CHAPTER XII.

THE BARONET IS RELIEVED.--A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

The night was wild and stormy. The wind had risen to a hurricane, and drove the rain in Raymond’s face as he walked home through the park. It was driving the grass in cold ripples over the fields, and tossing the trees about as if it would break them. Columns of black clouds were trooping over the sky, and the moon broke through them as if she were pursued by the wind and flying for her life. Raymond was a long time getting to the cottage. Great gusts swept up from the valley, staggering him, so that he had to stand every now and then and cling to a tree until it passed. Then the rain beat against his face so that he could hardly profit by the fitful gleams of the moon as she dipped in and out of the clouds. He was dripping wet when he got to his own door and let himself in with his latch-key. He took off his coat, hanging it in the hall, and lighted his candle. Franceline had left it close to his hand with a match.

Mechanically he walked up to his room and began to divest himself of his drenched clothing. He hardly noticed that they were soaking and that he was wet through; he was flushed and heated as if he had come straight from a hot room. How the blast roared and shrieked, beating against the cottage till it rocked like a ship at sea, and trying the windows till they cracked and groaned! It whistled through the chinks so that the flimsy red curtain fluttered as if the window had been open. Raymond pushed it aside and opened the shutters, and looked out. The night was inky black, above and below, except when a star flickered in and out like a gas-jet swept by the wind, and showed the river like a bit of steel, as it flashed and quivered under the pelting rain and hurried away into blacker distance. All this angry roar was better than music to Raymond. The fury of the elements seemed to comfort him. Nature was in sympathy with him. It was kind of her to be angry and disturbed when he was so distraught. Nature had more heart than his fellow-men. These were talking over his despair quietly enough now--mocking him, very likely; but the world around was shaken, and tossed, and driven in sympathy with him. A great gust came swelling up from the river, growing louder and heavier as it drew near, till, gathering itself up like a mountainous wave, it burst with a crash against the cottage. M. de la Bourbonias leaped back, and, with a sudden impulse of terror, flew out into the landing, and knocked at Angélique’s door; but the sonorous breathing of the old servant reassured him that all was right there and in the room beyond. It was pitch dark, but the reflection from his own open door showed Franceline’s standing wide open. He listened, but everything was silent there. He stole noiselessly back to his room and closed the door, without disturbing either of the sleepers.

The storm had reached its crisis, and gradually subsided after this, until the wind was spent and died away in long, low wails behind the woods, and the moon drifted above the tattered clouds that were sweeping toward the east, leaving a portion of the sky stainless, with stars flashing out brightly. Raymond put out his candle and went to bed.

Under ordinary circumstances he would probably have paid for the night’s adventure by an attack of bronchitis or rheumatic fever; but the mental fever that had been devouring him warded off every other, and when he came down next morning he was neither ill nor ailing.

Franceline, like her _bonne_, had slept through the storm, and they were quite astonished to hear what an awful night it had been, and to see the fields strewn with great branches in every direction, gates torn up, and other evidences of the night’s work. But they saw no traces of another tempest that was raging still in a human soul close by them. Nothing betrayed its existence, and they guessed nothing--so securely does this living wall of flesh screen the secrets of the spirit from every outside gaze! Passions rise up in hearts whose pulses we fondly imagine close and familiar to us as our own, and the winds blow and the waves run high and make wild havoc there, turning life into darkness and despair, or, at the whisper of the Master’s voice, illuminating it as suddenly with a flood of sunshine; and we are blind and deaf to these things, and remain as “a stranger to our brother.” And mercifully so. Many a battle is won that would have been lost if it had not been fought alone. We hinder each other by our pity, perhaps, as often as we help.

* * * * *

Sir Simon had very little appetite for his breakfast when he came down next morning, sick at heart after a sleepless night, and found the pleasant meal thoughtfully spread in his favorite room, the library, with the table wheeled close to his arm-chair on the right side of the hearth. It all looked the very picture of comfort and refinement and elegance. But the cup was doubly poisoned to him now; last night’s adventure had added the last drop of bitterness to it. He could not think of Raymond without a poignant pang. He suspected--and he was right--that Raymond was thinking of him, wondering whether it was really all over with him this time, and whether he was bankrupt and his estate in the fangs of the creditors; and whether he was driving away from the Court never to see it again; or whether once more, for the hundred and ninety-ninth time, he had weathered the storm and was still afloat--even though on a raft. Raymond would have scarcely believed it if any one had informed him that he had been the instrument of destroying Sir Simon’s one chance of escape; that he had snatched the last plank from him in his shipwreck. It may have been an imaginary one, and Sir Simon, after the fashion of drowning men, may have been catching at a straw; but now that it was snatched from him, he was more than ever convinced that it had been a solid plank which would have borne him securely to shore. He did not ask himself whether Mr. Plover would have entered into his plans, and whether, supposing he found it his interest to do so, his fortune would have been equal to the demand; he only considered what might have been, and what was not; and thinking of this, his indulgent pity for M. de la Bourbonais shrank in the bitter reflection that he had ruined not only himself but his friend irretrievably. They were pretty much in the same boat now.

Sir Simon’s self-made delusions had cleared away wonderfully within the last forty-eight hours. He drew no comparison to his own advantage between Raymond’s actual position and his own. If M. de la Bourbonais was a thief in the technical sense of the word, he, Sir Simon, was a bankrupt; and a bankrupt, under certain conditions, may mean a swindler. He had been a swindler for years; his life had been a sham these twenty years, and he had not the excuse of circumstances to fall back on; he had been dishonest from extravagance and sheer want of principle. “Take it first and afford it afterwards” had been his theory, and he had lived up to it, and now the day of reckoning had arrived. Many a time he had said, half in jest, that Raymond was the richer man of the two. Raymond used to laugh mildly at the notion, but it was true. An ambitious, extravagant man and a contented poor one are pretty much on a level: the one possesses everything he does not want; the other wants everything he does not possess. The unprincipled spend-thrift and the high-minded, struggling man were then on an equality of fortune, or rather the latter was virtually the wealthier of the two. But now the distinction was washed out. The proud consciousness of unstained honor and innermost self-respect which had hitherto sustained M. de la Bourbonais and sweetened the cup of poverty to him was gone. He was a blighted man, who could never hold up his head again amongst his fellow-men.

“Good God! what delirium possessed him? How could he be so infatuated, so stupid!” broke out Sir Simon, giving vent to what was passing through his mind. “But,” he added presently, “he was not accountable. I believe grief and anxiety drove him mad.” Then he recalled that answer of Raymond’s, that had sounded so untrue at the time: “Yes, I can fancy myself giving way, if the temptation took a certain form, and if I were left to my own strength.” The words sounded now like a prophecy.

Of course we all know that, according to the canons of poetical justice, the brave, suffering man should have been in some unexpected way succored in his extremity; that some angel in visible or invisible form should have been sent to hold him up from slipping into the pit that despair had dug for him; and that, on the other hand, the wicked spendthrift should have been left to eat the bread of righteous retribution, and suffer the just penalty of his evil behavior. But poetical justice and the facts of real life do not always agree.

Sir Simon, after walking up and down the library, chewing the cud of bitter thoughts until he was sick of it, bethought himself that as breakfast was there he might as well try and eat it before it got cold. So he sat down and poured out his coffee, and then, by mere force of habit, and without the faintest glimmer of interest, began to turn over the bundle of letters piled up beside the _Times_ on the table. One after another was tossed away contemptuously. The duns might cry till they were hoarse now; he need not trouble about them; he would be at least that much the gainer by his disgrace. Suddenly his eye lighted on an envelope that was not addressed in the well-known hand of the race of duns, but in Clide de Winton’s, and it bore the London postmark. The thought of Clide generally produced on Sir Simon the effect of a needle run through the left side; but he took up this letter with a strange thrill of expectation. He opened it, and a change came over his face; it was not joy--it was too uncertain, too tremulous yet for that. He must read it again before he trusted to the first impression; he must make sure that he was not dreaming, and the words that danced like a will-o’-the-wisp before his eyes were real, written with real ink, on real paper. At last he dropped the letter, and a heartier prayer than he had uttered since his childhood came from him: “My God, I thank thee! I have not deserved this mercy, but I will try to deserve it.”

He buried his face in his hands, and remained mute and motionless for some minutes. Then, starting up as if suddenly remembering something, he pulled out his watch. It wanted five minutes of ten. The law officer and the Jew creditor were to start by the train that left Charing Cross at a quarter past eleven. Sir Simon rang the bell sharply.

“Saddle a horse, and ride as fast as you can with this to the telegraph,” he said to his valet, who answered the summons; “and the moment you come back, get ready to be off with me to London by the mid-day train.”

