She threw her arms round him involuntarily, for she was much agitated. “Glad, brother? Yes, I am glad because you are glad.”
“No more than that, Amélie? That is a small thing to be glad for.”
“Oh, brother! I am glad for gladness's sake! We can never overpay the debt of gratitude we owe Pierre Philibert.”
“O my sweet sister,” replied he, kissing her, “I knew my news would please you. Come, we will go down and see him at once, for Pierre is in the house.”
“But, Le Gardeur!” She blushed and hesitated. “Pierre Philibert I knew—I could speak to him; but I shall hardly dare recognize him in the stately soldier of to-day. Voilà la différence!” added she, repeating the refrain of a song very popular both in New France and in Old at that period.
Le Gardeur did not comprehend her hesitation and tone. Said he—“Pierre is wonderfully changed since he and I wore the green sash of the seminary. He is taller than I, wiser and better—he was always that—but in heart the same generous, noble Pierre Philibert he was when a boy. Voilà la ressemblance!” added he, pulling her hair archly as he repeated the antistrophe of the same ditty.
Amélie gave her brother a fond look, but she did not reply, except by a tight pressure of the hand. The voices of the Chevalier La Corne and the Lady de Tilly and Colonel Philibert were again heard in animated conversation. “Come, brother, we will go now,” said she; and quick in executing any resolution she had formed, she took the arm of her brother, swept with him down the broad stair, and entered the drawing-room.
Philibert rose to his feet in admiration of the vision of loveliness that suddenly beamed upon his eyes. It was the incarnation of all the shapes of grace and beauty that had passed through his fervid fancy during so many years of absence from his native land. Something there was of the features of the young girl who had ridden with flying locks, like a sprite, through the woods of Tilly. But comparing his recollection of that slight girl with the tall, lithe, perfect womanhood of the half-blushing girl before him, he hesitated, although intuitively aware that it could be no other than the idol of his heart, Amélie de Repentigny.
Le Gardeur solved the doubt in a moment by exclaiming, in a tone of exultation, “Pierre Philibert, I bring an old young friend to greet you—my sister!”
Philibert advanced, and Amélie raised her dark eyes with a momentary glance that drew into her heart the memory of his face forever. She held out her hand frankly and courteously. Philibert bent over it as reverently as he would over the hand of the Madonna.
The greeting of the Lady de Tilly and La Corne St. Luc had been cordial, nay, affectionate in its kindness. The good lady kissed Pierre as a mother might have done a long-absent son.
“Colonel Philibert,” said Amélie, straining her nerves to the tension of steel to preserve her composure, “Colonel Philibert is most welcome; he has never been forgotten in this house.” She glanced at her aunt, who smiled approvingly at Amélie's remark.
“Thanks, Mademoiselle de Repentigny; I am indeed happy to be remembered here; it fulfils one of my most cherished hopes in returning to my native land.”
“Ay, ay, Pierre,” interrupted La Corne St. Luc, who looked on this little scene very admiringly, “good blood never lies. Look at Colonel Philibert there, with the King's epaulets on his shoulders. I have a sharp eye, as you know, Amélie, when I look after my pretty goddaughter, but I should not have recognized our lively Pierre in him, had Le Gardeur not introduced him to me, and I think you would not have known him either.”
“Thanks for your looking after me, godfather,” replied Amélie, merrily, very grateful in her heart for his appreciation of Pierre, “but I think neither aunt nor I should have failed to recognize him.”
“Right, my Amélie!” said the Lady de Tilly. “We should not, and we shall not be afraid, Pierre—I must call you Pierre or nothing—we shall not be afraid, although you do lay in a new stock of acquaintances in the capital, that old friends will be put aside as unfashionable remnants.”
“My whole stock of friendship consists of those remnants, my Lady—memories of dear friends I love and honor. They will never be unfashionable with me: I should be bankrupt indeed, were I to part with one of them.”
“Then they are of a truer fabric than Penelope's web, for she, I read, pulled in pieces at night what she had woven through the day,” replied Lady de Tilly. “Give me the friendship that won't unravel.”
“But not a thread of my recollections has ever unravelled, or ever will,” replied Pierre, looking at Amélie as she clasped the arm of her aunt, feeling stronger, as is woman's way, by the contact with another.
“Zounds! What is all this merchant's talk about webs and threads and thrums?” exclaimed La Corne. “There is no memory so good as a soldier's, Amélie, and for good reason: a soldier on our wild frontiers is compelled to be faithful to old friends and old flannels; he cannot help himself to new ones if he would. I was five years and never saw a woman's face except red ones—some of them were very comely, by the way,” added the old warrior with a smile.
“The gallantry of the Chevalier La Corne is incontestable,” remarked Pierre, “for once, when we captured a convoy of soldiers' wives from New England, he escorted them, with drums beating, to Grand Pré, and sent a cask of Gasçon wine for them to celebrate their reunion with their husbands.”
“Frowzy huzzies! not worth the keeping, or I would not have sent them; fit only for the bobtailed militia of New England!” exclaimed La Corne.
“Not so thought the New Englanders, who had a three days feast when they remarried their wives—and handsome they were, too,” said Philibert; “the healths they drank to the Chevalier were enough to make him immortal.”
La Corne always brushed aside compliments to himself: “Tut, my Lady! it was more Pierre's good-nature than mine—he out of kindness let the women rejoin their husbands; on my part it was policy and stratagem, of war. Hear the sequel! The wives spoiled the husbands, as I guessed they would do, taught them to be too late at reveille, too early at tattoo. They neglected guards and pickets, and when the long nights of winter set in, the men hugged their wives by the firesides instead of their muskets by their watch-fires. Then came destruction upon them! In a blinding storm, amid snow-drifts and darkness, Coulon de Villiers, with his troops on snow-shoes, marched into the New England camp, and made widows of the most of the poor wives, who fell into our hands the second time. Poor creatures! I saw that day how hard it was to be a soldier's wife.” La Corne's shaggy eyelash twinkled with moisture. “But it was the fortune of war!—the fortune of war, and a cruel fortune it is at the best!”
The Lady de Tilly pressed her hand to her bosom to suppress the rising emotion. “Alas, Chevalier! poor widows! I feel all they suffered. War is indeed a cruel fortune, as I too have had reason to learn.”
“And what became of the poor women, godfather?” Amélie's eyes were suffused with tears: it was in her heart, if ever in any mortal's, to love her enemies.
“Oh, we cared for them the best we could. The Baron de St. Castin sheltered them in his château for the winter, and his daughter devoted herself to them with the zeal and tenderness of a saint from Heaven—a noble, lovely girl, Amélie!” added La Corne, impressively; “the fairest flower in all Acadia, and most unfortunate, poor girl! God's blessing rest upon her, wherever she may be!” La Corne St. Luc spoke with a depth of emotion he rarely manifested.
“How was she unfortunate, godfather?” Philibert watched the cheek flush and the eyelid quiver of the fair girl as she spoke, carried away by her sympathy. His heart went with his looks.
“Alas!” replied La Corne, “I would fain not answer, lest I distrust the moral government of the universe. But we are blind creatures, and God's ways are not fashioned in our ways. Let no one boast that he stands, lest he fall!