Evangeline | Page 8

the roll of drums from the churchyard.?Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the church-doors?Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession?Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers.?Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country,?Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn,?So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended?Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters.?Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their voices,?Sang they with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions:--?"Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain!?Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience!"?Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside?Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them?Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed.
Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence,?Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction,--?Calmly and sadly she waited, until the procession approached her,?And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion.?Tears then filled her eyes, and, eagerly running to meet him,?Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder and whispered,--?"Gabriel! be of good cheer! for if we love one another,?Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may happen!"?Smiling she spake these words; then suddenly paused, for her father?Saw she slowly advancing. Alas! how changed was his aspect!?Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, and his footstep?Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart in his bosom.?But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and embraced him,?Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not.?Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful procession.
There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking.?Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion?Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children?Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties.?So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried,?While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her father.?Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight?Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean?Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach?Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed.?Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons,?Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle,?All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them,?Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers.?Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean,?Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving?Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors.?Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures;?Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their udders;?Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the farm-yard,--?Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milkmaid.?Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus sounded,?Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the windows.
But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had been kindled,?Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from wrecks in the tempest.?Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were gathered,?Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of children.?Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his parish,?Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and cheering,?Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate sea-shore.?Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her father,?And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man,?Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or emotion,?E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been taken.?Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer him,?Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked not, he spake not,?But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering fire-light.?"Benedicite!" murmured the priest; in tones of compassion.?More he fain would have said, but his heart was full, and his accents?Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a threshold,?Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence of sorrow.?Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the maiden,?Raising his eyes full of tears to the silent stars that above them?Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows of mortals.?Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in silence.
Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red?Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon?Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain