Chapter XXVI
The Chapel Prison
Before the door of the chapel stood a bent old figure hooded in a redshawl. Muttering, and with bowed head, it poked in the dust with astaff. When we were close at hand it straightened alertly; and oldMother Pêche’s startling eyes flashed into mine. I could have kissed thestrange hawk face, so glad was I to see it. And I held out my hand, tobe clutched eagerly.
“My blessings be upon thee, chéri Master Paul!” she cried.
“Thank you, mother!” said I. “Your love is very dear to me; and for yourblessings, I need them all.”
“Come, monsieur,” said Waldron, at the steps.
“A word, a word,” she begged, half of him, half of me, “before thou goin there and these old eyes, perhaps, see thee never again.”
“Grant me one moment, I beg you, monsieur,” said I earnestly to Waldron.“She is a dear old friend and retainer of my family.”
He nodded, and turned half aside in patient indifference.
“Listen,” she whispered, thrusting her face near mine, and talkingrapidly, that the guard, who were but clumsy with our French speech,might not understand. “Hast thou the stone safe?”
“Surely,” said I.
“Then here, take this,” she muttered, laying a silken tress of hair inmy hand. In the dusk I could not note its colour; but I needed not lightto tell me whose it was. My blood ran hot and cold beneath it. The pulsethrobbed furiously in my fingers as they closed upon it. “I clipped itunder the new moon, the right moon, with my own hand, for thee, MasterPaul.”
“Did she know it was for me?” I asked, in a sort of ecstasy.
“No, no!” answered the old dame impatiently; “but she gave it tome—laughing because I wanted it. I said that I was going far away withthese my people,”—sweeping her hand toward the village,—“while she,perhaps, would stay. Strangely she regarded that _perhaps_, Master Paul.But here it is—and I have put a spell upon it while waiting for thee tocome; and it will draw, it will draw her; she cannot let it go very faroff, as long as she lives. It is for thee, chéri, I did it.”
Now, how I loved her for it, even while deriding the magic, I need nottell. Yet I was angry with her for explaining. That made me seem to takea base advantage in retaining the treasure. Sorrowfully I said:
“I cannot keep it, mother. That were treason to her. I will have naughtof her but what her own heart gives me.”
And I held out the precious lock to her again, yet all the time graspedit tightly enough, no doubt.
“Why, chéri,” she laughed cunningly, “where is the treason? _You_ don’tbelieve an old wife’s foolish charms!”
“True, mother,” I acquiesced at once, relieved beyond measure, “true,there can be no witchcraft in it but that which ever resides in everyhair of that dear head. Not her, alas! but me, me it ensnares. God blessyou, mother, for this wonderful gift.”
“Be of good cheer, Master Paul,” she said, hobbling briskly off. “I willbring thee some word often to the wicket.”
“I am ready now for the inside of these walls, monsieur,” said I,turning to Waldron, with a warm elation at my heart. The hair I hadcoiled and slipped into the little deerskin pouch wherein the eye ofManitou slumbered.
A moment more and I had stepped inside the prison. The closing andlocking of the door seemed to me unnecessarily loud, blatantlyconspicuous.
At once I heard greetings, my name spoken on all sides, heartily,respectfully, familiarly, as might be, for I had both friends andfollowers—many, alas!—in that dolorous company. To them, worn with thesameness of day upon monotonous day, my coming was an event. But for alittle I chose to heed no one. There was time, I thought, ahead of us,more than we should know what to do with. As I could not possibly speakto all at once, I spoke to none. I leaned against a wooden pillar,looked at the windows, then the altar-place, of the sacred buildingwhich hived for me so many humming memories of childhood—memories richwith sweetness, sharp with sting. The place looked battered, begrimed,desecrated,—yet a haunting of my mother’s gentle eyes still hallowed it.To see them the better I covered my own eyes with my hand.
“It must be something of a sorer stroke than merely to be clapped inprison, to make my captain so downcast,” I heard a cheerful voicedeclare close at my elbow.
