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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/24078-8.txt b/24078-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa6ef0e --- /dev/null +++ b/24078-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9571 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bonaventure, by George Washington Cable + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Bonaventure + A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana + + +Author: George Washington Cable + + + +Release Date: December 30, 2007 [eBook #24078] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BONAVENTURE*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Sam W., and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). Music transcribed by +Linda Cantoni. + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations and + an audio file of music. + See 24078-h.htm or 24078-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/0/7/24078/24078-h/24078-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/0/7/24078/24078-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + There are a small number of characters with diacritical marks, + which are as follows: + + [)o] is o with a breve (u shaped symbol) above it; + + [=a] is a with a macron (straight line) above it. + + Additional notes will be found at the end of the book. + + + + + +BONAVENTURE + +A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana + +by + +GEORGE W. CABLE + + + + + + + +New York +International Association of Newspapers and Authors +1901 + +Copyright, 1887, 1888, by George W. Cable. + +Braunworth, Munn & Barber +Printers and Binders +Brooklyn, N. Y. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +_CARANCRO._ + + CHAPTER. PAGE. + + I. SOSTHÈNE 1 + + II. BONAVENTURE AND ZOSÉPHINE 4 + + III. ATHANASIUS 9 + + IV. THE CONSCRIPT OFFICER 15 + + V. THE CURÉ OF CARANCRO 24 + + VI. MISSING 33 + + VII. A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK 42 + + VIII. THE QUEST ENDED 47 + + IX. THE WEDDING 55 + + X. AFTER ALL 62 + + +_GRANDE POINTE._ + + CHAPTER. PAGE. + + I. A STRANGER 73 + + II. IN A STRANGE LAND 77 + + III. THE HANDSHAKING 81 + + IV. HOW THE CHILDREN RANG THE BELL 86 + + V. INVITED TO LEAVE 91 + + VI. WAR OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT 98 + + VII. LOVE AND DUTY 103 + + VIII. AT CLAUDE'S MERCY 111 + + IX. READY 116 + + X. CONSPIRACY 119 + + XI. LIGHT, LOVE, AND VICTORY 129 + + +_AU LARGE._ + + CHAPTER. PAGE. + + I. THE POT-HUNTER 142 + + II. CLAUDE 147 + + III. THE TAVERN FIRESIDE 152 + + IV. MARGUERITE 167 + + V. FATHER AND SON 179 + + VI. CONVERGING LINES 188 + + VII. 'THANASE'S VIOLIN 201 + + VIII. THE SHAKING PRAIRIE 213 + + IX. NOT BLUE EYES, NOR YELLOW HAIR 221 + + X. A STRONG TEAM 226 + + XI. HE ASKS HER AGAIN 235 + + XII. THE BEAUSOLEILS AND ST. PIERRES 248 + + XIII. THE CHASE 255 + + XIV. WHO SHE WAS 263 + + XV. CAN THEY CLOSE THE BREAK? 269 + + XVI. THE OUTLAW AND THE FLOOD 271 + + XVII. WELL HIDDEN 280 + + XVIII. THE TORNADO 286 + + XIX. "TEARS AND SUCH THINGS" 294 + + XX. LOVE, ANGER, AND MISUNDERSTANDING 299 + + XXI. LOVE AND LUCK BY ELECTRIC LIGHT 305 + + XXII. A DOUBLE LOVE-KNOT 310 + + + + +BONAVENTURE. + + + + +CARANCRO. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +SOSTHÈNE. + + +Bayou Teche is the dividing line. On its left is the land of bayous, +lakes, and swamps; on its right, the beautiful short-turfed prairies +of Western Louisiana. The Vermilion River divides the vast prairie +into the countries of Attakapas on the east and Opelousas on the west. +On its west bank, at its head of navigation, lies the sorry little +town of Vermilionville, near about which on the north and east the +prairie rises and falls with a gentle swell, from whose crests one +may, as from the top of a wave, somewhat overlook the surrounding +regions. + +Until a few years ago, stand on whichever one you might, the prospect +stretched away, fair and distant, in broad level or gently undulating +expanses of crisp, compact turf, dotted at remote intervals by farms, +each with its low-roofed house nestled in a planted grove of oaks, or, +oftener, Pride of China trees. Far and near herds of horses and +cattle roamed at will over the plain. If for a moment, as you passed +from one point of view to another, the eye was shut in, it was only +where in some lane you were walled in by fields of dense tall +sugar-cane or cotton, or by huge green Chickasaw hedges, studded with +their white-petalled, golden-centred roses. Eastward the plain broke +into slight ridges, which, by comparison with the general level, were +called hills; while toward the north it spread away in quieter swells, +with more frequent fields and larger houses. + +North, south, east, and west, far beyond the circle of these horizons, +not this parish of Lafayette only, but St. Landry, St. Martin, Iberia, +St. Mary's, Vermilion,--all are the land of the Acadians. This quarter +off here to northward was named by the Nova-Scotian exiles, in memory +of the land from which they were driven, the Beau Bassin. These small +homestead groves that dot the plain far and wide are the homes of +their children. Here is this one on a smooth green billow of the land, +just without the town. It is not like the rest,--a large brick house, +its Greek porch half hid in a grove of oaks. On that dreadful day, +more than a century ago, when the British in far-off Acadie shut into +the chapel the villagers of Grand Pré, a certain widow fled with her +children to the woods, and there subsisted for ten days on roots and +berries, until finally, the standing crops as well as the houses being +destroyed, she was compelled to accept exile, and in time found her +way, with others, to these prairies. Her son founded Vermilionville. +Her grandson rose to power,--sat in the Senate of the United States. +From early manhood to hale gray age, the people of his State were +pleased to hold him, now in one capacity, now in another, in their +honored service; they made him Senator, Governor, President of +Convention, what you will. I have seen the portrait for which he sat +in early manhood to a noted English court painter: dark waving locks; +strong, well-chiselled features; fine clear eyes; an air of warm, +steady-glowing intellectual energy. It hangs still in the home of +which I speak. And I have seen an old ambrotype of him, taken in the +days of this story: hair short-cropped, gray; eyes thoughtful, +courageous; mouth firm, kind, and ready to smile. + +It must have been some years before this picture was taken, that, as +he issued from his stately porch,--which the oaks, young then, did not +hide from view as they do now,--coming forth to mount for his regular +morning ride, a weary-faced woman stood before him, holding by the +hand a little toddling boy. She was sick; the child was hungry. He +listened to her tale. Their conversation was in French. + +"Widow, are you? And your husband was a Frenchman: yes, I see. Are you +an Acadian? You haven't the accent." + +"I am a Creole," she said, with a perceptible flush of resentment. So +that he responded amiably:-- + +"Yes, and, like all Creoles, proud of it, as you are right to be. But +I am an Acadian of the Acadians, and never wished I was any thing +else." + +He found her a haven a good half-day's ride out across the prairies +north-westward, in the home of his long-time acquaintance, Sosthène +Gradnego, who had no more heart than his wife had to say No to either +their eminent friend or a houseless widow; and, as to children, had so +many already, that one more was nothing. They did not feel the burden +of her, she died so soon; but they soon found she had left with them a +positive quantity in her little prattling, restless, high-tempered +Bonaventure. Bonaventure Deschamps: he was just two years younger than +their own little Zoséphine. + +Sosthène was already a man of some note in this region,--a region +named after a bird. Why would it not often be well so to name +places,--for the bird that most frequents the surrounding woods or +fields? How pleasant to have one's hamlet called Nightingale, or +Whippoorwill, or Goldfinch, or Oriole! The home of Zoséphine and +Bonaventure's childhood was in the district known as Carancro; in +bluff English, Carrion Crow. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +BONAVENTURE AND ZOSÉPHINE. + + +They did not live _à la chapelle_; that is, in the village of six or +eight houses clustered about the small wooden spire and cross of the +mission chapel. Sosthène's small ground-story cottage, with garret +stairs outside in front on the veranda and its five-acre farm behind, +was not even on a highway nor on the edge of any rich _bas +fond_,--creek-bottom. It was _au large_,--far out across the smooth, +unscarred turf of the immense prairie, conveniently near one of the +clear circular ponds--_maraises_--which one sees of every size and in +every direction on the seemingly level land. Here it sat, as still as +a picture, within its hollow square of China-trees, which every third +year yielded their limbs for fuel; as easy to overlook the first +time--as easy to see the next time--as a bird sitting on her eggs. +Only the practised eye could read aright the infrequent obscure signs +of previous travel that showed the way to it,--sometimes no more than +the occasional soilure of the short turf by a few wheels or hoofs +where the route led into or across the _coolées_--rivulets--that from +_marais_ to _marais_ slipped southward toward the great marshes of the +distant, unseen Gulf. + +When I say the parent of one of these two children and guardian of the +other was a man of note, I mean, for one thing, his house was painted. +That he was the owner of thousands of cattle, one need not mention, +for so were others who were quite inconspicuous, living in unpainted +houses, rarely seeing milk, never tasting butter; men who at call of +their baptismal names would come forth from these houses barefooted +and bareheaded in any weather, and, while their numerous progeny +grouped themselves in the doorway one behind another in inverse order +of age and stature, would either point out your lost way, or, quite as +readily as Sosthène, ask you in beneath a roof where the coffee-pot +never went dry or grew cold by day. Nor would it distinguish him from +them to say he had many horses or was always well mounted. It was a +land of horsemen. One met them incessantly; men in broad hats and dull +homespun, with thin, soft, untrimmed brown beards, astride of small +but handsome animals, in Mexican saddles, the girths and bridles of +plaited hair, sometimes a _pialle_ or _arriatte_--lasso, lariat--of +plaited rawhide coiled at the saddle-bow. "Adieu, Onesime"--always +adieu at meeting, the same as at parting. "Adieu, François; adieu, +Christophe; adieu, Lazare;" and they with their gentle, brown-eyed, +wild-animal gaze, "Adjieu." + +What did make Sosthène notable was the quiet thing we call thrift, +made graceful by certain rudiments of taste. To say Sosthène, means +Madame Sosthène as well; and this is how it was that Zoséphine +Gradnego and Bonaventure Deschamps, though they went not to school, +nevertheless had "advantages." For instance, the clean, hard-scrubbed +cypress floors beneath their pattering feet; the neat round +parti-colored mats at the doors that served them for towns and +villages; the strips of home-woven carpet that stood for roads--this +one to Mermentau, that one to Côte Gelée, a third _à la chapelle_; the +walls of unpainted pine; the beaded joists under the ceiling; the +home-made furniture, bedsteads and wardrobes of stained woods, and +hickory chairs with rawhide seats, hair uppermost; the white fringed +counterpanes on the high featherbeds; especially, in the principal +room, the house's one mantelpiece, of wood showily stained in three +colors and surmounted by a pair of gorgeous vases, beneath which the +two children used to stand and feast their eyes, worth fifty cents if +they were worth one,--these were as books to them indoors; and out in +the tiny garden, where they played wild horse and wild cow, and lay in +ambush for butterflies, they came under the spell of marigolds, +prince's-feathers, lady-slippers, immortelles, portulaca, jonquil, +lavender, althæa, love-apples, sage, violets, amaryllis, and that +grass ribbon they call _jarretière de la vierge_,--the virgin's +garter. + +Time passed; the children grew. The children older than they in the +same house became less and less like children, and began to disappear +from the family board and roof by a mysterious process called marrying, +which greatly mystified Zoséphine, but equally pleased her by the +festive and jocund character of the occasions, times when there was a +ravishing abundance of fried rice-cakes and _boulettes_--beef-balls. + +To Bonaventure these affairs brought less mystery and less unalloyed +pleasure. He understood them better. Some boys are born lovers. From +the time they can reach out from the nurse's arms, they must be +billing and cooing and choosing a mate. Such was ardent little +Bonaventure; and none of the Gradnego weddings ever got quite through +its ceremony without his big blue eyes being found full of +tears--tears of mingled anger and desolation--because by some +unpardonable oversight he and Zoséphine were still left unmarried. So +that the pretty damsel would have to take him aside, and kiss him as +they clasped, and promise him, "Next time--next time, without fail!" + +Nevertheless, he always reaped two proud delights from these events. +For one, Sosthène always took him upon his lap and introduced him as +his little Creole. And the other, the ex-governor came to these +demonstrations--the great governor! who lifted him to his knee and +told him of those wonderful things called cities, full of people that +could read and write; and about steamboats and steam-cars. + +At length one day, when weddings had now pretty well thinned out the +ranks of Sosthène's family, the ex-governor made his appearance though +no marriage was impending. Bonaventure, sitting on his knee, asked why +he had come, and the ex-governor told him there was war. + +"Do you not want to make haste and grow up and be a dragoon?" + +The child was silent, and Sosthène laughed a little as he said +privately in English, which tongue his exceptional thrift had put him +in possession of: + +"Aw, naw!"--he shook his head amusedly--"he dawn't like hoss. Go to +put him on hoss, he kick like a frog. Yass; squeal wuss'n a pig. But +still, sem time, you know, he ain't no coward; git mad in minute; +fight like little ole ram. Dawn't ondstand dat little fellah; he love +flower' like he was a gal." + +"He ought to go to school," said the ex-governor. And Sosthène, half +to himself, responded in a hopeless tone: + +"Yass." Neither Sosthène nor any of his children had ever done that. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +ATHANASIUS. + + +War it was. The horsemen grew scarce on the wide prairies of +Opelousas. Far away in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, on bloody fields, +many an Acadian volunteer and many a poor conscript fought and fell +for a cause that was really none of theirs, simple, non-slaveholding +peasants; and many died in camp and hospital--often of wounds, often +of fevers, often of mere longing for home. Bonaventure and Zoséphine +learned this much of war: that it was a state of affairs in which dear +faces went away, and strange ones came back with tidings that brought +bitter wailings from mothers and wives, and made _les vieux_--the old +fathers--sit very silent. Three times over that was the way of it in +Sosthène's house. + +It was also a condition of things that somehow changed boys into men +very young. A great distance away, but still in sight south-westward +across the prairie, a dot of dark green showed where dwelt a sister +and brother-in-law of Sosthène's _vieille_,--wife. There was not the +same domestic excellence there as at Sosthène's; yet the dooryard was +very populous with fowls; within the house was always heard the hard +thump, thump, of the loom, or the loud moan of the spinning-wheel; and +the children were many. The eldest was Athanase. Though but fifteen he +was already stalwart, and showed that intelligent sympathy in the +family cares that makes such offspring the mother's comfort and the +father's hope. At that age he had done but one thing to diminish that +comfort or that hope. One would have supposed an ambitious chap like +him would have spent his first earnings, as other ambitious ones did, +for a saddle; but 'Thanase Beausoleil had bought a fiddle. + +He had hardly got it before he knew how to play it. Yet, to the +father's most welcome surprise, he remained just as bold a rider and +as skilful a thrower of the _arriatte_ as ever. He came into great +demand for the Saturday-night balls. When the courier with a red +kerchief on a wand came galloping round, the day before, from _île_ to +_île_,--for these descendants of a maritime race call their homestead +groves islands,--to tell where the ball was to be, he would assert, if +there was even a hope of it, that 'Thanase was to be the fiddler. + +In this way 'Thanase and his pretty little _jarmaine_--first +cousin--Zoséphine, now in her fourteenth year, grew to be well +acquainted. For at thirteen, of course, she began to move in society, +which meant to join in the contra-dance. 'Thanase did not dance with +her, or with any one. She wondered why he did not; but many other +girls had similar thoughts about themselves. He only played, his +playing growing better and better, finer and finer, every time he was +heard anew. As to the few other cavaliers, very willing were they to +have it so. The music could not be too good, and if 'Thanase was +already perceptibly a rival when hoisted up in a chair on top of a +table, fiddle and bow in hand, "twisting," to borrow their own +phrase--"twisting the ears of that little red beast and rubbing his +abdomen with a stick," it was just as well not to urge him to come +down into the lists upon the dancing-floor. But they found one night, +at length, that the music could be too good--when 'Thanase struck up +something that was not a dance, and lads and damsels crowded around +standing and listening and asking ever for more, and the ball turned +out a failure because the concert was such a success. + +The memory of that night was of course still vivid next day, Sunday, +and Zoséphine's memory was as good as any one's. I wish you might have +seen her in those days of the early bud. The time had returned when +Sosthène could once more get all his household--so had marriages +decimated it--into one vehicle, a thing he had not been able to do for +almost these twenty years. Zoséphine and Bonaventure sat on a back +seat contrived for them in the family calèche. In front were the +broad-brimmed Campeachy hat of Sosthène and the meek, limp sunbonnet +of _la vieille_. About the small figure of the daughter there was +always something distinguishing, even if you rode up from behind, that +told of youth, of mettle, of self-regard; a neatness of fit in the +dress, a firm erectness in the little slim back, a faint proudness of +neck, a glimpse of ribbon at the throat, another at the waist; a +something of assertion in the slight crispness of her homespun +sunbonnet, and a ravishing glint of two sparks inside it as you got +one glance within--no more. And as you rode on, if you were a young +blade, you would be--as the soldier lads used to say--all curled up; +but if you were an old mustache, you would smile inwardly and say to +yourself, "She will have her way; she will make all winds blow in her +chosen direction; she will please herself; she will be her own good +luck and her own commander-in-chief, and, withal, nobody's misery or +humiliation, unless you count the swain after swain that will sigh in +vain." As for Bonaventure, sitting beside her, you could just see his +bare feet limply pendulous under his wide palm-leaf hat. And yet he +was a very real personage. + +"Bonaventure," said Zoséphine,--this was as they were returning from +church, the wide rawhide straps of their huge wooden two-wheeled +vehicle creaking as a new saddle would if a new saddle were as big as +a house,--"Bonaventure, I wish you could learn how to dance. I am +tired trying to teach you." (This and most of the unbroken English of +this story stands for Acadian French.) + +Bonaventure looked meek for a moment, and then resentful as he said: + +"'Thanase does not dance." + +"'Thanase! Bah! What has 'Thanase to do with it? Who was even thinking +of 'Thanase? Was he there last night? Ah yes! I just remember now he +was. But even he could dance if he chose; while you--you can't learn! +You vex me. 'Thanase! What do you always bring him up for? I wish you +would have the kindness just not to remind me of him! Why does not +some one tell him how he looks, hoisted up with his feet in our faces, +scratching his fiddle? Now, the fiddle, Bonaventure--the fiddle would +just suit you. Ah, if you could play!" But the boy's quick anger so +flashed from his blue eyes that she checked herself and with +contemplative serenity added: + +"Pity nobody else can play so well as that tiresome fellow. It was +positively silly, the way some girls stood listening to him last +night. I'd be ashamed, or, rather, too proud, to flatter such a +high-headed care-for-nobody. I wish he wasn't my cousin!" + +Bonaventure, still incensed, remarked with quiet intensity that he +knew why she wished 'Thanase was not a cousin. + +"It's no such a thing!" exclaimed Zoséphine so forcibly that Madame +Sosthène's sunbonnet turned around, and a murmur of admonition came +from it. But the maiden was smiling and saying blithely to +Bonaventure: + +"Oh, you--you can't even guess well." She was about to say more, but +suddenly hushed. Behind them a galloping horse drew near, softly +pattering along the turfy road. As he came abreast, he dropped into a +quiet trot. + +The rider was a boyish yet manly figure in a new suit of gray +home-made linsey, the pantaloons thrust into the tops of his sturdy +russet boots, and the jacket ending underneath a broad leather belt +that carried a heavy revolver in its holster at one hip. A Campeachy +hat shaded his face and shoulders, and a pair of Mexican spurs tinkled +their little steel bells against their huge five-spiked rowels on his +heels. He scarcely sat in the saddle-tree--from hat to spurs you might +have drawn a perpendicular line. It would have taken in shoulders, +thighs, and all. + +"Adjieu," said the young centaur; and Sosthène replied from the +creaking calèche, "Adjieu, 'Thanase," while the rider bestowed his +rustic smile upon the group. Madame Sosthène's eyes met his, and her +lips moved in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little +daughter were in her lap. Bonaventure's gaze was hostile. A word or +two passed between uncle and nephew, including a remark and admission +that the cattle-thieves were getting worse than ever; and with a touch +of the spur, the young horseman galloped on. + +It seems enough to admit that Zoséphine's further remarks were silly +without reporting them in full. + +"Look at his back! What airs! If I had looked up I should have laughed +in his face!" etc. "Well," she concluded, after much such chirruping, +"there's one comfort--he doesn't care a cent for me. If I should die +to-morrow, he would forget to come to the funeral. And you think I +wouldn't be glad? Well, you're mistaken, as usual. I hate him, and I +just know he hates me! Everybody hates me!" + +The eyes of her worshipper turned upon her. But she only turned her +own away across the great plain to the vast arching sky, and patted +the calèche with a little foot that ached for deliverance from its +Sunday shoe. Then her glance returned, and all the rest of the way +home she was as sweet as the last dip of cane-juice from the boiling +battery. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE CONSCRIPT OFFICER. + + +By and by 'Thanase was sixteen. Eighteen was the lowest age for +conscription, yet he was in the Confederate uniform. But then so was +his uncle Sosthène; so was his father. It signified merely that he had +been received into the home guard. The times were sadly unsettled. +Every horseman, and how much more every group of horsemen, that one +saw coming across the prairie, was watched by anxious eyes, from the +moment they were visible specks, to see whether the uniform would turn +out to be the blue or the gray. Which was the more unwelcome I shall +not say, but this I can, that the blue meant invasion and the gray +meant conscription. Sosthène was just beyond the limit of age, and +'Thanase two years below it; but 'Thanase's father kept a horse +saddled all the time, and slept indoors only on stormy nights. + +Do not be misled: he was neither deserter nor coward; else the +nickname which had quite blotted out his real name would not have been +Chaouache--savage, Indian. He was needed at home, and--it was not his +war. His war was against cattle-thieves and like marauders, and there +was no other man in all Carancro whom these would not have had on +their track rather than him. But one gray dawn they found there was +another not unlike him. They had made an attempt upon Sosthène's +cattle one night; had found themselves watched and discovered; had +turned and fled westward half the night, and had then camped in the +damp woods of a _bas fond_; when, just as day was breaking and they +were looking to their saddles about to mount--there were seven of +them--just then--listen!--a sound of hoofs! + +Instantly every left foot is in stirrup; but before they can swing +into the saddle a joyous cry is in their ears, and pop! pop! pop! pop! +ring the revolvers as, with the glad, fierce cry still resounding, +three horsemen launch in upon them--only three, but those three a +whirlwind. See that riderless horse, and this one, and that one! And +now for it--three honest men against four remaining thieves! Pop! pop! +dodge, and fire as you dodge! Pop! pop! pop! down he goes; well done, +gray-bearded Sosthène! Shoot there! Wheel here! Wounded? Never +mind--_ora!_ Another rogue reels! Collar him, Chaouache! drag him from +the saddle--down he goes! What, again? Shoot there! Look out, that +fellow's getting away! Ah! down goes Sosthène's horse, breaking his +strong neck in the tumble. Up, bleeding old man--bang! bang! Ha, ha, +_ora!_ that finishes--_ora!_ 'Twas the boy saved your life with that +last shot, Sosthène, and the boy--the youth is 'Thanase. + +He has not stopped to talk; he and his father are catching the horses +of the dead and dying jayhawkers. Now bind up Sosthène's head, and now +'Thanase's hip. Now strip the dead beasts, and take the dead men's +weapons, boots, and spurs. Lift this one moaning villain into his +saddle and take him along, though he is going to die before ten miles +are gone over. So they turn homeward, leaving high revel for the +carrion-crows. + +Think of Bonaventure, the slender, the intense, the reticent--with +'Thanase limping on rude but glorious crutches for four consecutive +Saturdays and Sundays up and down in full sight of Zoséphine, savior +of her mother from widowhood, owner of two fine captured horses, and +rewarded by Sosthène with five acres of virgin prairie. If the young +fiddler's music was an attraction before, fancy its power now, when +the musician had to be lifted to his chair on top of the table! + +Bonaventure sought comfort of Zoséphine, and she gave it, tittering at +'Thanase behind his back, giving Bonaventure knowing looks, and +sticking her sunbonnet in her mouth. + +"Oh, if the bullet had only gone into the dandy's fiddle-bow arm!" she +whispered gleefully. + +"I wish he might never get well!" said the boy. + +The girl's smile vanished; her eyes flashed lightning for an instant; +the blood flew to her cheeks, and she bit her lip. + +"Why don't you, now while he cannot help himself--why don't you go to +him and hit him square in the face, like"--her arm flew up, and she +smote him with her sunbonnet full between the eyes--"like that!" She +ran away, laughing joyously, while Bonaventure sat down and wept with +rage and shame. + +Day by day he went about his trivial tasks and efforts at pastime with +the one great longing that Zoséphine would more kindly let him be her +slave, and something--any thing--take 'Thanase beyond reach. + +Instead of this 'Thanase got well, and began to have a perceptible +down on his cheek and upper lip, to the great amusement of Zoséphine. + +"He had better take care," she said one day to Bonaventure, her eyes +leaving their mirth and expanding with sudden seriousness, "or the +conscript officer will be after him, though he is but sixteen." + +Unlucky word! Bonaventure's bruised spirit seized upon the thought. +They were on their way even then _à la chapelle_; and when they got +there he knelt before Mary's shrine and offered the longest and most +earnest prayer, thus far, of his life, and rose to his feet under a +burden of guilt he had never known before. + +It was November. The next day the wind came hurtling over the plains +out of the north-west, bitter cold. The sky was all one dark gray. At +evening it was raining. Sosthène said, as he sat down to supper, that +it was going to pour and blow all night. Chaouache said much the same +thing to his wife as they lay down to rest. Farther away from Carancro +than many of Carancro's people had ever wandered, in the fire-lighted +public room of a village tavern, twelve or fifteen men were tramping +busily about, in muddy boots and big clanking spurs, looking to +pistols and carbines of miscellaneous patterns, and securing them +against weather under their as yet only damp and slightly bespattered +great-coats, no two of which were alike. They spoke to each other +sometimes in French, sometimes in English that betrayed a Creole +rather than an Acadian accent. A young man with a neat _kepi_ tipped +on one side of his handsome head stood with his back to the fire, a +sabre dangling to the floor from beneath a captured Federal overcoat. +A larger man was telling him a good story. He listened smilingly, +dropped the remnant of an exhausted cigarette to the floor, put his +small, neatly booted foot upon it, drew from his bosom one of those +silken tobacco-bags that our sisters in war-time used to make for all +the soldier boys, made a new cigarette, lighted it with the flint and +tinder for which the Creole smokers have such a predilection, and put +away his appliances, still hearkening to the story. He nodded his head +in hearty approval as the tale was finished. It was the story of +Sosthène, Chaouache, 'Thanase, and the jayhawkers. He gathered up his +sabre and walked out, followed by the rest. A rattle of saddles, a +splashing of hoofs, and then no sound was heard but the wind and the +pouring rain. The short column went out of the village at full gallop. + +Day was fully come when Chaouache rose and stepped out upon his +galérie. He had thought he could venture to sleep in bed such a night; +and, sure enough, here morning came, and there had been no intrusion. +'Thanase, too, was up. It was raining and blowing still. Across the +prairie, as far as the eye could reach, not a movement of human life +could be seen. They went in again, made a fire of a few fagots and an +armful of cotton-seed, hung the kettle, and emptied the old coffee +from the coffee-pot. + +The mother and children rose and dressed. The whole family huddled +around the good, hot, cotton-seed fire. No one looked out of window or +door; in such wind and rain, where was the need? In the little log +stable hard by, the two favorite saddle-horses remained unsaddled and +unbridled. The father's and son's pistol-belts, with revolvers +buttoned in their holsters, hung on the bedposts by the headboards of +their beds. A long sporting rifle leaned in a corner near the chimney. + +Chaouache and 'Thanase got very busy plaiting a horse-hair halter, and +let time go by faster than they knew. Madame Chaouache, so to call +her, prepared breakfast. The children played with the dog and cat. +Thus it happened that still nobody looked out into the swirling rain. +Why should they? Only to see the wide deluged plain, the round +drenched groves, the _maraises_ and sinuous _coolées_ shining with +their floods, and long lines of benumbed, wet cattle seeking in +patient, silent Indian file for warmer pastures. They knew it all by +heart. + +Yonder farthest _île_ is Sosthène's. The falling flood makes it almost +undiscernible. Even if one looked, he would not see that a number of +horsemen have come softly plashing up to Sosthène's front fence, for +Sosthène's house and grove are themselves in the way. They spy +Bonaventure. He is just going in upon the galérie with an armful of +China-tree fagots. Through their guide and spokesman they utter, not +the usual halloo, but a quieter hail, with a friendly beckon. + +"Adjieu." The men were bedraggled, and so wet one could not make out +the color of the dress. One could hardly call it a uniform, and pretty +certainly it was not blue. + +"Adjieu," responded Bonaventure, with some alarm; but the spokesman +smiled re-assuringly. He pointed far away south-westward, and asked if +a certain green spot glimmering faintly through the rain was not +Chaouache's _île_; and Bonaventure, dumb in the sight of his prayer's +answer, nodded. + +"And how do you get there?" the man asks, still in Acadian French; for +he is well enough acquainted with prairies to be aware that one needs +to know the road even to a place in full view across the plain. +Bonaventure, with riot in his heart, and feeling himself drifting over +the cataract of the sinfullest thing that ever in his young life he +has had the chance to do, softly lays down his wood, and comes to the +corner of the galérie. + +It is awful to him, even while he is doing it, the ease with which he +does it. If, he says, they find it troublesome crossing the marshy +place by Numa's farm,--_le platin à coté d' l'habitation à +Numa_,--then it will be well to _virer de bord_--go about, _et +naviguer au large_--sail across the open prairie. "Adjieu." He takes +up his fagots again, and watches the spattering squad trot away in the +storm, wondering why there is no storm in his own heart. + +They are gone. Sosthène, inside the house, has heard nothing. The +tempest suffocates all sounds not its own, and the wind is the wrong +way anyhow. Now they are far out in the open. Chaouache's _île_ still +glimmers to them far ahead in the distance, but if some one should +only look from the front window of its dwelling, he could see them +coming. And that would spoil the fun. So they get it into line with +another man's grove nearer by, and under that cover quicken to a +gallop. Away, away; splash, splash, through the _coolées_, around the +_maraises_, clouds of wild fowl that there is no time to shoot into +rising now on this side, now on that; snipe without number, gray as +the sky, with flashes of white, trilling petulantly as they flee; +giant snowy cranes lifting and floating away on waving pinions, and +myriads of ducks in great eruptions of hurtling, whistling wings. On +they gallop; on they splash; heads down; water pouring from soaked +hats and caps; cold hands beating upon wet breasts; horses throwing +steaming muzzles down to their muddy knees, and shaking the rain from +their worried ears; so on and on and on. + +The horse-hair halter was nearly done. The breakfast was smoking on +the board. The eyes of the family group were just turning toward it +with glances of placid content, when a knock sounded on the door, and +almost before father or son could rise or astonishment dart from eye +to eye, the door swung open, and a man stood on the threshold, all mud +and water and weapons, touching the side of his cap with the edge of +his palm and asking in French, with an amused smile forcing its way +about his lips:-- + +"Can fifteen of us get something to eat, and feed our horses?" + +Chaouache gave a vacant stare, and silently started toward the +holsters that hung from the bedpost; but the stranger's right hand +flashed around to his own belt, and, with a repeater half drawn, he +cried: + +"Halt!" And then, more quietly, "Look out of the door, look out the +window." + +Father and son looked. The house was surrounded. + +Chaouache turned upon his wife one look of silent despair. Wife and +children threw themselves upon his neck, weeping and wailing. 'Thanase +bore the sight a moment, maybe a full minute; then drew near, pressed +the children with kind firmness aside, pushed between his father and +mother, took her tenderly by the shoulders, and said in their antique +dialect, with his own eyes brimming:-- + +"Hush! hush! he will not have to go." + + * * * * * + +At a gentle trot the short column of horsemen moves again, but with +its head the other way. The wind and rain buffet and pelt horse and +rider from behind. Chaouache's door is still open. He stands in it +with his red-eyed wife beside him and the children around them, all +gazing mutely, with drooping heads and many a slow tear, after the +departing cavalcade. + +None of the horsemen look back. Why should they? To see a barefoot man +beside a woman in dingy _volante_ and _casaquin_, with two or three +lads of ten or twelve in front, whose feet have known sunburn and +frost but never a shoe, and a damsel or two in cotton homespun dress +made of one piece from collar to hem, and pantalettes of the same +reaching to the ankles--all standing and looking the picture of +witless incapacity, and making no plea against tyranny! Is that a +thing worth while to turn and look back upon? If the blow fell upon +ourselves or our set, that would be different; but these illiterate +and lowly ones--they are--you don't know--so dull and insensible. Yes, +it may be true that it is only _some_ of them who feel less acutely +than _some_ of us--we admit that generously; but when you insinuate +that when we overlook parental and fraternal anguish tearing at such +hearts the dulness and insensibility are ours, you make those people +extremely offensive to us, whereas you should not estrange them from +our tolerance. + +Ah, poor unpitied mother! go back to your toils; they are lightened +now--a little; the cooking, the washing, the scrubbing. Spread, day by +day, the smoking board, and call your spared husband and your little +ones to partake; but you--your tears shall be your meat day and night, +while underneath your breath you moan, "'Thanase! 'Thanase!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE CURÉ OF CARANCRO. + + +It was an unexpected and capital exchange. They had gone for a +conscript; they came away with a volunteer. + +Bonaventure sat by the fire in Sosthène's cottage, silent and heavy, +holding his small knees in his knit hands and gazing into the flames. +Zoséphine was washing the household's few breakfast dishes. _La +vieille_--the mother--was spinning cotton. _Le vieux_--Sosthène--sat +sewing up a rent in a rawhide chair-bottom. He paused by and by, +stretched, and went to the window. His wife caught the same spirit of +relaxation, stopped her wheel, looked at the boy moping in the +chimney-corner, and, passing over to his side, laid a hand upon his +temple to see if he might have fever. + +The lad's eyes did not respond to her; they were following Sosthène. +The husband stood gazing out through the glass for a moment, and then, +without moving, swore a long, slow execration. The wife and daughter +pressed quickly to his either side and looked forth. + +There they came, the number increased to eighteen now, trotting +leisurely through the subsiding storm. The wife asked what they were, +but Sosthène made no reply; he was counting them: twelve, thirteen, +fourteen--fourteen with short guns, another one who seemed to wear a +sword, and three, that must be-- + +"Cawnscreep," growled Sosthène, without turning his eyes. But the next +moment an unusual sound at his elbow drew his glance upon Zoséphine. +"_Diable!_" He glared at her weeping eyes, his manner demanding of her +instant explanation. She retreated a step, moved her hand toward the +approaching troop, and cried distressfully: + +"_Tu va oère!_"--"You will see!" + +His glance was drawn to Bonaventure. The lad had turned toward them, +and was sitting upright, his blue eyes widened, his face pale, and his +lips apart; but ere Sosthène could speak his wife claimed his +attention. + +"Sosthène!" she exclaimed, pressing against the window-pane, "ah, +Sosthène! Ah, ah! they have got 'Thanase!" + +Father, mother, and daughter crowded against the window and one +another, watching the body of horse as it drew nigh. Bonaventure went +slowly and lay face downward on the bed. + +Now the dripping procession is at hand. They pass along the dooryard +fence. At the little garden gate they halt. Only 'Thanase dismounts. +The commander exchanges a smiling word or two with him, and the youth +passes through the gate, and, while his companions throw each a tired +leg over the pommel and sit watching him, comes up the short, flowery +walk and in at the opening door. + +There is nothing to explain, the family have guessed it; he goes in +his father's stead. There is but a moment for farewells. + +"Adjieu, Bonaventure." + +The prostrate boy does not move. 'Thanase strides up to the bed and +looks at one burning cheek, then turns to his aunt. + +"_Li malade?_"--"Is he ill?" + +"_Sa l'air a ca_," said the aunt. (_Il a l'air_--he seems so.) + +"Bien, n'onc' Sosthène, adjieu." Uncle and nephew shake hands stoutly. +"Adjieu," says the young soldier again to his aunt. She gives her +hand and turns to hide a tear. The youth takes one step toward +Zoséphine. She stands dry-eyed, smiling on her father. As the youth +comes her eyes, without turning to him, fill. He puts out his hand. +She lays her own on it. He gazes at her for a moment, with beseeching +eye--"Adjieu." Her eyes meet his one instant--she leaps upon his +neck--his strong arms press her to his bosom--her lifted face lights +up--his kiss is on her lips--it was there just now, and now--'Thanase +is gone, and she has fled to an inner room. + +Bonaventure stood in the middle of the floor. Why should the boy look +so strange? Was it anger, or fever, or joy? He started out. + +"_A ou-ce-tu va Bonaventure?_"--"Whereabouts are you going?" + +"_Va crier les vaches._"--"Going to call the cows." + +"At this time of day?" demanded _la vieille_, still in the same +tongue. "Are you crazy?" + +"Oh!--no!" the boy replied, looking dazed. "No," he said; "I was going +for some more wood." He went out, passed the woodpile by, got round +behind a corn-crib, and stood in the cold, wet gale watching the +distant company lessening on the view. It was but a short, dim, dark +streak, creeping across the field of vision like some slow insect on a +window-glass. A spot just beyond it was a grove that would presently +shut the creeping line finally from sight. They reached it, passed +beyond, and disappeared; and then Bonaventure took off the small, +soft-brimmed hat that hung about his eyes, and, safe from the sight +and hearing of all his tiny world, lifted his voice, and with face +kindling with delight swung the sorry covering about his head and +cried three times: + +"Ora! Or-r-ra! Ora-a-a-a!" + +But away in the night Madame Sosthène, hearing an unwonted noise, went +to Bonaventure's bedside and found him sobbing as if his heart had +broken. + +"He has had a bad dream," she said; for he would not say a word. + +The curé of Vermilionville and Carancro was a Creole gentleman who +looked burly and hard when in meditation; but all that vanished when +he spoke and smiled. In the pocket of his cassock there was always a +deck of cards, but that was only for the game of solitaire. You have +your pipe or cigar, your flute or violoncello; he had his little table +under the orange-tree and his game of solitaire. + +He was much loved. To see him beyond earshot talking to other men you +would say he was by nature a man of affairs, whereas, when you came to +hear him speak you find him quite another sort: one of the Elisha +kind, as against the Elijahs; a man of the domestic sympathies, whose +influence on man was personal and familiar; one of the sort that heal +bitter waters with a handful of salt, make poisonous pottage wholesome +with a little meal, and find easy, quiet ways to deliver poor widows +from their creditors with no loss to either; a man whom men +reverenced, while women loved and children trusted him. + +The ex-governor was fond of his company, although the curé only +smiled at politics and turned the conversation back to family matters. +He had a natural gift for divining men's, women's, children's personal +wants, and every one's distinctively from every other one's. So that +to everybody he was an actual personal friend. He had been a long time +in this region. It was he who buried Bonaventure's mother. He was the +connecting link between Bonaventure and the ex-governor. Whenever the +curé met this man of worldly power, there were questions asked and +answered about the lad. + +A little after 'Thanase's enlistment the priest and the ex-governor, +who, if I remember right, was home only transiently from camp, met on +the court-house square of Vermilionville, and stood to chat a bit, +while others contemplated from across the deep mud of the street these +two interesting representatives of sword and gown. Two such men +standing at that time must naturally, one would say, have been talking +of the strength of the defences around Richmond, or the Emperor +Maximilian's operations in Mexico, or Kirby Smith's movements, hardly +far enough away to make it seem comfortable. But in reality they were +talking about 'Thanase. + +"He cannot write," said the curé; "and if he could, no one at home +could read his letters." + +The ex-governor promised to look after him. + +"And how," he asked, "does Sosthène's little orphan get on?" + +The curé smiled. "He is well--physically. A queer, high-strung child; +so old, yet so young. In some things he will be an infant as long as +he lives; in others, he has been old from the cradle. He takes every +thing in as much earnest as a man of fifty. What is to become of him?" + +"Oh! he will come out all right," said the ex-governor. + +"That depends. Some children are born with fixed characters: you can +tell almost from the start what they are going to be. Be they much or +little, they are complete in themselves, and it makes comparatively +little difference into what sort of a world you drop them." + +"'Thanase, for instance," said the ex-governor. + +"Yes, you might say 'Thanase; but never Bonaventure. He is the other +type; just as marked and positive traits, but those traits not yet +builded into character: a loose mass of building-material, and the +beauty or ugliness to which such a nature may arrive depends on who +and what has the building of it into form. What he may turn out to be +at last will be no mere product of circumstances; he is too original +for that. Oh, he's a study! Another boy under the same circumstances +might turn out entirely different; and yet it will make an immense +difference how his experiences are allowed to combine with his +nature." The speaker paused a moment, while Bonaventure's other friend +stood smiling with interest; then the priest added, "He is just now +struggling with his first great experience." + +"What is that?" + +"It belongs," replied the curé, smiling in his turn, "to the +confidences of the confessional. But," he added, with a little anxious +look, "I can tell you what it will do; it will either sweeten his +whole nature more and more, or else make it more and more bitter, from +this time forth. And that is no trifle to you or me; for whether for +good or bad, in a large way or in a small way, he is going to make +himself felt." + +The ex-governor mused. "I'm glad the little fellow has you for a +friend, father.--I'll tell you; if Sosthène and his wife will part +with him, and you will take him to live with you, and, mark you, not +try too hard to make a priest of him, I will bear his expenses." + +"I will do it," said the curé. + +It required much ingenuity of argument to make the Gradnego pair see +the matter in the desired light; but when the curé promised Sosthène +that he would teach the lad to read and write, and then promised _la +vieille_ that Zoséphine should share this educational privilege with +him, they let him go. + +Zoséphine was not merely willing, but eager, to see the arrangements +made. She beckoned the boy aside and spoke to him alone. + +"You must go, Bonaventure. You will go, will you not--when I ask you? +Think how fine that will be--to be educated! For me, I cannot endure +an uneducated person. But--ah! _ca sré vaillant, pour savoir lire_. +[It will be bully to know how to read.] _Aie ya yaie!_"--she stretched +her eyes and bit her lip with delight--"_C'est t'y gai, pour savoir +écrire!_ [That's fine to know how to write.] I will tell you a secret, +dear Bonaventure. Any girl of sense is _bound_ to think it much +greater and finer for a man to read books than to ride horses. She may +not want to, but she has to do it; she can't help herself!" + +Still Bonaventure looked at her mournfully. She tried again. + +"When I say any girl of sense I include myself--of course! I think +more of a boy--or man, either--who can write letters than of one who +can play the fiddle. There, now, I have told you! And when you have +learned those things, I will be proud of you! And besides, you know, +if you don't go, you make me lose my chance of learning the same +things; but if you go, we will learn them together." + +He consented. She could not understand the expression of his face. She +had expected gleams of delight. There were none. He went with silent +docility, and without a tear; but also without a smile. When in his +new home the curé from time to time stole glances at his face fixed in +unconscious revery, it was full of a grim, unhappy satisfaction. + +"Self is winning, or dying hard. I wish no ill to 'Thanase; but if +there is to be any bad news of him, I hope, for the sake of this boy's +soul, it will come quickly." So spoke the curé alone, to his cards. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +MISSING. + + +The war was in its last throes even when 'Thanase enlisted. Weeks and +months passed. Then a soldier coming home to Carancro--home-comers +were growing plentiful--brought the first news of him. An officer +making up a force of picked men for an expedition to carry important +despatches eastward across the Mississippi and far away into Virginia +had chosen 'Thanase. The evening the speaker left for home on his +leave of absence 'Thanase was still in camp, but was to start the next +morning. It was just after Sunday morning mass that Sosthène and +Chaouache, with their families and friends, crowded around this bearer +of tidings. + +"Had 'Thanase been in any battles?" + +"Yes, two or three." + +"And had not been wounded?" + +"No, although he was the bravest fellow in his company." + +Sosthène and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, smiled, and +swore two simultaneous oaths of admiration. Zoséphine softly pinched +her mother, and whispered something. Madame Sosthène addressed the +home-comer aloud: + +"Did 'Thanase send no other message except that mere 'How-d'ye all +do?'" + +"No." + +Zoséphine leaned upon her mother's shoulder, and softly breathed: + +"He is lying." + +The mother looked around upon her daughter in astonishment. The flash +of scorn was just disappearing from the girl's eyes. She gave a little +smile and chuckle, and murmured, with her glance upon the man: + +"He has no leave of absence. He is a deserter." + +Then Madame Sosthène saw two things at once: that the guess was a good +one, and that Zoséphine had bidden childhood a final "adjieu." + +The daughter felt Bonaventure's eyes upon her. He was standing only a +step or two away. She gave him a quick, tender look that thrilled him +from head to foot, then lifted her brows and made a grimace of +pretended weariness. She was growing prettier almost from day to day. + +And Bonaventure, he had no playmates--no comrades--no amusements. This +one thing, which no one knew but the curé, had taken possession of +him. The priest sometimes seemed to himself cruel, so well did it +please him to observe the magnitude Bonaventure plainly attributed to +the matter. The boy seemed almost physically to bow under the burden +of his sense of guilt. + +"It is quickening all his faculties," said the curé to himself. +Zoséphine had hardly yet learned to read without stammering, when +Bonaventure was already devouring the few French works of the curé's +small bookshelf. Silent on other subjects, on one he would talk till +a pink spot glowed on either cheek-bone and his blue eyes shone like a +hot noon sky;--casuistry. He would debate the right and wrong of any +thing, every thing, and the rights and wrongs of men in every relation +of life. + +Blessed was it for him then that the tactful curé was his father and +mother in one, and the surgeon and physician of his mind. Thus the +struggle brought him light. To the boy's own eyes it seemed to be +bringing him only darkness, but the priest saw better. + +"That is but his shadow; he is standing in it; it is deepening; that +shows the light is increasing." Thus spake the curé to himself as he +sat at solitaire under his orange-tree one afternoon. + +The boy passed out of sight, and the curé's eyes returned to his game +of solitaire; but as he slowly laid one card upon another, now here, +now there, he still thought of Bonaventure. + +"There will be no peace for him, no sweetness of nature, no green +pastures and still waters, within or without, while he seeks life's +adjustments through definitions of mere right and rights. No, boy; you +will ever be a restless captive, pacing round and round those limits +of your enclosure. Worse still if you seek those definitions only to +justify your overriding another's happiness in pursuit of your own." +The boy was not in hearing; this was apostrophe. + +"Bonaventure," he said, as the lad came by again; and Bonaventure +stopped. The player pushed the cards from him, pile by pile, leaned +back, ran his fingers slowly through his thin gray hair, and smiled. + +"Bonaventure, I have a riddle for you. It came to me as I was playing +here just now. If everybody could do just as he pleased; if he had, as +the governor would say, all his rights,--life, liberty, pursuit of +happiness,--if everybody had this, I say, why should we still be +unhappy?" + +The boy was silent. + +"Well, I did not suppose you would know. Would you like me to tell +you? It is because happiness pursued is never overtaken. And can you +guess why that is? Well, never mind, my son. But--would you like to do +something for me?" + +Bonaventure nodded. The curé rose, taking from his bosom as he left +his chair a red silk handkerchief and a pocket-worn note-book. He laid +the note-book on the table, and drawing back with a smile said: + +"Here, sit down in my place, and write what I tell you, while I +stretch my legs. So; never mind whether you understand or not. I am +saying it for myself: it helps _me_ to understand it better. Now, as I +walk, you write. 'Happiness pursued is never overtaken, because'--have +you written that?--'because, little as we are, God's image makes us so +large that we cannot live within ourselves, nor even for ourselves, +and be satisfied.' Have you got that down? Very well--yes--the +spelling could be improved, but that is no matter. Now wait a moment; +let me walk some more. Now write: 'It is not good for man to be alone, +because'--because--let me see; where--ah, yes!--'because rightly self +is the'--Ah! no, no, my boy; not a capital S for 'self'--ah! that's +the very point,--small _s_,--'because rightly self is the smallest +part of us. Even God found it good not to be alone, but to +create'--got that?--'to create objects for His love and benevolence.' +Yes--'And because in my poor, small way I am made like Him, the whole +world becomes a part of me'--small _m_, yes, that is right!" From +bending a moment over the writer, the priest straightened up and took +a step backward. The boy lifted his glance to where the sunlight and +leaf-shadows were playing on his guardian's face. The curé answered +with a warm smile, saying: + +"My boy, God is a very practical God--no, you need not write it; +just listen a moment. Yes; and so when He gave us natures like +His, He gave men not wives only, but brethren and sisters and +companions and strangers, in order that benevolence, yes, and even +self-sacrifice,--mistakenly so called,--might have no lack of +direction and occupation; and then bound the whole human family +together by putting every one's happiness into some other one's +hands. I see you do not understand: never mind; it will come to you +little by little. It was a long time coming to me. Let us go in to +supper." + +The good man had little hope of such words taking hold. At school next +day there was Zoséphine with her soft electric glances to make the boy +forget all; and at the Saturday-night balls there she was again. + +"Bonaventure," her manner plainly said, "did you ever see any thing +else in this wide world so tiresome as these boys about here? Stay +with me; it keeps them away." She never put such thoughts into words. +With an Acadian girl such a thing was impossible But girls do not need +words. She drew as potently, and to all appearances as impassively, as +a loadstone. All others than Bonaventure she repelled. If now and then +she toyed with a heart, it was but to see her image in it once or +twice and toss it aside. All got one treatment in the main. Any one of +them might gallop by her father's veranda seven times a day, but not +once in all the seven would she be seen at the window glancing up at +the weather or down at her flowers; nor on the veranda hanging up +fresh hanks of yarn; nor at the well with the drinking-pail, getting +fresh water, as she might so easily have been, had she so chosen. +Yonder was Sosthène hoeing leisurely in the little garden, and +possibly the sunbonnet of _la vieille_ half seen and half hidden among +her lima-beans; but for the rest there was only the house, silent at +best, or, worse, sending out through its half-open door the long, +scornful No-o-o! of the maiden's unseen spinning-wheel. No matter the +fame or grace of the rider. All in vain, my lad: pirouette as you +will; sit your gallantest; let your hat blow off, and turn back, and +at full speed lean down from the saddle, and snatch it airily from the +ground, and turn again and gallop away; all is in vain. For by her +estimate either you are living in fear of the conscript officer; or, +if you are in the service, and here only transiently on leave of +absence, your stay seems long, and it is rumored your leave has +expired; or, worse, you cannot read; or, worst, your age, for all your +manly airs, is so near Zoséphine's as to give your attentions strong +savor of presumption. But let any fortune bring Bonaventure in any +guise--sorriest horseman of all, youngest, slenderest, and stranger to +all the ways that youth loves--and at once she is visible; nay, more, +accessible; and he, welcome. So accessible she, so welcome he, that +more than once she has to waft aside her mother's criticisms by +pleading Bonaventure's foster-brotherhood and her one or two superior +years. + +"Poor 'Thanase!" said the youths and maidens. + + * * * * * + +And now the war came to an end. Bonaventure was glad. 'Thanase was +expected home, but--let him come. If the absent soldier knew what the +young folks at the balls knew, he would not make haste in his return. +And he did not, as it seemed. Day after day, in group after group, +without shouting and without banners, with wounds and scars and +tattered garments, some on horses, but many more on foot, the loved +ones--the spared ones, remnants of this command and that command and +'Thanase's command--came home. But day by day brought no 'Thanase. + +Bonaventure began to wish for him anxiously. He wanted him back so +that this load might be lifted. Thus the bitter would pass out of the +sweet; the haunting fear of evil tidings from the absent rival would +haunt no more. Life would be what it was to other lads, and Zoséphine +one day fall to his share by a better title than he could ever make +with 'Thanase in exile. Come, 'Thanase, come, come! + +More weeks passed. The youth's returned comrades were all back at +their ploughs again and among their herds. 'Thanase would be along by +and by, they said; he could not come with them, for he had not been +paroled with them; he had been missing--taken prisoner, no doubt--in +the very last fight. But presently they who had been prisoners were +home also, and still 'Thanase had not come. And then, instead of +'Thanase coming, Chaouache died. + +A terror took up its home in the heart of Bonaventure. Every thing he +looked upon, every creature that looked upon him, seemed to offer an +unuttered accusation. Least of all could he bear the glance of +Zoséphine. He did not have to bear it. She kept at home now closely. +She had learned to read, and Sosthène and his _vieille_ had pronounced +her education completed. + +In one direction only could the eyes of Bonaventure go, and meet +nothing that accused him: that was into the face of the curé. And lest +accusation should spring up there, he had omitted his confession for +weeks. He was still child enough not to see that the priest was +watching him narrowly and tenderly. + +One night, away in the small hours, the curé was aroused by the +presence of some one in his room. + +"Who is that?" He rose from his pillow. + +"It is I, father," said a low voice, and against the darkness of an +inner door he saw dimly the small, long nightdress of the boy he +loved. + +"What gets you up, Bonaventure? Come here. What troubles you?" + +"I cannot sleep," murmured the lad, noiselessly moving near. The +priest stroked the lad's brow. + +"Have you not been asleep at all?" + +"Yes." + +"But you have had bad dreams that woke you?" + +"Only one." + +"And what was that?" + +There was a silence. + +"Did you dream about--'Thanase, for example?" + +"Yes." + +The priest reached out and took the boy's small, slender hands in his. +They were moist and cold. + +"And did you dream"-- + +"I dreamed he was dead. I dream it every night." + +"But, my child, that does not make it so. Would you like to get into +bed here with me? No?--or to go back now to your own bed? No? What, +then?" + +"I do not want to go back to bed any more. I want to go and find +'Thanase." + +"Why, my child, you are not thoroughly awake, are you?" + +"Yes, I want to go and find 'Thanase. I have been thinking to-night of +all you have told me--of all you said that day in the garden,--and--I +want to go and find 'Thanase." + +"My boy," said the priest, drawing the lad with gentle force to his +bosom, "my little old man, does this mean that you have come to the +end of all self-service?--that self is never going to be spelt with a +capital S any more? Will it be that way if I let you go?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, then, my son--God only knows whether I am wise or foolish, +but--you may go." + +The boy smiled for the first time in weeks, then climbed half upon +the bed, buried his face in the priest's bosom, and sobbed as though +his heart had broken. + +"It has broken," said the curé to himself as he clasped him tightly. +"It has broken--thank God!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK. + + +In such and such a battle, in the last charge across a certain +cornfield, or in the hurried falling back through a certain wood, with +the murderous lead singing and hitting from yonder dark mass +descending on the flank, and the air full of imperious calls, +"Halt!"--"Surrender!" a man disappeared. He was not with those who +escaped, nor with the dead when they were buried, nor among the +wounded anywhere, nor in any group of prisoners. But long after the +war was over, another man, swinging a bush scythe among the overgrown +corners of a worm fence, found the poor remnant of him, put it +scarcely underground, and that was the end. How many times that +happened! + +Was it so with 'Thanase? No. For Sosthène's sake the ex-governor had +taken much pains to correspond with officials concerning the missing +youth, and had secured some slender re-assurances. 'Thanase, though +captured, had not been taken to prison. Tidings of general surrender +had overhauled him on the way to it, near, I think, the city of +Baltimore--somewhere in that region, at any rate; and he had been +paroled and liberated, and had started penniless and on foot, +south-westward along the railway-tracks. + +To find him, Bonaventure must set out, like him on foot, +south-eastward over some fifty miles of wagon-road to the nearest +railway; eastward again over its cross-ties eighty miles to _la +ville_, the great New Orleans, there to cross the Mississippi. Then +away northward, through the deep, trestled swamps, leagues and +leagues, across Bayou La Branche and Bayou Desair, and Pass Manchac +and North Manchac, and Pontchatoula River two or three times; and out +of the swamps and pine barrens into the sweet pine hills, with their +great resinous boles rising one hundred--two hundred feet overhead; +over meadows and fields and many and many a beautiful clear creek, and +ten or more times over the winding Tangipahoa, by narrow clearings, +and the old tracks of forgotten hurricanes, and many a wide +plantation; until more than two hundred miles from the great city, +still northward across the sinking and swelling fields, the low, dark +dome of another State's Capitol must rise amid spires and trees into +the blue, and the green ruins of fortifications be passed, and the +iron roads be found branching west, north, and east. + +Thence all was one wide sea of improbability. Even before a quarter of +that distance should have been covered, how many chances of every sort +there were against the success of such a search! + +"It is impossible that he should find him," said the ex-governor. + +"Well,"--the curé shrugged,--"if he finds no one, yet he may succeed +in losing himself." But in order that Bonaventure in losing himself +should not be lost, the priest gave him pens and paper, and took his +promise to write back as he went step by step out into the world. + +"And learn English, my boy; learn it with all speed; you will find it +vastly, no telling how vastly, to your interest--I should say your +usefulness. I am sorry I could not teach it to you myself. Here is a +little spelling-book and reader for you to commence with. Make haste +to know English; in America we should be Americans; would that I could +say it to all our Acadian people! but I say it to you, learn English. +It may be that by not knowing it you may fail, or by knowing it +succeed, in this errand. And every step of your way let your first +business be the welfare of others. Hundreds will laugh at you for it: +never mind; it will bring you through. Yes, I will tell Sosthène and +the others good-by for you. I will tell them you had a dream that +compelled you to go at once. Adieu." And just as the rising sun's +first beam smote the curé's brimming eyes, his "little old man" turned +his face toward a new life, and set forward to enter it. + +"Have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a young man named +'Thanase Beausoleil?"--This question to every one met, day in, day +out, in early morning lights, in noonday heats, under sunset glows, +by a light figure in thin, clean clothing, dusty shoes, and with limp +straw hat lowered from the head. By and by, as first the land of the +Acadians and then the land of the Creoles was left behind, a man every +now and then would smile and shake his head to mean he did not +understand--for the question was in French. But then very soon it +began to be in English too, and by and by not in French at all. + +"Sir, have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a young man +named 'Thanase Beausoleil?" + +But no one had seen him. + +Travel was very slow. Not only because it was done afoot. Many a day +he had to tarry to earn bread, for he asked no alms. But after a while +he passed eastward into a third State, and at length into the +mountains of a fourth. + +Meantime the weeks were lengthening into months; the year was in its +decline. Might not 'Thanase be even then at home? No. Every week +Bonaventure wrote back, "Has he come?" and the answer came back, "He +is not here." + +But one evening, as he paced the cross-ties of a railway that hugged a +huge forest-clad mountain-side, with the valley a thousand feet below, +its stony river shining like a silken fabric in the sunset lights, the +great hillsides clad in crimson, green, and gold, and the long, +trailing smoke of the last train--a rare, motionless blue gauze--gone +to rest in the chill mid-air, he met a man who suddenly descended upon +the track in front of him from higher up the mountain,--a great, lank +mountaineer. And when Bonaventure asked the apparition the untiring +question to which so many hundreds had answered No, the tall man +looked down upon the questioner, a bright smile suddenly lighting up +the unlovely chin-whiskered face, and asked: + +"Makes a fiddle thess talk an' cry?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, he hain't been gone from hyer two weeks." + +It was true. Only a few weeks before, gaunt, footsore, and ragged, +tramping the cross-ties yonder where the railway comes from the +eastward, curving into view out of that deep green and gray defile, +'Thanase had come into this valley. So short a time before, because +almost on his start homeward illness had halted him by the way and +held him long in arrest. But at length he had reached the valley, and +had lingered here for days; for it happened that a man in bought +clothing was there just then, roaming around and hammering pieces off +the rocks, who gave 'Thanase the chance to earn a little something +from him, with which the hard-marched wanderer might take the train +instead of the cross-ties for as far as the pittance would carry him. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE QUEST ENDED. + + +The next sunrise saw Bonaventure, with a new energy in his step, +journeying back the way he had come. And so anew the weeks wore by. +Once more the streams ran southward, and the landscapes opened wide +and fertile. + +"Sir,--pardon your stopping,--in what State should I find myself at +the present?" + +The person inquired of looked blank, examined the questioner from head +to foot, and replied: + +"In what--oh! I understand; yes. What State--Alabama, yes, Alabama. +You must excuse me, I didn't understand you at first. Yes, this is +Alabama." + +"Thank you, sir. Have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a +young man named 'Thanase Beausoleil?" + +"Back from the war! Why, everybody done got back from the war long +ago." "Lawng ago-o-o," the speaker pronounced it, but the +pronunciation could not be as untrue as the careless assertion. + +A second time, and again a third, Bonaventure fell upon the trail. But +each time it was colder than before. And yet he was pushing on as fast +as he dared. Many a kind man's invitation to tarry and rest was +gratefully declined. Once, where two railways parted, one leading +south, the other west, he followed the southern for days, and then +came back to the point of separation, and by and by found the lost +thread again on the more westward road. But the time since 'Thanase +had passed was the longest yet. Was it certainly 'Thanase? Yes; the +fiddle always settled that question. And had he not got home? He had +not come. Somewhere in the long stretch between Bonaventure and +Carancro there must be strange tidings. + +On the first New Year's eve after the war, as the sun was sinking upon +the year's end, Bonaventure turned that last long curve of the New +Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad, through the rushes, +flags, willows, and cypress-stumps of the cleared swamp behind the +city of the Creoles, and, passing around the poor shed called the +depot, paused at the intersection of Calliope and Magnolia Streets, +waiting the turn of chance. + +Trace of the lost 'Thanase had brought him at length to this point. +The word of a fellow-tramp, pledged on the honor of his guild, gave +assurance that thus far the wanted man had come in strength and +hope--but more than a month before. + +The necessity of moving on presently carried Bonaventure aimlessly +into the city along the banks of the New Canal. The lad had shot up in +these few months into the full stature, without the breadth, of +manhood. The first soft, uneven curls of a light-brown beard were on +his thin cheek and chin. Patient weariness and humble perseverance +were in his eyes. His coarse, ill-matched attire was whole and, but +for the soilure of foot-travel, clean. Companioning with nature had +browned his skin, and dried his straight fine hair. Any reader of +faces would have seen the lines of unselfish purpose about his lips, +and, when they parted nervously for speech, the earnest glow of that +purpose in a countenance that neither smiled nor frowned, and, though +it was shaded, cast no shadow. + +The police very soon knew him. They smiled at one another and tapped +the forehead with one finger, as he turned away with his question +answered by a shake of the head. It became their habit. They would +jerk a thumb over a shoulder after him facetiously. + +"Goes to see every unknown white man found dead or drowned. And yet, +you know, he's happy. He's a heap sight"--sometimes they used other +adjectives--"a heap sight happier than us, with his trampin' around +all day and his French and English books at night, as old Tony says. +He bunks with old Tony, you know, what keeps that little grocery in +Solidelle Street. Tony says his candles comes to more than his bread +and meat, or, rather, his rice and crawfish. He's the funniest crazy +_I_ ever see. All the crazies I ever see is got some grind for +pleasing number one; but this chap is everlastin'ly a-lookin' out for +everybody _but_ number one. Oh, yes, the candles and books,--I reckon +they are for number one,--that's so; but anyhow, that's what I hear +Madame Tony allow." + +The short, wet winter passed. The search stretched on into the spring. +It did not, by far, take up the seeker's whole daily life. Only it was +a thread that ran all through it, a dye that colored it. Many other +factors--observations, occupations, experiences--were helping to make +up that life, and to make it, with all its pathetic slenderness, far +more than it was likely ever to have been made at Carancro. Through +hundreds of miles of tramping the lad had seen, in a singularly +complete yet inhostile disentanglement from it, the world of men; +glimpses of the rich man's world with its strivings, steadier views of +the poor man's world with its struggles. The times were strong and +rude. Every step of his way had been through a land whose whole civil +order had been condemned, shattered, and cast into the mill of +revolution for a total remoulding. Every day came like the discharge +of a great double-shotted gun. It could not but be that, humble as his +walk was, and his years so few, his fevered mind should leap into the +questions of the hour like a naked boy into the surf. He made +mistakes, sometimes in a childish, sometimes in an older way, some +against most worthy things. But withal he managed to keep the main +direction of truth, after his own young way of thinking and telling +it. He had no such power to formulate his large conclusions as you or +even I have; but whatever wrought to enlighten the unlettered, +whatever cherished manhood's rights alike in lofty and lowly, whatever +worked the betterment of the poor, whatever made man not too much and +not too little his brother's keeper,--his keeper not by mastery, but +by fraternal service,--whatever did these things was to him good +religion, good politics. So, at least, the curé told the ex-governor, +as from time to time they talked of the absent Bonaventure and of his +letters. However, they had to admit one thing: all this did not find +'Thanase. + +And why, now, should 'Thanase longer be sought? Was there any thing to +gain by finding him dead? Not for Bonaventure; he felt, as plainly as +though he had seen an angel write the decree, that to Bonaventure +Deschamps no kind of profit or advantage under the sun must come by +such a way. But was there any thing to be gained in finding that +'Thanase still lived? The police will tell you, as they told +Bonaventure, that in these days of steam and steel and yoked lightning +a man may get lost and be found again; but that when he stays lost, +and is neither dead nor mad, it is because he wants to be lost. So +where was to be the gain in finding 'Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed, +to Bonaventure! The star of a new hope shot up into his starless sky +when that thought came, and in that star trembled that which he had +not all these weary months of search dared see even with fancy's +eye,--the image of Zoséphine! This--this! that he had never set out to +achieve--this! if he could but stand face to face with evidence that +'Thanase could have reached home and would not. + +This thought was making new lines in the young care-struck face, +when-- + +"See here," said a voice one day. Bonaventure's sleeve was caught by +the thumb and forefinger of a man to whom, in passing, he had touched +his hat. The speaker was a police captain. + +"Come with me." They turned and walked, Bonaventure saying not a word. +They passed a corner, turned to the right, passed two more, turned to +the left,--high brick walls on either side, damp, ill-smelling +pavements under foot,--and still strode on in silence. As they turned +once more to the right in a dim, narrow way, the captain patted the +youth softly on the back, and said: + +"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies." + +So Bonaventure asked none. But presently, in one of those dens called +sailors' boarding-houses, somewhere down on the water-front near the +Mint, he was brought face to face with a stranger whose manner seemed +to offer the reverse proposition. Of him the youth asked questions and +got answers. + +'Thanase Beausoleil still lived, far beyond seas. How? why? If this +man spake truly, because here in New Orleans, at the last turn in the +long, weary journey that was to have brought the young volunteer home, +he had asked and got the aid of this informant to ship--before the +mast--for foreign parts. But why? Because his ambition and pride, +explained the informant, had outgrown Carancro, and his heart had +tired of the diminished memory of the little Zoséphine. + +Bonaventure hurried away. What storms buffeted one another in his +bosom! + +Night had fallen upon the great city. Long stretches of street lay now +between high walls, and now between low-hanging eaves, empty of human +feet and rife with solitude. Through long distances he could run and +leap, and make soft, mild pretence of shouting and smiting hands. The +quest was ended! rivalry gone of its own choice, guilt washed from the +hands, love returned to her nest. Zoséphine! Zoséphine! Away now, +away to the reward of penance, patience, and loyalty! Unsought, +unhoped-for reward! As he ran, the crescent moon ran before him in the +sky, and one glowing star, dipping low, beckoned him into the west. + +And yet that night a great riot broke out in his heart; and in the +morning there was a look on his face as though in that tumult +conscience had been drugged, beaten, stoned, and left for dead outside +the gate of his soul. + +There was something of defiance in his eye, not good to see, as he +started down the track of the old Opelousas Railroad, with the city +and the Mississippi at his back. When he had sent a letter ahead of +him, he had no money left to pay for railway passage. Should he delay +for that or aught else, he might never start; for already the ghost of +conscience was whispering in at the barred windows of his heart: + +"It is not true. The man has told you falsely. It is not true." + +And so he was tramping once more--toward Carancro. And never before +with such determined eagerness. Nothing could turn him about now. Once +a train came in sight in front of him just as he had started across a +trestle-work; but he ran forward across the open ties, and leaped +clear of the track on the farther side, just when another instant +would have been too late. He stood a moment, only half-pausing among +the palmettos and rushes as the hurtling mass thundered by; then +pushed quickly into the whirling dust of the track and hurried on +between the clicking rails, not knowing that yonder dark, dwindling +speck behind was bearing away from him strange tidings from the curé. + +The summer was coming on; the suns were hot. There were leagues on +leagues of unbroken shaking prairie with never a hand-breadth of +shade, but only the glowing upper blue, with huge dazzling clouds +moving, like herds of white elephants pasturing across heavenly +fields, too slowly for the eye to note their motion; and below, the +far-reaching, tremulous sheen of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of +serpent, wild-cat, and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue +of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither toward the sea, +and sometimes miles of deep forest swamp through which the railroad +went by broad, frowzy, treeless clearings flanked with impassable oozy +ditches; but shade there was none. + +Nor was there peace. Always as he strode along, something he could not +outgo was at his side, gaunt, wounded, soiled, whispering: "Turn back; +turn back, and settle with me," and ever put off with promises--after +that fashion as old as the world--to do no end of good things if only +the one right thing might be left undone. + +And so because there were no shade, no peace, and no turning back, no +one day's march made him stronger for the next; and at length, when he +came to the low thatch of a negro-cabin, under the shadow of its +bananas he sank down in its doorway, red with fever. + +There he had to stay many days; but in the end he was up and on his +way again. He left the Atchafalaya behind him. It was easier going +now. There was shade. Under his trudging feet was the wagon-road +along the farther levee of the Teche. Above him great live-oaks +stretched their arms clad in green vestments and gray drapings, the +bright sugar-cane fields were on his left, and on his right the +beautiful winding bayou. In his face, not joy, only pallid eagerness, +desire fixed upon fulfilment, and knowledge that happiness was +something else; a young, worn face, with hard lines about the mouth +and neck; the face of one who had thought self to be dead and buried, +and had seen it rise to life again, and fallen captive to it. So he +was drawing near to Carancro. Make haste, Bonaventure! + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +THE WEDDING. + + +A horse and buggy have this moment been stopped and are standing on a +faint rise of ground seven miles out beyond the south-western outskirt +of Carancro. The two male occupants of the vehicle are lifting their +heads, and looking with well-pleased faces at something out over the +plain. You know the curé?--and the ex-governor. + +In the far distance, across the vast level, something that looks +hardly so large on the plain as an ant on the floor, is moving this +way across it. This is what the curé and his friend are watching. Open +in the curé's hand, as if he had just read it aloud again, is that +last letter of Bonaventure's, sent ahead of him from New Orleans and +received some days ago. The governor holds the reins. + +What do they see? Some traveller afoot? Can it be that Bonaventure is +in sight? That is not even the direction from which Bonaventure, when +he comes, will appear. No, speck though it is, the object they are +looking at is far larger than a man afoot, or any horse, or horse and +calèche. It is a house. It is on wheels, and is drawn by many yoke of +oxen. From what the curé is saying we gather that Sosthène has bought +this very small dwelling from a neighbor, and is moving it to land of +his own. Two great beams have been drawn under the sills at each end, +the running gear of two heavy ox-wagons is made to bear up the four +ends of these beams, all is lashed firmly into place, the oxen are +slowly pulling, the long whips are cracking, the house is answering +the gentle traction, and, already several miles away from its first +site, it will to-morrow settle down upon new foundations, a homely +type of one whose wreath will soon be a-making, and who will soon +after come to be the little house's mistress. + +But what have we done--let time slip backward? A little; not much; for +just then, as the ex-governor said, "And where is Bonaventure by this +time?" Bonaventure had been only an hour or two in the negro-cabin +where fever had dragged him down. + +Since then the house had not only settled safely upon its new +foundations, but Sosthène, in the good, thorough way that was his own, +had carried renovation to a point that made the cottage to all +intents and purposes a new house. And the curé had looked upon it +again, much nearer by; for before a bride dared enter a house so +nearly new, it had been deemed necessary for him to come and, before a +temporary altar within the dwelling, to say mass in the time of full +moon. But not yet was the house really a dwelling; it, and all +Carancro, were waiting for the wedding. Make haste, Bonaventure! + +He had left the Teche behind him on the east. And now a day breaks +whose sunset finds him beyond the Vermilion River. He cannot go aside +to the ex-governor's, over yonder on the right. He is making haste. +This day his journey will end. His heart is light; he has thought out +the whole matter now; he makes no doubt any longer that the story told +him is true. And he knows now just what to do: this very sunset he +will reach his goal; he goes to fill 'Thanase's voided place; to lay +his own filial service at the feet of the widowed mother; to be a +brother in the lost brother's place; and Zoséphine?--why, she shall be +her daughter, the same as though 'Thanase, not he, had won her. And +thus, too, Zoséphine shall have her own sweet preference--that +preference which she had so often whispered to him--for a scholar +rather than a soldier. Such is the plan, and Conscience has given her +consent. + +The sun soars far overhead. It, too, makes haste. But the wasted, +flushed, hungry-eyed traveller is putting the miles behind him. He +questions none to-day that pass him or whom he overtakes; only bows, +wipes his warm brow, and presses on across the prairie. Straight +before him, though still far away, a small, white, wooden steeple +rises from out a tuft of trees. It is _la chapelle_! + +The distance gets less and less. See! the afternoon sunlight strikes +the roofs of a few unpainted cottages that have begun to show +themselves at right and left of the chapel. And now he sees the green +window-shutters of such as are not without them, and their copperas or +indigo-dyed curtains blowing in and out. Nearer; nearer; here is a +house, and yonder another, newly built. Carancro is reached. + +He enters a turfy, cattle-haunted lane between rose-hedges. In a +garden on one side, and presently in another over the way, children +whom he remembers--but grown like weeds since he saw them last--are at +play; but when they stop and gaze at him, it is without a sign of +recognition. Now he walks down the village street. How empty it seems! +was it really always so? Still, yonder is a man he knows--and yonder a +woman--but they disappear without seeing him. + +How familiar every thing is! There are the two shops abreast of the +chapel, Marx's on this side, Lichtenstein's on that, their dingy false +fronts covered with their same old huge rain-faded words of promise. +Yonder, too, behind the blacksmith's shop, is the little schoolhouse, +dirty, half-ruined, and closed--that is, wide-open and empty--it may +be for lack of a teacher, or funds, or even of scholars. + +"It shall not be so," said the traveller to himself, "when _she_ and +I"-- + +His steps grow slow. Yet here, not twenty paces before him, is the +home of the curé. Ah! that is just the trouble. Shall he go here +first? May he not push on and out once more upon the prairie and make +himself known first of all to _her_? Stopping here first, will not the +curé say tarry till to-morrow? His steps grow slower still. + +And see, now. One of the Jews in the shop across the street has +observed him. Now two stand together and scrutinize him; and now there +are three, looking and smiling. Plainly, they recognize him. One +starts to come across, but on that instant the quiet of the hamlet is +broken by a sound of galloping hoofs. + +Bonaventure stands still. How sudden is this change! He is not noticed +now; every thing is in the highest animation. There are loud calls and +outcries; children are shouting and running, and women's heads are +thrust out of doors and windows. Horsemen come dashing into the +village around through the lanes and up the street. Look! they wheel, +they rein up, they throw themselves from the rattling saddles; they +leave the big wooden stirrups swinging and the little unkempt ponies +shaking themselves, and rush into the _boutique de_ Monsieur +Lichtenstein, and are talking like mad and decking themselves out on +hats and shoulders with ribbons in all colors of the rainbow! + +Suddenly they shout, all together, in answer to a shout outside. More +horsemen appear. Lichtenstein's store belches all its population. + +"_La calége! La calége!_" The calèche is coming! + +Something, he knows not what, makes Bonaventure tremble. + +"Madame," he says in French to a chattering woman who has just run +out of her door, and is standing near him tying a red Madras kerchief +on her head as she prattles to a girl,--"madame, what wedding is +this?" + +"_C'est la noce à_ Zoséphine," she replies, without looking at him, +and goes straight on telling her companion how fifty dollars has been +paid for the Pope's dispensation, because the bridal pair are first +cousins. + +Bonaventure moves back and leans against a paling fence, pallid and +faint. But there is no time to notice him--look, look! + +Some women on horseback come trotting into the street. Cheers! cheers! +and in a moment louder cheers yet--the calèche with the bride and +groom and another with the parents have come. + +Throw open the church door! + +Horsemen alight, horsewomen descend; down, also, come they that were +in the calèche. Look, Bonaventure! They form by twos--forward--in they +go. "Hats off, gentlemen! Don't forget the rule!--Now--silence! +softly, softly; speak low--or speak not at all; sh-sh! Silence! The +pair are kneeling. Hush-sh! Frown down that little buzz about the +door! Sh-sh!" + +Bonaventure has rushed in with the crowd. He cannot see the kneeling +pair; but there is the curé standing over them and performing the holy +rite. The priest stops--he has seen Bonaventure! He stammers, and then +he goes on. Here beside Bonaventure is a girl so absorbed in the scene +that she thinks she is speaking to her brother, when presently she +says to the haggard young stranger, letting herself down from her +tiptoes and drawing a long breath: + +"_La sarimonie est fait._" + +It is true; the ceremony is ended. She rises on tiptoe again to see +the new couple sign the papers. + +Slowly! The bridegroom first, his mark. Step back. Now the little +bride--steady! Zoséphine, _sa marque_. She turns; see her, everybody; +see her! brown and pretty as a doe! They are kissing her. Hail, Madame +'Thanase! + +"Make way, make way!" The man and wife come forth.--Ah! 'Thanase +Beausoleil, so tall and strong, so happy and hale, you do not look +to-day like the poor decoyed, drugged victim that woke up one morning +out in the Gulf of Mexico to find yourself, without fore-intent or +knowledge, one of a ship's crew bound for Brazil and thence to the +Mediterranean!--"Make way, make way!" They mount the calèches, +Sosthène after Madame Sosthène; 'Thanase after Madame 'Thanase. "To +horse, ladies and gentlemen!" Never mind now about the youth who has +been taken ill in the chapel, and whom the curé has borne almost +bodily in his arms to his own house. "Mount! Mount! Move aside for the +wedding singers!"--The wedding singers take their places, one on this +side the bridal calèche, the other on that, and away it starts, +creaking and groaning. + +"_Mais, arretez!_--Stop, stop! Before going, _passez le +'nisette_!--pass the anisette!" May the New-Orleans compounder be +forgiven the iniquitous mixture! "_Boir les dames avant!_--Let the +ladies drink first!" Aham! straight from the bottle. + +Now, go. The calèche moves. Other calèches bearing parental and +grandparental couples follow. And now the young men and maidens gallop +after; the cavalcade stretches out like the afternoon shadows, and +with shout and song and waving of hats and kerchiefs, away they go! +while from window and door and village street follows the wedding cry: + +"_Adjieu, la calége! Adjieu, la calége!_--God speed the wedding pair!" + +Coming at first from the villagers, it is continued at length, faint +and far, by the attending cavaliers. As mile by mile they drop aside, +singly or in pairs, toward their homes, they rise in their stirrups, +and lifting high their ribbon-decked hats, they shout and curvette and +curvette and shout until the eye loses them, and the ear can barely +catch the faint farewell: + +"_Adjieu, la calége! Adjieu, les mariées!_" + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +AFTER ALL. + + +Adieu; but only till the fall of night shall bring the wedding ball. + +One little tune--and every Acadian fiddler in Louisiana knows +it--always brings back to Zoséphine the opening scene of that festive +and jocund convocation. She sees again the great clean-swept +seed-cotton room of a cotton-gin house belonging to a cousin of the +ex-governor, lighted with many candles stuck into a perfect wealth of +black bottles ranged along the beams of the walls. The fiddler's seat +is mounted on a table in the corner, the fiddler is in it, each beau +has led a maiden into the floor, the sets are made for the +contra-dance, the young men stand expectant, their partners wait with +downcast eyes and mute lips as Acadian damsels should, the music +strikes up, and away they go. + +Yes, Zoséphine sees the whole bright scene over again whenever that +strain sounds. + +[Music] + +It was fine from first to last! The ball closed with the bride's +dance. Many a daughter Madame Sosthène had waltzed that farewell +measure with, and now Zoséphine was the last. So they danced it, they +two, all the crowd looking on: the one so young and lost in self, the +other so full of years and lost to self; eddying round and round each +other in this last bright embrace before they part, the mother to +swing back into still water, the child to enter the current of a new +life. + +And then came the wedding supper! At one end of the long table the +bride and groom sat side by side, and at their left and right the +wedding singers stood and sang. In each corner of the room there was a +barrel of roasted sweet potatoes. How everybody ate, that night! Rice! +beef-balls! pass them here! pass them there! help yourself! reach them +with a fork! _des riz! des boulettes!_ more down this way! pass them +over heads! _des riz! des boulettes!_ And the anisette!--bad whiskey +and oil of anise--never mind that; pour, fill, empty, fill again! +Don't take too much--and make sure not to take too little! How merrily +all went on! How gay was Zoséphine! + +"Does she know that Bonaventure, too, has come back?" the young +maidens whisper, one to another; for the news was afloat. + +"Oh, yes, of course; some one had to let it slip. But if it makes any +difference, she is only brighter and prettier than before. I tell +you--it seems strange, but I believe, now, she never cared for anybody +but 'Thanase. When she heard Bonaventure had come back, she only let +one little flash out of her eyes at the fool who told her, then said +it was the best news that could be, and has been as serene as the +picture of a saint ever since." + +The serenity of the bride might have been less perfect, and the one +flash of her eyes might have been two, had she known what the curé was +that minute saying to the returned wanderer, with the youth's head +pressed upon his bosom, in the seclusion of his own chamber: + +"It is all for the best, Bonaventure. It is not possible that thou +shouldst see it so now, but thou shalt hereafter. It is best this +way." And the tears rolled silently down his cheek as the weary head +in his bosom murmured back: + +"It is best. It is best." + +The curé could only press him closer then. It was much more than a +year afterward when he for the first time ventured to add: + +"I never wanted you to get her, my dear boy; she is not your kind at +all--nay, now, let me say it, since I have kept it unsaid so long and +patiently. Do you imagine she could ever understand an unselfish life, +or even one that tried to be unselfish? She makes an excellent Madame +'Thanase. 'Thanase is a good, vigorous, faithful, gentle animal, that +knows how to graze and lie in the shade and get up and graze again. +But you--it is not in you to know how poor a Madame Bonaventure she +would have been; not now merely, but poorer and poorer as the years go +by. + +"And so I say, do not go away. I know why you want to go; you want to +run away from a haunting thought that some unlikely accident or other +may leave Madame 'Thanase a widow, and you step into his big shoes. +They would not fit. Do not go. That thing is not going to happen; and +the way to get rid of the troublesome notion is to stay and see +yourself outgrow it--and her." + +Bonaventure shook his head mournfully, but staid. From time to time +Madame 'Thanase passed before his view in pursuit of her outdoor and +indoor cares. But even when he came under her galérie roof he could +see that she never doubted she had made the very best choice in all +Carancro. + +And yet people knew--she knew--that Bonaventure not only enjoyed the +acquaintance, but sometimes actually went from one place to another on +the business, of the great ex-governor. Small matters they may have +been, but, anyhow, just think! + +Sometimes as he so went or came he saw her squatting on a board at the +edge of a _coolée_, her petticoat wrapped snugly around her limbs, and +a limp sunbonnet hiding her nut-brown face, pounding her washing with +a wooden paddle. She was her own housekeeper, chambermaid, cook, +washerwoman, gooseherd, seamstress, nurse, and all the rest. Her +floors, they said, were always _bien fourbis_ (well scrubbed); her +beds were high, soft, snug, and covered with the white mesh of her own +crochet-needle. + +He saw her the oftener because she worked much out on her low veranda. +From that place she had a broad outlook upon the world, with 'Thanase +in the foreground, at his toil, sometimes at his sport. His cares as a +herder, _vacheur_,--_vaché_, he called it,--were wherever his +slender-horned herds might roam or his stallions lead their mares in +search of the sweetest herbage; and when rains filled the _maraises_, +and the cold nor'westers blew from Texas and the sod was spongy with +much water, and he went out for feathered game, the numberless +mallards, black ducks, gray ducks, teal--with sometimes the +canvas-back--and the _poules-d'eau_--the water-hens and the rails, and +the _cache-cache_--the snipe--were as likely to settle or rise just +before his own house as elsewhere, and the most devastating shot that +hurtled through those feathered multitudes was that sent by her +husband--hers--her own--possessive case--belonging to her. She was +proud of her property. + +Sometimes _la vieille_--for she was _la vieille_ from the very day +that she counted her wedding presents, mostly chickens, and turned +them loose in the dooryard--sometimes she enjoyed the fine excitement +of seeing her _vieux_ catching and branding his yearling colts. Small +but not uncomely they were: tougher, stronger, better when broken, +than the mustang, though, like the mustang, begotten and foaled on the +open prairie. Often she saw him catch two for the plough in the +morning, turn them loose at noon to find their own food and drink, and +catch and work another pair through the afternoon. So what did not +give her pride gave her quiet comfort. Sometimes she looked forth with +an anxious eye, when a colt was to be broken for the saddle; for as +its legs were untied, and it sprang to its feet with 'Thanase in the +saddle, and the blindfold was removed from its eyes, the strain on the +young wife's nerves was as much as was good, to see the creature's +tremendous leaps in air and not tremble for its superb, unmovable +rider. + +Could scholarship be finer than--or as fine as--such horsemanship? And +yet, somehow, as time ran on, Zoséphine, like all the rest of +Carancro, began to look up with a certain deference, half-conscious, +half-unconscious, to the needy young man who was nobody's love or +lover, and yet, in a gentle, unimpassioned way, everybody's; +landless, penniless, artless Bonaventure, who honestly thought there +was no girl in Carancro who was not much too good for him, and of whom +there was not one who did not think him much too good for her. He was +quite outside of all their gossip. How could they know that with all +his learning--for he could read and write in two languages and took +the Vermilionville newspaper--and with all his books, almost an entire +mantel-shelf full--he was feeling heart-hunger the same as any +ordinary lad or lass unmated? Zoséphine found her eyes, so to speak, +lifting, lifting, more and more as from time to time she looked upon +the inoffensive Bonaventure. But so her satisfaction in her own +husband was all the more emphatic. If she had ever caught a real +impulse toward any thing that even Carancro would have called culture, +she had cast it aside now--as to herself; her children--oh! yes; but +that would be by and by. + +Even of pastimes and sports she saw almost none. For 'Thanase there +was, first of all, his fiddle; then _la chasse_, the chase; the +_papegaie_, or, as he called it, _pad-go_--the shooting-match; _la +galloche_, pitch-farthing; the cock-fight; the five-arpent pony-race; +and too often, also, _chin-chin_, twenty-five-cent poker, and the +gossip and glass of the roadside "store." But for Madame 'Thanase +there was only a seat against the wall at the Saturday-night dance, +and mass _à la chapelle_ once in two or three weeks; these, and infant +baptisms. These showed how fast time and life were hurrying along. The +wedding seemed but yesterday, and yet here was little Sosthène, and +tiny Marguerite, and cooing Zoséphine the younger--how fast history +repeats itself! + +But one day, one Sunday, it repeated itself in a different way. +'Thanase was in gay humor that morning. He kissed his wife, tossed his +children, played on his fiddle that tune they all liked best, and, +while Zoséphine looked after him with young zest in her eye, sprang +into the saddle and galloped across the prairie _à la chapelle_ to +pass a jolly forenoon at _chin-chin_ in the village grocery. + +Since the war almost every one went armed--not for attack, of course; +for defence. 'Thanase was an exception. + +"My fists," he said, in the good old drawling Acadian dialect and with +his accustomed smile,--"my fists will take care of me." + +One of the party that made up the game with 'Thanase was the fellow +whom you may remember as having brought that first news of 'Thanase +from camp to Carancro, and whom Zoséphine had discredited. The young +husband had never liked him since. + +But, as I say, 'Thanase was in high spirits. His jests came thick and +fast, and some were hard and personal, and some were barbed with +truth, and one, at length, ended in the word "deserter." The victim +grew instantly fierce and red, leaped up crying "Liar," and was +knocked backward to the ground by the long-reaching fist of 'Thanase. +He rose again and dashed at his assailant. The rest of the company +hastily made way to right and left, chairs were overturned, over went +the table, the cards were underfoot. Men ran in from outside and from +over the way. The two foes clash together, 'Thanase smites again with +his fist, and the other grapples. They tug and strain-- + +"Separate them!" cry two or three of the packed crowd in suppressed +earnestness. "Separate them! Bonaventure is coming! And here from the +other side the curé too! Oh, get them apart!" But the half-hearted +interference is shaken off. 