The telegram prepared Mr. Simpson to see his client appear at his office at two o’clock that afternoon, and, in obedience to its directions, the Jew was there to meet him. Clide de Winton had seen Simpson the day before, and given him full authority to settle the Dullerton debts so as to set Sir Simon Harness free. He had only arrived in London that very morning, and it was the merest accident that led him to call on the family lawyer, who was also the family’s best friend, on his way from the station to his hotel. Simpson was discretion itself, and one of the attributes of that virtue is to know when to be indiscreet. Clide’s first inquiry was for Sir Simon, with a view--which the astute lawyer did not see through--of leading up to inquiries about other friends at Dullerton; whereupon Mr. Simpson bolted out the whole truth, told him of the baronet’s position, the long arrears of debt that had come against him, and which were to culminate in bankruptcy within twenty-four hours. It was as if the sky had fallen on Clide, or the ground opened under his feet.

“Thank goodness I am come in time!” he exclaimed; and there and then sat down and wrote to Sir Simon, telling him that proceedings were stopped, and that he, Clide, took them in his own hands.

“And this is what you call being a friend!” said the young man, as he and the baronet left Simpson’s office together, the one with a lightened purse, the other with a heart considerably more so. “To think of your letting things go to such lengths, and that if I had been a day later it would have been all over!”

“My dear boy! what can I say to you? How can I ever repay you?”

“By forgiving me. I’ve lived long enough to find out a secret or two. One is that it requires a very noble soul to forgive a man a money obligation, and that there is a deal more generosity in accepting than in conferring it. So if you don’t pick a quarrel with me after this, and turn your back on me, we are quits. Is it a bargain?”

He held out his hand, laughing; Sir Simon wrung it till the pressure made Clide wince. This was his only answer, and the only sentimental passage the occasion gave rise to between them.

* * * * *

It was more than a month since Clide had left St. Petersburg, although the season was still at its height there, and Isabel’s engagement was to have lasted until the end of it. This had, however, been brought to an abrupt and tragic close. She had acted for six weeks with unprecedented success; every night was a fresh triumph, and nothing was talked of in the _salons_ and clubs but the wonders of her voice, the intense reality of her acting, and her rare beauty. Ophelia was considered her grandest part. She was playing it one evening to a crowded house, in the presence of the imperial family and the whole court, and seemed wrought up to a pitch of power and pathos that surpassed her finest preceding efforts. She was singing the mad scene with melting tenderness; the house was breathless, hanging enraptured on every note, when suddenly the voice ceased, the prima donna cast a wild look on every side of her, and then, with a shriek too terribly real to be within the compass of art, she flung her arms over her head, and, clasping her hands, fell insensible to the ground. Never did any opera-house witness so dramatic a scene. The spectators rose in a body from the pit to the gallery, shouting to know what had happened, and calling for help. Help was near enough. A man in plain clothes sprang from behind the scenes, and lifted the prostrate Ophelia before any of the actors could interfere. There were several medical men among the audience, and they rushed in a body to offer their services. It was feared for a moment that she was dead; but the doctors soon pronounced it to be only a swoon, though it was impossible to say what might follow on the awakening. The emperor sent one of his chamberlains to hear and see what was going on in the green-room, and inquire if the piece was to be continued; whereupon the luckless manager flew out before the footlights, and falling on his knees under the imperial box, as if he saw the knout suspended over his shoulders, called heaven to witness that he was a loyal subject and an innocent man, and flung himself on the imperial clemency. The prima donna had been seized with illness, and the opera could not be finished that night. The czar waved his clemency to the terrified man, who withdrew, invoking all manner of benedictions on the mercy of the Father of all the Russians, and flew to hear what the doctors were now saying of Ophelia. They were saying that she was acting out her part as it had never yet been acted, with the perfection of nature--she was raving mad.

This was not proclaimed at once. The affair was hushed up for a few days, and kept out of the newspapers, so that Clide only heard it accidentally at the club, where he happened to lounge in a week after the occurrence. He sent Stanton off at once to make inquiries at the house where Isabel lodged. But they could tell nothing of her there; she had been taken away the day after her seizure at the opera, and had left no address. Clide went straight to the lawyer, and asked if there was no way of getting access to her through the police; of learning at least whether she was in an asylum; for his first idea on hearing that she had been taken away was that they had placed her in some such confinement. The lawyer agreed with him that this was most probable, but did not promise much help in verifying the supposition. He seemed honestly willing to do what he could in the matter, but repeated the old warning that little could be done where imperial favor stood in the way. It was highly probable that the czar would still show his benevolence toward the beautiful artist by screening her hiding-place and the fact of her being mad, in hope of her being able to return and complete her engagement after rest and medical treatment.

His position now seemed worse to Clide than it had ever been. The thought of Isabel’s being in a mad-house, a prey to the most awful visitation that humanity is subject to, rudely, perhaps cruelly, treated by coarse, pitiless menials, was so horrible that at first it haunted him till he almost fancied he was going mad himself. The image of the bright young creature who had first stirred the pulses of his foolish heart was for ever before his eyes as she appeared to him that day--how long ago it seemed!--in the midst of the splendors of Niagara, and that he took her for a sprite--some lovely creature of the water and the sunlight. He remembered, with a new sense of its meaning, the strange air she wore, walking on as if half unconscious he had wondered if she were not walking in her sleep. Was it a phase of the cruel malady that was then showing itself? And if so, was she not, perhaps, blameless from the beginning? This blight that had fallen on her in her brilliant maturity might have been germinating then, making strange havoc in her mind, and impelling her character, her destiny, to fearful and fantastic issues. Some weeks passed while Clide was a prey to these harrowing thoughts, when he received a letter from the lawyer, saying he had something to communicate to him of interest.

“It is not good news,” he said, as the Englishman entered his office; “but it is better than complete suspense. The signora is not in St. Petersburg. All our researches were useless from the first, as she was carried off almost immediately to a lunatic asylum in Saxony.”

“And she is there still?”

“Yes; and she has been admirably treated with the utmost skill and care, so much so that it is expected she will be quite restored after a short period of convalescence.”

“How did you ascertain all this?” inquired Clide.

“Through a client of mine who has been for some time a patient of the establishment. He left it very recently, and came to see me on his return, and in talking over the place and its inmates he described one in a way that excited my suspicions. I wrote to the director, and put a few questions cautiously, and the answer leaves me no doubt but that the patient whom my client saw there a few days before his departure was the lady who interests you.”

“Did you hear who accompanied her to Saxony?”

“My client saw a person walking in the grounds with her once, and from the description it must be the same who travelled with her from England--her uncle, in fact: a middle-sized man with coal-black hair and very white teeth; ‘decidedly an unpleasant-looking person’ my client called him.”

“Strange!” murmured Clide. “That description does not tally with my recollection of the man who called himself her uncle, except that he had a forbidding countenance and was of medium height. He had a quantity of gray, almost white, hair, and not a sound tooth in his head.”

“Humph! White hair may turn black, and new teeth may be made to replace lost ones,” observed the lawyer. “I would not be put off the scent by changes of that sort, if the main points coincided.”

“Very true. I must start at once, then, for Saxony, and try and see for myself. I shall have difficulty in gaining the confidence of the directors of the place, I dare say. Can you help me by a letter of introduction to any of them?”

“Yes; I am well known to the principal medical man by name, and I will give you a line to him with pleasure.”

He wrote it, and shook hands with his client and wished him good-speed.

Clide travelled without halting till he drove up to the door of the asylum. His letter procured him admittance at once to the private room of the medical man, and, what was of greater importance, it inclined the latter to credit his otherwise almost incredible story. When Clide had told all he deemed necessary, the doctor informed him that the patient whom he believed to be his wife had already left the house and the country altogether; she had spent three full weeks under his care, and was then well enough to be removed, and had, by his advice, been taken home for the benefit of native air. It was just three days since she had left Saxony. The doctor could give no idea as to where she had gone, beyond that she had returned to England; he knew nothing of the whereabouts of her native place there, and her uncle had left no clue to his future residence.

Clide was once more baffled by fate, and found himself again in a dead-lock. In answer to his inquiries concerning the nature of Isabel’s disease, the medical man said that it was hereditary, and therefore beyond the likelihood--not to say possibility--of radical cure. This, it seemed, was the third attack from which she had suffered. The first was in early girlhood, before the patient was eighteen; the second, somewhat later and of much longer duration--it had lasted six years, her uncle said; then came the third crisis, which, owing, perhaps, to the improved general health of the patient, but more probably to the more judicious and enlightened treatment she had met with, had passed off very rapidly. It was, however, far from being a cure. It was at best but a recovery, and the disease might at any moment show itself again in a more obstinate and dangerous form. Perfect quiet, freedom from excitement, whether mental or physical, were indispensable conditions for preserving her against another crisis. It was needless to add after this that the career of an actress was the most fatal one the unfortunate young woman could have adopted. But in that, no doubt, she was more passive than active.

* * * * *

With this new light on his path, Clide hastened his return to England, farther than ever, it seemed, from his journey’s end, and laden with a heavier burden than when he set out. March! march! was still the command that sounded in his ears, driving him on and on like the Wandering Jew, and never letting him get nearer the goal.