“Why, and that it is, you may be sure, my brave ferryman!” said I,looking up with a smile and grasping the long, gaunt fingers of yellowBa’tiste Chouan. “I have my own reasons for not wanting to be in GrandPré chapel this day, for all that it is especially the place where I cansee most of my friends.”
Straightway, my mood changing, I moved swiftly hither and thither,calling them by name. There was the whole clan of the Le Marchands,black, fearless, melancholy for their flax-fields; the three LeBoutilliers; the brave young slip, Jacques Violet, whom I had liked as aboy; a Landry or two; the lad Petit Joliet; several of the restlessLabillois; long Philibert Trou, the moose-hunter; and, to my regretfulastonishment, that wily fox, La Mouche.
“_You_ here, too!” I cried, shaking him by the arm. “If they have caughtyou, who has escaped!”
“I came in on business, my captain,” said he grimly.
“A woman back of it, monsieur,” grunted Philibert, indifferent to LaMouche’s withering eye-stroke.
Naturally, I did not smile. I met his brooding, deep eyes with a lookwhich told him much. I might, indeed, have even spoken a word ofcomprehension; but just then I caught sight of my cousin Marc comingfrom the sacristy. I hastened to greet him with hand and heart.
There was so much to talk of between us two that others, understanding,left us to ourselves. He told me of his little Puritan’s grief, far awayin Quebec, of her long suspense, and of how, at last, he had got word toher. “She is a woman among ten thousand, Paul,” said he. “These NewEnglanders are the people to breed up a wife for a French gentleman.”
I assented most heartily, for I had ever liked and admired thatwhite-skinned Prudence of his. Of my own affairs I told him some thingsfully, some things not at all; of my accident, my illness, my sojourningwith Grûl, everything; but of my coming to the Gaspereau ford and mycapture, nothing then.
“There is too much hanging upon it, Marc,” said I. “It touches me toodeeply. I cannot talk of it at all while we are like to be interrupted.Let us wait for quiet—when the rest are asleep.”
“It is cold here at night,” said Marc, “but the women have been allowedto bring us a few quilts and blankets. You wills hare mine—the gift ofthe good curé. Then we can talk.”
The early autumnal dark had been feebly lighted this while by a fewcandles; but candles were getting scarce in the stricken cottages ofGrand 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 acorner of the sacristy by general consent reserved to him.
A cold glimmer of stars came in by the narrow window, and I thought ofthem looking down on Yvonne, awake, not sleeping, I well knew. Were theastrologers right, I wondered. Good men and great had believed in thejurisdiction of the stars. I remembered a very learned astrologer inParis, during the year I spent there, and futilely I wished I hadconsulted him. But at the time I had been so occupied with the presentas to make small question of the future.
Soon the sound of many breathings told that the prisoners wereforgetting for a little their bars and walls. In a whisper, slowly, Itold Marc of my coming to Grand Pré in the spring—of Yvonne’s bond tothe Englishman—of the conversation at the hammock—of the fire, the sceneat the boat, the saving of Anderson—and of all that had just been saidand 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 thelack of it would no jot alter my purpose; but I loved him, and hungeredfor 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 myPrudence take the obstinate maid in hand,” said he, with an air thatproclaimed all confidence in the result. “You must remember, dear oldboy, the inevitable fetish which our French maids are wont to make outof obedience to parents—a fair and worshipful virtue, indeed, thatobedience, but not one to exact the sacrifice of a woman’s life—and ofwhat is yet more sacred to her. Prudence will make her understand somethings 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 hintof 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 butto 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 obstinatein that blindness of hers; and you may make blunders with your ancientfacility, cousin mine. But I call to mind that trick you ever had ofholding 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 yourverses, much as I like them, can be poetry, after all. But it is auseful characteristic to have about you, and, to my mind, it meansyou’ll win.”
“If the English don’t hang me for a spy,” said I.
“Stuff!” grunted my cousin. “The maid will look to that.”
Such was my confidence in my cousin Marc’s discernment that I went tosleep somewhat comforted.