'Thanase sees Bonaventure and the curé +enter; mortification smites him; a smothered cry of rage bursts from +his lips; he tries to hurl his antagonist from him; and just as the +two friends reach out to lay hands upon the wrestling mass, it goes +with a great thud to the ground. The crowd recoils and springs back +again; then a cry of amazement and horror from all around, the arm of +the under man lifted out over the back of the other, a downward flash +of steel--another--and another! the long, subsiding wail of a strong +man's sudden despair, the voice of one crying,-- + +"Zoséphine! Ah! Zoséphine! _ma vieille! ma vieille!_"--one long moan +and sigh, and the finest horseman, the sweetest musician, the bravest +soldier, yes, and the best husband, in all Carancro, was dead. + +Poor old Sosthène and his wife! How hard they tried, for days, for +weeks, to comfort their widowed child! But in vain. Day and night she +put them away in fierce grief and silence, or if she spoke wailed +always the one implacable answer,-- + +"I want my husband!" And to the curé the same words,-- + +"Go tell God I want my husband!" + +But when at last came one who, having come to speak, could only hold +her hand in his and silently weep with her, she clung to his with both +her own, and looking up into his young, thin face, cried,--not with +grace of words, and yet with some grace in all her words' Acadian +ruggedness,-- + +"Bonaventure! Ah! Bonaventure! thou who knowest the way--teach me, my +brother, how to be patient." + +And so--though the ex-governor had just offered him a mission in +another part of the Acadians' land, a mission, as he thought, far +beyond his deserving, though, in fact, so humble that to tell you what +it was would force your smile--he staid. + +A year went by, and then another. Zoséphine no longer lifted to heaven +a mutinous and aggrieved countenance. Bonaventure was often nigh, and +his words were a deep comfort. Yet often, too, her spirit flashed +impatience through her eyes when in the childish philosophizing of +which he was so fond he put forward--though ever so impersonally and +counting himself least of all to have attained--the precepts of +self-conquest and abnegation. And then as the flash passed away, with +a moisture of the eye repudiated by the pride of the lip, she would +slowly shake her head and say: + +"It is of no use; I can't do it! I may be too young--I may be too bad, +but--I can't learn it!" + +At last, one September evening, Bonaventure stood at the edge of +Sosthène's galérie, whither Zoséphine had followed out, leaving _le +vieux_ and _la vieille_ in the house. On the morrow Bonaventure was +to leave Carancro. And now he said,-- + +"Zoséphine, I must go." + +"Ah, Bonaventure!" she replied, "my children--what will my children +do? It is not only that you have taught them to spell and read, though +God will be good to you for that! But these two years you have been +every thing to them--every thing. They will be orphaned over again, +Bonaventure." Tears shone in her eyes, and she turned away her face +with her dropped hands clasped together. + +The young man laid his hand upon her drooping brow. She turned again +and lifted her eyes to his. His lips moved silently, but she read upon +them the unheard utterance: it was a word of blessing and farewell. +Slowly and tenderly she drew down his hand, laid a kiss upon it, and +said,-- + +"_Adjieu--adjieu_," and they parted. + +As Zoséphine, with erect form and firm, clear tread, went by her +parents and into the inner room where her children lay in their +trundle-bed, the old mother said to _le vieux_,-- + +"You can go ahead and repair the schoolhouse now. Our daughter will +want to begin, even to-morrow, to teach the children of the +village--_les zonfants à la chapelle_." + +"You think so?" said Sosthène, but not as if he doubted. + +"Yes; it is certain now that Zoséphine will always remain the Widow +'Thanase." + + + + +GRANDE POINTE. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A STRANGER. + + +From College Point to Bell's Point, sixty miles above New Orleans, the +Mississippi runs nearly from west to east. Both banks, or "coasts," +are lined with large and famous sugar-plantations. Midway on the +northern side, lie the beautiful estates of "Belmont" and "Belle +Alliance." Early one morning in the middle of October, 1878, a young +man, whose age you would have guessed fifteen years too much, stood in +scrupulously clean, ill-fitting, flimsy garments, on the strong, high +levee overlooking these two plantations. He was asking the way to a +place called Grande Pointe. Grand Point, he called it, and so may we: +many names in Louisiana that retain the French spelling are habitually +given an English pronunciation. + +A tattered negro mounted on a sunburnt, unshod, bare-backed mule, down +in the dusty gray road on the land-side of the embankment, was his +only hearer. Fifteen years earlier these two men, with French accents, +strangers to each other, would hardly have conversed in English; but +the date made the difference. We need not inexorably render the +dialect of the white man; pretty enough to hear, it would often be +hideous to print. The letter _r_, for instance, that plague of all +nations--before consonants it disappeared; before vowels the tongue +failed of that upward curve that makes the good strong _r_'s of Italy +and Great Britain. + +The negro pointed over his mule's ears. + +"You see Belle Alliance sugah-house yondeh? Well, behine dah you fine +one road go stret thoo the plantation till de wood. Dass 'bout mile, +you know. Den she keep stret on thoo de wood 'bout two mile' mo', an' +dat fetch you at Gran' Point'. Hole on; I show you." + +The two men started down the road, the negro on his mule, the stranger +along the levee's crown. + +"Dat Gran' Point'," resumed the black; "'tain't no point on de riveh, +you know, like dat Bell' Point, w'at you see yondeh 'twixt dem ah +batture willows whah de sun all spread out on the wateh; no, seh. 'Tis +jis lil place back in de _swamp_, raise' 'bout five, six feet 'bove de +wateh. Yes, seh; 'bout t'ree mile' long, 'alf mile wide. Don't nobody +but Cajun'[1] live back dah. Seem droll you goin' yondeh." + + [1] Acadians. + +"'Tis the reason I go," said the other, without looking up. + +"Yes, seh."--A short silence.--"Dass nigh fifty year', now, dat place +done been settle'. Ole 'Mian Roussel he was gret hunter. He know dat +place. He see 'tis rich groun'. One day he come dare, cut some tree', +buil' house, plant lil tobahcah. Nex' year come ole man Le Blanc; den +Poché, den St. Pierre, den Martin,--all Cajun'. Oh! dass mo'n fifty +year' 'go. Dey all comes from dis yeh riveh coast; 'caze de rich +Creole', dey buy 'em out. Yes, seh, dat use' be de _Côte Acadien'_, +right yeh whar yo' feet stan'in' on. _C'est la côte Acadien', just +ici, oui._" The trudging stranger waived away the right of +translation. He had some reason for preferring English. But his manner +was very gentle, and in a moment the negro began again. + +"Gret place, dat Gran' Point'. Yes, seh; fo' tobahcah. Dey make de +bes' Périque tobahcah in de worl'. Yes, seh, right yond' at Gran' +Point'; an' de bes' Périque w'at come from Gran' Point', dass de +Périque of Octave Roussel, w'at dey use call 'im Chat-oué;[2] but he +git tired dat name, and now he got lil boy 'bout twenny-five year' +ole, an' dey call de ole man Catou, an' call his lil _boy_ Chat-oué. +Dey fine dat wuck mo' betteh. Yes, seh. An' he got bruddeh name' 'Mian +Roussel. But dat not de ole, ole 'Mian--like dey say de ole he one. +'Caze, you know, he done peg out. Oh, yes, he peg out in de du'in' o' +de waugh.[3] But he lef' heap-sight chillen; you know, he got a year' +staht o' all de res', you know. Yes, seh. Dey got 'bout hund'ed fifty +peop' yond' by Gran' Point', and sim like dey mos' all name Roussel. +_Sim_ dat way to _me_. An' ev'y las' one got a lil fahm so lil you +can't plow her; got dig her up wid a spade. Yes, seh, same like you +diggin' grave; yes, seh." + + [2] Raccoon. + + [3] During the war. + +The gentle stranger interrupted, still without lifting his eyes from +the path. "'Tis better narrowness of land than of virtue." The negro +responded eagerly: + +"Oh, dey good sawt o' peop', yes. Dey deals fair an' dey deals square. +Dey keeps de peace. Dass 'caze dey mos'ly don't let whisky git on deir +blin' side, you know. Dey _does_ love to dance, and dey marries +mawnstus young; but dey not like some niggehs: dey stays married. An' +modess? Dey dess so modess dey shy! Yes, seh, dey de shyes', +easy-goin'es', modesses', most p'esumin' peop' in de whole worl'! I +don't see fo' why folks talk 'gin dem Cajun'; on'y dey a lil bit +slow." + +The traveller on the levee's top suddenly stood still, a soft glow on +his cheek, a distension in his blue eyes. "My friend, what was it, the +first American industry? Was it not the Newfoundland fisheries? Who +inaugu'ate them, if not the fishermen of Normandy and Bretagne? And +since how long? Nearly fo' hundred years!" + +"Dass so, boss," exclaimed the negro with the promptitude of an +eye-witness; but the stranger continued:-- + +"The ancestors of the Acadian'--they are the fathers of the codfish!" +He resumed his walk. + +"Dass so, seh; dass true. Yes, seh, you' talkin' mighty true; dey a +pow'ful ancestrified peop', dem Cajun'; dass w'at make dey so shy, you +know. An' dey mighty good han' in de sugah-house. Dey des watchin', +now, w'en dat sugah-cane git ready fo' biggin to grind; so soon dey +see dat, dey des come a-lopin' in here to Mistoo Wallis' sugah-house +here at Belle Alliance, an' likewise to Marse Louis Le Bourgeois yond' +at Belmont. You see! de fust t'ing dey gwine ass you when you come at +Gran' Point'--'Is Mistoo Wallis biggin to grind?' Well, seh, like I +tell you, yeh de sugah-house, an' dah de road. Dat road fetch you at +Gran' Point'." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +IN A STRANGE LAND. + + +An hour later the stranger, quite alone, had left behind him the broad +smooth road, between rustling walls of sugar-cane, that had brought +him through Belle Alliance plantation. The way before him was little +more than a bridle-path along the earth thrown up beside a +draining-ditch in a dense swamp. The eye could run but a little way +ere it was confused by the tangle of vegetation. The trees of the +all-surrounding forest--sweet-gums, water-oaks, magnolias--cast their +shade obliquely along and across his way, and wherever it fell the +undried dew still sparkled on the long grass. + +A pervading whisper seemed to say good-by to the great human world. +Scarce the note of an insect joined with his footsteps in the coarse +herbage to break the stillness. He made no haste. Ferns were often +about his feet, and vines were both there and everywhere. The soft +blue tufts of the ageratum were on each side continually. Here and +there in wet places clumps of Indian-shot spread their pale scroll +leaves and sent up their green and scarlet spikes. Of stature greater +than his own the golden-rod stood, crested with yellow plumes, +unswayed by the still air. Often he had to push apart the brake-canes +and press through with bowed head. Nothing met him in the path. Now +and then there were faint signs underfoot as if wheels might have +crushed the ragged turf long weeks before. Now and then the print of a +hoof was seen in the black soil, but a spider had made it her home and +spread across it her silken snares. If he halted and hearkened, he +heard far away the hawk screaming to his mate, and maybe, looking up, +caught a glimpse of him sailing in the upper air with the sunlight +glowing in his pinions; or in some bush near by heard the soft rustle +of the wren, or the ruffling whiff and nervous "chip" of the cardinal, +or saw for an instant the flirt of his crimson robes as he rattled the +stiff, jagged fans of the palmetto. + +At length the path grew easier and lighter, the woods on the right +gave place to a field half claimed for cotton and half given up to +persimmon saplings, blackberry-bushes, and rampant weeds. A furry pony +with mane and tail so loaded with cockleburs that he could not shake +them, lifted his head and stared. A moment afterward the view opened +to right and left, and the path struck a grassy road at right angles +and ended. Just there stood an aged sow. + +"Unclean one," said the grave wayfarer, "where dwells your +master?--Ignore you the English tongue? But I shall speak not in +another; 'tis that same that I am arriving to bring you." + +The brute, with her small bestial eye fixed on him distrustfully and +askance, moved enough to the right to let him pass on the other hand, +and with his coat on his arm--so strong was the October sun--he turned +into the road westward, followed one or two of its slight curves, and +presently saw neat fields on either hand, walled in on each farther +side by the moss-hung swamp; and now a small, gray, unpainted house, +then two or three more, the roofs of others peering out over the dense +verdure, and down at the end of the vista a small white spire and +cross. Then, at another angle, two men seated on the roadside. Their +diffident gaze bore that look of wild innocence that belongs to those +who see more of dumb nature than of men. Their dress was homespun. The +older was about fifty years old, the other much younger. + +"Sirs, have I already reach Gran' Point'?" + +The older replied in an affirmative that could but just be heard, laid +back a long lock of his straight brown hair after the manner of a +short-haired girl, and rose to his feet. + +"I hunt," said the traveller slowly, "Mr. Maximian Roussel." + +A silent bow. + +"'Tis you?" + +The same motion again. + +The traveller produced a slip of paper folded once and containing a +line or two of writing hastily pencilled that morning at Belle +Alliance. Maximian received it timidly and held it helplessly before +his downcast eyes with the lines turned perpendicularly, while the +pause grew stifling, and until the traveller said:-- + +"'Tis Mr. Wallis make that introduction." + +At the name of the owner of the beautiful plantation the man who had +not yet spoken rose, covered with whittlings. It was like a steer +getting up out of the straw. He spoke. + +"M'sieu' Walleece, _a commencé à mouliner_? Is big-in to gryne?" + +"He shall commence in the centre of the next week." + +Maximian's eyes rose slowly from the undeciphered paper. The +traveller's met them. He pointed to the missive. + +"The schoolmaster therein alluded--'tis me." + +"Oh!" cried the villager joyously, "_maître d'école!_--schooltitcher!" + +"But," said the stranger, "not worthy the title." He accepted +gratefully the hand of one and then of the other. + +"Walk een!" said Maximian, "all hand', walk een house." They went, +Indian file, across the road, down a sinuous footpath, over a stile, +and up to his little single-story unpainted house, and tramped in upon +the railed galérie. + +"_Et_ M'sieu' Le Bourgeois," said the host, as the schoolmaster +accepted a split-bottomed chair, "he's big-in to gryne?" + +Within this ground-floor veranda--chief appointment of all Acadian +homes--the traveller accepted a drink of water in a blue tumbler, +brought by the meek wife. The galérie just now was scattered with the +husband's appliances for making Périque tobacco into "carats"--the +carat-press. Its small, iron-ratcheted, wooden windlass extended along +the top rail of the balustrade across one of the galérie's ends. Lines +of half-inch grass rope, for wrapping the carats into diminished bulk +and solid shape, lay along under foot. Beside one of the doors, in +deep hickory baskets, were the parcels of cured tobacco swaddled in +cotton cloths and ready for the torture of ropes and windlass. From +the joists overhead hung the pods of tobacco-seed for next year's +planting. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE HANDSHAKING. + + +There was news in Grande Pointe. The fair noon sky above, with its +peaceful flocks of clouds; the solemn, wet forest round about; the +harvested fields; the dishevelled, fragrant fallows; the reclining, +ruminating cattle; the little chapel of St. Vincent de Paul in the +midst, open for mass once a fortnight, for a sermon in French four +times a year,--these were not more tranquil in the face of the fact +that a schoolmaster had come to Grande Pointe to _stay_ than outwardly +appeared the peaceful-minded villagers. Yet as the tidings floated +among the people, touching and drifting on like thistle-down, they +were stirred within, and came by ones, by twos, slow-stepping, +diffidently smiling, to shake hands with the young great man. They +wiped their own before offering them--the men on their strong thighs, +the women on their aprons. Children came, whose courage would carry +them no nearer than the galérie's end or front edge, where they lurked +and hovered, or gazed through the balustrade, or leaned against a +galérie post and rubbed one brown bare foot upon another and crowded +each other's shoulders without assignable cause, or lopped down upon +the grass and gazed from a distance. + +Little conversation was offered. The curiosity was as unobtrusive as +the diffidence was without fear; and when a villager's soft, low +speech was heard, it was generally in answer to inquiries necessary +for one to make who was about to assume the high office of educator. +Moreover, the schoolmaster revealed, with all gentleness, his +preference for the English tongue, and to this many could only give +ear. Only two or three times did the conversation rise to a pitch that +kindled even the ready ardor of the young man of letters. Once, after +a prolonged silence, the host, having gazed long upon his guest, said, +without preface:-- + +"Tough jawb you got," and waved a hand toward the hovering children. + +"Sir," replied the young scholar, "is it not the better to do whilse +it is the mo' tough? The mo' toughness, the mo' honor." He rose +suddenly, brushed back the dry, brown locks of his fine hair, and +extending both hands, with his limp straw hat dangling in one, said: +"Sir, I will ask you; is not the schoolmaster the true patriot? Shall +his honor be less than that of the soldier? Yet I ask not honor; for +me, I am not fit; yet, after my poor capacities"--He resumed his seat. + +An awesome quiet followed. Then some one spoke to him, too low to be +heard. He bent forward to hear the words repeated, and 'Mian said for +the timorous speaker:-- + +"Aw, dass nut'n; he jis only say, 'Is M'sieu' Walleece big-in to +gryne?'" + +Few tarried long, though one man--he whom the schoolmaster had found +sitting on the roadside with Maximian--staid all day; and even among +the villagers themselves there was almost no loquacity. Maximian, it +is true, as the afternoon wore along, and it seemed plain that the +reception was a great and spontaneous success, spoke with growing +frequency and heartiness; and, when the guest sat down alone at a +table within, where _la vieille_--the wife--was placing half-a-dozen +still sputtering fried eggs, a great wheaten loaf, a yellow gallon +bowl of boiled milk, a pewter ladle, a bowie-knife, the blue tumbler, +and a towel; and out on the galérie the callers were still coming: his +simple neighbors pardoned the elation that led him to take a chair +himself a little way off, sit on it sidewise, cross his legs gayly, +and with a smile and wave of his good brown hand say:-- + +"_Servez-vous!_ He'p you'se'f! Eat much you like; till you swell up!" + +Even he asked no questions. Only near the end of the day, when the +barefoot children by gradual ventures had at length gathered close about +and were softly pushing for place on his knees, and huddling under his +arms, and he was talking French,--the only language most of them +knew,--he answered the first personal inquiry put to him since arriving. +"His name," he replied to the tiny, dark, big-eyed boy who spoke for his +whispering fellows, "his name was Bonaventure--Bonaventure Deschamps." + +As the great October sun began to dip his crimson wheel behind the low +black line of swamp, and the chapel cross stood out against a band of +yellow light that spanned the west, he walked out to see the village, +a little girl on either hand and little boys round about. The children +talked apace. Only the girl whose hand he held in his right was mute. +She was taller than the rest; yet it was she to whom the little +big-eyed boy pointed when he said, vain of his ability to tell it in +English:-- + +"I don't got but eight year' old, me. I'm gran' for my age; but she, +she not gran' for her age--Sidonie; no; she not gran' at all for _her_ +age." + +They told the story of the chapel: how some years before, in the +Convent of the Sacred Heart, at the parish seat a few miles away on +the Mississippi, a nun had by the Pope's leave cast off the veil; how +she had come to Grande Pointe and taken charge of her widowed +brother's children; and how he had died, and she had found means, the +children knew not how, to build this chapel. And now she was buried +under it, they said. It seemed, from what they left unsaid as well as +what they said, that the simple influence of her presence had kindled +a desire for education in Grande Pointe not known before. + +"Dass my _tante_--my hant. She _was_ my hant befo' she die'," said the +little man of eight years, hopping along the turf in front of the +rest. He dropped into a walk that looked rapid, facing round and +moving backward. "She learn me English, my _tante_. And she try to +learn Sidonie; but Sidonie, Sidonie fine that too strong to learn, +that English, Sidonie." He hopped again, talking as he hopped, and +holding the lifted foot in his hand. He could do that and speak +English at the same time, so talented was Toutou. + +Thus the sun went down. And at Maximian's stile again Bonaventure +Deschamps took the children's cheeks into his slender fingers and +kissed them, one by one, beginning at the least, and so up, slowly, +toward Sidonie Le Blanc. With very earnest tenderness it was done, +some grave word of inspiration going before each caress; but when at +last he said, "To-morrow, dear chil'run, the school-bell shall ring in +Gran' Point'!" and turned to finish with Sidonie--she was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +HOW THE CHILDREN RANG THE BELL. + + +Where the fields go wild and grow into brakes, and the soil becomes +fenny, on the north-western edge of Grande Pointe, a dark, slender +thread of a bayou moves loiteringly north-eastward into a swamp of +huge cypresses. In there it presently meets another like itself, the +Bayou Tchackchou, slipping around from the little farm village's +eastern end as silently as a little mother comes out of a bower where +she has just put her babe to sleep. A little farther on they are +joined as noiselessly by Blind River, and the united waters slip on +northward through the dim, colonnaded, watery-floored, green-roofed, +blue-vapored, moss-draped wilderness, till in the adjoining parish of +Ascension they curve around to the east and issue into the sunny +breadth of Lake Maurepas. Thus they make the Bayou des Acadiens. From +Lake Maurepas one can go up Amite or Tickfaw River, or to Pass Manchac +or Pontchatoula, anywhere in the world, in fact,--where a canoe can +go. + +On a bank of this bayou, no great way from Grande Pointe, but with the +shadow of the swamp at its back and a small, bright prairie of rushes +and giant reeds stretching away from the opposite shore, stood, more +in the water than on the land, the palmetto-thatched fishing and +hunting lodge and only home of a man who on the other side of the +Atlantic you would have known for a peasant of Normandy, albeit he +was born in this swamp,--the man who had tarried all day at the +schoolmaster's handshaking. + +What a day that had been! Once before he had witnessed a positive +event. That was when, one day, he journeyed purposely to the levee of +Belle Alliance, waited from morning till evening, and at last saw the +steamer "Robert E. Lee" come by, and, as fortune would have it, land! +loaded with cotton from the water to the hurricane deck. He had gone +home resolved from that moment to save his money, and be something +more than he was. + +But that event had flashed before his eyes, and in a quarter-hour was +gone, save in his memory. The coming of the schoolmaster, all +unforeseen, had lasted a day, and he had seen it from beginning to +end. All day long on 'Mian's galérie, standing now here, now there, he +had got others to interpret for him, where he could not guess, the +meanings of the wise and noble utterances that fell every now and then +from the lips of the young soldier of learning, and stored them away +in his now greedy mind. + +One saying in particular, whose originality he did not dream of +questioning, took profound hold of his conviction and admiration; and +two or three times that evening, as his canoe glided homeward in the +twilight, its one long, smooth ripple gleaming on this side and that +as it widened away toward the bayou's dark banks, he rested for a +moment on his tireless paddle, and softly broke the silence of the +wilderness with its three simple words, so trite to our ears, so +strange to his:-- + +"Knowledge is power." + +In years he was but thirty-five; but he was a widower, and the one son +who was his only child and companion would presently be fourteen. + +"Claude," he said, as they rose that evening from their hard supper in +the light and fumes of their small kerosene-lamp, "_I' faut z-ahler +coucher._" (We must go to bed.) + +"_Quofoir?_" asked the sturdy lad. (_Pourquoi?_ Why?) + +"Because," replied the father in the same strange French in which he +had begun, "at daybreak to-morrow, and every day thereafter, you must +be in your dug-out on your way to Grande Pointe, to school. My son, +you are going to learn how to read!" + +So came it that, until their alphabetical re-arrangement, the first of +all the thirty-five names on the roll was Claude St. Pierre, and that +every evening thenceforward when that small kerosene-lamp glimmered in +the deep darkness of Bayou des Acadiens, the abecedarian Claude was a +teacher. + +But even before the first rough roll was made he was present, under +the little chapel-tower, when for the first time its bell rang for +school. The young master was there, and all the children; so that +really there was nothing to ring the bell for. They could, all +together, have walked quietly across the village green to the forlorn +tobacco-shed that 'Mian had given them for a schoolhouse, and begun +the session. Ah! say not so! It was good to ring the bell. A few of +the stronger lads would even have sent the glad clang abroad before +the time, but Bonaventure restrained them. For one thing, there must +be room for every one to bear a hand. So he tied above their best +reach three strands of "carat" cord to the main rope. Even then he was +not ready. + +"No, dear chil'run; but grasp hold, every one, the ropes, the +cawds,--the shawt chil'run reaching up shawtly, the long chil'run the +more longly." + +Few understood his words, but they quietly caught the idea, and +yielded themselves eagerly to his arranging hand. The highest grasp +was Claude's. There was a little empty space under it, and then one +only of Sidonie's hands, timid, smooth, and brown. And still the +master held back the word. + +"Not yet! not yet! The pear is not ripe!" He stood apart from them, +near the chapel-door, where the light was strong, his silver watch +open in his left hand, his form erect, his right hand lifted to the +brim of his hat, his eyes upon the dial. + +"Not yet, dear chil'run. Not yet. Two minute mo'.--Be ready.--Not +yet!--One minute mo'!--Have the patience. Hold every one in his aw her +place. Be ready! Have the patience." But at length when the little +ones were frowning and softly sighing with the pain of upheld arms, +their waiting eyes saw his dilate. "Be ready!" he said, with low +intensity: "Be ready!" He soared to his tiptoes, the hat flounced from +his head and smote his thigh, his eyes turned upon them blazing, and +he cried, "Ring, chil'run, ring!" + +The elfin crew leaped up the ropes and came crouching down. The bell +pealed; the master's hat swung round his head. His wide eyes were +wet, and he cried again, "Ring! ring! for God, light, libbutty, +education!" He sprang toward the leaping, sinking mass; but the right +feeling kept his own hands off. And up and down the children went, the +bell answering from above, peal upon peal; when just as they had +caught the rhythm of Claude's sturdy pull, and the bell could sound no +louder, the small cords gave way from their fastenings, the little +ones rolled upon their backs, the bell gave one ecstatic double clang +and turned clear over, the swift rope straightened upward from its +coil, and Claude and Sidonie, her hands clasped upon each other about +the rope and his hands upon hers, shot up three times as high as their +finest leap could have carried them. For an instant they hung; then +with another peal the bell turned back and they came blushing to the +floor. A swarm of hands darted to the rope, but Bonaventure's was on +it first. + +"'Tis sufficient!" he said, his face all triumph. The bell gave a +lingering clang or two and ceased, and presently the happy company +walked across the green. "Sufficient," the master had said; but it was +more than sufficient. In that moment of suspension, with Sidonie's +great brown frightened eyes in his, and their four hands clasped +together, Claude had learned, for his first lesson, that knowledge is +not the only or the greatest power. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +INVITED TO LEAVE. + + +After that, every school-day morning Claude rang the bell. Always full +early his pirogue came gliding out of the woods and up through the +bushy fen to the head of canoe navigation and was hauled ashore. +Bonaventure had fixed his home near the chapel and not far from +Claude's landing-place. Thus the lad could easily come to his door +each morning at the right moment--reading it by hunter's signs in +nature's book--to get the word to ring. There were none of the usual +reasons that the schoolmaster should live close to the schoolhouse. +There was no demand for its key. + +Not of that schoolhouse! A hundred feet length by twenty-five breadth, +of earth-floored, clapboard-roofed, tumbling shed, rudely walled with +cypress split boards,--_pieux_,--planted endwise in the earth, like +palisades, a hand-breadth space between every two, and sunlight and +fresh air and the gleams of green fields coming in; the scores of +little tobacco-presses that had stood in ranks on the hard earth +floor, the great sapling levers, and the festoons of curing tobacco +that had hung from the joists overhead, all removed, only the odor +left; bold gaps here and there in the _pieux_, made by that mild +influence which the restless call decay, and serving for windows and +doors; the eastern end swept clean and occupied by a few benches and +five or six desks, strong, home-made, sixty-four pounders. + +Life had broadened with Claude in two directions. On one side opened, +fair and noble, the acquaintanceship of Bonaventure Deschamps, a man +who had seen the outside world, a man of books, of learning, a man who +could have taught even geography, had there been any one to learn it; +and on the other side, like a garden of roses and spices, the +schoolmateship of Sidonie Le Blanc. To you and me she would have +seemed the merest little brown sprout of a thing, almost nothing but +two big eyes--like a little owl. To Claude it seemed as though nothing +older or larger could be so exactly in the prime of beauty; the path +to learning was the widest, floweriest, fragrantest path he had ever +trod. + +Sidonie did not often speak with him. At recess she usually staid at +her desk, studying, quite alone but for Bonaventure silently busy at +his, and Claude himself, sitting farther away, whenever the teacher +did not see him and drive him to the playground. If he would only +drive Sidonie out! But he never did. + +One day, after quite a contest of learning, and as the hour of +dismission was scattering the various groups across the green, Toutou, +the little brother who was grand for his age, said to Claude, hanging +timidly near Sidonie:-- + +"_Alle est plus_ smart' _que vous_." (She is smarter than you.) + +Whereupon Sidonie made haste to say in their Acadian French, "Ah! +Master Toutou, you forget we went to school to our dear aunt. And +besides, I am small and look young, but I am nearly a year older than +Claude." She had wanted to be kind, but that was the first thorn. +Older than he! + +And not only that; nearly fifteen! Why, at fifteen--at fifteen girls +get married! The odds were heavy. He wished he had thought of that at +first. He was sadly confused. Sometimes when Bonaventure spoke words +of enthusiasm and regard to him after urging him fiercely up some hill +of difficulty among the bristling heights of English pronunciation, he +yearned to seek him alone and tell him this difficulty of the heart. +There was no fear that Bonaventure would laugh; he seemed scarce to +know how; and his smiles were all of tenderness and zeal. Claude did +not believe the ten years between them would matter; had not +Bonaventure said to him but yesterday that to him all loveliness was +the lovelier for being very young? Yet when the confession seemed +almost on Claude's lips it was driven back by an alien mood in the +master's face. There were troubles in Bonaventure's heart that Claude +wot not of. + +One day who should drop in just as school was about to begin but the +priest from College Point! Such order as he found! Bonaventure stood +at his desk like a general on a high hill, his large hand-bell in his +grasp, passed his eyes over the seventeen demure girls, with their +large, brown-black, liquid eyes, their delicately pencilled brows, +their dark, waveless hair, and sounded one tap! The sport outside +ceased, the gaps at the shed's farther end were darkened by small +forms that came darting like rabbits into their burrows, eighteen +small hats came off, and the eighteen boys came softly forward and +took their seats. Such discipline! + +"Sir," said Bonaventure, "think you 'tis arising, f'om the strickness +of the teacher? 'Tis f'om the goodness of the chil'run! How I long the +State Sup'inten'ent Public Education to see them!" + +The priest commended the sight and the wish with smiling affirmations +that somehow seemed to lack sympathy. He asked the names of two or +three pupils. That little fellow with soft, tanned, chubby cheeks and +great black eyes, tiny mouth, smooth feet so shapely and small, still +wet to their ankles with dew, and arms that he could but just get +folded, was Toutou. That lad with the strong shoulders, good wide +brows, steady eye, and general air of manliness,--that was Claude St. +Pierre. And this girl over on the left here,--"You observe," said +Bonaventure, "I situate the lambs on the left and the kids on the +right,"--this little, slender crescent of human moonlight, with her +hair in two heavy, black, down-falling plaits, meek, drooping eyes, +long lashes, soft childish cheeks and full throat, was Sidonie Le +Blanc. Bonaventure murmured:-- + +"Best scholah in the school, yet the _only_--that loves not her +teacher. But I give always my interest, not according to the +interestingness, but rather to the necessitude, of each." + +The visit was not long. Standing, about to depart, the visitor seemed +still, as at the first, a man of many reservations under his polite +smiles. But just then he dropped a phrase that the teacher recognized +as an indirect quotation, and Bonaventure cried, with greedy eyes:-- + +"You have read Victor Hugo?" + +"Yes." + +"Oh, sir, that grea-a-at man! That father of libbutty! Other patriots +are the sons, but he the father! Is it not thus?" + +The priest shrugged and made a mouth. The young schoolmaster's face +dropped. + +"Sir, I must ask you--is he not the frien' of the poor and downtrod?" + +The visitor's smile quite disappeared. He said:-- + +"Oh!"--and waved a hand impatiently; "Victor Hugo"--another +mouth--"Victor Hugo"--replying in French to the schoolmaster's +English--"is not of my party." And then he laughed unpleasantly and +said good-day. + +The State Superintendent did not come, but every day--"It is perhaps +he shall come to-mo'w, chil'run; have yo' lessons well!" + +The whole tiny army of long, blue, ankle-hiding cottonade pantalettes +and pantaloons tried to fulfil the injunction. Not one but had a warm +place in the teacher's heart. But Toutou, Claude, Sidonie, anybody who +glanced into that heart could see sitting there enthroned. And some +did that kind of reconnoitring. Catou, 'Mian's older brother, was much +concerned. He saw no harm in a little education, but took no +satisfaction in the introduction of English speech; and speaking to +'Mian of that reminded him to say he believed the schoolmaster +himself was aware of the three children's pre-eminence in his heart. +But 'Mian only said:-- + +"_Ah bien, c'est_ all right, _alors_!" (Well, then, it's all right.) +Whether all right or not, Bonaventure was aware of it, and tried to +hide it under special kindnesses to others, and particularly to the +dullard of the school, grandson of Catou and nicknamed _Crébiche_[4]. +The child loved him; and when Claude rang the chapel bell, and before +its last tap had thrilled dreamily on the morning air, when the +urchins playing about the schoolhouse espied another group coming +slowly across the common with Bonaventure in the midst of them, his +coat on his arm and the children's hands in his, there among them came +Crébiche, now on one side, now running round to the other, hoping so +to get a little nearer to the master. + + [4] _Écrevisse_, crawfish. + +"None shall have such kindness to-day as thou," Bonaventure would +silently resolve as he went in through a gap in the _pieux_. And the +children could not see but he treated them all alike. They saw no +unjust inequality even when, Crébiche having three times spelt "earth" +with an _u_, the master paced to and fro on the bare ground among the +unmatched desks and break-back benches, running his hands through his +hair and crying:-- + +"Well! well aht thou name' the crawfish; with such rapiditive +celeritude dost thou progress backwardly!" + +It must have been to this utterance that he alluded when at the close +of that day he walked, as he supposed, with only birds and +grasshoppers for companions, and they grew still, and the turtle-doves +began to moan, and he smote his breast and cried: + +"Ah! rules, rules! how easy to make, likewise break! Oh! the shame, +the shame! _If_ Victor Hugo had seen that! And if George Washington! +But thou,"--some one else, not mentioned,--"thou sawedst it!" + +The last word was still on the speaker's lips, when--there beside the +path, with heavy eye and drunken frown, stood the father of Crébiche, +the son of Catou, the little boy of twenty-five known as Chat-oué. He +spoke: + +"To who is dat you speak? Talk wid de dev'?" + +Bonaventure murmured a salutation, touched his hat, and passed. +Chat-oué moved a little, and delivered a broadside: + +"Afteh dat, you betteh leave! Yes, you betteh leave Gran' Point'!" + +"Sir," said Bonaventure, turning with flushed face, "I stay." + +"Yes," said the other, "dass righ'; you betteh go way and +stay. _Magicien_," he added as the schoolmaster moved on, +"_sorcier!_--Voudou!--jackass!" + +What did all this mean? + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +WAR OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT. + + +Catou, it seems, had gone one day to College Point with a pair of wild +ducks that he had shot,--first of the season,--and offered them to the +priest who preached for Grande Pointe once a quarter. + +"Catou," said the recipient, in good French but with a cruel hardness +of tone, "why does that man out there teach his school in English?" +The questioner's intentions were not unkind. He felt a protector's +care for his Acadian sheep, whose wants he fancied he, if not he only, +understood. He believed a sudden overdose of enlightenment would be to +them a real disaster, and he proposed to save them from it by the kind +of management they had been accustomed to--they and their fathers--for +a thousand years. + +Catou answered the question only by a timid smile and shrug. The +questioner spoke again: + +"Why do you Grande Pointe folk allow it? Do you want your children +stuffed full of American ideas? What is in those books they are +studying? You don't know? Neither do I. I would not look into one of +them. But you ought to know that to learn English is to learn +free-thinking. Do you know who print those books that your children +are rubbing their noses in? Yankees! Oh, I doubt not they have been +sharp enough to sprinkle a little of the stuff _they_ call religion +here and there in them; 'tis but the bait on the hook! But you silly +'Cadians think your children are getting education, and that makes up +for every thing else. Do you know what comes of it? Discontent. +Vanity. Contempt of honest labor. Your children are going to be +discontented with their lot. It will soon be good-by to sunbonnets; +good-by to homespun; good-by to Grande Pointe,--yes, and good-by to +the faith of your fathers. Catou, what do you know about that man, +anyhow? You ask him no questions, you 'Cadians, and he--oh, he is too +modest to tell you who or what he is. _Who pays him?_" + +"He say pay is way behine. He say he don't get not'in' since he come +yondeh," said Catou, the distress that had gathered on his face +disappearing for a moment. + +The questioner laughed contemptuously. + +"Do you suppose he works that way for nothing? How do you know, at +all, that his real errand is to teach school? A letter from Mr. +Wallis! who simply told your simple-minded brother what the fellow +told him! See here, Catou; you owe a tax as a raiser of tobacco, eh? +And besides that, hasn't every one of you an absurd little sign stuck +up on the side of his house, as required by the Government, to show +that you owe another tax as a tobacco manufacturer? But still you have +a little arrangement to neutralize that, eh? How do you know this man +is not among you to look into that? Do you know that he _can_ teach? +No wonder he prefers to teach in English! I had a conversation with +him the other day; I want no more; he preferred to talk to _me_ in +English. That is the good manners he is teaching; light-headed, +hero-worshipping, free-thinker that he is." + +Catou was sore dismayed. He had never heard of hero-worship or +free-thinking before, but did not doubt their atrocity. It had never +occurred to him that a man with a few spelling-books and elementary +readers could be so dangerous to society. + +"I wish he clear out from yondeh," said Catou. He really made his +short responses in French, but in a French best indicated in bad +English. + +"Not for my sake," replied the priest, coldly smiling. "I shall just +preach somewhere else on the thirteenth Sunday of each quarter, and +let Grande Pointe go to the devil; for there is where your new friend +is sure to land you. Good-day, I am very busy this morning." + +These harsh words--harsh barking of the shepherd dog--spread an unseen +consternation in Grande Pointe. Maximian was not greatly concerned. +When he heard of the threat to cut off the spiritual table-crumbs with +which the villagers had so scantily been fed, he only responded that +in his opinion the dominie was no such a fool as that. But others +could not so easily dismiss their fears. They began to say privately, +leaning on fences and lingering at stiles, that they had felt from the +very day of that first mad bell-ringing that the whole movement was +too headlong; that this opening the sluices of English education would +make trouble. Children shouldn't be taught what their parents do not +understand. Not that there was special harm in a little spelling, +adding, or subtracting, but--the notions they and the teacher +produced! Here was the school's influence going through all the place +like the waters of a rising tide. All Grande Pointe was lifting from +the sands, and in danger of getting afloat and drifting toward the +current of the great world's life. Personally, too, the schoolmaster +seemed harmless enough. From the children and he loving each other, +the hearts of the seniors had become entangled. The children had come +home from the atmosphere of that old tobacco-shed, and persuaded the +very grandmothers to understand vaguely--very vaguely and dimly--that +the day of liberty which had come to the world at large a hundred +years before had come at last to them; that in France their race had +been peasants; in Acadia, forsaken colonists; in Massachusetts, +Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, exiles alien to the land, the +language, and the times; in St. Domingo, penniless, sick, unwelcome +refugees; and for just one century in Louisiana the jest of the proud +Creole, held down by the triple fetter of illiteracy, poverty, and the +competition of unpaid, half-clad, swarming slaves. But that now the +slave was free, the school was free, and a new, wide, golden future +waited only on their education in the greatest language of the world. + +All this was pleasant enough to accept even in a dim way, though too +good to be more than remotely grasped. But just when, as music in a +sleeper's ear, it is taking hold of their impulses somewhat, comes the +word of their hereditary dictator that this man is among them only for +their destruction. What could they reply? They were a people around +whom the entire world's thought had swirled and tumbled for four +hundred years without once touching them. Their ancestors had left +France before Descartes or Newton had begun to teach the modern world +to think. They knew no method of reasoning save by precedent, and had +never caught the faintest reflection from the mind of that great, +sweet thinker who said, "A stubborn retention of customs is a +turbulent thing, no less than the introduction of new." To such +strangers in the world of to-day now came the contemptuous challenge +of authority, defying them to prove that one who proposed to launch +them forth upon a sea of changes out of sight of all precedent and +tradition was not the hireling of some enemy's gold secretly paid to +sap the foundations of all their spiritual and temporal interests and +plunge them into chaos. + +They blamed Bonaventure; he had got himself hated and them rebuked; it +was enough. They said little to each other and nothing to him; but +they felt the sleepy sense of injury we all know so well against one +who was disturbing their slumber; and some began to suspect and +distrust him, others to think hard of him for being suspected and +distrusted. Yet all this reached not his ears, and the first betrayal +of it was from the lips of Chat-oué, when, in his cups, he +unexpectedly invited the schoolmaster to leave Grande Pointe. + +After that, even the unconscious schoolmaster could feel the faint +chill of estrangement. But he laid it not to his work, but to his +personal unloveliness, and said to 'Mian he did not doubt if he were +more engaging there would not be so many maidens kept at the wheel and +loom in the priceless hours of school, or so many strapping youths +sent, all unlettered, to the sugar-kettles of the coast plantations +what time M'sieu' Walleece big-in to gryne. + +"'Tain't dat," said 'Mian. He had intended to tell the true reason, +but his heart failed him; and when Bonaventure asked what, then, it +was, he replied: + +"Aw, dey don't got no time. Time run so fas',--run like a scared dog. +I dunno fo' w'at dey make dat time run so fas' dat way." + +"O my friend," cried the young schoolmaster, leaping from his chair, +"say not that! If God did not make time to p'oceed with rapidness, who +would ever do his best?" + +It was such lessons as this that made the children--Crébiche among +them--still gather round the humble master and love to grasp his hand. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +LOVE AND DUTY. + + +Time ran fast. The seasons were as inexorable at Grande Pointe as +elsewhere. But there was no fierceness in them. The very frosts were +gentle. Slowly and kindly they stripped the green robes from many a +tree, from many a thicket ejected like defaulting tenants the blue +linnet, the orchard oriole, the nonpareil, took down all its leafy +hangings and left it open to the winds and rain of December. The wet +ponies and kine turned away from the north and stood in the slanting +storm with bowed heads. The great wall of cypress swamp grew spectral. +But its depths, the marshes far beyond sight behind them, and the +little, hidden, rushy lakes, were alive with game. No snake crossed +the path. Under the roof, on the galérie, the wheel hummed, the loom +pounded; inside, the logs crackled and blazed on the hearth; on the +board were venison, mallard, teal, rice-birds, _sirop de baterie_, and +_quitte_; round the fireside were pipes, pecans, old stories, and the +Saturday-night contra-dance; and every now and then came sounding on +the outer air the long, hoarse bellow of some Mississippi steamer, +telling of the great world beyond the tree-tops, a little farther than +the clouds and nearer than the stars. + +Christmas passed, and New Year--time runs so fast! Presently yonder +was 'Mian himself, spading a piece of ground to sow his tobacco-seed +in; then Catou and his little boy of twenty-five doing likewise; and +then others all about the scattered village. Then there was a general +spreading of dry brush over the spaded ground, then the sweet, clean +smell of its burning, and, hanging everywhere throughout the clearing, +its thin blue smoke. The little frogs began to pipe to each other +again in every wet place, the grass began to freshen, and almost in +the calendar's midwinter the smiles of spring were wreathing +everywhere. + +What of the schoolmaster and the children? Much, much! The good work +went on. Intense days for Bonaventure. The clouds of disfavor darkling +in some places, but brightening in others, and, on the whole, he hoped +and believed, breaking. A few days of vacation, and then a bright +re-union and resumption, the children all his faithful adherents save +one--Sidonie. She, a close student, too, but growingly distant and +reticent. The State Superintendent still believed to be-- + +"Impending, impending, chil'run! he is impending! Any day he may +precipitate upon us!" + +Intense days, too, for Claude. Sidonie openly, and oh, so sweetly, his +friend. Loving him? He could neither say nor know; enough, for the +present, to be allowed to love her. His love knew no spirit of +conquest yet; it was star-worship; it was angel adoration; +seraphically pure; something so celestially refined that had it been a +tangible object you could have held it up and seen the stars right +through it. The thought of acquisition would have seemed like coveting +the gold of a temple. And yet already the faintest hint of loss was +intolerable. Oh! this happy, happy school-going,--this faring +sumptuously on one smile a day! Ah, if it might but continue! But +alas! how Sidonie was growing! Growing, growing daily! up, up, up! +While he--there was a tree in the swamp where he measured his stature +every day; but in vain, in vain! It never budged! And then--all at +once--like the rose-vine on her galérie, Sidonie burst into bloom. + +Her smiles were kinder and more frequent now than ever before; but +the boy's heart was wrung. What chance now? In four long years to come +he would not yet be quite nineteen, and she was fifteen now. Four +years! He was in no hurry himself--could wait forever and be happy +every day of it; but she? Such prize as she, somebody would certainly +bear away before three years could run by, run they ever so fast. + +Sitting and pondering one evening in the little bayou cabin, Claude +caught the father's eye upon him, leaned his forehead upon the +parent's knee, and silently wept. The rough woodman said a kind word, +and the boy, without lifting his burning face, told his love. The +father made no reply for a long time, and then he said in their quaint +old French: + +"Claude, tell the young schoolmaster. Of all men, he is the one to +help you." And then in English, as you would quote Latin, "Knowledge +is power!" + +The next day he missed--failed miserably--in every lesson. At its +close he sat at his desk, crushed. Bonaventure seemed scarce less +tempest-tossed than he; and all about the school the distress spread +as wintry gray overcasts a sky. Only Sidonie moved calmly her +accustomed round, like some fair, silent, wide-winged bird circling +about a wreck. + +At length the lad and his teacher were left alone. Claude sat very +still, looking at his toil-worn hands lying crossed on the desk. +Presently there sank an arm across his shoulders. It was the master's. +Drop--drop--two big tears fell upon the rude desk's sleeve-polished +wood. The small, hard, right hand slowly left its fellow, and rubbed +off the wet spots. + +"Claude, you have something to disclose me?" + +The drooping head nodded. + +"And 'tis not something done wrongly?" + +The lad shook his head. + +"Then, my poor Claude,"--the teacher's own voice faltered for a +moment,--"then--'tis--'tis she!" He stroked the weeping head that sank +into its hands. "Ah! yes, Claude, yes; 'tis she; 'tis she! And you +want me to help you. Alas! in vain you want me! I cannot even try-y-y +to help you; you have mentioned it too lately! 'Tis right you come to +me, despiting discrepancy of years; but alas! the dif_fic_ulty lies in +the con_tra_ry; for alas! Claude, our two heart' are of the one, same +age!" + +They went out; and walking side by side toward the failing sun, with +the humble flowers of the field and path newly opened and craving +leave to live about their feet and knees, Bonaventure Deschamps +revealed his own childlike heart to the simple boy whose hand clasped +his. + +"Yes, yes; I conceal not from you, Claude, that 'tis not alone 'thou +lovest,' but 'I love'! If with cause to hope, Claude, I know not. And +I must not search to know whilst yet the schoolmaster. And the same to +you, Claude, whilst yet a scholah. We mus' let the dissimulation like +a worm in the bud to h-eat our cheek. 'Tis the voice of honor +cry--'Silence.' And during the meanwhilst, you? Perchance at the last, +the years passing and you enlarging in size daily and arriving to +budding manhood, may be the successful; for suspect not I consider +lightly the youngness of yo' passion. Attend what I shall reveal you. +Claude, there once was a boy, yo' size, yo' age, but fierce, selfish, +distemperate; still more selfish than yo' schoolmaster of to-day." And +there that master went on to tell of an early--like Claude's, an all +too early--rash, and boyish passion, whose ragged wound, that he had +thought never could heal, was now only a tender scar. + +"And you, too, Claude, though now it seem not possible--you shall +recuperate from this. But why say I thus? Think you I would inoculate +the idea that you must despair? Nay, perchance you shall achieve her." +They stood near the lad's pirogue about to say adieu; the schoolmaster +waved his hand backward toward the farther end of the village. "She is +there; in a short time she will cease to continue scholah; then--try." +And again, with still more courageous kindness, he repeated, "Try! +'Tis a lesson that thou shouldest heed--try, try again. If _at_ the +first thou doest _not_ succeed, try, try again." + +Claude gazed gratefully into the master's face. Boy that he was, he +did not read aright the anguish gathering there. From his own face the +clouds melted into a glad sunshine of courage, resolve, and +anticipation. Bonaventure saw the spark of hope that he had dropped +into the boy's heart blaze up into his face. And what did Claude see? +The hot blood mounting to the master's brow an instant ere he wheeled +and hurried away. + +"'Sieur Bonaventure!" exclaimed Claude; "'Sieur Bonaventure!" + +But deaf to all tones alike, Bonaventure moved straight away along +the bushy path, and was presently gone from sight. There is a +repentance of good deeds. Bonaventure Deschamps felt it gnawing and +tearing hard and harder within his bosom as he strode on through the +wild vernal growth that closed in the view on every side. Soon he +halted; then turned, and began to retrace his steps. + +"Claude!" The tone was angry and imperative. No answer came. He +quickened his gait. "Claude!" The voice was petulant and imperious. A +turn of the path brought again to view the spot where the two had so +lately parted. No one was there. He moaned and then cried aloud, "O +thou fool, fool, fool!--Claude!" He ran; faster--faster--down the +path, away from all paths, down the little bayou's margin, into the +bushes, into the mud and water. "Claude! Claude! I told you wrongly! +Stop! _Arretez-la!_ I must add somewhat!--Claude!" The bushes snatched +away his hat; tore his garments; bled him in hands and face; yet on he +went into the edge of the forest. "Claude! Ah! Claude, thou hast ruin' +me! Stop, you young rascal!--thief!--robber!--brigand!" A vine caught +and held him fast. "Claude! Claude!"--The echoes multiplied the sound, +and scared from their dead-tree roost a flock of vultures. The dense +wood was wrapping the little bayou in its premature twilight. The +retreating sun, that for a while had shot its flaming arrows through +the black boles and branches, had sunk now and was gone. Only a +parting ruby glow shone through the tangle where far and wide the +echoes were calling for Claude. + +"Claude! I mistook the facts in the case. There is no hope for you! +'Tis futile you try--the poem is not for you! I take every thing +back!--all back! You shall not once try! You have grasp' the +advantage! You got no business, you little rascal! _You_ dare venture +to attempt making love in my school! Claude St. Pierre, you are +dismiss' the school! Mutiny! mutiny! Claude St. Pierre, for +mutinizing, excluded the Gran' Point' school." + +He tore himself from his fastenings and hastened back toward the +village. The tempest within him was as fierce as ever; but already it, +too, had turned and was coming out of the opposite quarter. The better +Bonaventure--the Bonaventure purified by fires that Grande Pointe had +no knowledge of--was coming back into his gentle self-mastery. And +because that other, that old-time Bonaventure, bound in chains deep +down within, felt already the triumph of a moment slipping from his +grasp, he silently now to the outer air, but loudly within, railed and +gnashed and tore himself the more. + +He regained the path and hurried along it, hatless, dishevelled, +bespattered, and oblivious to every thing save the war within. +Presently there came upon him the knowledge, the certain knowledge, +that Claude would come the next morning and ring the chapel bell, take +his seat in school, stand in all his classes, know every lesson, and +go home in the evening happy and all unchallenged of him. He groaned +aloud. + +"Ah! Claude! To dismiss or not to dismiss, it shall not be mine! But +it shall be thine, Sidonie! And whether she is for thee, Claude--so +juvenile!--or for me, so unfit, unfit, unfit!--Ah! Sidonie, choose not +yet!"--He stood rooted to the spot; while within easy earshot of his +lightest word tripped brightly and swiftly across the path from the +direction of the chapel a fawn, Claude's gift, and its mistress, +Sidonie--as though she neither saw nor heard. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +AT CLAUDE'S MERCY. + + +Time flagged not. The school shone on, within its walls making glad +the teacher and the pupils with ever new achievements in knowledge and +excellence. Some of the vanguard--Claude, Sidonie, Étienne, Madelaine, +Henri, Marcelline--actually going into the Third Reader. Such +perfection in lessons as they told about at home--such mastery of +English, such satisfactory results in pronunciation and emphasis! +Reading just as they talked? Oh, no, a thousand times no! The school's +remoter light, its secondary influences, slowly spreading, but so +slowly that only the eyes of enmity could see its increase. There were +murmurs and head-shakings; but the thirteenth Sunday of the year's +first quarter came, and the sermon whose withholding had been +threatened was preached. And on the thirteenth Monday there was +Bonaventure, still moving quietly across the green toward the +schoolhouse with the children all about him. But a few days later the +unexpected happened. + +By this time Claude's father, whose teacher, you remember, was Claude, +had learned to read. One day a surveyor, who had employed him as a +guide, seeing the Acadian laboring over a fragment of rural newspaper, +fell into conversation with him as they sat smoking by their +camp-fire, and presently caught some hint of St. Pierre's aspirations +for himself and his son. + +"So there's a public school at Grande Pointe, is there?" + +"Oh, yass; fine school; hondred feet long! and fine titcher; splendid +titcher; titch English." + +"Well, well!" laughed the surveyor. "Well, the next thing will be a +railroad." + +St. Pierre's eyes lighted up. + +"You t'ink!" + +"Why, yes; you can't keep railroads away from a place long, once you +let in the public school and teach English." + +"You t'ink dass good?" + +"What, a railroad? Most certainly. It brings immigration." + +"Whass dat--'migrash'n?" + +The surveyor explained. + +The next time St. Pierre came to Grande Pointe--to sell some fish--he +came armed with two great words for the final overthrow of all +opponents of enlightenment: "Rellroad!--'Migrash'n!" + +They had a profound and immediate effect--exactly the opposite of what +he had expected. + +The school had just been dismissed; the children were still in sight, +dispersing this way and that. Sidonie lingered a moment at her desk, +putting it in order; Claude, taking all the time he could, was getting +his canoe-paddle from a corner; Crébiche was waiting, by the master's +command, to repair some default of the day; and Toutou, outside on his +knees in the grass catching grasshoppers, was tarrying for his sister; +when four or five of the village's best men came slowly and +hesitatingly in. It required no power of divination for even the +pre-occupied schoolmaster to guess the nature of their errand. 'Mian +was not among them. Catou was at their head. They silently bowed. The +schoolmaster as silently responded. The visitors huddled together. +They came a step nearer. + +"Well," said Catou, "we come to see you." + +"Sirs, welcome to Gran' Point' school.--Sidonie, Crébiche, Claude, +rest in yo' seats." + +"Mo' betteh you tu'n 'em loose, I t'ink," said Catou amiably; "ain't +it?" + +"I rather they stay," replied Bonaventure. All sat down. There was a +sustained silence, and then Catou said with quiet abruptness: + +"We dawn't want no mo' school!" + +"From what cause?" + +"'Tain't no use." + +"Sir--sirs, no use? 'Tis every use! The schoolhouse? 'tis mo' worth +than the gole mine. Ah! sirs, tell me: what is gole without +education?" + +They confronted the riddle for a moment. + +"Ed'cation want to change every thin'--rellroad--'migrash'n." + +"Change every thing? Yes!--making every thing better! Sirs, where is +that country that the people are sorry that the railroad and the +schoolhouse have come?" Again the riddle went unanswered; but Catou +sat as if in meditation, looking to one side, and presently said: + +"I t'ink dass all humbug, dat titchin' English. What want titch +English faw?" + +"Sir," cried Bonaventure, "in America you mus' be American! Three +Acadians have been governor of Louisiana! What made them thus to +become?" He leaned forward and smote his hands together. "What was it? +'Twas English education!" + +The men were silent again. Catou pushed his feet out, and looked at +his shoes, put on for the occasion. Presently-- + +"Yass," he said, in an unconvinced tone; "yass, dass all right: but +how we know you titch English? Nobody can't tell you titchin' him +right or no." + +"And yet--I do! And the time approach when you shall know! Sirs, I +make to you a p'oposition. Time is passing. It must be soon the State +Sup'inten'ent Public Education visit this school. The school is any +time ready. Since long time are we waiting. He shall come--he shall +examine! The chil'run shall be ignorant this arrangement! Only these +shall know--Claude, Sidonie, Crébiche; they will not disclose! And the +total chil'run shall exhibit all their previous learning! And welcome +the day, when the ad_ver_saries of education shall see those dear +chil'run stan' up befo' the assem'led Gran' Point' spelling co'ectly +words of one to eight syllable' and _reading from their readers_! And +if one miss--if _one_--_one!_ miss, then let the school be shut and +the schoolmaster banish-ed!" + +It was so agreed. The debate did not cease at once, but it languished. +Catou thought he had made one strong point when he objected to +education as conducive to idle habits; but when the schoolmaster +hurled back the fact that communities the world over are industrious +just in proportion as they are educated, he was done. He did not know, +but when he confronted the assertion it looked so true that he could +not doubt it. He only said: + +"Well, anyhow, I t'ink 'tain't no use Crébiche go school no mo'." But +when Bonaventure pleaded for the lad's continuance, that too was +agreed upon. The men departed. + +"Crébiche," said the master, holding the boy's hand at parting, "ah! +Crébiche, if thou become not a good scholar"--and read a promise in +the boy's swimming eyes. + +"Claude, Claude, I am at yo' mercy now." But the honest gaze of Claude +and the pressure of his small strong hand were a pledge. The grateful +master turned to Sidonie, and again, as of old, no Sidonie was there. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +READY. + + +Summer came. The song-birds were all back again, waking at dawn, and +making the hoary cypress wood merry with their carollings to the wives +and younglings in the nests. Busy times. Foraging on the helpless +enemy--earth-worm, gnat, grub, grasshopper, weevil, sawyer, +dragon-fly--from morning till night: watching for him; scratching for +him; picking, pecking, boring for him; poising, swooping, darting for +him; standing upside down and peering into chinks for him; and all for +the luxury--not of knowledge, but of love and marriage. The +mocking-bird had no rest whatever. Back and forth from dawn to dark, +back and forth across and across Grande Pointe clearing, always one +way empty and the other way with his beak full of marketing; and then +sitting up on an average half the night--sometimes the whole of it--at +his own concert. And with military duties too; patrolling the earth +below, a large part of it, and all the upper air; driving off the +weasel, the black snake, the hawk, the jay, the buzzard, the crow, and +all that brigand crew--busy times! All nature in glad, gay earnest. +Corn in blossom and rustling in the warm breeze; blackberries ripe; +morning-glories under foot; the trumpet-flower flaring from its dense +green vine high above on the naked, girdled tree; the cotton-plant +blooming white, yellow, and red in the field beneath; honey a-making +in the hives and hollow trees; butterflies and bees lingering in the +fields at sunset; the moth venturing forth at the first sign of dew; +and Sidonie--a wild-rose tree. + +Mark you, this was in Grande Pointe. I have seen the wild flower taken +from its cool haunt in the forest, and planted in the glare of a city +garden. Alas! the plight of it, poor outshone, wilting, odorless +thing! And then I have seen it again in the forest; and pleasanter +than to fill the lap with roses and tulips of the conservatory's +blood-royal it was to find it there, once more the simple queen of +that green solitude. + +So Sidonie. Acadian maidens are shy as herons. They always see you +first. They see you first, silently rise, and are gone--from the +galérie. They are more shy than violets. You would think they lived +whole days with those dark, black-fringed eyes cast down; but--they +see you first. The work about the house is well done where they are; +there are apt to be flowers outside round about; while they themselves +are as Paul desired to see the women in bishop Timothy's church, +"adorned in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety." + +Flowers sprang plentifully where Sidonie dwelt. Her best homespun gown +was her own weaving; the old dog lying on the galérie always thumped +the floor with his tail and sank his obsequious head as that robe +passed; the fawn--that Claude had brought--would come trotting and +press its head against it; all the small living things of the dooryard +would follow it about; and if she stood by the calf-pen the calves +would push each other for the nearest place, lay their cheeks upon the +fence's top, and roll their eyes--as many a youth of Grande Pointe +would have done if he might. Chat-oué,--I fear I have omitted to +mention that the father of Crébiche, like the father of Claude, had +lost his wife before he was of age,--Chat-oué looked often over that +fence. + +When matters take that shape a girl _must_ quit school. And yet +Sidonie, when after a short vacation the school resumed its sessions, +resumed with it. Toutou, who had to admit now that his sister was even +more grand for her age than he, was always available for protection. +There was no wonder that Sidonie wished to continue; Bonaventure +explained why: + +"So in_ter_esting is that McGuffey's Third Reader!" + +Those at home hesitated, and presently it was the first of October. +Now it was too late to withdraw; the examination was to take place. +The school's opponents had expressed little impatience at the State +Superintendent's weary delay, but at length Catou asked, "Why dat man +don't nevva come!" + +"The wherefore of his non-coming I ignore," said Bonaventure, with a +look of old pain in his young face; "but I am ready, let him come or +let him come not." + +"'Tain't no use wait no longer," said Catou; "jis well have yo' lil +show widout him." + +"Sir, it shall be had! Revolution never go backwood!" + +Much was the toil, many the anxieties, of the preparation. For +Bonaventure at once determined to make the affair more than an +examination. He set its date on the anniversary of the day when he had +come to Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not be spared. +She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe to a star. A child, +beholding the little star in the heavens, and wondering what it can +be, sparkling diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it not +to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender regret the school +knew that no more thereafter was Sidonie to twinkle in its firmament. + +"Learn yo' lessons hard, chil'run; if the State Sup'inten'ent, even at +the last, you know"--Bonaventure could not believe that this important +outpost had been forgotten. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CONSPIRACY. + + +About this time a certain Mr. Tarbox--G. W. Tarbox--was travelling on +horseback and touching from house to house of the great sugar-estates +of the river "coast," seeing the country and people, and allowing the +_élite_ to subscribe to the "Album of Universal Information." + +One Sunday, resting at College Point, he was led by curiosity to +cultivate the acquaintance of three men who had come in from Grande +Pointe. One of them was Chat-oué. He could understand them, and make +them understand him, well enough to play _vingt et un_ with them the +whole forenoon. He won all their money, drank with them, and took +their five subscriptions, Chat-oué taking three--one for himself, one +for Catou, and one for Crébiche. There was no delivery of goods there +and then; they could not write; but they made their marks, and it was +agreed that when Mr. Tarbox should come along a few days later to +deliver the volumes, they were not to be received or paid for until +with his scholarly aid the impostor who pretended to teach English +education at Grande Pointe had been put to confusion and to flight. + +"All right," said Tarbox; "all _right_. I'm the kind of State +Superintendent you want. I like an adventure; and if there's any thing +I just love, it's exposing a fraud! What day shall I come? Yes, I +understand--middle of the day. I'll be on hand." + +The fateful day came. In every house and on every galérie the morning +tasks were early done. Then the best of every wardrobe was put on, the +sun soared high, and by noon every chair in Grande Pointe was in the +tobacco-shed where knowledge poured forth her beams, and was occupied +by one or two persons. And then, at last, the chapel bell above +Claude's head pealed out the final signal, and the schoolmaster moved +across the green. Bonaventure Deschamps was weary. Had aught gone +wrong? Far from it. But the work had been great, and it was now done. +Every thing was at stake: the cause of enlightenment and the fortunes +of his heart hung on the issue of the next few hours. Three pupils, +one the oftenest rebuked of all the school, one his rival in love, +one the queen of his heart, held his fate in their hands and knew it. +With these thoughts mingled the pangs of an unconfessed passion and +the loneliness of a benevolent nature famishing for a word of thanks. +Yea, and to-day he must be his own judge. + +His coat was on his arm, and the children round about him in their +usual way as they came across the common; but his words, always so +kind, were, on this day of all days, so dejected and so few that the +little ones stole glances into his face and grew silent. Then, all at +once, he saw,--yea, verily, he _saw_,--standing near the school +entrance, a man from the great outer world! + +He knew it by a hundred signs--the free attitude, the brilliant silk +hat, the shaven face, and every inch of the attire. As plainly as one +knows a green tree from a dead one, the Crusoe of Grande Pointe +recognized one who came from the haunts of men; from some great +nerve-centre of human knowledge and power where the human mind, +trained and equipped, had piled up the spoils of its innumerable +conquests. His whole form lighted up with a new life. His voice +trembled with pent feeling as he said in deep undertone: + +"Be callm, chil'run; be callm. Refrain excitement. Who you behole +befo' you, yondeh, I ignore. But who shall we expect to see if not the +State Sup'inten'ent Public Education? And if yea, then welcome, thrice +welcome, the surprise! We shall not inquire him; but as a stranger we +shall show him with how small reso'ce how large result." He put on his +coat. + +Mr. Tarbox had just reached the school-ground. His horse was fastened +by the bridle to a picket in a fence behind him. A few boys had been +out before the schoolhouse, and it was the sudden cessation of their +clamor that had drawn Bonaventure's attention. Some of them were still +visible, silently slipping through the gaps in the _pieux_ and +disappearing within. Bonaventure across the distance marked him beckon +persuasively to one of them. The lad stopped, came forward, and gave +his hand; and thereupon a second, a third, fourth, fifth, tenth, +without waiting for invitation, emerged again and advanced to the same +grave and silent ceremony. Two or three men who stood near did the +same. The handshaking was just ending when Bonaventure and the +stranger raised their hats to each other. + +"Trust I don't intrude?" + +"Sir, we are honored, not intruded, as you shall witness. Will you +give yourself the pain to enter the school-place? I say not +schoolhouse; 'tis, as its humble teacher, not fitly so nominated. But +you shall therein find a school which, the more taken by surprise, not +the less prepared." + +"The State ought to build you a good schoolhouse," said the stranger, +with a slight frown that seemed official. + +"Ah! sir," cried the young schoolmaster, beaming gratitude from his +whole surface, "I--I"--he smote his breast,--"I would reimburst her in +good citizen' and mother' of good citizen'! And both reading, writing, +and also ciphering,--arithmeticulating, in the English tongue, and +grammatically! But enter and investigate." + +A hush fell upon the school and the audience beyond it as the two men +came in. Every scholar was in place--the little ones with bare, +dangling feet, their shapely sun-tanned ankles just peeping from +pantaloons and pantalettes of equal length; the older lads beyond +them; and off at the left the larger girls, and Sidonie. The visitor, +as his eye fell last upon her, silently and all to himself drew a long +whistle of admiration. The master stood and eyed him with unspoken but +confessed pride. A little maiden of six slipped from the bench to the +earth floor, came forward, gave her hand, and noiselessly returned. +One by one, with eyes dropped, the remaining sixteen girls followed. +It seemed for a moment as if the contagion might break out in the +audience, but the symptom passed. + +There was just room on the teacher's little platform for Bonaventure +to seat his visitor a little at one side and stand behind his desk. +The fateful moment had come. The master stood nervously drawn up, bell +in hand. With a quick, short motion he gave it one tap, and set it +down. + +"That, sir, is to designate attention!" He waved a triumphant hand +toward the spectacle before them. + +"Perfect!" murmured the stranger. A look of earnest ecstasy broke out +upon the master's face. He turned at first upon the audience and then +upon the school. + +"Chil'run, _chil'run_, he p'onounce you perfect!" He turned again upon +the visitor, threw high his right hand, flirted it violently, and +cried:-- + +"At random! exclusively at random; state what class! at random!" + +"I--I doubt if I under"-- + +"Name any class, exclusively at random, and you shall see with what +promptness and quietude the chil'run shall take each one their exactly +co'ect places." + +"Oh, I understand. You want me to designate"-- + +"Any class! at yo' caprice." + +"Well, if you have--third class in geography." + +"Or spelling?" cried Bonaventure, a momentary look of dismay giving +place to fresh enthusiasm. + +"Yes--spell--I meant spelling." + +"Third spelling!" The tongue of the bell fell with the emphasis, and +as silently as sleep the tiniest seven in the school, four pairs of +pantaloons, three of pantalettes, with seven of little bare feet at +their borders and seven of hands pointed down stiffly at their sides, +came out and stood a-row. The master turned to the visitor. + +"Now, commencing wherever, even at the foot if desired! ask, sir, if +you please, any English word of one syllable, of however difficult!" + +"No matter how difficult?" + +"Well, they are timid, as you see; advance by degrees." + +"Very well, then," said the visitor with much kindness of tone; "I +will ask the little boy at this end"-- + +"At the foot--but--still, 'tis well. Only--ah, Crébiche! every thing +depend! Be prepared, Crébiche!" + +"Yes," said the stranger; "I will ask him to spell hoss." + +The child drew himself up rigidly, pointed his stiffened fingers down +his thighs, rounded his pretty red mouth, and said slowly, in a low, +melodious, distinct voice:-- + +"'O-double eth, awth." + +Bonaventure leapt from the platform and ran to the child. + +"_Ah! mon p'tit garçon_--ah! my lil boy! 'O-double eth, listten, my +chile. O, sir, he did not hear the word precisely. Listten, my chile, +to yo' teacher! remember that his honor and the school's honor is in +yo' spelling!" He drew back a step, poised himself, and gave the word. +It came like an anchor-chain crashing through a hawse-hole. + +"Or-r-r-r-rus-seh!" And the child, winking at vacancy in the intensity +of his attention, spelled:-- + +"Haich-o-r-eth-e, 'Orthe." + +The breathless audience, leaning forward, read the visitor's +commendation in his face. Bonaventure, beaming upon him, extended one +arm, the other turned toward the child, and cried, shaking both hands +tremulously:-- + +"Another! another word! another to the same!" + +"Mouse," said the stranger, and Bonaventure turned and cried:-- + +"Mah-ooseh! my nob'e lil boy! Mah-ooseh!" and Crébiche, a speaking +statue, spelled:-- + +"M-o-u-eth-e, mouthe." + +"Co'ect, my chile! And yet, sir, and yet, 'tis he that they call +Crébiche, because like the crawfish advancing backwardly. But to the +next! another word! another word!" + +The spelling, its excitements, its moments of agonizing suspense, and +its triumphs, went on. The second class is up. It spells in two, even +in three, syllables. Toutou is in it. He gets tremendously wrought up; +cannot keep two feet on the ground at once; spells fast when the word +is his; smiles in response to the visitor's smile, the only one who +dares; leans out and looks down the line with a knuckle in his mouth +as the spelling passes down; wrings one hand as his turn approaches +again; catches his word in mid-air and tosses it off, and marks with +ecstasy the triumph and pride written on the face of his master. + +"But, sir," cries Bonaventure, "why consume the spelling-book? Give, +yourself, if you please, to Toutou, a word not therein comprise'." He +glanced around condescendingly upon the people of Grande Pointe. +Chat-oué is in a front seat. Toutou gathers himself for the spring, +and the stranger ponders a moment and then gives--"Florida!" + +"F-l-o, flo, warr-de-warr-da,--Florida!" + +A smile broke from the visitor's face unbidden, but-- + +"Right! my chile! co'ect, Toutou!" cried Bonaventure, running and +patting the little hero on the back and head by turns. "Sir, let +us"--He stopped short. The eyes of the house were on Chat-oué. He had +risen to his feet and made a gesture for the visitor's attention. As +the stranger looked at him he asked:-- + +"He spell dat las word r-i-i-ight?" But the visitor with quiet gravity +said, "Yes, that was all right;" and a companion pulled the Raccoon +down into his seat again. Bonaventure resumed. + +"Sir, let us not exhoss the time with spelling! You shall now hear +them read." + +The bell taps, the class retires; again, and the reading class is up. +They are the larger girls and boys. But before they begin the master +has a word for their fathers and mothers. + +"Friends and fellow-citizens of Gran' Point', think not at the +suppi-zing goodness of yo' chil'run' reading. 'Tis to this branch has +been given the largest attention and most as_sid_u'ty, so thus to +comprise puffection in the English tongue, whether speaking aw +otherwise." He turned to the stranger beside him. "I am not satisfied +whilst the slightest accent of French is remaining. But you shall +judge if they read not as if in their own vernaculary. And you shall +choose the piece!" + +The visitor waived the privilege, but Bonaventure gently insisted, and +he selected Jane Taylor's little poem, "The Violet," glancing across +at Sidonie as he himself read out the first two lines:-- + + "Down in a green and shady bed + A modest violet grew." + +Bonaventure proclaimed the title and page and said:-- + +"Claude, p'oceed!" And Claude read:-- + +"'Dthee vy--ee-lit. Dah-oon-a hin hay grin and-a shad-y bade--A +mo-dest-a vy-ee-lit gr[)o]o--Hits-a stallk whoz baint hit hawngg-a +hits hade--Has hif-a too hah-ed-a frawm ve-[)o]o. Hand h-yet it whoz a +lo-vly flow'r--Hits-a co-lors-a brah-eet and fair-a--Heet maheet-a +h[=a]ve grass-ed a rozzy bow'r--Heenstade-a hof hah-ee-dingg there"-- + +"Stop!" cried Bonaventure; "stop! You pronounciate' a word faultily!" +He turned to the visitor. "I call not that a miss; but we must +inoculate the idea of puffection. So soon the sly-y-test +misp'onounciating I pass to the next." He turned again: "Next!" And a +black-haired girl began in a higher key, and very slowly:-- + +"Yate there eet whoz cawntaint-a too bulloom--Heen mo-dest-a teent +z-arrayed--And there-a heet sprade-a heets swit pre-fume-a--Whit-hin +thee sy-y-lent-a shade"-- + +"Stop! Not that you mistook, but--'tis enough. Sir, will you give +yourself the pain to tell--not for my sake or reputation, but to the +encouragement of the chil'run, and devoid flattery--what is yo' +opinion of that specimen of reading? Not t'oubling you, but, in two or +three word' only--if you will give yo'self the pain"-- + +"Why, certainly; I think it is--I can hardly find words--it's +remarkable." Bonaventure started with joy. + +"Chil'run, do you hear? Remawkable! But do you not detect no +slight--no small faultiness of p'onounciating?" + +"No, not the slightest; I smile, but I was thinking of something +else." The visitor's eye, wandering a trifle, caught Chat-oué giving +him one black look that removed his disposition to smile, yet he +insisted, "No, sir; I can truthfully say I never heard such a +pronunciation." The audience drank his words. + +"Sir," cried the glad preceptor, "'tis toil have p'oduce it! Toil of +the teacher, in_dust_ry of the chil'run! But it has p'oduce' _beside_! +Sir, look--that school! Since one year commencing the A B C--and now +spelling word' of eight syllabl'!" + +"Not _this_ school?" + +"Sir, you shall see--or, more p'operly, hear. First spelling!" + +"Yes," said the stranger, seeing Sidonie rise, "I'd like to hear that +class;" and felt Chat-oué looking at him again. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +LIGHT, LOVE, AND VICTORY. + + +The bell tapped, and they came forth to battle. There was the line, +there was the leader. The great juncture of the day was on him. Was +not here the State's official eye? Did not victory hover overhead? His +reserve, the darling regiment, the flower of his army, was dressing +for the final charge. There was Claude. Next him, Sidonie!--and +Étienne, and Madelaine, Henri and Marcelline,--all waiting for the +word--the words--of eight syllables! Supreme moment! Would any betray? +Banish the thought! Would any fail? + +He waited an instant while two or three mothers bore out great +armfuls of slumbering or fretting infancy and a number of young men +sank down into the vacated chairs. Then he stepped down from the +platform, drew back four or five yards from the class, opened the +spelling-book, scanned the first word, closed the book with his finger +at the place, lifted it high above his head, and cried: + +"Claude! Claude, my brave scholar, always perfect, ah you ready?" He +gave the little book a half whirl round, and dashed forward toward the +chosen scholar, crying as he came: + +"In-e-rad-i-ca-bility!" + +Claude's face suddenly set in a stony vacancy, and with his eyes +staring straight before him he responded: + +"I-n, in-, e, inerad-, r-a-d, rad-, inerad-, ineraddy-, ineradica-, +c-a, ca, ineradica-, ineradicabili-, b-i-elly-billy, ineradicabili-, +ineradicabili-, t-y, ty, ineradicability." + +"Right! Claude, my boy! my always good scholar, right!" The master +drew back to his starting-place as he spoke, re-opened the book, shut +it again, lifted it high in air, cried, "Madelaine, my dear chile, +prepare!" whirled the book and rushed upon her with-- + +"In-de-fat-i-ga-bil-ly-ty!" + +Madelaine turned to stone and began: + +"I-n, een, d-e, de-, inde-, indefat-, indefat--fat--f-a-t, fat, +indefat, indefatty, i, ty, indefati-, indefatiga-, g-a, ga, +indefatiga-, indefatigabilly, b-i-elly, billy, indefatigabili-, t-y, +ty, indefatigability." + +"O, Madelaine, my chile, you make yo' teacher proud! prah-ood, my +chile!" Bonaventure's hand rested a moment tenderly on her head as he +looked first toward the audience and then toward the stranger. Then he +drew off for the third word. He looked at it twice before he called +it. Then-- + +"Sidonie! ah! Sidonie, be ready! be prepared! fail not yo' humble +school-teacher! In-com"--He looked at the word a third time, and then +swept down upon her: + +"In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-_bility_!" + +Sidonie flinched not nor looked upon him, as he hung over her with the +spelling-book at arm's-reach above them; yet the pause that followed +seemed to speak dismay, and throughout the class there was a silent +recoil from something undiscovered by the master. But an instant later +Sidonie had chosen between the two horns of her agonizing dilemma, and +began: + +"I-n, een, c-o-m, cawm, eencawm, eencawmpre, p-r-e, pre, eencawmpre, +eencawmprehen, prehen, haich-e-n, hen, hen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, +eencawmprehensi-, b-i-l"-- + +"Ah! Sidonie! Stop! _Arretez!_ Si-do-nie-e-e-e! Oh! listen--_écoutez_-- +Sidonie, my dear!" The master threw his arms up and down in distraction, +then suddenly faced his visitor, "Sir, it was my blame! I spoke the word +without adequate distinction! Sidonie--_maintenant_--now!" But a voice +in the audience interrupted with-- + +"_Assoiez-vous la_, Chat-oué! Seet down yondeh!" And at the potent +voice of Maximian Roussel the offender was pushed silently into the +seat he had risen from, and Bonaventure gave the word again. + +"In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bil-i-ty!" And Sidonie, blushing like fire, +returned to the task: + +"I-n, een"--She bit her lip and trembled. + +"Right! _Right!_ Tremble not, my Sidonie! fear naught! yo' loving +school-teacher is at thy side!" But she trembled like a red leaf as she +spelled on--"Haich-e-n, hen, eencawmprehen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, +eencawmprehensi-, eencawmprehensi-billy-t-y, ty, incomprehensibility!" + +The master dropped his hands and lifted his eyes in speechless +despair. As they fell again upon Sidonie, her own met them. She +moaned, covered her face in her hands, burst into tears, ran to her +desk and threw her hands and face upon it, shaking with noiseless sobs +and burning red to the nape of her perfect neck. All Grande Pointe +rose to its feet. + +"Lost!" cried Bonaventure in a heart-broken voice. "Every thing lost! +Farewell, chil'run!" He opened his arms toward them and with one dash +all the lesser ones filled them. They wept. Tears welled from +Bonaventure's eyes; and the mothers of Grande Pointe dropped again +into their seats and silently added theirs. + +The next moment all eyes were on Maximian. His strong figure was +mounted on a chair, and he was making a gentle, commanding gesture +with one hand as he called: + +"Seet down! Seet down, all han'!" And all sank down, Bonaventure in a +mass of weeping and clinging children. 'Mian too resumed his seat, at +the same time waving to the stranger to speak. + +"My friends," said the visitor, rising with alacrity, "I say when a +man makes a bargain, he ought to stick to it!" He paused for them--as +many as could--to take in the meaning of his English speech, and, it +may be, expecting some demonstration of approval; but dead silence +reigned, all eyes on him save Bonaventure's and Sidonie's. He began +again: + +"A bargain's a bargain!" And Chat-oué nodded approvingly and began to +say audibly, "Yass;" but 'Mian thundered out: + +"_Taise toi_, Chat-oué! Shot op!" And the silence was again complete, +while the stranger resumed. + +"There was a plain bargain made." He moved a step forward and laid the +matter off on the palm of his hand. "There was to be an examination; +the school was not to know; but if one scholar should make one mistake +the schoolhouse was to be closed and the schoolmaster sent away. Well, +there's been a mistake made, and I say a bargain's a bargain." Dead +silence still. The speaker looked at 'Mian. "Do you think they +understand me?" + +"Dey meck out," said 'Mian, and shut his firm jaws. + +"My friends," said the stranger once more, "some people think +education's a big thing, and some think it ain't. Well, sometimes it +is and sometimes it ain't. Now, here's this man"--he pointed down to +where Bonaventure's dishevelled crown was drooping to his +knees--"claims to have taught over thirty of your children to read. +Well, what of it? A man can know how to read, and be just as no +account as he was before. He brags that he's taught them to talk +English. Well, what does that prove? A man _might_ speak English and +starve to death. He claims, I am told, to have taught some of them to +write. But I know a man in the penitentiary that can write; he wrote +too much." + +Bonaventure had lifted his head and was sitting with his eyes upon the +speaker in close attention. At this last word he said: + +"Ah! sir! too true, too true ah yo' words; nevertheless, their +cooelty! 'Tis not what is print' _in_ the books, but what you learn +_through_ the books!" + +"Yes; and so you hadn't never ought to have made the bargain you made; +but, my friends, a bargain's a bargain, and the teacher's"--He paused +invitingly, and an answer came from the audience. It was Catou who +rose and said: + +"Naw, sah. Naw; he don't got to go!" But again 'Mian thundered: + +"_Taise toi_, Catou. Shot op!" + +"I say," continued the stranger, "the mistake's been made. _Three_ +mistakes have been made!" + +"Yass!" roared Chat-oué, leaping to his feet and turning upon the +assemblage a face fierce with triumph. Suspense and suspicions were +past now; he was to see his desire on his enemy. But instantly a dozen +men were on their feet--St. Pierre, Catou, Bonaventure himself, with a +countenance full of pleading deprecation, and even Claude, flushed +with anger. + +"Naw, sah! Naw, sah! Waun meesteck?" + +"Seet down, all han'!" yelled 'Mian; "all han' seet dah-oon!" Only +Chat-oué took his seat, glancing upon the rest with the exultant look +of one who can afford to yield ground. + +"The first mistake," resumed the stranger, addressing himself +especially to the risen men still standing, and pointedly to Catou, +"the first mistake was in the kind of bargain you made." He ceased, +and passed his eyes around from one to another until they rested an +instant on the bewildered countenance of Chat-oué. Then he turned +again upon the people, who had sat down, and began to speak with the +exultation of a man that feels his subject lifting him above himself. + +"I came out here to show up that man as a fraud. But what do I find? A +poor, unpaid, half-starved man that loves his thankless work better +than his life, teaching what not one schoolmaster in a thousand can +teach; teaching his whole school four better things than were ever +printed in any school-book,--how to study, how to think, how to value +knowledge, and to love one another and mankind. What you'd ought to +have done was to agree that such a school should keep open, and such a +teacher should stay, if jest one, one lone child should answer one +single book-question right! But as I said before, a bargain's a +bargain--Hold on there! Sit down! You sha'n't interrupt me again!" Men +were standing up on every side. There was confusion and a loud buzz of +voices. "The second mistake," the stranger made haste to cry, "was +thinking the teacher gave out that last word right. He gave it wrong! +And the third mistake," he shouted against the rising commotion, "was +thinking it was spelt wrong. _She spelt it right!_ And a bargain's a +bargain! The schoolmaster stays!" + +He could say no more; the rumble of voices suddenly burst into a cheer. +The women and children laughed and clapped their hands,--Toutou his feet +also,--and Bonaventure, flirting the leaves of a spelling book till he +found the place, looked, cried--"In-com-pre-hen-_sibility_!" wheeled and +dashed upon Sidonie, seized her hands in his as she turned to fly, and +gazed speechlessly upon her, with the tears running down his face. +Feeling a large hand upon his shoulder, he glanced around and saw 'Mian +pointing him to his platform and desk. Thither he went. The stranger had +partly restored order. Every one was in his place. But what a change! +What a gay flutter throughout the old shed! Bonaventure seemed to have +bathed in the fountain of youth. Sidonie, once more the school's +queen-flower, sat calm, with just a trace of tears adding a subtle +something to her beauty. + +"Chil'run, beloved chil'run," said Bonaventure, standing once more by +his desk, "yo' school-teacher has the blame of the sole mistake; and, +sir, gladly, oh, gladly, sir, would he always have the blame rather +than any of his beloved school-chil'run! Sir, I will boldly ask +you--_ah_ you not the State Sup'inten'ent Public Education?" + +"No, I"-- + +"But surely, sir, than a greater?--Yes, I discover it, though you +smile. Chil'run--friends--not the State Sup'inten'ent, but +greater!--Pardon; have yo' chair, sir." + +"Why, the examination's over, isn't it? Guess you'd better call it +finished, hadn't you?" He made the suggestion softly, but Bonaventure +answered aloud: + +"Figu'atively speaking, 'tis conclude'; but--pardon--you mention' +writing. Shall you paht f'om us not known--not leaving yo' name--in a +copy-book, for examp'?" + +"With pleasure. You do teach writing?" + +"If I teach writing? To such with desks, yes. 'Twould be to all but +for the privation of desks. You perceive how we have here nothing less +than a desk famine. Madelaine! Claude! Sidonie!--present copy-book'! +Sir, do you not think every chile should be provided a desk?--Ah! I +knew 'twould be yo' verdic'. But how great trouble I have with that +subjec'! Me, I think yes; but the parents,"--he looked tenderly over +among them,--"they contend no. Now, sir, here are three copy-books. +Inspect; criticise. No, commence rather, if you please, with the +copy-book of Madelaine; then _p'oceed_ to the copy-book of Claude, and +finally conclude at the copy-book of Sidonie; thus rising by degrees: +good, more good, most good." + +"How about," asked the stranger, with a smile, as he turned the +leaves, "about Toutou and Crébiche; don't they write?" + +"Ah! sir," said Bonaventure, half to the stranger and half to the +assemblage, "they write, yes; but--they ah yet in the pot-hook and +chicken-track stage. And now, chil'run, in honor of our eminent +friend's visitation, and of the excellence with which you have been +examine', I p'onounce the _exhibition_ finish'--dispensing with +'Twink', twink' lil stah.' And now, in the book of the best writing +scholar in the school--you, sir, deciding that intricacy--shall now be +written the name of the eminent frien' of learning hereinbefo' +confronting.--Claude! a new pen!" + +The stranger made his choice among the books. + +"Chil'run, he has select' the book of Sidonie!" Bonaventure reached +and swung a chair into place at his desk. The visitor sat down. +Bonaventure stood over him, gazing down at the hand that poised the +pen. The silence was profound. + +"Chil'run--sh-sh-sh!" said the master, lifting his left arm but not +his eyes. The stranger wrote a single initial. + +"G! chil'run; G!--Sir, does it not signify George?" + +"Yes," murmured the writer; "it stands for George." He wrote another. + +"W! my chil'run; George W!--Sir, does it not sig--_My_ chil'run! +George Washington! George Washington, my chil'run! George Washington, +the father of his country! My chil'run and fellow-citizen' of Gran' +Point', he is nominated for George Washington, the father of his +country! Sir, ah you not a relation?" + +"I really can't tell you," said the writer, with a calm smile. "I've +always been too busy to look it up." He finished his signature as he +talked. Bonaventure bent over it. + +"Tar-box. Chil'run and friends and fellow-citizen', I have the +p'oudness to int'oduce you the hono'able George Washington Tarbox! And +now the exhibition is dismiss'; but stop! Sir, if some--aw all--desire +gratefully to shake hand'?" + +"I should feel honored." + +"Attention, everybody! Make rank! Everybody by two by two, the +school-chil'run coming last,--Claude and Sidonie resting till the +end,--pass 'round--shake hand'--walk out--similah a fu-nial." + +So came, shook hands, and passed out and to their simple homes, the +manhood, motherhood, maidenhood, childhood of Grande Pointe, not +knowing that before many days every household in the village was to be +a subscriber to the "Album of Universal Information." + +One of the last of the householders was Chat-oué. But when he grasped +the honored hand, he also held it, fixing upon its owner a generous +and somewhat bacchanalian smile. + +"I'm a fool, but _I_ know. You been put op a jawb on me. Dass four, +five days now I been try to meck out what dat niggah at Belle Alliance +holla to me when I gallop down de road." (Chat-oué's English had been +acquired from negroes in the sugar-house, and was like theirs.) "He +been braggin' dat day befo'"--turning to Bonaventure--"how 'twas him +show you de road to Gran' Point' las' year; and so I git mad and tell +him, me," addressing the stranger again, "how we goin' git school +shot op. Well, dat night I mit him comin' fum Gran' Point' and he hol' +at me. I been try evva since meck out what he say. Yass. An' I _jis_ +meck it out! He say, 'Watch out, watch out, 'Mian Roussel and dat +book-fellah dawn't put op jawb on _you_.' Well, I'm a fool, but I +know. You put op jawb on me; I know. But dass all right--_I don't take +no book._" He laughed with the rest, scratched his tipsy head, and +backed out through the _pieux_. + +Only a fairy number remained, grouped around the honorable Tarbox. +They were St. Pierre, Bonaventure,--Maximian detaining a middle-aged +pair, Sidonie's timorous guardians,--and two others, who held back, +still waiting to shake hands. + +"Claude," cried Bonaventure; "Sidonie." + +They came. Claude shook hands and stepped inside. Sidonie, with eyes +on the ground, put forth her hand. The honored guest held it +lingeringly, and the ceremonies were at an end. + +"Come," said 'Mian, beckoning away the great G. W.'s probable +relative. They passed out together. "Come!" he repeated, looking back +and beckoning again; "walk een! all han'! walk een house!" + +The guardian pair followed, hand in hand. + +"Claude," said Bonaventure tenderly; but-- + +"Claude," more firmly said St. Pierre. + +The boy looked for one instant from the master's face to Sidonie's; +then turned, grasped his father's hand, and followed the others. + +A blaze of light filled Bonaventure's heart. He turned to Sidonie to +give his hand--both her hands were clasped upon each other, and they +only tightened. But their eyes met--ah! those Acadian maidens, they do +it all with their eyes!--and lover and maiden passed out and walked +forth side by side. They are going that way still, only--with hands +joined. + + + + +AU LARGE. