A Sister to Evangeline

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

  Chapter I

  Paul Grande’s Home-coming to Grand Pré

  “R_evenant à la Belle Acadie_”—the words sang themselves over and overin my brain, but I could get no further than that one line, try as Imight. I felt that it was the beginning of a song which, if only I couldimprison 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 atthat moment in my heart, and did not then need the half-futileexpression that words at best can give. But I did put it into words at alater day, when at last I found myself able to set it apart and view itwith clear eyes; and you shall judge, maybe, when I come to put myverses into print, whether I succeeded in making the words rhyme fairlyand the volatile syllables march at measured pace. The art of verse hasnever been much practised among us Acadians, and it is a matter of somepride to me that I, a busy soldier, now here at Grand Pré and anon atMackinaw 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 couldsay.

  It was surely enough. I had come over from Piziquid afoot, by the uppertrail, and now, having crossed the Gaspereau where it narrows just abovetide-water, I had come out upon the spacious brow of the hill thatoverlooks Grand Pré village.

  Not all my wanderings had shown me another scene so wonderful as thatwide prospect. The vale of the Five Rivers lay spread out before me,with Grand Pré, the quiet metropolis of the Acadian people, nestling inher apple-bloom at my feet. There was the one long street, thick-setwith its wide-eaved gables, and there its narrow subsidiary lanedescending from the slopes upon my left. Near the angle rose the spireof the village church, glittering like gold in the clear flood of thesunset. And everywhere the dear apple-blossoms. For it was spring inAcadie when I came home.

  Beyond the village and its one black wharf my eyes ranged the green,wind-ruffled marshes, safe behind the sodded circumvallations of theirdykes. 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 atebb. How red in the sunset, molten copper threaded with fire, thosenaked reaches gleamed that night! Their color was like a blare oftrumpets challenging the peace of the Five Rivers.

  Past the flats, smooth and dazzling to the eye at such a distance, laythe waters of Minas. Well I knew how their unsleeping eddies boiled andseethed about the grim base of Blomidon. Such tricks does memory serveone that even across that wide tranquillity I seemed to hear thedepredating clamour of those tides upon the shingle.

  Though it was now two years since I had seen the gables and apple-treesof Grand Pré, I was in no haste to descend into the village. There camea sudden sinking at my heart, as my heart inquired, with unseasonablepertinence, by what right I continued to call Grand Pré “home”? Thethought was new to me; and that I might fairly consider it I seatedmyself upon the broad stump of a birch-tree, felled the precedingwinter.

  By far the smaller portion of my life had been spent in the Acadianvillage—only my early boyhood, before the years of schooling at Quebec;and afterwards the fleeting sweetness of some too brief visits, that layin my memory like pools of enchanted leisure in a desert of emulouscontentions. My father, tenderest and bravest of all men that I haveknown, rested in an unmarked grave beside the northern wash of thePeribonca. My uncle, Jean de Mer, Sieur de Briart, was on the Ohio,fighting the endless battle of France in the western wildernesses. Hisone son, my one cousin, the taciturn but true-hearted Marc, was with hisfather, spending himself in the same quarrel. I thought with a longingtenderness of these two—the father full of high faith in the triumph ofNew France, the son fighting obstinately in what he held a lost cause,caring mainly that his father still had faith in it. I wished mightilythat their brave hands could clasp mine in welcome back to Grand Pré. Ithought of their two fair New England wives, left behind at Quebec toshame by their gay innocence the corruption of Bigot’s court. Kindred Ihad none in Grand Pré, unless one green grave in the churchyard could becalled my kin—the grave wherein my mother’s girlish form and laughingeyes 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 minethat I should call it home. But friends, loyal friends, would welcomeme, I knew. There was Father Fafard, the firm and gentle old priest, towhom, 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 chinand 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 factbefore I express it in act. I acknowledged to myself that I had beenthinking of the De Lamouries’ pleasant farmhouse, and of somewhat thatit 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 throughmuch misfortune and some fault had fallen from a high place atVersailles and been fain to hide himself on an Acadian farm. I thoughtalso of Madame, his wife, a wizened little woman with nothing left, saidthe villagers, to remind one of the loveliness which had once dazzledLouis himself. To me she seemed an amazingly interesting woman, whoseformer beauty could still be guessed from its ruins.

  Both of these good people I remembered with a depth of concern farbeyond the deserts of such casual friendlinesses as they had shown me.As I looked down toward their spacious apple-orchard, on the furthestoutskirts of the village, it was borne in upon me that they had oneclaim to distinction beyond all others.

  They had achieved Yvonne.