He had not the faintest idea of Isabel’s native place. She had told him she was Scotch, and her name said so too, though she was perfectly free from the native accent which marked her uncle’s speech so strongly. But what did that prove either way? Was Cameron her name, or Prendergast his? He had taken a new name in his travels, and so had she. Still, feeble as the thread was, it was the only one he had to guide him; so he started for Scotland as soon as he landed in England, having previously taken the precaution to acquaint the police in London with his present purpose, and what had led him to it. If Isabel were sufficiently recovered to appear again in public, it was probable that the brutal man--who was in reality no more than her task-master--would have made some engagement for her with a manager, and she might at this moment be singing her brain away for his benefit in some provincial theatre. It was clear he shunned the publicity of the London stage. Clide thought of these things as he tramped over the purple heather of the Highlands, following now one mirage, now another; and his heart swelled within him and smote him for his angry and vindictive feelings toward Isabel; and tears, that were no disgrace to his manhood, forced themselves from his eyes. Poor child! She was not to blame, then, for wrecking his life, and coming again like an evil genius to thrust him back into the abyss just as he had climbed to safety, beckoned onwards and upwards by another angel form. She was a victim herself, and had perhaps never meant to deceive or betray him, but had loved him with her mad, untutored heart as well as she knew how.

The winter days dragged on drearily, as he went from place to place in Scotland, and found no trace of the missing one, heard nothing that gave him any hopes of finding her. The police were equally unsuccessful in London. Stanton had gone back there, very much against his inclination; but Clide insisted that he would be of more use in the busy streets, keeping his keen eyes open, than following his master in his wanderings up and down Scotland.

One dark afternoon the valet was walking along Regent Street, when he stopped to look at some prints in a music-shop. The gas was lighted, and streamed in a brilliant blaze over the gaudily-attired tenors and _prime donne_ that were piling the agony on the backs of various operatic songs. Stanton was considering them, and mentally commenting on the manner of ladies and gentlemen who found it good to spend their lives making faces and throwing themselves into contortions that appeared to him equally painful and ridiculous, when he noticed a lady inside the shop engaged in choosing some music. She was dressed in black, and he only caught a glimpse of her side face through her veil; but the glimpse made him start. He watched her take the roll of music from the shopman, secure it in a little leathern case, and then turn to leave the shop. She walked out leisurely, but the moment she opened the door she quickened her pace almost to a run; and before Stanton knew where he was, she had rushed into the middle of the street. He hastened after her, but a string of carriages and cabs intervened and blocked the street for some moments. As soon as it was clear, he saw the slight figure in black stepping into an omnibus. He hailed it, gesticulating and hallooing frantically; but the conductor, with the spirit of contradiction peculiar to conductors, kept his head persistently turned the other way. Stanton tore after him, waving his umbrella and whistling, all to no purpose, until at last he stopped for want of breath. At the same moment the omnibus pulled up to let some travellers alight; he overtook it this time, and got in. The great machine went thundering on its way, and there opposite to him sat the lady in black, his master’s wife, he was ready to swear, if she was in the land of the living. He saw the features very indistinctly, but well enough to be certain of their identity; the height and contour were the same, and so was the mass of jet black hair that escaped in thick plaits from under the small black bonnet. Then there was the conclusive fact of his having seen her in a music-shop. This clinched the matter for Stanton. The omnibus stopped, the lady got out, ran to the corner of the street, and waited for another to come up, and jumped into it; Stanton meanwhile following her like her shadow. She saw it, and he saw that she saw it, and that she was frightened and trying to get away from him. Why should she do so if she were not afraid of being recognized? He was not a gentleman, and could see no reason for an unprotected young woman being frightened at a man looking fixedly at her and pursuing her, unless she had a guilty conscience. He sat as near as he could to her in the omnibus, and when it pulled up to let her down he got down. She hurried up a small, quiet street off Tottenham Court Road, and on reaching a semi-detached small house, flew up the steps and pulled violently at the bell. Stanton was beside her in an instant.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but I know you. I don’t mean to do you any ’arm, only to tell you that I’m Stanton, Mr. Clide’s valet; you are my master’s wife!”

He was excited, but respectful in his manner.

“You are mistaken,” replied the lady, shrinking into the doorway. “I know nothing about you. I never heard of Mr. Clide, and I’m not married!”

Stanton was of course prepared for the denial, and showed no sign of surprise or incredulity; but, in spite of himself, her tone of assurance staggered him a little. He could not say whether the sound of the voice resembled that of Mrs. de Winton. Its echoes had lingered very faintly in his memory, and so many other voices and sounds had swept over it during the intervening years that he could not the least affirm whether the voice he had just heard was hers or not. Before he had found any answer to this question, footsteps were audible pattering on the tarpauling of the narrow entry, and a slip-shod servant-girl opened the door. The lady passed quickly in; Stanton followed her.

“You must leave me!” she said, turning on him. “This is my papa’s house, and if you give any more annoyance he will have you taken into custody.” She spoke in a loud voice, and as she ceased the parlor door was opened, and a gentleman in a velveteen coat and slippers came forward with a newspaper in his hand.

“What’s the matter? What is all this about?” he demanded blandly, coming forward to reconnoitre Stanton, who did not look at all bland, but grim and resolute, like a man who had conquered his footing on the premises, and meant to hold it.

“Sir, I am Stanton, Mr. Clide’s valet; this lady knows me well, if you don’t.”

“Papa! I never saw him in my life! I don’t know who Mr. Clide is!” protested the young lady in a tremor. “This man has annoyed me all the way home. Send him away!”

“I must speak to you, sir,” said Stanton stoutly. “I cannot leave the house without.”

“Pray walk in!” said the gentleman, waving his newspaper towards the open parlor; “and you, my dear, go and take off your bonnet.”

“Now, sir, be good enough to state your business,” he began when the door was closed.

“My business isn’t with you, sir, but with your daughter, if she is your daughter,” said Stanton. “One thing is certain--she’s my master’s wife; there an’t no use in her denying it, and the best thing she can do is to speak out to her ’usband penitent-like, and he’ll forgive her, poor thing, and do the best he can for her, which will be better than what that uncle of hers ’as been doin’ for her, draggin’ her about everywhere and driving the poor creature crazy. That’s what I’ve got to say, sir, and I ’ope you’ll see as it’s sense and reason.”

The occupant of the velveteen slippers listened to this speech with eyes that grew rounder and rounder as it proceeded; then he threw back his head and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.

“My good man, there’s some mistake! You’ve mistaken my daughter for somebody else; she never was married in her life, and she has no uncle that ever I heard of. Ha! ha! ha! It’s the best joke I ever heard in my life!”

“Excuse me; it an’t no joke at all!” protested Stanton, nettled, and resolved not to be shaken by the ring of honesty there was in the man’s laugh. “You mayn’t know the person that calls himself her uncle, but I do, sir. Mayhap you are duped by the rascal yourself; but it’ll all come out now. I have it all in the palm of my hand.” And he opened that capacious member and closed it again significantly. “Your daughter must either come away with me quietly, or I’ll call the police and have her taken off whether she will or no!”

“I tell you, man, you are under some preposterous mistake,” said the gentleman, his blandness all gone, and his choler rising. “My name is Honey. I am a clerk in H---- Bank, and my daughter, Eliza Jane Honey, has never left me since she was born. She is an artist, a singer, and gives lessons in singing in some of the first houses in London!”

“Singer! Singing lessons! Ha! Just so! I know it all,” said Stanton, his mouth compressing itself in a saturnine smile. “I know it all, and I tell you I don’t leave this ’ouse without her.”

“Confound your insolence! What do you mean? You’d better be gone this instant, or I’ll call the police and give _you_ into custody!

“No, sir, don’t try it; it won’t answer,” said Stanton, imperturbable. “It ’ud only make more trouble; the poor thing has enough on her already, and I’m not the one to make more for her. If you call in the police I’ve something ’ere,” slapping his waistcoat pocket, “as ’ud settle at once which of us was to be took up.”

Before Mr. Honey could say anything in answer to this, a voice came carrolling down the stairs, singing some air from an opera, rich with trills and _fioriture_.

“There it is! The very voice! The very tune I’ve ’eard her sing in the drawing-room at Lanwold!” exclaimed Stanton.

The singer dashed into the room, but broke off in her trills on seeing him.

“What! you are not gone? Papa, who is he?”

“My dear, he is either a madman or--or worse,” said her father. “It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard in my life!”

“Speak out, ma’am, and don’t you fear I’ll do you any ’arm; my master wouldn’t ’ave it, not for all the money he’s worth. Nobody knows the sum he’s spent on them detectives already to try and catch you; and it speaks badly for the lot to say they’ve not caught you long ago. But don’t you be afraid of me, ma’am!” urged Stanton, making his voice as mild as he could.

Eliza Jane’s answer was a peal of laughter.

“Why should I be afraid of you? I never laid my eyes on you before, or you on me; you mistake me for somebody else, I tell you. I never heard of Mr. Clide, and I am certain he never heard of me. The idea of your insisting that I’m his wife!” And she laughed again; but there was a nervous twitch about her mouth, and Stanton saw it.

“As like as two peas in a pod!” was his emphatic remark, as he deliberately scanned her face.

There was no denying the resemblance, indeed. The face was fuller, the features more developed, but the interval of years would explain that.

“Look at my hand! You see I have no wedding-ring? Ask me a few questions; you will find out the blunder at once, if you only try,” she said.

Stanton paused for a moment, as if trying to recall something that might serve as a test.

“I ’ave it!” he said, looking up with a look of triumph. “Open your mouth, ma’am, and let me look into it!”

He advanced towards her, expecting instant compliance. But Miss Honey rushed behind her father with a cry of terror and disgust. The movement was perfectly natural under the circumstances, but Stanton saw it in the light of his own suspicions.

“Ha! I guessed as much,” he said, drawing away, and speaking in a quiet tone of regret. “I was sure of it. Well, you give me no choice. I know my dooty to a lady, but I know my dooty to my master too.” He went toward the window, intending to throw it up and call for a policeman.

“Stop!” cried Mr. Honey. “What do you expect to find in my daughter’s mouth?”

“That, sir, is known to her and to me,” was the oracular reply. “If she has nothing in it as can convict her, she needn’t be afraid to let me look into it.”

Mr. Honey turned aside, touched his forehead with his forefinger, and pointed with the thumb toward Stanton. After this rapid and significant little pantomime, he said aloud to his daughter:

“My dear, perhaps it is as well to let the man have his way. He will see that there is nothing to see. Come and gratify his singular curiosity.”

The girl was now too frightened to see the ludicrous side of the performance; she advanced gravely to the table, on which a gas-burner threw a strong, clear light, and opened her mouth. Stanton came and peered into it. “Please to lift the left side as wide open as you can, ma’am; it was the third tooth from the back of her left jaw.”

She did as he desired, but, after looking closely all round, he could see nothing but two fine, pearly rows of teeth, all ivory, without the smallest glimmer of gold or silver to attest the presence of even an unsound one.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am! I beg a thousand pardons, sir! I find I’ve made a great mistake! I’ve behaved shameful rude to you and the young lady; but I hope you’ll forgive me. I was only doing my dooty to my master. I’m sorrier than I can say for my mistake!” Both father and daughter were too thankful to be rid of him to withhold their free and unconditional pardon. They even went the length of regretting that he had had so much trouble and such an unpleasant adventure all to no purpose, and cordially wished him better success next time, as he withdrew, profusely apologizing.

“Papa, he must be an escaped lunatic!” cried the young lady, as the hall-door closed on Stanton.

“I dare say they took me for a maniac, and indeed no wonder!” was Stanton’s reflection, as he heard a peal of laughter through the window.

The adventure left, nevertheless, an uneasy feeling on his mind, and the next day he called on Mr. Peckitt, the dentist, and related it. Mr. Peckitt had not seen the wearer of the silver tooth since the time he had attended her before her departure for Berlin; but he had seen her uncle, and made an entire set of false teeth for him. He took the liberty on first seeing him of inquiring for the young lady; but her uncle answered curtly that she was in no need of dental services at present, and turned off the subject by some irrelevant remark. Mr. Peckitt, of course, took the hint, and never reverted to it. This was all he had to tell Stanton; but he did not confirm the valet’s certainty as to the non-identity of Miss Honey on the grounds of the absence of the silver tooth. It was, he thought, improbable that his patient should have parted with that odd appendage, and that, if so, she should have gone to a strange dentist to have it replaced by an ordinary tooth; but either of these alternatives was possible.

This was all the information that Stanton had for his master when the latter returned from his bootless search in Scotland.

On the following day Sir Simon Harness came to London and heard of the strange adventure. He was inclined to attach more importance to it than Clide apparently did.

“Suppose this so-called Eliza Jane Honey should not have been Isabel,” he said, “but some one like her--the same whom you saw at Dieppe?” Clide shook his head.

“Impossible! _I_ could not be deceived, though Stanton might. This Miss Honey, too, was fuller in the face, and altogether a more robust person, than Isabel, as Stanton remembers her. Now, after the terrible attack that she has suffered lately, it is much more likely that she is worn and thin, poor child!”

“That is true. Still, there remains the coincidence of the splendid voice and of her being an artist. If I were you, I would not rest till I saw her myself.”

“It would only make assurance doubly sure. Stanton has startled me over and over again for nothing. Every pair of black eyes and bright complexion that he sees gives him a turn, as he says, and sets him off on the chase. No; the woman I saw at Dieppe was my wife--I am as sure of that as of my own identity. I did not get near enough to her to say, ‘Are you my wife?’ but I am as certain of it as if I had.” He promised, however, to satisfy Sir Simon, that he would go to Tottenham Court and see Miss Honey.

While Clide’s tongue was engaged on this absorbing topic, he was mentally reverting to another subject which was scarcely less absorbing, and which was closer to his heart. His love for Franceline had not abated one atom of its ardor since absence and a far more impassable gulf had parted him from her; her image reigned supreme in his heart still, and accompanied him in his waking and sleeping thoughts. He felt no compunction for this. His conscience tendered full and unflinching allegiance to the letter of the moral law, but it was in bondage to none of those finer spiritual tenets that ruled and influenced Franceline. He would have cut off his right hand rather than outrage her memory by so much as an unworthy thought; but he gave his heart full freedom to retain and foster its love for her. He had not her clear spiritual insight to discern the sinfulness of this, any more than he had her deep inward strength to enable him to crush the sin out of his heart, even if he had tried, which he did not. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that his love for her was unlawful. Nothing could make it guilty; that was in his own power, and the purity of its object was its best protection. She was an angel, and could only be worshipped with the reverent love that one of her own pure kindred spirits might accept without offence or contamination. Such was Clide’s code, and, if he wanted any internal proof of his own loyalty to sanction it, he had it in the shape of many deep-drawn sighs--prayers, he called them, and perhaps they were--that Franceline might not suffer on his account, but might forget him, and be happy after a time with some worthier husband. He had been quite honest when he sighed these sighs--at least he thought he was; yet when Sir Simon, meaning to console him and make things smooth and comfortable, assured him emphatically that they had been both happily mistaken in the nature of Franceline’s feelings, and then basely and cruelly insinuated that Ponsonby Anwyll was in a fair way to make her a good husband by and by, Clide felt a pang more acute than any he had yet experienced. This is often the case with us. We never know how much insincerity there is in the best of our prayers--the anti-self ones--until we are threatened with the grant of them.

Sir Simon said nothing about the stolen ring. His friendship for Raymond partook of that strong personal feeling which made any dishonor in its object touch him like a personal stain. He could not bear even to admit it to himself that his ideal was destroyed. M. de la Bourbonais had been his ideal of truth, of manly independence, of everything that was noble, simple, and good. There are many intervals in the scale that separates the ordinary honest man from the ideal man of honor. Sir Simon could count several of the former class; but he knew but one of the higher type. He had never known any one whom he would have placed on the same pinnacle of unsullied, impregnable honor with Raymond. Now that he had fallen, it seemed as if the very stronghold of Sir Simon’s own faith had surrendered; he could disbelieve everything, he could doubt everybody. Where was truth to be found, who was to be trusted, since Raymond de la Bourbonais had failed? But meantime he would screen him as long as he could. He would not be the first to speak of his disgrace to any one. He told Clide how Raymond had lost, for him, a considerable sum of money recently, through the dishonesty of a bank, and how he had borne the loss with the most incredible philosophy, because just then it so happened he did not want the money; but since then Franceline’s health had become very delicate, and she was ordered to a warm climate, and these few hundreds would have enabled him to take her there, and her father was now bitterly lamenting the loss.

Clide was all excitement in a moment.

“But now you can supply them?” he cried. “Or rather let me do it through you! I must not, of course, appear; but it will be something to know I am of use to her--to both of them. You can easily manage it, can you not? M. de la Bourbonais would make no difficulty in accepting the service from you.”

“Humph! As ill-luck will have it, there is a coldness between us at present,” said Sir Simon--“a little tiff that will blow off after a while but meanwhile Bourbonais is as unapproachable as a porcupine. He’s as proud as Lucifer at any time, and I fear there is no one but myself from whom he would accept a service of the kind.”

“Could not Langrove manage it? They seemed on affectionate terms,” said Clide.

“Oh! no, oh! no. That would never do!” said Sir Simon quickly. “I don’t see any one at Dullerton but myself who could attempt it.”

“Well, but some one must, since you say you can’t,” argued Clide with impatience. “When do you return to the Court?”

“I did not mean to return just yet a while. You see, I have a great deal of business to look to--of a pleasant sort, thanks to you, my dear boy, but still imperative and admitting of no delay. I can’t possibly leave town until it has been settled.”

