Besides, the Honourable8 Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was now often in peril9 because of his Cavalier propensities10, and whose losses had aged11 him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his daughter with him. Jessica was the apple of his eye; for her he would have borne all, sorts of trials; but he could not bear to see her called on to bear them. Like most people out of the heyday12 of their own youth, he imagined the way a maid’s fancy ought to go.
If he had known how much his daughter’s promise to marry Gering would cost her, he would not have had it. But indeed she did not herself guess it. She had, with the dreamy pleasure of a young girl, dwelt upon an event which might well hold her delighted memory: distance, difference of race, language, and life, all surrounded Iberville with an engaging fascination13. Besides, what woman could forget a man who gave her escape from a fate such as Bucklaw had prepared for her? But she saw the hopelessness of the thing, everything was steadily14 acting15 in Gering’s favour, and her father’s trouble decided16 her at last.
When Gering arrived at New York and told his story—to his credit with no dispraise of Iberville, rather as a soldier—she felt a pang17 greater than she ever had known. Like a good British maid, she was angry at the defeat of the British, she was indignant at her lover’s failure and proud of his brave escape, and she would have herself believe that she was angry at Iberville. But it was no use; she was ill-content while her father and others called him buccaneer and filibuster5, and she joyed that old William Drayton, who had ever spoken well of the young Frenchman, laughed at their insults, saying that he was as brave, comely18, and fine-tempered a lad as he had ever met, and that the capture of the forts was genius: “Genius and pith, upon my soul!” he said stoutly19; “and if he comes this way he shall have a right hearty20 welcome, though he come to fight.”
In the first excitement of Gering’s return, sorry for his sufferings and for his injured ambition, she had suddenly put her hands in his and had given her word to marry him.
She was young, and a young girl does not always know which it is that moves her: the melancholy21 of the impossible, from which she sinks in a kind of peaceful despair upon the possible, or the flush of a deep desire; she acts in an atmosphere of the emotions, and cannot therefore be sure of herself. But when it was done there came reaction to Jessica. In the solitude22 of her own room—the room above the hallway, from which she had gone to be captured by Bucklaw—she had misgivings23. If she had been asked whether she loved Iberville, she might have answered no. But he was a possible lover; and every woman weighs the possible lover against the accepted one—often, at first, to fluttering apprehensions24. In this brief reaction many a woman’s heart has been caught away.
A few days after Gering’s arrival he was obliged to push on to Boston, there to meet Phips. He hoped that Mr. Leveret and Jessica would accompany him, but Governor Nicholls would not hear of it just yet. Truth is, wherever the girl went she was light and cheerfulness, although her ways were quiet and her sprightliness25 was mostly in her looks. She was impulsive26, but impulse was ruled by a reserve at once delicate and unembarrassed. She was as much beloved in the town of New York as in Boston.
Two days after Gering left she was wandering in the garden, when the governor joined her.
“Well, well, my pretty councillor,” he said—“an hour to cheer an old man’s leisure?”
“As many as you please,” she answered daintily, putting her hand within his arm. “I am so very cheerful I need to shower the surplus.” There was a smile at her lips, but her eyes were misty27. Large, brilliant, gentle, they had now also a bewildered look, which even the rough old soldier saw. He did not understand, but he drew the hand further within his arm and held it, there, and for the instant he knew not what to say. The girl did not speak; she only kept looking at him with a kind of inward smiling. Presently, as if he had suddenly lighted upon a piece of news for the difficulty, he said: “Radisson has come.”
“Radisson!” she cried.
“Yes. You know ‘twas he that helped George to escape?”
“Indeed, no!” she answered. “Mr. Gering did not tell me.” She was perplexed28, annoyed, yet she knew not why.
Gering had not brought Radisson into New York had indeed forbidden him to come there, or to Boston, until word was given him; for while he felt bound to let the scoundrel go with him to the Spaniards’ country, it was not to be forgotten that the fellow had been with Bucklaw. But Radisson had no scruples29 when Gering was gone, though the proscription30 had never been withdrawn31.
“We will have to give him freedom, councillor, eh? even though we proclaimed him, you remember.” He laughed, and added: “You would demand that, yea or nay32.
“Why should I?” she asked.
“Now, give me wisdom all ye saints! Why—why?
“Faith, he helped your lover from the clutches of the French coxcomb33.”
“Indeed,” she answered, “such a villain34 helps but for absurd benefits. Mr. Gering might have stayed with Monsieur Iberville in honour and safety at least. And why a coxcomb? You thought different once; and you cannot doubt his bravery. Enemy of our country though he be, I am surely bound to speak him well—he saved my life.”
