The Span o' Life Part 9

"Not everything," she answered, quickly--"not everything, unless I am nothing! I am with you heart and soul! No, you cannot speak, because you have no position, and perhaps no future. But I can!

Oh, Hugh, Hugh! I care nothing about it being unmaidenly; I cannot mind such matters when my heart is breaking. I love you with all my soul and with all my life. I will think of you every hour you are away from me, and pray for you every hour until G.o.d brings you back. Oh, Hugh, tell me-tell me you love me!"

"No, miss! Master Hughie shall do nothing of the sort!" interrupted Lady Jane, who had come in unmarked. "Any man who wishes to do any love-making, so far as Margaret Nairn is concerned, must first do so through me.

"There, there! Peggy, my pet--my wee girlie. You may kiss him once for your poor heart's comfort; and then, my lambie, leave my boy to me; I am the only mother he has. There, dearie, go now," she said, tenderly, when I had kissed her as one might kiss a saint; and without a word Margaret left the room with my cousin, and it and my heart were empty.

Lady Jane was generous, as was her wont: all that money could do to make my departure easy was done; and most of all, she comforted me as a mother might comfort a son--indeed, as she had said to Margaret, she was the only mother I had ever known.

Again she told me plainly that I must not cherish any hopes upon her death beyond such humble provision as she might spare. "Margaret is my daughter, Hughie; and if you are the man I take you for, you would not deprive her of whatever money may bring."

"Cousin," said I, "I am going away for her sake, for her peace of mind alone; and if I am content to bury myself alive for this now, think you I'll regret any other good that can come to her? I love her with my whole heart and soul, and the greatest bitterness I have to bear is that I am prevented from declaring my feelings towards her before I go. She has spoken words to me that call for all the response in a man's soul, and I go away with my mouth closed like a clown."

"Tut, tut, Hughie! Now you are letting your vanity get the upperhand of you. You are bemoaning yourself because you have not cut a better figure in her eyes. But just one word for your cold comfort. There never was a young girl in her position yet--bless all their lovely, trusting hearts--who would not make a hero of the man she loved, had he the garb of a Merry Andrew and the manners of a Calmuck.

Don't fash yourself over imaginary woes when you've real ones in sight, plain enough, my poor boy. But now leave this profitless heart-break and let us plan for the future."

Our talk lasted late into the night, and by daybreak I was on my way to La Roch.e.l.le.

And now began the most miserable period of my life, the details of which I have no intention of inflicting on my reader. A wretched sea-voyage was a fitting introduction to my place of banishment--Louisbourg, a pretentious and costly fortification, but miserably situate and falling to decay for want of the most necessary repair. There it was, shut in on the one hand by the monotonous sea, wild and threatening with its ice, and snow, and storm in winter, sad and depressing with its mournful fog in summer--and on the other by an unbroken wilderness of rock and firs--that I ate out my heart in bitterness year after year; my only alleviation being the rare letters which I received from Margaret, but which I scarce could answer, though my reticence only brought forth a fuller expression of the unwavering affection of her generous soul.

Dear as this indulgence in a cherished affection was to me, I brought myself to renounce it, for I held I was bound to this for more than one reason. Now that I had entirely broken with my past, I recognised that perhaps I should have done so sooner. Was it not folly to suppose that a girl such as Margaret would not follow her generous fancy when propinquity was added to inclination? Alas!

that such admirable decisions are only so readily consented to when the occasion for delinquency is no longer possible!

Then, too, my position towards Lady Jane was a delicate one. She had clearly indicated to me her intentions as to the disposal of her fortune. A hopeful or even a contented correspondence was impossible to one in my situation, and to enter into any truthful detail of the misery of my surroundings might well appear, even in her kindly judgment, but an implied appeal to her generosity.

For this it was that I gradually cut down my letters year by year, until I entirely ceased from all intercourse, and lived my lonely life as best I might.

For fellow-exiles, I had near an hundred discontented gentlemen, ruling over a homesick soldiery, two or three unfortunate gentlewomen, a few greedy and dishonest officials, and a handful of wretched townspeople, whose prosperity was never fostered in time of peace nor their safety considered in time of war.

At last, through the friends.h.i.+p of the Comte de Raimond, Governor of the Island, I obtained a tardy promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the Regiment of Artois, under M. de St. Julhien, and the appointment as King's Interpreter, on which I was heartily congratulated by my comrades, who had long pitied my undeserved ill fortune.

Until then I had made but little effort to better my condition, but my advancement, as well as the increase in my pay, aroused me.

I took fresh heart in and my appearance, and began to mix somewhat in such society as our forlorn situation afforded.

In Madame de Drucour, wife of our Commandant, I found a grande dame de par le monde, who commanded the admiration and respect of all our officers and the devotion of the soldiery and townspeople.

In Madame Prevost, the most charming little Canadian, wife of the Commissary--a creature with the carriage of a lackey and the soul of a dry-salter--I discovered a heart full of tender sympathy, dying of ennui. Her husband's unpopularity was such that but few of the officers would enter his doors, and indeed he was so fierce a Cerberus in regard to his unfortunate wife, that he made any attempt at alleviation of her unhappy condition wellnigh impossible.

However, through my acquaintance with a M. de Sarennes, a Canadian partisan officer, who stood high in his favour, he saw fit to allow my visits, and I willingly put up with his want of breeding to offer such attention as I might to his prisoner, for so in truth she was.