“I should have thought Simpson might have attended to it. I suppose you mean legal matters?” said the young man with some asperity. He could not understand Sir Simon’s being hindered by mere business from sparing a day in a case of such emergency, and for such a friend. It was unlike him to be selfish, and this was downright heartlessness.

“Simpson? To be sure!” exclaimed the baronet jubilantly, starting up and seizing his hat. “I will be off and see him this minute. Simpson is sure to hit on some device; he’s never at a loss for anything.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE STORY OF EVANGELINE IN PROSE.

I spare you M. Jourdain’s oft-quoted saying. Too often, I fear, I successfully imitate the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” in speaking prose without knowing it--aye, at the very moment when I think to woo the Muse most ardently. But great is the courage demanded to announce a purpose to be prosaic--prosy, it may be--with premeditation. Especially true is this when, as in the case before me, the subject itself ranks high as poetry. Mr. Longfellow, in some of his later writings, may seem to aim at, or does, perhaps, unconsciously catch, that tone, made fashionable by the younger Victorian songsters, which sets the poet apart as a being differing from his kind, and makes him, as the English poet-laureate does, “born in a golden clime”

“With golden stars above.”

But in his “Tale of Acadie” our American Wordsworth touches with sympathetic finger the chords that vibrate with feeling in common hearts. This is the lyre he sweeps with a magic sweetness not excelled by any modern English poet. _Evangeline_ is a poem of the hearth and domestic love. That is to say, though it is true the heroine and her betrothed never come together in one happy home, the feelings described are such as might without shame beat tenderly in any Christian maiden’s breast; such, too, as any husband might wish his wife to feel. How different is this from the fierce passion--a surrender to the lower nature--which burns and writhes and contorts itself in Mr. Swinburne’s heroines! One is Christian Love, the other the pagan brutishness of Juvenal’s Messalina. It may be said indeed with truth that, in portraying a Catholic maiden and a Catholic community, Mr. Longfellow has, with the intuition of genius, reflected in this poem the purity and fidelity blessed by the church in the love it sanctions. His admirers, therefore, cannot but regret that debasing contact with the new school of the XIXth-century realism which, in such an one of his later poems, for example, as that entitled “Love,” draws him to the worship of the “languors” and “kisses” of the Lucretian Venus. The love of Evangeline is that which is affected by refined women in every society--humble though the poet’s heroine be; the other strips the veil from woman’s weakness.

The charm of the poem is that it transports us to a scene Arcadian, idyllic, yet which impresses us with its truthfulness to nature. This is not Acadia only, but Arcadia. The nymphs, and the shepherds and shepherdesses, and the god Pan with his oaten reed, put off the stage costumes worn by them in the pages of Virgil or on the canvas of Watteau, and, lo! here they are in real life in the village of Grand Pré--Evangeline milking the kine, Gabriel Lajeunesse, and Michael the fiddler, and the level Acadian meadows walled in by their dykes from the turmoil of war that shook the world all around them. The picture is truthful; but truthful rather by the effect of the bold touches that befit the artist and poet than in the multitude of details--some more prosaic, some not so charming--which, massed together, make up the more faithful portrait of the historian. The description of scenery in the poem confuses the natural features of two widely-separated and different sections of the country; the Evangeline of Grand Pré is not in all respects the Acadian girl of Charlevoix or Murdock; the history of men and manners on the shores of the Basin of Mines,[231] as depicted by the poet, is sadly at variance with the angry, tumultuous, suspicious, blood-stained annals of those settlements. Strange as it may seem, the poem is truer of the Acadians of to-day, again living in Nova Scotia, than of their expatriated forefathers. Remoteness of time did not mean, in their case, a golden age of peace and plenty. Far from it! It meant ceaseless war on the borders, the threats and intrigues of a deadly national feud, the ever-present, overhanging doom of exile, military tyranny, and constant English espionage. Now absolute peace reigns within the townships still peopled by their descendants, and the Acadian peasant and village maiden cling in silence and undisturbed to the manners their fathers brought from Normandy nearly three centuries ago.

The first few lines give the coloring to the whole poem. They are the setting within which are grouped the characters.

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,”

stand “like Druids of eld,” or “harpers hoar”;

“While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.”

This is the refrain running through the poem like the _aria_ of the “Last Rose of Summer” through _Martha_. Yet the picture conveyed to the reader’s mind is that of the Atlantic coast of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, not of the Basin of Mines, where Evangeline dwelt with her people. The natural features of the two sections of country are strikingly diverse. On the east coast of Nova Scotia rises a line of granitic and other cliffs, sterile, vast, jagged, opposing their giant shoulders to the roaring surges of the Atlantic. On the hills behind, the pines and hemlocks rustle and murmur in answer to the waves. This is the “forest primeval” and the “loud-voiced neighboring ocean.” But on the west coast is quite another scene. The Basin of Mines is an inland gulf of an inland sea--the Bay of Fundy. Here the granite rocks and murmuring pines give place to red clay-banks and overflowed marshes. And here is Horton, or Grand Pré. It is separated by the whole breadth of the peninsula of Nova Scotia from the ocean. The “mists from the mighty Atlantic,” which

“Looked on the happy valley, but ne’er from their station descended,”

are in reality the fogs of the Bay of Fundy shut out by the North Mountain. Instead of the long swell of the Atlantic breaking on a rocky coast, we have in the Basin of Mines numerous small rivers running through an alluvial country, with high clay-banks left bare by the receding tide. This last feature of the scene is correctly described by the poet; but it must be borne in mind that it is not united with the natural features of the east coast. The Acadians never, in fact, affected the Atlantic sea-board. They sailed shuddering past its frowning and wintry walls, and, doubling Cape Sable, beat up the Bay of Fundy to where the sheltered Basins of Port Royal and Mines invited an entrance from the west. For over one hundred years after the founding of Port Royal the Atlantic coast of Acadia remained a waste. A fishing-village at Canseau on the north--a sort of stepping-stone to and from the great fortress of Louisburg--and a few scattered houses and clearings near La Tour’s first settlement alone broke the monotonous silence of the wilderness. The Indian hunter tracking the moose over the frozen surface of the snow, and some half-solitary Irish and New England fishermen in Chebucto Bay, divided the rest of the country between them. It was not until 1749 that Cornwallis landed his colonists at Halifax, and made the first solid footing on the Atlantic coast. But for generations previously, in the rich valley of the River of Port Royal, and along the fertile banks of the streams flowing into the Basin of Mines--the Gaspereau, the Canard, and the Pereau--the thrifty Acadians spread their villages, built their churches, and were married and buried by the good Recollect Fathers.

I was a lad scarce emancipated from college when I first visited those scenes. I remember well my emotion when I drew my eyes away from the landscape, and, turning to my companion, Father K----, asked him if there were any remains of the old village of Grand Pré. To my youthful imagination Evangeline was as real as the people about me. Father K---- was the priest stationed at Kentville, about ten miles distant from Grand Pré and the Gaspereau River, which were included in his mission. He was an old family friend, and I was going to spend the summer vacation with him. We were driving from Windsor through Horton and Wolfville to Kentville, passing on our road through all the scenes described in the poem. I have often visited that part of the country since then, but never has it made such an impression on me. The stage-coach then rolled between Windsor and Kentville, and something of the rural simplicity congenial with the poem was still felt to be around one. Last year I rode by rail over the same ground, and later on another line of railroad to Truro, and thence around the Basin of Mines on the north through Cumberland. But my feelings had changed, or the whistle of the locomotive was a sound alien to the memories of those green meadows and intersecting dykes. Evangeline was no longer a being to be loved, but a beautiful figment of the poet’s brain.

I don’t know to this day whether Father K---- was quizzing me, or was loath to shatter my boyish romance, when he told me that there were some old ruins which were said to be the home of Evangeline. It is probable he was having a quiet joke at my expense, as he was noted for his fund of humor, which I learned better to appreciate in later years. Poor Father K----! He was a splendid type of the old Irish missionary priest--an admirable Latinist; well read in English literature, especially the Queen Anne poets; hearty, jovial, and could tell a story that would set the table in a roar. And, withal, no priest worked harder than he did in his wide and laborious mission, or was a more tender-hearted friend of the poor and afflicted. He is since dead.

During the month or six weeks I spent with Father K----, that part of the country became quite familiar to me by means of his numerous drives on parish duties, when I usually accompanied him. Often, as the shades of the summer evening descended, have I watched the mists across the Basin shrouding the bluff front of Cape Blomidon--“Blow-me-down,” as it is more commonly called by the country-folk. At other times we drove up the North Mountain, where the

“Sea-fogs pitched their tents,”

and, standing there, I have looked down upon the distant glittering waters of the Bay of Fundy.