Anxious to please her, he answered: “Wise as ever, councillor. What an old bear am I: When I called him coxcomb, ‘twas as an Englishman hating a Frenchman, who gave our tongues to gall—a handful of posts gone, a ship passed to the spoiler, the governor of the company a prisoner, and our young commander’s reputation at some trial! My temper was pardonable, eh, mistress?”
The girl smiled, and added: “There was good reason why Mr. Gering brought not Radisson here, and I should beware that man. A traitor35 is ever a traitor. He is French, too, and as a good Englishman you should hate all Frenchmen, should you not?”
“Merciless witch! Where got you that wit? If I must, I kneel;” and he groaned36 in mock despair. “And if Monsieur Iberville should come knocking at our door you would have me welcome him lovingly?”
“Surely; there is peace, is there not? Has not the king, because of his love for Louis commanded all goodwill37 between us and Canada?”
The governor laughed bitterly. “Much pity that he has! how can we live at peace with buccaneers?” Their talk was interrupted here; but a few days later, in the same garden, Morris came to them. “A ship enters harbour,” he said, “and its commander sends this letter.”
An instant after the governor turned a troubled face on the girl and said: “Your counsel of the other day is put to rapid test, Jessica. This comes from monsieur, who would pay his respects to me.”
He handed the note to her. It said that Iberville had brought prisoners whom he was willing to exchange for French prisoners in the governor’s hands.
Entering New York harbour with a single vessel38 showed in a strong light Iberville’s bold, almost reckless, courage. The humour of it was not lost on Jessica, though she turned pale, and the paper fluttered in her fingers.
“What will you do?” she said.
“I will treat him as well as he will let me, sweetheart.” Two hours afterwards, Iberville came up the street with Sainte-Helene, De Casson, and Perrot,—De Troyes had gone to Quebec,—courteously accompanied by Morris and an officer of the New York Militia39. There was no enmity shown the Frenchmen, for many remembered what had once made Iberville popular in New York. Indeed, Iberville, whose memory was of the best, now and again accosted40 some English or Dutch resident, whose face he recalled.
The governor was not at first cordial; but Iberville’s cheerful soldierliness, his courtier spirit, and his treatment of the English prisoners, soon placed him on a footing near as friendly as that of years before. The governor praised his growing reputation, and at last asked him to dine, saying that Mistress Leveret would no doubt be glad to meet her rescuer again.
“Still, I doubt not,” said the governor, “there will be embarrassment41, for the lady can scarce forget that you had her lover prisoner. But these things are to be endured. Besides, you and Mr. Gering seem as easily enemies as other men are friends.”
Iberville was amazed. So, Jessica and Gering were affianced. And the buckle42 she had sent him he wore now in the folds of his lace! How could he know what comes from a woman’s wavering sympathies, what from her inborn43 coquetry, and what from love itself? He was merely a man with much to learn.
He accepted dinner and said: “As for Monsieur Gering, your excellency, we are as easily enemies as he and Radisson are comrades-in-arms.”
“Which is harshly put, monsieur. When a man is breaking prison he chooses any tool. You put a slight upon an honest gentleman.”
“I fear that neither Mr. Gering nor myself is too generous with each other, your excellency,” answered Iberville lightly.
This frankness was pleasing, and soon the governor took Iberville into the drawing-room, where Jessica was. She was standing44 by the great fireplace, and she did not move at first, but looked at Iberville in some thing of her old simple way. Then she offered him her hand with a quiet smile.
“I fear you are not glad to see me,” he said, with a smile. “You cannot have had good reports of me—no?”
“Yes, I am glad,” she answered gently. “You know, monsieur, mine is a constant debt. You do not come to me, I take it, as the conqueror45 of Englishmen.”
“I come to you,” he answered, “as Pierre le Moyne of Iberville, who had once the honour to do you slight service. I have never tried to forget that, because by it I hoped I might be remembered—an accident of price to me.”
She bowed and at first did not speak; then Morris came to say that some one awaited the governor, and the two were left alone.
“I have not forgotten,” she began softly, breaking a silence.
“You will think me bold, but I believe you will never forget,” was his meaning reply.
“Yes, you are bold,” she replied, with the demure46 smile which had charmed him long ago. Suddenly she looked up at him anxiously, and, “Why did you go to Hudson’s Bay?” she asked.
“I would have gone ten times as far for the same cause,” he answered, and he looked boldly, earnestly, into her eyes.
She turned her head away. “You have all your old recklessness,” she answered. Then her eyes softened47, and, “All your old courage,” she added.
“I have all my old motive48.”
“What is-your motive?”
Does a woman ever know how much such speeches cost? Did Jessica quite know when she asked the question, what her own motive was; how much it had of delicate malice—unless there was behind it a simple sincerity49? She was inviting50 sorrow. A man like Iberville was not to be counted lightly; for every word he sowed, he would reap a harvest of some kind.
