into the woods, he suddenly dropped his former tone, and addressed me without pretence:
“Well, madame, are you as anxious as before to get to Louisbourg?”