On one occasion we rode over from Kentville to Wolfville, and then up the Gaspereau, at the mouth of which

“The English ships at their anchors”

swung with the tide on the morning which ushered in the doom of Grand Pré. We rode some distance up the valley to the house of a Catholic farmer, and there put up for the day. It was the day on which the elections took place for the House of Assembly. The contest was fiercely conducted amid great popular excitement. One of those “No-Popery” cries, fomented by an artful politician--which sometimes sweep the colonies as well as the mother country--was raging in the province. Father K---- left Kentville, the county town, on that day to avoid all appearance of interference in the election, and also to get away from the noise and confusion that pervaded the long main street of the village. I can remember the news coming up the Gaspereau in the evening how every one of the four candidates opposed to Father K---- had been returned. But at that time I paid little heed to politics, and during the day I wandered down through the field to the river, and strolled along its willow-fringed banks. Some of those willows were very aged, and might have swung their long, slim wands and narrow-pointed leaves over an Evangeline and a Gabriel a hundred years before. Those willows were not the natural growth of the forest, but were planted there--by whom? No remnant of the people that first tilled the valley was left to say!

Riding home next day, a laughable incident, but doubtless somewhat annoying to Father K----, occurred. Just as we were about to turn a narrow bend of the road, suddenly we were confronted by a long procession in carriages and all sorts of country vehicles, with banners flying, men shouting, and everything to indicate a triumphal parade. It was, in fact, a procession escorting two of the “No-Popery” members elected the day before. The position was truly rueful, but Father K---- had to grin and bear it. There was no escape for us; we had to draw up at the side of the road, and sit quietly in our single wagon until the procession passed us. It was a very orderly and good-humored crowd, but there were a good many broad grins, as they rode by, at having caught the portly and generally popular priest in such a trap. Nothing would persuade them, of course, but that he had been working might and main for the other side during the election. Finally, as the tail of the procession passed us, some one in the rear, more in humor than in malice, sang out: “To h--ll with the Pope.” There was a roar of laughter at this, during which Father K---- gathered up his reins, and, saying something under his breath which I will not vouch for as strictly a blessing, applied the whip to old Dobbin with an energy that that respectable quadruped must have thought demanded explanation.

Changed indeed was such a scene from those daily witnessed when Father Felician,

“Priest and pedagogue both in the village,”

ruled over his peaceful congregation at the mouth of the Gaspereau.

It has been said in the beginning of this article that Evangeline, the heroine and central figure of the poem, is not altogether true to history as typical of the Acadian girl of that period, as seen in the annals of Port Royal; and doubtless this assertion can be borne out by the records. But, on second thoughts, it does appear, as it were, a profanation to subject such a bright creation of the poet’s mind to the analysis of history. As profitably might we set about converting the diamond into its original carbon. The magical chemistry of genius, as of nature, has in either case fused the dull and common atoms into the sparkling and priceless jewel.

The stoutest champion of her sex will not, upon consideration, contend that so absolutely perfect a creature as Evangeline is likely to be found in any possible phase of society. Is not a spice of coquetry inseparable from all women? Evangeline has none of it. She is, too, too unconscious that her lover

“Watches for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow”

under the trees in the orchard. She is the heroine of an idyl--not, indeed, of unreal Arthurian romance, but of that exalted and passionless love which the virgin heart seeks, but afterwards consoles itself for not finding. That ideal star does not shine upon this world; but its divine rays fall softly upon many an unknown heart in the cloister.

But it is incontestable that the Acadian maidens of Port Royal and Mines shared in some of the agreeable frivolities which still, it is said, sometimes distinguish their sisters in the world. They had an eye for a military uniform and clanking spurs even in those “primeval” days. It is a frequent complaint of the French governors to the home authorities at Paris that their young officers were being continually led into marriage with girls of the country “without birth,” and, worse still, often “without money.” In the old parish register of Annapolis can be seen more than one entry of the union of a gallant ensign or captain to a village belle from the inland settlements whose visit to the Acadian metropolis had subjugated the Gallic son of Mars. Nor was the goddess of fashion altogether without a shrine in close contiguity to the “murmuring pines and the hemlocks.” Some of the naval and military officers sent for their wives from Paris or Quebec, and these fine ladies brought their maids with them. This is not a supposition, but a fact which can be verified by reference to the letters of M. des Goutins and others in the correspondence of the time. Imagine a Parisian soubrette of the XVIIIth century in the village of Grand Pré! It is a shock to those who derive their knowledge of Acadie from Mr. Longfellow’s poem; but those who are familiar with the voluminous records of the day, preserved in the provincial archives, are aware of a good many stranger things than that related in them. Since _Evangeline_ was published the Canadian and Nova Scotian governments have done much to collect and edit their records, and they are now accessible to the student. Rightly understood, there is no reason why the flood of light thus thrown upon the lives of the Acadians should detract anything from our admiration for that simple and kindly race. They were not faultless; but the very fact that they shared in the common interests, and even foibles, of the rest of the world gives that tone of reality to their history which makes us sympathize with them more justly in the cruel fate that overtook them. Yet, in depicting the young Acadian girl of that period as he has done, the poet has but idealized the truth. The march of the history of her people aids him in making the portrait a faithful one. Had he placed the time a little earlier--that is to say, under the French-Acadian _régime_--and his heroine at Annapolis, his poem could not have borne the criticism of later research. But in selecting the most dramatic incident of Acadian history as the central point of interest, he has necessarily shifted the scene to one of the Neutral French settlements. Here, too, he is aided in maintaining the truthfulness of his portraiture by the fact that the English conquest, in depriving the Acadians of the right of political action, and cutting them off as much as possible from intercourse with Canada and France, had thrown them back upon rural occupations alone, and developed their simple virtues. Mines and Chignecto had been noted for their rustic independence and their manners uncorrupted by contact with the world, even under the old _régime_. One of the military governors of Port Royal complains of them as “semi-republicans” in a letter to the Minister of Marine and Colonies at Paris. After the conquest of 1710, intercourse with Annapolis and its English Government House and foreign garrison became even more restricted. No oath of allegiance being taken to the new government, the _curé_ was recognized both by the inhabitants and the Annapolis government as their virtual ruler. Under the mild sway of Fathers Felix, Godalie, and Miniac--in turn _curés_ of Mines--the Acadians sought to forget in the cultivation of their fields the stern military surveillance of Annapolis, and, later, Fort Edwards and Fort Lawrence. Father Miniac comes latest in time, and shared the misfortunes of his flock in their expulsion. But in Father Godalie, the accomplished scholar and long-loved friend of the people of Grand Pré, we seem best to recognize the “Father Felician” of Mr. Longfellow’s poem. He was a guide well fitted to form the lovely character of Evangeline; nor do the authentic records of the time bear less ample testimony to the virtue of his people than the glowing imagination of the poet.

It is less in the delineation of individual character than in its description of the undisturbed peace reigning at Grand Pré that the poem departs most from the truth of history. The expulsion of 1755 was not a thunderbolt in a clear sky descending upon a garden of Eden. It was a doom known to be hanging over them for forty years. Its shadow, more or less threatening for two generations, was present in every Acadian household, disabling industry and driving the young men into service or correspondence with their French compatriots. Space would not permit, in so short a paper, to enter into the history of that desperate struggle for supremacy on this continent ending on the heights of Abraham, isolated chapters of which have been narrated with a graphic pen by Mr. Francis Parkman. Acadie was one of its chosen battlegrounds. So far from the Acadians living in rural peace and content, it may be said broadly yet accurately that from the date of their first settlement to their final expulsion from the country, during a period extending over one hundred and fifty years, five years had never passed consecutively without hostilities, open or threatened. The province changed masters, or was wholly or partially conquered, seven times in a little over one hundred years, and the final English conquest, so far from establishing peace, left the Acadians in a worse position than before. They refused to take the oath of allegiance to the English government; the French government was not able to protect them, though it used them to harass the English.