He came close to her, and looked as though he would read her through and through. “Can you ask that question?” he said most seriously. “If you ask it because from your soul you wish to know, good! But if you ask it as a woman who would read a man’s heart, and then—”
“Oh, hush51!—hush!” she whispered. Her face became pale, and her eyes had a painful brightness. “You must not answer. I had no right to ask. Oh, monsieur!” she added, “I would have you always for my friend if I could, though you are the enemy of my country and of the man—I am to marry.”
“I am for my king,” he replied; “and I am enemy of him who stands between you and me. For see: from the hour that I met you I knew that some day, even as now, I should tell you that—I love you—indeed, Jessica, with all my heart.”
“Oh, have pity!” she pleaded. “I cannot listen—I cannot.”
“You shall listen, for you have remembered me and have understood. Voila!” he added, hastily catching52 her silver buckle from his bosom53. “This that you sent me, look where I have kept it—on my heart!”
She drew back from him, her face in her hands. Then suddenly she put them out as though to prevent him coming near her, and said:
“Oh, no—no! You will spare me; I am an affianced wife.” An appealing smile shone through her tears. “Oh, will you not go?” she begged. “Or, will you not stay and forget what you have said? We are little more than strangers; I scarcely know you; I—”
“We are no strangers,” he broke in. “How can that be, when for years I have thought of you—you of me? But I am content to wait, for my love shall win you yet. You—”
She came to him and put her hands upon his arm. “You remember,” she said, with a touch of her old gaiety, and with an inimitable grace, “what good friends we were that first day we met? Let us be the same now—for this time at least. Will you not grant me this for to-day?”
“And to-morrow?” he asked, inwardly determining to stay in the port of New York and to carry her off as his wife; but, unlike Bucklaw, with her consent.
At that moment the governor returned, and Iberville’s question was never answered. Nor did he dine at Government House, for word came secretly that English ships were coming from Boston to capture him. He had, therefore, no other resource but to sail out and push on for Quebec. He would not peril the lives of his men merely to follow his will with Jessica.
What might have occurred had he stayed is not easy to say—fortunes turn on strange trifles. The girl, under the influence of his masterful spirit and the rare charm of his manner, might have—as many another has—broken her troth. As it was, she wrote Iberville a letter and sent it by a courier, who never delivered it. By the same fatality54, of the letters which he wrote her only one was received. This told her that when he returned from a certain cruise he would visit her again, for he was such an enemy to her country that he was keen to win what did it most honour. Gering had pressed for a marriage before he sailed for the Spaniards’ country, but she had said no, and when he urged it she had shown a sudden coldness. Therefore, bidding her good-bye, he had sailed away with Phips, accompanied, much against his will, by Radisson. Bucklaw was not with them. He had set sail from England in a trading schooner55, and was to join Phips at Port de la Planta. Gering did not know that Bucklaw had share in the expedition, nor did Bucklaw guess the like of Gering.
Within two weeks of the time that Phips in his Bridgwater Merchant, manned by a full crew, twenty fighting men, and twelve guns, with Gering in command of the Swallow, a smaller ship, got away to the south, Iberville also sailed in the same direction. He had found awaiting him, on his return to Quebec, a priest bearing messages and a chart from another priest who had died in the Spaniards’ country.
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1
joyfully
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| adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地 | |
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consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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filibustering
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| v.阻碍或延宕国会或其他立法机构通过提案( filibuster的现在分词 )；掠夺 | |
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filibuster
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| n.妨碍议事，阻挠；v.阻挠 | |
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incited
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| 刺激，激励，煽动( incite的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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harass
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| vt.使烦恼，折磨，骚扰 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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propensities
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| n.倾向，习性( propensity的名词复数 ) | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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heyday
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| n.全盛时期，青春期 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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comely
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| adj.漂亮的，合宜的 | |
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stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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sprightliness
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| n.愉快，快活 | |
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impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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proscription
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| n.禁止，剥夺权利 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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coxcomb
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| n.花花公子 | |
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villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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goodwill
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| n.善意，亲善，信誉，声誉 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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accosted
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| v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的过去式和过去分词 )；跟…搭讪；（乞丐等）上前向…乞讨；（妓女等）勾搭 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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buckle
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| n.扣子，带扣；v.把...扣住，由于压力而弯曲 | |
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inborn
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| adj.天生的，生来的，先天的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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demure
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| adj.严肃的；端庄的 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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49
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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51
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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52
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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53
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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54
fatality
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| n.不幸，灾祸，天命 | |
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55
schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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