Sarennes was attractive enough, in so far as his outward appearance went, but, like most of his countrymen--that is, the Canadians--was wanting in all those externals which are essential to a gentleman.

He was courageous, but a braggart; he was well born, but had no breeding; he was open and friendly, but, I feared, truculent; and his sense of honour was not above the universal dishonesty which disgraced and wrecked his unfortunate country.

I had suspected his intimacy with Prevost had some less honourable foundation than a pitying admiration for his unfortunate wife, and I was confirmed in this by his proposal in my quarters one evening that I should hand over to him some blanks, signed by St. Julhien, on the Commissary, for stores, etc., which I was to requisition as required.

"May I ask to what use you intend to put them?" I said, more to sound him than for information, for this was one of the most favoured forms of peculation in the colonies.

"Oh, none that you will ever know of, Chevalier; and I should think an addition to your inadequate pay would not come amiss," he added, artfully, without even an effort to veil his knavery.

The whole disgraceful, pettifogging scheme disgusted me; but, because he was a much younger man than I, and I believed might be in Prevost's power, I refrained from my natural indignation, and pa.s.sing over the personal affront, I spake to him with all the consideration of a friend. I shewed him the path which he was treading, and pointed out the inevitable disgrace which must attend such a course, and most of all, the wretched meanness of so contemptible a crime. But, to my astonishment, he was inclined to excuse and cloak his wrong-doing.

"Sir," said I, "nothing is further from my liking than an artificial morality, but I would avoid even the appearance of being cheaply vicious. Do not weigh out the largest possible measure of dishonesty to the smallest possible quantum of correction. If you must depart from that path of virtue towards which we should all direct our best endeavours, do so in a manner that will at least command the admiration of gentlemen and the leniency of a Divine Being, who may consider the frailty of the natural man, but never the tortuous conclusions of his compromising intellect."

He was apparently sensible of my kindly advice, but I soon discovered that he not only disregarded it, but was endeavouring to do me an ill turn with the Commissary by directing his warped and jealous suspicions towards my innocent attentions to his wife.

The word "innocent" I use advisedly, and lest the reader have any doubt now or hereafter as to my intention touching the fair Madame Provost, let me a.s.sure him I can lay my hand on my heart and aver I never at any time held any warmer feeling towards her than the sympathy of an exile towards a prisoner.

That her stupidly jealous husband, fired by the insinuations of Sarennes, should distort mere civilities into serious intentions, and bear himself with such a ridiculous a.s.sumption of jaundiced suspicion that a cause for his uneasiness was readily invented by a scandal-loving garrison, was no doing of mine. Madame Prevost, with all her charm, had neither experience nor knowledge in such affairs; she was simply a woman profoundly unhappy and profoundly ignorant of the world. Could I have honestly offered her my affections as well as my sympathies, I might have done so, and had them as honestly returned; but no woman had ever awakened a throb in my heart since I bade farewell to one in the rue Dauphine in Paris.

She still remained at once my hope and my despair; and, so long as she lived, other women were as dead to me. I lay claim to no great fort.i.tude, to no heroic self-denial--it is seldom a man has attained the results of virtue with as little conscious effort as I was called upon to exercise.

But the mere knowledge of the integrity of my motives was not sufficient to protect them from the idle gossip of the town, and this inconvenience led to an abrupt termination of our intercourse in the following manner:

One afternoon, when amusing myself and Mme. Prevost by singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of old songs, I had ended a favourite of hers with a telling accompaniment and the effective words,

"J'ai perdu mon coeur volage, Mon honneur, mon avantage, De moi ne me parle plus,"

when I was surprised by a burst of pretended applause, and turned to find M. Prevost facing me with a malicious air.

"Believe me, M. le Lieutenant, you have my sincerest sympathy," he cried, with mock emphasis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "M. le Lieutenant, you have my sincerest sympathy!"]

"Upon what, sir?"

"Upon the loss of that inestimable jewel, your honour."

"Pardon me, monsieur; that is merely the license of the verse--a dangerous thing to translate into plain prose."

"I do not seize the distinction, monsieur."

"You are probably not qualified to judge of either one or the other, M. Prevost."

"Possibly not, M. le Lieutenant, but I am qualified to judge of the persons I will admit within my doors; and, 'in plain prose,'

I would wish you to understand you are no longer one of them."

"M. le Commissaire, your meaning is as plain as is your manner; nothing could be more unqualified, and I regret my inability to answer it in the same fas.h.i.+on," I returned, not without a certain appreciation of his handling of the situation.

"Madame," I said to his lady, who had preserved an admirable composure throughout this pa.s.sage at arms, "I owe you a thousand thanks for your kindness, and a thousand regrets should I be the cause of any misunderstanding between you and your husband;" whereupon I raised her hand, and kissing it ceremoniously, I effected a not undignified retreat.

So the summer of '57 dragged on, when one warm afternoon in September--it was the 25th of the month--I wandered down to the landing-place to see the arrival of a s.h.i.+p from France that had slipped through the feeble blockade attempted by the English. I lazily watched the captain and others disembark with an uninterested eye until among them I caught sight of a lad of about fifteen years, whose dress and countenance were certainly English. As he came up with the others I advanced, and laying my hand on his shoulder, said,

"You are not French, my lad?"

"Oh no, sir," he answered, looking full at me with an open, engaging smile; "I am English."

"I thought so. What is your name?"

"Christopher Routh."

"Good G.o.d! Kit! I am Captain Geraldine!"