They acquired, therefore, by a sort of tacit understanding, the title and position of the “Neutral French,” the English government simply waiting from year to year until it felt itself strong enough to remove them _en masse_ from the province, and the Acadians yearly expecting succor from Quebec or Louisburg. Each party regarded the other as aliens and enemies. Hence it is that no French-Acadian would ever have used the words “his majesty’s mandate”--applied to George II.--as spoken by Basil the blacksmith in the poem. That single expression conveys a radically false impression of the feelings of the people at the time. The church at Mines, or Grand Pré, from the belfry of which

“Softly the Angelus sounded,”

had been burned down twice by the English and its altar vessels stolen by Col. Church in the old wars. Nor had permanent conquest, as we have said, brought any change for the better. The _curés_ were frequently imprisoned on pretext of exciting attacks on the English garrisons, and sometimes, as in the case of Father Felix and Father Charlemagne, were exiled from the province. In 1714 the intention was first announced of transporting all the Acadians from their homes. It was proposed to remove them to Cape Breton, still held by the French. The pathetic remonstrance of Father Felix Palm, the _curé_ of Grand Pré, in a letter and petition to the governor, averted this great calamity from his people at that time. But the project was again revived by the English Board of Trade, 1720-30. In pursuance of its orders, Gov. Philipps issued a proclamation commanding the people of Mines to come in and take the oath of allegiance by a certain day, or to depart forthwith out of the province, permitting, at the same time--a stretch of generosity which will hardly be appreciated at this day--each family to carry away with it “two sheep,” but all the rest of their property to be confiscated. This storm also blew over. But the result of this continual harassment and threatening was to drive the Acadians into closer correspondence with the French at Louisburg, and to cause their young men to enlist in the French-Canadian forces on the frontier. In view of this aid and comfort given to the enemy, and their persistent refusal to take the oath of allegiance, later English writers have not hesitated to declare the removal of the Acadians from the province a political and military necessity. But the otherwise unanimous voice of humanity has unequivocally denounced their wholesale deportation as one of the most cruel and tyrannical acts in the colonial history of England. We are not to suppose, however, that the Acadians folded their hands while utter ruin was thus threatening them. In 1747 they joined in the attack on Col. Noble’s force at Mines, in which one hundred of the English were killed and wounded, and the rest of his command made prisoners. They were accused, not without some show of reason, of supporting the Indians in their attack on the new settlement at Halifax. It is admitted that three hundred of them, including many of the young men from Grand Pré, were among the prisoners taken at Fort Beau Sejour on the border a few months before their expulsion. It is not our purpose to enter into any defence or condemnation of those hostilities. But it is plain that Mr. Longfellow’s beautiful lines describing the columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense, ascending

“From a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment,”

“free from fear, that reigns with the tyrant, or envy, the vice of republics,” were not applicable to the condition of affairs at Grand Pré in 1755, nor at any time.

The poem follows with fidelity the outlines of the scenes of the expulsion. Heart-rending indeed is the scene, as described even by those who were agents in its execution. The poet gives almost _verbatim_ the address of Col. John Winslow in the chapel. Nevertheless one important clause is omitted. Barbarous as were the orders of Gov. Lawrence, he was not absolutely devoid of humanity. Some attempt was made to lessen the pangs of separation from their country by the issuing of orders to the military commanders that “whole families should go together on the same transport.” These orders were communicated with the others to the inhabitants by Col. Winslow, and it appears, they were faithfully executed as far as the haste of embarkation would permit. But as the young men marched separately to the ships, and some of them escaped for a time into the woods, there was nothing to prevent such an incident occurring as the separation of Evangeline and Gabriel.

About seven thousand (7,000) Acadians, according to Gov. Lawrence’s letter to Col. Winslow, were transported from their homes. The total number of these unfortunate people in the province at that time has been estimated at eighteen thousand. The destruction was more complete at Grand Pré than elsewhere, that being the oldest settlement, with the exception of Annapolis, and the most prosperous and thickly settled. A few years later another attempt was made to transfer the remainder of the Acadian population to New England; but the transports were not permitted to land them at Boston, as they were completely destitute, and the New England commonwealths petitioned against being made responsible for their support. The Acadian exiles were scattered over Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia. About four hundred and fifty were landed at Philadelphia.

“In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware’s waters, Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn, the apostle, Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded. … There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile, Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country.”

A few months ago I visited the Quaker City. There, where Evangeline ended her long pilgrimage, I took up the thread of that story the early scenes of which had been so familiar to me. How different those around me! Gone were the balsamic odors of the pines and the salt spray of the ocean. One can conceive how the hearts of the poor Acadian exiles must have trembled. I sought out the old “Swedish church at Wicaco,” whence the “sounds of psalms

“Across the meadows were wafted”

on the Sabbath morning when Evangeline went on her way to the hospital, and there found her lover dying unknown. The quaint little church--not larger than a country school-house--built of red and black bricks brought from Sweden, is now almost lost in a corner near the river’s edge, in the midst of huge warehouses and intersecting railroad tracks. In the wall near the minister’s desk is a tablet in memory of the first pastor and his wife buried beneath. Fastened to the gallery of the choir--not much higher than one’s head--is the old Swedish Bible first used in the church, and over it two gilded wooden cherubs--also brought from Sweden--that make one smile at their comical features. In the churchyard, under the blue and faded gray tombstones, repose the men and women of the congregation of 1755 and years before. But no vestiges of the Acadian wanderers remain in the Catholic burying-ground.

“Side by side in their nameless graves the lovers are sleeping. Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard, In the heart of the city, they lie unknown and unnoticed.”

Many of the Acadians succeeded in wandering back to their country. Others escaped into what is now called New Brunswick, which was then a part of Acadia, and either returned to Nova Scotia in after-years when the whole of Canada was finally ceded to the English, or founded settlements, existing to this day in New Brunswick, and returning their own members to the Provincial Parliaments. The descendants of the Acadians, still speaking the French language and retaining the manners of their forefathers, are more numerous than is generally supposed in Nova Scotia. They number thirty-two thousand out of a total population of three hundred and eighty-seven thousand (387,000), according to the census of 1871. The poet says:

“Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic Linger a few Acadian peasants.… Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline’s story.”

This refers, no doubt, to the settlement at Chezzetcook, which, from its closeness to Halifax, is best known. On Saturday mornings, in the market at Halifax, the Acadian women can be seen standing with their baskets of eggs and woollen mitts and socks for sale. They are at once recognized by their short blue woollen outer petticoats or kirtles, and their little caps, with their black hair drawn tightly up from the forehead under them. The young girls are often very pretty. They have delicate features, an oval face, a clear olive complexion, and eyes dark and shy, like a fawn’s. They soon fade, and get a weather-beaten and hard expression from exposure to the climate on their long journeys on foot and from severe toil.

But in Yarmouth County, and on the other side of the peninsula in the township of Clare, Digby County, there are much larger and more prosperous settlements. Clare is almost exclusively French-Acadian. The people generally send their own member to the provincial House of Assembly. He speaks French more fluently than English. The priest preaches in French. Here at this day is to be found the counterpart of the manners of Grand Pré. Virtue, peace, and happiness reign in more than “a hundred homes” under the old customs. Maidens as pure and sweet as Evangeline can be seen as of old walking down the road to the church on a Sunday morning with their “chaplet of beads and their missal.” But the modern dressmaker and milliner has made more headway than among the poor Chezzetcook people. Grand Pré itself, and most of the old Acadian settlements, are inhabited by a purely British race--descendants of the North of Ireland and New England settlers who received grants of the confiscated lands. By a singular turn of fortune’s wheel the descendants of another expatriated race--the American loyalists--now people a large part of the province once held by the exiled Acadians.

THE PATIENT CHURCH.

Bide thou thy time! Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime, Sit in the gate, and be the heathen’s jest, Smiling and self-possest. O thou, to whom is pledged a victor’s sway, Bide thou the victor’s day!

Think on the sin That reap’d the unripe seed, and toil’d to win Foul history-marks at Bethel and at Dan-- No blessing, but a ban; Whilst the wise Shepherd hid his heaven-told fate, Nor reck’d a tyrant’s hate.

Such loss is gain; Wait the bright Advent that shall loose thy chain! E’en now the shadows break, and gleams divine Edge the dim, distant line. When thrones are trembling, and earth’s fat ones quail, True seed! thou shalt prevail.

--NEWMAN.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

IV.

William du Bellay having remained in France, M. de Vaux had been sent to replace him in England. The latter, having but recently returned from Rome, where he was attached to the embassy of M. de Grammont, French ambassador to that court, was not yet initiated into the state of affairs as they existed at the court of Henry VIII.

Du Bellay was not satisfied with the change; and the old diplomate, finding his new assistant inclined to be somewhat dull, undertook to enlighten him--leading him on step by step into the intricacies of diplomacy, like a mother, or rather a governess, a little brusque, who is impatient at the slow progress the child makes in learning to walk.

“Come!” he exclaimed, “I see you understand nothing of this; so I shall have to be patient and begin it all over again. It is incredible,” he added, by way of digression, addressing himself to the public (who was absent), “what absurd reports are circulated outside with regard to what we say and do in our secret negotiations! It extends even to all these harebrains of the court; but you who have a foot in diplomacy I cannot excuse. Come, let us see--we say:

“When my brother left, he went to demand on the part of Henry VIII., of the universities of France, and above all that of Paris (preponderating over all the others)--remark well: to demand, I say--that they should give decisions favorable to the divorce. Now, this point appeared at first quite insignificant; but it is just here we have shown our ability (I would say I, but I do not wish to vaunt _myself_ over a young man just starting out in the world like yourself). Then our king has replied to the King of England that he would ask nothing better than to use his influence with the universities to induce them to give satisfaction on this subject; but that (notice this especially) the Emperor Charles V. had made precisely the same demand in an opposite direction, in favor of Queen Catherine, his aunt; that if he refused the emperor, he would be extremely displeased, and that he was compelled to reflect a second time, because the princes, his children, were held as hostages in the hands of the emperor, and in spite of all his efforts he had not yet been able to pay the price of their ransom stipulated at the treaty of Cambrai.

“It then remained to say that we could do nothing for him--on the contrary, must oppose him so long as the children were held prisoners, or while there was even a chance that they would be restored to us on condition that we should throw our influence on the side of Queen Catherine. All of which is as clear as day--is it not? Now you are going to see if I have understood how to take advantage of these considerations with Henry VIII.”

Saying this, with a slightly derisive smile, Du Bellay took from a drawer a casket of green sharkskin, which he handed to De Vaux, who opened it eagerly.

“Oh! how beautiful,” he exclaimed, taking from the case and holding up in the sunlight a magnificent _fleur de lis_ composed entirely of diamonds. “Oh! this is most superb.”

“Yes, it is beautiful!” replied Du Bellay with a satisfied air, “and worth one hundred and fifty thousand crowns. Philip, the emperor’s father, pledged it to the King of England for that sum. We are obliged by the treaty to redeem it; but as we have not the money to pay, it has been made a present to us. And here is what is better still,” he added, displaying a quittance--“a receipt in full for five hundred thousand crowns which the emperor owed Henry VIII.; and he now makes a present of it to Francis I., to enable him to pay immediately the two millions required for the ransom of the princes.”

“That is admirable!” cried De Vaux. “It must be admitted, my lord, that we shall be under great obligations to Mlle. Anne.”

“All disorders cost dear, my child,” replied Du Bellay; “and if this continues, they will ruin England. Think of what will have to be paid yet to the University of Paris!…”

“And do you suppose they will consent to this demand?” interrupted De Vaux.

“No, truly, I do not believe it,” replied Du Bellay. “Except Master Gervais, who is always found ready to do anything asked of him, I know not how they will decide; but, between ourselves, I tell you I believe they will be against it. But, observe, we have not promised a favorable decision--we have only left it to be hoped for; which is quite a different thing.”

“That is very adroit,” replied De Vaux, “assuredly; but it seems to me not very honest.”

“How! not honest?” murmured Du Bellay, contracting his little gray eyebrows, and fixing his greenish eyes on the fair face of the youth. “Not honest!” he again exclaimed in a stentorian voice. “Where do you come from, then, young man? Know that among these people honesty is a thing unheard of. Others less candid than myself may tell you the contrary, knowing very well that such is not the truth. They arrange projects with the intention of defeating them; they sign treaties with the studied purpose of violating them; they swear to keep the peace in order to prepare for war; and a state sells her authority and puts her influence in the balance of the world in favor of the highest bidder. Let the price be earth or metal, it is of no consequence; I make no distinction. When Henry devastated our territories and took possession of our provinces, was it just? No! ‘Might makes right’; that is the veritable law of nations--the only one they are willing to acknowledge or adopt. In default of strength, there remains stratagem; and I must use it!”

“Under existing circumstances you are right,” replied De Vaux, replacing in its case the superb _fleur de lis_, and again waving it in the sunlight. “It is a pity,” he added, “that they may be obliged to return this; it would set off wonderfully well the wedding dress of the future Duchess of Orleans.”

“What! are they speaking already of the marriage of the young Duke of Orleans?” asked Du Bellay in surprise.

“Ah! that is a great secret,” replied De Vaux confidentially. “You know our king has not abandoned the idea of subjugating the Milanese, and, to ensure the pope’s friendship, he offers to marry his second son to his niece, the young Catherine de’ Medici.”

“No!” cried M. du Bellay. “No, it is impossible! How can they forget that but a short time since the Medici family was composed of only the simple merchants of Florence?”

“It has all been arranged, notwithstanding,” replied De Vaux. “In spite of all our precautions, the emperor has been apprised of it. At first he refused to credit it, and would not believe the King of France could really think of allying his noble blood with that of the Medici. In the meantime he has been so much frightened, lest the hope of this alliance would not sufficiently dazzle Clement VIII., that he has made a proposal to break off the marriage of his niece, the Princess of Denmark, with the Duke of Milan, and substitute the young Catherine in her place. We have, as you may well suppose, promptly advised M. de Montmorency of all these things, who returned us, on the spot, full power to sign the articles. M. de Grammont immediately carried them to the pope; and he was greatly delighted, as Austria, it seems, had already got ahead of us, and persuaded him that we had no other intention than to deceive him and gain time. Now everything is harmoniously arranged. They promise for the marriage portion of Catherine Reggio, Pisa, Leghorn, Modena, Ribera, the Duchy of Urbino; and Francis I. cedes to his son his claims to the Duchy of Milan.”

“Sad compensation for a bad marriage!” replied M. du Bellay angrily: “new complications which will only result in bringing about interminable disputes! Princes can never learn to be contented with the territory already belonging to them. Although they may not possess sufficient ability to govern even _that_ well, still they are always trying to extend it. War must waste and ruin a happy and flourishing country, in order to put them in possession of a few feet of desolated earth, all sprinkled with gold and watered with blood.”

“Ah! yes,” interrupted De Vaux earnestly, “we have learned this cruelly and to our cost. And relentless history will record without regret the account of our reverses, and the captivity of a king so valiant and dauntless--a king who has sacrificed everything save his honor.”

“Reflect, my dear, on all this. The honor of a king consists not in sacrificing the happiness of his people. A soldier should be brave--the head of a nation should be wise and prudent,” replied Du Bellay, as he turned over a great file of papers in search of something, “Valor without prudence is worthless. The intrigues of the cabinet are more certain; they are of more value than the best generals. They, at least, are never entirely defeated; the disaster of the evening inspires renewed strength for the morrow. Cold, hunger, and sickness are not able to destroy them.… They can only waste a few words or lose a sum of money. A dozen well-chosen spies spread their toils in every direction; we hold them like bundles of straw in our hands; they glide in the dark, slip through your fingers--an army that cannot be captured, which exists not and yet never dies; which drags to the tribunal of those who pay them, without pity as without discrimination, without violence as without hesitation, the hearts of all mankind.

“Gold, my child, but never blood! With bread we can move the world; with blood we destroy it. Your heart, young man, leaps within you at the sound of the shrill trumpet, when glittering banners wave and the noise of battle inebriates your soul. But look behind you, child, look behind you: the squadron has passed. Hear the shrieks and groans of the dying. Behold those men dragging themselves over the trampled field; their heads gashed and bleeding, their bones dislocated, their limbs torn; streams of blood flow from their wounds; they die in an ocean furnished from their own lacerated veins. Go there to the field of carnage and death; pause beside that man with pallid face and agonized expression; think of the tender care and painful anxiety of the mother who reared him from his cradle. How often she has pressed her lips upon the golden curls of her boy, the hope of her old age, which must now end in despair! Reflect there, upon the field of carnage and death, on the tender caresses of wives, sisters, and friends. Imagine the brother’s grief, the deep anguish of the father. Alas! all these recollections pass in an instant before the half-open eyes of the dying. Farewell! dream of glory, hateful vision now for ever vanished. Life is almost extinct, yet with the latest breath he thinks but of them! ‘They will see me no more! I must die far away, without being able to bid them a last adieu.’ Such are the bitter thoughts murmured by his dying lips as the last sigh is breathed forth. Tell me, young man, have you never reflected when, on the field glittering in the bright summer sunshine, you have seen the heavy, well-drilled battalions advance; when the prince rode in the midst of them, and they saluted him with shouts of enthusiasm and love; when that prince, a weak man like themselves, elated with pride, said to them: ‘March on to death; it is for me that you go!’ For you! And who are you? Their executioner, who throws their ashes to the wind of your ambition, to satisfy the thirst of your covetousness, the insolent pride of your name, which the century will see buried in oblivion! Ah! my son,” continued the old diplomate, deeply affected, with his hands crossed on the packet of papers, that he had entirely forgotten, “if you knew how much I have seen in my life of these horrible calamities, of these monstrous follies, which devastate the world! If you but knew how my heart has groaned within me, concealed beneath my gloomy visage, my exterior as impassible as my garments, you would understand how I hate them, these mighty conquerors, these vile plagues of the earth, and how I count as nothing the sack of gold which lies at the bottom of the precipice over which they push us, the adroit fraud that turns them aside from their course! But shall I weep like an old woman?” he suddenly exclaimed, vexed at being betrayed into the expression of so much emotion.

Hastily brushing the tear from his cheek, he began examining the package of papers, and, instantly recovering his usual composure, became M. du Bellay, the diplomate.

Young De Vaux, greatly surprised at the excess of feeling into which the ambassador had suddenly been betrayed, so much at variance with his previous manner, as well as his rule of conduct and the rather brusque reception he had given him, still remembered it when all thought of the occurrence had passed from the mind of his superior.

“Here, sir, read that,” he exclaimed, throwing the young man a small scrap of paper.

“I will read it, my lord.”

“Read aloud, sir.”

“‘Cardinal Wolsey, overcome by grief and alarm, has fallen dangerously