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE POT-HUNTER. + + +The sun was just rising, as a man stepped from his slender dug-out and +drew half its length out upon the oozy bank of a pretty bayou. Before +him, as he turned away from the water, a small gray railway-platform +and frame station-house, drowsing on long legs in the mud and water, +were still veiled in the translucent shade of the deep cypress swamp, +whose long moss drapings almost overhung them on the side next the +brightening dawn. The solemn gray festoons did overhang the farthest +two or three of a few flimsy wooden houses and a saw-mill with its +lumber, logs, and sawdust, its cold furnace and idle engine. + +As with gun and game this man mounted by a short, rude ladder to +firmer footing on the platform, a negro, who sat fishing for his +breakfast on the bank a few yards up the stream, where it bent from +the north and west, slowly lifted his eyes, noted that the other was a +white man, an Acadian, and brought his gaze back again to hook and +line. + +He had made out these facts by the man's shape and dress, for the +face was in shade. The day, I say, was still in its genesis. The +waters that slid so languidly between the two silent men as not to +crook one line of the station-house's image inverted in their clear +dark depths, had not yet caught a beam upon their whitest water-lily, +nor yet upon their tallest bulrush; but the tops of the giant +cypresses were green and luminous, and as the Acadian glanced abroad +westward, in the open sky far out over the vast marshy breadths of the +"shaking prairie,"[5] two still clouds, whose under surfaces were yet +dusky and pink, sparkled on their sunward edges like a frosted fleece. +You could not have told whether the Acadian saw the black man or not. +His dog, soiled and wet, stood beside his knee, pricked his ears for a +moment at sight of the negro, and then dropped them. + + [5] The "shaking prairie," "trembling prairie," or + _prairie tremblante_, is low, level, treeless delta + land, having a top soil of vegetable mould overlying + immense beds of quicksand. + +It was September. The comfortable air could only near by be seen to +stir the tops of the high reeds whose crowding myriads stretched away +south, west, and north, an open sea of green, its immense distances +relieved here and there by strips of swamp forest tinged with their +peculiar purple haze. Eastward the railroad's long causeway and +telegraph-poles narrowed on the view through its wide axe-hewn lane in +the overtowering swamp. New Orleans, sixty miles or more away, was in +that direction. Westward, rails, causeway, and telegraph, tapered away +again across the illimitable hidden quicksands of the "trembling +prairie" till the green disguise of reeds and rushes closed in upon +the attenuated line, and only a small notch in a far strip of woods +showed where it still led on toward Texas. Behind the Acadian the +smoke of woman's early industry began to curl from two or three low +chimneys. + +But his eye lingered in the north. He stood with his dog curled at his +feet beside a bunch of egrets,--killed for their plumage,--the butt of +his long fowling-piece resting on the platform, and the arm half +outstretched whose hand grasped the barrels near the muzzle. The hand, +toil-hardened and weather-browned, showed, withal, antiquity of race. +His feet were in rough muddy brogans, but even so they were smallish +and shapely. His garments were coarse, but there were no tatters +anywhere. He wore a wide Campeachy hat. His brown hair was too long, +but it was fine. His eyes, too, were brown, and, between brief moments +of alertness, sedate. Sun and wind had darkened his face, and his pale +brown beard curled meagre and untrimmed on a cheek and chin that in +forty years had never felt a razor. + +Some miles away in the direction in which he was looking, the +broadening sunlight had struck and brightened the single red lug-sail +of a boat whose unseen hull, for all the eye could see, was coming +across the green land on a dry keel. But the bayou, hidden in the tall +rushes, was its highway; for suddenly the canvas was black as it +turned its shady side, and soon was red again as another change of +direction caught the sunbeams upon its tense width and showed that, +with much more wind out there than it would find by and by in here +under the lee of the swamp, it was following the unseen meanderings of +the stream. Presently it reached a more open space where a stretch of +the water lay shining in the distant view. Here the boat itself came +into sight, showed its bunch of some half-dozen passengers for a +minute or two, and vanished again, leaving only its slanting red sail +skimming nautilus-like over the vast breezy expanse. + +Yet more than two hours later the boat's one blue-shirted, barefoot +Sicilian sailor in red worsted cap had with one oar at the stern just +turned her drifting form into the glassy calm by the railway-station, +tossed her anchor ashore, and was still busy with small matters of +boat-keeping, while his five passengers clambered to the platform. + +The place showed somewhat more movement now. The negro had long ago +wound his line upon its crooked pole, gathered up his stiffened fishes +from the bank, thrust them into the pockets of his shamelessly ragged +trousers, and was gone to his hut in the underbrush. But the few +amphibious households round about were passing out and in at the +half-idle tasks of their slow daily life, and a young white man was +bustling around, now into the station and now out again upon the +platform, with authority in his frown and a pencil and two matches +behind his ear. It was Monday. Two or three shabby negroes with broad, +collapsed, glazed leather travelling-bags of the old carpet-sack +pattern dragged their formless feet about, waiting to take the train +for the next station to hire out there as rice harvesters, and one, +with his back turned, leaned motionless against an open window gazing +in upon the ticking telegraph instruments. A black woman in blue +cotton gown, red-and-yellow Madras turban, and some sportsman's +cast-off hunting-shoes minus the shoe-strings, crouched against the +wall. Beside her stood her shapely mulatto daughter, with +head-covering of white cotton cloth, in which female instinct had +discovered the lines of grace and disposed them after the folds of the +Egyptian fellah head--dress. A portly white man, with decided polish +in his commanding air, evidently a sugar-planter from the Mississippi +"coast" ten miles northward, moved about in spurred boots, and put +personal questions to the negroes, calling them "boys," and the +mulattress, "girl." + +The pot-hunter was still among them; or rather, he had drawn apart +from the rest, and stood at the platform's far end, leaning on his +gun, an innocent, wild-animal look in his restless eyes, and a +slumberous agility revealed in his strong, supple loins. The +station-agent went to him, and with abrupt questions and assertions, +to which the man replied in low, grave monosyllables, bought his +game,--as he might have done two hours before, but--an Acadian can +wait. There was some trouble to make exact change, and the agent, +saying "Hold on, I'll fix it," went into the station just as the group +from the Sicilian's boat reached the platform. The agent came bustling +out again with his eyes on his palm, counting small silver. + +"Here!" But he spoke to the empty air. He glanced about with an +offended frown. + +"Achille!" There was no reply. He turned to one of the negroes: +"Where's that 'Cajun?" Nobody knew. Down where his canoe had lain, +tiny rillets of muddy water were still running into its imprint left +in the mire; but canoe, dog, and man had vanished into the rank +undergrowth of the swamp. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +CLAUDE. + + +Of the party that had come in the Sicilian's boat four were men and +one a young woman. She was pretty; so pretty, and of such restful +sweetness of countenance, that the homespun garb, the brand-new +creaking gaiters, and a hat that I dare not describe were nothing +against her. Her large, soft, dark eyes, more sweetly but not less +plainly than the attire, confessed her a denizen of the woods. + +Not so the man who seemed to be her husband. His dress was rustic +enough; and yet you would have seen at once that it was not the +outward circumstance, but an inward singularity, that had made him and +must always keep him a stranger to the ordinary ways of men. There was +an emotional exaltation in his face as he hastily led his companions +with military directness to the ticket window. Two others of the men +were evidently father and son, the son barely twenty years of age, the +parent certainly not twice as old; and the last of the group was a +strong, sluggish man of years somewhat near, but under, fifty. + +They bought but one ticket; but, as one may say, they all bought it, +the youngest extricating its price with difficulty from the knotted +corner of his red handkerchief, and the long, thin hand of the leader +making the purchase, while the eyes of the others followed every +movement with unconscious absorption. + +The same unemotional attentiveness was in their forms as their slow +feet drifted here and there always after the one leader, their eyes on +his demonstrative hands, and their ears drinking in his discourse. He +showed them the rails of the track, how smooth they were, how they +rested on their cross-ties, and how they were spiked in place always +the same width apart. They crowded close about him at the +telegraph-window while he interpreted with unconscious originality the +wonders of electricity. Their eyes rose slowly from the window up and +out along the ascending wires to where they mounted the poles and +eastward and westward leaped away sinking and rising from insulator to +insulator. One of the party pointed at these green dots of glass and +murmured a question, and the leader's wife laid her small hand softly +upon his arm to check the energy of his utterance as he said, audibly +to all on the platform, and with a strong French accent: + +"They?--are there lest the heat of the telegraph fluid inflame the +post-es!" He laid his own hand tenderly upon his wife's in response to +its warning pressure, yet turned to the sugar-planter and asked: + +"Sir, pardon; do I not explain truly?" + +The planter, with restrained smile, was about to reply, when some one +called, "There she comes!" and every eye was turned to the east. + +"Truly!" exclaimed the inquirer, in a voice made rich with emotion. +"Truly, she comes! She comes! The iron horse, though they call him +'she'!" He turned to the planter--"Ah! sir, why say they thus many or +thus many horse-power, when truly"--his finger-tip pattered upon his +temple--"truly it is mind-power!" + +The planter, smiling decorously, turned away, and the speaker looked +again down the long vacant track to where the small dark focus of +every one's attention was growing on the sight. He spoke again, in +lower voice but with larger emotion. + +"Mind-power! thought-power! knowledge-power! learning and thinking +power!" He caught his wife's arm. "See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her +enhancing in magnitude so fastly approaching!" As he spoke a puff of +white vapor lifted from the object and spread out against the blue, +the sunbeams turned it to silver and pearl, and a moment later came +the far-away, long, wild scream of the locomotive. + +"Retire!" exclaimed the husband, drawing back all his gazing +companions at once. "Retire! retire! the whisttel is to signify +warning to retire from too close the edge of the galérie! There! rest +at this point. 'Tis far enough. Now, each and all resolve to stand and +shrink not whilst that iron mare, eating coal, drinking hot water, and +spitting fire, shall seem, but falsely, threatening to come on the +platform. Ah! Claude!" he cried to the youngest of the group, "now +shall you behold what I have told you--that vast am-azement of +civilize-ation anni-_high_-lating space and also time at the tune of +twenty miles the hour!" He wheeled upon the planter--"Sir, do I +exaggerate?" + +"Forty miles," replied the planter; "sometimes fifty." + +"Friends,--confirmated! more than twicefold confirmated. Forty, +sometimes fifty! Thou heardest it, Maximian Roussel! Not from me, but +from the gentleman himself! Forty, sometimes fifty! Such the march, +the forward march of civilize-ation!" + +His words were cut short by the unearthly neigh of the engine. Sidonie +smote herself backward against her husband. + +"Nay, Sidonie, fear thou nothing! Remember, dear Sidonie, thy promise +of self-control! Stand boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son, +stand." The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, and +shaking the earth, the engine and train loomed up to the platform and +stopped. + +"Come!" cried Bonaventure Deschamps; "lose no moment, dear friends. +Tide and time--even less the railroad--wait for nobody. Claude, +remember; give your ticket of passage to none save the conductor only. +'Tis print' in letter' of gold on front his cap--'Conductor'--Stop! he +is here.--Sir, this young man, inexperienced, is taking passage for"-- + +"Shoot him aboard," replied a uniformed man, and walked on without a +pause. Claude moved toward the train. Bonaventure seized him by both +arms and gazed on him. + +"Claude St. Pierre! Claude, my boy, pride of Grande Pointe, second +only with Sidonie, farewell!" + +Tears leaped into the eyes of both. Bonaventure snatched Claude to his +arms and kissed him. It was less than nothing to him that every eye on +and off the train was on them. He relaxed his grasp. "Sidonie! tell +him farewell!--ah! nay! shake not hands only! Kiss her, Claude! Kiss +him, my own Sidonie, kiss him farewell!" + +It was done. Claude blushed red, and Sidonie stepped back, wiping her +eyes. Maximian moved into the void, and smiling gave his hand to the +young adventurer. + +"Adjieu, Claude." He waved a hand awkwardly. "Teck care you'seff," and +dropped the hand audibly against his thigh. + +Claude's eye sought his father. St. Pierre pressed forward, laid his +right hand upon his son's shoulder, and gazed into his face. His voice +was low and husky. He smiled. + +"Claude,"--tears rose in his eyes, but he swallowed them +down,--"Claude,--my baby,"--and the flood came. The engine-bell rang. +The conductor gave the warning word, the youth leaped upon his +father's neck. St. Pierre thrust him off, caught his two cheeks +between fluttering palms and kissed him violently; the train moved, +the young man leaped aboard, the blue uniforms disappeared, save one +on the rear platform, the bell ceased, the gliding mass shrunk and +dwindled away, the rails clicked more and more softly, the tearful +group drew closer together as they gazed after the now-unheard train. +It melted to a point and disappeared, the stillness of forest and +prairie fell again upon the place, the soaring sun shone down, and +Claude St. Pierre was gone to seek his fortune. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE TAVERN FIRESIDE. + + +I call to mind a certain wild, dark night in November. St. Pierre lay +under his palmetto thatch in the forest behind Grande Pointe, and +could not sleep for listening to the wind, and wondering where his son +was, in that wild Texas norther. On the Mississippi a steamer, upward +bound, that had whistled to land at Belmont or Belle Alliance +plantation, seemed to be staying there afraid to venture away. Miles +southward beyond the river and the lands on that side, Lake des +Allemands was combing with the tempest and hissing with the rain. +Still farther away, on the little bayou and at the railway-station in +the edge of the swamp that we already know, and westward over the +prairie where Claude had vanished into the world, all life was hidden +and mute. And farther still, leagues and leagues away, the mad tempest +was riding the white-caps in Berwick's Bay and Grande Lake; and yet +beyond, beyond New Iberia, and up by Carancro, and around again by +St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Grand Coteau, and Opelousas, and down +once more across the prairies of Vermilion, the marshes about Côte +Blanche Bay, and the islands in the Gulf, it came bounding, screaming, +and buffeting. And all the way across that open sweep from Mermentau +to Côte Gelée it was tearing the rain to mist and freezing it wherever +it fell, only lulling and warming a little about Joseph Jefferson's +Island, as if that prank were too mean a trick to play upon his +orange-groves. + +In Vermilionville the wind came around every corner piercing and +pinching to the bone. The walking was slippery; and though it was +still early bedtime and the ruddy lamp-light filled the wet panes of +some window every here and there, scarce a soul was stirring without, +on horse or afoot, to be guided by its kindly glow. + +At the corner of two streets quite away from the court-house square, a +white frame tavern, with a wooden Greek porch filling its whole +two-story front and a balcony built within the porch at the +second-story windows in oddest fashion, was glowing with hospitable +firelight. It was not nearly the largest inn of the place, nor the +oldest, nor the newest, nor the most accessible. There was no clink of +glass there. Yet in this, only third year of its present management, +it was the place where those who knew best always put up. + +Around the waiting-room fire this evening sat a goodly semicircle of +men,--commercial travellers. Some of them were quite dry and +comfortable, and wore an air of superior fortune over others whose +shoes and lower garments sent out more or less steam and odor toward +the open fireplace. Several were smoking. One who neither smoked nor +steamed stood with his back to the fire and the skirts of his coat +lifted forward on his wrists. He was a rather short, slight, nervy +man, about thirty years of age, with a wide pink baldness running so +far back from his prominent temples and forehead that when he tipped +his face toward the blue joists overhead, enjoying the fatigue of a +well-filled day, his polished skull sent back the firelight +brilliantly. There was a light skirmish of conversation going on, in +which he took no part. No one seemed really acquainted with another. +Presently a man sitting next on the left of him put away a quill +toothpick in his watch-pocket, looked up into the face of the standing +man, and said, with a faint smile: + +"That job's done!" + +With friendly gravity the other looked down and replied, "I never use +a quill toothpick." + +"Yes," said the one who sat, "it's bad. Still I do it." + +"Nothing," continued the other,--"nothing harder than a sharpened +white-pine match should ever go between the teeth. Brush thoroughly +but not violently once or twice daily with a moderately stiff brush +dipped in soft water into which has been dropped a few drops of the +tincture of myrrh. A brush of badger's hair is best. If tartar +accumulates, have it removed by a dentist. Do not bite thread or crack +nuts with the teeth, or use the teeth for other purposes than those +for which nature designed them." He bent toward his hearer with a +smile of irresistible sweetness, drew his lips away from his gums, +snapped his teeth together loudly twice or thrice, and smiled again, +modestly. The other man sought defence in buoyancy of manner. + +"Right you are!" he chirruped. He reached up to his adviser's blue and +crimson neck-scarf, and laid his finger and thumb upon a large, +solitary pear-shaped pearl. "You're like me; you believe in the real +thing." + +"I do," said the pearl's owner; "and I like people that like the real +thing. A pearl of the first water _is_ real. There's no sham there; no +deception--except the iridescence, which is, as you doubtless know, an +optical illusion attributable to the intervention of rays of light +reflected from microscopic corrugations of the nacreous surface. But +for that our eye is to blame, not the pearl. See?" + +The seated man did not reply; but another man on the speaker's right, +a large man, widest at the waist, leaned across the arm of his chair +to scrutinize the jewel. Its owner turned his throat for the +inspection, despite a certain grumness and crocodilian aggressiveness +in the man's interest. + +"I like a diamond, myself," said the new on-looker, dropped back in +his chair, and met the eyes of the pearl's owner with a heavy glance. + +"Tastes differ," kindly responded the wearer of the pearl. "Are you +acquainted with the language of gems?" + +The big-waisted man gave a negative grunt, and spat bravely into the +fire. "Didn't know gems could talk," he said. + +"They do not talk, they speak," responded their serene interpreter. +The company in general noticed that, with all his amiability of tone +and manner, his mild eyes held the big-waisted man with an +uncomfortable steadiness. "They speak not to the ear, but to the eye +and to the thought: + + 'Thought is deeper than all speech; + Feeling deeper than all thought; + Souls to souls can never teach + What unto themselves was taught.'" + +The speaker's victim writhed, but the riveted gaze and an uplifted +finger pinioned him. "You should know--every one should know--the +language of gems. There is a language of flowers: + + 'To me the meanest flower that blows can give + Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' + +But the language of gems is as much more important than that of +flowers as the imperishable gem is itself more enduring than the +withering, the evanescent blossom. A gentleman may not with safety +present to a lady a gem of whose accompanying sentiment he is +ignorant. But with the language of gems understood between them, how +could a sentiment be more exquisitely or more acceptably expressed +than by the gift of a costly gem uttering that sentiment with an +unspoken eloquence! Did you but know the language of gems, your choice +would not be the diamond. 'Diamond me no diamonds,' emblems of pride-- + + 'Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, + I see the lords of humankind pass by.' + +"Your choice would have been the pearl, symbol of modest loveliness. + + 'Full many a gem of purest ray serene + The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;' + + 'Orient pearls at random strung;' + + 'Fold, little trembler, thy fluttering wing, + Freely partake of love's fathomless spring; + So hallowed thy presence, the spirit within + Hath whispered, "The angels protect thee from sin."'" + +The speaker ceased, with his glance hovering caressingly over the +little trembler with fluttering wing, that is, the big-waisted man. +The company sat in listening expectancy; and the big-waisted man, +whose eyes had long ago sought refuge in the fire, lifted them and +said, satirically, "Go on," at the same time trying to buy his way out +with a smile. + +"It's your turn," quickly responded the jewel's owner, with something +droll in his manner that made the company laugh at the other's +expense. The big-waisted man kindled, then smiled again, and said: + +"Was that emblem of modest loveliness give' to you symbolically, or +did you present it to yourself?" + +"I took it for a debt," replied the wearer, bowing joyously. + +"Ah!" said the other. "Well, I s'pose it was either that or her +furniture?" + +"Thanks, yes." There was a pause, and then the pearl's owner spoke on. +"Strange fact. That was years ago. And yet"--he fondled his gem with +thumb and finger and tender glance--"you're the first man I've met to +whom I could sincerely and symbolically present it, and you don't want +it. I'm sorry." + +"I see," said the big-waisted man, glaring at him. + +"So do I," responded the pearl's owner. A smile went round, and the +company sat looking into the fire. Outside the wind growled and +scolded, shook and slapped the house, and thrashed it with the rain. A +man sitting against the chimney said: + +"If this storm keeps on six hours longer I reduce my estimate of the +cotton-crop sixty-five thousand bales." But no one responded; and as +the importance died out of his face he dropped his gaze into the fire +with a pretence of deep meditation. Presently another, a good-looking +young fellow, said: + +"Well, gents, I never cared much for jewelry. But I like a nice +scarf-pin; it's nobby. And I like a handsome seal-ring." He drew one +from a rather chubby finger, and passed it to his next neighbor, +following it with his eyes, and adding: "That's said to be a real +intaglio. But--now, one thing I don't like, that's to see a lady wear +a quantity of diamond rings outside of her glove, and heavy gold +chains, and"--He was interrupted. A long man, with legs stiffened out +to the fire, lifted a cigar between two fingers, sent a soft jet of +smoke into the air, and began monotonously: + + "'Chains on a Southern woman? Chains?' + +I know the lady that wrote that piece." He suddenly gathered himself +up for some large effort. "I can't recite it as she used to, but"--And +to the joy of all he was interrupted. + +"Gentlemen," said one, throwing a cigarette stump into the fire, +"that brings up the subject of the war. By the by, do you know what +that war cost the Government of the United States?" He glanced from +one to another until his eye reached the wearer of the pearl, who had +faced about, and stood now, with the jewel glistening in the +firelight, and who promptly said: + +"Yes; how much?" + +"Well," said the first questioner with sudden caution, "I may be +mistaken, but I've heard that it cost six--I think they say +six--billion dollars. Didn't it?" + +"It did," replied the other, with a smile of friendly commendation; +"it cost six billion, one hundred and eighty-nine million, nine +hundred and twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and eight dollars. The +largest item is interest; one billion, seven hundred and one million, +two hundred and fifty-six thousand, one hundred and ninety-eight +dollars, forty-two cents. The next largest, the pay of troops; the +next, clothing the army. If there's any item of the war's expenses you +would like to know, ask me. Capturing president Confederate +States--ninety-seven thousand and thirty-one dollars, three cents." +The speaker's manner grew almost gay. The other smiled defensively, +and responded: + +"You've got a good memory for sta-stistics. I haven't; and yet I +always did like sta-stistics. I'm no sta-stitian, and yet if I had the +time sta-stistics would be my favorite study; I s'pose it's yours." + +The wearer of the pearl shook his head. "No. But I like it. I like +the style of mind that likes it." The two bowed with playful +graciousness to each other. "Yes, I do. And I've studied it, some +little. I can tell you the best time of every celebrated trotter in +this country; the quickest trip a steamer ever made between Queenstown +and New York, New York and Queenstown, New Orleans and New York; the +greatest speed ever made on a railroad or by a yacht, pedestrian, +carrier-pigeon, or defaulting cashier; the rate of postage to every +foreign country; the excess of women over men in every State of the +Union so afflicted--or blessed, according to how you look at it; the +number of volumes in each of the world's ten largest libraries; the +salary of every officer of the United-States Government; the average +duration of life in a man, elephant, lion, horse, anaconda, tortoise, +camel, rabbit, ass, etcetera-etcetera; the age of every crowned head +in Europe; each State's legal and commercial rate of interest; and how +long it takes a healthy boy to digest apples, baked beans, cabbage, +dates, eggs, fish, green corn, h, i, j, k, l-m-n-o-p, quinces, rice, +shrimps, tripe, veal, yams, and any thing you can cook commencing with +z. It's a fascinating study. But it's not my favorite. + + 'The proper study of mankind is man. + * * * * * + Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, + The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!' + +"I love to study human nature. That's my favorite study! The art of +reading the inner human nature by the outer aspect is of immeasurable +interest and boundless practical value, and the man who can practise +it skilfully and apply it sagaciously is on the high road to fortune, +and why? Because to know it thoroughly is to know whom to trust and +how far; to select wisely a friend, a confidant, a partner in any +enterprise; to shun the untrustworthy, to anticipate and turn to our +personal advantage the merits, faults, and deficiencies of all, and to +evolve from their character such practical results as we may choose +for our own ends; but a thorough knowledge is attained only by +incessant observation and long practice; like music, it demands a +special talent possessed by different individuals in variable quantity +or not at all. You, gentlemen, all are, what I am not, commercial +tourists. Before you I must be modest. You, each of you, have been +chosen from surrounding hundreds or thousands for your superior +ability, natural or acquired, to scan the human face and form and know +whereof you see. I look you in the eye--you look me in the eye--for +the eye, though it does not tell all, tells much--it is the key of +character--it has been called the mirror of the soul-- + + 'And looks commercing with the skies, + Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.' + +And so looking you read me. You say to yourself, 'There's a man with +no concealments, yet who speaks not till he's spoken to; knows when to +stop, and stops.' You note my pale eyebrows, my slightly prominent and +pointed chin, somewhat over-sized mouth; small, well-spread ears, +faintly aquiline nose; fine, thin, blonde hair, a depression in the +skull where the bump of self-conceit ought to be, and you say, 'A man +that knows his talents without being vain of them; who not only minds +his own business, but loves it, and who in that business, be it +buggy-whips or be it washine, or be it something far nobler,'--which, +let me say modestly, it is,--'simply goes to the head of the class and +stays there.' Yes, sirs, if I say that reading the human countenance +is one of my accomplishments, I am diffidently mindful that in this +company, I, myself, am read, perused; no other probably so well +read--I mean so exhaustively perused. For there is one thing about me, +gentlemen, if you'll allow me to say it, I'm short metre, large print, +and open to the public seven days in the week. And yet you probably +all make one mistake about me: you take me for the alumni of some +university. Not so. I'm a self-made man. I made myself; and +considering that I'm the first man I ever made, I think--pardon the +seeming egotism--I think I've done well. A few years ago there dwelt +in humble obscurity among the granite hills of New England, earning +his bread by the sweat of his brow upon his father's farm, a youth to +fortune and to fame unknown. But one day a voice within him said, +'Tarbox'--George W.,--namesake of the man who never told a lie,--'do +you want to succeed in life? Then leave the production of tobacco and +cider to unambitious age, and find that business wherein you can +always give a man ten times as much for his dollar as his dollar is +worth.' The meaning was plain, and from that time forth young Tarbox +aspired to become a book-agent. 'Twas not long ere he, like + + 'Young Harry Bluff, left his friends and his home, + And his dear native land, o'er the wide world to roam.' + +Books became his line, and full soon he was the head of the line. +And why? Was it because in the first short twelve months of his +career he sold, delivered, and got the money for, 5107 copies of +'Mend-me-at-Home'? No. Was it, then, because three years later he +sold in one year, with no other assistance than a man to drive the +horse and wagon, hold the blackboard, and hand out the books, 10,003 +copies of 'Rapid 'Rithmetic'? It was not. Was it, then, because in +1878, reading aright the public mind, he said to his publishers, +whose confidence in him was unbounded, 'It ain't "Mend-me-at-Home" +the people want most, nor "Rapid 'Rithmetic," nor "Heal Thyself," +nor "I meet the Emergency," nor the "Bouquet of Poetry and Song." +What they want is all these in one.'--'Abridged?' said the +publishers. 'Enlarged!' said young Tarbox,--'enlarged and copiously +illustrated, complete in one volume, price, cloth, three dollars, +sheep four, half morocco, gilt edges, five; real value to the +subscriber, two hundred and fifty; title, "The Album of Universal +Information; author, G. W. Tarbox; editor, G. W. T.; agent for the +United States, the Canadas, and Mexico, G. W. Tarbox," that is to +say, myself.' That, gentlemen, is the reason I stand at the head of +my line; not merely because on every copy sold I make an author's as +well as a solicitor's margin; but because, being the author, I know +whereof I sell. A man that's got my book has got a college +education; and when a man taps me,--for, gentlemen, I never spout +until I'm tapped,--and information bursts from me like water from a +street hydrant, and he comes to find out that every thing I tell is +in that wonderful book, and that every thing that is in that +wonderful book I can tell, he wants to own a copy; and when I tell +him I can't spare my sample copy, but I'll take his subscription, he +smiles gratefully"-- + +A cold, wet blast, rushing into the room from the hall, betrayed the +opening of the front door. The door was shut again, and a well-formed, +muscular young man who had entered stood in the parlor doorway lifting +his hat from his head, shaking the rain from it, and looking at it +with amused diffidence. Mr. Tarbox turned about once more with his +back to the fire, gave the figure a quick glance of scrutiny, then a +second and longer one, and then dropped his eyes to the floor. The +big-waisted man shifted his chair, tipped it back, and said: + +"He smiles gratefully, you say?" + +"Yes." + +"And subscribes?" + +"If he's got any sense," Mr. Tarbox replied in a pre-occupied tone. +His eyes were on the young man who still stood in the door. This +person must have reached the house in some covered conveyance. Even +his boot-tops were dry or nearly so. He was rather pleasing to see; of +good stature, his clothing cheap. A dark-blue flannel sack of the +ready-made sort hung on him not too well. Light as the garment was, he +showed no sign that he felt the penetrating cold out of which he had +just come. His throat and beardless face had the good brown of outdoor +life, his broad chest strained the two buttons of his sack, his head +was well-poised, his feet were shapely, and but for somewhat too much +roundness about the shoulder-blades, noticeable in the side view as he +carefully stood a long, queer package that was not buggy-whips against +the hat-rack, it would have been fair to pronounce him an athlete. + +The eyes of the fireside group were turned toward him; but not upon +him. They rested on a girl of sixteen who had come down the hall, and +was standing before the new-comer just beyond the door. The +registry-book was just there on a desk in the hall. She stood with a +freshly dipped pen in her hand, ignoring the gaze from the fireside +with a faintly overdone calmness of face. The new guest came forward, +and, in a manner that showed slender acquaintance with the operation, +slowly registered his name and address. + +He did it with such pains-taking, that, upside down as the writing +was, she read it as he wrote. As the Christian name appeared, her +perfunctory glance became attention. As the surname followed, the +attention became interest and recognition. And as the address was +added, Mr. Tarbox detected pleasure dancing behind the long fringe of +her discreet eyes, and marked their stolen glance of quick inspection +upon the short, dark locks and strong young form still bent over the +last strokes of the writing. But when he straightened up, carefully +shut the book, and fixed his brown eyes upon hers in guileless +expectation of instructions, he saw nothing to indicate that he was +not the entire stranger that she was to him. + +"You done had sopper?" she asked. The uncommon kindness of such a +question at such an hour of a tavern's evening was lost on the young +man's obvious inexperience, and as one schooled to the hap-hazard of +forest and field he merely replied: + +"Naw, I didn' had any." + +The girl turned--what a wealth of black hair she had!--and disappeared +as she moved away along the hall. Her voice was heard: "Mamma?" Then +there was the silence of an unheard consultation. The young man moved +a step or two into the parlor and returned toward the door as a light +double foot-fall approached again down the hall and the girl appeared +once more, somewhat preceded by a small, tired-looking, pretty woman +some thirty-five years of age, of slow, self-contained movement and +clear, meditative eyes. + +But the guest, too, had been re-enforced. A man had come silently from +the fireside, taken his hand, and now, near the doorway, was softly +shaking it and smiling. Surprise, pleasure, and reverential regard +were mingled in the young man's face, and his open mouth was gasping-- + +"Mister Tarbox!" + +"Claude St. Pierre, after six years, I'm glad to see you.--Madame, +take good care of Claude.--No fear but she will, my boy; if anybody +in Louisiana knows how to take care of a traveller, it's Madame +Beausoleil." He smiled for all. The daughter's large black eyes +danced, but the mother asked Claude, with unmoved countenance and soft +tone: + +"You are Claude St. Pierre?--from Gran' Point'?" + +"Yass." + +"Dass lately since you left yondah?" + +"About two month'." + +"Bonaventure Deschamps--he was well?" + +"Yass." Claude's eyes were full of a glad surprise, and asked a +question that his lips did not dare to venture upon. Madame Beausoleil +read it, and she said: + +"We was raise' together, Bonaventure and me." She waved her hand +toward her daughter. "He teach her to read. Seet down to the fire; we +make you some sopper." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +MARGUERITE. + + +Out in the kitchen, while the coffee was dripping and the ham and eggs +frying, the mother was very silent, and the daughter said little, but +followed her now and then with furtive liftings of her young black +eyes. Marguerite remembered Bonaventure Deschamps well and lovingly. +For years she had seen the letters that at long intervals came from +him at Grande Pointe to her mother here. In almost every one of them +she had read high praises of Claude. He had grown, thus, to be the +hero of her imagination. She had wondered if it could ever happen that +he would come within her sight, and if so, when, where, how. And now, +here at a time of all times when it would have seemed least possible, +he had, as it were, rained down. + +She wondered to-night, with more definiteness of thought than ever +before, what were the deep feelings which her reticent little +mother--Marguerite was an inch the taller--kept hid in that dear +breast. Rarely had emotion moved it. She remembered its terrible +heavings at the time of her father's death, and the later silent +downpour of tears when her only sister and brother were taken in one +day. Since then, those eyes had rarely been wet; yet more than once or +twice she had seen tears in them when they were reading a letter from +Grande Pointe. Had her mother ever had something more than a sister's +love for Bonaventure? Had Bonaventure loved her? And when? Before her +marriage, or after her widowhood? + +The only answer that came to her as she now stood, knife in hand, by +the griddle, was a roar of laughter that found its way through the +hall, the dining-room, and two closed doors, from the men about the +waiting-room fireside. That was the third time she had heard it. What +could have put them so soon into such gay mood? Could it be Claude? +Somehow she hoped it was not. Her mother reminded her that the +batter-cakes would burn. She quickly turned them. The laugh came +again. + +When by and by she went to bid Claude to his repast, the laughter, as +she reached the door of the waiting-room, burst upon her as the storm +would have done had she opened the front door. It came from all but +Claude and Mr. Tarbox. Claude sat with a knee in his hands, smiling. +The semicircle had widened out from the fire, and in the midst Mr. +Tarbox stood telling a story, of which Grande Pointe was the scene, +Bonaventure Deschamps the hero, a school-examination the circumstance, +and he, G. W., the accidental arbiter of destinies that hung upon its +results. The big-waisted man had retired for the night, and half an +eye could see that the story-teller had captivated the whole remaining +audience. He was just at the end as Marguerite re-appeared at the +door. The laugh suddenly ceased, and then all rose; it was high +bedtime. + +"And did they get married?" asked one. Three or four gathered close to +hear the answer. + +"Who? Sidonie and Bonnyventure? Yes. I didn't stay to see. I went away +into Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama, and just only a few weeks +ago took a notion to try this Attakapas and Opelousas region. But +that's what Claude tells me to-night--married more than five years +ago.--Claude, your supper wants you. Want me to go out and sit with +you? Oh, no trouble! not the slightest! It will make me feel as if I +was nearer to Bonnyventure." + +And so the group about Claude's late supper numbered four. And because +each had known Bonaventure, though each in a very different way from +any other, they were four friends when Claude had demolished the ham +and eggs, the strong black coffee, and the griddle-cakes and +sirop-de-batterie. + +At the top of the hall stairway, as Mr. Tarbox was on his way to bed, +one of the dispersed fireside circle stopped him, saying: + +"That's an awful good story!" + +"I wouldn't try a poor one on you." + +"Oh!--but really, now, in good earnest, it is good. It's good in more +ways than one. Now, you know, that man, hid away there in the swamp at +Grande Pointe, he little thinks that six or eight men away off here in +Vermilionville are going to bed to-night better men--that's it, +sir--yes, sir, that's it--yes, sir!--better men--just for having heard +of him!" + +Mr. Tarbox smiled with affectionate approval, and began to move away; +but the other put out a hand-- + +"Say, look here; I'm going away on that two o'clock train to-night. I +want that book of yours. And I don't want to subscribe and wait. I +want the book now. That's my way. I'm just that kind of a man; I'm the +nowest man you ever met up with. That book's just the kind of thing +for a man like me who ain't got no time to go exhaustively delving and +investigating and researching into things, and yet has got to keep as +sharp as a brier." + +Mr. Tarbox, on looking into his baggage, found he could oblige this +person. Before night fell again he had done virtually the same thing, +one by one, for all the rest. By that time they were all gone; but Mr. +Tarbox made Vermilionville his base of operations for several days. + +Claude also tarried. For reasons presently to appear, the "ladies +parlor," a small room behind the waiting-room, with just one door, +which let into the hall at the hall's inner end, was given up to his +use; and of evenings not only Mr. Tarbox, but Marguerite and her +mother as well, met with him, gathering familiarly about a lamp that +other male lodgers were not invited to hover around. + +The group was not idle. Mr. Tarbox held big hanks of blue and yellow +yarn, which Zoséphine wound off into balls. A square table quite +filled the centre of the room. There was a confusion of objects on it, +and now on one side and now on another Claude leaned over it and +slowly toiled, from morning until evening alone, and in the evening +with these three about him; Marguerite, with her sewing dropped upon +the floor, watching his work with an interest almost wholly silent, +only making now and then a murmured comment, her eyes passing at +intervals from his pre-occupied eyes to his hands, and her hand now +and then guessing and supplying his want as he looked for one thing or +another that had got out of sight. What was he doing? + +As to Marguerite, more than he was aware of, Zoséphine Beausoleil saw, +and was already casting about somewhat anxiously in her mind to think +what, if any thing, ought to be done about it. She saw her child's +sewing lie forgotten on the floor, and the eyes that should have been +following the needle, fixed often on the absorbed, unconscious, +boyish-manly face so near by. She saw them scanning the bent brows, +the smooth bronzed cheek, the purposeful mouth, and the unusual +length of dark eyelashes that gave its charm to the whole face; and +she saw them quickly withdrawn whenever the face with those lashes was +lifted and an unsuspecting smile of young companionship broke slowly +about the relaxing lips and the soft, deep-curtained eyes. No; Claude +little knew what he was doing. Neither did Marguerite. But, aside from +her, what was his occupation? I will explain. + +About five weeks earlier than this, a passenger on an eastward-bound +train of Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railway stood at the rear door +of the last coach, eying critically the track as it glided swiftly +from under the train and shrank perpetually into the west. The coach +was nearly empty. No one was near him save the brakeman, and by and by +he took his attention from the track and let it rest on this person. +There he found a singular attraction. Had he seen that face before, or +why did it provoke vague reminiscences of great cypresses overhead, +and deep-shaded leafy distances with bayous winding out of sight +through them, and cane-brakes impenetrable to the eye, and +axe-strokes--heard but unseen--slashing through them only a few feet +away? Suddenly he knew. + +"Wasn't it your father," he said, "who was my guide up Bayou des +Acadiens and Blind River the time I made the survey in that big swamp +north of Grande Pointe? Isn't your name Claude St. Pierre?" And +presently they were acquainted. + +"You know I took a great fancy to your father. And you've been clear +through the arithmetic twice? Why, see here; you're just the sort of +man I--Look here; don't you want to learn to be a surveyor?" The +questioner saw that same ambition which had pleased him so in the +father, leap for joy in the son's eyes. + +An agreement was quickly reached. Then the surveyor wandered into +another coach, and nothing more passed between them that day save one +matter, which, though trivial, has its place. When the surveyor +returned to the rear train, Claude was in a corner seat gazing +pensively through the window and out across the wide, backward-flying, +purpling green cane-fields of St. Mary, to where on the far left the +live-oaks of Bayou Teche seemed hoveringly to follow on the flank of +their whooping and swaggering railway-train. Claude turned and met the +stranger's regard with a faint smile. His new friend spoke first. + +"Matters may turn out so that we can have your father"-- + +Claude's eyes answered with a glad flash. "Dass what I was t'inkin'!" +he said, with a soft glow that staid even when he fell again into +revery. + +But when the engineer--for it seems that he was an engineer, chief of +a party engaged in redeeming some extensive waste swamp and marsh +lands--when the chief engineer, on the third day afterward, drew near +the place where he suddenly recollected Claude would be waiting to +enter his service, and recalled this part of their previous interview, +he said to himself, "No, it would be good for the father, but not best +for the son," and fell to thinking how often parents are called upon +to wrench their affections down into cruel bounds to make the +foundations of their children's prosperity. + +Claude widened to his new experience with the rapidity of something +hatched out of a shell. Moreover, accident was in his favor; the party +was short-handed in its upper ranks, and Claude found himself by this +stress taken into larger and larger tasks as fast as he could, though +ever so crudely, qualify for them. + +"'Tisn't at all the best thing for you," said one of the surveyors, +"but I'll lend you some books that will teach you the why as well as +the how." + +In the use of these books by lantern-light certain skill with the pen +showed itself; and when at length one day a despatch reached camp from +the absent "chief" stating that in two or three days certain matters +would take him to Vermilionville, and ordering that some one be sent +at once with all necessary field notes and appliances, and give his +undivided time to the making of certain urgently needed maps, and the +only real draughtsman of the party was ill with swamp-fever, Claude +was sent. + +On his last half-day's journey toward the place, he had fallen in with +an old gentleman whom others called "Governor," a tall, trim figure, +bent but little under fourscore years, with cheerful voice and ready +speech, and eyes hidden behind dark glasses and flickering in their +deep sockets. + +"Go to Madame Beausoleil's," he advised Claude. "That is the place for +you. Excellent person; I've known her from childhood; a woman worthy a +higher station." And so, all by accident, chance upon chance, here +was Claude making maps; and this delightful work, he thought, was +really all he was doing, in Zoséphine's little inner parlor. + +By and by it was done. The engineer had not yet arrived. The storm had +delayed work in one place and undone work in another, and he was +detained beyond expectation. But a letter said he would come in a day +or two more, and some maps of earlier surveys, drawn by skilled +workmen in great New Orleans, arrived; seeing which, Claude blushed +for his own and fell to work to make them over. + +"If at first you not succeed," said Claude,-- + +"Try--try aga-a-ain," responded Marguerite; "Bonaventure learn me that +poetry; and you?" + +"Yass," said Claude. He stood looking down at his work and not seeing +it. What he saw was Grande Pointe in the sunset hour of a spring day +six years gone, the wet, spongy margin of a tiny bayou under his feet, +the great swamp at his back, the leafy undergrowth all around; his +canoe and paddle waiting for him, and Bonaventure repeating to +him--swamp urchin of fourteen--the costliest words of kindness--to +both of them the costliest--that he had ever heard, ending with these +two that Marguerite had spoken. As he resumed his work, he said, +without lifting his eyes: + +"Seem' to me 'f I could make myself like any man in dat whole worl', I +radder make myself like Bonaventure. And you?" + +She was so slow to answer that he looked at her. Even then she merely +kept on sweeping her fingers slowly and idly back and forth on the +table, and, glancing down upon them, said without enthusiasm: "Yass." + +Yet they both loved Bonaventure, each according to knowledge of him. +Nor did their common likings stop with him. The things he had taught +Claude to love and seek suddenly became the admiration of Marguerite. +Aspirations--aspirations!--began to stir and hum in her young heart, +and to pour forth like waking bees in the warm presence of spring. +Claude was a new interpretation of life to her; as one caught abed by +the first sunrise at sea, her whole spirit leaped, with unmeasured +self-reproach, into fresh garments and to a new and beautiful stature, +and looked out upon a wider heaven and earth than ever it had seen or +desired to see before. All at once the life was more than meat and the +body than raiment. Presently she sprang to action. In the convent +school, whose white belfry you could see from the end of Madame +Beausoleil's balcony, whither Zoséphine had sent her after teaching +her all she herself knew, it had been "the mind for knowledge;" now it +was "knowledge for the mind." Mental training and enrichment had a +value now, never before dreamed of. The old school-books were got +down, recalled from banishment. Nothing ever had been hard to learn, +and now she found that all she seemed to have forgotten merely +required, like the books, a little beating clear of dust. + +And Claude was there to help. "If C"----C!----"having a start of one +hundred miles, travels"--so and so, and so and so,--"how fast must I +travel in order to"--etc. She cannot work the problem for thinking of +what it symbolizes. As C himself takes the slate, her dark eyes, +lifted an instant to his, are large with painful meaning, for she sees +at a glance she must travel--if the arithmetical is the true +answer--more than the whole distance now between them. But Claude says +there is an easy way. She draws her chair nearer and nearer to his; he +bows over the problem, and she cannot follow his pencil without +bending her head very close to his--closer--closer--until fluffy bits +of her black hair touch the thick locks on his temples. Look to your +child, Zoséphine Beausoleil, look to her! Ah! she can look; but what +can she do? + +She saw the whole matter; saw more than merely an unripe girl +smitten with the bright smile, goodly frame, and bewitching eyes of +a promising young rustic; saw her heart ennobled, her nature +enlarged, and all the best motives of life suddenly illuminated by +the presence of one to be mated with whom promised the key-note of +all harmonies; promised heart-fellowship in the ever-hoping effort +to lift poor daily existence higher and higher out of the dust and +into the light. What could she say? If great spirits in men or +maidens went always or only with high fortune, a mere Acadian lass, +a tavern maiden, were safe enough, come one fate or another. If +Marguerite were like many a girl in high ranks and low, to whom any +husband were a husband, any snug roof a home, and any living +life--But what may a maiden do, or a mother bid her do, when she +looks upon the youth so shaped without and within to her young +soul's belief in its wants, that all other men are but beasts of the +field and creeping things, and he alone Adam? To whom could the +widow turn? Father, mother?--Gone to their rest. The curé who had +stood over her in baptism, marriage, and bereavement?--Called long +ago to higher dignities and wider usefulness in distant fields. Oh +for the presence and counsel of Bonaventure! It is true, here was +Mr. Tarbox, so kind, and so replete with information; so shrewd and +so ready to advise. She spurned the thought of leaning on him; and +yet the oft-spurned thought as often returned. Already his generous +interest had explored her pecuniary affairs, and his suggestions, +too good to be ignored, had moulded them into better shape, and +enlarged their net results. And he could tell how many eight-ounce +tacks make a pound, and what electricity is, and could cure a wart +in ten minutes, and recite "Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be +proud?" And this evening, the seventh since the storm, when for one +weak moment she had allowed the conversation to drift toward +wedlock, he had stated a woman's chances of marrying between the +ages of fifteen and twenty, to wit, 14½ per cent; and between thirty +and thirty-five, 15½. + +"Hah!" exclaimed Zoséphine, her eyes flashing as they had not done in +many a day, "'tis not dat way!--not in Opelousas!" + +"Arithmetically speaking!" the statistician quickly explained. He +ventured to lay a forefinger on the back of her hand, but one glance +of her eye removed it. "You see, that's merely arithmetically +considered. Now, of course, looking at it geographically--why, of +course! And--why, as to that, there are ladies"-- + +Madame Beausoleil rose, left Mr. Tarbox holding the yarn, and went +down the hall, whose outer door had opened and shut. A moment later +she entered the room again. + +"Claude!" + +Marguerite's heart sank. Her guess was right: the chief engineer had +come. And early in the morning Claude was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +FATHER AND SON. + + +Such strange things storms do,--here purifying the air, yonder +treading down rich harvests, now replenishing the streams, and now +strewing shores with wrecks; here a blessing, there a calamity. See +what this one had done for Marguerite! Well, what? She could not +lament; she dared not rejoice. Oh! if she were Claude and Claude were +she, how quickly-- + +She wondered how many miles a day she could learn to walk if she +should start out into the world on foot to find somebody, as she had +heard that Bonaventure had once done to find her mother's lover. There +are no Bonaventures now, she thinks, in these decayed times. + +"Mamma,"--her speech was French,--"why do we never see Bonaventure? +How far is it to Grande Pointe?" + +"Ah! my child, a hundred miles; even more." + +"And to my uncle Rosamond's,--Rosamond Robichaux, on Bayou +Terrebonne?" + +"Fully as far, and almost the same journey." + +There was but one thing to be done,--crush Claude out of her heart. + +The storm had left no wounds on Grande Pointe. Every roof was safe, +even the old tobacco-shed where Bonaventure had kept school before the +schoolhouse was built. The sheltering curtains of deep forest had +broken the onset of the wind, and the little cotton, corn, and tobacco +fields, already harvested, were merely made a little more tattered and +brown. The November air was pure, sunny, and mild, and thrilled every +now and then with the note of some lingering bird. A green and bosky +confusion still hid house from house and masked from itself the all +but motionless human life of the sleepy woods village. Only an +adventitious China-tree here and there had been stripped of its golden +foliage, and kept but its ripened berries with the red birds darting +and fluttering around them like so many hiccoughing Comanches about a +dramseller's tent. And here, if one must tell a thing so painful, our +old friend the mocking-bird, neglecting his faithful wife and letting +his home go to decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting +the berries' rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you +know,--"Lost so many children, and the rest gone off in ungrateful +forgetfulness of their old hard-working father; yes;" and ready to +sing or fight, just as any other creature happened not to wish; and +going home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and getting to bed +barely able to hang on to the roost. It would have been bad enough, +even for a man; but for a bird--and a mocking-bird! + +But the storm wrought a great change in one small house not in Grande +Pointe, yet of it. Until the storm, ever since the day St. Pierre had +returned from the little railway-station where Claude had taken the +cars, he had seemed as patiently resigned to the new loneliness of +Bayou des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which day by day sat so silent +between the edges of the dark forest and the darker stream, looking +out beyond the farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes +with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously now this way and +now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows passing slowly across from one +far line of cypress wood to another. But since that night when the +hut's solitary occupant could not sleep for the winds and for thought +of Claude, there was a great difference inside. And this did not +diminish; it grew. It is hard for a man to be both father and mother, +and at the same time be childless. The bonds of this condition began +slowly to tighten around St. Pierre's heart and then to cut into it. +And so, the same day on which Claude in Vermilionville left the +Beausoleils' tavern, the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, ever in his +mind's eye, was empty, and in Grande Pointe his father stood on the +one low step at the closed door of Bonaventure's little frame +schoolhouse. + +He had been there a full minute and had not knocked. Every movement, +to-day, came only after an inward struggle. Many associations crowded +his mind on this doorstep. Six years before, almost on this spot, a +mere brier-patch then, he and Maximian Roussel had risen from the +grassy earth and given the first two welcoming hand-grasps to the +schoolmaster. And now, as one result, Claude, who did not know his +letters then, was rising--nay, had risen--to greatness! Claude, whom +once he would have been glad to make a good fisherman and swamper, or +at the utmost a sugar-boiler, was now a greater, in rank at least, +than the very schoolmaster. Truly "knowledge is power"--alas! yes; for +it had stolen away that same Claude. The College Point priest's +warning had come true: it was "good-by to Grande Pointe!"--Nay, nay, +it must not be! Is that the kind of power education is? Power to tear +children from their parents? Power to expose their young heads to +midnight storms? Power to make them eager to go, and willing to stay +away, from their paternal homes? Then indeed the priest had said only +too truly, that these public schools teach every thing except morals +and religion! From the depth of St. Pierre's heart there quickly came +a denial of the charge; and on the moment, like a chanted response, +there fell upon his listening ear a monotonous intonation from within +the door. A reading-class had begun its exercise. He knew the words by +heart, so often had Claude and he read them together. He followed the +last stanza silently with his own lips. + + "Remember, child, remember + That you love, with all your might, + The God who watches o'er us + And gives us each delight, + Who guards us ever in the day, + And saves as in the night." + +Tears filled the swamper's eyes. He moved as if to leave the place. +But again he paused, with one foot half lowered to the ground. His +jaws set, a frown came between his eyes; he drew back the foot, turned +again to the door, and gave a loud, peremptory knock. + +Bonaventure came to the door. Anxiety quickly overspread his face as +he saw the gloom on St. Pierre's. He stood on the outer edge of the +sill, and drew the door after him. + +"I got good news," said St. Pierre, with no softening of countenance. + +"Good news?" + +"Yass.--I goin' make Claude come home." + +Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. St. Pierre looked +away and continued: + +"'S no use. Can't stand it no longer." He turned suddenly upon the +schoolmaster. "Why you di'n' tell me ed'cation goin' teck my boy 'way +from me?" In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification +quickly changed to one of anxious compassion. + +"Wait!" he said. He went back into the schoolroom, leaving St. Pierre +in the open door, and said: + +"Dear chil'run, I perceive generally the aspects of fatigue. You have +been good scholars. I pronounce a half-hollyday till to-morrow +morning. Come, each and every one, with lessons complete." + +The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another to shake the +schoolmaster's hand as they passed him. When they were gone he put on +his coarse straw hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as +they went, down the green road that years before had first brought the +educator to Grande Pointe. + +"Dear friend," said the schoolmaster, "shall education be to blame for +this separation? Is not also non-education responsible? Is it not by +the non-education of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit here for +Claude's staying?" + +"You stay!" + +"I? I stay? Ah! sir, I stay, yes! Because like Claude, leaving my home +and seeking by wandering to find the true place of my utility, a voice +spake that I come at Grande Pointe. Behole me! as far from my +childhood home as Claude from his. Friend,--ah! friend, what shall +I,--shall Claude,--shall any man do with education! Keep it? Like a +miser his gol'? What shall the ship do when she is load'? Dear +friend,"--they halted where another road started away through the +underbrush at an abrupt angle on their right,--"where leads this +narrow road? To Belle Alliance plantation only, or not also to the +whole worl'? So is education! That road here once fetch me at Grande +Pointe; the same road fetch Claude away. Education came whispering, +'Claude St. Pierre, come! I have constitute' you citizen of the worl'. +Come, come, forgetting self!' Oh, dear friend, education is not for +self alone! Nay, even self is not for self!" + +"Well, den,"--the deep-voiced woodman stood with one boot on a low +stump, fiercely trimming a branch that he had struck from the parent +stem with one blow of his big, keen clasp-knife,--"self not for +self,--for what he gone off and lef' me in de swamp?" + +"Ah, sir!" replied Bonaventure, "what do I unceasingly tell those dear +school-chil'run? 'May we not make the most of self, yet not for +self?'" He laid his hand upon St. Pierre's shoulder. "And who sent +Claude hence if not his unselfish father?" + +"I was big fool," said St. Pierre, whittling on. + +"Nay, wise! Discovering the great rule of civilize-ation. Every man +not for self, but for every other!" + +The swamper disclaimed the generous imputation with a shake of the +head. + +"Naw, I dunno nut'n' 'bout dat. I look out for me and my boy, me.--And +beside,"--he abruptly threw away the staff he had trimmed, shut his +knife with a snap, and thrust it into his pocket,--"I dawn't see +ed'cation make no diff'ence. You say ed'cation--priest say +religion--me, I dawn't see neider one make no diff'ence. I see every +man look out for hisself and his li'l' crowd. Not you, but"--He waved +his hand bitterly toward the world at large. + +"Ah, sir!" cried Bonaventure, "'tis not something what you can see all +the time, like the horns on a cow! And yet, sir,--and yet!"--he lifted +himself upon tiptoe and ran his fingers through his thin hair--"the +education that make' no difference is but a dead body! and the +religion that make' no difference is a ghost! Behole! behole two +thing' in the worl', where all is giving and getting, two thing', +con_tra_ry, yet resem'ling! 'Tis the left han'--alas, alas!--giving +only to get; and the right, blessed of God, getting only to give! How +much resem'ling, yet how con_tra_ry! The one--han' of all strife; the +other--of all peace. And oh! dear friend, there are those who call the +one civilize-ation, and the other religion. Civilize-ation? Religion? +They are one! They are body and soul! I care not what religion the +priest teach you; in God's religion is comprise' the total _mécanique_ +of civilize-ation. We are all in it; you, me, Claude, Sidonie; all in +it! Each and every at his task, however high, however low, working not +to get, but to give, and not to give only to his own li'l' crowd, but +to all, to all!" The speaker ceased, for his hearer was nodding his +head with sceptical impatience. + +"Yass," said the woodman, "yass; but look, Bonaventure. Di'n' you said +one time, 'Knowledge is power'?" + +"Yes, truly; and it is." + +"But what use knowledge be power if goin' give ev't'in' away?" + +Bonaventure drew back a step or two, suddenly jerked his hat from his +head, and came forward again with arms stretched wide and the hat +dangling from his hand. "Because--because God will not let it sta-a-ay +given away! 'Give--it shall be give' to you.' Every thing given out +into God's worl' come back to us roun' God's worl'! Resem'ling the +stirring of water in a bucket." + +But St. Pierre frowned. "Yass,--wat' in bucket,--yass. Den no man +dawn't keep nut'n'. Dawn't own nut'n' he got." + +"Ah! sir, there is a better owning than to _own_. 'Tis giving, dear +friend; 'tis giving. To get? To have? That is not to own. The giver, +not the getter; the giver! he is the true owner. Live thou not to get, +but to give." Bonaventure's voice trembled; his eyes were full of +tears. + +The swamper stood up with his own eyes full, but his voice was firm. +"Bonaventure, I don't got much. I got dat li'l' shanty on Bayou des +Acadiens, and li'l' plunder inside--few kittle', and pan',--cast-net, +fish-line', two, t'ree gun', and--my wife' grave, yond' in graveyard. +But I got Claude,--my boy, my son. You t'ink God want me give my son +to whole worl'?" + +The schoolmaster took the woodsman's brown wrist tenderly into both +his hands, and said, scarce above a whisper, "He gave His, first. He +started it. Who can refuse, He starting it? And thou wilt not refuse." +The voice rose--"I see, I see the victory! Well art thou nominated +'St. Pierre!' for on that rock of giving"-- + +"Naw, sir! Stop!" The swamper dashed the moisture from his eyes and +summoned a look of stubborn resolve. "Mo' better you call me St. +Pierre because I'm a fisherman what cuss when I git mad. Look! You +dawn't want me git Claude back in Gran' Point'. You want me to give, +give. Well, all right! I goin' _quit_ Gran' Point' and give myself, +me, to Claude. I kin read, I kin write, I t'ink kin do better 'long +wid Claude dan livin' all 'lone wid snake' and alligator. I t'ink dass +mo' better for everybody; and anyhow, I dawn't care; I dawn't give my +son to nobody; I give myself to Claude." + +Bonaventure and his friend gazed into each other's wet eyes for a +moment. Then the schoolmaster turned, lifted his eyes and one arm +toward the west, and exclaimed: + +"Ah, Claude! thou receivest the noblest gift in Gran' Point'!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +CONVERGING LINES. + + +On the prairies of Vermilion and Lafayette, winter is virtually over +by the first week in February. From sky to sky, each tree and field, +each plain and plantation grove, are putting on the greenery of a +Northern May. Even on Côte Gelée the housewife has persuaded _le +vieux_ to lay aside his gun, and the early potatoes are already +planted. If the moon be at the full, much ground is ready for the +sower; and those ploughmen and pony teams and men working along behind +them with big, clumsy hoes, over in yonder field, are planting corn. +Those silent, tremulous strands of black that in the morning sky come +gliding, high overhead, from the direction of the great sea-marshes +and fade into the northern blue, are flocks that have escaped the +murderous gun of the pot-hunter. Spring and Summer are driving these +before them as the younger and older sister, almost abreast, come +laughing, and striving to outrun each other across the Mexican Gulf. + +Those two travellers on horseback, so dwarfed by distance, whom you +see approaching out of the north-west, you shall presently find have +made, in their dress, no provision against cold. At Carancro, some +miles away to the north-east, there is a thermometer; and somewhere in +Vermilionville, a like distance to the south-east, there might +possibly be found a barometer; but there is no need of either to tell +that the air to-day is threescore and ten and will be more before it +is less. Before the riders draw near you have noticed that only one is +a man and the other a woman. And now you may see that he is sleek and +alert, blonde and bland, and the savage within us wants to knock off +his silk hat. All the more so for that she is singularly pretty to be +met in his sole care. The years count on her brows, it is true, but +the way in which they tell of matronhood--and somehow of widowhood +too--is a very fair and gentle way. Her dress is plain, but its lines +have a grace that is also dignity; and the lines of her face--lines is +too hard a word for them--are not those of time, but of will and of +care, that have chastened and refined one another. She speaks only now +and then. Her companion's speech fills the wide intervals. + +"Yesterday morning," he says, "as I came along here a little after +sunrise, there was a thin fog lying only two or three feet deep, close +to the level ground as far as you could see, hiding the whole prairie, +and making it look for all the world like a beautiful lake, with every +here and there a green grove standing out of it like a real little +island." + +She replies that she used to see it so in her younger days. The +Acadian accent is in her words. She lifts her black eyes, looks toward +Carancro, and is silent. + +"You're thinking of the changes," says her escort. + +"Yass; _'tis_ so. Dey got twenty time' many field' like had befo'. +Peop' don't raise cattl' no more; raise crop'. Dey say even dat land +changin'." + +"How changing?" + +"I dunno. I dunno if _'tis_ so. Dey say prairie risin' mo' higher +every year. I dunno if _'tis_ so. I t'ink dat land don't change much; +but de peop', yass." + +"Still, the changes are mostly good changes," responds the male rider. +"'Tisn't the prairie, but the people that are rising. They've got the +schoolhouse, and the English language, and a free paid labor system, +and the railroads, and painted wagons, and Cincinnati furniture, and +sewing-machines, and melodeons, and Horsford's Acid Phosphate; and +they've caught the spirit of progress!" + +"Yass, _'tis_ so. Dawn't see nobody seem satisfied--since de +army--since de railroad." + +"Well, that's right enough; they oughtn't to be satisfied. You're not +satisfied, are you? And yet you've never done so well before as you +have this season. I wish I could say the same for the 'Album of +Universal Information;' but I can't. I tell you that, Madame +Beausoleil; I wouldn't tell anybody else." + +Zoséphine responds with a dignified bow. She has years ago noticed in +herself, that, though she has strength of will, she lacks clearness +and promptness of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to do +with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. But there is always +a plausible explanation of his presence, and a person of more tactful +propriety, it seems to her, never put his name upon her tavern +register or himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow or +specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions +in her that Bonaventure lighted; and although Mr. Tarbox's modest +loveliness is not visible, yet a certain fundamental rectitude, +discernible behind all his nebulous gaudiness, confirms her liking. +Then, too, he has earned her gratitude. She has inherited not only her +father's small fortune, but his thrift as well. She can see the +sagacity of Mr. Tarbox's advice in pecuniary matters, and once and +once again, when he has told her quietly of some little operation into +which he and the ex-governor--who "thinks the world of me," he +says--were going to dip, and she has accepted his invitation to +venture in also, to the extent of a single thousand dollars, the money +has come back handsomely increased. Even now, the sale of all her +prairie lands to her former kinsmen-in-law, which brought her out here +yesterday and lets her return this morning, is made upon his +suggestion, and is so advantageous that somehow, she doesn't know +why, she almost fears it isn't fair to the other side. The fact is, +the country is passing from the pastoral to the agricultural life, the +prairies are being turned into countless farms, and the people are +getting wealth. So explains Mr. Tarbox, whose happening to come along +this morning bound in her direction is pure accident--pure accident. + +"No, the 'A. of U. I.' hasn't done its best," he says again. "For one +thing, I've had other fish to fry. You know that." He ventures a +glance at her eyes, but they ignore it, and he adds, "I mean other +financial matters." + +"_'Tis_ so," says Zoséphine; and Mr. Tarbox hopes the reason for this +faint repulse is only the nearness of this farmhouse peeping at them +through its pink veil of blossoming peach-trees, as they leisurely +trot by. + +"Yes," he says; "and, besides, 'Universal Information' isn't what this +people want. The book's too catholic for them." + +"Too Cat'oleek!" Zoséphine raises her pretty eyebrows in grave +astonishment--"'Cadian' is all Cat'oleek." + +"Yes, yes, ecclesiastically speaking, I know. That wasn't my meaning. +Your smaller meaning puts my larger one out of sight; yes, just as +this Cherokee hedge puts out of sight the miles of prairie fields, and +even that house we just passed. No, the 'A. of U. I.,'--I love to call +it that; can you guess why?" There is a venturesome twinkle in his +smile, and even a playful permission in her own as she shakes her +head. + +"Well, I'll tell you; it's because it brings U and I so near +together." + +"Hah!" exclaims Madame Beausoleil, warningly, yet with sunshine and +cloud on her brow at once. She likes her companion's wit, always so +deep, and yet always so delicately pointed! His hearty laugh just now +disturbs her somewhat, but they are out on the wide plain again, +without a spot in all the sweep of her glance where an eye or an ear +may ambush them or their walking horses. + +"No," insists her fellow-traveller; "I say again, as I said before, +the 'A. of U. I.'"--he pauses at the initials, and Zoséphine's faint +smile gives him ecstasy--"hasn't done its best. And yet it has done +beautifully! Why, when did you ever see such a list as this?" He +dexterously draws from an extensive inner breast-pocket, such as no +coat but a book-agent's or a shoplifter's would be guilty of, a wide, +limp, morocco-bound subscription-book. "Here!" He throws it open upon +the broad Texas pommel. "Now, just for curiosity, look at it--oh! you +can't see it from away off there, looking at it sideways!" He gives +her a half-reproachful, half-beseeching smile and glance, and gathers +up his dropped bridle. They come closer. Their two near shoulders +approach each other, the two elbows touch, and two dissimilar hands +hold down the leaves. The two horses playfully bite at each other; it +is their way of winking one eye. + +"Now, first, here's the governor's name; and then his son's, and his +nephew's, and his other son's, and his cousin's. And here's Pierre +Cormeaux, and Baptiste Clément, you know, at Carancro; and here's +Basilide Sexnailder, and Joseph Cantrelle, and Jacques Hébert; see? +And Gaudin, and Laprade, Blouin, and Roussel,--old Christofle Roussel +of Beau Bassin,--Duhon, Roman and Simonette Le Blanc, and Judge +Landry, and Thériot,--Colonel Thériot,--Martin, Hébert again, +Robichaux, Mouton, Mouton again, Robichaux again, Mouton--oh, I've got +'em all!--Castille, Beausoleil--cousin of yours? Yes, he said so; good +fellow, thinks you're the greatest woman alive." The two dissimilar +hands, in turning a leaf, touch, and the smaller one leaves the book. +"And here's Guilbeau, and Latiolais, and Thibodeaux, and Soudrie, and +Arcenaux--flowers of the community--'I gather them in,'--and here's a +page of Côte Gelée people, and--Joe Jefferson hadn't got back to the +Island yet, but I've got his son; see? And here's--can you make out +this signature? It's written so small"-- + +Both heads,--with only the heavens and the dear old earth-mother to +see them,--both heads bend over the book; the hand that had retreated +returns, but bethinks itself and withdraws again; the eyes of Mr. +Tarbox look across their corners at the sedate brow so much nearer his +than ever it has been before, until that brow feels the look, and +slowly draws away. Look to your mother, Marguerite; look to her! But +Marguerite is not there, not even in Vermilionville; nor yet in +Lafayette parish; nor anywhere throughout the wide prairies of +Opelousas or Attakapas. Triumph fills Mr. Tarbox's breast. + +"Well," he says, restoring the book to its hiding-place, "seems like +I ought to be satisfied with that; doesn't it to you?" + +It does; Zoséphine says so. She sees the double meaning, and Mr. +Tarbox sees that she sees it, but must still move cautiously. So he +says: + +"Well, I'm not satisfied. It's perfect as far as it goes, but don't +expect me to be satisfied with it. If I've seemed satisfied, shall I +tell you why it was, my dear--friend?" + +Zoséphine makes no reply; but her dark eyes meeting his for a moment, +and then falling to her horse's feet, seem to beg for mercy. + +"It's because," says Mr. Tarbox, while her heart stands still, "it's +because I've made"--there is an awful pause--"more money without the +'A. of U. I.' this season than I've made with it." + +Madame Beausoleil catches her breath, shows relief in every feature, +lifts her eyes with sudden brightness, and exclaims: + +"Dass good! Dass mighty good, yass! _'Tis_ so." + +"Yes, it is; and I tell you, and you only, because I'm proud to +believe you're my sincere friend. Am I right?" + +Zoséphine busies herself with her riding-skirt, shifts her seat a +little, and with studied carelessness assents. + +"Yes," her companion repeats; "and so I tell you. The true business +man is candid to all, communicative to none. And yet I open my heart +to you. I can't help it; it won't stay shut. And you must see, I'm +sure you must, that there's something more in there besides money; +don't you?" His tone grows tender. + +Madame Beausoleil steals a glance toward him,--a grave, timid glance. +She knows there is safety in the present moment. Three horsemen, +strangers, far across the field in their front, are coming toward +them, and she feels an almost proprietary complacence in a suitor whom +she can safely trust to be saying just the right nothings when those +shall meet them and ride by. She does not speak; but he says: + +"You know there is, dear Jos----friend!" He smiles with modest +sweetness. "G. W. Tarbox doesn't run after money, and consequently he +never runs past much without picking it up." They both laugh in +decorous moderation. The horsemen are drawing near; they are Acadians. +"I admit I love to make money. But that's not my chief pleasure. My +chief pleasure is the study of human nature. + + 'The proper study of mankind is man. + * * * * * + Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, + The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.' + +"This season I've been studying these Acadian people. And I like them! +They don't like to be reminded that they're Acadians. Well, that's +natural; the Creoles used to lord it over them so when the Creoles +were slave-holding planters and they were small farmers. That's about +past now. The Acadians are descended from peasants, that's true, while +some Creoles are from the French nobility. But, hooh! wouldn't any +fair-minded person"--the horsemen are within earshot; they are +staring at the silk hat--"Adjieu." + +"Adjieu." They pass. + +"--Wouldn't any fair-minded person that knows what France was two or +three hundred years ago--show you some day in the 'Album'--about as +lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good +deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dear--friend, the day's +coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there +is in Louisiana! They're the only white people that ever trod this +continent--island or mainland--who never on their own account +oppressed anybody. Some little depredation on their British neighbors, +out of dogged faithfulness to their king and church,--that's the worst +charge you can make. Look at their history! all poetry and pathos! +Look at their character! brave, peaceable, loyal, industrious, +home-loving"-- + +But Zoséphine was looking at the speaker. Her face is kindled with the +inspiration of his praise. His own eyes grow ardent. + +"Look at their women! Ah, Josephine, I'm looking at one! Don't turn +away. + + --'One made up + Of loveliness alone; + A woman, of her gentle sex + The seeming paragon.' + + 'The reason firm, the temperate will, + Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; + A perfect woman nobly planned, + To warn, to comfort, and command.' + +"You can't stop me, Josephine; it's got to come, and come right now. +I'm a homeless man, Josephine, tired of wandering, with a heart bigger +and weaker than I ever thought I had. I want you! I love you! I've +never loved anybody before in my life except myself, and I don't find +myself as lovely as I used. Oh, take me, Josephine! I don't ask you to +love as if you'd never loved another. I'll take what's left, and be +perfectly satisfied! I know you're ambitious, and I love you for that! +But I do think I can give you a larger life. With you for a wife, I +believe I could be a man you needn't be ashamed of. I'm already at the +head of my line. Best record in the United States, Josephine, whether +by the day, week, month, year, or locality. But if you don't like the +line, I'll throw up the 'A. of U. I.' and go into any thing you say; +for I want to lift you higher, Josephine. You're above me already, by +nature and by rights, but I can lift you, I know I can. You've got no +business keeping tavern; you're one of Nature's aristocrats. Yes, you +are! and you're too young and lovely to stay a widow--in a State where +there's more men than there's women. There's a good deal of the hill +yet to climb before you start down. Oh, let's climb it together, +Josephine! I'll make you happier than you are, Josephine; I haven't +got a bad habit left; such as I had, I've quit; it don't pay. I don't +drink, chew, smoke, tell lies, swear, quarrel, play cards, make debts, +nor belong to a club--be my wife! Your daughter 'll soon be leaving +you. You can't be happy alone. Take me! take me!" He urges his horse +close--her face is averted--and lays his hand softly but firmly on +her two, resting folded on the saddle-horn. They struggle faintly and +are still; but she slowly shakes her hanging head. + +"O Josephine! you don't mean no, do you? Look this way! you don't mean +no?" He presses his hand passionately down upon hers. Her eyes do not +turn to his; but they are lifted tearfully to the vast, unanswering +sky, and as she mournfully shakes her head again, she cries,-- + +"I dunno! I dunno! I can't tell! I got to see Marguerite." + +"Well, you'll see her in an hour, and if she"-- + +"Naw, naw! 'tis not so; Marguerite is in New Orleans since Christmas." + +Very late in the evening of that day Mr. Tarbox entered the principal +inn of St. Martinville, on the Teche. He wore an air of blitheness +which, though silent, was overdone. As he pushed his silk hat back on +his head, and registered his name with a more than usual largeness of +hand, he remarked: + + "'Man wants but little here below, + Nor wants that little long.' + +"Give me a short piece of candle and a stumpy candlestick--and + + 'Take me up, and bear me hence + Into some other chamber'"-- + +"Glad to see you back, Mr. Tarbox," responded the host; and as his +guest received the candle and heard the number of his room,--"books +must 'a' went well this fine day." + +Mr. Tarbox fixed him with his eye, drew a soft step closer, said in a +low tone: + + "'My only books + Were woman's looks, + And folly's all they've taught me.'" + +The landlord raised his eyebrows, rounded his mouth, and darted out +his tongue. The guest shifted the candle to his left hand, laid his +right softly upon the host's arm, and murmured: + +"List! Are we alone? If I tell thee something, wilt thou tell it +never?" + +The landlord smiled eagerly, shook his head, and bent toward his +speaker. + +"Friend Perkins," said Mr. Tarbox, in muffled voice-- + + "'So live, that when thy summons comes to join + The innumerable caravan which moves + To that mysterious realm where each shall take + His chamber in the silent halls of death, + Thou go not, like the quarry-slave, at night, + Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed + By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave + Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch + About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.' + +"Don't let the newspapers get hold of it--good-night." + +But it was only at daybreak that Mr. Tarbox disordered the drapery of +his couch to make believe he had slept there, and at sunrise he was +gone to find Claude. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +'THANASE'S VIOLIN. + + +Had Marguerite gone to New Orleans the better to crush Claude out of +her heart? No, no! Her mother gave an explanation interesting and +reasonable enough, and at the same time less uncomfortably romantic. +Marguerite had gone to the city to pursue studies taught better there +than in Opelousas; especially music. + +Back of this was a reason which she had her mother's promise not to +mention,--the physician's recommendation--a change of scene. He spoke +of slight malarial influences, and how many odd forms they took; of +dyspepsia and its queer freaks; of the confining nature of house +cares, and of how often they "ran down the whole system." His phrases +were French, but they had all the weary triteness of these; while +Marguerite rejoiced that he did not suspect the real ailment, and +Zoséphine saw that he divined it perfectly. + +A change of scene. Marguerite had treated the suggestion lightly, as +something amusingly out of proportion to her trivial disorder, but +took pains not to reject it. Zoséphine had received it with troubled +assent, and mentioned the small sugar-farm and orangery of the kinsman +Robichaux, down on Bayou Terrebonne. But the physician said, "If that +would not be too dull;" mentioned, casually, the city, and saw +Marguerite lighten up eagerly. The city was chosen; the physician's +sister, living there, would see Marguerite comfortably established. +All was presently arranged. + +"And you can take your violin with you, and study music," he said. +Marguerite had one, and played it with a taste and skill that knew no +competitor in all the surrounding region. + +It had belonged to her father. Before she was born, all Lafayette +parish had known it tenderly. Before she could talk she had +danced--courtesied and turned, tiptoed and fallen and risen again, +latter end first, to the gay strains he had loved to wring from it. +Before it seemed safe, for the instrument, to trust it in her hands, +she had learned to draw its bow; and for years, now, there had been no +resident within the parish who could not have been her scholar better +than to be her teacher. + +When Claude came, she had shut the violin in its case, and left the +poor thing hidden away, despising its powers to charm, lost in +self-contempt, and helpless under the spell of a chaste passion's +first enchantment. When he went, she still forgot the instrument for +many days. She returned with more than dutiful energy to her full part +in the household cares, and gave every waking hour not so filled to +fierce study. If she could not follow him--if a true maiden must wait +upon faith--at least she would be ready if fate should ever bring him +back. + +But one night, when she had conned her simple books until the words +ran all together on the page, some good angel whispered, "The +violin!" She took it and played. The music was but a song, but from +some master of song. She played it, it may be, not after the best +rules, yet as one may play who, after life's first great billow has +gone over him, smites again his forgotten instrument. With tears, of +all emotions mingled, starting from her eyes, and the bow trembling on +the strings, she told the violin her love. And it answered her: + +"Be strong! be strong! you shall not love for naught. He shall--he +shall come back--he shall come back and lead us into joy." From that +time the violin had more employment than ever before in all its days. + +So it and Marguerite were gone away to the great strange city +together. The loneliness they left behind was a sad burden to +Zoséphine. No other one thing had had so much influence to make so +nearly vulnerable the defences of her heart when Mr. Tarbox essayed to +storm them. On the night following that event, the same that he had +spent so sleeplessly in St. Martinville, she wrote a letter to +Marguerite, which, though intended to have just the opposite effect, +made the daughter feel that this being in New Orleans, and all the +matter connected with it, were one unmixed mass of utter selfishness. +The very written words that charged her to stay on seemed to say, +"Come home!" Her strong little mother! always quiet and grave, it is +true, and sometimes sad; yet so well poised, so concentrated, so equal +to every passing day and hour!--she to seem--in this letter--far out +of her course, adrift, and mutely and dimly signalling for aid! The +daughter read the pages again and again. What could they mean? Here, +for instance, this line about the mother's coming herself to the city, +if, and if, and if! + +The letter found Marguerite in the bosom of a family that dwelt in the +old Rue Bourbon, only a short way below Canal Street, the city's +centre. The house stands on the street, its drawing-room windows +opening upon the sidewalk, and a narrow balcony on the story above +shading them scantily at noon. A garden on the side is visible from +the street through a lofty, black, wrought-iron fence. Of the details +within the enclosure, I remember best the vines climbing the walls of +the tall buildings that shut it in, and the urns and vases, and the +evergreen foliage of the Japan plum-trees. A little way off, and +across the street, was the pleasant restaurant and salesroom of the +Christian Women's Exchange. + +The family spoke English. Indeed, they spoke it a great deal; and +French--also a great deal. The younger generation, two daughters and a +son, went much into society. Their name was that of an ancient French +noble house, with which, in fact, they had no connection. They took +great pains to call themselves Creoles, though they knew well enough +they were Acadians. The Acadian caterpillar often turns into a Creole +butterfly. Their great-grandfather, one of the children of the +Nova-Scotian deportation, had been a tobacco-farmer on the old Côte +Acadien in St. John the Baptist parish. Lake des Allemands lay there, +just behind him. In 1815, his son, their grandfather, in an excursion +through the lake and bayou beyond, discovered, far south-eastward in +the midst of the Grande Prairie des Allemands, a "pointe" of several +hundred acres extent. Here, with one or two others, he founded the +Acadian settlement of "La Vacherie," and began to build a modest +fortune. The blood was good, even though it was not the blood of +ancient robbers; and the son in the next generation found his way, by +natural and easy stages, through Barataria and into the city, and +became the "merchant" of his many sugar and rice planting kinsmen and +neighbors. + +It was a great favor to Marguerite to be taken into such a household +as this. She felt it so. The household felt it so. Yet almost from the +start they began to play her, in their social world, as their best +card--when they could. She had her hours of school and of home study; +also her music, both lessons and practice; was in earnest both as to +books and violin, and had teachers who also were in earnest; and so +she found little time for social revels. Almost all sociality is revel +in New-Orleans society, and especially in the society she met. + +But when she did appear, somehow she shone. A native instinct in +dress,--even more of it than her mother had at the same age,--and in +manners and speech, left only so little rusticity as became itself a +charm rather than a blemish, suggested the sugar-cane fields; the +orange-grove; the plantation-house, with pillared porch, half-hidden +in tall magnolias and laurestines and bushes of red and white +camellias higher and wider than arms can reach, and covered with +their regal flowers from the ground to their tops; and the bayou front +lined with moss-draped live-oaks, their noonday shadows a hundred feet +across. About her there was not the faintest hint of the country +tavern. She was but in her seventeenth year; but on her native +prairies, where girls are women at fourteen, seventeen was almost an +advanced stage of decay. She seemed full nineteen, and a very +well-equipped nineteen as social equipments went in the circle she had +entered. Being a schoolgirl was no drawback; there are few New-Orleans +circles where it is; and especially not in her case, for she needed +neither to titter nor chatter,--she could talk. And then, her violin +made victory always easy and certain. + +Sometimes the company was largely of down-town Creoles; sometimes of +up-town people,--"Americans;" and often equally of the two sorts, +talking French and English in most amusing and pleasing confusion. For +the father of the family had lately been made president of a small +bank, and was fairly boxing the social compass in search of +depositors. Marguerite had not yet discovered that--if we may drag the +metaphor ashore--to enter society is not to emerge upon an unbroken +table-land, or that she was not on its highest plateau. She noticed +the frequency with which she encountered unaccomplished fathers, +stupid mothers, rude sons and daughters, and ill-distributed personal +regard; but she had the common-sense not to expect more of society +than its nature warrants, guessed rightly that she would find the +same thing anywhere else, and could not know that these elements were +less mixed with better here than in many other of the city's circles, +of whose existence she had not even heard. However: + +Society, at its very best, always needs, and at its best or worst +always contains, a few superior members, who make themselves a +blessing by working a constant, tactful redistribution of individuals +by their true values, across the unworthy lines upon which society +ever tends to stratify. Such a person, a matron, sat with Marguerite +one April evening under a Chinese lantern in the wide, curtained +veranda of an Esplanade-street house whose drawing-room and Spanish +garden were filled with company. + +Marguerite was secretly cast down. This lady had brought her here, +having met her but a fortnight before and chosen her at once, in her +own private counsels, for social promotion. And Marguerite had played +the violin. In her four months' advanced training she had accomplished +wonders. Her German professor made the statement, while he warned her +against enthusiastic drawing-room flattery. This evening she had +gotten much praise and thanks. Yet these had a certain discriminative +moderation that was new to her ear, and confirmed to her, not in the +pleasantest way, the realization that this company was of higher +average intelligence and refinement than any she had met before. She +little guessed that the best impression she had ever made she made +here to-night. + +Of course it was not merely on account of the violin. She had beauty, +not only of face and head, but of form and carriage. So that when she +stood with her instrument, turning, as it were, every breath of air +into music, and the growing volume of the strains called forth all her +good Acadian strength of arms and hand, she charmed not merely the +listening ear, but the eye, the reason, and the imagination in its +freest range. + +But, indeed, it was not the limitations of her social triumphs +themselves that troubled her. Every experience of the evening had +helped to show her how much wider the world was than she had dreamed, +and had opened new distances on the right, on the left, and far ahead; +and nowhere in them all could eye see, or ear hear, aught of that one +without whom to go back to old things was misery, and to go on to new +was mere weariness. And the dear little mother at home!--worth nine +out of any ten of all this crowd--still at home in that old +tavern-keeping life, now intolerable to think of, and still writing +those yearning letters that bade the daughter not return! No wonder +Marguerite's friend had divined her feelings, and drawn her out to the +cool retreat under the shadow of the veranda lanterns. + +A gentleman joined them, who had "just come," he said. Marguerite's +companion and he were old friends. Neither he nor Marguerite heard +each other's name, nor could see each other's face more than dimly. He +was old enough to be twitted for bachelorhood, and to lay the blame +upon an outdoor and out-of-town profession. Such words drew +Marguerite's silent but close attention. + +The talk turned easily from this to the ease with which the fair sex, +as compared with the other, takes on the graces of the drawing-room. +"Especially," the two older ones agreed, "if the previous lack is due +merely to outward circumstances." But Marguerite was still. Here was a +new thought. One who attained all those graces and love's prize also +might at last, for love's sake, have to count them but dross, or carry +them into retirement, the only trophies of abandoned triumphs. While +she thought, the conversation went on. + +"Yes," said her friend, replying to the bachelor, "we acquire +drawing-room graces more easily; but why? Because most of us think we +must. A man may find success in one direction or another; but a woman +has got to be a social success, or she's a complete failure. She can't +snap her fingers at the drawing-room." + +"Ah!" exclaimed Marguerite, "she can if she want!" She felt the +strength to rise that moment and go back to Opelousas, if only--and +did not see, until her companions laughed straight at her, that the +lady had spoken in jest. + +"Still," said the bachelor, "the drawing-room is woman's +element--realm--rather than man's, whatever the reasons may be. I had +a young man with me last winter"-- + +"I knew it!" thought Marguerite. + +"--until lately, in fact; he's here in town now,--whom I have tried +once or twice to decoy into company in a small experimental way. It's +harder than putting a horse into a ship. He seems not to know what +social interchange is for." + +"Thinks it's for intellectual profit and pleasure," interrupted the +ironical lady. + +"No, he just doesn't see the use or fun of it. And yet, really, that's +his only deficiency. True, he listens better than he talks--overdoes +it; but when a chap has youth, intelligence, native refinement, +integrity, and good looks, as far above the mean level as many of our +society fellows are below it, it seems to me he ought to be"-- + +"Utilized," suggested the lady, casting her eyes toward Marguerite and +withdrawing them as quickly, amused at the earnestness of her +attention. + +"Yes," said the bachelor, and mused a moment. "He's a talented fellow. +It's only a few months ago that he really began life. Now he's +outgrown my service." + +"Left the nest," said the lady. + +"Yes, indeed. He has invented"-- + +"Oh, dear!" + +The bachelor was teased. "Ah! come, now; show your usual kindness; he +has, really, made a simple, modest agricultural machine that--meets a +want long felt. Oh! you may laugh; but he laughs last. He has not only +a patent for it, but a good sale also, and is looking around for other +worlds to conquer." + +"And yet spurns society? Ours!" + +"No, simply develops no affinity for it; would like to, if only to +please me; but can't. Doesn't even make intimate companions among men; +simply clings to his fond, lone father, and the lone father to him, +closer than any pair of twin orphan girls that ever you saw. I don't +believe any thing in life could divide them." + +"Ah, don't you trust him! Man proposes, Cupid disposes. A girl will +stick to her mother; but a man? Why, the least thing--a pair of blue +eyes, a yellow curl"-- + +The bachelor gayly shook his head, and, leaning over with an air of +secrecy, said: "A pair of blue eyes have shot him through and through, +and a yellow curl is wound all round him from head to heel, and yet he +sticks to his father." + +"He can't live," said the lady. Marguerite's hand pressed her arm, and +they rose. As the bachelor drew the light curtain of a long window +aside, that they might pass in, the light fell upon Marguerite's face. +It was entirely new to him. It seemed calm. Yet instantly the question +smote him, "What have I done? what have I said?" She passed, and +turned to give a parting bow. The light fell upon him. She was right; +it was Claude's friend, the engineer. + +When he came looking for them a few minutes later, he only caught, by +chance, a glimpse of them, clouded in light wraps and passing to their +carriage. It was not yet twelve. + +Between Marguerite's chamber and that of one of the daughters of the +family there was a door that neither one ever fastened. Somewhere +down-stairs a clock was striking three in the morning, when this door +softly opened and the daughter stole into Marguerite's room in her +night-robe. With her hair falling about her, her hands unconsciously +clasped, her eyes starting, and an outcry of amazement checked just +within her open, rounded mouth, she stopped and stood an instant in +the brightly lighted chamber. + +Marguerite sat on the bedside exactly as she had come from the +carriage, save that a white gossamer web had dropped from her head and +shoulders, and lay coiled about her waist. Her tearless eyes were wide +and filled with painful meditation, even when she turned to the +alarmed and astonished girl before her. With suppressed exclamations +of wonder and pity the girl glided forward, cast her arms about the +sitting figure, and pleaded for explanation. + +"It is a headache," said Marguerite, kindly but firmly lifting away +the intwining arms.--"No, no, you can do nothing.--It is a +headache.--Yes, I will go to bed presently; you go to yours.--No, +no"-- + +The night-robed girl looked for a moment more into Marguerite's eyes, +then sank to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and wept. +Marguerite laid her hands upon the bowed head and looked down with dry +eyes. "No," she presently said again, "it is a headache. Go back to +your bed.--No, there is nothing to tell; only I have been very, very +foolish and very, very selfish, and I am going home to-morrow. +Good-night." + +The door closed softly between the two. Then Marguerite sank slowly +back upon the bed, closed her eyes, and rocking her head from side to +side, said again and again, in moans that scarcely left the lips: + +"My mother! my mother! Take me back! Oh! take me back, my mother! my +mother!" + +At length she arose, put off her attire, lay down to rest, and, even +while she was charging sleep with being a thousand leagues +away--slept. + +When she awoke, the wide, bright morning filled all the room. Had some +sound wakened her? Yes, a soft tapping came again upon her door. She +lay still. It sounded once more. For all its softness, it seemed +nervous and eager. A low voice came with it: + +"Marguerite!" + +She sprang from her pillow.--"Yes!" + +While she answered, it came again,-- + +"Marguerite!" + +With a low cry, she cast away the bed-coverings, threw back the white +mosquito-curtain and the dark masses of her hair, and started up, +lifted and opened her arms, cried again, but with joy, "My mother! my +mother!" and clasped Zoséphine to her bosom. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE SHAKING PRAIRIE. + + +Manifestly it was a generous overstatement for Claude's professional +friend to say that Claude had outgrown his service. It was true only +that by and by there had come a juncture in his affairs where he could +not, without injustice to others, make a place for Claude which he +could advise Claude to accept, and they had parted with the mutual +hope that the separation would be transient. But the surveyor could +not but say to himself that such incidents, happening while we are +still young, are apt to be turning-points in our lives, if our lives +are going to have direction and movement of their own at all. + +St. Pierre had belted his earnings about him under the woollen sash +that always bound his waist, shouldered his rifle, taken one last, +silent look at the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, stood for a few +moments with his hand in Bonaventure's above one green mound in the +churchyard at Grande Pointe, given it into the schoolmaster's care, +and had gone to join his son. Of course, not as an idler; such a +perfect woodsman easily made himself necessary to the engineer's +party. The company were sorry enough to lose him when Claude went +away; but no temptation that they could invent could stay him from +following Claude. Father and son went in one direction, and the camp +in another. + +I must confess to being somewhat vague as to just where they were. I +should have to speak from memory, and I must not make another slip in +topography. The changes men have made in Southern Louisiana these last +few years are great. I say nothing, again, of the vast widths of +prairie stripped of the herds and turned into corn and cane fields: +when I came, a few months ago, to that station on Morgan's Louisiana +and Texas Railroad where Claude first went aboard a railway-train, +somebody had actually moved the bayou, the swamp, and the prairie +apart! + +However, the exact whereabouts of the St. Pierres is not important to +us. Mr. Tarbox, when in search of the camp he crossed the Teche at St. +Martinville, expected to find it somewhere north-eastward, between +that stream and the Atchafalaya. But at the Atchafalaya he found that +the work in that region had been finished three days before, and that +the party had been that long gone to take part in a new work down in +the _prairies tremblantes_ of Terrebonne Parish. The Louisiana Land +Reclamation Company,--I think that was the name of the concern +projecting the scheme. This was back in early February, you note. + +Thither Mr. Tarbox followed. The "Album of Universal Information" went +along, and "did well." It made his progress rather slow, of course; +but one of Mr. Tarbox's many maxims was, never to make one day pay for +another when it could be made to pay for itself, and during this +season--this Louisiana campaign, as he called it--he had developed a +new art,--making each day pay for itself several times over. + +"Many of these people," he said,--but said it solely and silently to +himself,--"are ignorant, shiftless, and set in their ways; and even +when they're not they're out of the current, as it were; they haven't +headway; and so they never--or seldom ever--see any way to make money +except somehow in connection with the plantations. There's no end of +chances here to a man that's got money-sense, and nerve to use it." He +wrote that to Zoséphine, but she wrote no answer. A day rarely passed +that he did not find some man making needless loss through ignorance +or inactivity; whereupon he would simply put in the sickle of his +sharper wit, and garner the neglected harvest. Or, seeing some +unesteemed commodity that had got out of, or had never been brought +into, its best form, time, or place, he knew at sight just how, and at +what expense, to bring it there, and brought it. + +"Give me the gains other men pass by," he said, "and I'll be +satisfied. The saying is, 'Buy wisdom;' but I sell mine. I like to +sell. I enjoy making money. It suits my spirit of adventure. I like an +adventure. And if there's any thing I love, it's an adventure with +money in it! But even that isn't my chief pleasure: my chief +pleasure's the study of human nature. + + 'The proper study of mankind is man. + * * * * * + Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, + The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.'" + +This spoiling of Assyrian camps, so to speak, often detained Mr. +Tarbox within limited precincts for days at a time; but "Isn't that +what time is for?" he would say to those he had been dealing with, as +he finally snapped the band around his pocket-book; and they would +respond, "Yes, that's so." + +And then he would wish them a hearty farewell, while they were +thinking that at least he might know it was his treat. + +Thus it was the middle of February when at Houma, the parish seat of +Terrebonne, he passed the last rootlet of railway, and, standing +finally under the blossoming orange-trees of Terrebonne Bayou far +down toward the Gulf, heard from the chief of the engineering party +that Claude was not with him. + +"He didn't leave us; we left him; and up to the time when we left he +hadn't decided where he would go or what he would do. His father and +he are together, you know, and of course that makes it harder for them +to know just how to move." + +The speaker was puzzled. What could this silk-hatted, cut-away-coated, +empearled, free lance of a fellow want with Claude? He would like to +find out. So he added, "I may get a letter from him to-morrow; suppose +you stay with me until then." And, to his astonishment, Mr. Tarbox +quickly jumped at the proposition. + +No letter came. But when the twenty-four hours had passed, the +surveyor had taken that same generous--not to say credulous--liking +for Mr. Tarbox that we have seen him show for St. Pierre and for +Claude. He was about to start on a tour of observation eastward +through a series of short canals that span the shaking prairies from +bayou to bayou, from Terrebonne to Lafourche, Lafourche to Des +Allemands, so through Lake Ouacha into and up Barataria, again across +prairie, and at length, leaving Lake Cataouaché on the left, through +cypress-swamp to the Mississippi River, opposite New Orleans. He would +have pressed Mr. Tarbox to bear him company; but before he could ask +twice, Mr. Tarbox had consented. They went in a cat-rigged skiff, with +a stalwart negro rowing or towing whenever the sail was not the best. + +"It's all of sixty miles," said the engineer; "but if the wind +doesn't change or drop we can sleep to-night in Achille's hut, send +this man and skiff back, and make Achille, with his skiff, put us on +board the Louisiana-avenue ferry-launch to-morrow afternoon." + +"Who is Achille?" + +"Achille? Oh! he's merely a 'Cajun pot-hunter living on a shell bank +at the edge of Lake Cataouaché, with an Indian wife. Used to live +somewhere on Bayou des Allemands, but last year something or other +scared him away from there. He's odd--seems to be a sort of self-made +outcast. I don't suppose he's ever done anybody any harm; but he just +seems to be one of that kind that can't bear to even try to keep up +with the rest of humanity; the sort of man swamps and shaking prairies +were specially made for, you know. He's living right on top of a bank +of fossil shells now,--thousands of barrels of them,--that he knows +would bring him a little fortune if only he could command the +intelligence and the courage to market them in New Orleans. There's a +chance for some bright man who isn't already too busy. Why didn't I +think to mention it to Claude? But then neither he nor his father have +got the commercial knowledge they would need. Now"--The speaker +suddenly paused, and, as the two men sat close beside each other under +an umbrella in the stern of the skiff, looked into Mr. Tarbox's +pale-blue eyes, and smiled, and smiled. + +"I'm here," said Mr. Tarbox. + +"Yes," responded the other, "and I've just made out why! And you're +right, Tarbox; you and Claude, with or without his father, will make +a strong team. You've got no business to be canvassing books, you"-- + +"It's my line," said the canvasser, smiling fondly and pushing his hat +back,--it was wonderful how he kept that hat smooth,--"and I'm the +head of the line: + + 'A voice replied far up the height, + Excelsior!' + +I was acquainted with Mr. Longfellow." + +"Tarbox," persisted the engineer, driving away his own smile, "you +know what you are; you are a born contractor! You've found it out, +and"--smiling again--"that's why you're looking for Claude." + +"Where is he?" asked Mr. Tarbox. + +"Well, I told you the truth when I said I didn't know; but I haven't a +doubt he's in Vermilionville." + +"Neither have I," said the book-agent; "and if I had, I wouldn't give +it room. If I knew he was in New Jersey, still I'd think he was in +Vermilionville, and go there looking for him. And wherefore? For +occult reasons." The two men looked at each other smilingly in the +eye, and the boat glided on. + +The wind favored them. With only now and then the cordelle, and still +more rarely the oars, they moved all day across the lands and waters +that were once the fastnesses of the Baratarian pirates. The engineer +made his desired observations without appreciable delays, and at night +they slept under Achille's thatch of rushes. + +As the two travellers stood alone for a moment next morning, the +engineer said: + +"You seem to be making a study of my pot-hunter." + +"It's my natural instinct," replied Mr. Tarbox. "The study of human +nature comes just as natural to me as it does to a new-born duck to +scratch the back of its head with its hind foot; just as natural--and +easier. The pot-hunter is a study; you're right." + +"But he reciprocates," said the engineer; "he studies you." + +The student of man held his smiling companion's gaze with his own, +thrust one hand into his bosom, and lifted the digit of the other: +"The eyes are called the windows of the soul,-- + + 'And looks commercing with the skies, + Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.' + +"Have you tried to look into his eyes? You can't do it. He won't let +you. He's got something in there that he doesn't want you to see." + +In the middle of the afternoon, when Achille's skiff was already +re-entering the shades of the swamp on his way homeward, and his two +landed passengers stood on the levee at the head of Harvey's Canal +with the Mississippi rolling by their feet and on its farther side the +masts and spires of the city, lighted by the western sun, swinging +round the long bend of her yellow harbor, Mr. Tarbox offered his hand +to say good-by. The surveyor playfully held it. + +"I mean no disparagement to your present calling," he said, "but the +next time we meet I hope you'll be a contractor." + +"Ah!" responded Tarbox, "it's not my nature. I cannot contract; I +must always expand. And yet--I thank you. + + "'Pure thoughts are angel visitors. Be such + The frequent inmates of thy guileless breast.' + +"Good luck! Good-by!" + +One took the ferry; the other, the west bound train at Gretna. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +NOT BLUE EYES, NOR YELLOW HAIR. + + +When the St. Pierres found themselves really left with only each +other's faces to look into, and the unbounded world around them, it +was the father who first spoke: + +"Well, Claude, where you t'ink 'better go?" + +There had been a long, silent struggle in both men's minds. And now +Claude heard with joy this question asked in English. To ask it in +their old Acadian tongue would have meant retreat; this meant advance. +And yet he knew his father yearned for Bayou des Acadiens. Nay, not +his father; only one large part of his father's nature; the old, +French, home-loving part. + +What should Claude answer? Grande Pointe? Even for St. Pierre alone +that was impossible. "Can a man enter a second time into his mother's +womb?" No; the thatched cabin stood there,--stands there now; but, be +he happy or unhappy, no power can ever make St. Pierre small enough +again to go back into that shell. Let it stand, the lair of one of +whom you may have heard, who has retreated straight backward from +Grande Pointe and from advancing enlightenment and order,--the village +drunkard, Chat-oué. + +Claude's trouble, then, was not that his father's happiness beckoned +in one direction and his in another; but that his father's was linked +on behind his. Could the father endure the atmosphere demanded by the +son's widening power? Could the second nature of lifetime habits bear +the change? Of his higher spirit there was no doubt. Neither father +nor son had any conception of happiness separate from noble +aggrandizement. Nay, that is scant justice; far more than they knew, +or than St. Pierre, at least, would have acknowledged, they had caught +the spirit of Bonaventure, to call it by no higher name, and saw that +the best life for self is to live the best possible for others. "For +all others," Bonaventure would have insisted; but "for Claude," St. +Pierre would have amended. They could not return to Grande Pointe. + +Where, then, should they go? Claude stood with his arms akimbo, looked +into his father's face, tried to hide his perplexity under a smile, +and then glanced at their little pile of effects. There lay their +fire-arms, the same as ever; but the bundles in Madras handkerchiefs +had given place to travelling-bags, and instead of pots and pans here +were books and instruments. What reply did these things make? New +Orleans? The great city? Even Claude shrank from that thought. + +No, it was the name of quite a different place they spoke; a name that +Claude's lips dared not speak, because, for lo! these months and +months his heart had spoken it,--spoken it at first in so soft a +whisper that for a long time he had not known it was his heart he +heard. When something within uttered and re-uttered the place's name, +he would silently explain to himself: "It is because I am from home. +It is this unfixed camp-life, this life without my father, without +Bonaventure, that does it. This is not love, of course; I know that: +for, in the first place, I was in love once, when I was fourteen, and +it was not at all like this; and in the second place, it would be +hopeless presumption in me, muddy-booted vagabond that I am; and in +the third place, a burnt child dreads fire. And so it cannot be love. +When papa and I are once more together, this unaccountable longing +will cease." + +But, instead of ceasing, it had grown. The name of the place was still +the only word the heart would venture; but it meant always one pair of +eyes, one young face, one form, one voice. Still it was not love--oh, +no! Now and then the hospitality of some plantation-house near the +camp was offered to the engineers; and sometimes, just to prove that +this thing was not love, he would accept such an invitation, and even +meet a pretty maiden or two, and ask them for music and song--for +which he had well-nigh a passion--and talk enough to answer their +questions and conjectures about a surveyor's life, etc.; but when he +got back to camp, matters within his breast were rather worse than +better. + +He had then tried staying in camp, but without benefit,--nothing +cured, every thing aggravated. And yet he knew so perfectly well that +he was not in love, that just to realize the knowledge, one evening, +when his father was a day's march ahead, and he was having a pleasant +chat with the "chief," no one else nigh, and they were dawdling away +its closing hour with pipes, metaphysics, psychology, and like +trifles, which Claude, of course, knew all about,--Claude told him of +this singular and amusing case of haunting fantasy in his own +experience. His hearer had shown even more amusement than he, and had +gone on smiling every now and then afterward, with a significance that +at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him and still more with +himself. There had been one offsetting comfort; an unintentional +implication had somehow slipped in between his words, that the +haunting fantasy had blue eyes and yellow hair. + +"All right," the angry youth had muttered, tossing on his iron couch, +"let him think so!" And then he had tossed again, and said below his +breath, "It is not love: it is not. But I must never answer its call; +if I do, love is what it will be. My father, my father! would that I +could give my whole heart to thee as thou givest all to me!" + +God has written on every side of our nature,--on the mind, on the +soul, yes, and in our very flesh,--the interdict forbidding love to +have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed. +This Claude vaguely felt; but lacking the clear thought, he could +only cry, "Oh, is it, _is it_, selfishness for one's heart just to be +hungry and thirsty?" + +And now here sat his father, on all their worldly goods, his rifle +between his knees, waiting for his son's choice, and ready to make it +his own. And here stood the son, free of foot to follow that voice +which was calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling assured +that to follow it meant love without hope for him, and for this dear +father the pain of yielding up the larger share of his son's +heart,--as if love were subject to arithmetic!--yielding it to one +who, thought Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress of +her black hair, one lash of her dark eyes. While he still pondered, +the father spoke. + +"Claude, I tell you!" his face lighted up with courage and ambition. +"We better go--Mervilionville!" + +Claude's heart leaped, but he kept his countenance. "Vermilionville? +No, papa; you will not like Vermilionville." + +"Yaas! I will like him. 'Tis good place! Bonaventure come from yondah. +When I was leav' Gran' Point', Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I +tole you. He tell Sidonie he bringin' ed'cation at Gran' Point' to +make Gran' Point' more better, but now ed'cation drive bes' men 'way +from Gran' Point'. And den he say, 'St. Pierre, may bee you go +Mervilionville; dat make me glad,' he say: 'dat way,' he say, 'what I +rob Peter I pay John.' Where we go if dawn't go Mervilionville? St. +Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me. +Can't go to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn't like +Mervilionville? You write me letter, when you was yondah, you like him +fus' class!" + +Claude let silence speak consent. He stooped, and began to load +himself with their joint property. He had had, in his life, several +sorts of trouble of mind; but only just now at twenty was he making +the acquaintance of his conscience. Vermilionville was the call that +had been sounding within him all these months, and Marguerite was the +haunting fantasy. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +A STRONG TEAM. + + +I would not wish to offend the self-regard of Vermilionville. +But--what a place in which to seek enlargement of life! I know worth +and greatness have sometimes, not to say ofttimes, emerged from much +worse spots; from little lazy villages, noisy only on Sunday, with +grimier court-houses, deeper dust and mud, their trade more entirely +in the hands of rat-faced Isaacs and Jacobs, with more frequent huge +and solitary swine slowly scavenging about in abysmal self-occupation, +fewer vine-clad cottages, raggeder negroes, and more decay. +Vermilionville is not the worst, at all. I have seen large, and +enlarging, lives there. + +Hither came the two St. Pierres. "No," Claude said; "they would not +go to the Beausoleil house." Privately he would make himself believe +he had not returned to any thing named Beausoleil, but only and simply +to Vermilionville. On a corner opposite the public square there was +another "hotel;" and it was no great matter to them if it was mostly +pine-boards, pale wall-paper, and transferable whitewash. But, not to +be outdone by its rival round the corner, it had, besides, a piano, of +a quality you may guess, and a landlady's daughter who seven times a +day played and sang "I want to be somebody's darling," and had no want +beyond. The travellers turned thence, found a third house full, +conjectured the same of the only remaining one, and took their way, +after all, towards Zoséphine's. It was quite right, now, to go there, +thought Claude, since destiny led; and so he let it lead both his own +steps and the thrumping boots of this dear figure in Campeachy hat and +soft untrimmed beard, that followed ever at his side. + +And then, after all!--looking into those quiet black eyes of +Zoséphine's,--to hear that Marguerite was not there! Gone! Gone to the +great city, the place "too big to live in." Gone there for knowledge, +training, cultivation, larger life, and finer uses! Gone to study an +art,--an art! Risen beyond him "like a diamond in the sky." And he +fool enough to come rambling back, blue-shirted and brown-handed, +expecting to find her still a tavern maid! So, farewell fantasy! 'Twas +better so; much better. Now life was simplified. Oh, yes; and St. +Pierre made matters better still by saying to Zoséphine: + +"I dinn' know you got one lill gal. Claude never tell me 'bout dat. I +spec' dat why he dawn't want 'come yeh. He dawn't like gal; he run +f'om 'em like dog from yalla-jacket. He dawn't like none of 'm. What +he like, dass his daddy. He jus' married to his daddy." The father +dropped his hand, smilingly, upon his son's shoulder with a weight +that would have crushed it in had it been ordinary cast-iron. + +Claude took the hand and held it, while Zoséphine smiled and secretly +thanked God her child was away. In her letters to Marguerite she made +no haste to mention the young man's re-appearance, and presently a +small thing occurred that made it well that she had left it untold. + +With Claude and his father some days passed unemployed. Yet both felt +them to be heavy with significance. The weight and pressure of new +and, to them, large conditions, were putting their inmost quality to +proof. Claude saw, now, what he could not see before; why his friend +the engineer had cast him loose without a word of advice as to where +he should go or what he should do. It was because by asking no advice +he had really proposed to be his own master. And now, could he do it? +Dare he try it? + +The first step he took was taken, I suppose, instinctively rather than +intelligently; certainly it was perilous: he retreated into himself. +St. Pierre found work afield, for of this sort there was plenty; the +husbandmen's year, and the herders' too, were just gathering good +momentum. But Claude now stood looking on empty-handed where other men +were busy with agricultural utensils or machines; or now kept his +room, whittling out a toy miniature of some apparatus, which when made +was not like the one he had seen, at last. A great distress began to +fill the father's mind. There had been a time when he could be idle +and whittle, but that time was gone by; that was at Grande Pointe; and +now for his son--for Claude--to become a lounger in tavern +quarters--Claude had not announced himself to Vermilionville as a +surveyor, or as any thing--Claude to be a hater of honest labor--was +this what Bonaventure called civilize-ation? Better, surely better, go +back to the old pastoral life. How yearningly it was calling them to +its fragrant bosom! And almost every thing was answering the call. The +town was tricking out its neglected decay with great trailing robes of +roses. The spade and hoe were busy in front flower-beds and rear +kitchen-gardens. Lanes were green, skies blue, roads good. In the _bas +fonds_ the oaks of many kinds and the tupelo-gums were hiding all +their gray in shimmering green; in these coverts and in the reedy +marshes, all the feathered flocks not gone away north were broken into +nesting pairs; in the fields, crops were springing almost at the +sower's heels; on the prairie pastures, once so vast, now being +narrowed so rapidly by the people's thrift, the flocks and herds ate +eagerly of the bright new grass, and foals, calves, and lambs stood +and staggered on their first legs, while in the door-yards housewives, +hens, and mother-geese warned away the puppies and children from downy +broods under the shade of the China-trees. But Claude? Even his books +lay unstudied, and his instruments gathered dust, while he pottered +over two or three little wooden things that a boy could not play with +without breaking. At last St. Pierre could bear it no longer. + +"Well, Claude, dass ten days han'-runnin' now, we ain't do not'in' but +whittlin'." + +Claude slowly pushed his model from him, looked, as one in a dream, +into his father's face, and suddenly and for the first time saw what +that father had suffered for a fortnight. But into his own face there +came no distress; only, for a moment, a look of tender protestation, +and then strong hope and confidence. + +"Yass," he said, rising, "dass true. But we dawn't got whittle no +mo'." He pointed to the model, then threw his strong arms akimbo and +asked, "You know what is dat?" + +"Naw," replied the father, "I dunno. I t'ink 'taint no real mash-in' +[machine] 'cause I dawn't never see nuttin' like dat at Belle Alliance +plant-ation, neider at Belmont; and I know, me, if anybody got one +mash-in', any place, for do any t'in' mo' betteh or mo' quicker, +Mistoo Walleece an' M'sieu Le Bourgeois dey boun' to 'ave 'im. Can't +hitch nuttin' to dat t'ing you got dare; she too small for a rat. What +she is, Claude?" + +A yet stronger hope and courage lighted Claude's face. He laid one +hand upon the table before him and the other upon the shoulder of his +sitting companion: + +"Papa, if you want to go wid me to de city, we make one big enough for +two mule'. Dass a mash-in'--a new mash-in'--my mash-in'--my +invention!" + +"Invench? What dat is--invench?" + +Some one knocked on the door. Claude lifted the model, moved on +tiptoe, and placed it softly under the bed. As he rose and turned +again with reddened face, a card was slipped under the door. He took +it and read, in a pencil scrawl,-- + + "State Superintendent of Public Education,"-- + +looked at his father with a broad grin, and opened the door. + +Mr. Tarbox had come at the right moment. There was a good hour and a +half of the afternoon still left, and he and Claude took a walk +together. Beyond a stile and a frail bridge that spanned a gully at +one end of the town, a noble avenue of oaks leads toward Vermilion +River. On one side of this avenue the town has since begun to spread, +but at that time there were only wide fields on the right hand and on +the left. At the farther end a turn almost at right angles to the left +takes you through a great gate and across the railway, then along a +ruined hedge of roses, and presently into the oak-grove of the old +ex-governor's homestead. This was their walk. + +By the time they reached the stile, Claude had learned that his friend +was at the head of his line, and yet had determined to abandon that +line for another + + "Far up the height-- + Excelsior!" + +Also that his friend had liked him, had watched him, would need him, +and was willing then and there to assure him a modest salary, whose +amount he specified, simply to do whatever he might call upon him to +do in his (Claude's) "line." + +They were walking slowly, and now and then slower still. As they +entered the avenue of oaks, Claude declined the offer. Then they went +very slowly indeed. Claude learned that Mr. Tarbox, by some chance not +explained, had been in company with his friend the engineer; that the +engineer had said, "Tarbox, you're a born contractor," and that Claude +and he would make a "strong team;" that Mr. Tarbox's favorite study +was human nature; that he knew talent when he saw it; had studied +Claude; had fully expected him to decline to be his employee, and +liked him the better for so doing. + +"That was just a kind of test vote; see?" + +Then Mr. Tarbox offered Claude a partnership; not an equal one, but +withal a fair interest. + +"We've got to commence small and branch out gradually; see?" And +Claude saw. + +"Now, you wonder why I don't go in alone. Well, I'll tell you; and +when I tell you, I'll astonish you. I lack education! Now, Claude, I'm +taking you into my confidence. You've done nothing but go to school +and study for about six years. I had a different kind of father from +yours; I never got one solid year's schooling, all told, in my life. +I've picked up cords of information, but an ounce of education's worth +a ton of information. Don't you believe that? eh? it is so! I say it, +and I'm the author of the A. of U. I. I like to call it that, because +it brings you and I so near together; see?" The speaker smiled, was +still, and resumed: + +"That's why I need you. And I'm just as sure you need me. I need not +only the education you have now, but what you're getting every day. +When you see me you see a man who is always looking awa-a-ay ahead. I +see what you're going to be, and I'm making this offer to the Claude +St. Pierre of the future." + +Mr. Tarbox waited for a reply. The avenue had been passed, the railway +crossed, and the hedge skirted. They loitered slowly into the +governor's grove, under whose canopy the beams of the late afternoon +sun were striking and glancing. But all their light seemed hardly as +much as that which danced in the blue eyes of Mr. Tarbox while Claude +slowly said: + +"I dunno if we can fix dat. I was glad to see you comin'. I reckon you +jus' right kind of man I want. I jus' make a new invention. I t'ink 'f +you find dat's good, dat be cawntrac' enough for right smart while. +And beside', I t'ink I invent some mo' b'fo' long." + +But Mr. Tarbox was not rash. He only asked quiet and careful questions +for some time. The long sunset was sending its last rays across the +grove-dotted land, and the birds in every tree were filling the air +with their sunset song-burst, when the two friends re-entered the +avenue of oaks. They had agreed to join their fortunes. Now their talk +drifted upon other subjects. + +"I came back to Vermilionville purposely to see you," said Mr. Tarbox. +"But I'll tell you privately, you wasn't the only cause of my coming." + +Claude looked at him suddenly. Was this another haunted man? Were +there two men haunted, and only one fantasy? He felt ill at ease. Mr. +Tarbox saw, but seemed not to understand. He thought it best to speak +plainly. + +"I'm courting her, Claude; and I think I'm going to get her." + +Claude stopped short, with jaws set and a bad look in his eye. + +"Git who?" + +But Mr. Tarbox was calm--even complacent. He pushed his silk hat from +his forehead, and said: + + ... "'One made up + Of loveliness alone; + A woman, of her gentle sex + The seeming paragon.' + +I refer to the Rose of Vermilionville, the Pearl of the Parish, the +loveliest love and fairest fair that ever wore the shining name of +Beausoleil. She's got to change it to Tarbox, Claude. Before yon sun +has run its course again, I'm going to ask her for the second time. +I've just begun asking, Claude; I'm going to keep it up till she says +yes." + +"She's not yondah!" snarled Claude, with the frown and growl of a +mastiff. "She's gone to de city." + +Mr. Tarbox gazed a moment in blank amazement. Then he slowly lifted +his hat from his head, expanded his eyes, drew a long slow groan, +turned slowly half around, let the inhalation go in a long keen +whistle, and cried: + +"Oh! taste! taste! Who's got the taste? What do you take me for? Who +_are_ you talking about? That little monkey? Why, man alive, it's the +mother I'm after. Ha, ha, ha!" + +If Claude said any thing in reply, I cannot imagine what it was. Mr. +Tarbox had a right to his opinion and taste, if taste it could be +called, and Claude was helpless to resent it, even in words; but for +hours afterward he execrated his offender's stupidity, little guessing +that Mr. Tarbox, in a neighboring chamber, alone and in his +night-robe, was bending, smiting his thigh in silent merriment, and +whispering to himself: + +"He thinks I'm an ass! He thinks I'm an ass! He can't see that I was +simply investigating him!" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +HE ASKS HER AGAIN. + + +Claude and his father left the next day,--Saturday. Only the author of +the A. of U. I. knew whither they were gone. As they were going he +said very privately to Claude: + +"I'll be with you day after to-morrow. You can't be ready for me +before then, and you and your father can take Sunday to look around, +and kind o' see the city. But don't go into the down-town part; you'll +not like it; nothing but narrow streets and old buildings with +histories to 'em, and gardens hid away inside of 'em, and damp +archways, and pagan-looking females who can't talk English, peeping +out over balconies that offer to drop down on you, and then don't keep +their word; every thing old-timey, and Frenchy, and Spanishy; +unprogressive--you wouldn't like it. Go up-town. That's American. It's +new and fresh. There you'll find beautiful mansions, mostly frame, +it's true, but made to look like stone, you know. There you'll see +wealth! There you'll get the broad daylight-- + + 'The merry, merry sunshine, that makes the heart so gay.' + +See? Yes, and Monday we'll meet at Jones's, 17 Tchoupitoulas Street; +all right; I'll be on hand. But to-day and to-morrow--'Alabama'--'here +I rest.' I feel constrained"--he laid his hand upon his heart, closed +one eye, and whispered--"to stay. I would fain spend the sabbath in +sweet Vermilionville. You get my idea?" + +The sabbath afternoon, beyond the town, where Mr. Tarbox strolled, was +lovelier than can be told. Yet he was troubled. Zoséphine had not thus +far given him a moment alone. I suppose, when a hundred generations +more have succeeded us on the earth, lovers will still be blind to the +fact that women do not do things our way. How can they? That would be +capitulation at once, and even we should find the whole business as +stupid as shooting barnyard fowls. + +Zoséphine had walked out earlier than Tarbox. He had seen her go, but +dared not follow. He read "thou shalt not" as plain as print on her +back as she walked quietly away; that same little peremptory back +that once in her father's calèche used to hold itself stiff when +'Thanase rode up behind. The occasional townsman that lifted his +slouch hat in deep deference to her silent bow, did not read unusual +care on her fair brow; yet she, too, was troubled. + +Marguerite! she was the trouble. Zoséphine knew her child could never +come back to these old surroundings and be content. The mother was not +willing she should. She looked at a photograph that her daughter had +lately sent her. What a change from the child that had left her! It +was like the change from a leaf to a flower. There was but one thing +to do: follow her. So Zoséphine had resolved to sell the inn. She was +gone, now, to talk with the old ex-governor about finding a purchaser. +Her route was not by the avenue of oaks, but around by a northern and +then eastern circuit. She knew Mr. Tarbox must have seen her go; had a +genuine fear that he would guess whither she was bound, and yet, +deeper down in her heart than woman ever lets soliloquy go, was +willing he should. For she had another trouble. We shall come to that +presently. + +Her suitor walked in the avenue of oaks. + +"She's gone," he reckoned to himself, "to consult the governor about +something, and she'll come back this way." He loitered out across +fields, but not too far off or out of sight; and by and by there she +came, with just the slightest haste in her walk. She received him with +kindly reserve, and they went more slowly, together. + +She told where she had been, and that the governor approved a +decision she had made. + +"Yass; I goin' sell my hotel." + +"He's right!" exclaimed her companion, with joy; "and you're right!" + +"Well, 'tain't sold yet," she responded. She did not smile as she +looked at him. He read trouble; some trouble apart from the subject, +in her quiet, intense eyes. + +"You know sombodie want buy dat?" she asked. + +"I'll find some one," he promptly replied. Then they talked a little +about the proper price for it, and then were very still until Mr. +Tarbox said: + +"I walked out here hoping to meet you." + +Madame Beausoleil looked slightly startled, and then bowed gravely. + +"Yes; I want your advice. It's only business, but it's important, and +it's a point where a woman's instinct is better than a man's +judgment." + +There was some melancholy satire in her responding smile; but it +passed away, and Mr. Tarbox went on: + +"You never liked my line of business"-- + +Zoséphine interrupted with kind resentment: + +"Ah!" + +"No; I know you didn't. You're one of the few women whose subscription +I've sought in vain. Till then I loved my business. I've never loved +it since. I've decided to sell out and quit. I'm going into another +business, one that you'll admire. I don't say any thing about the man +going into it,-- + + 'Honor and shame from no condition rise: + Act well your part; there all the honor lies,'-- + +but I want your advice about the party I think of going in with. It's +Claude St. Pierre." + +Zoséphine turned upon the speaker a look of steady penetration. He met +it with a glance of perfect confiding. "She sees me," he said, at the +same time, far within himself. + +It was as natural to Mr. Tarbox to spin a web as it is for a spider. +To manoeuvre was the profoundest instinct of his unprofound nature. +Zoséphine felt the slender threads weaving around her. But in her +heart of hearts there was a certain pleasure in being snared. It could +not, to her, seem wholly bad for Tarbox to play spider, provided he +should play the harmless spider. Mr. Tarbox spoke again, and she +listened amiably. + +"Claude is talented. He has what I haven't; I have what he hasn't, and +together we could make each other's fortunes, if he's only the square, +high-style fellow I think he is. I'm a student of human nature, and I +think I've made him out. I think he'll do to tie to. But will he? You +can tell me. You read people by instinct. I ask you just as a matter +of business advice and in business confidence. What do you think? Will +you trust me and tell me--as my one only trusted friend--freely and +fully--as I would tell you?" + +Madame Beausoleil felt the odds against her, but she looked into her +companion's face with bright, frank eyes and said: "Yass, I t'ink +yass; I t'ink _'tis_ so." + +"Thanks!" said her friend, with unnecessary fervor and tenderness. +"Then Claude will be my partner, unless--my dear friend, shall you be +so kind--I might almost say confiding--to me, and me not tell you +something I think you'd ought to know? For I hope we are always to be +friends; don't you?" + +"Yass," she said, very sadly and sweetly. + +"Thanks! And if Claude and I become partners that will naturally bring +him into our circle, as it were; see?" + +The little madame looked up with a sudden austere exaltation of frame +and intensity of face, but her companion rushed on with--"And I'm +going to tell you, let the risk to me be what it may, that it may +result in great unhappiness to Claude; for he loves your daughter, +who, I know, you must think too good for him!" + +Madame Beausoleil blushed as though she herself were Marguerite and +Tarbox were Claude. + +"Ah! love Marguerite! Naw, naw! He dawn't love noboddie but hees papa! +Hees papa tell me dat! Ah! naw, 'tis _not_ so!" + +Mr. Tarbox stopped still; and when Zoséphine saw they were in the +shadow of the trees while all about them was brightened by the +momentary Southern twilight, she, too, stopped, and he spoke. + +"What brought Claude back here when by right he should have gone +straight to the city? You might have guessed it when you saw him." He +paused to let her revolve the thought, and added in his own mind--"If +you had disliked the idea, you'd 'a' suspected him quick enough"--and +was pleased. He spoke again. "But I didn't stop with guessing." + +Zoséphine looked up to his face from the little foot that edgewise +was writing nothings in the dust. + +"No," continued her companion: "I walked with him two evenings ago in +this avenue, and right where we stand now, without his ever knowing +it--then or now--he as good as told me. Yes, Josephine, he dares to +love your beautiful and accomplished daughter! The thought may offend +you, but--was I not right to tell you?" + +She nodded and began to move slowly on, he following. + +"I'm not betraying anyone's confidence," persisted he; "and I can't +help but have a care for you. Not that you need it, or anybody's. You +can take care of yourself if any man or woman can. Every time your +foot touches the ground it says so as plain as words. That's what +first caught my fancy. You haven't got to have somebody to take care +of you. O Josephine! that's just why I want to take care of you so +bad! I can take care of myself, and I used to like to do it; I was +just that selfish and small; but love's widened me. I can take care of +myself; but, oh! what satisfaction is there in it? Is there any? Now, +I ask you! It may do for you, for you're worth taking care of; but I +want to take care of something I needn't be ashamed to love!" He +softly stole her hand as they went. She let it stay, yet looked away +from him, up through the darkling branches, and distressfully shook +her head. + +"Don't, Josephine!--don't do that. I want you to take care of me. You +could do better, I know, if love wasn't the count; but when it comes +to loving you, I'm the edition deloox! I know you've an aspiring +nature, but so have I; and I believe with you to love and you loving +me, and counselling and guiding me, I could climb high. O Josephine! +it isn't this poor Tarbox I'm asking you to give yourself to; it's the +Tarbox that is to be; it's the coming Tarbox! Why, it's even a good +business move! If it wasn't I wouldn't say a word! You know I can, and +will take the very best care of every thing you've got; and I know +you'll take the same of mine. It's a good move, every way. Why, here's +every thing just fixed for it! Listen to the mocking-bird! See him +yonder, just at the right of the stile. See! O Josephine! don't you +see he isn't + + 'Still singing where the weeping willow waves'? + +he's on the myrtle; the myrtle, Josephine, and the crape-myrtle at +that!--widowhood unwidowed!--Now he's on the fence--but he'll not stay +there,--and you mustn't either!" The suitor smiled at his own +ludicrousness, yet for all that looked beseechingly in earnest. He +stood still again, continuing to hold her hand. She stole a furtive +glance here and there for possible spectators. He smiled again. + +"You don't see anybody; the world waives its claim." But there was +such distress in her face that his smile passed away, and he made a +new effort to accommodate his suit to her mood. "Josephine, there's no +eye on us except it's overhead. Tell me this; if he that was yours +until ten years ago was looking down now and could speak to us, don't +you believe he'd say yes?" + +"Oh! I dunno. Not to-day! Not _dis_ day!" The widow's eyes met his +gaze of tender inquiry and then sank to the ground. She shook her head +mournfully. "Naw, naw; not dis day. 'Tis to-day 'Thanase was kill'!" + +Mr. Tarbox relaxed his grasp and Zoséphine's hand escaped. She never +had betrayed to him so much distress as filled her face now. "De man +what kill' him git away! You t'ink I git marrie' while dat man alive? +Ho-o-o! You t'ink I let Marguerite see me do dat! Ah! naw!" She waved +him away and turned to leave the spot, but he pressed after, and she +paused once more. A new possibility lighted his eyes. He said eagerly: + +"Describe the man to me. Describe him. How tall was he? How old would +he be now? Did they try to catch him? Did you hear me talking +yesterday about a man? Is there any picture of him? Have you got one? +Yes, you have; it's in your pocket now with your hand on it. Let me +see it." + +"Ah! I di'n' want you to see dat!" + +"No, I don't suppose, as far as you know yourself, you did." He +received it from her, and with his eyes still on her, continued: "No, +but you knew that if I got a ghost of a chance, I'd see you alone. You +knew what I'd ask you;--yes, you did, Josephine, and you put this +thing into your pocket to make it easier to say no." + +"Hah! easier! Hah! easier! I need somethin' to _help_ me do dat? Hah! +'Tis _not_ so!" But the weakness of the wordy denial was itself almost +a confession. + +They moved on. A few steps brought them into better light. Mr. Tarbox +looked at the picture. Zoséphine saw a slight flash of recognition. He +handed it back in silence, and they walked on, saying not a word until +they reached the stile. But there, putting his foot upon it to bar the +way, he said: + +"Josephine, the devil never bid so high for me before in his life as +he's bidding for me now. And there's only one thing in the way; he's +bid too late." + +Her eyes flashed with injured resentment. "Ah, you! you dawn't know +not'n'--" But he interrupted: + +"Stop, I don't mean more than just what I say. Six years ago--six and +a half--I met a man of a kind I'd never met, to know it, before. You +know who' I mean, don't you?" + +"Bonaventure?" + +"Yes. That meeting made a turning-point in my life. You've told me +that whatever is best in you, you owe to him. Well, knowing him as I +do, I can believe it; and if it's true, then it's the same with me; +for first he, and then you, have made another man out of me." + +"Ah, naw! Bonaventure, may_be_; but not me; ah, naw!" + +"But I tell you, yes! you, Josephine! I'm poor sort enough yet; but I +could have done things once that I can't do now. There was a time when +if some miserable outlaw stood, or even seemed, maybe, to stand +between me and my chances for happiness, I could have handed him over +to human justice, so called, as easy as wink; but now? No, never any +more! Josephine, I know that man whose picture I've just looked at. I +could see you avenged. I could lay my hands, and the hands of the law, +on him inside of twenty-four hours. You say you can't marry till the +law has laid its penalties on him, or at least while he lives and +escapes them. Is that right?" + +Zoséphine had set her face to oppose his words only with unyielding +silence, but the answer escaped her: + +"Yass, _'tis_ so. 'Tis ri-ght!" + +"No, Josephine. I know you _feel_ as if it were; but you don't _think_ +so. No, you don't; I know you better in this matter than you know +yourself, and you don't think it's right. You know justice belongs to +the State, and that when you talk to yourself about what _you_ owe to +justice, it means something else that you're too sweet and good to +give the right name to, and still want it. You don't want it; you +don't want revenge, and here's the proof; for, Josephine, you know, +and I know, that if I--even without speaking--with no more than one +look of the eye--should offer to buy your favor at that price, even +ever so lawfully, you'd thank me for one minute, and then loathe me to +the end of your days." + +Zoséphine's face had lost its hardness. It was drawn with distress. +With a gesture of repulsion and pain she exclaimed: + +"I di'n' mean--I di'n' mean--Ah!" + +"What? private revenge? No, of course you didn't! But what else would +it be? O Josephine! don't I know you didn't mean it? Didn't I tell +you so? But I want you to go farther. I want you to put away forever +the _feeling_. I want to move and stand between you and it, and +say--whatever it costs me to say it--'God forbid!' I do say it; I say +it now. I can't say more; I can't say less; and somehow,--I don't know +how--wherever you learned it--I've learned it from you." + +Zoséphine opened her lips to refuse; but they closed and tightened +upon each other, her narrowed eyes sent short flashes out upon his, +and her breath came and went long and deep without sound. But at his +last words she saw--the strangest thing--to be where she saw it--a +tear--_tears_--standing in his eyes; saw them a moment, and then could +see them no more for her own. Her lips relaxed, her form drooped, she +lifted her face to reply, but her mouth twitched; she could not speak. + +"I'm not so foolish as I look," he said, trying to smile away his +emotion. "If the State chooses to hunt him out and put him to trial +and punishment, I don't say I'd stand in the way; that's the State's +business; that's for the public safety. But it's too late--you and +Bonnyventure have made it too late--for me to help any one, least of +all the one I love, to be revenged." He saw his words were prevailing +and followed them up. "Oh! you don't need it any more than you really +want it, Josephine. You mustn't ever look toward it again. I throw +myself and my love across the path. Don't walk over us. Take my hand; +give me yours; come another way; and if you'll let such a poor excuse +for a teacher and guide help you, I'll help you all I can, to learn to +say 'forgive us our trespasses.' You can begin, now, by forgiving me. +I may have thrown away my last chance with you, but I can't help it; +it's my love that spoke. And if I have spoiled all and if I've got to +pay for the tears you're shedding with the greatest disappointment of +my life, still I've had the glory and the sanctification of loving +you. If I must say, I can say, + + ''Tis better to have loved and lost + Than never to have loved at all.' + +Must I? Are you going to make me say that?" + +Zoséphine, still in tears, silently and with drooping head pushed her +way across the stile and left him standing on the other side. He sent +one pleading word after her: + +"Isn't it most too late to go the rest of the way alone?" + +She turned, lifted her eyes to his for an instant, and nodded. In a +twinkling he was at her side. She glanced at him again and said quite +contentedly: + +"Yass; _'tis_ so," and they went the short remnant of the way +together. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +THE BEAUSOLEILS AND ST. PIERRES. + + +You think of going to New Orleans in the spring. Certainly, the spring +is the time to go. When you find yourself there go some day for +luncheon--if they haven't moved it, there is talk of that,--go to the +Christian Women's Exchange, already mentioned, in the Rue +Bourbon,--French Quarter. You step immediately from the sidewalk into +the former drawing-room of a house built early in the century as a +fashionable residence. That at least is its aspect. Notice, for +instance, in the back parlor, crowded now, like the front one, with +eating-tables, a really interesting old wooden mantelpiece. Of course +this is not the way persons used to go in old times. They entered by +the porte-cochère and open carriage-way upon which these drawing-rooms +still open by several glass doors on your right. Step out there. You +find a veranda crowded with neat white-clothed tables. Before some +late alterations there was a great trellis full of green sunshine and +broken breezes entangled among vines of trumpet-creeper and the +Scuppernong grape. Here you will be waited on, by small, +blue-calico-robed damsels of Methodist unsophistication and +Presbyterian propriety, to excellent refreshment; only, if you know +your soul's true interest, eschew their fresh bread and insist on +having yesterday's. + +However, that is a matter of taste there, and no matter at all here. +All I need to add is that there are good apartments overhead to be +rented to women too good for this world, and that in the latter end of +April, 1884, Zoséphine and Marguerite Beausoleil here made their home. + +The tavern was sold. The old life was left far behind. They had done +that dreadful thing that everybody deprecates and everybody likes to +do--left the country and come to live in the city. And Zoséphine was +well pleased. A man who had tried and failed to be a merchant in the +city, he and his wife, took the tavern; so Zoséphine had not reduced +the rural population--had not sinned against "stastistics." + +Besides, she had the good conscience of having fled from Mr. +Tarbox--put U. and I. apart, as it were--and yet without being so hid +but a suitor's proper persistency could find her. Just now he was far +away prosecuting the commercial interests of Claude's one or two +inventions; but he was having great success; he wrote once or +twice--but got no reply--and hoped to be back within a month. + +When Marguerite, after her mother's receipt of each of these letters, +thought she saw a cloud on her brow, Zoséphine explained, with a +revival of that old look of sweet self-command which the daughter so +loved to see, that they contained matters of business not at all to be +called troubles. But the little mother did not show the letters. She +could not; Marguerite did not even know their writer had changed his +business. As to Claude, his name was never mentioned. Each supposed +the other was ignorant that he was in the city, and because he was +never mentioned each one knew the other was thinking of him. + +Ah, Claude! what are you thinking of? Has not your new partner in +business told you they are here? No, not a word of it. "That'll keep +till I get back," Mr. Tarbox had said to himself; and such shrewdness +was probably not so ungenerous, after all. "If you want a thing done +well, do it yourself," he said one evening to a man who could not make +out what he was driving at; and later Mr. Tarbox added to himself, +"The man that flies the kite must hold the thread." And so he kept his +counsel. + +But that does not explain. For we remember that Claude already knew +that Marguerite was in the city, at least had her own mother's word +for it. Here, weeks had passed. New Orleans is not so large; its +active centre is very small. Even by accident, on the street, Canal +Street especially, he should have seen her time and again. + +And he did not; at any rate not to know it. She really kept very busy +indoors; and in other doors so did he. More than that, there was his +father. When the two first came to the city St. Pierre endured the +town for a week. But it was martyrdom, doing it. Claude saw this. Mr. +Tarbox was with him the latter part of the week. He saw it. He gave +his suggestive mind to it for one night. The next day St. Pierre and +he wandered off in street-cars and on foot, and by the time the sun +went down again a new provision had been made. At about ninety +minutes' jaunt from the city's centre, up the river, and on its +farther shore, near where the old "Company Canal" runs from a lock in +the river bank, back through the swamps and into the Baratarian lakes, +St. Pierre had bought with his lifetime savings a neat house and +fair-sized orangery. No fields? None: + +"You see, bom-bye [by-and-by] Claude git doze new mash-in' all right, +he go to ingineerin' agin, and him and you [Tarbox] be takin' some +cawntrac' for buil' levee or break up old steamboat, or raise +somet'in' what been sunk, or somet'in' dat way. And den he certain' +want somboddie to boss gang o' fellows. And den he say, 'Papa, I want +you.' And den I say how I got fifty arpent' [42 acres] rice in field. +And den he say, 'How I goin' do widout you?' And den dare be fifty +arpent' rice gone!" No, no fields. + +Better: here with the vast wet forest at his back; the river at his +feet; the canal, the key to all Barataria, Lafourche, and Terrebonne, +full of Acadian fishermen, hunters, timber-cutters, moss-gatherers, +and the like; the great city in sight from yonder neighbor's +balustraded house-top; and Claude there to rally to his side or he to +Claude's at a moment's warning; he would be an operator--think of +that!--not of the telegraph; an operator in the wild products of the +swamp, the _prairies tremblantes_, the lakes, and in the small +harvests of the _pointes_ and bayou margins: moss, saw-logs, venison, +wild-duck, fish, crabs, shrimp, melons, garlic, oranges, Périque +tobacco. "Knowledge is power;" he knew wood, water, and sky by heart, +spoke two languages, could read and write, and understood the ways and +tastes of two or three odd sorts of lowly human kind. Self-command is +dominion; I do not say the bottle went never to his lips, but it never +was lifted high. And now to the blessed maxim gotten from Bonaventure +he added one given him by Tarbox: "In h-union ees strank!" Not mere +union of hands alone; but of counsels! There were Claude and Tarbox +and he! + +For instance; at Mr. Tarbox's suggestion Claude brought to his father +from the city every evening, now the "Picayune" and now the +"Times-Democrat." From European and national news he modestly turned +aside. Whether he read the book-notices I do not know; I hope not. But +when he had served supper--he was a capital camp cook--and he and +Claude had eaten, and their pipes were lighted, you should have seen +him scanning the latest quotations and debating the fluctuations of +the moss market, the shrimp market, and the garlic market. + +Thus Claude was rarely in the city save in the busy hours of the day. +Much oftener than otherwise, he saw the crimson sunsets, and the cool +purple sunrises as he and St. Pierre pulled in the father's skiff +diagonally to or fro across the Mississippi, between their cottage and +the sleepy outposts of city street-cars, just under the levee at the +edge of that green oak-dotted plain where a certain man, as gentle, +shy, and unworldly as our engineer friend thought Claude to be, was +raising the vast buildings of the next year's Universal Exposition. + +But all this explains only why Claude did not, to his knowledge, see +Marguerite by accident. Yet by intention! Why not by intention? +First, there was his fear of sinning against his father's love. That +alone might have failed to hold him back; but, second, there was his +helplessness. Love made Tarbox, if any thing were needed to make him, +brave; it made Claude a coward. And third, there was that helpless +terror of society in general, of which we have heard his friend talk. +I have seen a strong horse sink trembling to the earth at the beating +of an empty drum. Claude looked with amazed despair at a man's ability +to overtake a pretty girl acquaintance in Canal Street, and walk and +talk with her. He often asked himself how he had ever been a moment at +his ease those November evenings in the tavern's back-parlor at +Vermilionville. It was because he had a task there; sociality was not +the business of the hour. + +And now I have something else to confess about Claude; something +mortifying in the extreme. For you see the poverty of all these +explanations. Their very multitude makes them weak. "Many fires cannot +quench love;" what was the real matter? I will tell. + +Claude's love was a deep sentiment. He had never allowed it to assert +itself as a passion. The most he would allow it to be was a yearning. +It was scarcely personal. While he was with Marguerite, in the inn, +his diffidence alone was enough to hide from him the impression she +was making on his heart. In all their intercourse he had scarcely +twice looked her full in the face. Afterward she had simply become in +memory the exponent of an ideal. He found himself often, now, asking +himself, why are my eyes always looking for her? Should I actually +know her, were I to see her on this sidewalk, or in this street-car? +And while still asking himself these silent questions, what does he do +one day but fall--to all intents and purposes, at least--fall in +love--pell-mell--up to the eyebrows--with another girl! + +Do you remember Uncle Remus's story of Brer Rabbit with the bucket of +honey inverted on him? It was the same way with Claude. "He wa'n't des +only bedobble wid it, he wuz des kiver'd." It happened thus: An artist +friend, whose studio was in Carondelet Street just off of Canal, had +rented to him for a workroom a little loft above the studio. It had +one window looking out over roofs and chimney-pots upon the western +sky, and another down into the studio itself. It is right to say +friend, although there was no acquaintanceship until it grew out of +this arrangement. The artist, a single man, was much Claude's senior; +but Claude's taste for design, and love of work, and the artist's +grave sincerity, simplicity, and cordiality of character--he was a +Spaniard, with a Spaniard's perfect courtesy--made a mutual regard, +which only a common diffidence prevented from running into +comradeship. + +One Saturday afternoon Claude, thirsting for outdoor air, left his +eyrie for a short turn in Canal Street. The matinée audiences were +just out, and the wide balcony-shaded sidewalks were crowded with +young faces and bright attires. Claude was crossing the "neutral +ground" toward Bourbon Street, when he saw coming out of Bourbon +Street a young man, who might be a Creole, and two young girls in +light, and what seemed to him extremely beautiful dresses; especially +that of the farther one, who, as the three turned with buoyant step +into Canal Street to their left, showed for an instant the profile of +her face, and then only her back. Claude's heart beat consciously, and +he hurried to lessen the distance between them. He had seen no more +than the profile, but for the moment in which he saw it, it seemed to +be none other than the face of Marguerite! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +THE CHASE. + + +Claude came on close behind. No; now he could see his mistake, it was +not she. But he could not regret it. This was Marguerite repeated, yet +transcended. The stature was just perceptibly superior. The breadth +and grace of these shoulders were better than Marguerite's. The hair, +arranged differently and far more effectively than he had ever seen it +on Marguerite's head, seemed even more luxurious than hers. There was +altogether a finer dignity in this one's carriage than in that of the +little maid of the inn. And see, now,--now!--as she turns her head to +glance into this shop window! It is, and it isn't, it isn't, and it +is, and--no, no, it is not Marguerite! It is like her in profile, +singularly like, yet far beyond her; the nose a little too fine, and +a certain sad firmness about the mouth and eyes, as well as he could +see in the profile, but profiles are so deceptive--that he had never +seen in Marguerite. + +"But how do I know? What do I know?" he asked himself, still following +on. "The Marguerite I know is but a thing of my dreams, and this is +not that Marguerite of my actual sight, to whom I never gave a word or +smile or glance that calls for redemption. This is the Marguerite of +my dreams." + +Claude was still following, when without any cause that one could see, +the young man of the group looked back. He had an unpleasant face; it +showed a small offensive energy that seemed to assert simply him and +all his against you and all yours. His eyes were black, piercing, and +hostile. They darted their glances straight into Claude's. Guilty +Claude! dogging the steps of ladies on the street! He blushed for +shame, turned a corner into Exchange Alley, walked a little way down +it, came back, saw the great crowd coming and going, vehicles of all +sorts hurrying here and there; ranks of street-cars waiting their +turns to start to all points of the compass; sellers of peanuts and +walking-sticks, buyers of bouquets, acquaintances meeting or +overtaking one another, nodding bonnets, lifted hats, faces, faces, +faces; but the one face was gone. + +Caught, Claude? And by a mere face? The charge is too unkind. Young +folly, yes, or old folly, may read goodness rashly into all beauty, or +not care to read it in any. But it need not be so. Upon the face of +youth the soul within writes its confessions and promises; and when +the warm pulses of young nature are sanctified by upward yearnings, +and a pure conscience, the soul that seeks its mate will seek that +face which, behind and through all excellencies of mere tint and +feature, mirrors back the seeker's own faiths and hopes; and when that +is found, that to such a one is beauty. Judge not; you never saw this +face, fairer than Marguerite's, to say whether its beauty was mere +face, or the transparent shrine of an equal nobility within. + +Besides, Claude would have fired up and denied the first word of the +charge with unpleasant flatness. To be caught means to be in love, to +be in love implies a wish and hope to marry, and these were just what +Claude could not allow. May not a man, nevertheless, have an ideal of +truth and beauty and look worshipfully upon its embodiment? Humph! + +His eyes sought her in vain not only on that afternoon, but on many +following. The sun was setting every day later and later through the +black lace-work of pecan-trees and behind low dark curtains of orange +groves, yet he began to be more and more tardy each succeeding day in +meeting his father under the riverside oaks of the Exposition grounds. +And then, on the seventh day, he saw her again. + +Now he was more confident than ever that this vision and he, except in +dreams, had never spoken to each other. Yet the likeness was +wonderful. But so, too, was the unlikeness. True, this time, she only +flashed across his sight--out of a bank, into a carriage where a very +"American"-looking lady sat waiting for her and was gone. But the +bank; the carriage; that lady; those earlier companions,--no, this +could not be Marguerite. Marguerite would have been with her mother. +Now, if one could see Madame Beausoleil's daughter with Madame +Beausoleil at her side to identify her and distinguish her from this +flashing and vanishing apparition it would clear away a trying +perplexity. Why not be bold and call upon them where they were +dwelling? But where? Their names were not in the directory. Now, +inventive talent, do your best. + + * * * * * + +"Well!" said St. Pierre after a long silence. Claude and he were out +on the swollen Mississippi pulling with steady leisure for the +home-side shore, their skiff pointed half to and half from the boiling +current. The sun was gone; a purple dusk wrapped either low bank; a +steamboat that had passed up stream was now, at the turning of the +bend, only a cluster of soft red lights; Venus began to make a faint +silvery pathway across the waters. St. Pierre had the forward seat, at +Claude's back. The father looked with fond perplexity at the strong +young shoulders swinging silently with his own, forward and backward +in slow, monotonous strokes, and said again: + +"Well? Whass matter? Look like cat got yo' tongue. Makin' new +mash-in?" Then in a low dissatisfied tone--"I reckon somet'in' mighty +curious." He repeated the last three words in the Acadian speech: +"Tcheuque-chose bien tchurieux." + +"Yass," replied the son, "mighty strange. I tell you when we come at +home." + +He told all. Recounted all his heart's longings, all his dreams, +every least pang of self-reproach, the idealization of Marguerite, and +the finding of that ideal incarnated in one who was and yet seemed not +to be, or rather seemed to be and yet was not, Marguerite. And then he +went on to re-assure his father that this could never mean marriage, +never mean the father's supplanting. A man could worship what he could +never hope to possess. He would rather worship this than win such kind +as he would dare woo. + +He said all these things in a very quiet way, with now and then a +silent pause, and now and then a calm, self-contained tone in +resuming; yet his sentences were often disconnected, and often were +half soliloquy. Such were the only betrayals of emotion on either side +until Claude began to treat--in the words just given--his father's own +heart interests; then the father's eyes stood brimming full. But St. +Pierre did not speak. From the first he had listened in silence and he +offered no interruption until at length Claude came to that part about +the object of his regard being so far, so utterly, beyond his reach. +Then-- + +"Stop! Dass all foolishness! You want her? You kin have her!" + +"Ah, papa! you dawn't awnstand! What I am?" + +"Ah, bah! What anybody is? What she is? She invanted bigger mash-in +dan you? a mo' better corn-stubbl' destroyer and plant-corner?" He +meant corn-planter. "She invant a more handier doubl'-action pea-vine +rake? What she done mak' her so gran'? Naw, sir! She look fine in de +face, yass; and dass all you know. Well, dass all right; dass de +'Cajun way--pick 'em out by face. You begin 'Cajun way, for why you +dawn't finish 'Cajun way? All you got do, you git good saddle-hoss and +ride. Bom-bye you see her, you ride behind her till you find where her +daddy livin' at. Den you ride pas' yondah every day till fo', five +days, and den you see de ole man come scrape friend wid you. Den he +hass you drop round, and fus' t'ing you know--_adjieu la calége!_" + +Claude did not dispute the point, though he hardly thought this case +could be worked that way. He returned in silent thought to the +question, how to find Madame Beausoleil. He tried the mail; no +response. He thought of advertising; but that would never do. Imagine, +"If Madame Beausoleil, late of Vermilionville, will leave her address +at this office, she will hear of something not in the least to her +advantage." He couldn't advertise. + +It was midday following the eve of his confession to his father. For +the last eleven or twelve days, ever since he had seen that blessed +apparition turn with the two young friends into Canal Street out of +Bourbon--he had been venturing daily, for luncheon, just down into +Bourbon Street, to the Christian Women's Exchange. Now, by all the +laws of fortune he should in that time have seen in there at least +once or twice a day already, the face he was ever looking for. But he +had not; nor did he to-day. He only saw, or thought he saw, the +cashier--I should say the cashieress--glance crosswise at him with +eyes that seemed to him to say: + +"Fool; sneak; whelp; 'Cajun; our private detectives are watching +you." + +Both rooms and the veranda were full of ladies and gentlemen whose +faces he dared not lift his eyes to look into. And yet even in that +frame there suddenly came to him one of those happy thoughts that are +supposed to be the inspirations of inventive genius. A pleasant little +female voice near him said: + +"And apartments up-stairs that they rent to ladies only!" And +instantly the thought came that Marguerite and her mother might be +living there. One more lump of bread, a final gulp of coffee, a short +search for the waiter's check, and he stands at the cashieress's desk. +She makes change without looking at him or ceasing to tell a small +hunchbacked spinster standing by about somebody's wedding. But +suddenly she starts. + +"Oh! wasn't that right? You gave me four bits, didn't you? And I gave +you back two bits and a picayune, and--sir? Does Madame who? Oh! yes. +I didn't understand you; I'm a little deaf on this side; scarlet fever +when I was a little girl. I'm not the regular cashier, she's gone to +attend the wedding of a lady friend. Just wait a moment, please, while +I make change for these ladies. Oh, dear! ma'am, is that the smallest +you've got? I don't believe I can change that, ma'am. Yes--no--stop! +yes, I can! no, I can't! let's see! yes, yes, yes, I can; I've got it; +yes, there! I didn't think I had it." She turned again to Claude with +sisterly confidence. "Excuse me for keeping you waiting; haven't I met +you at the Y. M. C. A. sociable? Well, you must excuse me, but I was +sure I had. Of course I didn't if you was never there; but you know in +a big city like this you're always meeting somebody that's ne-e-early +somebody else that you know--oh! didn't you ask me--oh, yes! Madame +Beausoleil! Yes, she lives here, she and her daughter. But she's not +in. Oh! I'm sorry. Neither of them is here. She's not in the city; +hasn't been for two weeks. They're coming back; we're expecting them +every day. She heard of the death of a relative down in Terrebonne +somewhere. I wish they _would_ come back; we miss them here; I judge +they're relatives of yours, if I don't mistake the resemblance; you +seem to take after the daughter; wait a minute." + +Some one coming up to pay looked at Claude to see what the daughter +was like, and the young man slipped away, outblushing the night sky +when the marshes are afire. + +The question was settled; settled the wrong way. He hurried on across +Canal Street. Marguerite had not been, as he had construed the +inaccurate statement, in the city for two weeks. Resemblances need +delude him no longer. He went on into Carondelet Street and was +drawing near the door and stairway leading to his friend's studio and +his own little workroom above it, when suddenly from that very +stairway and door issued she whom, alas! he might now no longer +mistake for Marguerite, yet who, none the less for lessening hope, +held him captive. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +WHO SHE WAS. + + +For a moment somewhat more than her profile shone upon Claude's +bewildered gaze. + +"I shall see her eye to eye at last!" shouted his heart within: but +the next moment she turned away, and with two companions who came +across the same threshold, moved up the street, and, at the nearest +corner, vanished. Her companions were the American lady and the +artist. Claude wheeled, and hurried to pass around the square in the +opposite direction, and, as he reached the middle of its third side, +saw the artist hand them into the street-car, lift his hat, and return +towards the studio. The two men met at the foot of the stairs. The +Spaniard's countenance betrayed a restrained elation. + +"You goin' see a picture now," he said, in a modestly triumphant tone. +"Come in," he added, as Claude would have passed the studio door. + +They went in together. The Spaniard talked; Claude scarcely spoke. I +cannot repeat the conversation literally, but the facts are these: A +few evenings before, the artist had been one of the guests at a +musical party given by a lady whose name he did not mention. He +happened--he modestly believed it accidental--to be seated beside the +hostess, when a young lady--"jung Creole la-thy," he called her--who +was spending a few days with her, played the violin. The Spaniard's +delicate propriety left her also nameless; but he explained that, as +he understood, she was from the Teche. She played charmingly--"for an +amateur," he qualified: but what had struck him more than the music +was her beauty, her figure, her picturesque grace. And when he +confessed his delight in these, his hostess, seemingly on the +inspiration of the moment, said: + +"Paint her picture! Paint her just so! I'll give you the order. Not a +mere portrait--a picture." And he had agreed, and the "jung" lady had +consented. The two had but just now left the studio. To-morrow a +servant would bring violin, music-rack, etc.; the ladies would follow, +and then-- + +"You hear music, anyhow," said the artist. That was his gentle way of +intimating that Claude was not invited to be a looker-on. + +On the next day, Claude, in his nook above, with the studio below shut +from view by the curtain of his inner window, heard the ladies come. +He knows they are these two, for one voice, the elder, blooms out at +once in a gay abundance of words, and the other speaks in soft, low +tones that, before they reach his ear, run indistinguishably together. + +Soon there comes the sound of tuning the violin, while the older voice +is still heard praising one thing and another, and asking careless +questions. + +"I suppose that cotton cloth covers something that is to have a public +unveiling some day, doesn't it?" + +Claude cannot hear the answer; the painter drops his voice even below +its usual quiet tone. But Claude knows what he must be saying; that +the cloth covers merely a portrait he is finishing of a young man who +has sat for it to please a wifeless, and, but for him, childless, and +fondly devoted father. And now he can tell by the masculine step, and +the lady's one or two lively words, that the artist has drawn away the +covering from his (Claude's) own portrait. But the lady's young +companion goes on tuning her instrument--"tink, tink, tink;" and now +the bow is drawn. + +"Why, how singular!" exclaims the elder lady. "Why, my dear, come here +and see! Somebody has got your eyes! Why, he's got your whole state of +mind, a reduplication of it. And--I declare, he looks almost as good +as you do! If--I"-- + +The voice stops short. There is a moment's silence in which the unseen +hearer doubts not the artist is making signs that yonder window and +curtain are all that hide the picture's original, and the voice says +again,-- + +"I wish you'd paint my picture," and the violin sounds once more its +experimental notes. + +But there are other things which Claude can neither hear, nor see, nor +guess. He cannot see that the elder lady is already wondering at, and +guardedly watching, an agitation betrayed by the younger in a tremor +of the hand that fumbles with her music-sheets and music-stand, in the +foot that trembles on the floor, in the reddened cheek, and in the +bitten lip. He may guess that the painter sits at his easel with +kindling eye; but he cannot guess that just as the elder lady is about +to say,-- + +"My dear, if you don't feel"--the tremor vanishes, the lips gently +set, and only the color remains. But he hears the first soft moan of +the tense string under the bow, and a second, and another; and then, +as he rests his elbows upon the table before him, and covers his face +in his trembling hands, it seems to him as if his own lost heart had +entered into that vibrant medium, and is pouring thence to heaven and +her ear its prayer of love. + +Paint, artist, paint! Let your brushes fly! None can promise you she +shall ever look quite like this again. Catch the lines,--the waving +masses and dark coils of that loose-bound hair; the poise of head and +neck; the eloquent sway of the form; the folds of garments that no +longer hide, but are illumined by, the plenitude of an inner life and +grace; the elastic feet; the ethereal energy and discipline of arms +and shoulders; the supple wrists; the very fingers quivering on the +strings; the rapt face, and the love-inspired eyes. + +Claude, Claude! when every bird in forest and field knows the call of +its mate, can you not guess the meaning of those strings? Must she +open those sealed lips and call your very name--she who would rather +die than call it? + +He does not understand. Yet, without understanding, he answers. He +rises from his seat; he moves to the window; he will not tiptoe or +peep; he will be bold and bad. Brazenly he lifts the curtain and looks +down; and one, one only--not the artist and not the patroness of art, +but that one who would not lift her eyes to that window for all the +world's wealth--knows he is standing there, listening and looking +down. He counts himself all unseen, yet presently shame drops the +curtain. He turns away, yet stands hearkening. The music is about to +end. The last note trembles on the air. There is silence. Then someone +moves from a chair, and then the single cry of admiration and delight +from the player's companion is the player's name,-- + +"Marguerite Beausoleil!" + +Hours afterward there sat Claude in the seat where he had sunk down +when he heard that name. The artist's visitors had made a long stay, +but at length they were gone. And now Claude, too, rose to go out. His +steps were heard below, and presently the painter's voice called +persuadingly up:-- + +"St. Pierre! St. Pierre! Come, see." + +They stood side by side before the new work. Claude gazed in silence. +At length he said, still gazing: + +"I'll buy it when 'tis finish'." + +But the artist explained again that it was being painted for +Marguerite's friend. + +"For what she want it?" demanded Claude. The Spaniard smiled and +intimated that the lady probably thought he could paint. "But at any +rate," he went on to say, "she seemed to have a hearty affection for +the girl herself, whom," he said, "she had described as being as good +as she looked." Claude turned and went slowly out. + +When at sunset he stood under the honey-locust tree on the levee where +he was wont to find his father waiting for him, he found himself +alone. But within speaking distance he saw St. Pierre's skiff just +being drawn ashore by a ragged negro, who presently turned and came +to him, half-lifting the wretched hat that slouched about his dark +brows, and smiling. + +"Sim like you done fo'got me," he said. "Don't you 'member how I use' +live at Belle Alliance? Yes, seh. I's de one what show Bonaventure de +road to Gran' Point'. Yes, seh. But I done lef' dah since Mistoo +Wallis sole de place. Yes, seh. An' when I meet up wid you papa you +nevva see a nigger so glad like I was. No, seh. An' likewise you papa. +Yes, seh. An' he ass me is I want to wuck fo' him, an' I see he +needin' he'p, an' so I tu'n in an' he'p him. Oh, yes, seh! dass mo' 'n +a week, now, since I been wuckin' fo' you papa." + +They got into the skiff and pushed off, the negro alone at the oars. + +"Pow'ful strong current on udder side," he said, pulling quietly +up-stream to offset the loss of way he must make presently in crossing +the rapid flood. "Mistoo Claude, I see a gen'leman dis day noon what I +ain't see' befo' since 'bout six year' an' mo'. I disremember his +name, but----" + +"Tarbox?" asked Claude with sudden interest. + +"Yes, seh. Dass it! Tah-bawx. Sim like any man ought to 'member dat +name. Him an' you papa done gone down de canal. Yes, seh; in a +pirogue. He come in a big hurry an' say how dey got a big crevasse up +de river on dat side, an' he want make you papa see one man what +livin' on Lac Cataouaché. Yes, seh. An you papa say you fine you +supper in de pot. An' Mistoo Tah-bawx he say he want you teck one +hoss an' ride up till de crevasse an' you fine one frien' of yose +yondah, one ingineer; an' he say--Mistoo Tah-bawx--how he 'low to meet +up wid you at you papa' house to-morrow daylight. Yes, seh; Mistoo +Tah-bawx; yes, seh." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +CAN THEY CLOSE THE BREAK? + + +The towering cypresses of the far, southern swamps have a great width +of base, from which they narrow so rapidly in the first seven or eight +feet of their height, and thence upward taper so gradually, that it is +almost or quite impossible for an axe-man, standing at their roots, to +chop through the great flare that he finds abreast of him, and bring +the trees down. But when the swamps are deep in water, the swamper may +paddle up to these trees, whose narrowed waists are now within the +swing of his axe, and standing up in his canoe, by a marvel of +balancing skill, cut and cut, until at length his watchful, +up-glancing eye sees the forest giant bow his head. Then a shove, a +few backward sweeps of the paddle, and the canoe glides aside, and the +great trunk falls, smiting the smooth surface of the water with a roar +that, miles away, reaches the ear like the thunder of artillery. The +tree falls: but if the woodsman has not known how to judge and choose +wisely when the inner wood is laid bare under the first big chip that +flies, there are many chances that the fallen tree will instantly sink +to the bottom of the water, and cannot be rafted out. One must know +his craft, even in Louisiana swamps. "Knowledge is power." + +When Zoséphine and Mr. Tarbox finished out that Sunday twilight walk, +they talked, after leaving the stile behind, only on business. He told +her of having lately been, with a certain expert, in the swamps of +Barataria, where he had seen some noble cypress forests tantalizingly +near to navigation and market, but practically a great way off, +because the levees of the great sugar estates on the Mississippi River +shut out all deep overflows. Hence these forests could be bought for, +seemingly, a mere tithe of their value. Now, he proposed to buy such a +stretch of them along the edge of the shaking prairie north of Lake +Cataouaché as would show on his part, he said, "caution, but not +temerity." + +He invited her to participate. "And why?" For the simple reason that +the expert, and engineer, had dropped the remark that, in his opinion, +a certain levee could not possibly hold out against the high water of +more than two or three more years, and that when it should break it +would spread, from three to nine feet of water, over hundreds of +square miles of swamp forests, _prairies tremblantes_, and rice and +sugar fields, and many leagues of railway. Zoséphine had consented; +and though Mr. Tarbox had soon after gone upon his commercial travels, +he had effected the purchase by correspondence, little thinking that +the first news he should hear on returning to New Orleans would be +that the remotely anticipated "break" had just occurred. + +And now, could and would the breach be closed, or must all Barataria +soon be turned into, and remain for months, a navigable yellow sea? +This, Claude knew, was what he must hasten to the crevasse to +discover, and return as promptly to report upon, let his heart-strings +draw as they might towards the studio in Carondelet Street and the +Christian Women's Exchange. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +THE OUTLAW AND THE FLOOD. + + +What suffering it costs to be a coward! Some days before the crevasse +occurred, he whom we know as the pot-hunter stood again on the +platform of that same little railway station whence we once saw him +vanish at sight of Bonaventure Deschamps. He had never ventured there +since, until now. But there was a new station agent. + +His Indian squaw was dead. A rattlesnake had given her its fatal +sting, and the outcast, dreading all men and the coroner not the +least, had, silently and alone, buried her on the prairie. + +The train rolled up to the station again as before. Claude's friend, +the surveyor, stepped off with a cigar in his mouth, to enjoy in the +train's momentary stay the delightful air that came across the open +prairie. The pot-hunter, who had got rid of his game, ventured near +his former patron. It might be the engineer could give him work +whereby to earn a day's ready money. He was not disappointed. The +engineer told him to come in a day or two, by the waterways the +pot-hunter knew so well, across the swamps and prairies to Bayou +Terrebonne and the little court-house town of Houma. And then he +added: + +"I heard this morning that somebody had been buying the swamp land all +around you out on Lake Cataouaché. Is it so?" + +The Acadian looked vacant and shook his head. + +"Yes," said the other, "a Madame Beausoleil, or somebod--What's the +matter?" + +"All aboard!" cried the train conductor. + +"The fellow turned pale," said the surveyor, as he resumed his seat in +the smoking-car and the landscape began again to whirl by. + +The pot-hunter stood for a moment, and then slowly, as if he stole +away from some sleeping enemy, left the place. Alarm went with him +like an attendant ghost. A thousand times that day, in the dark swamp, +on the wide prairie, or under his rush-thatch on the lake-side, he +tortured himself with one question: Why had she--Zoséphine--reached +away out from Carancro to buy the uncultivable and primeval wilderness +round about his lonely hiding-place? Hour after hour the inexplicable +problem seemed to draw near and nearer to him, a widening, tightening, +dreamlike terror, that, as it came, silently pointed its finger of +death at him. He was glad enough to leave his cabin next day in his +small, swift pirogue--shot-gun, axe, and rifle his only +companions--for Terrebonne. + +It chanced to be noon of the day following, when he glided up the +sunny Terrebonne towards the parish seat. The shores of the stream +have many beauties, but the Acadian's eyes were alert to any thing but +them. The deep green, waxen-leaved casino hedges; the hedges of +Cherokee rose, and sometimes of rose and casino mingled; the fields of +corn and sugar-cane; the quaint, railed, floating bridges lying across +the lazy bayou; the orange-groves of aged, giant trees, their dark +green boughs grown all to a tangle with well-nigh the density of a +hedge, and their venerable trunks hairy with green-gray lichens; the +orange-trees again in the door-yards, with neat pirogues set upon +racks under their deep shade; the indescribable floods of sunlight and +caverns of shadow; the clear, brown depths beneath his own canoe; or, +at the bottom, the dark, waving, green-brown tresses of +water-weeds,--these were naught to him. + +But the human presence was much; and once, when just ahead of him he +espied a young, sunbonneted woman crouching in the pouring sunshine +beyond the sod of the bayou's bank, itself but a few inches above the +level of the stream, on a little pier of one plank pushed out among +the flags and reeds, pounding her washing with a wooden paddle, he +stopped the dip of his canoe-paddle, and gazed with growing +trepidation and slackening speed. At the outer end of the plank, the +habitual dip of the bucket had driven aside the water-lilies, and made +a round, glassy space that reflected all but perfectly to him her +busy, young, downcast visage. + +"How like"--Just then she lifted her head. He started as though his +boat had struck a snag. How like--how terribly like to that young +Zoséphine whose ill-concealed scorn he had so often felt in days--in +years--long gone, at Carancro! This was not, and could not be, the +same--lacked half the necessary years; and yet, in the joy of his +relief, he answered her bow with a question, "Whose was yonder house?" + +She replied in the same Acadian French in which she was questioned, +that there dwelt, or had dwelt, and about two weeks ago had died, +"Monsieur Robichaux." The pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, his canoe +shot on, and two hours later he walked with dust-covered feet into +Houma. + +The principal tavern there stands on that corner of the court-house +square to which the swamper would naturally come first. Here he was to +find the engineer. But, as with slow, diffident step he set one foot +upon the corner of the threshold, there passed quickly by him and out +towards the court-house, two persons,--one a man of a county +court-room look and with a handful of documents, and the other a woman +whom he knew at a glance. Her skirts swept his ankles as he shrank in +sudden and abject terror against the wall, yet she did not see him. + +He turned and retreated the way he had come, nothing doubting that +only by the virtue of a voodoo charm which he carried in his pocket he +had escaped, for the time being, a plot laid for his capture. For the +small, neatly-robed form that you may still see disappearing within +the court-house door beside the limping figure of the probate clerk is +Zoséphine Beausoleil. She will finish the last pressing matter of the +Robichaux succession now in an hour or so, and be off on the little +branch railway, whose terminus is here, for New Orleans. + +When the pot-hunter approached Lake Cataouaché again, he made on foot, +under cover of rushes and reeds taller than he, a wide circuit and +reconnoissance of his hut. While still a long way off, he saw, lighted +by the sunset rays, what he quickly recognized as a canoe drawn half +out of the water almost at his door. He warily drew nearer. Presently +he stopped, and stood slowly and softly shifting his footing about on +the oozy soil, at a little point of shore only some fifty yards away +from his cabin. His eyes, peering from the ambush, descried a man +standing by the pirogue and searching with his gaze the wide distances +that would soon be hidden in the abrupt fall of the southern night. + +The pot-hunter knew him. Not by name, but by face. The day the outlaw +saw Bonaventure at the little railway station this man was with him. +The name the pot-hunter did not know was St. Pierre. + +The ambushed man shrank a step backward into his hiding-place. His +rifle was in his hand and he noiselessly cocked it. He had not +resolved to shoot; but a rifle is of no use until it is cocked. While +he so stood, another man came into view and to the first one's side. +This one, too, he knew, despite the soft hat that had taken the place +of the silk one; for this was Tarbox. The Acadian was confirmed in +his conviction that the surveyor's invitation for him to come to Houma +was part of a plot to entrap him. + +While he still looked the two men got into the canoe and St. Pierre +paddled swiftly away. The pot-hunter let down the hammer of his gun, +shrank away again, turned and hurried through the tangle, regained his +canoe, and paddled off. The men's departure from the cabin was, in his +belief, a ruse. But he knew how by circuits and short cuts to follow +after them unseen, and this he did until he became convinced that they +were fairly in the Company Canal and gliding up its dark colonnade in +the direction whence they had evidently come. Then he returned to his +cabin and with rifle cocked and with slow, stealthy step entered it, +and in headlong haste began to prepare to leave it for a long +hiding-out. + +He knew every spot of land and water for leagues around, as a bear or +a fox would know the region about his den. He had in mind now a bit of +dry ground scarce fifty feet long or wide, deeply hidden in the swamp +to the north of this lake. How it had ever happened that this dry +spot, lifted two or three feet above the low level around it, had been +made, whether by some dumb force of nature or by the hand of men yet +more untamable than he, had never crossed his thought. It was beyond +measure of more value to him to know, by what he had seen growing on +it season after season, that for many a long year no waters had +overflowed it. In the lake, close to his hut, lay moored his small +centerboard lugger, and into this he presently threw his few +appliances and supplies, spread sail, and skimmed away, with his +pirogue towing after. + +His loaded rifle lay within instant reach. By choice he would not have +harmed any living creature that men call it wrong to injure; but to +save himself, not only from death, but from any risk of death, +rightful or wrongful, he would, not through courage, but in the +desperation of frantic cowardice, have killed a hundred men, one by +one. + +By this time it was night; and when first the lugger and, after it was +hidden away, the pirogue, had carried him up a slender bayou as near +as they could to the point he wished to reach, he had still to drag +the loaded pirogue no small distance through the dark, often wet and +almost impenetrable woods. He had taken little rest and less sleep in +his late journeyings, and when at length he cast himself down before +his fire of dead fagots on the raised spot he had chosen, he slept +heavily. He felt safe from man's world, at least for the night. + +Only one thing gave him concern as he lay down. It was the fact that +when, with the old woods-habit strong on him, he had approached his +selected camping ground, with such wariness of movement as the +dragging pirogue would allow, he had got quite in sight of it before a +number of deer on it bounded away. He felt an unpleasant wonder to +know what their unwilling boldness might signify. + +He did not awake to replenish his fire until there were only a few +live embers shining dimly at his feet. He rose to a sitting posture; +and in that same moment there came a confusion of sound--a trampling +through bushes--that froze his blood, and robbed his open throat of +power to cry. The next instant he knew it was but those same deer. But +the first intelligent thought brought a new fear. These most timid of +creatures had made but a few leaps and stopped. He knew what that +meant! As he leaped to his feet the deer started again, and he heard, +to his horror,--where the ground had been dry and caked when he lay +down,--the plash of their feet in water. + +Trembling, he drew his boots on, made and lighted a torch, and in a +moment was dragging his canoe after him in the direction of the +lugger. Presently his steps, too, were plashing. He stooped, waved the +torch low across the water's surface, and followed the gleam with his +scrutiny. But he did so not for any doubt that he would see, as he +did, the yellow flood of the Mississippi. He believed, as he believed +his existence, that his pursuers had let the river in upon the swamp, +ruin whom they might, to drive him from cover. + +Presently he stepped into the canoe, cast his torch into the water, +took his paddle, and glided unerringly through a darkness and a wild +tangle of undergrowth, large and small, where you or I could not have +gone ten yards without being lost. He emerged successfully from the +forest into the open prairie, and, under a sky whose stars told him it +would soon be day, glided on down the little bayou lane, between walls +of lofty rushes, up which he had come in the evening, and presently +found the lugger as he had left her, with her light mast down, hidden +among the brake canes that masked a little cove. + +The waters were already in the prairie. As he boarded the little +vessel at the stern, a raccoon waddled in noiseless haste over the +bow, and splashed into the wet covert of reeds beyond. If only to keep +from sharing his quarters with all the refuge-hunting vermin of the +noisome wilderness, the one human must move on. He turned the lugger's +prow towards the lake, and spread her sails to the faint, cool breeze. +But when day broke, the sail was gone. + +Far and wide lay the pale green leagues of reeds and bulrushes, with +only here and there a low willow or two beside some unseen lagoon, or +a sinuous band of darker green, where round rushes and myrtle bushes +followed the shore of some hidden bayou. The waters of the lake were +gleaming and crinkling in tints of lilac and silver stolen from the +air; and away to the right, and yet farther to the left, stood the +dark phalanxes of cypress woods. + +Thus had a thousand mornings risen on the scene in the sight of the +outlaw. Numberless birds fluttered from place to place, snatching +their prey, carolling, feeding their young, chattering, croaking, +warbling, and swinging on the bending rush. But if you looked again, +strange signs of nature's mute anguish began to show. On every log or +bit of smaller drift that rain-swollen bayous had ever brought from +the forest and thrown upon their banks some wild tenant of the jungle, +hare or weasel, cat, otter, or raccoon, had taken refuge, sometimes +alone, but oftener sharing it, in common misery and silent truce, +with deadly foes. For under all that expanse of green beauty, the +water, always abundant, was no longer here and there, but everywhere. + +See yonder reed but a few yards away. What singular dark enlargement +of stem is that near its top, that curious spiral growth?--growth! It +is a great serpent that has climbed and twined himself there, and is +holding on for the life he loves as we love ours. And see! On a reed +near by him, another; and a little farther off, another; and +another--and another! Where were our eyes until now? The surface of +the vast brake, as far as one can see such small things, is dotted +with like horrid burdens. And somewhere in this wild desolation, in +this green prospect of a million deaths waiting in silence alike for +harmful and harmless creatures, one man is hiding from all mankind. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +WELL HIDDEN. + + +Of all the teeming multitudes of the human world, the pot-hunter knows +not one soul who is on his side; not one whom he dare let see his face +or come between him and a hiding-place. The water is rising fast. He +dare not guess how high it will come; but rise as it may, linger at +its height as it may, he will not be driven out. In his belief a +hundred men are ready, at every possible point where his foot could +overstep the line of this vast inundation, to seize him and drag him +to the gallows. Ah, the gallows! Not being dead--not God's anger--not +eternal burnings; but simply facing death! The gallows! The tree above +his head--the rope around his neck--the signal about to be spoken--the +one wild moment after it! These keep him here. + +He has taken down sail and mast. The rushes are twelve feet high. They +hide him well. With oars, mast, and the like, he has contrived +something by which he can look out over their tops. He has powder and +shot, coffee, salt, and rice; he will not be driven out! At night he +spreads his sail and seeks the open waters of the lake, where he can +sleep, by littles, without being overrun by serpents; but when day +breaks, there is no visible sign of his presence. Yet he is where he +can see his cabin. It is now deep in the water, and the flood is still +rising. He is quite sure no one has entered it since he left it. +But--the strain of perpetual watching! + +When at dawn of the fifth day he again looked for cover in the +prairie, the water was too high to allow him concealment, and he +sought the screen of some willows that fringed the edge of the swamp +forest, anchoring in a few rods' width of open water between them and +the woods. He did not fear to make, on the small hearth of mud and +ashes he had improvised in his lugger, the meagre fire needed to +prepare his food. Its slender smoke quickly mingled with the hazy +vapors and shadows of the swamp. As he cast his eye abroad, he found +nowhere any sign of human approach. Here and there the tops of the +round rushes still stood three feet above the water, but their slender +needles were scarcely noticeable. Far and near, over prairie as over +lake, lay the unbroken yellow flood. There was no flutter of wings, no +whistle of feathered mate to mate, no call of nestlings from the +ruined nests. Except the hawk and vulture, the birds were gone. Untold +thousands of dumb creatures had clung to life for a time, but now were +devoured by birds of prey and by alligators, or were drowned. +Thousands still lived on. Behind him in the swamp the wood-birds +remained, the gray squirrel still barked and leaped from tree to tree, +the raccoon came down to fish, the plundering owl still hid himself +through the bright hours, and the chilled snake curled close in the +warm folds of the hanging moss. Nine feet of water below. In earlier +days, to the northward through the forest, many old timbers rejected +in railway construction or repair, with dead logs and limbs, had been +drifted together by heavy rains, and had gathered a covering of soil; +canebrake, luxurious willow-bushes, and tough grasses had sprung up on +them and bound them with their roots. These floating islands the +flood, now covering the dense underbrush of the swamp, lifted on its +free surface, and, in its slow creep southward, bore through the +pillared arcades of the cypress wood and out over the submerged +prairies. Many a cowering deer in those last few days that had made +some one of these green fragments of the drowned land a haven of +despair, the human castaway left unharmed. + +Of all sentient creatures in that deluge he was suffering most. He +was gaunt and haggard with watching. The thought of pursuit bursting +suddenly around him now fastened permanently upon his imagination. He +feared to sleep. From the direction of the open water surprise seemed +impossible; but from the forest! what instant might it not ring with +the whoop of discovery, the many-voiced halting challenge, and the +glint of loaded Winchester? And another fear had come. Many a man not +a coward, and as used to the sight of serpents as this man, has never +been able to be other than a coward concerning them. The pot-hunter +held them in terror. It was from fear of them that he had lighted his +torch the night of his bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their +ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding them had made the +swamp and prairie life bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven +from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to +lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to +find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant "Beware!" In the +flooded prairie the willow-trees were loaded with the knotted folds of +the moccasin, the rattlesnake, and I know not how many other sorts of +deadly or only loathsome serpents. Some little creatures at the bottom +of the water, feeding on the soft white part of the round rush near +its root, every now and then cut a stem free from its base, and let it +spring to the surface and float away. Often a snake had wrapped +himself about the end above the water, and when this refuge gave way +and drifted abroad he would cling for a time, until some less forlorn +hope came in sight, and then swim for it. Thus scarce a minute of the +day passed, it seemed, but one, two, or three of these creatures, +making for their fellow-castaway's boat, were turned away by nervous +waving of arms. The nights had proved that they could not climb the +lugger's side, and when he was in her the canoe was laid athwart her +gunwales; but at night he had to drop the bit of old iron that served +for an anchor, and the very first night a large moccasin--not of the +dusky kind described in books, but of that yet deadlier black sort, an +ell in length, which the swampers call the Congo--came up the +anchor-rope. The castaway killed it with an oar; but after that who +would have slept? + +About sunset of the fifth day, though it was bright and beautiful, the +hunter's cunning detected the first subtle signs of a coming storm. He +looked about him to see what provision was needed to meet and weather +its onset. On the swamp side the loftiest cypresses, should the wind +bring any of them down, would not more than cast the spray of their +fall as far as his anchorage. The mass of willows on the prairie side +was nearer, but its trees stood low,--already here and there the +branches touched the water; the hurricane might tear away some boughs, +but could do no more. He shortened the anchor-rope, and tried the hold +of the anchor on the bottom to make sure the lugger might not swing +into the willows, for in every fork of every bough was a huge dark +mass of serpents plaited and piled one upon another, and ready at any +moment to glide apart towards any new shelter that might be reached. + +While eye and hand were thus engaged, the hunter's ear was attentive +to sounds that he had been hearing for more than an hour. These were +the puff of 'scape-pipes and plash of a paddle-wheel, evidently from a +small steamer in the Company Canal. She was coming down it; that is, +from the direction of the river and the city. + +Whither was she bound? To some one of the hundred or more plantations +and plantation homes that the far-reaching crevasse had desolated? +Likely enough. In such event she would not come into view, although +for some time now he had seen faint shreds of smoke in the sky over a +distant line of woods. But it filled him with inward tremors to know +that if she chose to leave the usual haunts of navigation on her left, +and steam out over the submerged prairies and the lake, and into the +very shadow of these cypresses, she could do it without fear of a snag +or a shallow. He watched anxiously as the faint smoke reached a +certain point. If the next thin curl should rise farther on, it would +mean safety. But when it came it seemed to be in the same place as the +last; and another the same, and yet another the same: she was making +almost a straight line for the spot where he stood. Only a small low +point of forest broke the line, and presently, far away, she slowly +came out from behind it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE TORNADO. + + +The Acadian stooped at once and with a quick splash launched his +canoe. A minute later he was in it, gliding along and just within the +edge of the forest where it swept around nearly at right angles to the +direction in which the steamboat was coming. Thus he could watch the +approaching steamer unseen, while every moment putting distance +between himself and the lugger. + +The strange visitor came on. How many men there were on her lower +deck! Were they really negroes, or had they blackened their faces, as +men sometimes do when they are going to hang a poor devil in the +woods? On the upper deck are two others whose faces do not seem to be +blackened. But a moment later they are the most fearful sight of all; +for only too plainly does the fugitive see that they are the same two +men who stood before the doorway of his hut six days before. And see +how many canoes on the lower deck! + +While the steamer is yet half a mile away from the hidden lugger, her +lamps and fires and their attendant images in the water beneath glow +softly in the fast deepening twilight, and the night comes swiftly +down. The air is motionless. Across the silent waste an engine bell +jangles; the puff of steam ceases; the one plashing paddle-wheel at +the stern is still; the lights glide more and more slowly; with a +great crash and rumble, that is answered by the echoing woods, the +anchor-chain runs out its short measure, and the steamer stops. + +Gently the pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, and the pirogue moved +back towards the lugger. It may be that the flood was at last numbing +his fear, as it had so soon done that of all the brute-life around +him; it was in his mind to do something calling for more courage than +he had ever before commanded in his life, save on that one day in +Carancro, when, stung to madness by the taunts of a brave man, and +driven to the wall, he had grappled and slain his tormentor. He had +the thought now to return, and under cover of the swamp's deep outer +margin of shadow, silently lift into the canoe the bit of iron that +anchored the lugger, and as noiselessly draw her miles away to another +covert; or if the storm still held back, even at length to step the +mast, spread the sail, and put the horizon between him and the steamer +before daybreak. This he had now started to do, and would do, if only +courage would hold on and the storm hold off. + +For a time his canoe moved swiftly; but as he drew near the lugger his +speed grew less and less, and eye and ear watched and hearkened with +their intensest might. He could hear talking on the steamer. There was +a dead calm. He had come to a spot just inside the wood, abreast of +the lugger. His canoe slowly turned and pointed towards her, and then +stood still. He sat there with his paddle in the water, longing like a +dumb brute; longing, and, without a motion, struggling for courage +enough to move forward. It would not come. His heart jarred his frame +with its beating. He could not stir. + +As he looked out upon the sky a soft, faint tremor of light glimmered +for a moment over it, without disturbing a shadow below. The paddle +stirred gently, and the canoe slowly drew back; the storm was coming +to betray him with its lightnings. In the black forest's edge the +pot-hunter lingered trembling. Oh for the nerve to take a brave man's +chances! A little courage would have saved his life. He wiped the dew +from his brow with his sleeve; every nerve had let go. Again there +came across the water the very words of those who talked together on +the steamer. They were saying that the felling of trees would begin in +the morning; but they spoke in a tongue which Acadians of late years +had learned to understand, though many hated it, but of which he had +never known twenty words, and what he had known were now +forgotten--the English tongue. Even without courage, to have known a +little English would have made the difference between life and death. +Another glimmer spread dimly across the sky, and a faint murmur of +far-off thunder came to the ear. He turned the pirogue and fled. + +Soon the stars are hidden. A light breeze seems rather to tremble and +hang poised than to blow. The rolling clouds, the dark wilderness, and +the watery waste shine out every moment in the wide gleam of +lightnings still hidden by the wood, and are wrapped again in +ever-thickening darkness over which thunders roll and jar, and answer +one another across the sky. Then, like a charge of ten thousand +lancers, come the wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the +artillery of heaven. The lightnings leap, hiss, and blaze; the +thunders crack and roar; the rain lashes; the waters writhe; the wind +smites and howls. For five, for ten, for twenty minutes,--for an hour, +for two hours,--the sky and the flood are never for an instant wholly +dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; but while the universal +roar sinks and swells, and the wide, vibrant illumination shows all +things in ghostly half-concealment, fresh floods of lightning every +moment rend the dim curtain and leap forth; the glare of day falls +upon the swaying wood, the reeling, bowing, tossing willows, the +seething waters, the whirling rain, and in the midst the small form of +the distressed steamer, her revolving paddle-wheels toiling behind to +lighten the strain upon her anchor-chains; then all are dim ghosts +again, while a peal, as if the heavens were rent, rolls off around the +sky, comes back in shocks and throbs, and sinks in a long roar that +before it can die is swallowed up in the next flash and peal. + +The deserted lugger is riding out the tornado. Whirled one moment this +way and another that, now and again taking in water, her +forest-shelter breaks the force of many a gust that would have +destroyed her out in the open. But in the height of the storm her poor +substitute for an anchor lets go its defective hold on the rushy +bottom and drags, and the little vessel backs, backs, into the +willows. She escapes such entanglement as would capsize her, and by +and by, when the wind lulls for a moment and then comes with all its +wrath from the opposite direction, she swings clear again and drags +back nearly to her first mooring and lies there, swinging, tossing, +and surviving still,--a den of snakes. + +The tempest was still fierce, though abating, and the lightning still +flashed, but less constantly, when at a point near the lugger the +pirogue came out of the forest, laboring against the wind and +half-filled with water. On the face of the storm-beaten man in it each +gleam of the lightning showed the pallid confession of mortal terror. +Where that frail shell had been, or how often it had cast its occupant +out, no one can ever know. He was bareheaded and barefooted. One +cannot swim in boots; without them, even one who has never dared learn +how may hope to swim a little. + +In the darkness he drew alongside the lugger, rose, balanced +skilfully, seized his moment, and stepped safely across her gunwale. A +slight lurch caused him to throw his arms out to regain his poise; the +line by which he still held the canoe straightened out its length and +slipped from his grasp. In an instant the pirogue was gone. A glimmer +of lightning showed her driving off sidewise before the wind. But it +revealed another sight also. It was dark again, black; but the outcast +stood freezing with horror and fright, gazing just in advance of his +feet and waiting for the next gleam. It came, brighter than the last; +and scarcely a step before him he saw three great serpents moving +towards the spot that gave him already such slender footing. He +recoiled a step--another; but instantly as he made the second a cold, +living form was under his foot, its folds flew round his ankle, and +once! twice! it struck! With a frantic effort he spurned it from him; +all in the same instant a blaze of lightning discovered the maimed +form and black and red markings of a "bastard hornsnake," and with one +piercing wail of despair, that was drowned in the shriek of the wind +and roar of the thunder, he fell. + +A few hours later the winds were still, the stars were out, a sweet +silence had fallen upon water and wood, and from her deck the watchmen +on the steamer could see in the north-eastern sky a broad, soft, +illumination, and knew it was the lights of slumbering New Orleans, +eighteen miles away. + +By and by, farther to the east, another brightness began to grow and +gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a +soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it. +A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four +replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird +flew out of the woods on her earliest quest for family provision; a +thrush began to sing; and in a moment more the whole forest was one +choir. + +What wonderful purity was in the fragrant air; what color was on the +calm waters and in the deep sky; how beautiful, how gentle was Nature +after her transport of passion! Shall we ever subdue her and make her +always submissive and compliant? Who knows? Who knows what man may do +with her when once he has got self, the universal self, under perfect +mastery? See yonder huge bull-alligator swimming hitherward out of the +swamp. Even as you point he turns again in alarm and is gone. Once he +was man's terror, Leviathan. The very lions of Africa and the +grizzlies of the Rockies, so they tell us, are no longer the bold +enemies of man they once were. "Subdue the earth"--it is being done. +Science and art, commerce and exploration, are but parts of religion. +Help us, brothers all, with every possible discovery and invention to +complete the conquest begun in that lost garden whence man and woman +first came forth, not for vengeance but for love, to bruise the +serpent's head. But as yet, both within us and without us, what +terrible revolts doth Nature make! what awful victories doth she have +over us, and then turn and bless and serve us again! + +As the sun was rising, one of the timber-cutters from the steamer +stood up in his canoe about half a mile away, near the wood and beside +some willows, and halloed and beckoned. And when those on the steamer +hearkened he called again, bidding them tell "de boss" that he had +found a canoe adrift, an anchored boat, and a white man in her, dead. + +Tarbox and St. Pierre came in a skiff. + +"Is he drowned?" asked Mr. Tarbox, while still some distance off. + +"Been struck by lightnin' sim like," replied the negro who had found +the body.--"Watch out, Mistoo Tah-bawx!" he added, as the skiff drew +near; "dat boat dess lousy wid snake'!" + +Tarbox stood up in the skiff and looked sadly upon the dead face. +"It's our man," he said to St. Pierre. + +"Dass what I say!" exclaimed the negro. "Yes, seh, so soon I see him I +say, mos' sholy dass de same man what Mistoo Tah-bawx lookin' faw to +show him 'roun' 'bout de swamp! Yes, seh, not-instandin' I never see +him befo'! No, seh.--Lawd! look yondeh! look dat big bahsta'd +hawn-snake! He kyant git away: he's hu't! Lawd! dass what kill dat +man! Dat man trawmp on him in de dark, and he strack him wid his hawny +tail! Look at dem fo' li'l' spot' on de man' foot! Now, Mistoo +Tah-bawx! You been talk' 'bout dem ah bahsta'd hawn-snake not pizen! +Well, mos' sholy dey _bite_ ain't pizen; but if dat hawn on de een of +his tail dess on'y tetch you, you' gone! Look at dat man! Kill' him so +quick dey wa'n't time for de place to swell whah he was hit!" But +Tarbox quietly pointed out to St. Pierre that the tiny wounds were +made by the reptile's teeth. + +"The coroner's verdict will probably be 'privation and exposure,'" +said he softly; "but it ought to be, 'killed by fright and the bite of +a harmless snake.'" + +On his murmured suggestion, St. Pierre gave orders that, with one +exception, every woodsman go to his tree-felling, and that the lugger +and canoe, with the dead man lying untouched, be towed by skiff and a +single pair of oars to the head of the canal for inquest and burial. + +"I'll go with him," said Tarbox softly to St. Pierre. "We owe him all +we're going to get out of these woods, and I owe him a great deal +more." When a little later he was left for a moment without a hearer, +he said to the prostrate form, "Poor fellow! And to think I had her +message to you to come out of this swamp and begin to live the life of +a live man!" + +The rude funeral moved away, and soon the woods were ringing with the +blow of axes and the shout and song of black timber-men as gayly as +though there never had been or was to be a storm or a death. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +"TEARS AND SUCH THINGS." + + +Marguerite and her friend had no sooner taken their seats to drive +home from the studio the day the sketch was made than Marguerite began +a perfect prattle. Her eyes still shone exaltedly, and leaped and fell +and darkened and brightened with more than the swift variety of a +fountain in the moonlight, while she kept trying in vain to meet her +companion's looks with a moment's steady regard. + +Claude was found! and she trembled with delight. But, alas! he had +heard her passionate call and yet stood still; had looked down upon +her in silence, and drawn again the curtain between them. She had +thought until the last moment, "He will come; he will confront us as +we pass out the door--will overtake us at the foot of the stairs--on +the sidewalk--at the carriage window." But it had not been so; and +now they were gone from the place; and here sat this friend, this gay, +cynical knower of men's and women's ways, answering her chatter in +short, smiling responses, with a steady eye fixed on her, and reading, +Marguerite believed, as plainly as if it were any of the sign-boards +along the rattling street, the writing on her fluttering heart. And +so, even while she trembled with strange delight, pain, shame, and +alarm pleaded through her dancing glances, now by turns and now in +confusion together, for mercy and concealment. But in fact, as this +friend sat glancing upon the young face beside her with secret +sympathy and admiration, it was only this wild fear of betrayal that +at length betrayed. + +Reaching the house, the street door was hardly shut behind them when +Marguerite would have darted up to her chamber; but her friend caught +her hands across the balustrade, and said, with roguery in her own +eyes: + +"Marguerite, you sweet rowdy--" + +"W'at?" + +"Yes, _what_. There's something up; what is it?" + +The girl tried to put on surprise; but her eyes failed her again. She +leaned on the rail and looked down, meanwhile trying softly to draw +away up-stairs; but her friend held on to one hand and murmured: + +"Just one question, dearie, just one. I'll not ask another: I'll die +first. You'll probably find me _in articulo mortis_ when you come +down-stairs. Just one question, lovie." + +"_W'at_ it is?" + +"It's nothing but this; I ask for information." The voice dropped to +a whisper,--"Is he as handsome as his portrait?" + +The victim rallied all her poor powers of face, and turned feebly upon +the questioner: + +"Po'trait? Who?" Her voice was low, and she glanced furtively at the +nearest door. "I dawn't awnstan you." Her hand pulled softly for its +freedom, and she turned to go, repeating, with averted face, "I dawn't +awnstan you 't all." + +"Well, never mind then, dear, if you don't understand," responded the +tease, with mock tenderness. "But, _ma belle Créole_--" + +"_Je suis Acadienne._" + +"You're an angel, faintly disguised. Only--look around here--only, +Angelica, don't try to practise woman's humbug on a woman. At least, +not on this old one. It doesn't work. I'll tell you whom I mean." She +pulled, but Marguerite held off. "I mean," she hoarsely whispered,--"I +mean the young inventor that engineer told us about. Remember?" + +Marguerite, with her head bowed low, slowly dragged her hand free, and +moved with growing speed up the stairs, saying: + +"I dawn't know what is dat. I dawn't awnstan you 't all." Her last +words trembled as if nigh to tears. At the top of the stairs the +searching murmur of her friend's voice came up, and she turned and +looked back. + +"Forgive me!" said the figure below. The girl stood a moment, sending +down a re-assuring smile. + +"You young rogue!" murmured the lady, looking up with ravished eyes. +Then she lifted herself on tiptoe, made a trumpet of both little +hands, and whispered: + +"Don't--worry! We'll bring it out--all right!" + +Whereat Marguerite blushed from temple to throat, and vanished. + +The same day word came from her mother of her return from Terrebonne, +and she hastened to rejoin her in their snug rooms over the Women's +Exchange. When she snatched Zoséphine into her arms and shed tears, +the mother merely wiped and kissed them away, and asked no +explanation. + +The two were soon apart. For Marguerite hungered unceasingly for +solitude. Only in solitude could she, or dared she, give herself up to +the constant recapitulation of every minutest incident of the morning. +And that was ample employment. They seemed the happenings of a month +ago. She felt as if it were imperative to fix them in her memory now, +or lose them in confusion and oblivion forever. Over them all again +and again she went, sometimes quickening memory with half-spoken +words, sometimes halting in long reverie at some intense juncture: now +with tingling pleasure at the unveiling of the portrait, the painter's +cautionary revelation of the personal presence above, or Claude's +appearance at the window; now with burnings of self-abasement at the +passionate but ineffectual beseechings of her violin; and always +ending with her face in her hands, as though to hide her face even +from herself for shame that with all her calling--her barefaced, as +it seemed to her, her abject calling--he had not come. + +"Marguerite, my child, it is time for bed." + +She obeyed. It was all one, the bed or the window. Her mother, weary +with travel, fell asleep; but she--she heard the clock down-stairs +strike, and a clock next door attest, twelve--one--two--three--four, +and another day began to shine in at the window. As it brightened, her +spirits rose. She had been lying long in reverie; now she began once +more the oft-repeated rehearsal. But the new day shone into it also. +When the silent recital again reached its end, the old distress was no +longer there, but in its place was a new, sweet shame near of kin to +joy. The face, unhidden, looked straight into the growing light. +Whatever else had happened, this remained,--that Claude was found. She +silently formed the name on her parted lips--"Claude! Claude! Claude! +Claude!" and could not stop though it gave her pain, the pain was so +sweet. She ceased only when there rose before her again the picture of +him drawing the curtain and disappearing; but even then she remembered +the words, "Don't worry; we'll bring it out all right," and smiled. + +When Zoséphine, as the first sunbeam struck the window-pane, turned +upon her elbow and looked into the fair face beside her, the eyes were +closed in sleep. She arose, darkened the room, and left it. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +LOVE, ANGER, AND MISUNDERSTANDING. + + +The city bells had sounded for noon when the sleeper opened her eyes. +While she slept, Claude had arrived again at his father's cottage from +the scene of the crevasse, and reported to Tarbox the decision of +himself and the engineer, that the gap would not be closed for months +to come. While he told it, they sat down with St. Pierre to breakfast. +Claude, who had had no chance even to seek sleep, ate like a starved +horse. Tarbox watched him closely, with hidden and growing amusement. +Presently their eyes fastened on each other steadily. Tarbox broke the +silence. + +"_You_ don't care how the crevasse turns out. I've asked you a +question now twice, and you don't even hear." + +"Why you don't ass ag'in?" responded the younger man, reaching over to +the meat-dish and rubbing his bread in the last of the gravy. Some +small care called St. Pierre away from the board. Tarbox leaned +forward on his elbows, and, not knowing he quoted, said softly,-- + +"There's something up. What is it?" + +"Op?" asked Claude, in his full voice, frowning. "Op where?--w'at, +_w'at_ is?" + +"Ah, yes!" said Tarbox, with affected sadness. "Yes, that's it; I +thought so. + + 'Oh-hon for somebody, oh hey for somebody.'" + +Claude stopped with a morsel half-way to his mouth, glared at him +several seconds, and then resumed his eating; not like a horse now, +but like a bad dog gnawing an old bone. He glanced again angrily at +the embodiment of irreverence opposite. Mr. Tarbox smiled. Claude let +slip, not intending it, an audible growl, with his eyes in the plate. +Mr. Tarbox's smile increased to a noiseless laugh, and grew and grew +until it took hopeless possession of him. His nerves relaxed, he +trembled, the table trembled with him, his eyes filled with tears, his +brows lifted laboriously, he covered his lips with one hand, and his +abdomen shrank until it pained him. And Claude knew, and showed he +knew it all; that was what made it impossible to stop. At length, with +tottering knees, Mr. Tarbox rose and started silently for the door. He +knew Claude's eyes were following. He heard him rise to his feet. He +felt as though he would have given a thousand dollars if his legs +would but last him through the doorway. But to crown all, St. Pierre +met him just on the threshold, breaking, with unintelligent sympathy, +into a broad, simple smile. Tarbox laid one hand upon the door for +support, and at that moment there was a hurtling sound; something +whizzed by Tarbox's ear, and the meat-dish crashed against the +door-post, and flew into a hundred pieces. + +The book-agent ran like a deer for a hundred yards and fell grovelling +upon the turf, the laugh still griping him with the energy of a +panther's jaws, while Claude, who, in blind pursuit, had come +threshing into his father's arms, pulled his hat over his eyes and +strode away towards the skiff ferry. As Mr. Tarbox returned towards +the cottage, St. Pierre met him, looking very grave, if not +displeased. The swamper spoke first. + +"Dass mighty good for you I was yondah to stop dat boy. He would 'a' +half-kill' you." + +"He'd have served me ex-actly right," said the other, and laughed +again. St. Pierre shook his head, as though this confession were poor +satisfaction, and said,-- + +"Dass not safe--make a 'Cajun mad. He dawn't git mad easy, but when he +_git_ mad it bre'k out all ove' him, yass. He goin' feel bad all day +now; I see tear' in his eye when he walk off." + +"I'm sorry," said Tarbox sincerely, and presently added, "Now, while +you look up a picked gang of timber-men, I'll see if I can charter a +little stern-wheel steamer, get that written permission from Madame +Beausoleil to cut trees on her land, and so forth, and so forth. +You'll hardly see me before bedtime again." + +It was the first hour of the afternoon when Claude left his little +workroom and walked slowly down to, and across, Canal Street and into +Bourbon. He had spent the intervening hours seated at his work-table +with his face in his hands. He was in great bitterness. His late +transport of anger gave him no burdensome concern. Indeed, there was +consolation in the thought that he should, by and by, stand erect +before one who was so largely to blame, and make that full confession +and apology which he believed his old-time Grande Pointe schoolmaster +would have offered could Bonaventure ever have so shamefully forgotten +himself. Yet the chagrin of having at once so violently and so +impotently belittled himself added one sting more to his fate. He was +in despair. An escaped balloon, a burst bubble, could hardly have +seemed more utterly beyond his reach than now did Marguerite. And he +could not blame her. She was right, he said sternly to himself--right +to treat his portrait as something that reminded her of nothing, +whether it did so or not; to play on with undisturbed inspiration; to +lift never a glance to his window; and to go away without a word, a +look, a sign, to any one, when the least breath or motion would have +brought him instantly into her sacred presence. She was right. She was +not for him. There is a fitness of things, and there was no +fitness--he said--of him for her. And yet she must and would ever be +more to him than any one else. He would glory in going through life +unloved, while his soul lived in and on the phantom companionship of +that vision of delight which she was and should ever be. The midday +bells sounded softly here and there. He would walk. + +As I say, he went slowly down the old rue Bourbon. He had no hunger; +he would pass by the Women's Exchange. There was nothing to stop there +for; was not Madame Beausoleil in Terrebonne, and Marguerite the guest +of that chattering woman in silk and laces? But when he reached the +Exchange doors he drifted in as silently and supinely as any drift-log +would float into the new crevasse. + +The same cashier was still on duty. She lighted up joyously as he +entered, and, when he had hung his hat near the door, leaned forward +to address him; but with a faint pain in his face, and loathing in his +heart, he passed on and out into the veranda. The place was well +filled, and he had to look about to find a seat. The bare possibility +that _she_ might be there was overpowering. There was a total +suspension of every sort of emotion. He felt, as he took his chair and +essayed to glance casually around, as light and unreal as any one who +ever walked the tight-rope in a dream. The blood leaped in torrents +through his veins, and yet his movements, as he fumbled aimlessly with +his knife, fork, and glass, were slow and languid. + +A slender young waitress came, rested her knuckles on the table, and +leaned on them, let her opposite arm hang limply along the sidewise +curve of her form, and bending a smile of angelic affection upon the +young Acadian, said in a confidential undertone: + +"The cashier told me to tell you those ladies have come." + +Claude rose quickly and stood looking upon the face before him, +speechless. It was to him exactly as if a man in uniform had laid a +hand upon his shoulder and said, "You're my prisoner." Then, still +gazing, and aware of others looking at him, he slowly sank again into +his seat. + +"She just told me to tell you," said the damsel. "Yes, sir. Have you +ordered?" + +"Humph?" He was still looking at her. + +"I say, have you given your order?" + +"Yass." + +She paused awkwardly, for she knew he had not, and saw that he was +trying vainly to make her words mean something in his mind. + +"Sha'n't I get you some coffee and rolls--same as day before +yesterday?" + +"Yass." He did not know what she said. His heart had stopped beating; +now it began again at a gallop. He turned red. He could see the +handkerchief that was wadded into his outer breast-pocket jar in time +with the heavy thump, thump, thump beneath it. The waitress staid an +awful time. At last she came. + +"I waited," she sweetly said, "to get _hot_ ones." He drew the +refreshments towards him mechanically. The mere smell of food made him +sick. It seemed impossible that he should eat it. She leaned over him +lovingly and asked, as if referring to the attitude, "Would you like +any thing more?--something sweet?" His flesh crawled. He bent over his +plate, shook his head, and stirred his coffee without having put any +thing into it. + +She tripped away, and he drew a breath of momentary relief, leaned +back in his chair, and warily passed his eyes around to see if there +was anybody who was not looking at him and waiting for him to begin to +eat. + +Ages afterward--to speak with Claude's feelings--he rose, took up his +check, and went to the desk. The cashier leaned forward and said with +soft blitheness: + +"They're here. They're up-stairs now." + +Claude answered never a word. He paid his check. As he waited for +change, he cast another glance over the various groups at the tables. +All were strangers. Then he went out. On the single sidewalk step he +halted, and red and blind with mortification, turned again into the +place; he had left his hat. With one magnificent effort at dignity and +unconcern he went to the rack, took down the hat, and as he lowered it +towards his head cast a last look down the room, and--there stood +Marguerite. She had entered just in time, it seemed to him, but just +too late, in fact, to see and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They +bowed to each other with majestic faintness, and then each from each +was gone. The girl at the desk saw it and was dumb. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +LOVE AND LUCK BY ELECTRIC LIGHT. + + +Mr. Tarbox was really a very brave man. For, had he not been, how +could he have ventured, something after the middle of that afternoon, +in his best attire, up into Claude's workroom? He came to apologize. +But Claude was not there. + +He waited, but the young man did not return. The air was hot and +still. Mr. Tarbox looked at his watch--it was a quarter of five. He +rose and descended to the street, looked up and down it, and then +moved briskly down to, and across, Canal Street and into Bourbon. He +had an appointment. + +Claude had not gone back to his loft at all. He was wandering up and +down the streets. About four he was in Bienville Street, where the +pleasure-trains run through it on their way out to Spanish Fort, a +beautiful pleasure-ground some six miles away from the city's centre, +on the margin of Lake Pontchartrain. He was listlessly crossing the +way as a train came along, and it was easy for the habit of the +aforetime brakeman to move him. As the last platform passed the +crossing, he reached out mechanically and swung aboard. + +Spanish Fort is at the mouth of Bayou St. John. A draw-bridge spans +the bayou. On the farther, the eastern, side, Claude stood leaning +against a pile, looking off far beyond West End to where the sun was +setting in the swamps about Lake Maurepas. There--there--not seen save +by memory's eye, yet there not the less, was Bayou des Acadiens. Ah +me! there was Grande Pointe. + +"O Bonaventure! Do I owe you"--Claude's thought was in the old Acadian +tongue--"Do I owe you malice for this? No, no, no! Better _this_ than +_less_." And then he recalled a writing-book copy that Bonaventure had +set for him, of the schoolmaster's own devising: _Better Great Sorrow +than Small Delight._ His throat tightened and his eyes swam. + +A pretty schooner, with green hull and new sails, came down the bayou. +As he turned to gaze on her, the bridge, just beyond his feet, began +to swing open. He stepped upon it and moved towards its centre, his +eyes still on the beautiful silent advance of the vessel. With a +number of persons who had gathered from both ends of the bridge, he +paused and leaned over the rail as the schooner, with her crew looking +up into the faces of the throng, glided close by. A female form came +beside him, looking down with the rest and shedding upon the air the +soft sweetness of perfumed robes. A masculine voice, just beyond, +said: + + "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." + +Claude started and looked up, and behold, Marguerite on the arm of +Tarbox! + +His movement drew their glance, and the next instant Mr. Tarbox, +beaming apology and pouring out glad greetings, had him by the hand. +Burning, choking, stammering, Claude heard and answered, he knew not +how, the voice of the queen of all her kind. Another pair pressed +forward to add their salutations. They were Zoséphine and the +surveyor. + +Because the facilities for entertaining a male visitor were slender at +the Women's Exchange, because there was hope of more and cooler air at +the lake-side, because Spanish Fort was a pretty and romantic spot and +not so apt to be thronged as West End, and because Marguerite, as she +described it, was tired of houses and streets, and also because he had +something to say to Zoséphine, Mr. Tarbox had brought the pretty +mother and daughter out here. The engineer had met the three by chance +only a few minutes before, and now as the bridge closed again he +passed Zoséphine over to Claude, walked only a little way with them +down a path among the shrubbery, and then lifted his hat and withdrew. + +For once in his life Mr. G. W. Tarbox, as he walked with Marguerite +in advance of Claude and her mother, was at a loss what to say. The +drollness of the situation was in danger of overcoming him again. +Behind him was Claude, his mind tossed on a wild sea of doubts and +suspicions. + +"I told him," thought Tarbox, while the girl on his arm talked on in +pretty, broken English and sprightly haste about something he had lost +the drift of--"I told him I was courting Josephine. But I never proved +it to him. And now just look at this! Look at the whole sweet mess! +Something has got to be done." He did not mean something direct and +openhanded; that would never have occurred to him. He stopped, and +with Marguerite faced the other pair. One glance into Claude's face, +darkened with perplexity, anger, and a distressful effort to look +amiable and comfortable, was one too many; Tarbox burst into a laugh. + +"Pardon!" he exclaimed, checking himself until he was red; "I just +happened to think of something very funny that happened last week in +Arkansas--Madame Beausoleil, I know it must look odd,"--his voice +still trembled a little, but he kept a sober face--"and yet I must +take just a moment for business. Claude, can I see you?" + +They went a step aside. Mr. Tarbox put on a business frown, and said +to Claude in a low voice,-- + +"Hi! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the +moon the little dog laughed to see the sport and the dish ran away +with the spoon you understand I'm simply talking for talk's sake as +we resume our walk we'll inadvertently change partners--a kind of +Women's Exchange as it were old Mother Hubbard she went to the +cupboard to get her poor dog a bone but when she got there the +cupboard--don't smile so broadly--was bare and so the poor dog had +none will that be satisfactory?" + +Claude nodded, and as they turned again to their companions the +exchange was made with the grace, silence, and calm unconsciousness of +pure oversight,--or of general complicity. Very soon it suited +Zoséphine and Tarbox to sit down upon a little bench beside a bed of +heart's-ease and listen to the orchestra. But Marguerite preferred to +walk in and out among the leafy shadows of the electric lamps. + +And so, side by side, as he had once seen Bonaventure and Sidonie go, +they went, Claude and Marguerite, away from all windings of +disappointment, all shadows of doubt, all shoals of misapprehension, +out upon the open sea of mutual love. Not that the great word of +words--affirmative or interrogative--was spoken then or there. They +came no nearer to it than this,-- + +"I wish," murmured Claude,--they had gone over all the delicious +"And-I-thought-that-you's" and the sweetly reproachful "Did-you- +think-that-I's," and had covered the past down to the meeting on the +bridge,--"I wish," he murmured, dropping into the old Acadian French, +which he had never spoken to her before,--"I wish"-- + +"What?" she replied, softly and in the same tongue. + +"I wish," he responded, "that this path might never end." He wondered +at his courage, and feared that now he had ruined all; for she made no +answer. But when he looked down upon her she looked up and smiled. A +little farther on she dropped her fan. He stooped and picked it up, +and, in restoring it, somehow their hands touched,--touched and +lingered; and then--and then--through one brief unspeakable moment, a +maiden's hand, for the first time in his life, lay willingly in his. +Then, as glad as she was frightened, Marguerite said she must go back +to her mother, and they went. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +A DOUBLE LOVE-KNOT. + + +Spanish Fort--West End--they are well enough; but if I might have one +small part of New Orleans to take with me wherever I may wander in +this earthly pilgrimage, I should ask for the old Carrollton Gardens. + +They lie near the farthest upper limit of the expanded city. I should +want, of course, to include the levee, under which runs one side of +the gardens' fence; also the opposite shore of the Mississippi, with +its just discernible plantation houses behind their levee; and the +great bend of the river itself, with the sun setting in unutterable +gorgeousness behind the distant, low-lying pecan groves of Nine-mile +Point, and the bronzed and purpled waters kissing the very crown of +the great turfed levee, down under whose land side the gardens blossom +and give forth their hundred perfumes and bird songs to the children +and lovers that haunt their winding alleys of oleander, jasmine, +laurestine, orange, aloe, and rose, the grove of magnolias and oaks, +and come out upon the levee's top as the sun sinks, to catch the +gentle breeze and see the twilight change to moonlight on the water. + +One evening as I sat on one of the levee benches here, with one whose +I am and who is mine beside me, we noticed on the water opposite us, +and near the farther shore, a large skiff propelled with two pairs of +oars and containing, besides the two rowers, half a dozen passengers. + +Then I remembered that I had seen the same craft when it was farther +down the stream. The river is of a typical character about here. +Coming around the upper bend, the vast current sweeps across to this, +the Carrollton side, and strikes it just above the gardens with an +incalculable gnawing, tearing power. Hence the very high levee here; +the farther back the levee builders are driven by the corroding waters +the lower the ground is under them, and the higher they must build to +reach the height they reached before. From Carrollton the current +rebounds, and swinging over to the other shore strikes it, boiling +like a witch's caldron, just above and along the place where you may +descry the levee lock of the Company Canal. + +I knew the waters all about there, and knew that this skiff full of +passengers, some of whom we could see were women, having toiled +through the seething current below, was now in a broad eddy, and, if +it was about to cross the stream, would do so only after it had gone +some hundred yards farther up the river. There it could cross almost +with the current. + +And so it did. I had forgotten it again, when presently it showed +itself with all its freight, silhouetted against the crimson sky. I +said quickly: + +"I believe Bonaventure Deschamps is in that boat!" + +I was right. The skiff landed, and we saw its passengers step ashore. +They came along the levee's crown towards us, "by two, by two." +Bonaventure was mated with a young Methodist preacher, who had been my +playmate in boyhood, and who lived here in Carrollton. Behind him came +St. Pierre and Sidonie. Then followed Claude and Marguerite; and, +behind all, Zoséphine and Tarbox. + +They had come, they explained to us, from a funeral at the head of the +canal. They did not say the funeral of a friend, and yet I could see +that every one of them, even the preacher, had shed tears. The others +had thought it best and pleasantest to accompany the minister thus far +towards his home, then take a turn in the gardens, and then take the +horse-cars for the city's centre. Bonaventure and Sidonie were to +return next day by steamer to Belle Alliance and Grande Pointe. The +thoughtful Tarbox had procured Bonaventure's presence at the inquest +of the day before as the identifying witness, thus to save Zoséphine +that painful office. And yet it was of Zoséphine's own motion, and by +her sad insistence, that she and her daughter followed the outcast to +his grave. + +"Yes," she had said, laying one hand in Bonaventure's and the other +in Sidonie's and speaking in the old Acadian tongue, "when I was young +and proud I taught 'Thanase to despise and tease him. I did not know +then that I was such a coward myself. If I had been a better scholar, +Bonaventure, when we used to go to school to the curé together--a +better learner--not in the books merely, but in those things that are +so much better than the things books teach--how different all might +have been! Thank God, Bonaventure, one of us was." She turned to +Sidonie to add,--"But that one was Bonaventure. We will all go"--to +the funeral--"we will all go and bury vain regrets--with the dead." + +The influence of the sad office they had just performed was on the +group still, as they paused to give us the words of greeting we +coveted. Yet we could see that a certain sense of being very, very +rich in happiness was on them all, though differently on every one. + +Zoséphine wore the pear-shaped pearl. + +The preacher said good-day, and started down the steps that used to +lead from the levee down across a pretty fountained court and into the +town. But my friend Tarbox--for I must tell you I like to call him my +friend, and like it better every day; we can't all be one sort; you'd +like him if you knew him as I do--my friend Tarbox beckoned me to +detain him. + +"Christian!" I called--that is the preacher's real name. He turned +back and met Tarbox just where I stood. They laid their arms across +each other's shoulders in a very Methodist way, and I heard Tarbox +say: + +"I want to thank you once more. We've put you to a good deal of +trouble. You gave us the best you had: I'll never forget what you said +about 'them who through fear of death are all their life-time subject +to bondage.' I wish you were a Catholic priest." + +"Why?" + +"So we could pay you for your trouble. I don't think you ought to take +it hard if you get a check in to-morrow's mail." + +"Thy money survive with thee," said the preacher. "Is that all you +want me to be a priest for? Isn't there another reason?" His eyes +twinkled. "Isn't there something else I could do for you--you or +Claude--if I should turn priest?" + +"Yes," said Tarbox, with grave lips, but merry eyes; "we've both got +to have one." + +In fact they had two. Yet I have it from her husband himself, that +Madame Tarbox insists to this day, always with the same sweet dignity, +that she never did say yes. + +On the other hand, when Claude and Marguerite were kneeling at the +altar the proud St. Pierre, senior, spoke an audible and joyously +impatient affirmative every time either of them was asked a question. +When the time came for kissing, Sidonie, turning from both brides, +kissed St. Pierre the more for that she kissed not Claude, then turned +again and gave a tear with the kiss she gave to Zoséphine. But the +deepest, gladdest tears at those nuptials were shed by Bonaventure +Deschamps. + + + + * * * * * + + + +Transcriber's Note + +Minor typographic errors have been corrected without note. + +This work contains a lot of dialect, which includes unusual spelling +and hyphenation. This has been retained as printed throughout. + +A small portion of the text was obscured on page 90. With the context +and available space, 'Claude had' would seem to be the most +appropriate for the original, and has been used here. It now reads, +"... four hands clasped together, Claude had learned, for ..." + +The original text contained a small piece of music notation; this has +not been preserved in this version, and is noted simply as [Music]. + +The single oe ligature has not been retained. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BONAVENTURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 24078-8.txt or 24078-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/0/7/24078 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Bonaventure</p> +<p> A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana</p> +<p>Author: George Washington Cable</p> +<p>Release Date: December 30, 2007 [eBook #24078]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BONAVENTURE***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Sam W.,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net).<br /> + <br /> + Music transcribed by Linda Cantoni.</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 401px;"> +<img src="images/bonav01.jpg" width="401" height="600" +alt="Front cover of Bonaventure, by George W. Cable" /> +</div> + +<h1 style="padding-top: 3em; padding-bottom: 3em;">BONAVENTURE</h1> + +<h2>A Prose Pastoral of<br /> +Acadian Louisiana</h2> + +<p class="center" style="padding-top: 3em;"><b>By</b></p> + +<h2 style="padding-bottom: 3em;">GEORGE W. CABLE</h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 89px;"> +<img src="images/bonav02.png" width="89" height="100" +alt="Decoration" /> +</div> + + +<p class="center" style="padding-top: 3em;">New York<br /> +International Association of Newspapers and Authors<br /> +1901</p> + +<p class="center" style="padding-top: 5em; padding-bottom: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1887, 1888,<br /> +By GEORGE W. CABLE.</p> + +<p class="center">Braunworth, Munn & Barber<br /> +Printers and Binders<br /> +Brooklyn, N. Y.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="60%" summary="Table of Contents"> + <tr> + <td class="tdcib" colspan="3">CARANCRO.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrsc">Chapter.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"> </td> + <td class="tdrsc">Page.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">I.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Sosthène</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_I">1</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">II.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Bonaventure and Zoséphine</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_II">4</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">III.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Athanasius</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_III">9</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">IV.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Conscript Officer</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_IV">15</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">V.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Curé of Carancro</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_V">24</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Missing</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_VI">33</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">A Needle in a Haystack</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_VII">42</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VIII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Quest ended</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_VIII">47</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">IX.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Wedding</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_IX">55</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">X.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">After All</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_I_CHAP_X">62</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdcib" colspan="3">GRANDE POINTE.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">I.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">A Stranger</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_I">73</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">II.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">In a Strange Land</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_II">77</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">III.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Handshaking</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_III">81</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">IV.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">How the Children rang the Bell</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_IV">86</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>V.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Invited to leave</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_V">91</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">War of Darkness and Light</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_VI">98</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Love and Duty</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_VII">103</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VIII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">At Claude’s Mercy</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_VIII">111</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">IX.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Ready</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_IX">116</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">X.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Conspiracy</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_X">119</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Light, Love, and Victory</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_II_CHAP_XI">129</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdcib" colspan="3">AU LARGE.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">I.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Pot-Hunter</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_I">142</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">II.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Claude</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_II">147</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">III.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Tavern Fireside</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_III">152</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">IV.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Marguerite</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_IV">167</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">V.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Father and Son</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_V">179</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Converging Lines</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_VI">188</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">’Thanase’s Violin</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_VII">201</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">VIII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Shaking Prairie</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_VIII">213</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">IX.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Not Blue Eyes, nor Yellow Hair</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_IX">221</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">X.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">A Strong Team</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_X">226</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">He asks her again</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XI">235</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Beausoleils and St. Pierres</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XII">248</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Chase</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XIII">255</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIV.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Who she was</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XIV">263</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XV.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Can they close the Break?</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XV">269</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Outlaw and the Flood</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XVI">271</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XVII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Well Hidden</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XVII">280</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>XVIII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">The Tornado</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XVIII">286</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XIX.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">“Tears and such Things”</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XIX">294</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XX.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Love, Anger, and Misunderstanding</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XX">299</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">Love and Luck by Electric Light</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XXI">305</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrt">XXII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc">A Double Love-Knot</td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#PART_III_CHAP_XXII">310</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h1 style="padding-top: 5em;">BONAVENTURE.</h1> + + + +<h2 style="padding-top: 5em;"><a name="PART_I_CHAP_I" id="PART_I_CHAP_I"></a>CARANCRO.</h2> + + + +<h3 style="padding-top: 3em;">CHAPTER I.</h3> + +<h3>SOSTHÈNE.</h3> + + +<p>Bayou Teche is the dividing line. On its left is +the land of bayous, lakes, and swamps; on its right, the +beautiful short-turfed prairies of Western Louisiana. +The Vermilion River divides the vast prairie into the +countries of Attakapas on the east and Opelousas on +the west. On its west bank, at its head of navigation, +lies the sorry little town of Vermilionville, near about +which on the north and east the prairie rises and falls +with a gentle swell, from whose crests one may, as +from the top of a wave, somewhat overlook the surrounding +regions.</p> + +<p>Until a few years ago, stand on whichever one you +might, the prospect stretched away, fair and distant, +in broad level or gently undulating expanses of crisp, +compact turf, dotted at remote intervals by farms, each +with its low-roofed house nestled in a planted grove of +oaks, or, oftener, Pride of China trees. Far and near +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> +herds of horses and cattle roamed at will over the plain. +If for a moment, as you passed from one point of view +to another, the eye was shut in, it was only where in +some lane you were walled in by fields of dense tall +sugar-cane or cotton, or by huge green Chickasaw +hedges, studded with their white-petalled, golden-centred +roses. Eastward the plain broke into slight +ridges, which, by comparison with the general level, +were called hills; while toward the north it spread +away in quieter swells, with more frequent fields and +larger houses.</p> + +<p>North, south, east, and west, far beyond the circle +of these horizons, not this parish of Lafayette only, +but St. Landry, St. Martin, Iberia, St. Mary’s, Vermilion,—all +are the land of the Acadians. This +quarter off here to northward was named by the Nova-Scotian +exiles, in memory of the land from which they +were driven, the Beau Bassin. These small homestead +groves that dot the plain far and wide are the homes +of their children. Here is this one on a smooth green +billow of the land, just without the town. It is not like +the rest,—a large brick house, its Greek porch half +hid in a grove of oaks. On that dreadful day, more +than a century ago, when the British in far-off Acadie +shut into the chapel the villagers of Grand Pré, a certain +widow fled with her children to the woods, and +there subsisted for ten days on roots and berries, until +finally, the standing crops as well as the houses being +destroyed, she was compelled to accept exile, and in +time found her way, with others, to these prairies. +Her son founded Vermilionville. Her grandson rose +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> +to power,—sat in the Senate of the United States. +From early manhood to hale gray age, the people of +his State were pleased to hold him, now in one capacity, +now in another, in their honored service; they made +him Senator, Governor, President of Convention, what +you will. I have seen the portrait for which he sat +in early manhood to a noted English court painter: +dark waving locks; strong, well-chiselled features; fine +clear eyes; an air of warm, steady-glowing intellectual +energy. It hangs still in the home of which I speak. +And I have seen an old ambrotype of him, taken in +the days of this story: hair short-cropped, gray; eyes +thoughtful, courageous; mouth firm, kind, and ready +to smile.</p> + +<p>It must have been some years before this picture +was taken, that, as he issued from his stately porch,—which +the oaks, young then, did not hide from view +as they do now,—coming forth to mount for his regular +morning ride, a weary-faced woman stood before +him, holding by the hand a little toddling boy. She +was sick; the child was hungry. He listened to her +tale. Their conversation was in French.</p> + +<p>“Widow, are you? And your husband was a +Frenchman: yes, I see. Are you an Acadian? You +haven’t the accent.”</p> + +<p>“I am a Creole,” she said, with a perceptible flush +of resentment. So that he responded amiably:—</p> + +<p>“Yes, and, like all Creoles, proud of it, as you are +right to be. But I am an Acadian of the Acadians, +and never wished I was any thing else.”</p> + +<p>He found her a haven a good half-day’s ride out +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> +across the prairies north-westward, in the home of his +long-time acquaintance, Sosthène Gradnego, who had +no more heart than his wife had to say No to either +their eminent friend or a houseless widow; and, as to +children, had so many already, that one more was +nothing. They did not feel the burden of her, she +died so soon; but they soon found she had left with +them a positive quantity in her little prattling, restless, +high-tempered Bonaventure. Bonaventure Deschamps: +he was just two years younger than their own little +Zoséphine.</p> + +<p>Sosthène was already a man of some note in this +region,—a region named after a bird. Why would it +not often be well so to name places,—for the bird that +most frequents the surrounding woods or fields? How +pleasant to have one’s hamlet called Nightingale, or +Whippoorwill, or Goldfinch, or Oriole! The home +of Zoséphine and Bonaventure’s childhood was in the +district known as Carancro; in bluff English, Carrion +Crow.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_II" id="PART_I_CHAP_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3> + +<h3>BONAVENTURE AND ZOSÉPHINE.</h3> + + +<p>They did not live <i>à la chapelle</i>; that is, in the village +of six or eight houses clustered about the small +wooden spire and cross of the mission chapel. Sosthène’s +small ground-story cottage, with garret stairs +outside in front on the veranda and its five-acre farm +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> +behind, was not even on a highway nor on the edge +of any rich <i>bas fond</i>,—creek-bottom. It was <i>au large</i>,—far +out across the smooth, unscarred turf of the +immense prairie, conveniently near one of the clear +circular ponds—<i>maraises</i>—which one sees of every +size and in every direction on the seemingly level land. +Here it sat, as still as a picture, within its hollow +square of China-trees, which every third year yielded +their limbs for fuel; as easy to overlook the first time—as +easy to see the next time—as a bird sitting on +her eggs. Only the practised eye could read aright +the infrequent obscure signs of previous travel that +showed the way to it,—sometimes no more than the +occasional soilure of the short turf by a few wheels or +hoofs where the route led into or across the <i>coolées</i>—rivulets—that +from <i>marais</i> to <i>marais</i> slipped southward +toward the great marshes of the distant, unseen +Gulf.</p> + +<p>When I say the parent of one of these two children +and guardian of the other was a man of note, I mean, +for one thing, his house was painted. That he was +the owner of thousands of cattle, one need not mention, +for so were others who were quite inconspicuous, +living in unpainted houses, rarely seeing milk, never +tasting butter; men who at call of their baptismal +names would come forth from these houses barefooted +and bareheaded in any weather, and, while their +numerous progeny grouped themselves in the doorway +one behind another in inverse order of age and stature, +would either point out your lost way, or, quite as +readily as Sosthène, ask you in beneath a roof where +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> +the coffee-pot never went dry or grew cold by day. +Nor would it distinguish him from them to say he had +many horses or was always well mounted. It was a +land of horsemen. One met them incessantly; men +in broad hats and dull homespun, with thin, soft, +untrimmed brown beards, astride of small but handsome +animals, in Mexican saddles, the girths and +bridles of plaited hair, sometimes a <i>pialle</i> or <i>arriatte</i>—lasso, +lariat—of plaited rawhide coiled at the saddle-bow. +“Adieu, Onesime”—always adieu at meeting, +the same as at parting. “Adieu, François; adieu, +Christophe; adieu, Lazare;” and they with their +gentle, brown-eyed, wild-animal gaze, “Adjieu.”</p> + +<p>What did make Sosthène notable was the quiet thing +we call thrift, made graceful by certain rudiments of +taste. To say Sosthène, means Madame Sosthène as +well; and this is how it was that Zoséphine Gradnego +and Bonaventure Deschamps, though they went not +to school, nevertheless had “advantages.” For instance, +the clean, hard-scrubbed cypress floors beneath +their pattering feet; the neat round parti-colored mats +at the doors that served them for towns and villages; +the strips of home-woven carpet that stood for roads—this +one to Mermentau, that one to Côte Gelée, a +third <i>à la chapelle</i>; the walls of unpainted pine; the +beaded joists under the ceiling; the home-made furniture, +bedsteads and wardrobes of stained woods, and +hickory chairs with rawhide seats, hair uppermost; +the white fringed counterpanes on the high featherbeds; +especially, in the principal room, the house’s +one mantelpiece, of wood showily stained in three +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> +colors and surmounted by a pair of gorgeous vases, +beneath which the two children used to stand and feast +their eyes, worth fifty cents if they were worth one,—these +were as books to them indoors; and out in the +tiny garden, where they played wild horse and wild +cow, and lay in ambush for butterflies, they came under +the spell of marigolds, prince’s-feathers, lady-slippers, +immortelles, portulaca, jonquil, lavender, althæa, love-apples, +sage, violets, amaryllis, and that grass ribbon +they call <i>jarretière de la vierge</i>,—the virgin’s garter.</p> + +<p>Time passed; the children grew. The children older +than they in the same house became less and less like +children, and began to disappear from the family board +and roof by a mysterious process called marrying, +which greatly mystified Zoséphine, but equally pleased +her by the festive and jocund character of the occasions, +times when there was a ravishing abundance of +fried rice-cakes and <i>boulettes</i>—beef-balls.</p> + +<p>To Bonaventure these affairs brought less mystery +and less unalloyed pleasure. He understood them +better. Some boys are born lovers. From the time +they can reach out from the nurse’s arms, they must +be billing and cooing and choosing a mate. Such was +ardent little Bonaventure; and none of the Gradnego +weddings ever got quite through its ceremony without +his big blue eyes being found full of tears—tears +of mingled anger and desolation—because by some +unpardonable oversight he and Zoséphine were still +left unmarried. So that the pretty damsel would +have to take him aside, and kiss him as they clasped, +and promise him, “Next time—next time, without +fail!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> +Nevertheless, he always reaped two proud delights +from these events. For one, Sosthène always took +him upon his lap and introduced him as his little +Creole. And the other, the ex-governor came to these +demonstrations—the great governor! who lifted him +to his knee and told him of those wonderful things +called cities, full of people that could read and write; +and about steamboats and steam-cars.</p> + +<p>At length one day, when weddings had now pretty +well thinned out the ranks of Sosthène’s family, the +ex-governor made his appearance though no marriage +was impending. Bonaventure, sitting on his knee, +asked why he had come, and the ex-governor told +him there was war.</p> + +<p>“Do you not want to make haste and grow up and +be a dragoon?”</p> + +<p>The child was silent, and Sosthène laughed a little +as he said privately in English, which tongue his +exceptional thrift had put him in possession of:</p> + +<p>“Aw, naw!”—he shook his head amusedly—“he +dawn’t like hoss. Go to put him on hoss, he +kick like a frog. Yass; squeal wuss’n a pig. But +still, sem time, you know, he ain’t no coward; git +mad in minute; fight like little ole ram. Dawn’t +ondstand dat little fellah; he love flower’ like he was +a gal.”</p> + +<p>“He ought to go to school,” said the ex-governor. +And Sosthène, half to himself, responded in a hopeless +tone:</p> + +<p>“Yass.” Neither Sosthène nor any of his children +had ever done that.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_III" id="PART_I_CHAP_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3> + +<h3>ATHANASIUS.</h3> + + +<p>War it was. The horsemen grew scarce on the +wide prairies of Opelousas. Far away in Virginia, +Tennessee, Georgia, on bloody fields, many an Acadian +volunteer and many a poor conscript fought and +fell for a cause that was really none of theirs, simple, +non-slaveholding peasants; and many died in camp +and hospital—often of wounds, often of fevers, often +of mere longing for home. Bonaventure and Zoséphine +learned this much of war: that it was a state +of affairs in which dear faces went away, and strange +ones came back with tidings that brought bitter wailings +from mothers and wives, and made <i>les vieux</i>—the +old fathers—sit very silent. Three times over +that was the way of it in Sosthène’s house.</p> + +<p>It was also a condition of things that somehow +changed boys into men very young. A great distance +away, but still in sight south-westward across the +prairie, a dot of dark green showed where dwelt a +sister and brother-in-law of Sosthène’s <i>vieille</i>,—wife. +There was not the same domestic excellence there as +at Sosthène’s; yet the dooryard was very populous +with fowls; within the house was always heard the +hard thump, thump, of the loom, or the loud moan of +the spinning-wheel; and the children were many. The +eldest was Athanase. Though but fifteen he was +already stalwart, and showed that intelligent +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> +sympathy in the family cares that makes such offspring the +mother’s comfort and the father’s hope. At that age +he had done but one thing to diminish that comfort or +that hope. One would have supposed an ambitious +chap like him would have spent his first earnings, as +other ambitious ones did, for a saddle; but ’Thanase +Beausoleil had bought a fiddle.</p> + +<p>He had hardly got it before he knew how to play it. +Yet, to the father’s most welcome surprise, he remained +just as bold a rider and as skilful a thrower of the +<i>arriatte</i> as ever. He came into great demand for +the Saturday-night balls. When the courier with a +red kerchief on a wand came galloping round, the day +before, from <i>île</i> to <i>île</i>,—for these descendants of a +maritime race call their homestead groves islands,—to +tell where the ball was to be, he would assert, if +there was even a hope of it, that ’Thanase was to be +the fiddler.</p> + +<p>In this way ’Thanase and his pretty little <i>jarmaine</i>—first +cousin—Zoséphine, now in her fourteenth +year, grew to be well acquainted. For at thirteen, +of course, she began to move in society, which meant +to join in the contra-dance. ’Thanase did not dance +with her, or with any one. She wondered why he did +not; but many other girls had similar thoughts about +themselves. He only played, his playing growing +better and better, finer and finer, every time he was +heard anew. As to the few other cavaliers, very willing +were they to have it so. The music could not be +too good, and if ’Thanase was already perceptibly a +rival when hoisted up in a chair on top of a table, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> +fiddle and bow in hand, “twisting,” to borrow their +own phrase—“twisting the ears of that little red +beast and rubbing his abdomen with a stick,” it was +just as well not to urge him to come down into the +lists upon the dancing-floor. But they found one +night, at length, that the music could be too good—when +’Thanase struck up something that was not a +dance, and lads and damsels crowded around standing +and listening and asking ever for more, and the ball +turned out a failure because the concert was such a +success.</p> + +<p>The memory of that night was of course still vivid +next day, Sunday, and Zoséphine’s memory was as +good as any one’s. I wish you might have seen her +in those days of the early bud. The time had returned +when Sosthène could once more get all his household—so +had marriages decimated it—into one vehicle, +a thing he had not been able to do for almost these +twenty years. Zoséphine and Bonaventure sat on a +back seat contrived for them in the family calèche. +In front were the broad-brimmed Campeachy hat of +Sosthène and the meek, limp sunbonnet of <i>la vieille</i>. +About the small figure of the daughter there was +always something distinguishing, even if you rode up +from behind, that told of youth, of mettle, of self-regard; +a neatness of fit in the dress, a firm erectness +in the little slim back, a faint proudness of neck, a +glimpse of ribbon at the throat, another at the waist; +a something of assertion in the slight crispness of her +homespun sunbonnet, and a ravishing glint of two +sparks inside it as you got one glance within—no more. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> +And as you rode on, if you were a young blade, you +would be—as the soldier lads used to say—all +curled up; but if you were an old mustache, you +would smile inwardly and say to yourself, “She will +have her way; she will make all winds blow in her +chosen direction; she will please herself; she will be +her own good luck and her own commander-in-chief, +and, withal, nobody’s misery or humiliation, unless +you count the swain after swain that will sigh in +vain.” As for Bonaventure, sitting beside her, you +could just see his bare feet limply pendulous under +his wide palm-leaf hat. And yet he was a very real +personage.</p> + +<p>“Bonaventure,” said Zoséphine,—this was as they +were returning from church, the wide rawhide straps +of their huge wooden two-wheeled vehicle creaking as +a new saddle would if a new saddle were as big as a +house,—“Bonaventure, I wish you could learn how +to dance. I am tired trying to teach you.” (This +and most of the unbroken English of this story stands +for Acadian French.)</p> + +<p>Bonaventure looked meek for a moment, and then +resentful as he said:</p> + +<p>“’Thanase does not dance.”</p> + +<p>“’Thanase! Bah! What has ’Thanase to do with +it? Who was even thinking of ’Thanase? Was he +there last night? Ah yes! I just remember now +he was. But even he could dance if he chose; while +you—you can’t learn! You vex me. ’Thanase! +What do you always bring him up for? I wish you +would have the kindness just not to remind me of him! +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> +Why does not some one tell him how he looks, hoisted +up with his feet in our faces, scratching his fiddle? +Now, the fiddle, Bonaventure—the fiddle would just +suit you. Ah, if you could play!” But the boy’s +quick anger so flashed from his blue eyes that she +checked herself and with contemplative serenity added:</p> + +<p>“Pity nobody else can play so well as that tiresome +fellow. It was positively silly, the way some girls +stood listening to him last night. I’d be ashamed, or, +rather, too proud, to flatter such a high-headed care-for-nobody. +I wish he wasn’t my cousin!”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure, still incensed, remarked with quiet intensity +that he knew why she wished ’Thanase was +not a cousin.</p> + +<p>“It’s no such a thing!” exclaimed Zoséphine so +forcibly that Madame Sosthène’s sunbonnet turned +around, and a murmur of admonition came from it. +But the maiden was smiling and saying blithely to +Bonaventure:</p> + +<p>“Oh, you—you can’t even guess well.” She was +about to say more, but suddenly hushed. Behind them +a galloping horse drew near, softly pattering along the +turfy road. As he came abreast, he dropped into a +quiet trot.</p> + +<p>The rider was a boyish yet manly figure in a new +suit of gray home-made linsey, the pantaloons thrust +into the tops of his sturdy russet boots, and the jacket +ending underneath a broad leather belt that carried a +heavy revolver in its holster at one hip. A Campeachy +hat shaded his face and shoulders, and a pair of Mexican +spurs tinkled their little steel bells against their +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +huge five-spiked rowels on his heels. He scarcely sat +in the saddle-tree—from hat to spurs you might have +drawn a perpendicular line. It would have taken in +shoulders, thighs, and all.</p> + +<p>“Adjieu,” said the young centaur; and Sosthène +replied from the creaking calèche, “Adjieu, ’Thanase,” +while the rider bestowed his rustic smile upon the group. +Madame Sosthène’s eyes met his, and her lips moved +in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little +daughter were in her lap. Bonaventure’s gaze was +hostile. A word or two passed between uncle and +nephew, including a remark and admission that the +cattle-thieves were getting worse than ever; and with +a touch of the spur, the young horseman galloped on.</p> + +<p>It seems enough to admit that Zoséphine’s further +remarks were silly without reporting them in full.</p> + +<p>“Look at his back! What airs! If I had looked +up I should have laughed in his face!” etc. “Well,” +she concluded, after much such chirruping, “there’s +one comfort—he doesn’t care a cent for me. If I +should die to-morrow, he would forget to come to the +funeral. And you think I wouldn’t be glad? Well, +you’re mistaken, as usual. I hate him, and I just +know he hates me! Everybody hates me!”</p> + +<p>The eyes of her worshipper turned upon her. But +she only turned her own away across the great plain +to the vast arching sky, and patted the calèche with a +little foot that ached for deliverance from its Sunday +shoe. Then her glance returned, and all the rest of +the way home she was as sweet as the last dip of cane-juice +from the boiling battery.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_IV" id="PART_I_CHAP_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h3> + +<h3>THE CONSCRIPT OFFICER.</h3> + + +<p>By and by ’Thanase was sixteen. Eighteen was +the lowest age for conscription, yet he was in the Confederate +uniform. But then so was his uncle Sosthène; +so was his father. It signified merely that he had +been received into the home guard. The times were +sadly unsettled. Every horseman, and how much more +every group of horsemen, that one saw coming across +the prairie, was watched by anxious eyes, from the +moment they were visible specks, to see whether the +uniform would turn out to be the blue or the gray. +Which was the more unwelcome I shall not say, but +this I can, that the blue meant invasion and the gray +meant conscription. Sosthène was just beyond the +limit of age, and ’Thanase two years below it; but +’Thanase’s father kept a horse saddled all the time, +and slept indoors only on stormy nights.</p> + +<p>Do not be misled: he was neither deserter nor coward; +else the nickname which had quite blotted out his +real name would not have been Chaouache—savage, +Indian. He was needed at home, and—it was not +his war. His war was against cattle-thieves and like +marauders, and there was no other man in all Carancro +whom these would not have had on their track rather +than him. But one gray dawn they found there was +another not unlike him. They had made an attempt +upon Sosthène’s cattle one night; had found +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> +themselves watched and discovered; had turned and fled +westward half the night, and had then camped in the +damp woods of a <i>bas fond</i>; when, just as day was +breaking and they were looking to their saddles about +to mount—there were seven of them—just then—listen!—a +sound of hoofs!</p> + +<p>Instantly every left foot is in stirrup; but before +they can swing into the saddle a joyous cry is in their +ears, and pop! pop! pop! pop! ring the revolvers as, +with the glad, fierce cry still resounding, three horsemen +launch in upon them—only three, but those three +a whirlwind. See that riderless horse, and this one, +and that one! And now for it—three honest men +against four remaining thieves! Pop! pop! dodge, +and fire as you dodge! Pop! pop! pop! down he +goes; well done, gray-bearded Sosthène! Shoot +there! Wheel here! Wounded? Never mind—<i>ora!</i> +Another rogue reels! Collar him, Chaouache! drag +him from the saddle—down he goes! What, again? +Shoot there! Look out, that fellow’s getting away! +Ah! down goes Sosthène’s horse, breaking his strong +neck in the tumble. Up, bleeding old man—bang! +bang! Ha, ha, <i>ora!</i> that finishes—<i>ora!</i> ’Twas the +boy saved your life with that last shot, Sosthène, and +the boy—the youth is ’Thanase.</p> + +<p>He has not stopped to talk; he and his father are +catching the horses of the dead and dying jayhawkers. +Now bind up Sosthène’s head, and now ’Thanase’s +hip. Now strip the dead beasts, and take the dead +men’s weapons, boots, and spurs. Lift this one moaning +villain into his saddle and take him along, though +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> +he is going to die before ten miles are gone over. So +they turn homeward, leaving high revel for the carrion-crows.</p> + +<p>Think of Bonaventure, the slender, the intense, the +reticent—with ’Thanase limping on rude but glorious +crutches for four consecutive Saturdays and Sundays +up and down in full sight of Zoséphine, savior of her +mother from widowhood, owner of two fine captured +horses, and rewarded by Sosthène with five acres of +virgin prairie. If the young fiddler’s music was an +attraction before, fancy its power now, when the +musician had to be lifted to his chair on top of the +table!</p> + +<p>Bonaventure sought comfort of Zoséphine, and she +gave it, tittering at ’Thanase behind his back, giving +Bonaventure knowing looks, and sticking her sunbonnet +in her mouth.</p> + +<p>“Oh, if the bullet had only gone into the dandy’s +fiddle-bow arm!” she whispered gleefully.</p> + +<p>“I wish he might never get well!” said the boy.</p> + +<p>The girl’s smile vanished; her eyes flashed lightning +for an instant; the blood flew to her cheeks, and she +bit her lip.</p> + +<p>“Why don’t you, now while he cannot help himself—why +don’t you go to him and hit him square in +the face, like”—her arm flew up, and she smote him +with her sunbonnet full between the eyes—“like +that!” She ran away, laughing joyously, while Bonaventure +sat down and wept with rage and shame.</p> + +<p>Day by day he went about his trivial tasks and +efforts at pastime with the one great longing that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> +Zoséphine would more kindly let him be her slave, +and something—any thing—take ’Thanase beyond +reach.</p> + +<p>Instead of this ’Thanase got well, and began to +have a perceptible down on his cheek and upper lip, +to the great amusement of Zoséphine.</p> + +<p>“He had better take care,” she said one day to +Bonaventure, her eyes leaving their mirth and expanding +with sudden seriousness, “or the conscript officer +will be after him, though he is but sixteen.”</p> + +<p>Unlucky word! Bonaventure’s bruised spirit seized +upon the thought. They were on their way even then +<i>à la chapelle</i>; and when they got there he knelt before +Mary’s shrine and offered the longest and most earnest +prayer, thus far, of his life, and rose to his feet under +a burden of guilt he had never known before.</p> + +<p>It was November. The next day the wind came +hurtling over the plains out of the north-west, bitter +cold. The sky was all one dark gray. At evening it +was raining. Sosthène said, as he sat down to supper, +that it was going to pour and blow all night. Chaouache +said much the same thing to his wife as they lay down +to rest. Farther away from Carancro than many of +Carancro’s people had ever wandered, in the fire-lighted +public room of a village tavern, twelve or +fifteen men were tramping busily about, in muddy +boots and big clanking spurs, looking to pistols and +carbines of miscellaneous patterns, and securing them +against weather under their as yet only damp and +slightly bespattered great-coats, no two of which were +alike. They spoke to each other sometimes in French, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> +sometimes in English that betrayed a Creole rather +than an Acadian accent. A young man with a neat +<i>kepi</i> tipped on one side of his handsome head stood +with his back to the fire, a sabre dangling to the floor +from beneath a captured Federal overcoat. A larger +man was telling him a good story. He listened smilingly, +dropped the remnant of an exhausted cigarette +to the floor, put his small, neatly booted foot upon it, +drew from his bosom one of those silken tobacco-bags +that our sisters in war-time used to make for all the +soldier boys, made a new cigarette, lighted it with the +flint and tinder for which the Creole smokers have such +a predilection, and put away his appliances, still hearkening +to the story. He nodded his head in hearty +approval as the tale was finished. It was the story of +Sosthène, Chaouache, ’Thanase, and the jayhawkers. +He gathered up his sabre and walked out, followed by +the rest. A rattle of saddles, a splashing of hoofs, +and then no sound was heard but the wind and the +pouring rain. The short column went out of the village +at full gallop.</p> + +<p>Day was fully come when Chaouache rose and +stepped out upon his galérie. He had thought he +could venture to sleep in bed such a night; and, sure +enough, here morning came, and there had been no +intrusion. ’Thanase, too, was up. It was raining +and blowing still. Across the prairie, as far as the +eye could reach, not a movement of human life could +be seen. They went in again, made a fire of a few +fagots and an armful of cotton-seed, hung the kettle, +and emptied the old coffee from the coffee-pot.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> +The mother and children rose and dressed. The +whole family huddled around the good, hot, cotton-seed +fire. No one looked out of window or door; in +such wind and rain, where was the need? In the little +log stable hard by, the two favorite saddle-horses +remained unsaddled and unbridled. The father’s and +son’s pistol-belts, with revolvers buttoned in their holsters, +hung on the bedposts by the headboards of their +beds. A long sporting rifle leaned in a corner near +the chimney.</p> + +<p>Chaouache and ’Thanase got very busy plaiting a +horse-hair halter, and let time go by faster than they +knew. Madame Chaouache, so to call her, prepared +breakfast. The children played with the dog and cat. +Thus it happened that still nobody looked out into +the swirling rain. Why should they? Only to see the +wide deluged plain, the round drenched groves, the +<i>maraises</i> and sinuous <i>coolées</i> shining with their floods, +and long lines of benumbed, wet cattle seeking in +patient, silent Indian file for warmer pastures. They +knew it all by heart.</p> + +<p>Yonder farthest <i>île</i> is Sosthène’s. The falling flood +makes it almost undiscernible. Even if one looked, +he would not see that a number of horsemen have come +softly plashing up to Sosthène’s front fence, for +Sosthène’s house and grove are themselves in the way. +They spy Bonaventure. He is just going in upon the +galérie with an armful of China-tree fagots. Through +their guide and spokesman they utter, not the usual +halloo, but a quieter hail, with a friendly beckon.</p> + +<p>“Adjieu.” The men were bedraggled, and so wet +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> +one could not make out the color of the dress. One +could hardly call it a uniform, and pretty certainly it +was not blue.</p> + +<p>“Adjieu,” responded Bonaventure, with some +alarm; but the spokesman smiled re-assuringly. He +pointed far away south-westward, and asked if a certain +green spot glimmering faintly through the rain +was not Chaouache’s <i>île</i>; and Bonaventure, dumb in +the sight of his prayer’s answer, nodded.</p> + +<p>“And how do you get there?” the man asks, still +in Acadian French; for he is well enough acquainted +with prairies to be aware that one needs to know the +road even to a place in full view across the plain. +Bonaventure, with riot in his heart, and feeling himself +drifting over the cataract of the sinfullest thing that +ever in his young life he has had the chance to do, +softly lays down his wood, and comes to the corner +of the galérie.</p> + +<p>It is awful to him, even while he is doing it, the ease +with which he does it. If, he says, they find it troublesome +crossing the marshy place by Numa’s farm,—<i>le +platin à coté d’ l’habitation à Numa</i>,—then it will +be well to <i>virer de bord</i>—go about, <i>et naviguer au +large</i>—sail across the open prairie. “Adjieu.” He +takes up his fagots again, and watches the spattering +squad trot away in the storm, wondering why there is +no storm in his own heart.</p> + +<p>They are gone. Sosthène, inside the house, has +heard nothing. The tempest suffocates all sounds not +its own, and the wind is the wrong way anyhow. +Now they are far out in the open. Chaouache’s <i>île</i> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> +still glimmers to them far ahead in the distance, but +if some one should only look from the front window +of its dwelling, he could see them coming. And that +would spoil the fun. So they get it into line with +another man’s grove nearer by, and under that cover +quicken to a gallop. Away, away; splash, splash, +through the <i>coolées</i>, around the <i>maraises</i>, clouds of +wild fowl that there is no time to shoot into rising now +on this side, now on that; snipe without number, gray +as the sky, with flashes of white, trilling petulantly as +they flee; giant snowy cranes lifting and floating away +on waving pinions, and myriads of ducks in great +eruptions of hurtling, whistling wings. On they gallop; +on they splash; heads down; water pouring from +soaked hats and caps; cold hands beating upon wet +breasts; horses throwing steaming muzzles down to +their muddy knees, and shaking the rain from their +worried ears; so on and on and on.</p> + +<p>The horse-hair halter was nearly done. The breakfast +was smoking on the board. The eyes of the family +group were just turning toward it with glances of placid +content, when a knock sounded on the door, and almost +before father or son could rise or astonishment dart +from eye to eye, the door swung open, and a man +stood on the threshold, all mud and water and weapons, +touching the side of his cap with the edge of his +palm and asking in French, with an amused smile +forcing its way about his lips:—</p> + +<p>“Can fifteen of us get something to eat, and feed +our horses?”</p> + +<p>Chaouache gave a vacant stare, and silently started +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> +toward the holsters that hung from the bedpost; but +the stranger’s right hand flashed around to his own +belt, and, with a repeater half drawn, he cried:</p> + +<p>“Halt!” And then, more quietly, “Look out of +the door, look out the window.”</p> + +<p>Father and son looked. The house was surrounded.</p> + +<p>Chaouache turned upon his wife one look of silent +despair. Wife and children threw themselves upon +his neck, weeping and wailing. ’Thanase bore the +sight a moment, maybe a full minute; then drew near, +pressed the children with kind firmness aside, pushed +between his father and mother, took her tenderly by +the shoulders, and said in their antique dialect, with +his own eyes brimming:—</p> + +<p>“Hush! hush! he will not have to go.”</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>At a gentle trot the short column of horsemen moves +again, but with its head the other way. The wind and +rain buffet and pelt horse and rider from behind. +Chaouache’s door is still open. He stands in it with +his red-eyed wife beside him and the children around +them, all gazing mutely, with drooping heads and +many a slow tear, after the departing cavalcade.</p> + +<p>None of the horsemen look back. Why should +they? To see a barefoot man beside a woman in dingy +<i>volante</i> and <i>casaquin</i>, with two or three lads of ten or +twelve in front, whose feet have known sunburn and +frost but never a shoe, and a damsel or two in cotton +homespun dress made of one piece from collar to hem, +and pantalettes of the same reaching to the ankles—all +standing and looking the picture of witless +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> +incapacity, and making no plea against tyranny! Is that +a thing worth while to turn and look back upon? If +the blow fell upon ourselves or our set, that would be +different; but these illiterate and lowly ones—they +are—you don’t know—so dull and insensible. Yes, +it may be true that it is only <em>some</em> of them who feel +less acutely than <em>some</em> of us—we admit that generously; +but when you insinuate that when we overlook +parental and fraternal anguish tearing at such hearts +the dulness and insensibility are ours, you make those +people extremely offensive to us, whereas you should +not estrange them from our tolerance.</p> + +<p>Ah, poor unpitied mother! go back to your toils; +they are lightened now—a little; the cooking, the +washing, the scrubbing. Spread, day by day, the +smoking board, and call your spared husband and +your little ones to partake; but you—your tears shall +be your meat day and night, while underneath your +breath you moan, “’Thanase! ’Thanase!”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_V" id="PART_I_CHAP_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h3> + +<h3>THE CURÉ OF CARANCRO.</h3> + + +<p>It was an unexpected and capital exchange. They +had gone for a conscript; they came away with a +volunteer.</p> + +<p>Bonaventure sat by the fire in Sosthène’s cottage, +silent and heavy, holding his small knees in his knit +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> +hands and gazing into the flames. Zoséphine was +washing the household’s few breakfast dishes. <i>La +vieille</i>—the mother—was spinning cotton. <i>Le vieux</i>—Sosthène—sat +sewing up a rent in a rawhide chair-bottom. +He paused by and by, stretched, and went +to the window. His wife caught the same spirit of +relaxation, stopped her wheel, looked at the boy moping +in the chimney-corner, and, passing over to his +side, laid a hand upon his temple to see if he might +have fever.</p> + +<p>The lad’s eyes did not respond to her; they were +following Sosthène. The husband stood gazing out +through the glass for a moment, and then, without +moving, swore a long, slow execration. The wife and +daughter pressed quickly to his either side and looked +forth.</p> + +<p>There they came, the number increased to eighteen +now, trotting leisurely through the subsiding storm. +The wife asked what they were, but Sosthène made no +reply; he was counting them: twelve, thirteen, fourteen—fourteen +with short guns, another one who +seemed to wear a sword, and three, that must be—</p> + +<p>“Cawnscreep,” growled Sosthène, without turning +his eyes. But the next moment an unusual sound at +his elbow drew his glance upon Zoséphine. “<i>Diable!</i>” +He glared at her weeping eyes, his manner demanding +of her instant explanation. She retreated a step, +moved her hand toward the approaching troop, and +cried distressfully:</p> + +<p>“<i>Tu va oère!</i>”—“You will see!”</p> + +<p>His glance was drawn to Bonaventure. The lad +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> +had turned toward them, and was sitting upright, his +blue eyes widened, his face pale, and his lips apart; +but ere Sosthène could speak his wife claimed his +attention.</p> + +<p>“Sosthène!” she exclaimed, pressing against the +window-pane, “ah, Sosthène! Ah, ah! they have got +’Thanase!”</p> + +<p>Father, mother, and daughter crowded against the +window and one another, watching the body of horse +as it drew nigh. Bonaventure went slowly and lay +face downward on the bed.</p> + +<p>Now the dripping procession is at hand. They pass +along the dooryard fence. At the little garden gate +they halt. Only ’Thanase dismounts. The commander +exchanges a smiling word or two with him, +and the youth passes through the gate, and, while his +companions throw each a tired leg over the pommel +and sit watching him, comes up the short, flowery walk +and in at the opening door.</p> + +<p>There is nothing to explain, the family have guessed +it; he goes in his father’s stead. There is but a +moment for farewells.</p> + +<p>“Adjieu, Bonaventure.”</p> + +<p>The prostrate boy does not move. ’Thanase strides +up to the bed and looks at one burning cheek, then +turns to his aunt.</p> + +<p>“<i>Li malade?</i>”—“Is he ill?”</p> + +<p>“<i>Sa l’air a ca</i>,” said the aunt. (<i>Il a l’air</i>—he +seems so.)</p> + +<p>“Bien, n’onc’ Sosthène, adjieu.” Uncle and +nephew shake hands stoutly. “Adjieu,” says the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> +young soldier again to his aunt. She gives her hand +and turns to hide a tear. The youth takes one step +toward Zoséphine. She stands dry-eyed, smiling on +her father. As the youth comes her eyes, without +turning to him, fill. He puts out his hand. She lays +her own on it. He gazes at her for a moment, with +beseeching eye—“Adjieu.” Her eyes meet his one +instant—she leaps upon his neck—his strong arms +press her to his bosom—her lifted face lights up—his +kiss is on her lips—it was there just now, and +now—’Thanase is gone, and she has fled to an inner +room.</p> + +<p>Bonaventure stood in the middle of the floor. Why +should the boy look so strange? Was it anger, or +fever, or joy? He started out.</p> + +<p>“<i>A ou-ce-tu va Bonaventure?</i>”—“Whereabouts +are you going?”</p> + +<p>“<i>Va crier les vaches.</i>”—“Going to call the cows.”</p> + +<p>“At this time of day?” demanded <i>la vieille</i>, still in +the same tongue. “Are you crazy?”</p> + +<p>“Oh!—no!” the boy replied, looking dazed. +“No,” he said; “I was going for some more wood.” +He went out, passed the woodpile by, got round behind +a corn-crib, and stood in the cold, wet gale watching +the distant company lessening on the view. It was but +a short, dim, dark streak, creeping across the field of +vision like some slow insect on a window-glass. A +spot just beyond it was a grove that would presently +shut the creeping line finally from sight. They reached +it, passed beyond, and disappeared; and then Bonaventure +took off the small, soft-brimmed hat that hung +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> +about his eyes, and, safe from the sight and hearing of +all his tiny world, lifted his voice, and with face kindling +with delight swung the sorry covering about his +head and cried three times:</p> + +<p>“Ora! Or-r-ra! Ora-a-a-a!”</p> + +<p>But away in the night Madame Sosthène, hearing an +unwonted noise, went to Bonaventure’s bedside and +found him sobbing as if his heart had broken.</p> + +<p>“He has had a bad dream,” she said; for he would +not say a word.</p> + +<p>The curé of Vermilionville and Carancro was a +Creole gentleman who looked burly and hard when in +meditation; but all that vanished when he spoke and +smiled. In the pocket of his cassock there was always +a deck of cards, but that was only for the game of +solitaire. You have your pipe or cigar, your flute or +violoncello; he had his little table under the orange-tree +and his game of solitaire.</p> + +<p>He was much loved. To see him beyond earshot +talking to other men you would say he was by nature +a man of affairs, whereas, when you came to hear +him speak you find him quite another sort: one of +the Elisha kind, as against the Elijahs; a man of the +domestic sympathies, whose influence on man was +personal and familiar; one of the sort that heal bitter +waters with a handful of salt, make poisonous pottage +wholesome with a little meal, and find easy, quiet +ways to deliver poor widows from their creditors with +no loss to either; a man whom men reverenced, while +women loved and children trusted him.</p> + +<p>The ex-governor was fond of his company, although +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +the curé only smiled at politics and turned the conversation +back to family matters. He had a natural gift +for divining men’s, women’s, children’s personal wants, +and every one’s distinctively from every other one’s. +So that to everybody he was an actual personal friend. +He had been a long time in this region. It was he +who buried Bonaventure’s mother. He was the connecting +link between Bonaventure and the ex-governor. +Whenever the curé met this man of worldly power, +there were questions asked and answered about the +lad.</p> + +<p>A little after ’Thanase’s enlistment the priest and +the ex-governor, who, if I remember right, was home +only transiently from camp, met on the court-house +square of Vermilionville, and stood to chat a bit, while +others contemplated from across the deep mud of the +street these two interesting representatives of sword +and gown. Two such men standing at that time must +naturally, one would say, have been talking of the +strength of the defences around Richmond, or the +Emperor Maximilian’s operations in Mexico, or Kirby +Smith’s movements, hardly far enough away to make +it seem comfortable. But in reality they were talking +about ’Thanase.</p> + +<p>“He cannot write,” said the curé; “and if he could, +no one at home could read his letters.”</p> + +<p>The ex-governor promised to look after him.</p> + +<p>“And how,” he asked, “does Sosthène’s little orphan get on?”</p> + +<p>The curé smiled. “He is well—physically. A +queer, high-strung child; so old, yet so young. In +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> +some things he will be an infant as long as he lives; +in others, he has been old from the cradle. He takes +every thing in as much earnest as a man of fifty. +What is to become of him?”</p> + +<p>“Oh! he will come out all right,” said the ex-governor.</p> + +<p>“That depends. Some children are born with fixed +characters: you can tell almost from the start what +they are going to be. Be they much or little, they are +complete in themselves, and it makes comparatively +little difference into what sort of a world you drop +them.”</p> + +<p>“’Thanase, for instance,” said the ex-governor.</p> + +<p>“Yes, you might say ’Thanase; but never Bonaventure. +He is the other type; just as marked and +positive traits, but those traits not yet builded into +character: a loose mass of building-material, and the +beauty or ugliness to which such a nature may arrive +depends on who and what has the building of it into +form. What he may turn out to be at last will be no +mere product of circumstances; he is too original for +that. Oh, he’s a study! Another boy under the same +circumstances might turn out entirely different; and +yet it will make an immense difference how his experiences +are allowed to combine with his nature.” The +speaker paused a moment, while Bonaventure’s other +friend stood smiling with interest; then the priest +added, “He is just now struggling with his first great +experience.”</p> + +<p>“What is that?”</p> + +<p>“It belongs,” replied the curé, smiling in his turn, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> +“to the confidences of the confessional. But,” he +added, with a little anxious look, “I can tell you what +it will do; it will either sweeten his whole nature more +and more, or else make it more and more bitter, from +this time forth. And that is no trifle to you or me; +for whether for good or bad, in a large way or in a +small way, he is going to make himself felt.”</p> + +<p>The ex-governor mused. “I’m glad the little fellow +has you for a friend, father.—I’ll tell you; if +Sosthène and his wife will part with him, and you will +take him to live with you, and, mark you, not try too +hard to make a priest of him, I will bear his expenses.”</p> + +<p>“I will do it,” said the curé.</p> + +<p>It required much ingenuity of argument to make the +Gradnego pair see the matter in the desired light; but +when the curé promised Sosthène that he would teach +the lad to read and write, and then promised <i>la vieille</i> +that Zoséphine should share this educational privilege +with him, they let him go.</p> + +<p>Zoséphine was not merely willing, but eager, to see +the arrangements made. She beckoned the boy aside +and spoke to him alone.</p> + +<p>“You must go, Bonaventure. You will go, will you +not—when I ask you? Think how fine that will be—to +be educated! For me, I cannot endure an uneducated +person. But—ah! <i>ca sré vaillant, pour +savoir lire</i>. [It will be bully to know how to read.] +<i>Aie ya yaie!</i>”—she stretched her eyes and bit her lip +with delight—“<i>C’est t’y gai, pour savoir écrire!</i> +[That’s fine to know how to write.] I will tell you a +secret, dear Bonaventure. Any girl of sense is <em>bound</em> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +to think it much greater and finer for a man to read +books than to ride horses. She may not want to, but +she has to do it; she can’t help herself!”</p> + +<p>Still Bonaventure looked at her mournfully. She +tried again.</p> + +<p>“When I say any girl of sense I include myself—of +course! I think more of a boy—or man, either—who +can write letters than of one who can play the +fiddle. There, now, I have told you! And when you +have learned those things, I will be proud of you! +And besides, you know, if you don’t go, you make me +lose my chance of learning the same things; but if you +go, we will learn them together.”</p> + +<p>He consented. She could not understand the expression +of his face. She had expected gleams of +delight. There were none. He went with silent docility, +and without a tear; but also without a smile. +When in his new home the curé from time to time stole +glances at his face fixed in unconscious revery, it was +full of a grim, unhappy satisfaction.</p> + +<p>“Self is winning, or dying hard. I wish no ill to +’Thanase; but if there is to be any bad news of him, +I hope, for the sake of this boy’s soul, it will come +quickly.” So spoke the curé alone, to his cards.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_VI" id="PART_I_CHAP_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h3> + +<h3>MISSING.</h3> + + +<p>The war was in its last throes even when ’Thanase +enlisted. Weeks and months passed. Then a soldier +coming home to Carancro—home-comers were growing +plentiful—brought the first news of him. An +officer making up a force of picked men for an expedition +to carry important despatches eastward across the +Mississippi and far away into Virginia had chosen +’Thanase. The evening the speaker left for home on +his leave of absence ’Thanase was still in camp, but +was to start the next morning. It was just after Sunday +morning mass that Sosthène and Chaouache, with +their families and friends, crowded around this bearer +of tidings.