This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By Gilbert Parker
Three months afterwards George Gering was joyfully preparing to taketwo voyages. Perhaps, indeed, his keen taste for the one had much to dowith his eagerness for the other—though most men find getting gold ascheerful as getting married. He had received a promise of marriage fromJessica, and he was also soon to start with William Phips for theSpaniards' country. His return to New York with the news of the captureof the Hudson's Bay posts brought consternation. There was no angrierman in all America than Colonel Richard Nicholls; there was perhaps nogirl in all the world more agitated than Jessica, then a guest atGovernment House. Her father was there also, cheerfully awaiting hermarriage with Gering, whom, since he had lost most traces of Puritanism,he liked. He had long suspected the girl's interest in Iberville; if hehad known that two letters from him—unanswered—had been treasured,read, and re-read, he would have been anxious. That his daughter shouldmarry a Frenchman—a filibustering seigneur, a Catholic, the enemy of theBritish colonies, whose fellow-countrymen incited the Indians to harassand to massacre—was not to be borne.
Besides, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was nowoften in peril because of his Cavalier propensities, and whose losses hadaged him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his daughter withhim. 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 heyday of their own youth, he imagined theway a maid's fancy ought to go.
If he had known how much his daughter's promise to marry Gering wouldcost her, he would not have had it. But indeed she did not herself guessit. She had, with the dreamy pleasure of a young girl, dwelt upon anevent which might well hold her delighted memory: distance, differenceof race, language, and life, all surrounded Iberville with an engagingfascination. Besides, what woman could forget a man who gave her escapefrom a fate such as Bucklaw had prepared for her? But she saw thehopelessness of the thing, everything was steadily acting in Gering'sfavour, and her father's trouble decided her at last.
When Gering arrived at New York and told his story—to his credit withno dispraise of Iberville, rather as a soldier—she felt a pang greaterthan she ever had known. Like a good British maid, she was angry at thedefeat of the British, she was indignant at her lover's failure and proudof his brave escape, and she would have herself believe that she wasangry at Iberville. But it was no use; she was ill-content while herfather and others called him buccaneer and filibuster, and she joyed thatold William Drayton, who had ever spoken well of the young Frenchman,laughed at their insults, saying that he was as brave, comely, and fine-tempered a lad as he had ever met, and that the capture of the forts wasgenius: "Genius and pith, upon my soul!" he said stoutly; "and if hecom