“Revenant à la Belle Acadie”—the words sang themselves over and over in my brain, but I could get no further than that one line, try as I might. I felt that it was the beginning of a song which, if only I could imprison it in my rhyme, would stick in the hearts of our men of Acadie, and live upon their lips, and be sung at every camp and hearth fire, as “à la Claire Fontaine” is sung by the voyageurs of the St. Lawrence. At last I perceived, however, that the poem was living itself out at that moment in my heart, and did not then need the half-futile expression that words at best can give. But I did put it into words at a later day, when at last I found myself able to set it apart and view it with clear eyes; and you shall judge, maybe, when I come to put my verses into print, whether I succeeded 2in making the words rhyme fairly and the volatile syllables march at measured pace. The art of verse has never been much practised among us Acadians, and it is a matter of some pride to me that I, a busy soldier, now here at Grand Pré and anon at Mackinaw or Natchez, taking in my hand my life more often than a pen, should have mastered even the rudiments of an art so lofty and exacting.
So, for awhile, “Home again to Acadie the Fair” was all that I could say.
It was surely enough. I had come over from Piziquid afoot, by the upper trail, and now, having crossed the Gaspereau where it narrows just above tide-water, I had come out upon the spacious brow of the hill that overlooks Grand Pré village.
Not all my wanderings had shown me another scene so wonderful as that wide prospect. The vale of the Five Rivers lay spread out before me, with Grand Pré, the quiet metropolis of the Acadian people, nestling in her apple-bloom at my feet. There was the one long street, thick-set with its wide-eaved gables, and there its narrow subsidiary lane descending from the slopes upon my left. Near the angle rose the spire of the village church, glittering like gold in the clear flood of the sunset. And everywhere the dear apple-blossoms. For it was spring in Acadie when I came home.
3Beyond the village and its one black wharf my eyes ranged the green, wind-ruffled marshes, safe behind the sodded circumvallations of their dykes. Past the dykes, on either side of “the island’s” wooded rampart, stretched the glowing miles of the flats; for the tides of Minas were at ebb. How red in the sunset, molten copper threaded with fire, those naked reaches gleamed that night! Their color was like a blare of trumpets challenging the peace of the Five Rivers.
Past the flats, smooth and dazzling to the eye at such a distance, lay the waters of Minas. Well I knew how their unsleeping eddies boiled and seethed about the grim base of Blomidon. Such tricks does memory serve one that even across that wide tranquillity I seemed to hear the depredating clamour of those tides upon the shingle.
Though it was now two years since I had seen the gables and apple-trees of Grand Pré, I was in no haste to descend into the village. There came a sudden sinking at my heart, as my heart inquired, with unseasonable pertinence, by what right I continued to call Grand Pré “home”? The thought was new to me; and that I might fairly consider it I seated myself upon the broad stump of a birch-tree, felled the preceding winter.
By far the smaller portion of my life had been spent in the Acadian village—only my early boyhood, before the years of schooling at Quebec; 4and afterwards the fleeting sweetness of some too brief visits, that lay in my memory like pools of enchanted leisure in a desert of emulous contentions. My father, tenderest and bravest of all men that I have known, rested in an unmarked grave beside the northern wash of the Peribonca. My uncle, Jean de Mer, Sieur de Briart, was on the Ohio, fighting the endless battle of France in the western wildernesses. His one son, my one cousin, the taciturn but true-hearted Marc, was with his father, spending himself in the same quarrel. I thought with a longing tenderness of these two—the father full of high faith in the triumph of New France, the son fighting obstinately in what he held a lost cause, caring mainly that his father still had faith in it. I wished mightily that their brave hands could clasp mine in welcome back to Grand Pré. I thought of their two fair New England wives, left behind at Quebec to shame by their gay innocence the corruption of Bigot’s court. Kindred I had none in Grand Pré, unless one green grave in the churchyard could be called my kin—the grave wherein my mother’s girlish form and laughing eyes had been laid to sleep while I was yet a child.
Yes, I had no kinsfolk to greet me back to Grand Pré; no roof of mine that I should call it home. But friends, loyal friends, would welcome me, I knew. There was Father Fafard, the firm 5and gentle old priest, to whom, of course, I should go just as if I were of his flesh and blood. Then there were the De Lamouries—
Yes, to be sure, the De Lamouries. And here I took myself by the chin and laughed. I know that, for all my verses, I am in the main a soldier, yet I am so far a poet as to suffer myself to befool myself at times, and get a passing satisfaction out of it. But I always face the fact before I express it in act. I acknowledged to myself that I had been thinking of the De Lamouries’ pleasant farmhouse, and of somewhat that it contained, when I sang “Home again to Acadie the Fair.”
I remembered with a pleasant warmth the tall, bent figure, fierce eyes, and courtly air of Giles de Lamourie, the broken gentleman, who through much misfortune and some fault had fallen from a high place at Versailles and been fain to hide himself on an Acadian farm. I thought also of Madame, his wife, a wizened little woman with nothing left, said the villagers, to remind one of the loveliness which had once dazzled Louis himself. To me she seemed an amazingly interesting woman, whose former beauty could still be guessed from its ruins.
Both of these good people I remembered with a depth of concern far beyond the deserts of such casual friendlinesses as they had shown me. As I looked down toward their spacious apple-orchard, 6on the furthest outskirts of the village, it was borne in upon me that they had one claim to distinction beyond all others.
They had achieved Yvonne.
Many a time had I wondered how my cousin Marc could have had eyes for his ruddy-haired Puritan lily when there was Yvonne de Lamourie in the world. On my last two visits to Grand Pré I had seen her; not many times, indeed, nor much alone; and never word of love had passed between us. In truth, I had not known that I loved her in those days. I had taken a wondering delight in her beauty and her wit, but of the pretty trifles of compliment and the careless gallantries that so often simulate love I had offered her none at all. This surprised me the more afterward, as women had ever found me somewhat lavish in such light coin. I think I was withheld by the great love unrealized in my heart, which found expression then only in such white reverence as the devotee proffers to his saint. I think, too, I was restrained by the consciousness of a certain girl at Trois Pistoles on the St. Lawrence, who, if I might believe my vanity, loved me, and to whom, if I might believe my conscience, I had given some sort of claim upon my honor. I cared naught for the girl. I had never intended anything but a light and passing affair; but somehow it had not seemed to me light when Yvonne de 7Lamourie’s eyes were upon me. A little afterward, revisiting Trois Pistoles on my way to the western lakes, I had found the maiden married to a prosperous trader of Quebec. In the leaping joy that seized my heart at the news I perceived how my fetters had galled; and I knew then, though at first but dimly, that if anywhere in the world there awaited me such a love as I had dreamed of sleeping, but ever doubted waking,—the love that should be not a pastime, but a prayer, not an episode, but an eternity,—it awaited me in Grand Pré village.
In my heart these two years I had carried two clear visions of my mistress. Strange to tell, they were not bedimmed by the much handling which they had endured. They but seemed to grow the brighter and fresher from being continually pressed to the kisses of my soul.
In one of these I saw her as she stood a certain morning in the orchard, prying with insistent little finger-tips into the heart of a young apple-flower, while I watched and said nothing. I know not to this day whether she were thinking of the apple-flower or wondering at the dumbness of her cavalier; but she feigned, at least, to concern herself with only the blossom’s heart. Her wide white lids downcast over her great eyes, her long lashes almost sweeping the rondure of her cheek, she looked a Madonna. The broad, low forehead; 8the finely chiselled nose, not too small for strength of purpose; the full, firm chin—all added to this sweet dignity, which was of a kind to compel a lover’s worship. There was enough breadth to the gracious curve below the ear to make me feel that this girl would be a strong man’s mate. But the mouth, a bow of tenderness, with a wilful dimple at either delectable corner always lurking, spoke her all woman, too laughing and loving to spend her days in sainthood. Her hair—very thick and of a purply-bronze, near to black—lay in a careless fulness over her little ears. On her head, though in all else she affected the dress of the Grand Pré maids, she wore not the Acadian linen cap, but a fine shawl of black Spanish lace, which became her mightily. Her bodice was of linen homespun, coarse, but bleached to a creamy whiteness; and her skirt, of the same simple stuff, was short after the Acadian fashion, so that I could see her slim ankles, and feet of that exceeding smallness and daintiness which may somehow tread right heavily upon a man’s heart.
The other vision cherished in my memory was different from this, and even more enchanting. It was a vision of one look cast upon me as I left the door of her father’s house. In the radiance of her great eyes, turned full upon me, all else became indistinct, her other features blurred, as it 9were, with the sudden light of that look, which meant—I knew not what. Indeed, it was ever difficult to observe minutely the other beauties of her face as long as the eyes were turned upon one, so clear an illumination from her spirit shone within their lucid deeps. Hence it was, I suppose, that few could agree as to the colour of those eyes—the many calling them black, others declaring with confidence that they were brown, while some even, who must have angered her, averred them to be of a very cold dark grey. I, for my part, knew that they were of a greenish hazel of indescribable depth, with sometimes amber lights in them, and sometimes purple shadows very mysterious and unfathomable.
As I sat now looking down into the village I wondered if Yvonne would have a welcome for me. As I remembered, she had ever shown goodwill toward me, so far as consisted with maidenly reserve. She had seemed ever ready for tales of my adventure, and even for my verses. As I thought of it there dawned now upon my heart a glimmering hope that there had been in that last unforgotten look of hers more warmth of meaning than maid Yvonne had been willing to confess.
This thought went to my heart and I sprang up in a kind of sudden intoxication, to go straightway down into the village. As I did so I caught the flutter of a white frock among the trees of the 10De Lamourie orchard. Thereupon my breath came with a quickness that was troublesome, and to quiet it I paused, looking out across the marshes and the tide toward Blomidon. Then for the first time I observed a great bank of cloud that had arisen behind the Cape. It was black and menacing, ragged and fiery along its advancing crest. Its shadow lay already upon the marshes and the tide. It crept smoothly upon the village. And at this moment, from the skirts of a maple grove on the summit of the hill behind me, came a great and bell-like voice, crying: