I have said that the room grew brighter for the going of the Black Abbé. To me, at least, it seemed so. Yet, after his departure, there fell a palpable air of constraint. Monsieur de Lamourie regarded me with something almost like suspicion. Madame eyed me with a curious scrutiny, tolerant, yet as it were watchful. As for Yvonne, her face was coldly averted. All this troubled me. Only the New Englander came to my rescue.
With a smile of frank satisfaction he remarked:
“You dealt very effectively and expeditiously with that black-frocked firebrand, monsieur. You must have great influence at headquarters to be able to treat La Garne with so little ceremony.”
Now, puzzled though I was, I was marvellously elated by my easy victory over the notorious Black Abbé. There was doubtless a vainglorious ring in the would-be modest voice with which I answered.
37“Yes,” said I, “I did not expect quite so swift a triumph. I thought I might even be driven to threats ill fitting the dignity of his office. But doubtless he saw that I was rather in earnest.”
“He certainly seemed to regard you as one having authority,” said De Lamourie gravely.
“Or even,” murmured Madame, with that dryness in her voice, “as in some way his confederate.”
“Or Vaurin’s,” came a cold suggestion from Mademoiselle. Her eyes were gazing steadily into the fire; but I caught the scornful curl of her lip.
At this I felt myself flush hotly, I knew not just why. It seemed as if I lay under some obscure but disgraceful imputation. With sudden warmth I cried:
“I have no authority, save as an officer of the king, with a clean record and a sword not unproven. I have no confederate, nor am I like to be engaged in such work as shall make one needful. And as for this Vaurin,” I demanded, turning to Yvonne, “who is he? He seems a personage indeed; yet never had I heard of him till the commandant of Beauséjour gave me a letter for his hand.”
“I cannot doubt you, monsieur,” interposed Anderson heartily. “This Vaurin is a very sorry scoundrel, a spy and an assassin, who does the dirty work of those who employ him. I think it 38was ill done of Vergor to give to any gentleman a commission to that foul cur.”
I sprang to my feet and walked thrice up and down the room, while all sat silent. I think my anger was plain enough to every one, for the old friendliness—as I afterwards remembered—came back to the faces of Monsieur and Madame de Lamourie, and Yvonne’s eyes shone upon me for an instant with a wistfulness which I could not understand. Yet this, as I said, is but what came back to me afterwards. I felt Yvonne’s eyes but as in a dream at that moment.
“Vergor shall answer to me,” I cried bitterly. “It is ill work serving under the public thieves whom the intendant puts in power to-day. One never knows what baseness may not be demanded of him. Vergor shall clear himself, or meet me!”
“What hope is there for your cause,” asked Anderson, “when they who guide New France are so corrupt?”
“They are not all corrupt!” I declared with vehemence. “The governor is honest. The general is honour itself. But, alas, the most grievous enemies of New France are those within her gate! Bigot is the prince of robbers. His hands and those of his gang are at her throat. It is he we fear, and not you English, brave and innumerable though you are.”
And with this my indignation at Vergor, who, it 39was plain, had put upon me an errand unbecoming to a gentleman and an officer of the king, spread out to include the whole corrupt crew of which the intendant Bigot was the too efficient captain. Seating myself again by the hearth, I gave bitter account of the wrong and infamy at Quebec, and showed how, to the anguish of her faithful sons, New France was being stripped and laid bare to the enemy. My heart being as dead with my own sudden sorrow, the story which I told of my country’s plight was steeped in dark forebodings.
When I had finished, the conversation became general, and I presently withdrew into my heaviness. I remember that Madame rallied me, at last, on my silence; but Yvonne came quickly and sweetly to my help, recalling my long day’s journey and insisting upon my drinking a cup of spiced brandy—“very sound and good,” she declared, “and but late from Louisburg, no thanks to King George!”
As I sat sipping of the fragrant brew—though it had been wormwood it had seemed to me delicate from her hand—I tried to gather together the shattered fragments of my dream.
There she sat—of all women the one woman, as I had in the long, solitary night-watches come to know, whom my soul needed and my body needed. My inmost thought, speaking with itself in nakedest sincerity, declared that it was she 40only whom God had made for me—or for whom God had made me. The whole truth, as I felt it, required both statements to perfect its expression. There she sat, so near that her voice was making a wonder of music in my ears, so near that her eyes from time to time flashed a palpable radiance upon my face; yet further away than when I lightened with dreams of her the long marches beside the Miami or lay awake to think of her, in the remote huts of the Natchez. So far away had a word, a brief word, put her; yet here she sat where I could grasp her just by stretching out my hand.
As I thought of it her eyes met mine. I swear that I made no motion. My grasp never relaxed from the arm of the black old chair where it had fixed itself. Yet the thought must have cried out to her, for a look of alarm, yet not wholly of denial, flickered for one heart-beat in her gaze. She rose, with a little aimless movement, looked at me, swayed her body toward me almost imperceptibly, then sat down again in her old place with her face averted. At once she began talking with a whimsical gayety that engrossed all ears and left me again in my gloom.
I scrutinized this man, the New Englander, who sat drinking her with his eyes. For the joy that was in his face as he watched her I cursed him—yet ere the curse had gone forth I blessed him 41bitterly. How could I curse him when I saw that his soul was on its knees to her, as mine was. I felt myself moved toward him in a strange affection. Yet—and yet!
He was a tall man, well over six feet in height, of a goodly breadth of shoulder,—taller than myself by three inches at least, and heavier in build. He had beauty, too, which I could not boast of; though before love taught me humility I had been vain enough to deem my face not all ill-favored. His abundant light hair, slightly waving; his ruddy, somewhat square face, with its good chin and kind mouth; his frank and cheerful blue eyes, fearless but not aggressive; his air of directness and good intention—all compelled my tribute of admiration, and made me think little of my own sombre and sallow countenance, with its straight black hair, straight black brows, straight black moustache; its mouth large and hard set; its eyes wherein mirth and moroseness were at frequent strife for mastery. Being, as I have reluctantly confessed, a vain man without good cause for vanity, I knew the face well—and it was with small satisfaction I remembered it now, while looking upon the manly fairness of George Anderson.
Yet, such is the inconsistency of men, I was conscious of a faint, inexplicable pity for him. I felt myself stronger than he, and wiser in the knowledge of life. But he had the promise of that 42which to me was more than life. He had, as I kept telling myself, Yvonne’s love; yet—had he? So obstinate is hope, I would not yield all credence to this telling. At least I had one advantage, if no other. I was wiser than he in this, that I knew my love for Yvonne, and he did not know it. Yet this was but a poor vantage, and even upon the moment I had resolved to throw it away. I resolved that he should be as wise as I on this point, if telling could make him so.