  Many a time had I wondered how my cousin Marc could have had eyes forhis ruddy-haired Puritan lily when there was Yvonne de Lamourie in theworld. On my last two visits to Grand Pré I had seen her; not manytimes, indeed, nor much alone; and never word of love had passed betweenus. In truth, I had not known that I loved her in those days. I hadtaken a wondering delight in her beauty and her wit, but of the prettytrifles of compliment and the careless gallantries that so oftensimulate love I had offered her none at all. This surprised me the moreafterward, as women had ever found me somewhat lavish in such lightcoin. I think I was withheld by the great love unrealized in my heart,which found expression then only in such white reverence as the devoteeproffers to his saint. I think, too, I was restrained by theconsciousness 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 mightbelieve my conscience, I had given some sort of claim upon my honor. Icared naught for the girl. I had never intended anything but a light andpassing affair; but somehow it had not seemed to me light when Yvonne deLamourie’s eyes were upon me. A little afterward, revisiting TroisPistoles on my way to the western lakes, I had found the maiden marriedto a prosperous trader of Quebec. In the leaping joy that seized myheart at the news I perceived how my fetters had galled; and I knewthen, though at first but dimly, that if anywhere in the world thereawaited me such a love as I had dreamed of sleeping, but ever doubtedwaking,—the love that should be not a pastime, but a prayer, not anepisode, but an eternity,—it awaited me in Grand Pré village.

  In my heart these two years I had carried two clear visions of mymistress. Strange to tell, they were not bedimmed by the much handlingwhich they had endured. They but seemed to grow the brighter and fresherfrom 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 youngapple-flower, while I watched and said nothing. I know not to this daywhether she were thinking of the apple-flower or wondering at thedumb
ness of her cavalier; but she feigned, at least, to concern herselfwith only the blossom’s heart. Her wide white lids downcast over hergreat eyes, her long lashes almost sweeping the rondure of her cheek,she looked a Madonna. The broad, low forehead; the finely chisellednose, not too small for strength of purpose; the full, firm chin—alladded to this sweet dignity, which was of a kind to compel a lover’sworship. There was enough breadth to the gracious curve below the ear tomake 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 corneralways lurking, spoke her all woman, too laughing and loving to spendher days in sainthood. Her hair—very thick and of a purply-bronze, nearto 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, shewore not the Acadian linen cap, but a fine shawl of black Spanish lace,which became her mightily. Her bodice was of linen homespun, coarse, butbleached to a creamy whiteness; and her skirt, of the same simple stuff,was short after the Acadian fashion, so that I could see her slimankles, and feet of that exceeding smallness and daintiness which maysomehow tread right heavily upon a man’s heart.

  The other vision cherished in my memory was different from this, andeven more enchanting. It was a vision of one look cast upon me as I leftthe door of her father’s house. In the radiance of her great eyes,turned full upon me, all else became indistinct, her other featuresblurred, as it were, with the sudden light of that look, which meant—Iknew not what. Indeed, it was ever difficult to observe minutely theother beauties of her face as long as the eyes were turned upon one, soclear an illumination from her spirit shone within their lucid deeps.Hence it was, I suppose, that few could agree as to the colour of thoseeyes—the many calling them black, others declaring with confidence thatthey were brown, while some even, who must have angered her, averredthem to be of a very cold dark grey. I, for my part, knew that they wereof a greenish hazel of indescribable depth, with sometimes amber lightsin them, and sometimes purple shadows very mysterious and unfathomable.

  As I sat now looking down into the village I wondered if Yvonne wouldhave a welcome for me. As I remembered, she had ever shown goodwilltoward me, so far as consisted with maidenly reserve. She had seemedever ready for tales of my adventure, and even for my verses. As Ithought of it there dawned now upon my heart a glimmering hope thatthere had been in that last unforgotten look of hers more warmth ofmeaning than maid Yvonne had been willing to confess.

  This thought went to my heart and I sprang up in a kind of suddenintoxication, to go straightway down into the village. As I did so Icaught the flutter of a white frock among the trees of the De Lamourieorchard. Thereupon my breath came with a quickness that was troublesome,and to quiet it I paused, looking out across the marshes and the tidetoward Blomidon. Then for the first time I observed a great bank ofcloud that had arisen behind the Cape. It was black and menacing, raggedand fiery along its advancing crest. Its shadow lay already upon themarshes and the tide. It crept smoothly upon the village. And at thismoment, from the skirts of a maple grove on the summit of the hillbehind me, came a great and bell-like voice, crying:

  “Woe, woe to Acadie the Fair, for the hour of her desolation cometh!”