</p> + +<p>“Had ’Thanase been in any battles?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, two or three.”</p> + +<p>“And had not been wounded?”</p> + +<p>“No, although he was the bravest fellow in his +company.”</p> + +<p>Sosthène and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, +smiled, and swore two simultaneous oaths +of admiration. Zoséphine softly pinched her mother, +and whispered something. Madame Sosthène addressed +the home-comer aloud:</p> + +<p>“Did ’Thanase send no other message except that +mere ‘How-d’ye all do?’”</p> + +<p>“No.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> +Zoséphine leaned upon her mother’s shoulder, and +softly breathed:</p> + +<p>“He is lying.”</p> + +<p>The mother looked around upon her daughter in +astonishment. The flash of scorn was just disappearing +from the girl’s eyes. She gave a little smile and +chuckle, and murmured, with her glance upon the +man:</p> + +<p>“He has no leave of absence. He is a deserter.”</p> + +<p>Then Madame Sosthène saw two things at once: +that the guess was a good one, and that Zoséphine +had bidden childhood a final “adjieu.”</p> + +<p>The daughter felt Bonaventure’s eyes upon her. +He was standing only a step or two away. She gave +him a quick, tender look that thrilled him from head +to foot, then lifted her brows and made a grimace of +pretended weariness. She was growing prettier almost +from day to day.</p> + +<p>And Bonaventure, he had no playmates—no comrades—no +amusements. This one thing, which no +one knew but the curé, had taken possession of him. +The priest sometimes seemed to himself cruel, so well +did it please him to observe the magnitude Bonaventure +plainly attributed to the matter. The boy seemed +almost physically to bow under the burden of his +sense of guilt.</p> + +<p>“It is quickening all his faculties,” said the curé +to himself. Zoséphine had hardly yet learned to read +without stammering, when Bonaventure was already +devouring the few French works of the curé’s small +bookshelf. Silent on other subjects, on one he would +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +talk till a pink spot glowed on either cheek-bone and +his blue eyes shone like a hot noon sky;—casuistry. +He would debate the right and wrong of any thing, +every thing, and the rights and wrongs of men in every +relation of life.</p> + +<p>Blessed was it for him then that the tactful curé +was his father and mother in one, and the surgeon +and physician of his mind. Thus the struggle brought +him light. To the boy’s own eyes it seemed to be +bringing him only darkness, but the priest saw better.</p> + +<p>“That is but his shadow; he is standing in it; it is +deepening; that shows the light is increasing.” Thus +spake the curé to himself as he sat at solitaire under +his orange-tree one afternoon.</p> + +<p>The boy passed out of sight, and the curé’s eyes +returned to his game of solitaire; but as he slowly +laid one card upon another, now here, now there, he +still thought of Bonaventure.</p> + +<p>“There will be no peace for him, no sweetness of +nature, no green pastures and still waters, within or +without, while he seeks life’s adjustments through +definitions of mere right and rights. No, boy; you +will ever be a restless captive, pacing round and round +those limits of your enclosure. Worse still if you +seek those definitions only to justify your overriding +another’s happiness in pursuit of your own.” The boy +was not in hearing; this was apostrophe.</p> + +<p>“Bonaventure,” he said, as the lad came by again; +and Bonaventure stopped. The player pushed the +cards from him, pile by pile, leaned back, ran his +fingers slowly through his thin gray hair, and smiled.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> +“Bonaventure, I have a riddle for you. It came +to me as I was playing here just now. If everybody +could do just as he pleased; if he had, as the governor +would say, all his rights,—life, liberty, pursuit of +happiness,—if everybody had this, I say, why should +we still be unhappy?”</p> + +<p>The boy was silent.</p> + +<p>“Well, I did not suppose you would know. Would +you like me to tell you? It is because happiness pursued +is never overtaken. And can you guess why +that is? Well, never mind, my son. But—would +you like to do something for me?”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure nodded. The curé rose, taking from +his bosom as he left his chair a red silk handkerchief +and a pocket-worn note-book. He laid the note-book +on the table, and drawing back with a smile said:</p> + +<p>“Here, sit down in my place, and write what I tell +you, while I stretch my legs. So; never mind whether +you understand or not. I am saying it for myself: it +helps <em>me</em> to understand it better. Now, as I walk, +you write. ‘Happiness pursued is never overtaken, +because’—have you written that?—‘because, little +as we are, God’s image makes us so large that we +cannot live within ourselves, nor even for ourselves, +and be satisfied.’ Have you got that down? Very +well—yes—the spelling could be improved, but that +is no matter. Now wait a moment; let me walk some +more. Now write: ‘It is not good for man to be +alone, because’—because—let me see; where—ah, +yes!—‘because rightly self is the’—Ah! no, no, +my boy; not a capital S for ‘self’—ah! that’s the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> +very point,—small <em>s</em>,—‘because rightly self is the +smallest part of us. Even God found it good not +to be alone, but to create’—got that?—‘to create +objects for His love and benevolence.’ Yes—‘And +because in my poor, small way I am made like Him, +the whole world becomes a part of me’—small <em>m</em>, +yes, that is right!” From bending a moment over +the writer, the priest straightened up and took a step +backward. The boy lifted his glance to where the +sunlight and leaf-shadows were playing on his guardian’s +face. The curé answered with a warm smile, +saying:</p> + +<p>“My boy, God is a very practical God—no, you +need not write it; just listen a moment. Yes; and so +when He gave us natures like His, He gave men not +wives only, but brethren and sisters and companions +and strangers, in order that benevolence, yes, and even +self-sacrifice,—mistakenly so called,—might have no +lack of direction and occupation; and then bound the +whole human family together by putting every one’s +happiness into some other one’s hands. I see you do +not understand: never mind; it will come to you little +by little. It was a long time coming to me. Let us +go in to supper.”</p> + +<p>The good man had little hope of such words taking +hold. At school next day there was Zoséphine with +her soft electric glances to make the boy forget all; +and at the Saturday-night balls there she was again.</p> + +<p>“Bonaventure,” her manner plainly said, “did you +ever see any thing else in this wide world so tiresome +as these boys about here? Stay with me; it keeps +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> +them away.” She never put such thoughts into words. +With an Acadian girl such a thing was impossible +But girls do not need words. She drew as potently, +and to all appearances as impassively, as a loadstone. +All others than Bonaventure she repelled. If now +and then she toyed with a heart, it was but to see her +image in it once or twice and toss it aside. All got +one treatment in the main. Any one of them might +gallop by her father’s veranda seven times a day, but +not once in all the seven would she be seen at the +window glancing up at the weather or down at her +flowers; nor on the veranda hanging up fresh hanks +of yarn; nor at the well with the drinking-pail, getting +fresh water, as she might so easily have been, had +she so chosen. Yonder was Sosthène hoeing leisurely +in the little garden, and possibly the sunbonnet of +<i>la vieille</i> half seen and half hidden among her lima-beans; +but for the rest there was only the house, +silent at best, or, worse, sending out through its half-open +door the long, scornful No-o-o! of the maiden’s +unseen spinning-wheel. No matter the fame or grace +of the rider. All in vain, my lad: pirouette as you +will; sit your gallantest; let your hat blow off, and +turn back, and at full speed lean down from the saddle, +and snatch it airily from the ground, and turn again +and gallop away; all is in vain. For by her estimate +either you are living in fear of the conscript officer; +or, if you are in the service, and here only transiently +on leave of absence, your stay seems long, and it is +rumored your leave has expired; or, worse, you cannot +read; or, worst, your age, for all your manly airs, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> +is so near Zoséphine’s as to give your attentions strong +savor of presumption. But let any fortune bring +Bonaventure in any guise—sorriest horseman of all, +youngest, slenderest, and stranger to all the ways that +youth loves—and at once she is visible; nay, more, +accessible; and he, welcome. So accessible she, so +welcome he, that more than once she has to waft aside +her mother’s criticisms by pleading Bonaventure’s foster-brotherhood +and her one or two superior years.</p> + +<p>“Poor ’Thanase!” said the youths and maidens.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And now the war came to an end. Bonaventure +was glad. ’Thanase was expected home, but—let +him come. If the absent soldier knew what the young +folks at the balls knew, he would not make haste in +his return. And he did not, as it seemed. Day after +day, in group after group, without shouting and without +banners, with wounds and scars and tattered garments, +some on horses, but many more on foot, the +loved ones—the spared ones, remnants of this command +and that command and ’Thanase’s command—came +home. But day by day brought no ’Thanase.</p> + +<p>Bonaventure began to wish for him anxiously. He +wanted him back so that this load might be lifted. +Thus the bitter would pass out of the sweet; the haunting +fear of evil tidings from the absent rival would +haunt no more. Life would be what it was to other +lads, and Zoséphine one day fall to his share by a +better title than he could ever make with ’Thanase in +exile. Come, ’Thanase, come, come!</p> + +<p>More weeks passed. The youth’s returned +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> +comrades were all back at their ploughs again and among +their herds. ’Thanase would be along by and by, +they said; he could not come with them, for he had not +been paroled with them; he had been missing—taken +prisoner, no doubt—in the very last fight. But presently +they who had been prisoners were home also, and +still ’Thanase had not come. And then, instead of +’Thanase coming, Chaouache died.</p> + +<p>A terror took up its home in the heart of Bonaventure. +Every thing he looked upon, every creature that +looked upon him, seemed to offer an unuttered accusation. +Least of all could he bear the glance of Zoséphine. +He did not have to bear it. She kept at home +now closely. She had learned to read, and Sosthène +and his <i>vieille</i> had pronounced her education completed.</p> + +<p>In one direction only could the eyes of Bonaventure +go, and meet nothing that accused him: that was into +the face of the curé. And lest accusation should +spring up there, he had omitted his confession for +weeks. He was still child enough not to see that the +priest was watching him narrowly and tenderly.</p> + +<p>One night, away in the small hours, the curé was +aroused by the presence of some one in his room.</p> + +<p>“Who is that?” He rose from his pillow.</p> + +<p>“It is I, father,” said a low voice, and against the +darkness of an inner door he saw dimly the small, long +nightdress of the boy he loved.</p> + +<p>“What gets you up, Bonaventure? Come here. +What troubles you?”</p> + +<p>“I cannot sleep,” murmured the lad, noiselessly +moving near. The priest stroked the lad’s brow.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> +“Have you not been asleep at all?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“But you have had bad dreams that woke you?”</p> + +<p>“Only one.”</p> + +<p>“And what was that?”</p> + +<p>There was a silence.</p> + +<p>“Did you dream about—’Thanase, for example?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>The priest reached out and took the boy’s small, +slender hands in his. They were moist and cold.</p> + +<p>“And did you dream”—</p> + +<p>“I dreamed he was dead. I dream it every night.”</p> + +<p>“But, my child, that does not make it so. Would +you like to get into bed here with me? No?—or to +go back now to your own bed? No? What, then?”</p> + +<p>“I do not want to go back to bed any more. I +want to go and find ’Thanase.”</p> + +<p>“Why, my child, you are not thoroughly awake, +are you?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I want to go and find ’Thanase. I have been +thinking to-night of all you have told me—of all you +said that day in the garden,—and—I want to go and +find ’Thanase.”</p> + +<p>“My boy,” said the priest, drawing the lad with +gentle force to his bosom, “my little old man, does +this mean that you have come to the end of all self-service?—that +self is never going to be spelt with a +capital S any more? Will it be that way if I let you +go?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, my son—God only knows whether I +am wise or foolish, but—you may go.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> +The boy smiled for the first time in weeks, then +climbed half upon the bed, buried his face in the +priest’s bosom, and sobbed as though his heart had +broken.</p> + +<p>“It has broken,” said the curé to himself as he +clasped him tightly. “It has broken—thank God!”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_VII" id="PART_I_CHAP_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h3> + +<h3>A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK.</h3> + + +<p>In such and such a battle, in the last charge across +a certain cornfield, or in the hurried falling back +through a certain wood, with the murderous lead singing +and hitting from yonder dark mass descending on +the flank, and the air full of imperious calls, “Halt!”—“Surrender!” +a man disappeared. He was not +with those who escaped, nor with the dead when they +were buried, nor among the wounded anywhere, nor in +any group of prisoners. But long after the war was +over, another man, swinging a bush scythe among the +overgrown corners of a worm fence, found the poor +remnant of him, put it scarcely underground, and that +was the end. How many times that happened!</p> + +<p>Was it so with ’Thanase? No. For Sosthène’s +sake the ex-governor had taken much pains to correspond +with officials concerning the missing youth, and +had secured some slender re-assurances. ’Thanase, +though captured, had not been taken to prison. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> +Tidings of general surrender had overhauled him on the +way to it, near, I think, the city of Baltimore—somewhere +in that region, at any rate; and he had been +paroled and liberated, and had started penniless and +on foot, south-westward along the railway-tracks.</p> + +<p>To find him, Bonaventure must set out, like him on +foot, south-eastward over some fifty miles of wagon-road +to the nearest railway; eastward again over its +cross-ties eighty miles to <i>la ville</i>, the great New +Orleans, there to cross the Mississippi. Then away +northward, through the deep, trestled swamps, leagues +and leagues, across Bayou La Branche and Bayou +Desair, and Pass Manchac and North Manchac, and +Pontchatoula River two or three times; and out of the +swamps and pine barrens into the sweet pine hills, +with their great resinous boles rising one hundred—two +hundred feet overhead; over meadows and fields +and many and many a beautiful clear creek, and ten +or more times over the winding Tangipahoa, by narrow +clearings, and the old tracks of forgotten hurricanes, +and many a wide plantation; until more than two hundred +miles from the great city, still northward across +the sinking and swelling fields, the low, dark dome +of another State’s Capitol must rise amid spires and +trees into the blue, and the green ruins of fortifications +be passed, and the iron roads be found branching west, +north, and east.</p> + +<p>Thence all was one wide sea of improbability. Even +before a quarter of that distance should have been +covered, how many chances of every sort there were +against the success of such a search!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> +“It is impossible that he should find him,” said the +ex-governor.</p> + +<p>“Well,”—the curé shrugged,—“if he finds no one, +yet he may succeed in losing himself.” But in order +that Bonaventure in losing himself should not be lost, +the priest gave him pens and paper, and took his +promise to write back as he went step by step out into +the world.</p> + +<p>“And learn English, my boy; learn it with all +speed; you will find it vastly, no telling how vastly, to +your interest—I should say your usefulness. I am +sorry I could not teach it to you myself. Here is a +little spelling-book and reader for you to commence +with. Make haste to know English; in America we +should be Americans; would that I could say it to all +our Acadian people! but I say it to you, learn English. +It may be that by not knowing it you may fail, or by +knowing it succeed, in this errand. And every step +of your way let your first business be the welfare of +others. Hundreds will laugh at you for it: never +mind; it will bring you through. Yes, I will tell Sosthène +and the others good-by for you. I will tell +them you had a dream that compelled you to go at +once. Adieu.” And just as the rising sun’s first +beam smote the curé’s brimming eyes, his “little old +man” turned his face toward a new life, and set forward +to enter it.</p> + +<p>“Have you seen anywhere, coming back from the +war, a young man named ’Thanase Beausoleil?”—This +question to every one met, day in, day out, in +early morning lights, in noonday heats, under sunset +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> +glows, by a light figure in thin, clean clothing, dusty +shoes, and with limp straw hat lowered from the head. +By and by, as first the land of the Acadians and then +the land of the Creoles was left behind, a man every +now and then would smile and shake his head to mean +he did not understand—for the question was in French. +But then very soon it began to be in English too, and +by and by not in French at all.</p> + +<p>“Sir, have you seen anywhere, coming back from +the war, a young man named ’Thanase Beausoleil?”</p> + +<p>But no one had seen him.</p> + +<p>Travel was very slow. Not only because it was +done afoot. Many a day he had to tarry to earn +bread, for he asked no alms. But after a while he +passed eastward into a third State, and at length into +the mountains of a fourth.</p> + +<p>Meantime the weeks were lengthening into months; +the year was in its decline. Might not ’Thanase be +even then at home? No. Every week Bonaventure +wrote back, “Has he come?” and the answer came +back, “He is not here.”</p> + +<p>But one evening, as he paced the cross-ties of a railway +that hugged a huge forest-clad mountain-side, +with the valley a thousand feet below, its stony river +shining like a silken fabric in the sunset lights, the +great hillsides clad in crimson, green, and gold, and +the long, trailing smoke of the last train—a rare, +motionless blue gauze—gone to rest in the chill mid-air, +he met a man who suddenly descended upon the +track in front of him from higher up the mountain,—a +great, lank mountaineer. And when Bonaventure +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> +asked the apparition the untiring question to which so +many hundreds had answered No, the tall man looked +down upon the questioner, a bright smile suddenly +lighting up the unlovely chin-whiskered face, and +asked:</p> + +<p>“Makes a fiddle thess talk an’ cry?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Well, he hain’t been gone from hyer two weeks.”</p> + +<p>It was true. Only a few weeks before, gaunt, footsore, +and ragged, tramping the cross-ties yonder where +the railway comes from the eastward, curving into view +out of that deep green and gray defile, ’Thanase had +come into this valley. So short a time before, because +almost on his start homeward illness had halted him +by the way and held him long in arrest. But at length +he had reached the valley, and had lingered here for +days; for it happened that a man in bought clothing +was there just then, roaming around and hammering +pieces off the rocks, who gave ’Thanase the chance to +earn a little something from him, with which the hard-marched +wanderer might take the train instead of the +cross-ties for as far as the pittance would carry him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_VIII" id="PART_I_CHAP_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h3> + +<h3>THE QUEST ENDED.</h3> + + +<p>The next sunrise saw Bonaventure, with a new energy +in his step, journeying back the way he had come. +And so anew the weeks wore by. Once more the +streams ran southward, and the landscapes opened +wide and fertile.</p> + +<p>“Sir,—pardon your stopping,—in what State +should I find myself at the present?”</p> + +<p>The person inquired of looked blank, examined the +questioner from head to foot, and replied:</p> + +<p>“In what—oh! I understand; yes. What State—Alabama, +yes, Alabama. You must excuse me, +I didn’t understand you at first. Yes, this is +Alabama.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you, sir. Have you seen anywhere, coming +back from the war, a young man named ’Thanase +Beausoleil?”</p> + +<p>“Back from the war! Why, everybody done got +back from the war long ago.” “Lawng ago-o-o,” +the speaker pronounced it, but the pronunciation could +not be as untrue as the careless assertion.</p> + +<p>A second time, and again a third, Bonaventure fell +upon the trail. But each time it was colder than +before. And yet he was pushing on as fast as he +dared. Many a kind man’s invitation to tarry and +rest was gratefully declined. Once, where two railways +parted, one leading south, the other west, he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> +followed the southern for days, and then came back +to the point of separation, and by and by found the +lost thread again on the more westward road. But +the time since ’Thanase had passed was the longest yet. +Was it certainly ’Thanase? Yes; the fiddle always +settled that question. And had he not got home? He +had not come. Somewhere in the long stretch between +Bonaventure and Carancro there must be strange +tidings.</p> + +<p>On the first New Year’s eve after the war, as the +sun was sinking upon the year’s end, Bonaventure +turned that last long curve of the New Orleans, Jackson, +and Great Northern Railroad, through the rushes, +flags, willows, and cypress-stumps of the cleared +swamp behind the city of the Creoles, and, passing +around the poor shed called the depot, paused at the +intersection of Calliope and Magnolia Streets, waiting +the turn of chance.</p> + +<p>Trace of the lost ’Thanase had brought him at length +to this point. The word of a fellow-tramp, pledged +on the honor of his guild, gave assurance that thus far +the wanted man had come in strength and hope—but +more than a month before.</p> + +<p>The necessity of moving on presently carried Bonaventure +aimlessly into the city along the banks of the +New Canal. The lad had shot up in these few months +into the full stature, without the breadth, of manhood. +The first soft, uneven curls of a light-brown beard +were on his thin cheek and chin. Patient weariness +and humble perseverance were in his eyes. His coarse, +ill-matched attire was whole and, but for the soilure +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> +of foot-travel, clean. Companioning with nature had +browned his skin, and dried his straight fine hair. +Any reader of faces would have seen the lines of unselfish +purpose about his lips, and, when they parted +nervously for speech, the earnest glow of that purpose +in a countenance that neither smiled nor frowned, +and, though it was shaded, cast no shadow.</p> + +<p>The police very soon knew him. They smiled at +one another and tapped the forehead with one finger, +as he turned away with his question answered by a +shake of the head. It became their habit. They would +jerk a thumb over a shoulder after him facetiously.</p> + +<p>“Goes to see every unknown white man found dead +or drowned. And yet, you know, he’s happy. He’s +a heap sight”—sometimes they used other adjectives—“a +heap sight happier than us, with his trampin’ +around all day and his French and English books at +night, as old Tony says. He bunks with old Tony, +you know, what keeps that little grocery in Solidelle +Street. Tony says his candles comes to more than his +bread and meat, or, rather, his rice and crawfish. He’s +the funniest crazy <em>I</em> ever see. All the crazies I ever +see is got some grind for pleasing number one; but +this chap is everlastin’ly a-lookin’ out for everybody +<em>but</em> number one. Oh, yes, the candles and books,—I +reckon they are for number one,—that’s so; but +anyhow, that’s what I hear Madame Tony allow.”</p> + +<p>The short, wet winter passed. The search stretched +on into the spring. It did not, by far, take up the +seeker’s whole daily life. Only it was a thread that +ran all through it, a dye that colored it. Many other +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> +factors—observations, occupations, experiences—were +helping to make up that life, and to make it, with +all its pathetic slenderness, far more than it was likely +ever to have been made at Carancro. Through hundreds +of miles of tramping the lad had seen, in a singularly +complete yet inhostile disentanglement from it, +the world of men; glimpses of the rich man’s world +with its strivings, steadier views of the poor man’s +world with its struggles. The times were strong and +rude. Every step of his way had been through a land +whose whole civil order had been condemned, shattered, +and cast into the mill of revolution for a total remoulding. +Every day came like the discharge of a great +double-shotted gun. It could not but be that, humble +as his walk was, and his years so few, his fevered mind +should leap into the questions of the hour like a naked +boy into the surf. He made mistakes, sometimes in +a childish, sometimes in an older way, some against +most worthy things. But withal he managed to keep +the main direction of truth, after his own young way +of thinking and telling it. He had no such power to +formulate his large conclusions as you or even I have; +but whatever wrought to enlighten the unlettered, +whatever cherished manhood’s rights alike in lofty and +lowly, whatever worked the betterment of the poor, +whatever made man not too much and not too little his +brother’s keeper,—his keeper not by mastery, but by +fraternal service,—whatever did these things was to +him good religion, good politics. So, at least, the +curé told the ex-governor, as from time to time they +talked of the absent Bonaventure and of his letters. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> +However, they had to admit one thing: all this did +not find ’Thanase.</p> + +<p>And why, now, should ’Thanase longer be sought? +Was there any thing to gain by finding him dead? +Not for Bonaventure; he felt, as plainly as though he +had seen an angel write the decree, that to Bonaventure +Deschamps no kind of profit or advantage under +the sun must come by such a way. But was there any +thing to be gained in finding that ’Thanase still lived? +The police will tell you, as they told Bonaventure, that +in these days of steam and steel and yoked lightning +a man may get lost and be found again; but that +when he stays lost, and is neither dead nor mad, it is +because he wants to be lost. So where was to be the +gain in finding ’Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed, to +Bonaventure! The star of a new hope shot up into +his starless sky when that thought came, and in that +star trembled that which he had not all these weary +months of search dared see even with fancy’s eye,—the +image of Zoséphine! This—this! that he had +never set out to achieve—this! if he could but stand +face to face with evidence that ’Thanase could have +reached home and would not.</p> + +<p>This thought was making new lines in the young +care-struck face, when—</p> + +<p>“See here,” said a voice one day. Bonaventure’s +sleeve was caught by the thumb and forefinger of a +man to whom, in passing, he had touched his hat. +The speaker was a police captain.</p> + +<p>“Come with me.” They turned and walked, Bonaventure +saying not a word. They passed a corner, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> +turned to the right, passed two more, turned to the +left,—high brick walls on either side, damp, ill-smelling +pavements under foot,—and still strode on in +silence. As they turned once more to the right in a +dim, narrow way, the captain patted the youth softly +on the back, and said:</p> + +<p>“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”</p> + +<p>So Bonaventure asked none. But presently, in one +of those dens called sailors’ boarding-houses, somewhere +down on the water-front near the Mint, he was +brought face to face with a stranger whose manner +seemed to offer the reverse proposition. Of him the +youth asked questions and got answers.</p> + +<p>’Thanase Beausoleil still lived, far beyond seas. +How? why? If this man spake truly, because here in +New Orleans, at the last turn in the long, weary journey +that was to have brought the young volunteer +home, he had asked and got the aid of this informant +to ship—before the mast—for foreign parts. But +why? Because his ambition and pride, explained the +informant, had outgrown Carancro, and his heart had +tired of the diminished memory of the little Zoséphine.</p> + +<p>Bonaventure hurried away. What storms buffeted +one another in his bosom!</p> + +<p>Night had fallen upon the great city. Long stretches +of street lay now between high walls, and now between +low-hanging eaves, empty of human feet and rife with +solitude. Through long distances he could run and +leap, and make soft, mild pretence of shouting and +smiting hands. The quest was ended! rivalry gone +of its own choice, guilt washed from the hands, love +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> +returned to her nest. Zoséphine! Zoséphine! Away +now, away to the reward of penance, patience, and +loyalty! Unsought, unhoped-for reward! As he ran, +the crescent moon ran before him in the sky, and one +glowing star, dipping low, beckoned him into the west.</p> + +<p>And yet that night a great riot broke out in his +heart; and in the morning there was a look on his face +as though in that tumult conscience had been drugged, +beaten, stoned, and left for dead outside the gate of +his soul.</p> + +<p>There was something of defiance in his eye, not good +to see, as he started down the track of the old Opelousas +Railroad, with the city and the Mississippi at +his back. When he had sent a letter ahead of him, +he had no money left to pay for railway passage. +Should he delay for that or aught else, he might never +start; for already the ghost of conscience was whispering +in at the barred windows of his heart:</p> + +<p>“It is not true. The man has told you falsely. It +is not true.”</p> + +<p>And so he was tramping once more—toward Carancro. +And never before with such determined eagerness. +Nothing could turn him about now. Once a train came +in sight in front of him just as he had started across +a trestle-work; but he ran forward across the open +ties, and leaped clear of the track on the farther side, +just when another instant would have been too late. +He stood a moment, only half-pausing among the palmettos +and rushes as the hurtling mass thundered by; +then pushed quickly into the whirling dust of the track +and hurried on between the clicking rails, not knowing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> +that yonder dark, dwindling speck behind was bearing +away from him strange tidings from the curé.</p> + +<p>The summer was coming on; the suns were hot. +There were leagues on leagues of unbroken shaking +prairie with never a hand-breadth of shade, but only +the glowing upper blue, with huge dazzling clouds +moving, like herds of white elephants pasturing across +heavenly fields, too slowly for the eye to note their +motion; and below, the far-reaching, tremulous sheen +of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of serpent, wild-cat, +and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue +of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither +toward the sea, and sometimes miles of deep forest +swamp through which the railroad went by broad, +frowzy, treeless clearings flanked with impassable +oozy ditches; but shade there was none.</p> + +<p>Nor was there peace. Always as he strode along, +something he could not outgo was at his side, gaunt, +wounded, soiled, whispering: “Turn back; turn back, +and settle with me,” and ever put off with promises—after +that fashion as old as the world—to do no end +of good things if only the one right thing might be left +undone.</p> + +<p>And so because there were no shade, no peace, and +no turning back, no one day’s march made him stronger +for the next; and at length, when he came to the low +thatch of a negro-cabin, under the shadow of its bananas +he sank down in its doorway, red with fever.</p> + +<p>There he had to stay many days; but in the end he +was up and on his way again. He left the Atchafalaya +behind him. It was easier going now. There was +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> +shade. Under his trudging feet was the wagon-road +along the farther levee of the Teche. Above him great +live-oaks stretched their arms clad in green vestments +and gray drapings, the bright sugar-cane fields were on +his left, and on his right the beautiful winding bayou. +In his face, not joy, only pallid eagerness, desire fixed +upon fulfilment, and knowledge that happiness was +something else; a young, worn face, with hard lines +about the mouth and neck; the face of one who had +thought self to be dead and buried, and had seen it +rise to life again, and fallen captive to it. So he was +drawing near to Carancro. Make haste, Bonaventure!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_IX" id="PART_I_CHAP_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h3> + +<h3>THE WEDDING.</h3> + + +<p>A horse and buggy have this moment been stopped +and are standing on a faint rise of ground seven miles +out beyond the south-western outskirt of Carancro. +The two male occupants of the vehicle are lifting their +heads, and looking with well-pleased faces at something +out over the plain. You know the curé?—and +the ex-governor.</p> + +<p>In the far distance, across the vast level, something +that looks hardly so large on the plain as an ant on the +floor, is moving this way across it. This is what the +curé and his friend are watching. Open in the curé’s +hand, as if he had just read it aloud again, is that last +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> +letter of Bonaventure’s, sent ahead of him from New +Orleans and received some days ago. The governor +holds the reins.</p> + +<p>What do they see? Some traveller afoot? Can it +be that Bonaventure is in sight? That is not even the +direction from which Bonaventure, when he comes, +will appear. No, speck though it is, the object they +are looking at is far larger than a man afoot, or any +horse, or horse and calèche. It is a house. It is on +wheels, and is drawn by many yoke of oxen. From +what the curé is saying we gather that Sosthène has +bought this very small dwelling from a neighbor, and +is moving it to land of his own. Two great beams +have been drawn under the sills at each end, the running +gear of two heavy ox-wagons is made to bear up +the four ends of these beams, all is lashed firmly into +place, the oxen are slowly pulling, the long whips are +cracking, the house is answering the gentle traction, +and, already several miles away from its first site, it +will to-morrow settle down upon new foundations, a +homely type of one whose wreath will soon be a-making, +and who will soon after come to be the little +house’s mistress.</p> + +<p>But what have we done—let time slip backward? +A little; not much; for just then, as the ex-governor +said, “And where is Bonaventure by this time?” +Bonaventure had been only an hour or two in the +negro-cabin where fever had dragged him down.</p> + +<p>Since then the house had not only settled safely upon +its new foundations, but Sosthène, in the good, thorough +way that was his own, had carried renovation to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> +a point that made the cottage to all intents and purposes +a new house. And the curé had looked upon it +again, much nearer by; for before a bride dared enter +a house so nearly new, it had been deemed necessary +for him to come and, before a temporary altar within +the dwelling, to say mass in the time of full moon. +But not yet was the house really a dwelling; it, and +all Carancro, were waiting for the wedding. Make +haste, Bonaventure!</p> + +<p>He had left the Teche behind him on the east. And +now a day breaks whose sunset finds him beyond the +Vermilion River. He cannot go aside to the ex-governor’s, +over yonder on the right. He is making haste. +This day his journey will end. His heart is light; he +has thought out the whole matter now; he makes no +doubt any longer that the story told him is true. And +he knows now just what to do: this very sunset he +will reach his goal; he goes to fill ’Thanase’s voided +place; to lay his own filial service at the feet of the +widowed mother; to be a brother in the lost brother’s +place; and Zoséphine?—why, she shall be her daughter, +the same as though ’Thanase, not he, had won her. +And thus, too, Zoséphine shall have her own sweet +preference—that preference which she had so often +whispered to him—for a scholar rather than a soldier. +Such is the plan, and Conscience has given her +consent.</p> + +<p>The sun soars far overhead. It, too, makes haste. +But the wasted, flushed, hungry-eyed traveller is putting +the miles behind him. He questions none to-day that +pass him or whom he overtakes; only bows, wipes his +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> +warm brow, and presses on across the prairie. Straight +before him, though still far away, a small, white, wooden +steeple rises from out a tuft of trees. It is <i>la chapelle</i>!</p> + +<p>The distance gets less and less. See! the afternoon +sunlight strikes the roofs of a few unpainted cottages +that have begun to show themselves at right and left +of the chapel. And now he sees the green window-shutters +of such as are not without them, and their +copperas or indigo-dyed curtains blowing in and out. +Nearer; nearer; here is a house, and yonder another, +newly built. Carancro is reached.</p> + +<p>He enters a turfy, cattle-haunted lane between rose-hedges. +In a garden on one side, and presently in +another over the way, children whom he remembers—but +grown like weeds since he saw them last—are at +play; but when they stop and gaze at him, it is without +a sign of recognition. Now he walks down the +village street. How empty it seems! was it really +always so? Still, yonder is a man he knows—and +yonder a woman—but they disappear without seeing +him.</p> + +<p>How familiar every thing is! There are the two +shops abreast of the chapel, Marx’s on this side, +Lichtenstein’s on that, their dingy false fronts covered +with their same old huge rain-faded words of promise. +Yonder, too, behind the blacksmith’s shop, is the little +schoolhouse, dirty, half-ruined, and closed—that is, +wide-open and empty—it may be for lack of a teacher, +or funds, or even of scholars.</p> + +<p>“It shall not be so,” said the traveller to himself, +“when <em>she</em> and I”—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> +His steps grow slow. Yet here, not twenty paces +before him, is the home of the curé. Ah! that is just +the trouble. Shall he go here first? May he not push +on and out once more upon the prairie and make himself +known first of all to <em>her</em>? Stopping here first, will +not the curé say tarry till to-morrow? His steps grow +slower still.</p> + +<p>And see, now. One of the Jews in the shop across +the street has observed him. Now two stand together +and scrutinize him; and now there are three, looking +and smiling. Plainly, they recognize him. One starts +to come across, but on that instant the quiet of the +hamlet is broken by a sound of galloping hoofs.</p> + +<p>Bonaventure stands still. How sudden is this +change! He is not noticed now; every thing is in +the highest animation. There are loud calls and outcries; +children are shouting and running, and women’s +heads are thrust out of doors and windows. Horsemen +come dashing into the village around through the +lanes and up the street. Look! they wheel, they rein +up, they throw themselves from the rattling saddles; +they leave the big wooden stirrups swinging and the +little unkempt ponies shaking themselves, and rush into +the <i>boutique de</i> Monsieur Lichtenstein, and are talking +like mad and decking themselves out on hats and +shoulders with ribbons in all colors of the rainbow!</p> + +<p>Suddenly they shout, all together, in answer to a +shout outside. More horsemen appear. Lichtenstein’s +store belches all its population.</p> + +<p>“<i>La calége! La calége!</i>” The calèche is coming!</p> + +<p>Something, he knows not what, makes Bonaventure +tremble.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> +“Madame,” he says in French to a chattering +woman who has just run out of her door, and is +standing near him tying a red Madras kerchief on her +head as she prattles to a girl,—“madame, what +wedding is this?”</p> + +<p>“<i>C’est la noce à</i> Zoséphine,” she replies, without +looking at him, and goes straight on telling her companion +how fifty dollars has been paid for the Pope’s +dispensation, because the bridal pair are first cousins.</p> + +<p>Bonaventure moves back and leans against a paling +fence, pallid and faint. But there is no time to notice +him—look, look!</p> + +<p>Some women on horseback come trotting into the +street. Cheers! cheers! and in a moment louder +cheers yet—the calèche with the bride and groom +and another with the parents have come.</p> + +<p>Throw open the church door!</p> + +<p>Horsemen alight, horsewomen descend; down, also, +come they that were in the calèche. Look, Bonaventure! +They form by twos—forward—in they go. +“Hats off, gentlemen! Don’t forget the rule!—Now—silence! +softly, softly; speak low—or speak +not at all; sh-sh! Silence! The pair are kneeling. +Hush-sh! Frown down that little buzz about the +door! Sh-sh!”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure has rushed in with the crowd. He +cannot see the kneeling pair; but there is the curé +standing over them and performing the holy rite. The +priest stops—he has seen Bonaventure! He stammers, +and then he goes on. Here beside Bonaventure +is a girl so absorbed in the scene that she thinks +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> +she is speaking to her brother, when presently she +says to the haggard young stranger, letting herself +down from her tiptoes and drawing a long breath:</p> + +<p>“<i>La sarimonie est fait.</i>”</p> + +<p>It is true; the ceremony is ended. She rises on +tiptoe again to see the new couple sign the papers.</p> + +<p>Slowly! The bridegroom first, his mark. Step back. +Now the little bride—steady! Zoséphine, <i>sa marque</i>. +She turns; see her, everybody; see her! brown and +pretty as a doe! They are kissing her. Hail, Madame +’Thanase!</p> + +<p>“Make way, make way!” The man and wife +come forth.—Ah! ’Thanase Beausoleil, so tall and +strong, so happy and hale, you do not look to-day like +the poor decoyed, drugged victim that woke up one +morning out in the Gulf of Mexico to find yourself, +without fore-intent or knowledge, one of a ship’s +crew bound for Brazil and thence to the Mediterranean!—“Make +way, make way!” They mount the +calèches, Sosthène after Madame Sosthène; ’Thanase +after Madame ’Thanase. “To horse, ladies and gentlemen!” +Never mind now about the youth who has +been taken ill in the chapel, and whom the curé has +borne almost bodily in his arms to his own house. +“Mount! Mount! Move aside for the wedding +singers!”—The wedding singers take their places, +one on this side the bridal calèche, the other on that, +and away it starts, creaking and groaning.</p> + +<p>“<i>Mais, arretez!</i>—Stop, stop! Before going, <i>passez +le ’nisette</i>!—pass the anisette!” May the New-Orleans +compounder be forgiven the iniquitous +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> +mixture! “<i>Boir les dames avant!</i>—Let the ladies drink +first!” Aham! straight from the bottle.</p> + +<p>Now, go. The calèche moves. Other calèches +bearing parental and grandparental couples follow. +And now the young men and maidens gallop after; +the cavalcade stretches out like the afternoon shadows, +and with shout and song and waving of hats and kerchiefs, +away they go! while from window and door +and village street follows the wedding cry:</p> + +<p>“<i>Adjieu, la calége! Adjieu, la calége!</i>—God speed +the wedding pair!”</p> + +<p>Coming at first from the villagers, it is continued at +length, faint and far, by the attending cavaliers. As +mile by mile they drop aside, singly or in pairs, toward +their homes, they rise in their stirrups, and lifting high +their ribbon-decked hats, they shout and curvette and +curvette and shout until the eye loses them, and the +ear can barely catch the faint farewell:</p> + +<p>“<i>Adjieu, la calége! Adjieu, les mariées!</i>”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_I_CHAP_X" id="PART_I_CHAP_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h3> + +<h3>AFTER ALL.</h3> + + +<p>Adieu; but only till the fall of night shall bring +the wedding ball.</p> + +<p>One little tune—and every Acadian fiddler in +Louisiana knows it—always brings back to Zoséphine +the opening scene of that festive and jocund convocation. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> +She sees again the great clean-swept seed-cotton +room of a cotton-gin house belonging to a cousin of +the ex-governor, lighted with many candles stuck into +a perfect wealth of black bottles ranged along the +beams of the walls. The fiddler’s seat is mounted on +a table in the corner, the fiddler is in it, each beau has +led a maiden into the floor, the sets are made for the +contra-dance, the young men stand expectant, their +partners wait with downcast eyes and mute lips as +Acadian damsels should, the music strikes up, and +away they go.</p> + +<p>Yes, Zoséphine sees the whole bright scene over again +whenever that strain sounds.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;"> +<img src="images/bonav03.png" width="700" height="225" +alt="Untitled music notation, no lyrics" /> +</div> + +<p class="center" style="font-size: small;">[<a href="music/bonaventure.midi">Listen.</a>]<br /> +[<a href="music/bonaventure.pdf">View manuscript as .pdf.</a>]</p> + +<p>It was fine from first to last! The ball closed with +the bride’s dance. Many a daughter Madame Sosthène +had waltzed that farewell measure with, and now +Zoséphine was the last. So they danced it, they two, +all the crowd looking on: the one so young and lost +in self, the other so full of years and lost to self; +eddying round and round each other in this last bright +embrace before they part, the mother to swing back +into still water, the child to enter the current of a new +life.</p> + +<p>And then came the wedding supper! At one end of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> +the long table the bride and groom sat side by side, +and at their left and right the wedding singers stood +and sang. In each corner of the room there was a +barrel of roasted sweet potatoes. How everybody ate, +that night! Rice! beef-balls! pass them here! pass +them there! help yourself! reach them with a fork! +<i>des riz! des boulettes!</i> more down this way! pass them +over heads! <i>des riz! des boulettes!</i> And the anisette!—bad +whiskey and oil of anise—never mind that; +pour, fill, empty, fill again! Don’t take too much—and +make sure not to take too little! How merrily all +went on! How gay was Zoséphine!</p> + +<p>“Does she know that Bonaventure, too, has come +back?” the young maidens whisper, one to another; +for the news was afloat.</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, of course; some one had to let it slip. +But if it makes any difference, she is only brighter +and prettier than before. I tell you—it seems strange, +but I believe, now, she never cared for anybody but +’Thanase. When she heard Bonaventure had come +back, she only let one little flash out of her eyes at the +fool who told her, then said it was the best news that +could be, and has been as serene as the picture of a +saint ever since.”</p> + +<p>The serenity of the bride might have been less perfect, +and the one flash of her eyes might have been +two, had she known what the curé was that minute +saying to the returned wanderer, with the youth’s head +pressed upon his bosom, in the seclusion of his own +chamber:</p> + +<p>“It is all for the best, Bonaventure. It is not +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> +possible that thou shouldst see it so now, but thou shalt +hereafter. It is best this way.” And the tears rolled +silently down his cheek as the weary head in his +bosom murmured back:</p> + +<p>“It is best. It is best.”</p> + +<p>The curé could only press him closer then. It was +much more than a year afterward when he for the first +time ventured to add:</p> + +<p>“I never wanted you to get her, my dear boy; she +is not your kind at all—nay, now, let me say it, since +I have kept it unsaid so long and patiently. Do you +imagine she could ever understand an unselfish life, +or even one that tried to be unselfish? She makes +an excellent Madame ’Thanase. ’Thanase is a good, +vigorous, faithful, gentle animal, that knows how to +graze and lie in the shade and get up and graze again. +But you—it is not in you to know how poor a Madame +Bonaventure she would have been; not now merely, +but poorer and poorer as the years go by.</p> + +<p>“And so I say, do not go away. I know why you +want to go; you want to run away from a haunting +thought that some unlikely accident or other may leave +Madame ’Thanase a widow, and you step into his big +shoes. They would not fit. Do not go. That thing +is not going to happen; and the way to get rid of the +troublesome notion is to stay and see yourself outgrow +it—and her.”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure shook his head mournfully, but staid. +From time to time Madame ’Thanase passed before +his view in pursuit of her outdoor and indoor cares. +But even when he came under her galérie roof he could +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> +see that she never doubted she had made the very best +choice in all Carancro.</p> + +<p>And yet people knew—she knew—that Bonaventure +not only enjoyed the acquaintance, but sometimes +actually went from one place to another on the business, +of the great ex-governor. Small matters they may +have been, but, anyhow, just think!</p> + +<p>Sometimes as he so went or came he saw her squatting +on a board at the edge of a <i>coolée</i>, her petticoat +wrapped snugly around her limbs, and a limp sunbonnet +hiding her nut-brown face, pounding her washing +with a wooden paddle. She was her own housekeeper, +chambermaid, cook, washerwoman, gooseherd, seamstress, +nurse, and all the rest. Her floors, they said, +were always <i>bien fourbis</i> (well scrubbed); her beds +were high, soft, snug, and covered with the white mesh +of her own crochet-needle.</p> + +<p>He saw her the oftener because she worked much out +on her low veranda. From that place she had a broad +outlook upon the world, with ’Thanase in the foreground, +at his toil, sometimes at his sport. His cares +as a herder, <i>vacheur</i>,—<i>vaché</i>, he called it,—were +wherever his slender-horned herds might roam or his +stallions lead their mares in search of the sweetest +herbage; and when rains filled the <i>maraises</i>, and the +cold nor’westers blew from Texas and the sod was +spongy with much water, and he went out for feathered +game, the numberless mallards, black ducks, gray +ducks, teal—with sometimes the canvas-back—and +the <i>poules-d’eau</i>—the water-hens and the rails, and the +<i>cache-cache</i>—the snipe—were as likely to settle or +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> +rise just before his own house as elsewhere, and the +most devastating shot that hurtled through those +feathered multitudes was that sent by her husband—hers—her +own—possessive case—belonging to her. +She was proud of her property.</p> + +<p>Sometimes <i>la vieille</i>—for she was <i>la vieille</i> from +the very day that she counted her wedding presents, +mostly chickens, and turned them loose in the dooryard—sometimes +she enjoyed the fine excitement of seeing +her <i>vieux</i> catching and branding his yearling colts. +Small but not uncomely they were: tougher, stronger, +better when broken, than the mustang, though, like +the mustang, begotten and foaled on the open prairie. +Often she saw him catch two for the plough in the +morning, turn them loose at noon to find their own +food and drink, and catch and work another pair +through the afternoon. So what did not give her +pride gave her quiet comfort. Sometimes she looked +forth with an anxious eye, when a colt was to be +broken for the saddle; for as its legs were untied, and +it sprang to its feet with ’Thanase in the saddle, and +the blindfold was removed from its eyes, the strain on +the young wife’s nerves was as much as was good, to +see the creature’s tremendous leaps in air and not +tremble for its superb, unmovable rider.</p> + +<p>Could scholarship be finer than—or as fine as—such +horsemanship? And yet, somehow, as time ran on, +Zoséphine, like all the rest of Carancro, began to look +up with a certain deference, half-conscious, half-unconscious, +to the needy young man who was nobody’s +love or lover, and yet, in a gentle, unimpassioned +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> +way, everybody’s; landless, penniless, artless Bonaventure, +who honestly thought there was no girl in +Carancro who was not much too good for him, and of +whom there was not one who did not think him much +too good for her. He was quite outside of all their +gossip. How could they know that with all his learning—for +he could read and write in two languages +and took the Vermilionville newspaper—and with all +his books, almost an entire mantel-shelf full—he was +feeling heart-hunger the same as any ordinary lad or +lass unmated? Zoséphine found her eyes, so to speak, +lifting, lifting, more and more as from time to time she +looked upon the inoffensive Bonaventure. But so her +satisfaction in her own husband was all the more emphatic. +If she had ever caught a real impulse toward +any thing that even Carancro would have called culture, +she had cast it aside now—as to herself; her children—oh! +yes; but that would be by and by.</p> + +<p>Even of pastimes and sports she saw almost none. +For ’Thanase there was, first of all, his fiddle; then +<i>la chasse</i>, the chase; the <i>papegaie</i>, or, as he called it, +<i>pad-go</i>—the shooting-match; <i>la galloche</i>, pitch-farthing; +the cock-fight; the five-arpent pony-race; and +too often, also, <i>chin-chin</i>, twenty-five-cent poker, and +the gossip and glass of the roadside “store.” But for +Madame ’Thanase there was only a seat against the +wall at the Saturday-night dance, and mass <i>à la chapelle</i> +once in two or three weeks; these, and infant +baptisms. These showed how fast time and life were +hurrying along. The wedding seemed but yesterday, +and yet here was little Sosthène, and tiny Marguerite, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> +and cooing Zoséphine the younger—how fast history +repeats itself!</p> + +<p>But one day, one Sunday, it repeated itself in a +different way. ’Thanase was in gay humor that morning. +He kissed his wife, tossed his children, played +on his fiddle that tune they all liked best, and, while +Zoséphine looked after him with young zest in her eye, +sprang into the saddle and galloped across the prairie +<i>à la chapelle</i> to pass a jolly forenoon at <i>chin-chin</i> in the +village grocery.</p> + +<p>Since the war almost every one went armed—not +for attack, of course; for defence. ’Thanase was an +exception.</p> + +<p>“My fists,” he said, in the good old drawling +Acadian dialect and with his accustomed smile,—“my +fists will take care of me.”</p> + +<p>One of the party that made up the game with +’Thanase was the fellow whom you may remember as +having brought that first news of ’Thanase from camp +to Carancro, and whom Zoséphine had discredited. +The young husband had never liked him since.</p> + +<p>But, as I say, ’Thanase was in high spirits. His +jests came thick and fast, and some were hard and +personal, and some were barbed with truth, and one, +at length, ended in the word “deserter.” The victim +grew instantly fierce and red, leaped up crying “Liar,” +and was knocked backward to the ground by the long-reaching +fist of ’Thanase. He rose again and dashed +at his assailant. The rest of the company hastily +made way to right and left, chairs were overturned, +over went the table, the cards were underfoot. Men +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +ran in from outside and from over the way. The two +foes clash together, ’Thanase smites again with his +fist, and the other grapples. They tug and strain—</p> + +<p>“Separate them!” cry two or three of the packed +crowd in suppressed earnestness. “Separate them! +Bonaventure is coming! And here from the other side +the curé too! Oh, get them apart!” But the half-hearted +interference is shaken off. ’Thanase sees +Bonaventure and the curé enter; mortification smites +him; a smothered cry of rage bursts from his lips; he +tries to hurl his antagonist from him; and just as the +two friends reach out to lay hands upon the wrestling +mass, it goes with a great thud to the ground. The +crowd recoils and springs back again; then a cry of +amazement and horror from all around, the arm of the +under man lifted out over the back of the other, a +downward flash of steel—another—and another! the +long, subsiding wail of a strong man’s sudden despair, +the voice of one crying,—</p> + +<p>“Zoséphine! Ah! Zoséphine! <i>ma vieille! ma +vieille!</i>”—one long moan and sigh, and the finest +horseman, the sweetest musician, the bravest soldier, +yes, and the best husband, in all Carancro, was dead.</p> + +<p>Poor old Sosthène and his wife! How hard they +tried, for days, for weeks, to comfort their widowed +child! But in vain. Day and night she put them +away in fierce grief and silence, or if she spoke wailed +always the one implacable answer,—</p> + +<p>“I want my husband!” And to the curé the same +words,—</p> + +<p>“Go tell God I want my husband!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> +But when at last came one who, having come to +speak, could only hold her hand in his and silently +weep with her, she clung to his with both her own, and +looking up into his young, thin face, cried,—not with +grace of words, and yet with some grace in all her +words’ Acadian ruggedness,—</p> + +<p>“Bonaventure! Ah! Bonaventure! thou who +knowest the way—teach me, my brother, how to be +patient.”</p> + +<p>And so—though the ex-governor had just offered +him a mission in another part of the Acadians’ land, +a mission, as he thought, far beyond his deserving, +though, in fact, so humble that to tell you what it was +would force your smile—he staid.</p> + +<p>A year went by, and then another. Zoséphine no +longer lifted to heaven a mutinous and aggrieved +countenance. Bonaventure was often nigh, and his +words were a deep comfort. Yet often, too, her spirit +flashed impatience through her eyes when in the childish +philosophizing of which he was so fond he put forward—though +ever so impersonally and counting himself +least of all to have attained—the precepts of self-conquest +and abnegation. And then as the flash passed +away, with a moisture of the eye repudiated by the +pride of the lip, she would slowly shake her head and +say:</p> + +<p>“It is of no use; I can’t do it! I may be too +young—I may be too bad, but—I can’t learn it!”</p> + +<p>At last, one September evening, Bonaventure stood +at the edge of Sosthène’s galérie, whither Zoséphine +had followed out, leaving <i>le vieux</i> and <i>la vieille</i> in the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> +house. On the morrow Bonaventure was to leave +Carancro. And now he said,—</p> + +<p>“Zoséphine, I must go.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, Bonaventure!” she replied, “my children—what +will my children do? It is not only that you +have taught them to spell and read, though God will +be good to you for that! But these two years you +have been every thing to them—every thing. They +will be orphaned over again, Bonaventure.” Tears +shone in her eyes, and she turned away her face with +her dropped hands clasped together.</p> + +<p>The young man laid his hand upon her drooping +brow. She turned again and lifted her eyes to his. +His lips moved silently, but she read upon them the +unheard utterance: it was a word of blessing and farewell. +Slowly and tenderly she drew down his hand, +laid a kiss upon it, and said,—</p> + +<p>“<i>Adjieu—adjieu</i>,” and they parted.</p> + +<p>As Zoséphine, with erect form and firm, clear tread, +went by her parents and into the inner room where her +children lay in their trundle-bed, the old mother said +to <i>le vieux</i>,—</p> + +<p>“You can go ahead and repair the schoolhouse now. +Our daughter will want to begin, even to-morrow, to +teach the children of the village—<i>les zonfants à la +chapelle</i>.”</p> + +<p>“You think so?” said Sosthène, but not as if he +doubted.</p> + +<p>“Yes; it is certain now that Zoséphine will always +remain the Widow ’Thanase.”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PART_II_CHAP_I" id="PART_II_CHAP_I"></a>GRANDE POINTE.</h2> + + + +<h3 style="padding-top: 3em;">CHAPTER I.</h3> + +<h3>A STRANGER.</h3> + + +<p>From College Point to Bell’s Point, sixty miles +above New Orleans, the Mississippi runs nearly from +west to east. Both banks, or “coasts,” are lined with +large and famous sugar-plantations. Midway on the +northern side, lie the beautiful estates of “Belmont” +and “Belle Alliance.” Early one morning in the +middle of October, 1878, a young man, whose age you +would have guessed fifteen years too much, stood in +scrupulously clean, ill-fitting, flimsy garments, on the +strong, high levee overlooking these two plantations. +He was asking the way to a place called Grande Pointe. +Grand Point, he called it, and so may we: many +names in Louisiana that retain the French spelling are +habitually given an English pronunciation.</p> + +<p>A tattered negro mounted on a sunburnt, unshod, +bare-backed mule, down in the dusty gray road on the +land-side of the embankment, was his only hearer. +Fifteen years earlier these two men, with French accents, +strangers to each other, would hardly have conversed +in English; but the date made the difference. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> +We need not inexorably render the dialect of the white +man; pretty enough to hear, it would often be hideous +to print. The letter <em>r</em>, for instance, that plague of all +nations—before consonants it disappeared; before +vowels the tongue failed of that upward curve that +makes the good strong <em>r</em>’s of Italy and Great Britain.</p> + +<p>The negro pointed over his mule’s ears.</p> + +<p>“You see Belle Alliance sugah-house yondeh? +Well, behine dah you fine one road go stret thoo the +plantation till de wood. Dass ’bout mile, you know. +Den she keep stret on thoo de wood ’bout two mile’ +mo’, an’ dat fetch you at Gran’ Point’. Hole on; +I show you.”</p> + +<p>The two men started down the road, the negro on +his mule, the stranger along the levee’s crown.</p> + +<p>“Dat Gran’ Point’,” resumed the black; “’tain’t +no point on de riveh, you know, like dat Bell’ Point, +w’at you see yondeh ’twixt dem ah batture willows +whah de sun all spread out on the wateh; no, seh. +’Tis jis lil place back in de <em>swamp</em>, raise’ ’bout five, +six feet ’bove de wateh. Yes, seh; ’bout t’ree mile’ +long, ’alf mile wide. Don’t nobody but Cajun’<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> live +back dah. Seem droll you goin’ yondeh.”</p> + +<p>“’Tis the reason I go,” said the other, without +looking up.</p> + +<p>“Yes, seh.”—A short silence.—“Dass nigh fifty +year’, now, dat place done been settle’. Ole ’Mian +Roussel he was gret hunter. He know dat place. He +see ’tis rich groun’. One day he come dare, cut some +tree’, buil’ house, plant lil tobahcah. Nex’ year come +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> +ole man Le Blanc; den Poché, den St. Pierre, den +Martin,—all Cajun’. Oh! dass mo’n fifty year’ ’go. +Dey all comes from dis yeh riveh coast; ’caze de rich +Creole’, dey buy ’em out. Yes, seh, dat use’ be de +<i>Côte Acadien’</i>, right yeh whar yo’ feet stan’in’ on. +<i>C’est la côte Acadien’, just ici, oui.</i>” The trudging +stranger waived away the right of translation. He had +some reason for preferring English. But his manner +was very gentle, and in a moment the negro began +again.</p> + +<p>“Gret place, dat Gran’ Point’. Yes, seh; fo’ +tobahcah. Dey make de bes’ Périque tobahcah in de +worl’. Yes, seh, right yond’ at Gran’ Point’; an’ +de bes’ Périque w’at come from Gran’ Point’, dass de +Périque of Octave Roussel, w’at dey use call ’im Chat-oué;<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +but he git tired dat name, and now he got lil +boy ’bout twenny-five year’ ole, an’ dey call de ole +man Catou, an’ call his lil <em>boy</em> Chat-oué. Dey fine dat +wuck mo’ betteh. Yes, seh. An’ he got bruddeh +name’ ’Mian Roussel. But dat not de ole, ole ’Mian—like +dey say de ole he one. ’Caze, you know, he +done peg out. Oh, yes, he peg out in de du’in’ +o’ de waugh.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> But he lef’ heap-sight chillen; you +know, he got a year’ staht o’ all de res’, you know. +Yes, seh. Dey got ’bout hund’ed fifty peop’ yond’ +by Gran’ Point’, and sim like dey mos’ all name +Roussel. <em>Sim</em> dat way to <em>me</em>. An’ ev’y las’ one +got a lil fahm so lil you can’t plow her; got dig her +up wid a spade. Yes, seh, same like you diggin’ +grave; yes, seh.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> +The gentle stranger interrupted, still without lifting +his eyes from the path. “’Tis better narrowness of +land than of virtue.” The negro responded eagerly:</p> + +<p>“Oh, dey good sawt o’ peop’, yes. Dey deals fair +an’ dey deals square. Dey keeps de peace. Dass +’caze dey mos’ly don’t let whisky git on deir blin’ side, +you know. Dey <em>does</em> love to dance, and dey marries +mawnstus young; but dey not like some niggehs: dey +stays married. An’ modess? Dey dess so modess +dey shy! Yes, seh, dey de shyes’, easy-goin’es’, +modesses’, most p’esumin’ peop’ in de whole worl’! +I don’t see fo’ why folks talk ’gin dem Cajun’; on’y +dey a lil bit slow.”</p> + +<p>The traveller on the levee’s top suddenly stood still, +a soft glow on his cheek, a distension in his blue eyes. +“My friend, what was it, the first American industry? +Was it not the Newfoundland fisheries? Who inaugu’ate +them, if not the fishermen of Normandy and +Bretagne? And since how long? Nearly fo’ hundred +years!”</p> + +<p>“Dass so, boss,” exclaimed the negro with the +promptitude of an eye-witness; but the stranger continued:—</p> + +<p>“The ancestors of the Acadian’—they are the +fathers of the codfish!” He resumed his walk.</p> + +<p>“Dass so, seh; dass true. Yes, seh, you’ talkin’ +mighty true; dey a pow’ful ancestrified peop’, dem +Cajun’; dass w’at make dey so shy, you know. An’ +dey mighty good han’ in de sugah-house. Dey des +watchin’, now, w’en dat sugah-cane git ready fo’ biggin +to grind; so soon dey see dat, dey des come a-lopin’ +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> +in here to Mistoo Wallis’ sugah-house here at Belle +Alliance, an’ likewise to Marse Louis Le Bourgeois +yond’ at Belmont. You see! de fust t’ing dey gwine +ass you when you come at Gran’ Point’—‘Is Mistoo +Wallis biggin to grind?’ Well, seh, like I tell you, +yeh de sugah-house, an’ dah de road. Dat road fetch +you at Gran’ Point’.”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_II" id="PART_II_CHAP_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3> + +<h3>IN A STRANGE LAND.</h3> + + +<p>An hour later the stranger, quite alone, had left +behind him the broad smooth road, between rustling +walls of sugar-cane, that had brought him through +Belle Alliance plantation. The way before him was +little more than a bridle-path along the earth thrown +up beside a draining-ditch in a dense swamp. The +eye could run but a little way ere it was confused by +the tangle of vegetation. The trees of the all-surrounding +forest—sweet-gums, water-oaks, magnolias—cast +their shade obliquely along and across his way, and +wherever it fell the undried dew still sparkled on the +long grass.</p> + +<p>A pervading whisper seemed to say good-by to the +great human world. Scarce the note of an insect +joined with his footsteps in the coarse herbage to break +the stillness. He made no haste. Ferns were often +about his feet, and vines were both there and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> +everywhere. The soft blue tufts of the ageratum were on +each side continually. Here and there in wet places +clumps of Indian-shot spread their pale scroll leaves +and sent up their green and scarlet spikes. Of stature +greater than his own the golden-rod stood, crested with +yellow plumes, unswayed by the still air. Often he +had to push apart the brake-canes and press through +with bowed head. Nothing met him in the path. Now +and then there were faint signs underfoot as if wheels +might have crushed the ragged turf long weeks before. +Now and then the print of a hoof was seen in the +black soil, but a spider had made it her home and +spread across it her silken snares. If he halted and +hearkened, he heard far away the hawk screaming to +his mate, and maybe, looking up, caught a glimpse of +him sailing in the upper air with the sunlight glowing +in his pinions; or in some bush near by heard the soft +rustle of the wren, or the ruffling whiff and nervous +“chip” of the cardinal, or saw for an instant the flirt +of his crimson robes as he rattled the stiff, jagged fans +of the palmetto.</p> + +<p>At length the path grew easier and lighter, the woods +on the right gave place to a field half claimed for +cotton and half given up to persimmon saplings, blackberry-bushes, +and rampant weeds. A furry pony with +mane and tail so loaded with cockleburs that he could +not shake them, lifted his head and stared. A moment +afterward the view opened to right and left, and the +path struck a grassy road at right angles and ended. +Just there stood an aged sow.</p> + +<p>“Unclean one,” said the grave wayfarer, “where +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> +dwells your master?—Ignore you the English tongue? +But I shall speak not in another; ’tis that same that I +am arriving to bring you.”</p> + +<p>The brute, with her small bestial eye fixed on him +distrustfully and askance, moved enough to the right +to let him pass on the other hand, and with his coat on +his arm—so strong was the October sun—he turned +into the road westward, followed one or two of its +slight curves, and presently saw neat fields on either +hand, walled in on each farther side by the moss-hung +swamp; and now a small, gray, unpainted house, then +two or three more, the roofs of others peering out over +the dense verdure, and down at the end of the vista a +small white spire and cross. Then, at another angle, +two men seated on the roadside. Their diffident gaze +bore that look of wild innocence that belongs to those +who see more of dumb nature than of men. Their +dress was homespun. The older was about fifty years +old, the other much younger.</p> + +<p>“Sirs, have I already reach Gran’ Point’?”</p> + +<p>The older replied in an affirmative that could but +just be heard, laid back a long lock of his straight +brown hair after the manner of a short-haired girl, and +rose to his feet.</p> + +<p>“I hunt,” said the traveller slowly, “Mr. Maximian +Roussel.”</p> + +<p>A silent bow.</p> + +<p>“’Tis you?”</p> + +<p>The same motion again.</p> + +<p>The traveller produced a slip of paper folded once +and containing a line or two of writing hastily pencilled +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> +that morning at Belle Alliance. Maximian received it +timidly and held it helplessly before his downcast eyes +with the lines turned perpendicularly, while the pause +grew stifling, and until the traveller said:—</p> + +<p>“’Tis Mr. Wallis make that introduction.”</p> + +<p>At the name of the owner of the beautiful plantation +the man who had not yet spoken rose, covered +with whittlings. It was like a steer getting up out of +the straw. He spoke.</p> + +<p>“M’sieu’ Walleece, <i>a commencé à mouliner</i>? Is big-in +to gryne?”</p> + +<p>“He shall commence in the centre of the next +week.”</p> + +<p>Maximian’s eyes rose slowly from the undeciphered +paper. The traveller’s met them. He pointed to the +missive.</p> + +<p>“The schoolmaster therein alluded—’tis me.”</p> + +<p>“Oh!” cried the villager joyously, “<i>maître d’école!</i>—schooltitcher!”</p> + +<p>“But,” said the stranger, “not worthy the title.” +He accepted gratefully the hand of one and then of +the other.</p> + +<p>“Walk een!” said Maximian, “all hand’, walk +een house.” They went, Indian file, across the road, +down a sinuous footpath, over a stile, and up to his +little single-story unpainted house, and tramped in +upon the railed galérie.</p> + +<p>“<i>Et</i> M’sieu’ Le Bourgeois,” said the host, as the +schoolmaster accepted a split-bottomed chair, “he’s +big-in to gryne?”</p> + +<p>Within this ground-floor veranda—chief appointment +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> +of all Acadian homes—the traveller accepted a +drink of water in a blue tumbler, brought by the meek +wife. The galérie just now was scattered with the +husband’s appliances for making Périque tobacco into +“carats”—the carat-press. Its small, iron-ratcheted, +wooden windlass extended along the top rail of the +balustrade across one of the galérie’s ends. Lines of +half-inch grass rope, for wrapping the carats into +diminished bulk and solid shape, lay along under foot. +Beside one of the doors, in deep hickory baskets, were +the parcels of cured tobacco swaddled in cotton cloths +and ready for the torture of ropes and windlass. From +the joists overhead hung the pods of tobacco-seed for +next year’s planting.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_III" id="PART_II_CHAP_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3> + +<h3>THE HANDSHAKING.</h3> + + +<p>There was news in Grande Pointe. The fair noon +sky above, with its peaceful flocks of clouds; the +solemn, wet forest round about; the harvested fields; +the dishevelled, fragrant fallows; the reclining, ruminating +cattle; the little chapel of St. Vincent de Paul +in the midst, open for mass once a fortnight, for a +sermon in French four times a year,—these were not +more tranquil in the face of the fact that a schoolmaster +had come to Grande Pointe to <em>stay</em> than outwardly +appeared the peaceful-minded villagers. Yet as the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> +tidings floated among the people, touching and drifting +on like thistle-down, they were stirred within, and came +by ones, by twos, slow-stepping, diffidently smiling, to +shake hands with the young great man. They wiped +their own before offering them—the men on their +strong thighs, the women on their aprons. Children +came, whose courage would carry them no nearer than +the galérie’s end or front edge, where they lurked and +hovered, or gazed through the balustrade, or leaned +against a galérie post and rubbed one brown bare foot +upon another and crowded each other’s shoulders without +assignable cause, or lopped down upon the grass +and gazed from a distance.</p> + +<p>Little conversation was offered. The curiosity was +as unobtrusive as the diffidence was without fear; and +when a villager’s soft, low speech was heard, it was +generally in answer to inquiries necessary for one to +make who was about to assume the high office of educator. +Moreover, the schoolmaster revealed, with all +gentleness, his preference for the English tongue, and +to this many could only give ear. Only two or three +times did the conversation rise to a pitch that kindled +even the ready ardor of the young man of letters. +Once, after a prolonged silence, the host, having gazed +long upon his guest, said, without preface:—</p> + +<p>“Tough jawb you got,” and waved a hand toward +the hovering children.</p> + +<p>“Sir,” replied the young scholar, “is it not the +better to do whilse it is the mo’ tough? The mo’ +toughness, the mo’ honor.” He rose suddenly, +brushed back the dry, brown locks of his fine hair, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> +extending both hands, with his limp straw hat dangling +in one, said: “Sir, I will ask you; is not the +schoolmaster the true patriot? Shall his honor be less +than that of the soldier? Yet I ask not honor; for +me, I am not fit; yet, after my poor capacities”—He +resumed his seat.</p> + +<p>An awesome quiet followed. Then some one spoke +to him, too low to be heard. He bent forward to hear +the words repeated, and ’Mian said for the timorous +speaker:—</p> + +<p>“Aw, dass nut’n; he jis only say, ‘Is M’sieu’ +Walleece big-in to gryne?’”</p> + +<p>Few tarried long, though one man—he whom the +schoolmaster had found sitting on the roadside with +Maximian—staid all day; and even among the villagers +themselves there was almost no loquacity. +Maximian, it is true, as the afternoon wore along, +and it seemed plain that the reception was a great and +spontaneous success, spoke with growing frequency +and heartiness; and, when the guest sat down alone +at a table within, where <i>la vieille</i>—the wife—was +placing half-a-dozen still sputtering fried eggs, a great +wheaten loaf, a yellow gallon bowl of boiled milk, a +pewter ladle, a bowie-knife, the blue tumbler, and +a towel; and out on the galérie the callers were still +coming: his simple neighbors pardoned the elation +that led him to take a chair himself a little way off, +sit on it sidewise, cross his legs gayly, and with a +smile and wave of his good brown hand say:—</p> + +<p>“<i>Servez-vous!</i> He’p you’se’f! Eat much you like; +till you swell up!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> +Even he asked no questions. Only near the end of +the day, when the barefoot children by gradual ventures +had at length gathered close about and were softly +pushing for place on his knees, and huddling under his +arms, and he was talking French,—the only language +most of them knew,—he answered the first personal +inquiry put to him since arriving. “His name,” he +replied to the tiny, dark, big-eyed boy who spoke for +his whispering fellows, “his name was Bonaventure—Bonaventure +Deschamps.”</p> + +<p>As the great October sun began to dip his crimson +wheel behind the low black line of swamp, and the +chapel cross stood out against a band of yellow light +that spanned the west, he walked out to see the village, +a little girl on either hand and little boys round +about. The children talked apace. Only the girl +whose hand he held in his right was mute. She was +taller than the rest; yet it was she to whom the little +big-eyed boy pointed when he said, vain of his ability +to tell it in English:—</p> + +<p>“I don’t got but eight year’ old, me. I’m gran’ +for my age; but she, she not gran’ for her age—Sidonie; +no; she not gran’ at all for <em>her</em> age.”</p> + +<p>They told the story of the chapel: how some years +before, in the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at the +parish seat a few miles away on the Mississippi, a nun +had by the Pope’s leave cast off the veil; how she +had come to Grande Pointe and taken charge of her +widowed brother’s children; and how he had died, and +she had found means, the children knew not how, to +build this chapel. And now she was buried under it, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> +they said. It seemed, from what they left unsaid +as well as what they said, that the simple influence of +her presence had kindled a desire for education in +Grande Pointe not known before.</p> + +<p>“Dass my <i>tante</i>—my hant. She <em>was</em> my hant +befo’ she die’,” said the little man of eight years, hopping +along the turf in front of the rest. He dropped +into a walk that looked rapid, facing round and moving +backward. “She learn me English, my <i>tante</i>. +And she try to learn Sidonie; but Sidonie, Sidonie +fine that too strong to learn, that English, Sidonie.” +He hopped again, talking as he hopped, and holding +the lifted foot in his hand. He could do that and +speak English at the same time, so talented was +Toutou.</p> + +<p>Thus the sun went down. And at Maximian’s stile +again Bonaventure Deschamps took the children’s +cheeks into his slender fingers and kissed them, one by +one, beginning at the least, and so up, slowly, toward +Sidonie Le Blanc. With very earnest tenderness it +was done, some grave word of inspiration going before +each caress; but when at last he said, “To-morrow, +dear chil’run, the school-bell shall ring in Gran’ +Point’!” and turned to finish with Sidonie—she was +gone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_IV" id="PART_II_CHAP_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h3> + +<h3>HOW THE CHILDREN RANG THE BELL.</h3> + + +<p>Where the fields go wild and grow into brakes, and +the soil becomes fenny, on the north-western edge of +Grande Pointe, a dark, slender thread of a bayou +moves loiteringly north-eastward into a swamp of huge +cypresses. In there it presently meets another like +itself, the Bayou Tchackchou, slipping around from +the little farm village’s eastern end as silently as a +little mother comes out of a bower where she has just +put her babe to sleep. A little farther on they are +joined as noiselessly by Blind River, and the united +waters slip on northward through the dim, colonnaded, +watery-floored, green-roofed, blue-vapored, moss-draped +wilderness, till in the adjoining parish of Ascension +they curve around to the east and issue into +the sunny breadth of Lake Maurepas. Thus they +make the Bayou des Acadiens. From Lake Maurepas +one can go up Amite or Tickfaw River, or to Pass +Manchac or Pontchatoula, anywhere in the world, in +fact,—where a canoe can go.</p> + +<p>On a bank of this bayou, no great way from Grande +Pointe, but with the shadow of the swamp at its back +and a small, bright prairie of rushes and giant reeds +stretching away from the opposite shore, stood, more +in the water than on the land, the palmetto-thatched +fishing and hunting lodge and only home of a man who +on the other side of the Atlantic you would have +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> +known for a peasant of Normandy, albeit he was born +in this swamp,—the man who had tarried all day at +the schoolmaster’s handshaking.</p> + +<p>What a day that had been! Once before he had +witnessed a positive event. That was when, one day, +he journeyed purposely to the levee of Belle Alliance, +waited from morning till evening, and at last saw the +steamer “Robert E. Lee” come by, and, as fortune +would have it, land! loaded with cotton from the water +to the hurricane deck. He had gone home resolved +from that moment to save his money, and be something +more than he was.</p> + +<p>But that event had flashed before his eyes, and in +a quarter-hour was gone, save in his memory. The +coming of the schoolmaster, all unforeseen, had lasted +a day, and he had seen it from beginning to end. All +day long on ’Mian’s galérie, standing now here, now +there, he had got others to interpret for him, where +he could not guess, the meanings of the wise and +noble utterances that fell every now and then from +the lips of the young soldier of learning, and stored +them away in his now greedy mind.</p> + +<p>One saying in particular, whose originality he did +not dream of questioning, took profound hold of his +conviction and admiration; and two or three times that +evening, as his canoe glided homeward in the twilight, +its one long, smooth ripple gleaming on this side and +that as it widened away toward the bayou’s dark +banks, he rested for a moment on his tireless paddle, +and softly broke the silence of the wilderness with its +three simple words, so trite to our ears, so strange to +his:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +“Knowledge is power.”</p> + +<p>In years he was but thirty-five; but he was a +widower, and the one son who was his only child and +companion would presently be fourteen.</p> + +<p>“Claude,” he said, as they rose that evening from +their hard supper in the light and fumes of their small +kerosene-lamp, “<i>I’ faut z-ahler coucher.</i>” (We must +go to bed.)</p> + +<p>“<i>Quofoir?</i>” asked the sturdy lad. (<i>Pourquoi?</i> +Why?)</p> + +<p>“Because,” replied the father in the same strange +French in which he had begun, “at daybreak to-morrow, +and every day thereafter, you must be in your +dug-out on your way to Grande Pointe, to school. +My son, you are going to learn how to read!”</p> + +<p>So came it that, until their alphabetical re-arrangement, +the first of all the thirty-five names on the roll +was Claude St. Pierre, and that every evening thenceforward +when that small kerosene-lamp glimmered in +the deep darkness of Bayou des Acadiens, the abecedarian +Claude was a teacher.</p> + +<p>But even before the first rough roll was made he was +present, under the little chapel-tower, when for the +first time its bell rang for school. The young master +was there, and all the children; so that really there +was nothing to ring the bell for. They could, all together, +have walked quietly across the village green to +the forlorn tobacco-shed that ’Mian had given them +for a schoolhouse, and begun the session. Ah! say +not so! It was good to ring the bell. A few of +the stronger lads would even have sent the glad clang +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> +abroad before the time, but Bonaventure restrained +them. For one thing, there must be room for every +one to bear a hand. So he tied above their best reach +three strands of “carat” cord to the main rope. Even +then he was not ready.</p> + +<p>“No, dear chil’run; but grasp hold, every one, the +ropes, the cawds,—the shawt chil’run reaching up +shawtly, the long chil’run the more longly.”</p> + +<p>Few understood his words, but they quietly caught +the idea, and yielded themselves eagerly to his arranging +hand. The highest grasp was Claude’s. There +was a little empty space under it, and then one only +of Sidonie’s hands, timid, smooth, and brown. And +still the master held back the word.</p> + +<p>“Not yet! not yet! The pear is not ripe!” He +stood apart from them, near the chapel-door, where +the light was strong, his silver watch open in his left +hand, his form erect, his right hand lifted to the brim +of his hat, his eyes upon the dial.</p> + +<p>“Not yet, dear chil’run. Not yet. Two minute +mo’.—Be ready.—Not yet!—One minute mo’!—Have +the patience. Hold every one in his aw her place. +Be ready! Have the patience.” But at length when +the little ones were frowning and softly sighing with the +pain of upheld arms, their waiting eyes saw his dilate. +“Be ready!” he said, with low intensity: “Be ready!” +He soared to his tiptoes, the hat flounced from his head +and smote his thigh, his eyes turned upon them blazing, +and he cried, “Ring, chil’run, ring!”</p> + +<p>The elfin crew leaped up the ropes and came crouching +down. The bell pealed; the master’s hat swung +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> +round his head. His wide eyes were wet, and he cried +again, “Ring! ring! for God, light, libbutty, education!” +He sprang toward the leaping, sinking mass; +but the right feeling kept his own hands off. And up +and down the children went, the bell answering from +above, peal upon peal; when just as they had caught +the rhythm of Claude’s sturdy pull, and the bell could +sound no louder, the small cords gave way from their +fastenings, the little ones rolled upon their backs, the +bell gave one ecstatic double clang and turned clear +over, the swift rope straightened upward from its coil, +and Claude and Sidonie, her hands clasped upon each +other about the rope and his hands upon hers, shot up +three times as high as their finest leap could have +carried them. For an instant they hung; then with +another peal the bell turned back and they came blushing +to the floor. A swarm of hands darted to the +rope, but Bonaventure’s was on it first.</p> + +<p>“’Tis sufficient!” he said, his face all triumph. +The bell gave a lingering clang or two and ceased, and +presently the happy company walked across the green. +“Sufficient,” the master had said; but it was more +than sufficient. In that moment of suspension, with +Sidonie’s great brown frightened eyes in his, and their +four hands clasped together, Claude had learned, for +his first lesson, that knowledge is not the only or the +greatest power.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_V" id="PART_II_CHAP_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h3> + +<h3>INVITED TO LEAVE.</h3> + + +<p>After that, every school-day morning Claude rang +the bell. Always full early his pirogue came gliding +out of the woods and up through the bushy fen to the +head of canoe navigation and was hauled ashore. +Bonaventure had fixed his home near the chapel and +not far from Claude’s landing-place. Thus the lad +could easily come to his door each morning at the +right moment—reading it by hunter’s signs in nature’s +book—to get the word to ring. There were none of +the usual reasons that the schoolmaster should live +close to the schoolhouse. There was no demand for +its key.</p> + +<p>Not of that schoolhouse! A hundred feet length +by twenty-five breadth, of earth-floored, clapboard-roofed, +tumbling shed, rudely walled with cypress split +boards,—<i>pieux</i>,—planted endwise in the earth, like +palisades, a hand-breadth space between every two, +and sunlight and fresh air and the gleams of green +fields coming in; the scores of little tobacco-presses +that had stood in ranks on the hard earth floor, the +great sapling levers, and the festoons of curing tobacco +that had hung from the joists overhead, all removed, +only the odor left; bold gaps here and there in the +<i>pieux</i>, made by that mild influence which the restless +call decay, and serving for windows and doors; the +eastern end swept clean and occupied by a few benches +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> +and five or six desks, strong, home-made, sixty-four +pounders.</p> + +<p>Life had broadened with Claude in two directions. +On one side opened, fair and noble, the acquaintanceship +of Bonaventure Deschamps, a man who had seen +the outside world, a man of books, of learning, a man +who could have taught even geography, had there been +any one to learn it; and on the other side, like a garden +of roses and spices, the schoolmateship of Sidonie Le +Blanc. To you and me she would have seemed the +merest little brown sprout of a thing, almost nothing +but two big eyes—like a little owl. To Claude it +seemed as though nothing older or larger could be so +exactly in the prime of beauty; the path to learning +was the widest, floweriest, fragrantest path he had ever +trod.</p> + +<p>Sidonie did not often speak with him. At recess +she usually staid at her desk, studying, quite alone but +for Bonaventure silently busy at his, and Claude himself, +sitting farther away, whenever the teacher did +not see him and drive him to the playground. If he +would only drive Sidonie out! But he never did.</p> + +<p>One day, after quite a contest of learning, and as +the hour of dismission was scattering the various +groups across the green, Toutou, the little brother who +was grand for his age, said to Claude, hanging timidly +near Sidonie:—</p> + +<p>“<i>Alle est plus</i> smart’ <i>que vous</i>.” (She is smarter +than you.)</p> + +<p>Whereupon Sidonie made haste to say in their Acadian +French, “Ah! Master Toutou, you forget we +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> +went to school to our dear aunt. And besides, I am +small and look young, but I am nearly a year older +than Claude.” She had wanted to be kind, but that +was the first thorn. Older than he!</p> + +<p>And not only that; nearly fifteen! Why, at fifteen—at +fifteen girls get married! The odds were heavy. +He wished he had thought of that at first. He was +sadly confused. Sometimes when Bonaventure spoke +words of enthusiasm and regard to him after urging +him fiercely up some hill of difficulty among the bristling +heights of English pronunciation, he yearned to +seek him alone and tell him this difficulty of the heart. +There was no fear that Bonaventure would laugh; he +seemed scarce to know how; and his smiles were all +of tenderness and zeal. Claude did not believe the +ten years between them would matter; had not Bonaventure +said to him but yesterday that to him all loveliness +was the lovelier for being very young? Yet +when the confession seemed almost on Claude’s lips +it was driven back by an alien mood in the master’s +face. There were troubles in Bonaventure’s heart +that Claude wot not of.</p> + +<p>One day who should drop in just as school was about +to begin but the priest from College Point! Such order +as he found! Bonaventure stood at his desk like a +general on a high hill, his large hand-bell in his grasp, +passed his eyes over the seventeen demure girls, with +their large, brown-black, liquid eyes, their delicately +pencilled brows, their dark, waveless hair, and sounded +one tap! The sport outside ceased, the gaps at the +shed’s farther end were darkened by small forms that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> +came darting like rabbits into their burrows, eighteen +small hats came off, and the eighteen boys came softly +forward and took their seats. Such discipline!</p> + +<p>“Sir,” said Bonaventure, “think you ’tis arising, +f’om the strickness of the teacher? ’Tis f’om the +goodness of the chil’run! How I long the State +Sup’inten’ent Public Education to see them!”</p> + +<p>The priest commended the sight and the wish with +smiling affirmations that somehow seemed to lack sympathy. +He asked the names of two or three pupils. +That little fellow with soft, tanned, chubby cheeks and +great black eyes, tiny mouth, smooth feet so shapely +and small, still wet to their ankles with dew, and arms +that he could but just get folded, was Toutou. That +lad with the strong shoulders, good wide brows, steady +eye, and general air of manliness,—that was Claude +St. Pierre. And this girl over on the left here,—“You +observe,” said Bonaventure, “I situate the +lambs on the left and the kids on the right,”—this +little, slender crescent of human moonlight, with her +hair in two heavy, black, down-falling plaits, meek, +drooping eyes, long lashes, soft childish cheeks and +full throat, was Sidonie Le Blanc. Bonaventure murmured:—</p> + +<p>“Best scholah in the school, yet the <em>only</em>—that +loves not her teacher. But I give always my interest, +not according to the interestingness, but rather to the +necessitude, of each.”</p> + +<p>The visit was not long. Standing, about to depart, +the visitor seemed still, as at the first, a man of many +reservations under his polite smiles. But just then he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> +dropped a phrase that the teacher recognized as an +indirect quotation, and Bonaventure cried, with greedy +eyes:—</p> + +<p>“You have read Victor Hugo?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, sir, that grea-a-at man! That father of libbutty! +Other patriots are the sons, but he the father! +Is it not thus?”</p> + +<p>The priest shrugged and made a mouth. The young +schoolmaster’s face dropped.</p> + +<p>“Sir, I must ask you—is he not the frien’ of the +poor and downtrod?”</p> + +<p>The visitor’s smile quite disappeared. He said:—</p> + +<p>“Oh!”—and waved a hand impatiently; “Victor +Hugo”—another mouth—“Victor Hugo”—replying +in French to the schoolmaster’s English—“is not +of my party.” And then he laughed unpleasantly +and said good-day.</p> + +<p>The State Superintendent did not come, but every +day—“It is perhaps he shall come to-mo’w, chil’run; +have yo’ lessons well!”</p> + +<p>The whole tiny army of long, blue, ankle-hiding cottonade +pantalettes and pantaloons tried to fulfil the +injunction. Not one but had a warm place in the +teacher’s heart. But Toutou, Claude, Sidonie, anybody +who glanced into that heart could see sitting there +enthroned. And some did that kind of reconnoitring. +Catou, ’Mian’s older brother, was much concerned. +He saw no harm in a little education, but took no satisfaction +in the introduction of English speech; and +speaking to ’Mian of that reminded him to say he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> +believed the schoolmaster himself was aware of the +three children’s pre-eminence in his heart. But ’Mian +only said:—</p> + +<p>“<i>Ah bien, c’est</i> all right, <i>alors</i>!” (Well, then, it’s +all right.) Whether all right or not, Bonaventure was +aware of it, and tried to hide it under special kindnesses +to others, and particularly to the dullard of the +school, grandson of Catou and nicknamed <i>Crébiche</i><a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>. +The child loved him; and when Claude rang the chapel +bell, and before its last tap had thrilled dreamily on +the morning air, when the urchins playing about the +schoolhouse espied another group coming slowly across +the common with Bonaventure in the midst of them, +his coat on his arm and the children’s hands in his, +there among them came Crébiche, now on one side, +now running round to the other, hoping so to get a +little nearer to the master.</p> + +<p>“None shall have such kindness to-day as thou,” +Bonaventure would silently resolve as he went in +through a gap in the <i>pieux</i>. And the children could +not see but he treated them all alike. They saw no +unjust inequality even when, Crébiche having three +times spelt “earth” with an <em>u</em>, the master paced to +and fro on the bare ground among the unmatched +desks and break-back benches, running his hands +through his hair and crying:—</p> + +<p>“Well! well aht thou name’ the crawfish; with such +rapiditive celeritude dost thou progress backwardly!”</p> + +<p>It must have been to this utterance that he alluded +when at the close of that day he walked, as he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> +supposed, with only birds and grasshoppers for companions, +and they grew still, and the turtle-doves +began to moan, and he smote his breast and cried:</p> + +<p>“Ah! rules, rules! how easy to make, likewise +break! Oh! the shame, the shame! <em>If</em> Victor Hugo +had seen that! And if George Washington! But +thou,”—some one else, not mentioned,—“thou +sawedst it!”</p> + +<p>The last word was still on the speaker’s lips, when—there +beside the path, with heavy eye and drunken +frown, stood the father of Crébiche, the son of Catou, +the little boy of twenty-five known as Chat-oué. He +spoke:</p> + +<p>“To who is dat you speak? Talk wid de dev’?”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure murmured a salutation, touched his hat, +and passed. Chat-oué moved a little, and delivered a +broadside:</p> + +<p>“Afteh dat, you betteh leave! Yes, you betteh +leave Gran’ Point’!”</p> + +<p>“Sir,” said Bonaventure, turning with flushed face, +“I stay.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the other, “dass righ’; you betteh go +way and stay. <i>Magicien</i>,” he added as the schoolmaster +moved on, “<i>sorcier!</i>—Voudou!—jackass!”</p> + +<p>What did all this mean?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_VI" id="PART_II_CHAP_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h3> + +<h3>WAR OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT.</h3> + + +<p>Catou, it seems, had gone one day to College Point +with a pair of wild ducks that he had shot,—first +of the season,—and offered them to the priest who +preached for Grande Pointe once a quarter.</p> + +<p>“Catou,” said the recipient, in good French but +with a cruel hardness of tone, “why does that man +out there teach his school in English?” The questioner’s +intentions were not unkind. He felt a protector’s +care for his Acadian sheep, whose wants he +fancied he, if not he only, understood. He believed +a sudden overdose of enlightenment would be to them +a real disaster, and he proposed to save them from it +by the kind of management they had been accustomed +to—they and their fathers—for a thousand years.</p> + +<p>Catou answered the question only by a timid smile +and shrug. The questioner spoke again:</p> + +<p>“Why do you Grande Pointe folk allow it? Do +you want your children stuffed full of American ideas? +What is in those books they are studying? You don’t +know? Neither do I. I would not look into one of +them. But you ought to know that to learn English +is to learn free-thinking. Do you know who print +those books that your children are rubbing their noses +in? Yankees! Oh, I doubt not they have been sharp +enough to sprinkle a little of the stuff <em>they</em> call religion +here and there in them; ’tis but the bait on the hook! +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> +But you silly ’Cadians think your children are getting +education, and that makes up for every thing else. +Do you know what comes of it? Discontent. Vanity. +Contempt of honest labor. Your children are going +to be discontented with their lot. It will soon be +good-by to sunbonnets; good-by to homespun; good-by +to Grande Pointe,—yes, and good-by to the faith +of your fathers. Catou, what do you know about +that man, anyhow? You ask him no questions, you +’Cadians, and he—oh, he is too modest to tell you who +or what he is. <em>Who pays him?</em>”</p> + +<p>“He say pay is way behine. He say he don’t get +not’in’ since he come yondeh,” said Catou, the distress +that had gathered on his face disappearing for +a moment.</p> + +<p>The questioner laughed contemptuously.</p> + +<p>“Do you suppose he works that way for nothing? +How do you know, at all, that his real errand is to +teach school? A letter from Mr. Wallis! who simply +told your simple-minded brother what the fellow told +him! See here, Catou; you owe a tax as a raiser of +tobacco, eh? And besides that, hasn’t every one +of you an absurd little sign stuck up on the side of his +house, as required by the Government, to show that +you owe another tax as a tobacco manufacturer? But +still you have a little arrangement to neutralize that, +eh? How do you know this man is not among you to +look into that? Do you know that he <em>can</em> teach? No +wonder he prefers to teach in English! I had a conversation +with him the other day; I want no more; he +preferred to talk to <em>me</em> in English. That is the good +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> +manners he is teaching; light-headed, hero-worshipping, +free-thinker that he is.”</p> + +<p>Catou was sore dismayed. He had never heard of +hero-worship or free-thinking before, but did not doubt +their atrocity. It had never occurred to him that a +man with a few spelling-books and elementary readers +could be so dangerous to society.</p> + +<p>“I wish he clear out from yondeh,” said Catou. He +really made his short responses in French, but in a +French best indicated in bad English.</p> + +<p>“Not for my sake,” replied the priest, coldly smiling. +“I shall just preach somewhere else on the thirteenth +Sunday of each quarter, and let Grande Pointe +go to the devil; for there is where your new friend +is sure to land you. Good-day, I am very busy this +morning.”</p> + +<p>These harsh words—harsh barking of the shepherd +dog—spread an unseen consternation in Grande +Pointe. Maximian was not greatly concerned. When +he heard of the threat to cut off the spiritual table-crumbs +with which the villagers had so scantily been +fed, he only responded that in his opinion the dominie +was no such a fool as that. But others could not so +easily dismiss their fears. They began to say privately, +leaning on fences and lingering at stiles, that +they had felt from the very day of that first mad bell-ringing +that the whole movement was too headlong; +that this opening the sluices of English education +would make trouble. Children shouldn’t be taught +what their parents do not understand. Not that there +was special harm in a little spelling, adding, or +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> +subtracting, but—the notions they and the teacher produced! +Here was the school’s influence going through +all the place like the waters of a rising tide. All +Grande Pointe was lifting from the sands, and in danger +of getting afloat and drifting toward the current +of the great world’s life. Personally, too, the schoolmaster +seemed harmless enough. From the children +and he loving each other, the hearts of the seniors had +become entangled. The children had come home from +the atmosphere of that old tobacco-shed, and persuaded +the very grandmothers to understand vaguely—very +vaguely and dimly—that the day of liberty which had +come to the world at large a hundred years before +had come at last to them; that in France their race +had been peasants; in Acadia, forsaken colonists; in +Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, exiles +alien to the land, the language, and the times; in +St. Domingo, penniless, sick, unwelcome refugees; +and for just one century in Louisiana the jest of the +proud Creole, held down by the triple fetter of illiteracy, +poverty, and the competition of unpaid, half-clad, +swarming slaves. But that now the slave was free, +the school was free, and a new, wide, golden future +waited only on their education in the greatest language +of the world.</p> + +<p>All this was pleasant enough to accept even in a +dim way, though too good to be more than remotely +grasped. But just when, as music in a sleeper’s ear, +it is taking hold of their impulses somewhat, comes +the word of their hereditary dictator that this man is +among them only for their destruction. What could +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> +they reply? They were a people around whom the +entire world’s thought had swirled and tumbled for +four hundred years without once touching them. Their +ancestors had left France before Descartes or Newton +had begun to teach the modern world to think. They +knew no method of reasoning save by precedent, and +had never caught the faintest reflection from the mind +of that great, sweet thinker who said, “A stubborn +retention of customs is a turbulent thing, no less than +the introduction of new.” To such strangers in the +world of to-day now came the contemptuous challenge +of authority, defying them to prove that one who proposed +to launch them forth upon a sea of changes out +of sight of all precedent and tradition was not the +hireling of some enemy’s gold secretly paid to sap the +foundations of all their spiritual and temporal interests +and plunge them into chaos.</p> + +<p>They blamed Bonaventure; he had got himself hated +and them rebuked; it was enough. They said little +to each other and nothing to him; but they felt the +sleepy sense of injury we all know so well against one +who was disturbing their slumber; and some began to +suspect and distrust him, others to think hard of +him for being suspected and distrusted. Yet all this +reached not his ears, and the first betrayal of it was +from the lips of Chat-oué, when, in his cups, he unexpectedly +invited the schoolmaster to leave Grande +Pointe.</p> + +<p>After that, even the unconscious schoolmaster could +feel the faint chill of estrangement. But he laid it +not to his work, but to his personal unloveliness, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> +said to ’Mian he did not doubt if he were more engaging +there would not be so many maidens kept at the +wheel and loom in the priceless hours of school, or so +many strapping youths sent, all unlettered, to the +sugar-kettles of the coast plantations what time M’sieu’ +Walleece big-in to gryne.</p> + +<p>“’Tain’t dat,” said ’Mian. He had intended to tell +the true reason, but his heart failed him; and when +Bonaventure asked what, then, it was, he replied:</p> + +<p>“Aw, dey don’t got no time. Time run so fas’,—run +like a scared dog. I dunno fo’ w’at dey make +dat time run so fas’ dat way.”</p> + +<p>“O my friend,” cried the young schoolmaster, leaping +from his chair, “say not that! If God did not +make time to p’oceed with rapidness, who would ever +do his best?”</p> + +<p>It was such lessons as this that made the children—Crébiche +among them—still gather round the humble +master and love to grasp his hand.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_VII" id="PART_II_CHAP_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h3> + +<h3>LOVE AND DUTY.</h3> + + +<p>Time ran fast. The seasons were as inexorable at +Grande Pointe as elsewhere. But there was no fierceness +in them. The very frosts were gentle. Slowly +and kindly they stripped the green robes from many +a tree, from many a thicket ejected like defaulting +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> +tenants the blue linnet, the orchard oriole, the nonpareil, +took down all its leafy hangings and left it +open to the winds and rain of December. The wet +ponies and kine turned away from the north and +stood in the slanting storm with bowed heads. The +great wall of cypress swamp grew spectral. But its +depths, the marshes far beyond sight behind them, +and the little, hidden, rushy lakes, were alive with +game. No snake crossed the path. Under the roof, +on the galérie, the wheel hummed, the loom pounded; +inside, the logs crackled and blazed on the hearth; on +the board were venison, mallard, teal, rice-birds, <i>sirop +de baterie</i>, and <i>quitte</i>; round the fireside were pipes, +pecans, old stories, and the Saturday-night contra-dance; +and every now and then came sounding on the +outer air the long, hoarse bellow of some Mississippi +steamer, telling of the great world beyond the tree-tops, +a little farther than the clouds and nearer than +the stars.</p> + +<p>Christmas passed, and New Year—time runs so +fast! Presently yonder was ’Mian himself, spading +a piece of ground to sow his tobacco-seed in; then +Catou and his little boy of twenty-five doing likewise; +and then others all about the scattered village. Then +there was a general spreading of dry brush over the +spaded ground, then the sweet, clean smell of its burning, +and, hanging everywhere throughout the clearing, +its thin blue smoke. The little frogs began to pipe to +each other again in every wet place, the grass began +to freshen, and almost in the calendar’s midwinter the +smiles of spring were wreathing everywhere.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> +What of the schoolmaster and the children? Much, +much! The good work went on. Intense days for +Bonaventure. The clouds of disfavor darkling in +some places, but brightening in others, and, on the +whole, he hoped and believed, breaking. A few days +of vacation, and then a bright re-union and resumption, +the children all his faithful adherents save one—Sidonie. +She, a close student, too, but growingly +distant and reticent. The State Superintendent still +believed to be—</p> + +<p>“Impending, impending, chil’run! he is impending! +Any day he may precipitate upon us!”</p> + +<p>Intense days, too, for Claude. Sidonie openly, and +oh, so sweetly, his friend. Loving him? He could +neither say nor know; enough, for the present, to be +allowed to love her. His love knew no spirit of conquest +yet; it was star-worship; it was angel adoration; +seraphically pure; something so celestially refined that +had it been a tangible object you could have held it +up and seen the stars right through it. The thought +of acquisition would have seemed like coveting the +gold of a temple. And yet already the faintest hint +of loss was intolerable. Oh! this happy, happy school-going,—this +faring sumptuously on one smile a day! +Ah, if it might but continue! But alas! how Sidonie +was growing! Growing, growing daily! up, up, up! +While he—there was a tree in the swamp where he +measured his stature every day; but in vain, in vain! +It never budged! And then—all at once—like the +rose-vine on her galérie, Sidonie burst into bloom.</p> + +<p>Her smiles were kinder and more frequent now than +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> +ever before; but the boy’s heart was wrung. What +chance now? In four long years to come he would +not yet be quite nineteen, and she was fifteen now. +Four years! He was in no hurry himself—could +wait forever and be happy every day of it; but she? +Such prize as she, somebody would certainly bear away +before three years could run by, run they ever so fast.</p> + +<p>Sitting and pondering one evening in the little bayou +cabin, Claude caught the father’s eye upon him, leaned +his forehead upon the parent’s knee, and silently wept. +The rough woodman said a kind word, and the boy, +without lifting his burning face, told his love. The +father made no reply for a long time, and then he +said in their quaint old French:</p> + +<p>“Claude, tell the young schoolmaster. Of all men, +he is the one to help you.” And then in English, as +you would quote Latin, “Knowledge is power!”</p> + +<p>The next day he missed—failed miserably—in +every lesson. At its close he sat at his desk, crushed. +Bonaventure seemed scarce less tempest-tossed than +he; and all about the school the distress spread as +wintry gray overcasts a sky. Only Sidonie moved +calmly her accustomed round, like some fair, silent, +wide-winged bird circling about a wreck.</p> + +<p>At length the lad and his teacher were left alone. +Claude sat very still, looking at his toil-worn hands +lying crossed on the desk. Presently there sank an +arm across his shoulders. It was the master’s. Drop—drop—two +big tears fell upon the rude desk’s +sleeve-polished wood. The small, hard, right hand +slowly left its fellow, and rubbed off the wet spots.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> +“Claude, you have something to disclose me?”</p> + +<p>The drooping head nodded.</p> + +<p>“And ’tis not something done wrongly?”</p> + +<p>The lad shook his head.</p> + +<p>“Then, my poor Claude,”—the teacher’s own voice +faltered for a moment,—“then—’tis—’tis she!” +He stroked the weeping head that sank into its hands. +“Ah! yes, Claude, yes; ’tis she; ’tis she! And you +want me to help you. Alas! in vain you want me! +I cannot even try-y-y to help you; you have mentioned +it too lately! ’Tis right you come to me, +despiting discrepancy of years; but alas! the dif<em>fic</em>ulty +lies in the con<em>tra</em>ry; for alas! Claude, our two heart’ +are of the one, same age!”</p> + +<p>They went out; and walking side by side toward the +failing sun, with the humble flowers of the field and +path newly opened and craving leave to live about their +feet and knees, Bonaventure Deschamps revealed his +own childlike heart to the simple boy whose hand +clasped his.</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes; I conceal not from you, Claude, that +’tis not alone ‘thou lovest,’ but ‘I love’! If with +cause to hope, Claude, I know not. And I must not +search to know whilst yet the schoolmaster. And the +same to you, Claude, whilst yet a scholah. We mus’ +let the dissimulation like a worm in the bud to h-eat +our cheek. ’Tis the voice of honor cry—‘Silence.’ +And during the meanwhilst, you? Perchance at the +last, the years passing and you enlarging in size daily +and arriving to budding manhood, may be the successful; +for suspect not I consider lightly the youngness +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> +of yo’ passion. Attend what I shall reveal you. +Claude, there once was a boy, yo’ size, yo’ age, but +fierce, selfish, distemperate; still more selfish than yo’ +schoolmaster of to-day.” And there that master went +on to tell of an early—like Claude’s, an all too early—rash, +and boyish passion, whose ragged wound, +that he had thought never could heal, was now only a +tender scar.</p> + +<p>“And you, too, Claude, though now it seem not +possible—you shall recuperate from this. But why +say I thus? Think you I would inoculate the idea +that you must despair? Nay, perchance you shall +achieve her.” They stood near the lad’s pirogue +about to say adieu; the schoolmaster waved his hand +backward toward the farther end of the village. “She +is there; in a short time she will cease to continue +scholah; then—try.” And again, with still more +courageous kindness, he repeated, “Try! ’Tis a +lesson that thou shouldest heed—try, try again. If +<em>at</em> the first thou doest <em>not</em> succeed, try, try again.”</p> + +<p>Claude gazed gratefully into the master’s face. Boy +that he was, he did not read aright the anguish gathering +there. From his own face the clouds melted into +a glad sunshine of courage, resolve, and anticipation. +Bonaventure saw the spark of hope that he had dropped +into the boy’s heart blaze up into his face. And what +did Claude see? The hot blood mounting to the master’s +brow an instant ere he wheeled and hurried away.</p> + +<p>“’Sieur Bonaventure!” exclaimed Claude; “’Sieur +Bonaventure!”</p> + +<p>But deaf to all tones alike, Bonaventure moved +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> +straight away along the bushy path, and was +presently gone from sight. There is a repentance of +good deeds. Bonaventure Deschamps felt it gnawing +and tearing hard and harder within his bosom as he +strode on through the wild vernal growth that closed +in the view on every side. Soon he halted; then +turned, and began to retrace his steps.</p> + +<p>“Claude!” The tone was angry and imperative. +No answer came. He quickened his gait. “Claude!” +The voice was petulant and imperious. A turn of the +path brought again to view the spot where the two had +so lately parted. No one was there. He moaned and +then cried aloud, “O thou fool, fool, fool!—Claude!” +He ran; faster—faster—down the path, away from +all paths, down the little bayou’s margin, into the +bushes, into the mud and water. “Claude! Claude! +I told you wrongly! Stop! <i>Arretez-la!</i> I must add +somewhat!—Claude!” The bushes snatched away +his hat; tore his garments; bled him in hands and +face; yet on he went into the edge of the forest. +“Claude! Ah! Claude, thou hast ruin’ me! Stop, +you young rascal!—thief!—robber!—brigand!” A +vine caught and held him fast. “Claude! Claude!”—The +echoes multiplied the sound, and scared from +their dead-tree roost a flock of vultures. The dense +wood was wrapping the little bayou in its premature +twilight. The retreating sun, that for a while had shot +its flaming arrows through the black boles and branches, +had sunk now and was gone. Only a parting ruby +glow shone through the tangle where far and wide the +echoes were calling for Claude.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> +“Claude! I mistook the facts in the case. There +is no hope for you! ’Tis futile you try—the poem is +not for you! I take every thing back!—all back! +You shall not once try! You have grasp’ the advantage! +You got no business, you little rascal! <em>You</em> +dare venture to attempt making love in my school! +Claude St. Pierre, you are dismiss’ the school! Mutiny! +mutiny! Claude St. Pierre, for mutinizing, excluded +the Gran’ Point’ school.”</p> + +<p>He tore himself from his fastenings and hastened +back toward the village. The tempest within him was +as fierce as ever; but already it, too, had turned and +was coming out of the opposite quarter. The better +Bonaventure—the Bonaventure purified by fires that +Grande Pointe had no knowledge of—was coming +back into his gentle self-mastery. And because that +other, that old-time Bonaventure, bound in chains +deep down within, felt already the triumph of a +moment slipping from his grasp, he silently now to +the outer air, but loudly within, railed and gnashed +and tore himself the more.</p> + +<p>He regained the path and hurried along it, hatless, +dishevelled, bespattered, and oblivious to every thing +save the war within. Presently there came upon him +the knowledge, the certain knowledge, that Claude +would come the next morning and ring the chapel bell, +take his seat in school, stand in all his classes, know +every lesson, and go home in the evening happy and +all unchallenged of him. He groaned aloud.</p> + +<p>“Ah! Claude! To dismiss or not to dismiss, it +shall not be mine! But it shall be thine, Sidonie! And +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> +whether she is for thee, Claude—so juvenile!—or for +me, so unfit, unfit, unfit!—Ah! Sidonie, choose not +yet!”—He stood rooted to the spot; while within +easy earshot of his lightest word tripped brightly and +swiftly across the path from the direction of the chapel +a fawn, Claude’s gift, and its mistress, Sidonie—as +though she neither saw nor heard.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_VIII" id="PART_II_CHAP_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h3> + +<h3>AT CLAUDE’S MERCY.</h3> + + +<p>Time flagged not. The school shone on, within its +walls making glad the teacher and the pupils with ever +new achievements in knowledge and excellence. Some +of the vanguard—Claude, Sidonie, Étienne, Madelaine, +Henri, Marcelline—actually going into the +Third Reader. Such perfection in lessons as they told +about at home—such mastery of English, such satisfactory +results in pronunciation and emphasis! Reading +just as they talked? Oh, no, a thousand times no! +The school’s remoter light, its secondary influences, +slowly spreading, but so slowly that only the eyes of +enmity could see its increase. There were murmurs +and head-shakings; but the thirteenth Sunday of the +year’s first quarter came, and the sermon whose withholding +had been threatened was preached. And on +the thirteenth Monday there was Bonaventure, still +moving quietly across the green toward the schoolhouse +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> +with the children all about him. But a few +days later the unexpected happened.</p> + +<p>By this time Claude’s father, whose teacher, you +remember, was Claude, had learned to read. One day +a surveyor, who had employed him as a guide, seeing +the Acadian laboring over a fragment of rural newspaper, +fell into conversation with him as they sat +smoking by their camp-fire, and presently caught some +hint of St. Pierre’s aspirations for himself and his son.</p> + +<p>“So there’s a public school at Grande Pointe, is +there?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yass; fine school; hondred feet long! and +fine titcher; splendid titcher; titch English.”</p> + +<p>“Well, well!” laughed the surveyor. “Well, the +next thing will be a railroad.”</p> + +<p>St. Pierre’s eyes lighted up.</p> + +<p>“You t’ink!”</p> + +<p>“Why, yes; you can’t keep railroads away from a +place long, once you let in the public school and teach +English.”</p> + +<p>“You t’ink dass good?”</p> + +<p>“What, a railroad? Most certainly. It brings +immigration.”</p> + +<p>“Whass dat—’migrash’n?”</p> + +<p>The surveyor explained.</p> + +<p>The next time St. Pierre came to Grande Pointe—to +sell some fish—he came armed with two great +words for the final overthrow of all opponents of +enlightenment: “Rellroad!—’Migrash’n!”</p> + +<p>They had a profound and immediate effect—exactly +the opposite of what he had expected.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> +The school had just been dismissed; the children +were still in sight, dispersing this way and that. +Sidonie lingered a moment at her desk, putting it in +order; Claude, taking all the time he could, was getting +his canoe-paddle from a corner; Crébiche was waiting, +by the master’s command, to repair some default of +the day; and Toutou, outside on his knees in the grass +catching grasshoppers, was tarrying for his sister; +when four or five of the village’s best men came slowly +and hesitatingly in. It required no power of divination +for even the pre-occupied schoolmaster to guess +the nature of their errand. ’Mian was not among +them. Catou was at their head. They silently bowed. +The schoolmaster as silently responded. The visitors +huddled together. They came a step nearer.</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Catou, “we come to see you.”</p> + +<p>“Sirs, welcome to Gran’ Point’ school.—Sidonie, +Crébiche, Claude, rest in yo’ seats.”</p> + +<p>“Mo’ betteh you tu’n ’em loose, I t’ink,” said +Catou amiably; “ain’t it?”</p> + +<p>“I rather they stay,” replied Bonaventure. All +sat down. There was a sustained silence, and then +Catou said with quiet abruptness:</p> + +<p>“We dawn’t want no mo’ school!”</p> + +<p>“From what cause?”</p> + +<p>“’Tain’t no use.”</p> + +<p>“Sir—sirs, no use? ’Tis every use! The schoolhouse? +’tis mo’ worth than the gole mine. Ah! sirs, +tell me: what is gole without education?”</p> + +<p>They confronted the riddle for a moment.</p> + +<p>“Ed’cation want to change every thin’—rellroad—’migrash’n.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> +“Change every thing? Yes!—making every thing +better! Sirs, where is that country that the people +are sorry that the railroad and the schoolhouse have +come?” Again the riddle went unanswered; but +Catou sat as if in meditation, looking to one side, and +presently said:</p> + +<p>“I t’ink dass all humbug, dat titchin’ English. +What want titch English faw?”</p> + +<p>“Sir,” cried Bonaventure, “in America you mus’ +be American! Three Acadians have been governor +of Louisiana! What made them thus to become?” +He leaned forward and smote his hands together. +“What was it? ’Twas English education!”</p> + +<p>The men were silent again. Catou pushed his feet +out, and looked at his shoes, put on for the occasion. +Presently—</p> + +<p>“Yass,” he said, in an unconvinced tone; “yass, +dass all right: but how we know you titch English? +Nobody can’t tell you titchin’ him right or no.”</p> + +<p>“And yet—I do! And the time approach when +you shall know! Sirs, I make to you a p’oposition. +Time is passing. It must be soon the State Sup’inten’ent +Public Education visit this school. The school +is any time ready. Since long time are we waiting. +He shall come—he shall examine! The chil’run shall +be ignorant this arrangement! Only these shall know—Claude, +Sidonie, Crébiche; they will not disclose! +And the total chil’run shall exhibit all their previous +learning! And welcome the day, when the ad<em>ver</em>saries +of education shall see those dear chil’run stan’ +up befo’ the assem’led Gran’ Point’ spelling co’ectly +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> +words of one to eight syllable’ and <em>reading from their +readers</em>! And if one miss—if <em>one</em>—<em>one!</em> miss, then +let the school be shut and the schoolmaster banish-ed!”</p> + +<p>It was so agreed. The debate did not cease at once, +but it languished. Catou thought he had made one +strong point when he objected to education as conducive +to idle habits; but when the schoolmaster hurled +back the fact that communities the world over are industrious +just in proportion as they are educated, he +was done. He did not know, but when he confronted +the assertion it looked so true that he could not doubt +it. He only said:</p> + +<p>“Well, anyhow, I t’ink ’tain’t no use Crébiche go +school no mo’.” But when Bonaventure pleaded for +the lad’s continuance, that too was agreed upon. The +men departed.</p> + +<p>“Crébiche,” said the master, holding the boy’s +hand at parting, “ah! Crébiche, if thou become not a +good scholar”—and read a promise in the boy’s +swimming eyes.</p> + +<p>“Claude, Claude, I am at yo’ mercy now.” But +the honest gaze of Claude and the pressure of his small +strong hand were a pledge. The grateful master turned +to Sidonie, and again, as of old, no Sidonie was there.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_IX" id="PART_II_CHAP_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h3> + +<h3>READY.</h3> + + +<p>Summer came. The song-birds were all back again, +waking at dawn, and making the hoary cypress wood +merry with their carollings to the wives and younglings +in the nests. Busy times. Foraging on the helpless +enemy—earth-worm, gnat, grub, grasshopper, weevil, +sawyer, dragon-fly—from morning till night: watching +for him; scratching for him; picking, pecking, boring +for him; poising, swooping, darting for him; standing +upside down and peering into chinks for him; and all +for the luxury—not of knowledge, but of love and +marriage. The mocking-bird had no rest whatever. +Back and forth from dawn to dark, back and forth +across and across Grande Pointe clearing, always one +way empty and the other way with his beak full of +marketing; and then sitting up on an average half the +night—sometimes the whole of it—at his own concert. +And with military duties too; patrolling the +earth below, a large part of it, and all the upper air; +driving off the weasel, the black snake, the hawk, the +jay, the buzzard, the crow, and all that brigand crew—busy +times! All nature in glad, gay earnest. +Corn in blossom and rustling in the warm breeze; +blackberries ripe; morning-glories under foot; the +trumpet-flower flaring from its dense green vine high +above on the naked, girdled tree; the cotton-plant +blooming white, yellow, and red in the field beneath; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> +honey a-making in the hives and hollow trees; butterflies +and bees lingering in the fields at sunset; the +moth venturing forth at the first sign of dew; and +Sidonie—a wild-rose tree.</p> + +<p>Mark you, this was in Grande Pointe. I have seen +the wild flower taken from its cool haunt in the forest, +and planted in the glare of a city garden. Alas! the +plight of it, poor outshone, wilting, odorless thing! +And then I have seen it again in the forest; and pleasanter +than to fill the lap with roses and tulips of the +conservatory’s blood-royal it was to find it there, once +more the simple queen of that green solitude.</p> + +<p>So Sidonie. Acadian maidens are shy as herons. +They always see you first. They see you first, silently +rise, and are gone—from the galérie. They are more +shy than violets. You would think they lived whole +days with those dark, black-fringed eyes cast down; +but—they see you first. The work about the house is +well done where they are; there are apt to be flowers +outside round about; while they themselves are as Paul +desired to see the women in bishop Timothy’s church, +“adorned in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and +sobriety.”</p> + +<p>Flowers sprang plentifully where Sidonie dwelt. +Her best homespun gown was her own weaving; the +old dog lying on the galérie always thumped the floor +with his tail and sank his obsequious head as that robe +passed; the fawn—that Claude had brought—would +come trotting and press its head against it; all the +small living things of the dooryard would follow it +about; and if she stood by the calf-pen the calves +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> +would push each other for the nearest place, lay their +cheeks upon the fence’s top, and roll their eyes—as +many a youth of Grande Pointe would have done if he +might. Chat-oué,—I fear I have omitted to mention +that the father of Crébiche, like the father of Claude, +had lost his wife before he was of age,—Chat-oué +looked often over that fence.</p> + +<p>When matters take that shape a girl <em>must</em> quit school. +And yet Sidonie, when after a short vacation the +school resumed its sessions, resumed with it. Toutou, +who had to admit now that his sister was even more +grand for her age than he, was always available for +protection. There was no wonder that Sidonie wished +to continue; Bonaventure explained why:</p> + +<p>“So in<em>ter</em>esting is that McGuffey’s Third Reader!”</p> + +<p>Those at home hesitated, and presently it was the +first of October. Now it was too late to withdraw; +the examination was to take place. The school’s opponents +had expressed little impatience at the State +Superintendent’s weary delay, but at length Catou +asked, “Why dat man don’t nevva come!”</p> + +<p>“The wherefore of his non-coming I ignore,” said +Bonaventure, with a look of old pain in his young +face; “but I am ready, let him come or let him come +not.”</p> + +<p>“’Tain’t no use wait no longer,” said Catou; “jis +well have yo’ lil show widout him.”</p> + +<p>“Sir, it shall be had! Revolution never go backwood!”</p> + +<p>Much was the toil, many the anxieties, of the preparation. +For Bonaventure at once determined to make +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> +the affair more than an examination. He set its date +on the anniversary of the day when he had come to +Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not +be spared. She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe +to a star. A child, beholding the little star in +the heavens, and wondering what it can be, sparkling +diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it +not to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender +regret the school knew that no more thereafter was +Sidonie to twinkle in its firmament.</p> + +<p>“Learn yo’ lessons hard, chil’run; if the State +Sup’inten’ent, even at the last, you know”—Bonaventure +could not believe that this important outpost +had been forgotten.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_X" id="PART_II_CHAP_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h3> + +<h3>CONSPIRACY.</h3> + + +<p>About this time a certain Mr. Tarbox—G. W. +Tarbox—was travelling on horseback and touching +from house to house of the great sugar-estates of the +river “coast,” seeing the country and people, and +allowing the <i>élite</i> to subscribe to the “Album of Universal +Information.”</p> + +<p>One Sunday, resting at College Point, he was led by +curiosity to cultivate the acquaintance of three men +who had come in from Grande Pointe. One of them +was Chat-oué. He could understand them, and make +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +them understand him, well enough to play <i>vingt et un</i> +with them the whole forenoon. He won all their +money, drank with them, and took their five subscriptions, +Chat-oué taking three—one for himself, one for +Catou, and one for Crébiche. There was no delivery +of goods there and then; they could not write; but +they made their marks, and it was agreed that when +Mr. Tarbox should come along a few days later to deliver +the volumes, they were not to be received or paid +for until with his scholarly aid the impostor who pretended +to teach English education at Grande Pointe +had been put to confusion and to flight.</p> + +<p>“All right,” said Tarbox; “all <em>right</em>. I’m the +kind of State Superintendent you want. I like an +adventure; and if there’s any thing I just love, it’s +exposing a fraud! What day shall I come? Yes, I +understand—middle of the day. I’ll be on hand.”</p> + +<p>The fateful day came. In every house and on every +galérie the morning tasks were early done. Then the +best of every wardrobe was put on, the sun soared +high, and by noon every chair in Grande Pointe was +in the tobacco-shed where knowledge poured forth her +beams, and was occupied by one or two persons. And +then, at last, the chapel bell above Claude’s head +pealed out the final signal, and the schoolmaster moved +across the green. Bonaventure Deschamps was weary. +Had aught gone wrong? Far from it. But the work +had been great, and it was now done. Every thing was +at stake: the cause of enlightenment and the fortunes +of his heart hung on the issue of the next few hours. +Three pupils, one the oftenest rebuked of all the school, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> +one his rival in love, one the queen of his heart, held +his fate in their hands and knew it. With these +thoughts mingled the pangs of an unconfessed passion +and the loneliness of a benevolent nature famishing for +a word of thanks. Yea, and to-day he must be his own +judge.</p> + +<p>His coat was on his arm, and the children round +about him in their usual way as they came across the +common; but his words, always so kind, were, on this +day of all days, so dejected and so few that the little +ones stole glances into his face and grew silent. Then, +all at once, he saw,—yea, verily, he <em>saw</em>,—standing +near the school entrance, a man from the great outer +world!</p> + +<p>He knew it by a hundred signs—the free attitude, +the brilliant silk hat, the shaven face, and every inch of +the attire. As plainly as one knows a green tree from +a dead one, the Crusoe of Grande Pointe recognized one +who came from the haunts of men; from some great +nerve-centre of human knowledge and power where the +human mind, trained and equipped, had piled up the +spoils of its innumerable conquests. His whole form +lighted up with a new life. His voice trembled with +pent feeling as he said in deep undertone:</p> + +<p>“Be callm, chil’run; be callm. Refrain excitement. +Who you behole befo’ you, yondeh, I ignore. But +who shall we expect to see if not the State Sup’inten’ent +Public Education? And if yea, then welcome, +thrice welcome, the surprise! We shall not inquire +him; but as a stranger we shall show him with how +small reso’ce how large result.” He put on his coat.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> +Mr. Tarbox had just reached the school-ground. +His horse was fastened by the bridle to a picket in a +fence behind him. A few boys had been out before +the schoolhouse, and it was the sudden cessation of +their clamor that had drawn Bonaventure’s attention. +Some of them were still visible, silently slipping +through the gaps in the <i>pieux</i> and disappearing within. +Bonaventure across the distance marked him beckon +persuasively to one of them. The lad stopped, came +forward, and gave his hand; and thereupon a second, +a third, fourth, fifth, tenth, without waiting for invitation, +emerged again and advanced to the same grave +and silent ceremony. Two or three men who stood +near did the same. The handshaking was just ending +when Bonaventure and the stranger raised their hats +to each other.</p> + +<p>“Trust I don’t intrude?”</p> + +<p>“Sir, we are honored, not intruded, as you shall +witness. Will you give yourself the pain to enter the +school-place? I say not schoolhouse; ’tis, as its humble +teacher, not fitly so nominated. But you shall +therein find a school which, the more taken by surprise, +not the less prepared.”</p> + +<p>“The State ought to build you a good schoolhouse,” +said the stranger, with a slight frown that seemed +official.</p> + +<p>“Ah! sir,” cried the young schoolmaster, beaming +gratitude from his whole surface, “I—I”—he smote +his breast,—“I would reimburst her in good citizen’ +and mother’ of good citizen’! And both reading, +writing, and also ciphering,—arithmeticulating, in the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> +English tongue, and grammatically! But enter and +investigate.”</p> + +<p>A hush fell upon the school and the audience beyond +it as the two men came in. Every scholar was in place—the +little ones with bare, dangling feet, their shapely +sun-tanned ankles just peeping from pantaloons and +pantalettes of equal length; the older lads beyond +them; and off at the left the larger girls, and Sidonie. +The visitor, as his eye fell last upon her, silently and +all to himself drew a long whistle of admiration. The +master stood and eyed him with unspoken but confessed +pride. A little maiden of six slipped from the bench +to the earth floor, came forward, gave her hand, and +noiselessly returned. One by one, with eyes dropped, +the remaining sixteen girls followed. It seemed for a +moment as if the contagion might break out in the +audience, but the symptom passed.</p> + +<p>There was just room on the teacher’s little platform +for Bonaventure to seat his visitor a little at one side +and stand behind his desk. The fateful moment had +come. The master stood nervously drawn up, bell in +hand. With a quick, short motion he gave it one tap, +and set it down.</p> + +<p>“That, sir, is to designate attention!” He waved +a triumphant hand toward the spectacle before them.</p> + +<p>“Perfect!” murmured the stranger. A look of +earnest ecstasy broke out upon the master’s face. He +turned at first upon the audience and then upon the +school.</p> + +<p>“Chil’run, <em>chil’run</em>, he p’onounce you perfect!” +He turned again upon the visitor, threw high his right +hand, flirted it violently, and cried:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> +“At random! exclusively at random; state what +class! at random!”</p> + +<p>“I—I doubt if I under”—</p> + +<p>“Name any class, exclusively at random, and you +shall see with what promptness and quietude the chil’run +shall take each one their exactly co’ect places.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I understand. You want me to designate”—</p> + +<p>“Any class! at yo’ caprice.”</p> + +<p>“Well, if you have—third class in geography.”</p> + +<p>“Or spelling?” cried Bonaventure, a momentary +look of dismay giving place to fresh enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>“Yes—spell—I meant spelling.”</p> + +<p>“Third spelling!” The tongue of the bell fell with +the emphasis, and as silently as sleep the tiniest seven +in the school, four pairs of pantaloons, three of pantalettes, +with seven of little bare feet at their borders +and seven of hands pointed down stiffly at their sides, +came out and stood a-row. The master turned to the +visitor.</p> + +<p>“Now, commencing wherever, even at the foot if +desired! ask, sir, if you please, any English word of +one syllable, of however difficult!”</p> + +<p>“No matter how difficult?”</p> + +<p>“Well, they are timid, as you see; advance by +degrees.”</p> + +<p>“Very well, then,” said the visitor with much kindness +of tone; “I will ask the little boy at this end”—</p> + +<p>“At the foot—but—still, ’tis well. Only—ah, +Crébiche! every thing depend! Be prepared, Crébiche!”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the stranger; “I will ask him to spell +hoss.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> +The child drew himself up rigidly, pointed his stiffened +fingers down his thighs, rounded his pretty red +mouth, and said slowly, in a low, melodious, distinct +voice:—</p> + +<p>“’O-double eth, awth.”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure leapt from the platform and ran to the +child.</p> + +<p>“<i>Ah! mon p’tit garçon</i>—ah! my lil boy! ’O-double +eth, listten, my chile. O, sir, he did not hear +the word precisely. Listten, my chile, to yo’ teacher! +remember that his honor and the school’s honor is in +yo’ spelling!” He drew back a step, poised himself, +and gave the word. It came like an anchor-chain +crashing through a hawse-hole.</p> + +<p>“Or-r-r-r-rus-seh!” And the child, winking at +vacancy in the intensity of his attention, spelled:—</p> + +<p>“Haich-o-r-eth-e, ’Orthe.”</p> + +<p>The breathless audience, leaning forward, read the +visitor’s commendation in his face. Bonaventure, +beaming upon him, extended one arm, the other turned +toward the child, and cried, shaking both hands tremulously:—</p> + +<p>“Another! another word! another to the same!”</p> + +<p>“Mouse,” said the stranger, and Bonaventure +turned and cried:—</p> + +<p>“Mah-ooseh! my nob’e lil boy! Mah-ooseh!” and +Crébiche, a speaking statue, spelled:—</p> + +<p>“M-o-u-eth-e, mouthe.”</p> + +<p>“Co’ect, my chile! And yet, sir, and yet, ’tis he +that they call Crébiche, because like the crawfish advancing +backwardly. But to the next! another word! +another word!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> +The spelling, its excitements, its moments of agonizing +suspense, and its triumphs, went on. The +second class is up. It spells in two, even in three, +syllables. Toutou is in it. He gets tremendously +wrought up; cannot keep two feet on the ground at +once; spells fast when the word is his; smiles in +response to the visitor’s smile, the only one who dares; +leans out and looks down the line with a knuckle in his +mouth as the spelling passes down; wrings one hand +as his turn approaches again; catches his word in +mid-air and tosses it off, and marks with ecstasy the +triumph and pride written on the face of his master.</p> + +<p>“But, sir,” cries Bonaventure, “why consume the +spelling-book? Give, yourself, if you please, to +Toutou, a word not therein comprise’.” He glanced +around condescendingly upon the people of Grande +Pointe. Chat-oué is in a front seat. Toutou gathers +himself for the spring, and the stranger ponders a +moment and then gives—“Florida!”</p> + +<p>“F-l-o, flo, warr-de-warr-da,—Florida!”</p> + +<p>A smile broke from the visitor’s face unbidden, +but—</p> + +<p>“Right! my chile! co’ect, Toutou!” cried Bonaventure, +running and patting the little hero on the back +and head by turns. “Sir, let us”—He stopped +short. The eyes of the house were on Chat-oué. He +had risen to his feet and made a gesture for the visitor’s +attention. As the stranger looked at him he +asked:—</p> + +<p>“He spell dat las word r-i-i-ight?” But the visitor +with quiet gravity said, “Yes, that was all right;” +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> +and a companion pulled the Raccoon down into his +seat again. Bonaventure resumed.</p> + +<p>“Sir, let us not exhoss the time with spelling! You +shall now hear them read.”</p> + +<p>The bell taps, the class retires; again, and the +reading class is up. They are the larger girls and +boys. But before they begin the master has a word +for their fathers and mothers.</p> + +<p>“Friends and fellow-citizens of Gran’ Point’, think +not at the suppi-zing goodness of yo’ chil’run’ reading. +’Tis to this branch has been given the largest attention +and most as<em>sid</em>u’ty, so thus to comprise puffection in +the English tongue, whether speaking aw otherwise.” +He turned to the stranger beside him. “I am not satisfied +whilst the slightest accent of French is remaining. +But you shall judge if they read not as if in their own +vernaculary. And you shall choose the piece!”</p> + +<p>The visitor waived the privilege, but Bonaventure +gently insisted, and he selected Jane Taylor’s little +poem, “The Violet,” glancing across at Sidonie as he +himself read out the first two lines:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Down in a green and shady bed<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A modest violet grew.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Bonaventure proclaimed the title and page and +said:—</p> + +<p>“Claude, p’oceed!” And Claude read:—</p> + +<p>“’Dthee vy—ee-lit. Dah-oon-a hin hay grin and-a +shad-y bade—A mo-dest-a vy-ee-lit grŏo—Hits-a +stallk whoz baint hit hawngg-a hits hade—Has hif-a +too hah-ed-a frawm ve-ŏo. Hand h-yet it whoz a lo-vly +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> +flow’r—Hits-a co-lors-a brah-eet and fair-a—Heet +maheet-a hāve grass-ed a rozzy bow’r—Heenstade-a +hof hah-ee-dingg there”—</p> + +<p>“Stop!” cried Bonaventure; “stop! You pronounciate’ +a word faultily!” He turned to the visitor. +“I call not that a miss; but we must inoculate the +idea of puffection. So soon the sly-y-test misp’onounciating +I pass to the next.” He turned again: +“Next!” And a black-haired girl began in a higher +key, and very slowly:—</p> + +<p>“Yate there eet whoz cawntaint-a too bulloom—Heen +mo-dest-a teent z-arrayed—And there-a heet +sprade-a heets swit pre-fume-a—Whit-hin thee sy-y-lent-a +shade”—</p> + +<p>“Stop! Not that you mistook, but—’tis enough. +Sir, will you give yourself the pain to tell—not for +my sake or reputation, but to the encouragement of +the chil’run, and devoid flattery—what is yo’ opinion +of that specimen of reading? Not t’oubling you, but, +in two or three word’ only—if you will give yo’self +the pain”—</p> + +<p>“Why, certainly; I think it is—I can hardly find +words—it’s remarkable.” Bonaventure started with +joy.</p> + +<p>“Chil’run, do you hear? Remawkable! But do +you not detect no slight—no small faultiness of +p’onounciating?”</p> + +<p>“No, not the slightest; I smile, but I was thinking +of something else.” The visitor’s eye, wandering a +trifle, caught Chat-oué giving him one black look that +removed his disposition to smile, yet he insisted, “No, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> +sir; I can truthfully say I never heard such a pronunciation.” +The audience drank his words.</p> + +<p>“Sir,” cried the glad preceptor, “’tis toil have +p’oduce it! Toil of the teacher, in<em>dust</em>ry of the chil’run! +But it has p’oduce’ <em>beside</em>! Sir, look—that +school! Since one year commencing the A B C—and +now spelling word’ of eight syllabl’!”</p> + +<p>“Not <em>this</em> school?”</p> + +<p>“Sir, you shall see—or, more p’operly, hear. +First spelling!”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the stranger, seeing Sidonie rise, “I’d +like to hear that class;” and felt Chat-oué looking at +him again.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_II_CHAP_XI" id="PART_II_CHAP_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h3> + +<h3>LIGHT, LOVE, AND VICTORY.</h3> + + +<p>The bell tapped, and they came forth to battle. +There was the line, there was the leader. The great +juncture of the day was on him. Was not here the +State’s official eye? Did not victory hover overhead? +His reserve, the darling regiment, the flower of his +army, was dressing for the final charge. There was +Claude. Next him, Sidonie!—and Étienne, and +Madelaine, Henri and Marcelline,—all waiting for +the word—the words—of eight syllables! Supreme +moment! Would any betray? Banish the thought! +Would any fail?</p> + +<p>He waited an instant while two or three mothers +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +bore out great armfuls of slumbering or fretting infancy +and a number of young men sank down into the +vacated chairs. Then he stepped down from the platform, +drew back four or five yards from the class, +opened the spelling-book, scanned the first word, +closed the book with his finger at the place, lifted it +high above his head, and cried:</p> + +<p>“Claude! Claude, my brave scholar, always perfect, +ah you ready?” He gave the little book a half +whirl round, and dashed forward toward the chosen +scholar, crying as he came:</p> + +<p>“In-e-rad-i-ca-bility!”</p> + +<p>Claude’s face suddenly set in a stony vacancy, +and with his eyes staring straight before him he +responded:</p> + +<p>“I-n, in-, e, inerad-, r-a-d, rad-, inerad-, ineraddy-, +ineradica-, c-a, ca, ineradica-, ineradicabili-, b-i-elly-billy, +ineradicabili-, ineradicabili-, t-y, ty, ineradicability.”</p> + +<p>“Right! Claude, my boy! my always good scholar, +right!” The master drew back to his starting-place +as he spoke, re-opened the book, shut it again, lifted +it high in air, cried, “Madelaine, my dear chile, +prepare!” whirled the book and rushed upon her +with—</p> + +<p>“In-de-fat-i-ga-bil-ly-ty!”</p> + +<p>Madelaine turned to stone and began:</p> + +<p>“I-n, een, d-e, de-, inde-, indefat-, indefat—fat—f-a-t, +fat, indefat, indefatty, i, ty, indefati-, indefatiga-, +g-a, ga, indefatiga-, indefatigabilly, b-i-elly, billy, indefatigabili-, +t-y, ty, indefatigability.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> +“O, Madelaine, my chile, you make yo’ teacher +proud! prah-ood, my chile!” Bonaventure’s hand +rested a moment tenderly on her head as he looked +first toward the audience and then toward the stranger. +Then he drew off for the third word. He looked at it +twice before he called it. Then—</p> + +<p>“Sidonie! ah! Sidonie, be ready! be prepared! +fail not yo’ humble school-teacher! In-com”—He +looked at the word a third time, and then swept down +upon her:</p> + +<p>“In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-<em>bility</em>!”</p> + +<p>Sidonie flinched not nor looked upon him, as he +hung over her with the spelling-book at arm’s-reach +above them; yet the pause that followed seemed to +speak dismay, and throughout the class there was a +silent recoil from something undiscovered by the master. +But an instant later Sidonie had chosen between +the two horns of her agonizing dilemma, and began:</p> + +<p>“I-n, een, c-o-m, cawm, eencawm, eencawmpre, +p-r-e, pre, eencawmpre, eencawmprehen, prehen, haich-e-n, +hen, hen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, +b-i-l”—</p> + +<p>“Ah! Sidonie! Stop! <i>Arretez!</i> Si-do-nie-e-e-e! +Oh! listen—<i>écoutez</i>—Sidonie, my dear!” The master +threw his arms up and down in distraction, then +suddenly faced his visitor, “Sir, it was my blame! +I spoke the word without adequate distinction! Sidonie—<i>maintenant</i>—now!” +But a voice in the audience +interrupted with—</p> + +<p>“<i>Assoiez-vous la</i>, Chat-oué! Seet down yondeh!” +And at the potent voice of Maximian Roussel the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> +offender was pushed silently into the seat he had risen +from, and Bonaventure gave the word again.</p> + +<p>“In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bil-i-ty!” And Sidonie, +blushing like fire, returned to the task:</p> + +<p>“I-n, een”—She bit her lip and trembled.</p> + +<p>“Right! <em>Right!</em> Tremble not, my Sidonie! fear +naught! yo’ loving school-teacher is at thy side!” +But she trembled like a red leaf as she spelled on—“Haich-e-n, +hen, eencawmprehen, eencawmprehensi, +s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, eencawmprehensi-billy-t-y, +ty, incomprehensibility!”</p> + +<p>The master dropped his hands and lifted his eyes in +speechless despair. As they fell again upon Sidonie, +her own met them. She moaned, covered her face +in her hands, burst into tears, ran to her desk and +threw her hands and face upon it, shaking with noiseless +sobs and burning red to the nape of her perfect +neck. All Grande Pointe rose to its feet.</p> + +<p>“Lost!” cried Bonaventure in a heart-broken voice. +“Every thing lost! Farewell, chil’run!” He opened +his arms toward them and with one dash all the lesser +ones filled them. They wept. Tears welled from +Bonaventure’s eyes; and the mothers of Grande Pointe +dropped again into their seats and silently added +theirs.</p> + +<p>The next moment all eyes were on Maximian. His +strong figure was mounted on a chair, and he was +making a gentle, commanding gesture with one hand +as he called:</p> + +<p>“Seet down! Seet down, all han’!” And all +sank down, Bonaventure in a mass of weeping and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> +clinging children. ’Mian too resumed his seat, at the +same time waving to the stranger to speak.</p> + +<p>“My friends,” said the visitor, rising with alacrity, +“I say when a man makes a bargain, he ought to +stick to it!” He paused for them—as many as +could—to take in the meaning of his English speech, +and, it may be, expecting some demonstration of +approval; but dead silence reigned, all eyes on him +save Bonaventure’s and Sidonie’s. He began again:</p> + +<p>“A bargain’s a bargain!” And Chat-oué nodded +approvingly and began to say audibly, “Yass;” but +’Mian thundered out:</p> + +<p>“<i>Taise toi</i>, Chat-oué! Shot op!” And the silence +was again complete, while the stranger resumed.</p> + +<p>“There was a plain bargain made.” He moved +a step forward and laid the matter off on the palm of +his hand. “There was to be an examination; the +school was not to know; but if one scholar should +make one mistake the schoolhouse was to be closed +and the schoolmaster sent away. Well, there’s been +a mistake made, and I say a bargain’s a bargain.” +Dead silence still. The speaker looked at ’Mian. +“Do you think they understand me?”</p> + +<p>“Dey meck out,” said ’Mian, and shut his firm +jaws.</p> + +<p>“My friends,” said the stranger once more, “some +people think education’s a big thing, and some think +it ain’t. Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it ain’t. +Now, here’s this man”—he pointed down to where +Bonaventure’s dishevelled crown was drooping to his +knees—“claims to have taught over thirty of your +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> +children to read. Well, what of it? A man can know +how to read, and be just as no account as he was +before. He brags that he’s taught them to talk English. +Well, what does that prove? A man <em>might</em> +speak English and starve to death. He claims, I am +told, to have taught some of them to write. But I +know a man in the penitentiary that can write; he +wrote too much.”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure had lifted his head and was sitting +with his eyes upon the speaker in close attention. At +this last word he said:</p> + +<p>“Ah! sir! too true, too true ah yo’ words; nevertheless, +their cooelty! ’Tis not what is print’ <em>in</em> the +books, but what you learn <em>through</em> the books!”</p> + +<p>“Yes; and so you hadn’t never ought to have made +the bargain you made; but, my friends, a bargain’s +a bargain, and the teacher’s”—He paused invitingly, +and an answer came from the audience. It was +Catou who rose and said:</p> + +<p>“Naw, sah. Naw; he don’t got to go!” But +again ’Mian thundered:</p> + +<p>“<i>Taise toi</i>, Catou. Shot op!”</p> + +<p>“I say,” continued the stranger, “the mistake’s +been made. <em>Three</em> mistakes have been made!”</p> + +<p>“Yass!” roared Chat-oué, leaping to his feet and +turning upon the assemblage a face fierce with triumph. +Suspense and suspicions were past now; he +was to see his desire on his enemy. But instantly a +dozen men were on their feet—St. Pierre, Catou, +Bonaventure himself, with a countenance full of pleading +deprecation, and even Claude, flushed with anger.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> +“Naw, sah! Naw, sah! Waun meesteck?”</p> + +<p>“Seet down, all han’!” yelled ’Mian; “all han’ +seet dah-oon!” Only Chat-oué took his seat, glancing +upon the rest with the exultant look of one who +can afford to yield ground.</p> + +<p>“The first mistake,” resumed the stranger, addressing +himself especially to the risen men still standing, +and pointedly to Catou, “the first mistake was in the +kind of bargain you made.” He ceased, and passed +his eyes around from one to another until they rested +an instant on the bewildered countenance of Chat-oué. +Then he turned again upon the people, who had sat +down, and began to speak with the exultation of a +man that feels his subject lifting him above himself.</p> + +<p>“I came out here to show up that man as a fraud. +But what do I find? A poor, unpaid, half-starved +man that loves his thankless work better than his life, +teaching what not one schoolmaster in a thousand can +teach; teaching his whole school four better things +than were ever printed in any school-book,—how to +study, how to think, how to value knowledge, and +to love one another and mankind. What you’d ought +to have done was to agree that such a school should +keep open, and such a teacher should stay, if jest one, +one lone child should answer one single book-question +right! But as I said before, a bargain’s a bargain—Hold +on there! Sit down! You sha’n’t interrupt +me again!” Men were standing up on every side. +There was confusion and a loud buzz of voices. “The +second mistake,” the stranger made haste to cry, +“was thinking the teacher gave out that last word +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> +right. He gave it wrong! And the third mistake,” +he shouted against the rising commotion, “was thinking +it was spelt wrong. <em>She spelt it right!</em> And a +bargain’s a bargain! The schoolmaster stays!”</p> + +<p>He could say no more; the rumble of voices suddenly +burst into a cheer. The women and children +laughed and clapped their hands,—Toutou his feet +also,—and Bonaventure, flirting the leaves of a spelling +book till he found the place, looked, cried—“In-com-pre-hen-<em>sibility</em>!” +wheeled and dashed upon +Sidonie, seized her hands in his as she turned to fly, +and gazed speechlessly upon her, with the tears running +down his face. Feeling a large hand upon his +shoulder, he glanced around and saw ’Mian pointing +him to his platform and desk. Thither he went. The +stranger had partly restored order. Every one was in +his place. But what a change! What a gay flutter +throughout the old shed! Bonaventure seemed to +have bathed in the fountain of youth. Sidonie, once +more the school’s queen-flower, sat calm, with just +a trace of tears adding a subtle something to her +beauty.</p> + +<p>“Chil’run, beloved chil’run,” said Bonaventure, +standing once more by his desk, “yo’ school-teacher +has the blame of the sole mistake; and, sir, gladly, +oh, gladly, sir, would he always have the blame rather +than any of his beloved school-chil’run! Sir, I will +boldly ask you—<em>ah</em> you not the State Sup’inten’ent +Public Education?”</p> + +<p>“No, I”—</p> + +<p>“But surely, sir, than a greater?—Yes, I discover +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> +it, though you smile. Chil’run—friends—not the +State Sup’inten’ent, but greater!—Pardon; have yo’ +chair, sir.”</p> + +<p>“Why, the examination’s over, isn’t it? Guess +you’d better call it finished, hadn’t you?” He made +the suggestion softly, but Bonaventure answered +aloud:</p> + +<p>“Figu’atively speaking, ’tis conclude’; but—pardon—you +mention’ writing. Shall you paht f’om us +not known—not leaving yo’ name—in a copy-book, +for examp’?”</p> + +<p>“With pleasure. You do teach writing?”</p> + +<p>“If I teach writing? To such with desks, yes. +’Twould be to all but for the privation of desks. You +perceive how we have here nothing less than a desk +famine. Madelaine! Claude! Sidonie!—present +copy-book’! Sir, do you not think every chile should +be provided a desk?—Ah! I knew ’twould be yo’ verdic’. +But how great trouble I have with that subjec’! +Me, I think yes; but the parents,”—he looked tenderly +over among them,—“they contend no. Now, +sir, here are three copy-books. Inspect; criticise. +No, commence rather, if you please, with the copy-book +of Madelaine; then <em>p’oceed</em> to the copy-book of +Claude, and finally conclude at the copy-book of Sidonie; +thus rising by degrees: good, more good, most +good.”</p> + +<p>“How about,” asked the stranger, with a smile, as +he turned the leaves, “about Toutou and Crébiche; +don’t they write?”</p> + +<p>“Ah! sir,” said Bonaventure, half to the stranger +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> +and half to the assemblage, “they write, yes; but—they +ah yet in the pot-hook and chicken-track stage. +And now, chil’run, in honor of our eminent friend’s +visitation, and of the excellence with which you have +been examine’, I p’onounce the <em>exhibition</em> finish’—dispensing +with ‘Twink’, twink’ lil stah.’ And now, +in the book of the best writing scholar in the school—you, +sir, deciding that intricacy—shall now be written +the name of the eminent frien’ of learning hereinbefo’ +confronting.—Claude! a new pen!”</p> + +<p>The stranger made his choice among the books.</p> + +<p>“Chil’run, he has select’ the book of Sidonie!” +Bonaventure reached and swung a chair into place at +his desk. The visitor sat down. Bonaventure stood +over him, gazing down at the hand that poised the pen. +The silence was profound.</p> + +<p>“Chil’run—sh-sh-sh!” said the master, lifting his +left arm but not his eyes. The stranger wrote a single +initial.</p> + +<p>“G! chil’run; G!—Sir, does it not signify +George?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” murmured the writer; “it stands for +George.” He wrote another.</p> + +<p>“W! my chil’run; George W!—Sir, does it not +sig—<em>My</em> chil’run! George Washington! George +Washington, my chil’run! George Washington, the +father of his country! My chil’run and fellow-citizen’ +of Gran’ Point’, he is nominated for George Washington, +the father of his country! Sir, ah you not a +relation?”</p> + +<p>“I really can’t tell you,” said the writer, with a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> +calm smile. “I’ve always been too busy to look it +up.” He finished his signature as he talked. Bonaventure +bent over it.</p> + +<p>“Tar-box. Chil’run and friends and fellow-citizen’, +I have the p’oudness to int’oduce you the hono’able +George Washington Tarbox! And now the exhibition +is dismiss’; but stop! Sir, if some—aw all—desire +gratefully to shake hand’?”</p> + +<p>“I should feel honored.”</p> + +<p>“Attention, everybody! Make rank! Everybody +by two by two, the school-chil’run coming last,—Claude +and Sidonie resting till the end,—pass ’round—shake +hand’—walk out—similah a fu-nial.”</p> + +<p>So came, shook hands, and passed out and to their +simple homes, the manhood, motherhood, maidenhood, +childhood of Grande Pointe, not knowing that before +many days every household in the village was to be a +subscriber to the “Album of Universal Information.”</p> + +<p>One of the last of the householders was Chat-oué. +But when he grasped the honored hand, he also held +it, fixing upon its owner a generous and somewhat +bacchanalian smile.</p> + +<p>“I’m a fool, but <em>I</em> know. You been put op a jawb +on me. Dass four, five days now I been try to meck +out what dat niggah at Belle Alliance holla to me when +I gallop down de road.” (Chat-oué’s English had been +acquired from negroes in the sugar-house, and was like +theirs.) “He been braggin’ dat day befo’”—turning +to Bonaventure—“how ’twas him show you de +road to Gran’ Point’ las’ year; and so I git mad and +tell him, me,” addressing the stranger again, “how +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> +we goin’ git school shot op. Well, dat night I mit +him comin’ fum Gran’ Point’ and he hol’ at me. I +been try evva since meck out what he say. Yass. +An’ I <em>jis</em> meck it out! He say, ‘Watch out, watch +out, ’Mian Roussel and dat book-fellah dawn’t put op +jawb on <em>you</em>.’ Well, I’m a fool, but I know. You put +op jawb on me; I know. But dass all right—<em>I don’t +take no book.</em>” He laughed with the rest, scratched +his tipsy head, and backed out through the <i>pieux</i>.</p> + +<p>Only a fairy number remained, grouped around +the honorable Tarbox. They were St. Pierre, Bonaventure,—Maximian +detaining a middle-aged pair, +Sidonie’s timorous guardians,—and two others, who +held back, still waiting to shake hands.</p> + +<p>“Claude,” cried Bonaventure; “Sidonie.”</p> + +<p>They came. Claude shook hands and stepped inside. +Sidonie, with eyes on the ground, put forth her hand. +The honored guest held it lingeringly, and the ceremonies +were at an end.</p> + +<p>“Come,” said ’Mian, beckoning away the great G. +W.’s probable relative. They passed out together. +“Come!” he repeated, looking back and beckoning +again; “walk een! all han’! walk een house!”</p> + +<p>The guardian pair followed, hand in hand.</p> + +<p>“Claude,” said Bonaventure tenderly; but—</p> + +<p>“Claude,” more firmly said St. Pierre.</p> + +<p>The boy looked for one instant from the master’s +face to Sidonie’s; then turned, grasped his father’s +hand, and followed the others.</p> + +<p>A blaze of light filled Bonaventure’s heart. He +turned to Sidonie to give his hand—both her hands +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> +were clasped upon each other, and they only tightened. +But their eyes met—ah! those Acadian maidens, they +do it all with their eyes!—and lover and maiden +passed out and walked forth side by side. They are +going that way still, only—with hands joined.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PART_III_CHAP_I" id="PART_III_CHAP_I"></a>AU LARGE.</h2> + + + +<h3 style="padding-top: 3em;">CHAPTER I.</h3> + +<h3>THE POT-HUNTER.</h3> + + +<p>The sun was just rising, as a man stepped from his +slender dug-out and drew half its length out upon the +oozy bank of a pretty bayou. Before him, as he +turned away from the water, a small gray railway-platform +and frame station-house, drowsing on long +legs in the mud and water, were still veiled in the +translucent shade of the deep cypress swamp, whose +long moss drapings almost overhung them on the side +next the brightening dawn. The solemn gray festoons +did overhang the farthest two or three of a few flimsy +wooden houses and a saw-mill with its lumber, logs, +and sawdust, its cold furnace and idle engine.</p> + +<p>As with gun and game this man mounted by a short, +rude ladder to firmer footing on the platform, a negro, +who sat fishing for his breakfast on the bank a few +yards up the stream, where it bent from the north and +west, slowly lifted his eyes, noted that the other was +a white man, an Acadian, and brought his gaze back +again to hook and line.</p> + +<p>He had made out these facts by the man’s shape +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> +and dress, for the face was in shade. The day, I +say, was still in its genesis. The waters that slid so +languidly between the two silent men as not to crook +one line of the station-house’s image inverted in their +clear dark depths, had not yet caught a beam upon +their whitest water-lily, nor yet upon their tallest bulrush; +but the tops of the giant cypresses were green +and luminous, and as the Acadian glanced abroad +westward, in the open sky far out over the vast marshy +breadths of the “shaking prairie,”<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> two still clouds, +whose under surfaces were yet dusky and pink, sparkled +on their sunward edges like a frosted fleece. You +could not have told whether the Acadian saw the black +man or not. His dog, soiled and wet, stood beside +his knee, pricked his ears for a moment at sight of the +negro, and then dropped them.</p> + +<p>It was September. The comfortable air could only +near by be seen to stir the tops of the high reeds whose +crowding myriads stretched away south, west, and +north, an open sea of green, its immense distances +relieved here and there by strips of swamp forest +tinged with their peculiar purple haze. Eastward the +railroad’s long causeway and telegraph-poles narrowed +on the view through its wide axe-hewn lane in the overtowering +swamp. New Orleans, sixty miles or more +away, was in that direction. Westward, rails, causeway, +and telegraph, tapered away again across the +illimitable hidden quicksands of the “trembling +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> +prairie” till the green disguise of reeds and rushes +closed in upon the attenuated line, and only a small +notch in a far strip of woods showed where it still led +on toward Texas. Behind the Acadian the smoke +of woman’s early industry began to curl from two or +three low chimneys.</p> + +<p>But his eye lingered in the north. He stood with +his dog curled at his feet beside a bunch of egrets,—killed +for their plumage,—the butt of his long fowling-piece +resting on the platform, and the arm half outstretched +whose hand grasped the barrels near the +muzzle. The hand, toil-hardened and weather-browned, +showed, withal, antiquity of race. His feet were in +rough muddy brogans, but even so they were smallish +and shapely. His garments were coarse, but there +were no tatters anywhere. He wore a wide Campeachy +hat. His brown hair was too long, but it was +fine. His eyes, too, were brown, and, between brief +moments of alertness, sedate. Sun and wind had +darkened his face, and his pale brown beard curled +meagre and untrimmed on a cheek and chin that in +forty years had never felt a razor.</p> + +<p>Some miles away in the direction in which he was +looking, the broadening sunlight had struck and brightened +the single red lug-sail of a boat whose unseen +hull, for all the eye could see, was coming across +the green land on a dry keel. But the bayou, hidden +in the tall rushes, was its highway; for suddenly the +canvas was black as it turned its shady side, and soon +was red again as another change of direction caught +the sunbeams upon its tense width and showed that, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> +with much more wind out there than it would find by +and by in here under the lee of the swamp, it was following +the unseen meanderings of the stream. Presently +it reached a more open space where a stretch of +the water lay shining in the distant view. Here the +boat itself came into sight, showed its bunch of some +half-dozen passengers for a minute or two, and vanished +again, leaving only its slanting red sail skimming +nautilus-like over the vast breezy expanse.</p> + +<p>Yet more than two hours later the boat’s one blue-shirted, +barefoot Sicilian sailor in red worsted cap had +with one oar at the stern just turned her drifting form +into the glassy calm by the railway-station, tossed her +anchor ashore, and was still busy with small matters +of boat-keeping, while his five passengers clambered to +the platform.</p> + +<p>The place showed somewhat more movement now. +The negro had long ago wound his line upon its crooked +pole, gathered up his stiffened fishes from the bank, +thrust them into the pockets of his shamelessly ragged +trousers, and was gone to his hut in the underbrush. +But the few amphibious households round about were +passing out and in at the half-idle tasks of their slow +daily life, and a young white man was bustling around, +now into the station and now out again upon the platform, +with authority in his frown and a pencil and two +matches behind his ear. It was Monday. Two or +three shabby negroes with broad, collapsed, glazed +leather travelling-bags of the old carpet-sack pattern +dragged their formless feet about, waiting to take the +train for the next station to hire out there as rice +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> +harvesters, and one, with his back turned, leaned motionless +against an open window gazing in upon the ticking +telegraph instruments. A black woman in blue cotton +gown, red-and-yellow Madras turban, and some sportsman’s +cast-off hunting-shoes minus the shoe-strings, +crouched against the wall. Beside her stood her +shapely mulatto daughter, with head-covering of white +cotton cloth, in which female instinct had discovered +the lines of grace and disposed them after the folds of +the Egyptian fellah head—dress. A portly white man, +with decided polish in his commanding air, evidently a +sugar-planter from the Mississippi “coast” ten miles +northward, moved about in spurred boots, and put +personal questions to the negroes, calling them “boys,” +and the mulattress, “girl.”</p> + +<p>The pot-hunter was still among them; or rather, +he had drawn apart from the rest, and stood at the +platform’s far end, leaning on his gun, an innocent, +wild-animal look in his restless eyes, and a slumberous +agility revealed in his strong, supple loins. The +station-agent went to him, and with abrupt questions +and assertions, to which the man replied in low, grave +monosyllables, bought his game,—as he might have +done two hours before, but—an Acadian can wait. +There was some trouble to make exact change, and the +agent, saying “Hold on, I’ll fix it,” went into the +station just as the group from the Sicilian’s boat +reached the platform. The agent came bustling out +again with his eyes on his palm, counting small silver.</p> + +<p>“Here!” But he spoke to the empty air. He +glanced about with an offended frown.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> +“Achille!” There was no reply. He turned to +one of the negroes: “Where’s that ’Cajun?” Nobody +knew. Down where his canoe had lain, tiny rillets +of muddy water were still running into its imprint left +in the mire; but canoe, dog, and man had vanished +into the rank undergrowth of the swamp.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_II" id="PART_III_CHAP_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3> + +<h3>CLAUDE.</h3> + + +<p>Of the party that had come in the Sicilian’s boat +four were men and one a young woman. She was +pretty; so pretty, and of such restful sweetness of +countenance, that the homespun garb, the brand-new +creaking gaiters, and a hat that I dare not describe +were nothing against her. Her large, soft, dark eyes, +more sweetly but not less plainly than the attire, confessed +her a denizen of the woods.</p> + +<p>Not so the man who seemed to be her husband. +His dress was rustic enough; and yet you would have +seen at once that it was not the outward circumstance, +but an inward singularity, that had made him and +must always keep him a stranger to the ordinary ways +of men. There was an emotional exaltation in his face +as he hastily led his companions with military directness +to the ticket window. Two others of the men +were evidently father and son, the son barely twenty +years of age, the parent certainly not twice as old; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> +and the last of the group was a strong, sluggish man +of years somewhat near, but under, fifty.</p> + +<p>They bought but one ticket; but, as one may say, +they all bought it, the youngest extricating its price +with difficulty from the knotted corner of his red handkerchief, +and the long, thin hand of the leader making +the purchase, while the eyes of the others followed +every movement with unconscious absorption.</p> + +<p>The same unemotional attentiveness was in their +forms as their slow feet drifted here and there always +after the one leader, their eyes on his demonstrative +hands, and their ears drinking in his discourse. He +showed them the rails of the track, how smooth they +were, how they rested on their cross-ties, and how they +were spiked in place always the same width apart. +They crowded close about him at the telegraph-window +while he interpreted with unconscious originality the +wonders of electricity. Their eyes rose slowly from +the window up and out along the ascending wires to +where they mounted the poles and eastward and westward +leaped away sinking and rising from insulator to +insulator. One of the party pointed at these green +dots of glass and murmured a question, and the leader’s +wife laid her small hand softly upon his arm to +check the energy of his utterance as he said, audibly +to all on the platform, and with a strong French +accent:</p> + +<p>“They?—are there lest the heat of the telegraph +fluid inflame the post-es!” He laid his own hand tenderly +upon his wife’s in response to its warning pressure, +yet turned to the sugar-planter and asked:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> +“Sir, pardon; do I not explain truly?”</p> + +<p>The planter, with restrained smile, was about to +reply, when some one called, “There she comes!” +and every eye was turned to the east.</p> + +<p>“Truly!” exclaimed the inquirer, in a voice made +rich with emotion. “Truly, she comes! She comes! +The iron horse, though they call him ‘she’!” He +turned to the planter—“Ah! sir, why say they thus +many or thus many horse-power, when truly”—his +finger-tip pattered upon his temple—“truly it is mind-power!”</p> + +<p>The planter, smiling decorously, turned away, and +the speaker looked again down the long vacant track +to where the small dark focus of every one’s attention +was growing on the sight. He spoke again, in lower +voice but with larger emotion.</p> + +<p>“Mind-power! thought-power! knowledge-power! +learning and thinking power!” He caught his wife’s +arm. “See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her enhancing +in magnitude so fastly approaching!” As he +spoke a puff of white vapor lifted from the object and +spread out against the blue, the sunbeams turned it to +silver and pearl, and a moment later came the far-away, +long, wild scream of the locomotive.</p> + +<p>“Retire!” exclaimed the husband, drawing back +all his gazing companions at once. “Retire! retire! +the whisttel is to signify warning to retire from too +close the edge of the galérie! There! rest at this +point. ’Tis far enough. Now, each and all resolve +to stand and shrink not whilst that iron mare, eating +coal, drinking hot water, and spitting fire, shall seem, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> +but falsely, threatening to come on the platform. Ah! +Claude!” he cried to the youngest of the group, “now +shall you behold what I have told you—that vast +am-azement of civilize-ation anni-<em>high</em>-lating space and +also time at the tune of twenty miles the hour!” He +wheeled upon the planter—“Sir, do I exaggerate?”</p> + +<p>“Forty miles,” replied the planter; “sometimes +fifty.”</p> + +<p>“Friends,—confirmated! more than twicefold confirmated. +Forty, sometimes fifty! Thou heardest it, +Maximian Roussel! Not from me, but from the gentleman +himself! Forty, sometimes fifty! Such the +march, the forward march of civilize-ation!”</p> + +<p>His words were cut short by the unearthly neigh of +the engine. Sidonie smote herself backward against +her husband.</p> + +<p>“Nay, Sidonie, fear thou nothing! Remember, +dear Sidonie, thy promise of self-control! Stand +boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son, stand.” +The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, +and shaking the earth, the engine and train +loomed up to the platform and stopped.</p> + +<p>“Come!” cried Bonaventure Deschamps; “lose no +moment, dear friends. Tide and time—even less the +railroad—wait for nobody. Claude, remember; give +your ticket of passage to none save the conductor only. +’Tis print’ in letter’ of gold on front his cap—‘Conductor’—Stop! +he is here.—Sir, this young man, +inexperienced, is taking passage for”—</p> + +<p>“Shoot him aboard,” replied a uniformed man, and +walked on without a pause. Claude moved toward +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> +the train. Bonaventure seized him by both arms and +gazed on him.</p> + +<p>“Claude St. Pierre! Claude, my boy, pride of +Grande Pointe, second only with Sidonie, farewell!”</p> + +<p>Tears leaped into the eyes of both. Bonaventure +snatched Claude to his arms and kissed him. It was +less than nothing to him that every eye on and off the +train was on them. He relaxed his grasp. “Sidonie! +tell him farewell!—ah! nay! shake not hands only! +Kiss her, Claude! Kiss him, my own Sidonie, kiss +him farewell!”</p> + +<p>It was done. Claude blushed red, and Sidonie +stepped back, wiping her eyes. Maximian moved into +the void, and smiling gave his hand to the young +adventurer.</p> + +<p>“Adjieu, Claude.” He waved a hand awkwardly. +“Teck care you’seff,” and dropped the hand audibly +against his thigh.</p> + +<p>Claude’s eye sought his father. St. Pierre pressed +forward, laid his right hand upon his son’s shoulder, +and gazed into his face. His voice was low and +husky. He smiled.</p> + +<p>“Claude,”—tears rose in his eyes, but he swallowed +them down,—“Claude,—my baby,”—and +the flood came. The engine-bell rang. The conductor +gave the warning word, the youth leaped upon his +father’s neck. St. Pierre thrust him off, caught his +two cheeks between fluttering palms and kissed him +violently; the train moved, the young man leaped +aboard, the blue uniforms disappeared, save one on +the rear platform, the bell ceased, the gliding mass +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> +shrunk and dwindled away, the rails clicked more and +more softly, the tearful group drew closer together as +they gazed after the now-unheard train. It melted to +a point and disappeared, the stillness of forest and +prairie fell again upon the place, the soaring sun +shone down, and Claude St. Pierre was gone to seek +his fortune.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_III" id="PART_III_CHAP_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3> + +<h3>THE TAVERN FIRESIDE.</h3> + + +<p>I call to mind a certain wild, dark night in November. +St. Pierre lay under his palmetto thatch in the +forest behind Grande Pointe, and could not sleep for +listening to the wind, and wondering where his son was, +in that wild Texas norther. On the Mississippi a +steamer, upward bound, that had whistled to land at +Belmont or Belle Alliance plantation, seemed to be +staying there afraid to venture away. Miles southward +beyond the river and the lands on that side, +Lake des Allemands was combing with the tempest +and hissing with the rain. Still farther away, on the +little bayou and at the railway-station in the edge of +the swamp that we already know, and westward over +the prairie where Claude had vanished into the world, +all life was hidden and mute. And farther still, leagues +and leagues away, the mad tempest was riding the white-caps +in Berwick’s Bay and Grande Lake; and yet beyond, +beyond New Iberia, and up by Carancro, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> +around again by St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Grand +Coteau, and Opelousas, and down once more across +the prairies of Vermilion, the marshes about Côte +Blanche Bay, and the islands in the Gulf, it came +bounding, screaming, and buffeting. And all the way +across that open sweep from Mermentau to Côte Gelée +it was tearing the rain to mist and freezing it wherever +it fell, only lulling and warming a little about Joseph +Jefferson’s Island, as if that prank were too mean a +trick to play upon his orange-groves.</p> + +<p>In Vermilionville the wind came around every corner +piercing and pinching to the bone. The walking was +slippery; and though it was still early bedtime and +the ruddy lamp-light filled the wet panes of some +window every here and there, scarce a soul was stirring +without, on horse or afoot, to be guided by its kindly +glow.</p> + +<p>At the corner of two streets quite away from the +court-house square, a white frame tavern, with a wooden +Greek porch filling its whole two-story front and a +balcony built within the porch at the second-story +windows in oddest fashion, was glowing with hospitable +firelight. It was not nearly the largest inn of the +place, nor the oldest, nor the newest, nor the most +accessible. There was no clink of glass there. Yet +in this, only third year of its present management, it +was the place where those who knew best always put +up.</p> + +<p>Around the waiting-room fire this evening sat a +goodly semicircle of men,—commercial travellers. +Some of them were quite dry and comfortable, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> +wore an air of superior fortune over others whose +shoes and lower garments sent out more or less steam +and odor toward the open fireplace. Several were +smoking. One who neither smoked nor steamed stood +with his back to the fire and the skirts of his coat lifted +forward on his wrists. He was a rather short, slight, +nervy man, about thirty years of age, with a wide pink +baldness running so far back from his prominent temples +and forehead that when he tipped his face toward the +blue joists overhead, enjoying the fatigue of a well-filled +day, his polished skull sent back the firelight +brilliantly. There was a light skirmish of conversation +going on, in which he took no part. No one +seemed really acquainted with another. Presently a +man sitting next on the left of him put away a quill +toothpick in his watch-pocket, looked up into the face +of the standing man, and said, with a faint smile:</p> + +<p>“That job’s done!”</p> + +<p>With friendly gravity the other looked down and +replied, “I never use a quill toothpick.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the one who sat, “it’s bad. Still I +do it.”</p> + +<p>“Nothing,” continued the other,—“nothing harder +than a sharpened white-pine match should ever go +between the teeth. Brush thoroughly but not violently +once or twice daily with a moderately stiff brush dipped +in soft water into which has been dropped a few drops +of the tincture of myrrh. A brush of badger’s hair is +best. If tartar accumulates, have it removed by a +dentist. Do not bite thread or crack nuts with the +teeth, or use the teeth for other purposes than those +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> +for which nature designed them.” He bent toward +his hearer with a smile of irresistible sweetness, drew +his lips away from his gums, snapped his teeth together +loudly twice or thrice, and smiled again, modestly. The +other man sought defence in buoyancy of manner.</p> + +<p>“Right you are!” he chirruped. He reached up to +his adviser’s blue and crimson neck-scarf, and laid his +finger and thumb upon a large, solitary pear-shaped +pearl. “You’re like me; you believe in the real +thing.”</p> + +<p>“I do,” said the pearl’s owner; “and I like people +that like the real thing. A pearl of the first water <em>is</em> +real. There’s no sham there; no deception—except +the iridescence, which is, as you doubtless know, an +optical illusion attributable to the intervention of rays +of light reflected from microscopic corrugations of the +nacreous surface. But for that our eye is to blame, +not the pearl. See?”</p> + +<p>The seated man did not reply; but another man on +the speaker’s right, a large man, widest at the waist, +leaned across the arm of his chair to scrutinize the +jewel. Its owner turned his throat for the inspection, +despite a certain grumness and crocodilian aggressiveness +in the man’s interest.</p> + +<p>“I like a diamond, myself,” said the new on-looker, +dropped back in his chair, and met the eyes of the +pearl’s owner with a heavy glance.</p> + +<p>“Tastes differ,” kindly responded the wearer of the +pearl. “Are you acquainted with the language of +gems?”</p> + +<p>The big-waisted man gave a negative grunt, and spat +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> +bravely into the fire. “Didn’t know gems could +talk,” he said.</p> + +<p>“They do not talk, they speak,” responded their +serene interpreter. The company in general noticed +that, with all his amiability of tone and manner, his +mild eyes held the big-waisted man with an uncomfortable +steadiness. “They speak not to the ear, but to +the eye and to the thought:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Thought is deeper than all speech;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Feeling deeper than all thought;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Souls to souls can never teach<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What unto themselves was taught.’”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The speaker’s victim writhed, but the riveted gaze +and an uplifted finger pinioned him. “You should +know—every one should know—the language of +gems. There is a language of flowers:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But the language of gems is as much more important +than that of flowers as the imperishable gem is itself +more enduring than the withering, the evanescent +blossom. A gentleman may not with safety present to +a lady a gem of whose accompanying sentiment he is +ignorant. But with the language of gems understood +between them, how could a sentiment be more exquisitely +or more acceptably expressed than by the gift +of a costly gem uttering that sentiment with an unspoken +eloquence! Did you but know the language +of gems, your choice would not be the diamond. +‘Diamond me no diamonds,’ emblems of pride—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> +<span class="i0">‘Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I see the lords of humankind pass by.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Your choice would have been the pearl, symbol of +modest loveliness.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Orient pearls at random strung;’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Fold, little trembler, thy fluttering wing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Freely partake of love’s fathomless spring;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So hallowed thy presence, the spirit within<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hath whispered, “The angels protect thee from sin.”’”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The speaker ceased, with his glance hovering caressingly +over the little trembler with fluttering wing, that +is, the big-waisted man. The company sat in listening +expectancy; and the big-waisted man, whose eyes had +long ago sought refuge in the fire, lifted them and said, +satirically, “Go on,” at the same time trying to buy +his way out with a smile.</p> + +<p>“It’s your turn,” quickly responded the jewel’s +owner, with something droll in his manner that made +the company laugh at the other’s expense. The big-waisted +man kindled, then smiled again, and said:</p> + +<p>“Was that emblem of modest loveliness give’ to you +symbolically, or did you present it to yourself?”</p> + +<p>“I took it for a debt,” replied the wearer, bowing +joyously.</p> + +<p>“Ah!” said the other. “Well, I s’pose it was +either that or her furniture?”</p> + +<p>“Thanks, yes.” There was a pause, and then the +pearl’s owner spoke on. “Strange fact. That was +years ago. And yet”—he fondled his gem with thumb +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> +and finger and tender glance—“you’re the first man +I’ve met to whom I could sincerely and symbolically +present it, and you don’t want it. I’m sorry.”</p> + +<p>“I see,” said the big-waisted man, glaring at him.</p> + +<p>“So do I,” responded the pearl’s owner. A smile +went round, and the company sat looking into the fire. +Outside the wind growled and scolded, shook and +slapped the house, and thrashed it with the rain. A +man sitting against the chimney said:</p> + +<p>“If this storm keeps on six hours longer I reduce +my estimate of the cotton-crop sixty-five thousand +bales.” But no one responded; and as the importance +died out of his face he dropped his gaze into the fire +with a pretence of deep meditation. Presently another, +a good-looking young fellow, said:</p> + +<p>“Well, gents, I never cared much for jewelry. But +I like a nice scarf-pin; it’s nobby. And I like a handsome +seal-ring.” He drew one from a rather chubby +finger, and passed it to his next neighbor, following it +with his eyes, and adding: “That’s said to be a real +intaglio. But—now, one thing I don’t like, that’s to +see a lady wear a quantity of diamond rings outside of +her glove, and heavy gold chains, and”—He was +interrupted. A long man, with legs stiffened out to +the fire, lifted a cigar between two fingers, sent a soft +jet of smoke into the air, and began monotonously:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“‘Chains on a Southern woman? Chains?’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>I know the lady that wrote that piece.” He suddenly +gathered himself up for some large effort. “I can’t +recite it as she used to, but”—And to the joy of +all he was interrupted.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> +“Gentlemen,” said one, throwing a cigarette stump +into the fire, “that brings up the subject of the war. +By the by, do you know what that war cost the Government +of the United States?” He glanced from +one to another until his eye reached the wearer of the +pearl, who had faced about, and stood now, with the +jewel glistening in the firelight, and who promptly +said:</p> + +<p>“Yes; how much?”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said the first questioner with sudden caution, +“I may be mistaken, but I’ve heard that it cost +six—I think they say six—billion dollars. Didn’t +it?”</p> + +<p>“It did,” replied the other, with a smile of friendly +commendation; “it cost six billion, one hundred and +eighty-nine million, nine hundred and twenty-nine +thousand, nine hundred and eight dollars. The largest +item is interest; one billion, seven hundred and one +million, two hundred and fifty-six thousand, one hundred +and ninety-eight dollars, forty-two cents. The +next largest, the pay of troops; the next, clothing +the army. If there’s any item of the war’s expenses +you would like to know, ask me. Capturing president +Confederate States—ninety-seven thousand and thirty-one +dollars, three cents.” The speaker’s manner grew +almost gay. The other smiled defensively, and +responded:</p> + +<p>“You’ve got a good memory for sta-stistics. I +haven’t; and yet I always did like sta-stistics. I’m +no sta-stitian, and yet if I had the time sta-stistics +would be my favorite study; I s’pose it’s yours.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> +The wearer of the pearl shook his head. “No. +But I like it. I like the style of mind that likes it.” +The two bowed with playful graciousness to each +other. “Yes, I do. And I’ve studied it, some little. +I can tell you the best time of every celebrated trotter +in this country; the quickest trip a steamer ever made +between Queenstown and New York, New York and +Queenstown, New Orleans and New York; the greatest +speed ever made on a railroad or by a yacht, +pedestrian, carrier-pigeon, or defaulting cashier; the +rate of postage to every foreign country; the excess +of women over men in every State of the Union so +afflicted—or blessed, according to how you look at +it; the number of volumes in each of the world’s ten +largest libraries; the salary of every officer of the +United-States Government; the average duration of +life in a man, elephant, lion, horse, anaconda, tortoise, +camel, rabbit, ass, etcetera-etcetera; the age of every +crowned head in Europe; each State’s legal and commercial +rate of interest; and how long it takes a healthy +boy to digest apples, baked beans, cabbage, dates, +eggs, fish, green corn, h, i, j, k, l-m-n-o-p, quinces, +rice, shrimps, tripe, veal, yams, and any thing you can +cook commencing with z. It’s a fascinating study. +But it’s not my favorite.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘The proper study of mankind is man.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“I love to study human nature. That’s my favorite +study! The art of reading the inner human nature by +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> +the outer aspect is of immeasurable interest and boundless +practical value, and the man who can practise it +skilfully and apply it sagaciously is on the high road +to fortune, and why? Because to know it thoroughly +is to know whom to trust and how far; to select wisely +a friend, a confidant, a partner in any enterprise; to +shun the untrustworthy, to anticipate and turn to our +personal advantage the merits, faults, and deficiencies +of all, and to evolve from their character such practical +results as we may choose for our own ends; but a +thorough knowledge is attained only by incessant observation +and long practice; like music, it demands +a special talent possessed by different individuals in +variable quantity or not at all. You, gentlemen, all +are, what I am not, commercial tourists. Before you +I must be modest. You, each of you, have been +chosen from surrounding hundreds or thousands for +your superior ability, natural or acquired, to scan the +human face and form and know whereof you see. I +look you in the eye—you look me in the eye—for +the eye, though it does not tell all, tells much—it +is the key of character—it has been called the mirror +of the soul—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘And looks commercing with the skies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And so looking you read me. You say to yourself, +‘There’s a man with no concealments, yet who speaks +not till he’s spoken to; knows when to stop, and +stops.’ You note my pale eyebrows, my slightly +prominent and pointed chin, somewhat over-sized +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> +mouth; small, well-spread ears, faintly aquiline nose; +fine, thin, blonde hair, a depression in the skull where +the bump of self-conceit ought to be, and you say, ‘A +man that knows his talents without being vain of them; +who not only minds his own business, but loves it, and +who in that business, be it buggy-whips or be it washine, +or be it something far nobler,’—which, let me +say modestly, it is,—‘simply goes to the head of the +class and stays there.’ Yes, sirs, if I say that reading +the human countenance is one of my accomplishments, +I am diffidently mindful that in this company, I, myself, +am read, perused; no other probably so well read—I +mean so exhaustively perused. For there is one thing +about me, gentlemen, if you’ll allow me to say it, I’m +short metre, large print, and open to the public seven +days in the week. And yet you probably all make one +mistake about me: you take me for the alumni of some +university. Not so. I’m a self-made man. I made +myself; and considering that I’m the first man I ever +made, I think—pardon the seeming egotism—I think +I’ve done well. A few years ago there dwelt in humble +obscurity among the granite hills of New England, +earning his bread by the sweat of his brow upon +his father’s farm, a youth to fortune and to fame +unknown. But one day a voice within him said, +‘Tarbox’—George W.,—namesake of the man who +never told a lie,—‘do you want to succeed in life? +Then leave the production of tobacco and cider to unambitious +age, and find that business wherein you can +always give a man ten times as much for his dollar as +his dollar is worth.’ The meaning was plain, and from +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> +that time forth young Tarbox aspired to become a +book-agent. ’Twas not long ere he, like</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Young Harry Bluff, left his friends and his home,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his dear native land, o’er the wide world to roam.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Books became his line, and full soon he was the head +of the line. And why? Was it because in the first +short twelve months of his career he sold, delivered, +and got the money for, 5107 copies of ‘Mend-me-at-Home’? +No. Was it, then, because three years later +he sold in one year, with no other assistance than a +man to drive the horse and wagon, hold the blackboard, +and hand out the books, 10,003 copies of ‘Rapid ’Rithmetic’? +It was not. Was it, then, because in 1878, +reading aright the public mind, he said to his publishers, +whose confidence in him was unbounded, ‘It +ain’t “Mend-me-at-Home” the people want most, nor +“Rapid ’Rithmetic,” nor “Heal Thyself,” nor “I +meet the Emergency,” nor the “Bouquet of Poetry +and Song.” What they want is all these in one.’—‘Abridged?’ +said the publishers. ‘Enlarged!’ said +young Tarbox,—‘enlarged and copiously illustrated, +complete in one volume, price, cloth, three dollars, +sheep four, half morocco, gilt edges, five; real value +to the subscriber, two hundred and fifty; title, “The +Album of Universal Information; author, G. W. Tarbox; +editor, G. W. T.; agent for the United States, +the Canadas, and Mexico, G. W. Tarbox,” that is to +say, myself.’ That, gentlemen, is the reason I stand +at the head of my line; not merely because on every +copy sold I make an author’s as well as a solicitor’s +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> +margin; but because, being the author, I know whereof +I sell. A man that’s got my book has got a college +education; and when a man taps me,—for, gentlemen, +I never spout until I’m tapped,—and information +bursts from me like water from a street hydrant, +and he comes to find out that every thing I tell is in +that wonderful book, and that every thing that is +in that wonderful book I can tell, he wants to own +a copy; and when I tell him I can’t spare my sample +copy, but I’ll take his subscription, he smiles gratefully”—</p> + +<p>A cold, wet blast, rushing into the room from the +hall, betrayed the opening of the front door. The door +was shut again, and a well-formed, muscular young +man who had entered stood in the parlor doorway +lifting his hat from his head, shaking the rain from it, +and looking at it with amused diffidence. Mr. Tarbox +turned about once more with his back to the fire, gave +the figure a quick glance of scrutiny, then a second +and longer one, and then dropped his eyes to the floor. +The big-waisted man shifted his chair, tipped it back, +and said:</p> + +<p>“He smiles gratefully, you say?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“And subscribes?”</p> + +<p>“If he’s got any sense,” Mr. Tarbox replied in a +pre-occupied tone. His eyes were on the young man +who still stood in the door. This person must have +reached the house in some covered conveyance. Even +his boot-tops were dry or nearly so. He was rather +pleasing to see; of good stature, his clothing cheap. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> +A dark-blue flannel sack of the ready-made sort hung +on him not too well. Light as the garment was, he +showed no sign that he felt the penetrating cold out of +which he had just come. His throat and beardless +face had the good brown of outdoor life, his broad +chest strained the two buttons of his sack, his head +was well-poised, his feet were shapely, and but for +somewhat too much roundness about the shoulder-blades, +noticeable in the side view as he carefully stood +a long, queer package that was not buggy-whips +against the hat-rack, it would have been fair to pronounce +him an athlete.</p> + +<p>The eyes of the fireside group were turned toward +him; but not upon him. They rested on a girl of +sixteen who had come down the hall, and was standing +before the new-comer just beyond the door. The +registry-book was just there on a desk in the hall. She +stood with a freshly dipped pen in her hand, ignoring +the gaze from the fireside with a faintly overdone +calmness of face. The new guest came forward, and, +in a manner that showed slender acquaintance with the +operation, slowly registered his name and address.</p> + +<p>He did it with such pains-taking, that, upside down +as the writing was, she read it as he wrote. As the +Christian name appeared, her perfunctory glance became +attention. As the surname followed, the attention +became interest and recognition. And as the +address was added, Mr. Tarbox detected pleasure dancing +behind the long fringe of her discreet eyes, and +marked their stolen glance of quick inspection upon the +short, dark locks and strong young form still bent over +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> +the last strokes of the writing. But when he straightened +up, carefully shut the book, and fixed his brown +eyes upon hers in guileless expectation of instructions, +he saw nothing to indicate that he was not the entire +stranger that she was to him.</p> + +<p>“You done had sopper?” she asked. The uncommon +kindness of such a question at such an hour of a +tavern’s evening was lost on the young man’s obvious +inexperience, and as one schooled to the hap-hazard +of forest and field he merely replied:</p> + +<p>“Naw, I didn’ had any.”</p> + +<p>The girl turned—what a wealth of black hair she +had!—and disappeared as she moved away along the +hall. Her voice was heard: “Mamma?” Then +there was the silence of an unheard consultation. The +young man moved a step or two into the parlor and +returned toward the door as a light double foot-fall +approached again down the hall and the girl appeared +once more, somewhat preceded by a small, tired-looking, +pretty woman some thirty-five years of age, +of slow, self-contained movement and clear, meditative +eyes.</p> + +<p>But the guest, too, had been re-enforced. A man +had come silently from the fireside, taken his hand, +and now, near the doorway, was softly shaking it and +smiling. Surprise, pleasure, and reverential regard +were mingled in the young man’s face, and his open +mouth was gasping—</p> + +<p>“Mister Tarbox!”</p> + +<p>“Claude St. Pierre, after six years, I’m glad to see +you.—Madame, take good care of Claude.—No fear +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> +but she will, my boy; if anybody in Louisiana knows +how to take care of a traveller, it’s Madame Beausoleil.” +He smiled for all. The daughter’s large black +eyes danced, but the mother asked Claude, with unmoved +countenance and soft tone:</p> + +<p>“You are Claude St. Pierre?—from Gran’ +Point’?”</p> + +<p>“Yass.”</p> + +<p>“Dass lately since you left yondah?”</p> + +<p>“About two month’.”</p> + +<p>“Bonaventure Deschamps—he was well?”</p> + +<p>“Yass.” Claude’s eyes were full of a glad surprise, +and asked a question that his lips did not dare +to venture upon. Madame Beausoleil read it, and she +said:</p> + +<p>“We was raise’ together, Bonaventure and me.” +She waved her hand toward her daughter. “He teach +her to read. Seet down to the fire; we make you some +sopper.”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_IV" id="PART_III_CHAP_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h3> + +<h3>MARGUERITE.</h3> + + +<p>Out in the kitchen, while the coffee was dripping +and the ham and eggs frying, the mother was very +silent, and the daughter said little, but followed her now +and then with furtive liftings of her young black eyes. +Marguerite remembered Bonaventure Deschamps well +and lovingly. For years she had seen the letters that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> +at long intervals came from him at Grande Pointe to +her mother here. In almost every one of them she +had read high praises of Claude. He had grown, thus, +to be the hero of her imagination. She had wondered +if it could ever happen that he would come within her +sight, and if so, when, where, how. And now, here +at a time of all times when it would have seemed least +possible, he had, as it were, rained down.</p> + +<p>She wondered to-night, with more definiteness of +thought than ever before, what were the deep feelings +which her reticent little mother—Marguerite was an +inch the taller—kept hid in that dear breast. Rarely +had emotion moved it. She remembered its terrible +heavings at the time of her father’s death, and the +later silent downpour of tears when her only sister and +brother were taken in one day. Since then, those +eyes had rarely been wet; yet more than once or twice +she had seen tears in them when they were reading a +letter from Grande Pointe. Had her mother ever had +something more than a sister’s love for Bonaventure? +Had Bonaventure loved her? And when? Before her +marriage, or after her widowhood?</p> + +<p>The only answer that came to her as she now stood, +knife in hand, by the griddle, was a roar of laughter +that found its way through the hall, the dining-room, +and two closed doors, from the men about the waiting-room +fireside. That was the third time she had heard +it. What could have put them so soon into such gay +mood? Could it be Claude? Somehow she hoped it +was not. Her mother reminded her that the batter-cakes +would burn. She quickly turned them. The +laugh came again.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> +When by and by she went to bid Claude to his repast, +the laughter, as she reached the door of the +waiting-room, burst upon her as the storm would have +done had she opened the front door. It came from all +but Claude and Mr. Tarbox. Claude sat with a knee +in his hands, smiling. The semicircle had widened out +from the fire, and in the midst Mr. Tarbox stood telling +a story, of which Grande Pointe was the scene, Bonaventure +Deschamps the hero, a school-examination the +circumstance, and he, G. W., the accidental arbiter of +destinies that hung upon its results. The big-waisted +man had retired for the night, and half an eye could +see that the story-teller had captivated the whole remaining +audience. He was just at the end as Marguerite +re-appeared at the door. The laugh suddenly +ceased, and then all rose; it was high bedtime.</p> + +<p>“And did they get married?” asked one. Three +or four gathered close to hear the answer.</p> + +<p>“Who? Sidonie and Bonnyventure? Yes. I didn’t +stay to see. I went away into Mississippi, Tennessee, +and Alabama, and just only a few weeks ago took a +notion to try this Attakapas and Opelousas region. +But that’s what Claude tells me to-night—married +more than five years ago.—Claude, your supper wants +you. Want me to go out and sit with you? Oh, no +trouble! not the slightest! It will make me feel as if +I was nearer to Bonnyventure.”</p> + +<p>And so the group about Claude’s late supper numbered +four. And because each had known Bonaventure, +though each in a very different way from any +other, they were four friends when Claude had +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> +demolished the ham and eggs, the strong black coffee, and +the griddle-cakes and sirop-de-batterie.</p> + +<p>At the top of the hall stairway, as Mr. Tarbox was +on his way to bed, one of the dispersed fireside circle +stopped him, saying:</p> + +<p>“That’s an awful good story!”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t try a poor one on you.”</p> + +<p>“Oh!—but really, now, in good earnest, it is good. +It’s good in more ways than one. Now, you know, +that man, hid away there in the swamp at Grande +Pointe, he little thinks that six or eight men away off +here in Vermilionville are going to bed to-night better +men—that’s it, sir—yes, sir, that’s it—yes, sir!—better +men—just for having heard of him!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarbox smiled with affectionate approval, and +began to move away; but the other put out a hand—</p> + +<p>“Say, look here; I’m going away on that two +o’clock train to-night. I want that book of yours. +And I don’t want to subscribe and wait. I want the +book now. That’s my way. I’m just that kind of a +man; I’m the nowest man you ever met up with. +That book’s just the kind of thing for a man like me +who ain’t got no time to go exhaustively delving and +investigating and researching into things, and yet has +got to keep as sharp as a brier.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarbox, on looking into his baggage, found he +could oblige this person. Before night fell again he +had done virtually the same thing, one by one, for all +the rest. By that time they were all gone; but Mr. +Tarbox made Vermilionville his base of operations for +several days.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> +Claude also tarried. For reasons presently to appear, +the “ladies parlor,” a small room behind the +waiting-room, with just one door, which let into the +hall at the hall’s inner end, was given up to his use; +and of evenings not only Mr. Tarbox, but Marguerite +and her mother as well, met with him, gathering familiarly +about a lamp that other male lodgers were not +invited to hover around.</p> + +<p>The group was not idle. Mr. Tarbox held big hanks +of blue and yellow yarn, which Zoséphine wound off +into balls. A square table quite filled the centre of +the room. There was a confusion of objects on it, +and now on one side and now on another Claude leaned +over it and slowly toiled, from morning until evening +alone, and in the evening with these three about him; +Marguerite, with her sewing dropped upon the floor, +watching his work with an interest almost wholly +silent, only making now and then a murmured comment, +her eyes passing at intervals from his pre-occupied +eyes to his hands, and her hand now and then +guessing and supplying his want as he looked for one +thing or another that had got out of sight. What was +he doing?</p> + +<p>As to Marguerite, more than he was aware of, +Zoséphine Beausoleil saw, and was already casting +about somewhat anxiously in her mind to think what, +if any thing, ought to be done about it. She saw her +child’s sewing lie forgotten on the floor, and the eyes +that should have been following the needle, fixed often +on the absorbed, unconscious, boyish-manly face so +near by. She saw them scanning the bent brows, the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> +smooth bronzed cheek, the purposeful mouth, and +the unusual length of dark eyelashes that gave its +charm to the whole face; and she saw them quickly +withdrawn whenever the face with those lashes was +lifted and an unsuspecting smile of young companionship +broke slowly about the relaxing lips and the soft, +deep-curtained eyes. No; Claude little knew what he +was doing. Neither did Marguerite. But, aside from +her, what was his occupation? I will explain.</p> + +<p>About five weeks earlier than this, a passenger on +an eastward-bound train of Morgan’s Louisiana and +Texas Railway stood at the rear door of the last coach, +eying critically the track as it glided swiftly from under +the train and shrank perpetually into the west. The +coach was nearly empty. No one was near him save +the brakeman, and by and by he took his attention +from the track and let it rest on this person. There +he found a singular attraction. Had he seen that face +before, or why did it provoke vague reminiscences of +great cypresses overhead, and deep-shaded leafy distances +with bayous winding out of sight through them, +and cane-brakes impenetrable to the eye, and axe-strokes—heard +but unseen—slashing through them +only a few feet away? Suddenly he knew.</p> + +<p>“Wasn’t it your father,” he said, “who was my +guide up Bayou des Acadiens and Blind River the time +I made the survey in that big swamp north of Grande +Pointe? Isn’t your name Claude St. Pierre?” And +presently they were acquainted.</p> + +<p>“You know I took a great fancy to your father. +And you’ve been clear through the arithmetic twice? +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> +Why, see here; you’re just the sort of man I—Look +here; don’t you want to learn to be a surveyor?” +The questioner saw that same ambition which +had pleased him so in the father, leap for joy in the +son’s eyes.</p> + +<p>An agreement was quickly reached. Then the surveyor +wandered into another coach, and nothing more +passed between them that day save one matter, which, +though trivial, has its place. When the surveyor returned +to the rear train, Claude was in a corner seat +gazing pensively through the window and out across +the wide, backward-flying, purpling green cane-fields +of St. Mary, to where on the far left the live-oaks +of Bayou Teche seemed hoveringly to follow on the +flank of their whooping and swaggering railway-train. +Claude turned and met the stranger’s regard with a +faint smile. His new friend spoke first.</p> + +<p>“Matters may turn out so that we can have your +father”—</p> + +<p>Claude’s eyes answered with a glad flash. “Dass +what I was t’inkin’!” he said, with a soft glow that +staid even when he fell again into revery.</p> + +<p>But when the engineer—for it seems that he was +an engineer, chief of a party engaged in redeeming +some extensive waste swamp and marsh lands—when +the chief engineer, on the third day afterward, drew +near the place where he suddenly recollected Claude +would be waiting to enter his service, and recalled this +part of their previous interview, he said to himself, +“No, it would be good for the father, but not best for +the son,” and fell to thinking how often parents are +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> +called upon to wrench their affections down into cruel +bounds to make the foundations of their children’s +prosperity.</p> + +<p>Claude widened to his new experience with the +rapidity of something hatched out of a shell. Moreover, +accident was in his favor; the party was short-handed +in its upper ranks, and Claude found himself +by this stress taken into larger and larger tasks as fast +as he could, though ever so crudely, qualify for them.</p> + +<p>“’Tisn’t at all the best thing for you,” said one of +the surveyors, “but I’ll lend you some books that will +teach you the why as well as the how.”</p> + +<p>In the use of these books by lantern-light certain +skill with the pen showed itself; and when at length +one day a despatch reached camp from the absent +“chief” stating that in two or three days certain matters +would take him to Vermilionville, and ordering +that some one be sent at once with all necessary field +notes and appliances, and give his undivided time to +the making of certain urgently needed maps, and the +only real draughtsman of the party was ill with swamp-fever, +Claude was sent.</p> + +<p>On his last half-day’s journey toward the place, he +had fallen in with an old gentleman whom others +called “Governor,” a tall, trim figure, bent but little +under fourscore years, with cheerful voice and ready +speech, and eyes hidden behind dark glasses and +flickering in their deep sockets.</p> + +<p>“Go to Madame Beausoleil’s,” he advised Claude. +“That is the place for you. Excellent person; I’ve +known her from childhood; a woman worthy a higher +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> +station.” And so, all by accident, chance upon +chance, here was Claude making maps; and this delightful +work, he thought, was really all he was doing, +in Zoséphine’s little inner parlor.</p> + +<p>By and by it was done. The engineer had not yet +arrived. The storm had delayed work in one place +and undone work in another, and he was detained +beyond expectation. But a letter said he would come +in a day or two more, and some maps of earlier surveys, +drawn by skilled workmen in great New Orleans, +arrived; seeing which, Claude blushed for his own and +fell to work to make them over.</p> + +<p>“If at first you not succeed,” said Claude,—</p> + +<p>“Try—try aga-a-ain,” responded Marguerite; +“Bonaventure learn me that poetry; and you?”</p> + +<p>“Yass,” said Claude. He stood looking down at +his work and not seeing it. What he saw was Grande +Pointe in the sunset hour of a spring day six years +gone, the wet, spongy margin of a tiny bayou under +his feet, the great swamp at his back, the leafy undergrowth +all around; his canoe and paddle waiting for +him, and Bonaventure repeating to him—swamp urchin +of fourteen—the costliest words of kindness—to +both of them the costliest—that he had ever heard, +ending with these two that Marguerite had spoken. +As he resumed his work, he said, without lifting his +eyes:</p> + +<p>“Seem’ to me ’f I could make myself like any man +in dat whole worl’, I radder make myself like Bonaventure. +And you?”</p> + +<p>She was so slow to answer that he looked at her. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +Even then she merely kept on sweeping her fingers +slowly and idly back and forth on the table, and, glancing +down upon them, said without enthusiasm: +“Yass.”</p> + +<p>Yet they both loved Bonaventure, each according to +knowledge of him. Nor did their common likings stop +with him. The things he had taught Claude to love +and seek suddenly became the admiration of Marguerite. +Aspirations—aspirations!—began to stir and +hum in her young heart, and to pour forth like waking +bees in the warm presence of spring. Claude was a +new interpretation of life to her; as one caught abed +by the first sunrise at sea, her whole spirit leaped, +with unmeasured self-reproach, into fresh garments and +to a new and beautiful stature, and looked out upon a +wider heaven and earth than ever it had seen or desired +to see before. All at once the life was more than +meat and the body than raiment. Presently she sprang +to action. In the convent school, whose white belfry +you could see from the end of Madame Beausoleil’s +balcony, whither Zoséphine had sent her after teaching +her all she herself knew, it had been “the mind for +knowledge;” now it was “knowledge for the mind.” +Mental training and enrichment had a value now, +never before dreamed of. The old school-books were +got down, recalled from banishment. Nothing ever +had been hard to learn, and now she found that all she +seemed to have forgotten merely required, like the +books, a little beating clear of dust.</p> + +<p>And Claude was there to help. “If C”——C!—--“having +a start of one hundred miles, travels”—so +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> +and so, and so and so,—“how fast must I travel +in order to”—etc. She cannot work the problem for +thinking of what it symbolizes. As C himself takes +the slate, her dark eyes, lifted an instant to his, are +large with painful meaning, for she sees at a glance she +must travel—if the arithmetical is the true answer—more +than the whole distance now between them. But +Claude says there is an easy way. She draws her +chair nearer and nearer to his; he bows over the problem, +and she cannot follow his pencil without bending +her head very close to his—closer—closer—until +fluffy bits of her black hair touch the thick locks on his +temples. Look to your child, Zoséphine Beausoleil, +look to her! Ah! she can look; but what can she +do?</p> + +<p>She saw the whole matter; saw more than merely +an unripe girl smitten with the bright smile, goodly +frame, and bewitching eyes of a promising young +rustic; saw her heart ennobled, her nature enlarged, +and all the best motives of life suddenly illuminated +by the presence of one to be mated with whom promised +the key-note of all harmonies; promised heart-fellowship +in the ever-hoping effort to lift poor daily +existence higher and higher out of the dust and into +the light. What could she say? If great spirits in +men or maidens went always or only with high fortune, +a mere Acadian lass, a tavern maiden, were safe +enough, come one fate or another. If Marguerite +were like many a girl in high ranks and low, to whom +any husband were a husband, any snug roof a home, +and any living life—But what may a maiden do, or +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> +a mother bid her do, when she looks upon the youth so +shaped without and within to her young soul’s belief +in its wants, that all other men are but beasts of the +field and creeping things, and he alone Adam? To +whom could the widow turn? Father, mother?—Gone +to their rest. The curé who had stood over her in +baptism, marriage, and bereavement?—Called long +ago to higher dignities and wider usefulness in distant +fields. Oh for the presence and counsel of Bonaventure! +It is true, here was Mr. Tarbox, so kind, and +so replete with information; so shrewd and so ready to +advise. She spurned the thought of leaning on him; +and yet the oft-spurned thought as often returned. +Already his generous interest had explored her pecuniary +affairs, and his suggestions, too good to be ignored, +had moulded them into better shape, and enlarged +their net results. And he could tell how many eight-ounce +tacks make a pound, and what electricity is, and +could cure a wart in ten minutes, and recite “Oh! why +should the spirit of mortal be proud?” And this +evening, the seventh since the storm, when for one +weak moment she had allowed the conversation to +drift toward wedlock, he had stated a woman’s chances +of marrying between the ages of fifteen and twenty, +to wit, 14½ per cent; and between thirty and thirty-five, +15½.</p> + +<p>“Hah!” exclaimed Zoséphine, her eyes flashing as +they had not done in many a day, “’tis not dat way!—not +in Opelousas!”</p> + +<p>“Arithmetically speaking!” the statistician quickly +explained. He ventured to lay a forefinger on the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> +back of her hand, but one glance of her eye removed +it. “You see, that’s merely arithmetically considered. +Now, of course, looking at it geographically—why, of +course! And—why, as to that, there are ladies”—</p> + +<p>Madame Beausoleil rose, left Mr. Tarbox holding +the yarn, and went down the hall, whose outer door +had opened and shut. A moment later she entered +the room again.</p> + +<p>“Claude!”</p> + +<p>Marguerite’s heart sank. Her guess was right: the +chief engineer had come. And early in the morning +Claude was gone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_V" id="PART_III_CHAP_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h3> + +<h3>FATHER AND SON.</h3> + + +<p>Such strange things storms do,—here purifying the +air, yonder treading down rich harvests, now replenishing +the streams, and now strewing shores with wrecks; +here a blessing, there a calamity. See what this one +had done for Marguerite! Well, what? She could +not lament; she dared not rejoice. Oh! if she were +Claude and Claude were she, how quickly—</p> + +<p>She wondered how many miles a day she could learn +to walk if she should start out into the world on foot +to find somebody, as she had heard that Bonaventure +had once done to find her mother’s lover. There are no +Bonaventures now, she thinks, in these decayed times.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> +“Mamma,”—her speech was French,—“why do +we never see Bonaventure? How far is it to Grande +Pointe?”</p> + +<p>“Ah! my child, a hundred miles; even more.”</p> + +<p>“And to my uncle Rosamond’s,—Rosamond Robichaux, +on Bayou Terrebonne?”</p> + +<p>“Fully as far, and almost the same journey.”</p> + +<p>There was but one thing to be done,—crush Claude +out of her heart.</p> + +<p>The storm had left no wounds on Grande Pointe. +Every roof was safe, even the old tobacco-shed where +Bonaventure had kept school before the schoolhouse +was built. The sheltering curtains of deep forest had +broken the onset of the wind, and the little cotton, +corn, and tobacco fields, already harvested, were +merely made a little more tattered and brown. The +November air was pure, sunny, and mild, and thrilled +every now and then with the note of some lingering +bird. A green and bosky confusion still hid house +from house and masked from itself the all but motionless +human life of the sleepy woods village. Only +an adventitious China-tree here and there had been +stripped of its golden foliage, and kept but its ripened +berries with the red birds darting and fluttering around +them like so many hiccoughing Comanches about a +dramseller’s tent. And here, if one must tell a thing +so painful, our old friend the mocking-bird, neglecting +his faithful wife and letting his home go to decay, kept +dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting the berries’ +rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you +know,—“Lost so many children, and the rest gone +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> +off in ungrateful forgetfulness of their old hard-working +father; yes;” and ready to sing or fight, just as +any other creature happened not to wish; and going +home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and +getting to bed barely able to hang on to the roost. It +would have been bad enough, even for a man; but for +a bird—and a mocking-bird!</p> + +<p>But the storm wrought a great change in one small +house not in Grande Pointe, yet of it. Until the storm, +ever since the day St. Pierre had returned from the +little railway-station where Claude had taken the cars, +he had seemed as patiently resigned to the new loneliness +of Bayou des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which +day by day sat so silent between the edges of the dark +forest and the darker stream, looking out beyond the +farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes +with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously +now this way and now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows +passing slowly across from one far line of +cypress wood to another. But since that night when +the hut’s solitary occupant could not sleep for the +winds and for thought of Claude, there was a great +difference inside. And this did not diminish; it grew. +It is hard for a man to be both father and mother, +and at the same time be childless. The bonds of this +condition began slowly to tighten around St. Pierre’s +heart and then to cut into it. And so, the same day +on which Claude in Vermilionville left the Beausoleils’ +tavern, the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, ever in his +mind’s eye, was empty, and in Grande Pointe his +father stood on the one low step at the closed door of +Bonaventure’s little frame schoolhouse.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> +He had been there a full minute and had not knocked. +Every movement, to-day, came only after an inward +struggle. Many associations crowded his mind on this +doorstep. Six years before, almost on this spot, a +mere brier-patch then, he and Maximian Roussel had +risen from the grassy earth and given the first two +welcoming hand-grasps to the schoolmaster. And now, +as one result, Claude, who did not know his letters +then, was rising—nay, had risen—to greatness! +Claude, whom once he would have been glad to +make a good fisherman and swamper, or at the utmost +a sugar-boiler, was now a greater, in rank at +least, than the very schoolmaster. Truly “knowledge +is power”—alas! yes; for it had stolen away +that same Claude. The College Point priest’s warning +had come true: it was “good-by to Grande Pointe!”—Nay, +nay, it must not be! Is that the kind of +power education is? Power to tear children from +their parents? Power to expose their young heads to +midnight storms? Power to make them eager to go, +and willing to stay away, from their paternal homes? +Then indeed the priest had said only too truly, that +these public schools teach every thing except morals +and religion! From the depth of St. Pierre’s heart +there quickly came a denial of the charge; and on the +moment, like a chanted response, there fell upon his +listening ear a monotonous intonation from within the +door. A reading-class had begun its exercise. He +knew the words by heart, so often had Claude and +he read them together. He followed the last stanza +silently with his own lips.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> +<span class="i0">“Remember, child, remember<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That you love, with all your might,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The God who watches o’er us<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And gives us each delight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who guards us ever in the day,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And saves as in the night.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Tears filled the swamper’s eyes. He moved as if to +leave the place. But again he paused, with one foot +half lowered to the ground. His jaws set, a frown +came between his eyes; he drew back the foot, turned +again to the door, and gave a loud, peremptory knock.</p> + +<p>Bonaventure came to the door. Anxiety quickly +overspread his face as he saw the gloom on St. Pierre’s. +He stood on the outer edge of the sill, and drew the +door after him.</p> + +<p>“I got good news,” said St. Pierre, with no +softening of countenance.</p> + +<p>“Good news?”</p> + +<p>“Yass.—I goin’ make Claude come home.”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. +St. Pierre looked away and continued:</p> + +<p>“’S no use. Can’t stand it no longer.” He turned +suddenly upon the schoolmaster. “Why you di’n’ +tell me ed’cation goin’ teck my boy ’way from me?” +In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification +quickly changed to one of anxious compassion.</p> + +<p>“Wait!” he said. He went back into the schoolroom, +leaving St. Pierre in the open door, and said:</p> + +<p>“Dear chil’run, I perceive generally the aspects of +fatigue. You have been good scholars. I pronounce +a half-hollyday till to-morrow morning. Come, each +and every one, with lessons complete.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> +The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another +to shake the schoolmaster’s hand as they passed +him. When they were gone he put on his coarse straw +hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as +they went, down the green road that years before had +first brought the educator to Grande Pointe.</p> + +<p>“Dear friend,” said the schoolmaster, “shall education +be to blame for this separation? Is not also +non-education responsible? Is it not by the non-education +of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit +here for Claude’s staying?”</p> + +<p>“You stay!”</p> + +<p>“I? I stay? Ah! sir, I stay, yes! Because like +Claude, leaving my home and seeking by wandering +to find the true place of my utility, a voice spake that +I come at Grande Pointe. Behole me! as far from +my childhood home as Claude from his. Friend,—ah! +friend, what shall I,—shall Claude,—shall any +man do with education! Keep it? Like a miser his +gol’? What shall the ship do when she is load’? Dear +friend,”—they halted where another road started +away through the underbrush at an abrupt angle on +their right,—“where leads this narrow road? To +Belle Alliance plantation only, or not also to the whole +worl’? So is education! That road here once fetch +me at Grande Pointe; the same road fetch Claude +away. Education came whispering, ‘Claude St. Pierre, +come! I have constitute’ you citizen of the worl’. +Come, come, forgetting self!’ Oh, dear friend, education +is not for self alone! Nay, even self is not for +self!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> +“Well, den,”—the deep-voiced woodman stood +with one boot on a low stump, fiercely trimming a +branch that he had struck from the parent stem with +one blow of his big, keen clasp-knife,—“self not +for self,—for what he gone off and lef’ me in de +swamp?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, sir!” replied Bonaventure, “what do I unceasingly +tell those dear school-chil’run? ‘May we +not make the most of self, yet not for self?’” He +laid his hand upon St. Pierre’s shoulder. “And who +sent Claude hence if not his unselfish father?”</p> + +<p>“I was big fool,” said St. Pierre, whittling on.</p> + +<p>“Nay, wise! Discovering the great rule of civilize-ation. +Every man not for self, but for every other!”</p> + +<p>The swamper disclaimed the generous imputation +with a shake of the head.</p> + +<p>“Naw, I dunno nut’n’ ’bout dat. I look out for +me and my boy, me.—And beside,”—he abruptly +threw away the staff he had trimmed, shut his knife +with a snap, and thrust it into his pocket,—“I dawn’t +see ed’cation make no diff’ence. You say ed’cation—priest +say religion—me, I dawn’t see neider one make +no diff’ence. I see every man look out for hisself and +his li’l’ crowd. Not you, but”—He waved his +hand bitterly toward the world at large.</p> + +<p>“Ah, sir!” cried Bonaventure, “’tis not something +what you can see all the time, like the horns on a cow! +And yet, sir,—and yet!”—he lifted himself upon +tiptoe and ran his fingers through his thin hair—“the +education that make’ no difference is but a dead body! +and the religion that make’ no difference is a ghost! +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> +Behole! behole two thing’ in the worl’, where all is +giving and getting, two thing’, con<em>tra</em>ry, yet resem’ling! +’Tis the left han’—alas, alas!—giving only +to get; and the right, blessed of God, getting only to +give! How much resem’ling, yet how con<em>tra</em>ry! The +one—han’ of all strife; the other—of all peace. +And oh! dear friend, there are those who call the one +civilize-ation, and the other religion. Civilize-ation? +Religion? They are one! They are body and soul! +I care not what religion the priest teach you; in God’s +religion is comprise’ the total <i>mécanique</i> of civilize-ation. +We are all in it; you, me, Claude, Sidonie; +all in it! Each and every at his task, however high, +however low, working not to get, but to give, and not +to give only to his own li’l’ crowd, but to all, to all!” +The speaker ceased, for his hearer was nodding his +head with sceptical impatience.</p> + +<p>“Yass,” said the woodman, “yass; but look, Bonaventure. +Di’n’ you said one time, ‘Knowledge is +power’?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, truly; and it is.”</p> + +<p>“But what use knowledge be power if goin’ give +ev’t’in’ away?”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure drew back a step or two, suddenly +jerked his hat from his head, and came forward again +with arms stretched wide and the hat dangling from +his hand. “Because—because God will not let it +sta-a-ay given away! ‘Give—it shall be give’ to +you.’ Every thing given out into God’s worl’ come +back to us roun’ God’s worl’! Resem’ling the stirring +of water in a bucket.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> +But St. Pierre frowned. “Yass,—wat’ in bucket,—yass. +Den no man dawn’t keep nut’n’. Dawn’t +own nut’n’ he got.”</p> + +<p>“Ah! sir, there is a better owning than to <em>own</em>. +’Tis giving, dear friend; ’tis giving. To get? To +have? That is not to own. The giver, not the getter; +the giver! he is the true owner. Live thou not to get, +but to give.” Bonaventure’s voice trembled; his eyes +were full of tears.</p> + +<p>The swamper stood up with his own eyes full, but +his voice was firm. “Bonaventure, I don’t got much. +I got dat li’l’ shanty on Bayou des Acadiens, and +li’l’ plunder inside—few kittle’, and pan’,—cast-net, +fish-line’, two, t’ree gun’, and—my wife’ grave, +yond’ in graveyard. But I got Claude,—my boy, my +son. You t’ink God want me give my son to whole +worl’?”</p> + +<p>The schoolmaster took the woodsman’s brown wrist +tenderly into both his hands, and said, scarce above a +whisper, “He gave His, first. He started it. Who +can refuse, He starting it? And thou wilt not refuse.” +The voice rose—“I see, I see the victory! Well art +thou nominated ‘St. Pierre!’ for on that rock of +giving”—</p> + +<p>“Naw, sir! Stop!” The swamper dashed the +moisture from his eyes and summoned a look of stubborn +resolve. “Mo’ better you call me St. Pierre +because I’m a fisherman what cuss when I git mad. +Look! You dawn’t want me git Claude back in Gran’ +Point’. You want me to give, give. Well, all right! +I goin’ <em>quit</em> Gran’ Point’ and give myself, me, to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> +Claude. I kin read, I kin write, I t’ink kin do better +’long wid Claude dan livin’ all ’lone wid snake’ and +alligator. I t’ink dass mo’ better for everybody; and +anyhow, I dawn’t care; I dawn’t give my son to nobody; +I give myself to Claude.”</p> + +<p>Bonaventure and his friend gazed into each other’s +wet eyes for a moment. Then the schoolmaster turned, +lifted his eyes and one arm toward the west, and exclaimed:</p> + +<p>“Ah, Claude! thou receivest the noblest gift in +Gran’ Point’!”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_VI" id="PART_III_CHAP_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h3> + +<h3>CONVERGING LINES.</h3> + + +<p>On the prairies of Vermilion and Lafayette, winter +is virtually over by the first week in February. From +sky to sky, each tree and field, each plain and plantation +grove, are putting on the greenery of a Northern +May. Even on Côte Gelée the housewife has persuaded +<i>le vieux</i> to lay aside his gun, and the early +potatoes are already planted. If the moon be at the +full, much ground is ready for the sower; and those +ploughmen and pony teams and men working along +behind them with big, clumsy hoes, over in yonder +field, are planting corn. Those silent, tremulous +strands of black that in the morning sky come gliding, +high overhead, from the direction of the great +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> +sea-marshes and fade into the northern blue, are flocks +that have escaped the murderous gun of the pot-hunter. +Spring and Summer are driving these before them as +the younger and older sister, almost abreast, come +laughing, and striving to outrun each other across the +Mexican Gulf.</p> + +<p>Those two travellers on horseback, so dwarfed by +distance, whom you see approaching out of the north-west, +you shall presently find have made, in their dress, +no provision against cold. At Carancro, some miles +away to the north-east, there is a thermometer; and +somewhere in Vermilionville, a like distance to the +south-east, there might possibly be found a barometer; +but there is no need of either to tell that the air to-day +is threescore and ten and will be more before it is less. +Before the riders draw near you have noticed that only +one is a man and the other a woman. And now you +may see that he is sleek and alert, blonde and bland, +and the savage within us wants to knock off his silk +hat. All the more so for that she is singularly pretty +to be met in his sole care. The years count on her +brows, it is true, but the way in which they tell of +matronhood—and somehow of widowhood too—is +a very fair and gentle way. Her dress is plain, but +its lines have a grace that is also dignity; and the lines +of her face—lines is too hard a word for them—are +not those of time, but of will and of care, that have +chastened and refined one another. She speaks only +now and then. Her companion’s speech fills the wide +intervals.</p> + +<p>“Yesterday morning,” he says, “as I came along +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> +here a little after sunrise, there was a thin fog lying +only two or three feet deep, close to the level ground +as far as you could see, hiding the whole prairie, and +making it look for all the world like a beautiful lake, +with every here and there a green grove standing out +of it like a real little island.”</p> + +<p>She replies that she used to see it so in her younger +days. The Acadian accent is in her words. She lifts +her black eyes, looks toward Carancro, and is silent.</p> + +<p>“You’re thinking of the changes,” says her escort.</p> + +<p>“Yass; <em>’tis</em> so. Dey got twenty time’ many field’ +like had befo’. Peop’ don’t raise cattl’ no more; +raise crop’. Dey say even dat land changin’.”</p> + +<p>“How changing?”</p> + +<p>“I dunno. I dunno if <em>’tis</em> so. Dey say prairie +risin’ mo’ higher every year. I dunno if <em>’tis</em> so. I t’ink +dat land don’t change much; but de peop’, yass.”</p> + +<p>“Still, the changes are mostly good changes,” responds +the male rider. “’Tisn’t the prairie, but the +people that are rising. They’ve got the schoolhouse, +and the English language, and a free paid labor system, +and the railroads, and painted wagons, and Cincinnati +furniture, and sewing-machines, and melodeons, +and Horsford’s Acid Phosphate; and they’ve caught +the spirit of progress!”</p> + +<p>“Yass, <em>’tis</em> so. Dawn’t see nobody seem satisfied—since +de army—since de railroad.”</p> + +<p>“Well, that’s right enough; they oughtn’t to be +satisfied. You’re not satisfied, are you? And yet +you’ve never done so well before as you have this +season. I wish I could say the same for the ‘Album +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> +of Universal Information;’ but I can’t. I tell you +that, Madame Beausoleil; I wouldn’t tell anybody +else.”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine responds with a dignified bow. She has +years ago noticed in herself, that, though she has +strength of will, she lacks clearness and promptness +of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to +do with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. +But there is always a plausible explanation of his presence, +and a person of more tactful propriety, it seems +to her, never put his name upon her tavern register or +himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow +or specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle +the old ambitions in her that Bonaventure lighted; and +although Mr. Tarbox’s modest loveliness is not visible, +yet a certain fundamental rectitude, discernible behind +all his nebulous gaudiness, confirms her liking. Then, +too, he has earned her gratitude. She has inherited +not only her father’s small fortune, but his thrift as +well. She can see the sagacity of Mr. Tarbox’s advice +in pecuniary matters, and once and once again, when +he has told her quietly of some little operation into +which he and the ex-governor—who “thinks the +world of me,” he says—were going to dip, and she +has accepted his invitation to venture in also, to the +extent of a single thousand dollars, the money has +come back handsomely increased. Even now, the sale +of all her prairie lands to her former kinsmen-in-law, +which brought her out here yesterday and lets her +return this morning, is made upon his suggestion, and +is so advantageous that somehow, she doesn’t know +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> +why, she almost fears it isn’t fair to the other side. +The fact is, the country is passing from the pastoral +to the agricultural life, the prairies are being turned +into countless farms, and the people are getting wealth. +So explains Mr. Tarbox, whose happening to come +along this morning bound in her direction is pure +accident—pure accident.</p> + +<p>“No, the ‘A. of U. I.’ hasn’t done its best,” he +says again. “For one thing, I’ve had other fish to fry. +You know that.” He ventures a glance at her eyes, +but they ignore it, and he adds, “I mean other financial +matters.”</p> + +<p>“<em>’Tis</em> so,” says Zoséphine; and Mr. Tarbox hopes +the reason for this faint repulse is only the nearness +of this farmhouse peeping at them through its pink +veil of blossoming peach-trees, as they leisurely trot +by.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he says; “and, besides, ‘Universal Information’ +isn’t what this people want. The book’s +too catholic for them.”</p> + +<p>“Too Cat’oleek!” Zoséphine raises her pretty +eyebrows in grave astonishment—“’Cadian’ is all +Cat’oleek.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes, ecclesiastically speaking, I know. That +wasn’t my meaning. Your smaller meaning puts my +larger one out of sight; yes, just as this Cherokee +hedge puts out of sight the miles of prairie fields, and +even that house we just passed. No, the ‘A. of U. I.,’—I +love to call it that; can you guess why?” There +is a venturesome twinkle in his smile, and even a playful +permission in her own as she shakes her head.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> +“Well, I’ll tell you; it’s because it brings U and I +so near together.”</p> + +<p>“Hah!” exclaims Madame Beausoleil, warningly, +yet with sunshine and cloud on her brow at once. +She likes her companion’s wit, always so deep, and +yet always so delicately pointed! His hearty laugh +just now disturbs her somewhat, but they are out on +the wide plain again, without a spot in all the sweep +of her glance where an eye or an ear may ambush +them or their walking horses.</p> + +<p>“No,” insists her fellow-traveller; “I say again, +as I said before, the ‘A. of U. I.’”—he pauses at the +initials, and Zoséphine’s faint smile gives him ecstasy—“hasn’t +done its best. And yet it has done beautifully! +Why, when did you ever see such a list as +this?” He dexterously draws from an extensive inner +breast-pocket, such as no coat but a book-agent’s or a +shoplifter’s would be guilty of, a wide, limp, morocco-bound +subscription-book. “Here!” He throws it +open upon the broad Texas pommel. “Now, just +for curiosity, look at it—oh! you can’t see it from +away off there, looking at it sideways!” He gives +her a half-reproachful, half-beseeching smile and +glance, and gathers up his dropped bridle. They +come closer. Their two near shoulders approach each +other, the two elbows touch, and two dissimilar hands +hold down the leaves. The two horses playfully bite +at each other; it is their way of winking one eye.</p> + +<p>“Now, first, here’s the governor’s name; and then +his son’s, and his nephew’s, and his other son’s, and +his cousin’s. And here’s Pierre Cormeaux, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> +Baptiste Clément, you know, at Carancro; and here’s +Basilide Sexnailder, and Joseph Cantrelle, and Jacques +Hébert; see? And Gaudin, and Laprade, Blouin, and +Roussel,—old Christofle Roussel of Beau Bassin,—Duhon, +Roman and Simonette Le Blanc, and Judge +Landry, and Thériot,—Colonel Thériot,—Martin, +Hébert again, Robichaux, Mouton, Mouton again, +Robichaux again, Mouton—oh, I’ve got ’em all!—Castille, +Beausoleil—cousin of yours? Yes, he said +so; good fellow, thinks you’re the greatest woman +alive.” The two dissimilar hands, in turning a leaf, +touch, and the smaller one leaves the book. “And +here’s Guilbeau, and Latiolais, and Thibodeaux, and +Soudrie, and Arcenaux—flowers of the community—‘I +gather them in,’—and here’s a page of Côte +Gelée people, and—Joe Jefferson hadn’t got back to +the Island yet, but I’ve got his son; see? And here’s—can +you make out this signature? It’s written so +small”—</p> + +<p>Both heads,—with only the heavens and the dear +old earth-mother to see them,—both heads bend over +the book; the hand that had retreated returns, but +bethinks itself and withdraws again; the eyes of Mr. +Tarbox look across their corners at the sedate brow +so much nearer his than ever it has been before, until +that brow feels the look, and slowly draws away. +Look to your mother, Marguerite; look to her! But +Marguerite is not there, not even in Vermilionville; +nor yet in Lafayette parish; nor anywhere throughout +the wide prairies of Opelousas or Attakapas. Triumph +fills Mr. Tarbox’s breast.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> +“Well,” he says, restoring the book to its hiding-place, +“seems like I ought to be satisfied with that; +doesn’t it to you?”</p> + +<p>It does; Zoséphine says so. She sees the double +meaning, and Mr. Tarbox sees that she sees it, but +must still move cautiously. So he says:</p> + +<p>“Well, I’m not satisfied. It’s perfect as far as it +goes, but don’t expect me to be satisfied with it. If +I’ve seemed satisfied, shall I tell you why it was, my +dear—friend?”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine makes no reply; but her dark eyes meeting +his for a moment, and then falling to her horse’s +feet, seem to beg for mercy.</p> + +<p>“It’s because,” says Mr. Tarbox, while her heart +stands still, “it’s because I’ve made”—there is an +awful pause—“more money without the ‘A. of U. I.’ +this season than I’ve made with it.”</p> + +<p>Madame Beausoleil catches her breath, shows relief +in every feature, lifts her eyes with sudden brightness, +and exclaims:</p> + +<p>“Dass good! Dass mighty good, yass! <em>’Tis</em> +so.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, it is; and I tell you, and you only, because +I’m proud to believe you’re my sincere friend. Am +I right?”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine busies herself with her riding-skirt, shifts +her seat a little, and with studied carelessness assents.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” her companion repeats; “and so I tell you. +The true business man is candid to all, communicative +to none. And yet I open my heart to you. I can’t +help it; it won’t stay shut. And you must see, I’m +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> +sure you must, that there’s something more in there +besides money; don’t you?” His tone grows tender.</p> + +<p>Madame Beausoleil steals a glance toward him,—a +grave, timid glance. She knows there is safety in +the present moment. Three horsemen, strangers, far +across the field in their front, are coming toward them, +and she feels an almost proprietary complacence in a +suitor whom she can safely trust to be saying just the +right nothings when those shall meet them and ride by. +She does not speak; but he says:</p> + +<p>“You know there is, dear Jos——friend!” He +smiles with modest sweetness. “G. W. Tarbox +doesn’t run after money, and consequently he never +runs past much without picking it up.” They both +laugh in decorous moderation. The horsemen are +drawing near; they are Acadians. “I admit I love +to make money. But that’s not my chief pleasure. +My chief pleasure is the study of human nature.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘The proper study of mankind is man.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.’<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>“This season I’ve been studying these Acadian +people. And I like them! They don’t like to be +reminded that they’re Acadians. Well, that’s natural; +the Creoles used to lord it over them so when the +Creoles were slave-holding planters and they were +small farmers. That’s about past now. The Acadians +are descended from peasants, that’s true, while +some Creoles are from the French nobility. But, +hooh! wouldn’t any fair-minded person”—the horsemen +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> +are within earshot; they are staring at the silk +hat—“Adjieu.”</p> + +<p>“Adjieu.” They pass.</p> + +<p>“—Wouldn’t any fair-minded person that knows +what France was two or three hundred years ago—show +you some day in the ‘Album’—about as lief be +descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from +a good deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, +my dear—friend, the day’s coming when the Acadians +will be counted as good French blood as there is in +Louisiana! They’re the only white people that ever +trod this continent—island or mainland—who never +on their own account oppressed anybody. Some little +depredation on their British neighbors, out of dogged +faithfulness to their king and church,—that’s the +worst charge you can make. Look at their history! +all poetry and pathos! Look at their character! brave, +peaceable, loyal, industrious, home-loving”—</p> + +<p>But Zoséphine was looking at the speaker. Her +face is kindled with the inspiration of his praise. His +own eyes grow ardent.</p> + +<p>“Look at their women! Ah, Josephine, I’m looking +at one! Don’t turn away.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">—‘One made up<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of loveliness alone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A woman, of her gentle sex<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The seeming paragon.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘The reason firm, the temperate will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A perfect woman nobly planned,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To warn, to comfort, and command.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> +“You can’t stop me, Josephine; it’s got to come, +and come right now. I’m a homeless man, Josephine, +tired of wandering, with a heart bigger and weaker +than I ever thought I had. I want you! I love you! +I’ve never loved anybody before in my life except +myself, and I don’t find myself as lovely as I used. +Oh, take me, Josephine! I don’t ask you to love as if +you’d never loved another. I’ll take what’s left, and +be perfectly satisfied! I know you’re ambitious, and +I love you for that! But I do think I can give you a +larger life. With you for a wife, I believe I could be +a man you needn’t be ashamed of. I’m already at the +head of my line. Best record in the United States, +Josephine, whether by the day, week, month, year, +or locality. But if you don’t like the line, I’ll throw +up the ‘A. of U. I.’ and go into any thing you say; +for I want to lift you higher, Josephine. You’re above +me already, by nature and by rights, but I can lift you, +I know I can. You’ve got no business keeping tavern; +you’re one of Nature’s aristocrats. Yes, you are! and +you’re too young and lovely to stay a widow—in a +State where there’s more men than there’s women. +There’s a good deal of the hill yet to climb before you +start down. Oh, let’s climb it together, Josephine! +I’ll make you happier than you are, Josephine; I +haven’t got a bad habit left; such as I had, I’ve quit; +it don’t pay. I don’t drink, chew, smoke, tell lies, +swear, quarrel, play cards, make debts, nor belong to +a club—be my wife! Your daughter ’ll soon be leaving +you. You can’t be happy alone. Take me! take +me!” He urges his horse close—her face is averted—and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> +lays his hand softly but firmly on her two, resting +folded on the saddle-horn. They struggle faintly +and are still; but she slowly shakes her hanging head.</p> + +<p>“O Josephine! you don’t mean no, do you? Look +this way! you don’t mean no?” He presses his hand +passionately down upon hers. Her eyes do not turn +to his; but they are lifted tearfully to the vast, unanswering +sky, and as she mournfully shakes her head +again, she cries,—</p> + +<p>“I dunno! I dunno! I can’t tell! I got to see +Marguerite.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you’ll see her in an hour, and if she”—</p> + +<p>“Naw, naw! ’tis not so; Marguerite is in New +Orleans since Christmas.”</p> + +<p>Very late in the evening of that day Mr. Tarbox +entered the principal inn of St. Martinville, on the +Teche. He wore an air of blitheness which, though +silent, was overdone. As he pushed his silk hat back +on his head, and registered his name with a more than +usual largeness of hand, he remarked:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“‘Man wants but little here below,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor wants that little long.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Give me a short piece of candle and a stumpy +candlestick—and</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Take me up, and bear me hence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into some other chamber’”—<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Glad to see you back, Mr. Tarbox,” responded +the host; and as his guest received the candle and +heard the number of his room,—“books must ’a’ +went well this fine day.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> +Mr. Tarbox fixed him with his eye, drew a soft step +closer, said in a low tone:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“‘My only books<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Were woman’s looks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And folly’s all they’ve taught me.’”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The landlord raised his eyebrows, rounded his mouth, +and darted out his tongue. The guest shifted the +candle to his left hand, laid his right softly upon the +host’s arm, and murmured:</p> + +<p>“List! Are we alone? If I tell thee something, +wilt thou tell it never?”</p> + +<p>The landlord smiled eagerly, shook his head, and +bent toward his speaker.</p> + +<p>“Friend Perkins,” said Mr. Tarbox, in muffled +voice—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“‘So live, that when thy summons comes to join<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The innumerable caravan which moves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To that mysterious realm where each shall take<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His chamber in the silent halls of death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou go not, like the quarry-slave, at night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch<br /></span> +<span class="i0">About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Don’t let the newspapers get hold of it—good-night.”</p> + +<p>But it was only at daybreak that Mr. Tarbox disordered +the drapery of his couch to make believe he +had slept there, and at sunrise he was gone to find +Claude.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_VII" id="PART_III_CHAP_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h3> + +<h3>’THANASE’S VIOLIN.</h3> + + +<p>Had Marguerite gone to New Orleans the better to +crush Claude out of her heart? No, no! Her mother +gave an explanation interesting and reasonable enough, +and at the same time less uncomfortably romantic. +Marguerite had gone to the city to pursue studies +taught better there than in Opelousas; especially +music.</p> + +<p>Back of this was a reason which she had her +mother’s promise not to mention,—the physician’s +recommendation—a change of scene. He spoke of +slight malarial influences, and how many odd forms +they took; of dyspepsia and its queer freaks; of the +confining nature of house cares, and of how often they +“ran down the whole system.” His phrases were +French, but they had all the weary triteness of these; +while Marguerite rejoiced that he did not suspect the +real ailment, and Zoséphine saw that he divined it +perfectly.</p> + +<p>A change of scene. Marguerite had treated the +suggestion lightly, as something amusingly out of +proportion to her trivial disorder, but took pains not +to reject it. Zoséphine had received it with troubled +assent, and mentioned the small sugar-farm and +orangery of the kinsman Robichaux, down on Bayou +Terrebonne. But the physician said, “If that would +not be too dull;” mentioned, casually, the city, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> +saw Marguerite lighten up eagerly. The city was +chosen; the physician’s sister, living there, would see +Marguerite comfortably established. All was presently +arranged.</p> + +<p>“And you can take your violin with you, and study +music,” he said. Marguerite had one, and played it +with a taste and skill that knew no competitor in all +the surrounding region.</p> + +<p>It had belonged to her father. Before she was +born, all Lafayette parish had known it tenderly. +Before she could talk she had danced—courtesied +and turned, tiptoed and fallen and risen again, latter +end first, to the gay strains he had loved to wring from +it. Before it seemed safe, for the instrument, to trust +it in her hands, she had learned to draw its bow; and +for years, now, there had been no resident within the +parish who could not have been her scholar better than +to be her teacher.</p> + +<p>When Claude came, she had shut the violin in its +case, and left the poor thing hidden away, despising +its powers to charm, lost in self-contempt, and helpless +under the spell of a chaste passion’s first enchantment. +When he went, she still forgot the instrument +for many days. She returned with more than dutiful +energy to her full part in the household cares, and +gave every waking hour not so filled to fierce study. +If she could not follow him—if a true maiden must +wait upon faith—at least she would be ready if fate +should ever bring him back.</p> + +<p>But one night, when she had conned her simple +books until the words ran all together on the page, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> +some good angel whispered, “The violin!” She took +it and played. The music was but a song, but from +some master of song. She played it, it may be, not +after the best rules, yet as one may play who, after +life’s first great billow has gone over him, smites again +his forgotten instrument. With tears, of all emotions +mingled, starting from her eyes, and the bow trembling +on the strings, she told the violin her love. And it +answered her:</p> + +<p>“Be strong! be strong! you shall not love for +naught. He shall—he shall come back—he shall +come back and lead us into joy.” From that time +the violin had more employment than ever before in +all its days.</p> + +<p>So it and Marguerite were gone away to the great +strange city together. The loneliness they left behind +was a sad burden to Zoséphine. No other one +thing had had so much influence to make so nearly +vulnerable the defences of her heart when Mr. Tarbox +essayed to storm them. On the night following that +event, the same that he had spent so sleeplessly in +St. Martinville, she wrote a letter to Marguerite, +which, though intended to have just the opposite +effect, made the daughter feel that this being in New +Orleans, and all the matter connected with it, were +one unmixed mass of utter selfishness. The very +written words that charged her to stay on seemed +to say, “Come home!” Her strong little mother! +always quiet and grave, it is true, and sometimes +sad; yet so well poised, so concentrated, so equal to +every passing day and hour!—she to seem—in this +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> +letter—far out of her course, adrift, and mutely and +dimly signalling for aid! The daughter read the pages +again and again. What could they mean? Here, for +instance, this line about the mother’s coming herself +to the city, if, and if, and if!</p> + +<p>The letter found Marguerite in the bosom of a family +that dwelt in the old Rue Bourbon, only a short +way below Canal Street, the city’s centre. The house +stands on the street, its drawing-room windows opening +upon the sidewalk, and a narrow balcony on the +story above shading them scantily at noon. A garden +on the side is visible from the street through a lofty, +black, wrought-iron fence. Of the details within the +enclosure, I remember best the vines climbing the walls +of the tall buildings that shut it in, and the urns and +vases, and the evergreen foliage of the Japan plum-trees. +A little way off, and across the street, was the +pleasant restaurant and salesroom of the Christian +Women’s Exchange.</p> + +<p>The family spoke English. Indeed, they spoke it +a great deal; and French—also a great deal. The +younger generation, two daughters and a son, went +much into society. Their name was that of an ancient +French noble house, with which, in fact, they had no +connection. They took great pains to call themselves +Creoles, though they knew well enough they were +Acadians. The Acadian caterpillar often turns into +a Creole butterfly. Their great-grandfather, one of +the children of the Nova-Scotian deportation, had been +a tobacco-farmer on the old Côte Acadien in St. John +the Baptist parish. Lake des Allemands lay there, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> +just behind him. In 1815, his son, their grandfather, +in an excursion through the lake and bayou beyond, +discovered, far south-eastward in the midst of the +Grande Prairie des Allemands, a “pointe” of several +hundred acres extent. Here, with one or two others, +he founded the Acadian settlement of “La Vacherie,” +and began to build a modest fortune. The blood was +good, even though it was not the blood of ancient robbers; +and the son in the next generation found his +way, by natural and easy stages, through Barataria +and into the city, and became the “merchant” of his +many sugar and rice planting kinsmen and neighbors.</p> + +<p>It was a great favor to Marguerite to be taken into +such a household as this. She felt it so. The household +felt it so. Yet almost from the start they began +to play her, in their social world, as their best card—when +they could. She had her hours of school and of +home study; also her music, both lessons and practice; +was in earnest both as to books and violin, and +had teachers who also were in earnest; and so she +found little time for social revels. Almost all sociality +is revel in New-Orleans society, and especially in the +society she met.</p> + +<p>But when she did appear, somehow she shone. A +native instinct in dress,—even more of it than her +mother had at the same age,—and in manners and +speech, left only so little rusticity as became itself a +charm rather than a blemish, suggested the sugar-cane +fields; the orange-grove; the plantation-house, with +pillared porch, half-hidden in tall magnolias and laurestines +and bushes of red and white camellias higher +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> +and wider than arms can reach, and covered with their +regal flowers from the ground to their tops; and the +bayou front lined with moss-draped live-oaks, their +noonday shadows a hundred feet across. About her +there was not the faintest hint of the country tavern. +She was but in her seventeenth year; but on her +native prairies, where girls are women at fourteen, +seventeen was almost an advanced stage of decay. +She seemed full nineteen, and a very well-equipped +nineteen as social equipments went in the circle she +had entered. Being a schoolgirl was no drawback; +there are few New-Orleans circles where it is; and +especially not in her case, for she needed neither to +titter nor chatter,—she could talk. And then, her +violin made victory always easy and certain.</p> + +<p>Sometimes the company was largely of down-town +Creoles; sometimes of up-town people,—“Americans;” +and often equally of the two sorts, talking +French and English in most amusing and pleasing +confusion. For the father of the family had lately +been made president of a small bank, and was fairly +boxing the social compass in search of depositors. +Marguerite had not yet discovered that—if we may +drag the metaphor ashore—to enter society is not to +emerge upon an unbroken table-land, or that she was +not on its highest plateau. She noticed the frequency +with which she encountered unaccomplished fathers, +stupid mothers, rude sons and daughters, and ill-distributed +personal regard; but she had the common-sense +not to expect more of society than its nature +warrants, guessed rightly that she would find the same +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> +thing anywhere else, and could not know that these +elements were less mixed with better here than in many +other of the city’s circles, of whose existence she had +not even heard. However:</p> + +<p>Society, at its very best, always needs, and at its +best or worst always contains, a few superior members, +who make themselves a blessing by working a constant, +tactful redistribution of individuals by their true +values, across the unworthy lines upon which society +ever tends to stratify. Such a person, a matron, sat +with Marguerite one April evening under a Chinese +lantern in the wide, curtained veranda of an Esplanade-street +house whose drawing-room and Spanish garden +were filled with company.</p> + +<p>Marguerite was secretly cast down. This lady had +brought her here, having met her but a fortnight before +and chosen her at once, in her own private counsels, +for social promotion. And Marguerite had played the +violin. In her four months’ advanced training she +had accomplished wonders. Her German professor +made the statement, while he warned her against enthusiastic +drawing-room flattery. This evening she +had gotten much praise and thanks. Yet these had a +certain discriminative moderation that was new to her +ear, and confirmed to her, not in the pleasantest way, +the realization that this company was of higher average +intelligence and refinement than any she had met +before. She little guessed that the best impression she +had ever made she made here to-night.</p> + +<p>Of course it was not merely on account of the violin. +She had beauty, not only of face and head, but of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> +form and carriage. So that when she stood with her +instrument, turning, as it were, every breath of air +into music, and the growing volume of the strains +called forth all her good Acadian strength of arms +and hand, she charmed not merely the listening ear, +but the eye, the reason, and the imagination in its +freest range.</p> + +<p>But, indeed, it was not the limitations of her social +triumphs themselves that troubled her. Every experience +of the evening had helped to show her how much +wider the world was than she had dreamed, and had +opened new distances on the right, on the left, and far +ahead; and nowhere in them all could eye see, or ear +hear, aught of that one without whom to go back to +old things was misery, and to go on to new was mere +weariness. And the dear little mother at home!—worth +nine out of any ten of all this crowd—still at +home in that old tavern-keeping life, now intolerable +to think of, and still writing those yearning letters that +bade the daughter not return! No wonder Marguerite’s +friend had divined her feelings, and drawn her +out to the cool retreat under the shadow of the veranda +lanterns.</p> + +<p>A gentleman joined them, who had “just come,” +he said. Marguerite’s companion and he were old +friends. Neither he nor Marguerite heard each other’s +name, nor could see each other’s face more than dimly. +He was old enough to be twitted for bachelorhood, and +to lay the blame upon an outdoor and out-of-town +profession. Such words drew Marguerite’s silent but +close attention.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> +The talk turned easily from this to the ease with +which the fair sex, as compared with the other, takes +on the graces of the drawing-room. “Especially,” +the two older ones agreed, “if the previous lack is +due merely to outward circumstances.” But Marguerite +was still. Here was a new thought. One who +attained all those graces and love’s prize also might +at last, for love’s sake, have to count them but dross, +or carry them into retirement, the only trophies of +abandoned triumphs. While she thought, the conversation +went on.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said her friend, replying to the bachelor, +“we acquire drawing-room graces more easily; but +why? Because most of us think we must. A man +may find success in one direction or another; but a +woman has got to be a social success, or she’s a complete +failure. She can’t snap her fingers at the +drawing-room.”</p> + +<p>“Ah!” exclaimed Marguerite, “she can if she +want!” She felt the strength to rise that moment +and go back to Opelousas, if only—and did not see, +until her companions laughed straight at her, that the +lady had spoken in jest.</p> + +<p>“Still,” said the bachelor, “the drawing-room is +woman’s element—realm—rather than man’s, whatever +the reasons may be. I had a young man with me +last winter”—</p> + +<p>“I knew it!” thought Marguerite.</p> + +<p>“—until lately, in fact; he’s here in town now,—whom +I have tried once or twice to decoy into company +in a small experimental way. It’s harder than +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> +putting a horse into a ship. He seems not to know +what social interchange is for.”</p> + +<p>“Thinks it’s for intellectual profit and pleasure,” +interrupted the ironical lady.</p> + +<p>“No, he just doesn’t see the use or fun of it. And +yet, really, that’s his only deficiency. True, he listens +better than he talks—overdoes it; but when a chap +has youth, intelligence, native refinement, integrity, +and good looks, as far above the mean level as many +of our society fellows are below it, it seems to me he +ought to be”—</p> + +<p>“Utilized,” suggested the lady, casting her eyes +toward Marguerite and withdrawing them as quickly, +amused at the earnestness of her attention.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the bachelor, and mused a moment. +“He’s a talented fellow. It’s only a few months ago +that he really began life. Now he’s outgrown my +service.”</p> + +<p>“Left the nest,” said the lady.</p> + +<p>“Yes, indeed. He has invented”—</p> + +<p>“Oh, dear!”</p> + +<p>The bachelor was teased. “Ah! come, now; show +your usual kindness; he has, really, made a simple, +modest agricultural machine that—meets a want long +felt. Oh! you may laugh; but he laughs last. He +has not only a patent for it, but a good sale also, and +is looking around for other worlds to conquer.”</p> + +<p>“And yet spurns society? Ours!”</p> + +<p>“No, simply develops no affinity for it; would like +to, if only to please me; but can’t. Doesn’t even +make intimate companions among men; simply clings +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> +to his fond, lone father, and the lone father to him, +closer than any pair of twin orphan girls that ever you +saw. I don’t believe any thing in life could divide +them.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, don’t you trust him! Man proposes, Cupid +disposes. A girl will stick to her mother; but a man? +Why, the least thing—a pair of blue eyes, a yellow +curl”—</p> + +<p>The bachelor gayly shook his head, and, leaning over +with an air of secrecy, said: “A pair of blue eyes have +shot him through and through, and a yellow curl is +wound all round him from head to heel, and yet he +sticks to his father.”</p> + +<p>“He can’t live,” said the lady. Marguerite’s hand +pressed her arm, and they rose. As the bachelor drew +the light curtain of a long window aside, that they +might pass in, the light fell upon Marguerite’s face. +It was entirely new to him. It seemed calm. Yet instantly +the question smote him, “What have I done? +what have I said?” She passed, and turned to give +a parting bow. The light fell upon him. She was +right; it was Claude’s friend, the engineer.</p> + +<p>When he came looking for them a few minutes later, +he only caught, by chance, a glimpse of them, clouded +in light wraps and passing to their carriage. It was +not yet twelve.</p> + +<p>Between Marguerite’s chamber and that of one of +the daughters of the family there was a door that +neither one ever fastened. Somewhere down-stairs a +clock was striking three in the morning, when this +door softly opened and the daughter stole into +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> +Marguerite’s room in her night-robe. With her hair falling +about her, her hands unconsciously clasped, her +eyes starting, and an outcry of amazement checked +just within her open, rounded mouth, she stopped and +stood an instant in the brightly lighted chamber.</p> + +<p>Marguerite sat on the bedside exactly as she had +come from the carriage, save that a white gossamer +web had dropped from her head and shoulders, and +lay coiled about her waist. Her tearless eyes were +wide and filled with painful meditation, even when she +turned to the alarmed and astonished girl before her. +With suppressed exclamations of wonder and pity the +girl glided forward, cast her arms about the sitting +figure, and pleaded for explanation.</p> + +<p>“It is a headache,” said Marguerite, kindly but +firmly lifting away the intwining arms.—“No, no, +you can do nothing.—It is a headache.—Yes, I will +go to bed presently; you go to yours.—No, no”—</p> + +<p>The night-robed girl looked for a moment more into +Marguerite’s eyes, then sank to her knees, buried her +face in her hands, and wept. Marguerite laid her +hands upon the bowed head and looked down with dry +eyes. “No,” she presently said again, “it is a headache. +Go back to your bed.—No, there is nothing +to tell; only I have been very, very foolish and very, +very selfish, and I am going home to-morrow. Good-night.”</p> + +<p>The door closed softly between the two. Then Marguerite +sank slowly back upon the bed, closed her eyes, +and rocking her head from side to side, said again and +again, in moans that scarcely left the lips:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> +“My mother! my mother! Take me back! Oh! +take me back, my mother! my mother!”</p> + +<p>At length she arose, put off her attire, lay down to +rest, and, even while she was charging sleep with being +a thousand leagues away—slept.</p> + +<p>When she awoke, the wide, bright morning filled all +the room. Had some sound wakened her? Yes, a +soft tapping came again upon her door. She lay still. +It sounded once more. For all its softness, it seemed +nervous and eager. A low voice came with it:</p> + +<p>“Marguerite!”</p> + +<p>She sprang from her pillow.—“Yes!”</p> + +<p>While she answered, it came again,—</p> + +<p>“Marguerite!”</p> + +<p>With a low cry, she cast away the bed-coverings, +threw back the white mosquito-curtain and the dark +masses of her hair, and started up, lifted and opened +her arms, cried again, but with joy, “My mother! my +mother!” and clasped Zoséphine to her bosom.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_VIII" id="PART_III_CHAP_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h3> + +<h3>THE SHAKING PRAIRIE.</h3> + + +<p>Manifestly it was a generous overstatement for +Claude’s professional friend to say that Claude had +outgrown his service. It was true only that by and by +there had come a juncture in his affairs where he could +not, without injustice to others, make a place for +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> +Claude which he could advise Claude to accept, and +they had parted with the mutual hope that the separation +would be transient. But the surveyor could not +but say to himself that such incidents, happening +while we are still young, are apt to be turning-points +in our lives, if our lives are going to have direction +and movement of their own at all.</p> + +<p>St. Pierre had belted his earnings about him under +the woollen sash that always bound his waist, shouldered +his rifle, taken one last, silent look at the cabin +on Bayou des Acadiens, stood for a few moments +with his hand in Bonaventure’s above one green mound +in the churchyard at Grande Pointe, given it into the +schoolmaster’s care, and had gone to join his son. Of +course, not as an idler; such a perfect woodsman +easily made himself necessary to the engineer’s party. +The company were sorry enough to lose him when +Claude went away; but no temptation that they could +invent could stay him from following Claude. Father +and son went in one direction, and the camp in another.</p> + +<p>I must confess to being somewhat vague as to just +where they were. I should have to speak from memory, +and I must not make another slip in topography. +The changes men have made in Southern Louisiana +these last few years are great. I say nothing, again, of +the vast widths of prairie stripped of the herds and +turned into corn and cane fields: when I came, a few +months ago, to that station on Morgan’s Louisiana +and Texas Railroad where Claude first went aboard a +railway-train, somebody had actually moved the bayou, +the swamp, and the prairie apart!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> +However, the exact whereabouts of the St. Pierres +is not important to us. Mr. Tarbox, when in search +of the camp he crossed the Teche at St. Martinville, +expected to find it somewhere north-eastward, between +that stream and the Atchafalaya. But at the Atchafalaya +he found that the work in that region had been +finished three days before, and that the party had been +that long gone to take part in a new work down in +the <i>prairies tremblantes</i> of Terrebonne Parish. The +Louisiana Land Reclamation Company,—I think that +was the name of the concern projecting the scheme. +This was back in early February, you note.</p> + +<p>Thither Mr. Tarbox followed. The “Album of +Universal Information” went along, and “did well.” +It made his progress rather slow, of course; but one +of Mr. Tarbox’s many maxims was, never to make +one day pay for another when it could be made to pay +for itself, and during this season—this Louisiana +campaign, as he called it—he had developed a new +art,—making each day pay for itself several times +over.</p> + +<p>“Many of these people,” he said,—but said it +solely and silently to himself,—“are ignorant, shiftless, +and set in their ways; and even when they’re not +they’re out of the current, as it were; they haven’t +headway; and so they never—or seldom ever—see +any way to make money except somehow in connection +with the plantations. There’s no end of chances here +to a man that’s got money-sense, and nerve to use +it.” He wrote that to Zoséphine, but she wrote no +answer. A day rarely passed that he did not find +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> +some man making needless loss through ignorance or +inactivity; whereupon he would simply put in the +sickle of his sharper wit, and garner the neglected +harvest. Or, seeing some unesteemed commodity that +had got out of, or had never been brought into, its best +form, time, or place, he knew at sight just how, and at +what expense, to bring it there, and brought it.</p> + +<p>“Give me the gains other men pass by,” he said, +“and I’ll be satisfied. The saying is, ‘Buy wisdom;’ +but I sell mine. I like to sell. I enjoy making money. +It suits my spirit of adventure. I like an adventure. +And if there’s any thing I love, it’s an adventure with +money in it! But even that isn’t my chief pleasure: +my chief pleasure’s the study of human nature.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘The proper study of mankind is man.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.’”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>This spoiling of Assyrian camps, so to speak, often +detained Mr. Tarbox within limited precincts for days +at a time; but “Isn’t that what time is for?” he would +say to those he had been dealing with, as he finally +snapped the band around his pocket-book; and they +would respond, “Yes, that’s so.”</p> + +<p>And then he would wish them a hearty farewell, +while they were thinking that at least he might know +it was his treat.</p> + +<p>Thus it was the middle of February when at Houma, +the parish seat of Terrebonne, he passed the last rootlet +of railway, and, standing finally under the blossoming +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> +orange-trees of Terrebonne Bayou far down toward +the Gulf, heard from the chief of the engineering party +that Claude was not with him.</p> + +<p>“He didn’t leave us; we left him; and up to the +time when we left he hadn’t decided where he would +go or what he would do. His father and he are together, +you know, and of course that makes it harder +for them to know just how to move.”</p> + +<p>The speaker was puzzled. What could this silk-hatted, +cut-away-coated, empearled, free lance of a +fellow want with Claude? He would like to find out. +So he added, “I may get a letter from him to-morrow; +suppose you stay with me until then.” And, to his +astonishment, Mr. Tarbox quickly jumped at the proposition.</p> + +<p>No letter came. But when the twenty-four hours +had passed, the surveyor had taken that same generous—not +to say credulous—liking for Mr. Tarbox that +we have seen him show for St. Pierre and for Claude. +He was about to start on a tour of observation eastward +through a series of short canals that span the +shaking prairies from bayou to bayou, from Terrebonne +to Lafourche, Lafourche to Des Allemands, so through +Lake Ouacha into and up Barataria, again across +prairie, and at length, leaving Lake Cataouaché on the +left, through cypress-swamp to the Mississippi River, +opposite New Orleans. He would have pressed Mr. +Tarbox to bear him company; but before he could ask +twice, Mr. Tarbox had consented. They went in a cat-rigged +skiff, with a stalwart negro rowing or towing +whenever the sail was not the best.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> +“It’s all of sixty miles,” said the engineer; “but if +the wind doesn’t change or drop we can sleep to-night +in Achille’s hut, send this man and skiff back, and +make Achille, with his skiff, put us on board the +Louisiana-avenue ferry-launch to-morrow afternoon.”</p> + +<p>“Who is Achille?”</p> + +<p>“Achille? Oh! he’s merely a ’Cajun pot-hunter living +on a shell bank at the edge of Lake Cataouaché, +with an Indian wife. Used to live somewhere on Bayou +des Allemands, but last year something or other scared +him away from there. He’s odd—seems to be a sort of +self-made outcast. I don’t suppose he’s ever done anybody +any harm; but he just seems to be one of that kind +that can’t bear to even try to keep up with the rest of +humanity; the sort of man swamps and shaking prairies +were specially made for, you know. He’s living right +on top of a bank of fossil shells now,—thousands of +barrels of them,—that he knows would bring him a little +fortune if only he could command the intelligence and +the courage to market them in New Orleans. There’s a +chance for some bright man who isn’t already too busy. +Why didn’t I think to mention it to Claude? But then +neither he nor his father have got the commercial +knowledge they would need. Now”—The speaker +suddenly paused, and, as the two men sat close beside +each other under an umbrella in the stern of the skiff, +looked into Mr. Tarbox’s pale-blue eyes, and smiled, +and smiled.</p> + +<p>“I’m here,” said Mr. Tarbox.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” responded the other, “and I’ve just made +out why! And you’re right, Tarbox; you and Claude, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> +with or without his father, will make a strong team. +You’ve got no business to be canvassing books, +you”—</p> + +<p>“It’s my line,” said the canvasser, smiling fondly +and pushing his hat back,—it was wonderful how he +kept that hat smooth,—“and I’m the head of the +line:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘A voice replied far up the height,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Excelsior!’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>I was acquainted with Mr. Longfellow.”</p> + +<p>“Tarbox,” persisted the engineer, driving away his +own smile, “you know what you are; you are a born +contractor! You’ve found it out, and”—smiling +again—“that’s why you’re looking for Claude.”</p> + +<p>“Where is he?” asked Mr. Tarbox.</p> + +<p>“Well, I told you the truth when I said I didn’t +know; but I haven’t a doubt he’s in Vermilionville.”</p> + +<p>“Neither have I,” said the book-agent; “and if I +had, I wouldn’t give it room. If I knew he was in +New Jersey, still I’d think he was in Vermilionville, +and go there looking for him. And wherefore? For +occult reasons.” The two men looked at each other +smilingly in the eye, and the boat glided on.</p> + +<p>The wind favored them. With only now and then +the cordelle, and still more rarely the oars, they moved +all day across the lands and waters that were once the +fastnesses of the Baratarian pirates. The engineer +made his desired observations without appreciable +delays, and at night they slept under Achille’s thatch +of rushes.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> +As the two travellers stood alone for a moment next +morning, the engineer said:</p> + +<p>“You seem to be making a study of my pot-hunter.”</p> + +<p>“It’s my natural instinct,” replied Mr. Tarbox. +“The study of human nature comes just as natural to +me as it does to a new-born duck to scratch the back +of its head with its hind foot; just as natural—and +easier. The pot-hunter is a study; you’re right.”</p> + +<p>“But he reciprocates,” said the engineer; “he +studies you.”</p> + +<p>The student of man held his smiling companion’s +gaze with his own, thrust one hand into his bosom, +and lifted the digit of the other: “The eyes are called +the windows of the soul,—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘And looks commercing with the skies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Have you tried to look into his eyes? You can’t +do it. He won’t let you. He’s got something in +there that he doesn’t want you to see.”</p> + +<p>In the middle of the afternoon, when Achille’s skiff +was already re-entering the shades of the swamp on +his way homeward, and his two landed passengers +stood on the levee at the head of Harvey’s Canal with +the Mississippi rolling by their feet and on its farther +side the masts and spires of the city, lighted by the +western sun, swinging round the long bend of her +yellow harbor, Mr. Tarbox offered his hand to say +good-by. The surveyor playfully held it.</p> + +<p>“I mean no disparagement to your present calling,” +he said, “but the next time we meet I hope you’ll be +a contractor.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> +“Ah!” responded Tarbox, “it’s not my nature. +I cannot contract; I must always expand. And yet—I +thank you.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“‘Pure thoughts are angel visitors. Be such<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The frequent inmates of thy guileless breast.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Good luck! Good-by!”</p> + +<p>One took the ferry; the other, the west bound train +at Gretna.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_IX" id="PART_III_CHAP_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h3> + +<h3>NOT BLUE EYES, NOR YELLOW HAIR.</h3> + + +<p>When the St. Pierres found themselves really left +with only each other’s faces to look into, and the +unbounded world around them, it was the father who +first spoke:</p> + +<p>“Well, Claude, where you t’ink ’better go?”</p> + +<p>There had been a long, silent struggle in both men’s +minds. And now Claude heard with joy this question +asked in English. To ask it in their old Acadian +tongue would have meant retreat; this meant advance. +And yet he knew his father yearned for Bayou des +Acadiens. Nay, not his father; only one large part +of his father’s nature; the old, French, home-loving +part.</p> + +<p>What should Claude answer? Grande Pointe? Even +for St. Pierre alone that was impossible. “Can a +man enter a second time into his mother’s womb?” +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> +No; the thatched cabin stood there,—stands there +now; but, be he happy or unhappy, no power can ever +make St. Pierre small enough again to go back into +that shell. Let it stand, the lair of one of whom you +may have heard, who has retreated straight backward +from Grande Pointe and from advancing enlightenment +and order,—the village drunkard, Chat-oué.</p> + +<p>Claude’s trouble, then, was not that his father’s +happiness beckoned in one direction and his in another; +but that his father’s was linked on behind his. Could +the father endure the atmosphere demanded by the +son’s widening power? Could the second nature of +lifetime habits bear the change? Of his higher spirit +there was no doubt. Neither father nor son had any +conception of happiness separate from noble aggrandizement. +Nay, that is scant justice; far more than +they knew, or than St. Pierre, at least, would have +acknowledged, they had caught the spirit of Bonaventure, +to call it by no higher name, and saw that the +best life for self is to live the best possible for others. +“For all others,” Bonaventure would have insisted; +but “for Claude,” St. Pierre would have amended. +They could not return to Grande Pointe.</p> + +<p>Where, then, should they go? Claude stood with his +arms akimbo, looked into his father’s face, tried to +hide his perplexity under a smile, and then glanced +at their little pile of effects. There lay their fire-arms, +the same as ever; but the bundles in Madras handkerchiefs +had given place to travelling-bags, and instead +of pots and pans here were books and instruments. +What reply did these things make? New Orleans? +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> +The great city? Even Claude shrank from that +thought.</p> + +<p>No, it was the name of quite a different place they +spoke; a name that Claude’s lips dared not speak, +because, for lo! these months and months his heart +had spoken it,—spoken it at first in so soft a whisper +that for a long time he had not known it was his heart +he heard. When something within uttered and re-uttered +the place’s name, he would silently explain to +himself: “It is because I am from home. It is this +unfixed camp-life, this life without my father, without +Bonaventure, that does it. This is not love, of course; +I know that: for, in the first place, I was in love once, +when I was fourteen, and it was not at all like this; +and in the second place, it would be hopeless presumption +in me, muddy-booted vagabond that I am; and +in the third place, a burnt child dreads fire. And so +it cannot be love. When papa and I are once more +together, this unaccountable longing will cease.”</p> + +<p>But, instead of ceasing, it had grown. The name of +the place was still the only word the heart would venture; +but it meant always one pair of eyes, one young +face, one form, one voice. Still it was not love—oh, +no! Now and then the hospitality of some plantation-house +near the camp was offered to the engineers; and +sometimes, just to prove that this thing was not love, +he would accept such an invitation, and even meet a +pretty maiden or two, and ask them for music and +song—for which he had well-nigh a passion—and +talk enough to answer their questions and conjectures +about a surveyor’s life, etc.; but when he got back to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> +camp, matters within his breast were rather worse than +better.</p> + +<p>He had then tried staying in camp, but without +benefit,—nothing cured, every thing aggravated. +And yet he knew so perfectly well that he was not in +love, that just to realize the knowledge, one evening, +when his father was a day’s march ahead, and he was +having a pleasant chat with the “chief,” no one else +nigh, and they were dawdling away its closing hour +with pipes, metaphysics, psychology, and like trifles, +which Claude, of course, knew all about,—Claude told +him of this singular and amusing case of haunting +fantasy in his own experience. His hearer had shown +even more amusement than he, and had gone on smiling +every now and then afterward, with a significance +that at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him +and still more with himself. There had been one offsetting +comfort; an unintentional implication had +somehow slipped in between his words, that the haunting +fantasy had blue eyes and yellow hair.</p> + +<p>“All right,” the angry youth had muttered, tossing +on his iron couch, “let him think so!” And then he +had tossed again, and said below his breath, “It is +not love: it is not. But I must never answer its call; +if I do, love is what it will be. My father, my father! +would that I could give my whole heart to thee as thou +givest all to me!”</p> + +<p>God has written on every side of our nature,—on +the mind, on the soul, yes, and in our very flesh,—the +interdict forbidding love to have any one direction +only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed. This +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> +Claude vaguely felt; but lacking the clear thought, he +could only cry, “Oh, is it, <em>is it</em>, selfishness for one’s +heart just to be hungry and thirsty?”</p> + +<p>And now here sat his father, on all their worldly +goods, his rifle between his knees, waiting for his son’s +choice, and ready to make it his own. And here stood +the son, free of foot to follow that voice which was +calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling +assured that to follow it meant love without hope for +him, and for this dear father the pain of yielding up +the larger share of his son’s heart,—as if love were +subject to arithmetic!—yielding it to one who, thought +Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress +of her black hair, one lash of her dark eyes. While +he still pondered, the father spoke.</p> + +<p>“Claude, I tell you!” his face lighted up with +courage and ambition. “We better go—Mervilionville!”</p> + +<p>Claude’s heart leaped, but he kept his countenance. +“Vermilionville? No, papa; you will not like Vermilionville.”</p> + +<p>“Yaas! I will like him. ’Tis good place! Bonaventure +come from yondah. When I was leav’ Gran’ +Point’, Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I tole +you. He tell Sidonie he bringin’ ed’cation at Gran’ +Point’ to make Gran’ Point’ more better, but now +ed’cation drive bes’ men ’way from Gran’ Point’. And +den he say, ‘St. Pierre, may bee you go Mervilionville; +dat make me glad,’ he say: ‘dat way,’ he say, ‘what +I rob Peter I pay John.’ Where we go if dawn’t +go Mervilionville? St. Martinville, Opelousas, New +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> +Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me. Can’t go +to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn’t like +Mervilionville? You write me letter, when you was +yondah, you like him fus’ class!”</p> + +<p>Claude let silence speak consent. He stooped, and +began to load himself with their joint property. He +had had, in his life, several sorts of trouble of mind; +but only just now at twenty was he making the acquaintance +of his conscience. Vermilionville was the call +that had been sounding within him all these months, +and Marguerite was the haunting fantasy.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_X" id="PART_III_CHAP_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h3> + +<h3>A STRONG TEAM.</h3> + + +<p>I would not wish to offend the self-regard of +Vermilionville. But—what a place in which to seek +enlargement of life! I know worth and greatness +have sometimes, not to say ofttimes, emerged from +much worse spots; from little lazy villages, noisy only +on Sunday, with grimier court-houses, deeper dust and +mud, their trade more entirely in the hands of rat-faced +Isaacs and Jacobs, with more frequent huge and solitary +swine slowly scavenging about in abysmal self-occupation, +fewer vine-clad cottages, raggeder negroes, +and more decay. Vermilionville is not the worst, at +all. I have seen large, and enlarging, lives there.</p> + +<p>Hither came the two St. Pierres. “No,” Claude +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> +said; “they would not go to the Beausoleil house.” +Privately he would make himself believe he had not +returned to any thing named Beausoleil, but only and +simply to Vermilionville. On a corner opposite the +public square there was another “hotel;” and it was +no great matter to them if it was mostly pine-boards, +pale wall-paper, and transferable whitewash. But, +not to be outdone by its rival round the corner, it had, +besides, a piano, of a quality you may guess, and a +landlady’s daughter who seven times a day played and +sang “I want to be somebody’s darling,” and had no +want beyond. The travellers turned thence, found +a third house full, conjectured the same of the only +remaining one, and took their way, after all, towards +Zoséphine’s. It was quite right, now, to go there, +thought Claude, since destiny led; and so he let it +lead both his own steps and the thrumping boots of +this dear figure in Campeachy hat and soft untrimmed +beard, that followed ever at his side.</p> + +<p>And then, after all!—looking into those quiet +black eyes of Zoséphine’s,—to hear that Marguerite +was not there! Gone! Gone to the great city, the +place “too big to live in.” Gone there for knowledge, +training, cultivation, larger life, and finer uses! +Gone to study an art,—an art! Risen beyond him +“like a diamond in the sky.” And he fool enough +to come rambling back, blue-shirted and brown-handed, +expecting to find her still a tavern maid! So, farewell +fantasy! ’Twas better so; much better. Now +life was simplified. Oh, yes; and St. Pierre made +matters better still by saying to Zoséphine:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> +“I dinn’ know you got one lill gal. Claude never +tell me ’bout dat. I spec’ dat why he dawn’t want +’come yeh. He dawn’t like gal; he run f’om ’em like +dog from yalla-jacket. He dawn’t like none of ’m. +What he like, dass his daddy. He jus’ married to his +daddy.” The father dropped his hand, smilingly, +upon his son’s shoulder with a weight that would have +crushed it in had it been ordinary cast-iron.</p> + +<p>Claude took the hand and held it, while Zoséphine +smiled and secretly thanked God her child was away. +In her letters to Marguerite she made no haste to mention +the young man’s re-appearance, and presently a +small thing occurred that made it well that she had left +it untold.</p> + +<p>With Claude and his father some days passed unemployed. +Yet both felt them to be heavy with significance. +The weight and pressure of new and, to them, +large conditions, were putting their inmost quality to +proof. Claude saw, now, what he could not see +before; why his friend the engineer had cast him loose +without a word of advice as to where he should go or +what he should do. It was because by asking no advice +he had really proposed to be his own master. +And now, could he do it? Dare he try it?</p> + +<p>The first step he took was taken, I suppose, instinctively +rather than intelligently; certainly it was perilous: +he retreated into himself. St. Pierre found work afield, +for of this sort there was plenty; the husbandmen’s +year, and the herders’ too, were just gathering good +momentum. But Claude now stood looking on empty-handed +where other men were busy with agricultural +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> +utensils or machines; or now kept his room, whittling +out a toy miniature of some apparatus, which when +made was not like the one he had seen, at last. A +great distress began to fill the father’s mind. There +had been a time when he could be idle and whittle, but +that time was gone by; that was at Grande Pointe; and +now for his son—for Claude—to become a lounger +in tavern quarters—Claude had not announced himself +to Vermilionville as a surveyor, or as any thing—Claude +to be a hater of honest labor—was this what +Bonaventure called civilize-ation? Better, surely better, +go back to the old pastoral life. How yearningly it +was calling them to its fragrant bosom! And almost +every thing was answering the call. The town was +tricking out its neglected decay with great trailing robes +of roses. The spade and hoe were busy in front +flower-beds and rear kitchen-gardens. Lanes were +green, skies blue, roads good. In the <i>bas fonds</i> the +oaks of many kinds and the tupelo-gums were hiding +all their gray in shimmering green; in these coverts +and in the reedy marshes, all the feathered flocks not +gone away north were broken into nesting pairs; in the +fields, crops were springing almost at the sower’s heels; +on the prairie pastures, once so vast, now being narrowed +so rapidly by the people’s thrift, the flocks and +herds ate eagerly of the bright new grass, and foals, +calves, and lambs stood and staggered on their first +legs, while in the door-yards housewives, hens, and +mother-geese warned away the puppies and children +from downy broods under the shade of the China-trees. +But Claude? Even his books lay unstudied, and his +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> +instruments gathered dust, while he pottered over two +or three little wooden things that a boy could not play +with without breaking. At last St. Pierre could bear +it no longer.</p> + +<p>“Well, Claude, dass ten days han’-runnin’ now, we +ain’t do not’in’ but whittlin’.”</p> + +<p>Claude slowly pushed his model from him, looked, +as one in a dream, into his father’s face, and suddenly +and for the first time saw what that father had suffered +for a fortnight. But into his own face there came no +distress; only, for a moment, a look of tender protestation, +and then strong hope and confidence.</p> + +<p>“Yass,” he said, rising, “dass true. But we +dawn’t got whittle no mo’.” He pointed to the +model, then threw his strong arms akimbo and asked, +“You know what is dat?”</p> + +<p>“Naw,” replied the father, “I dunno. I t’ink ’taint +no real mash-in’ [machine] ’cause I dawn’t never see +nuttin’ like dat at Belle Alliance plant-ation, neider at +Belmont; and I know, me, if anybody got one mash-in’, +any place, for do any t’in’ mo’ betteh or mo’ quicker, +Mistoo Walleece an’ M’sieu Le Bourgeois dey boun’ +to ’ave ’im. Can’t hitch nuttin’ to dat t’ing you got +dare; she too small for a rat. What she is, Claude?”</p> + +<p>A yet stronger hope and courage lighted Claude’s +face. He laid one hand upon the table before him +and the other upon the shoulder of his sitting companion:</p> + +<p>“Papa, if you want to go wid me to de city, we +make one big enough for two mule’. Dass a mash-in’—a +new mash-in’—my mash-in’—my invention!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> +“Invench? What dat is—invench?”</p> + +<p>Some one knocked on the door. Claude lifted the +model, moved on tiptoe, and placed it softly under +the bed. As he rose and turned again with reddened +face, a card was slipped under the door. He took it +and read, in a pencil scrawl,—</p> + +<p> +“State Superintendent of Public Education,”—<br /> +</p> + +<p>looked at his father with a broad grin, and opened the +door.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarbox had come at the right moment. There +was a good hour and a half of the afternoon still left, +and he and Claude took a walk together. Beyond a +stile and a frail bridge that spanned a gully at one end +of the town, a noble avenue of oaks leads toward +Vermilion River. On one side of this avenue the +town has since begun to spread, but at that time there +were only wide fields on the right hand and on the +left. At the farther end a turn almost at right angles +to the left takes you through a great gate and across +the railway, then along a ruined hedge of roses, and +presently into the oak-grove of the old ex-governor’s +homestead. This was their walk.</p> + +<p>By the time they reached the stile, Claude had +learned that his friend was at the head of his line, and +yet had determined to abandon that line for another</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Far up the height—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Excelsior!”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Also that his friend had liked him, had watched him, +would need him, and was willing then and there to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +assure him a modest salary, whose amount he specified, +simply to do whatever he might call upon him to +do in his (Claude’s) “line.”</p> + +<p>They were walking slowly, and now and then slower +still. As they entered the avenue of oaks, Claude +declined the offer. Then they went very slowly indeed. +Claude learned that Mr. Tarbox, by some +chance not explained, had been in company with his +friend the engineer; that the engineer had said, “Tarbox, +you’re a born contractor,” and that Claude and +he would make a “strong team;” that Mr. Tarbox’s +favorite study was human nature; that he knew talent +when he saw it; had studied Claude; had fully expected +him to decline to be his employee, and liked +him the better for so doing.</p> + +<p>“That was just a kind of test vote; see?”</p> + +<p>Then Mr. Tarbox offered Claude a partnership; not +an equal one, but withal a fair interest.</p> + +<p>“We’ve got to commence small and branch out +gradually; see?” And Claude saw.</p> + +<p>“Now, you wonder why I don’t go in alone. Well, +I’ll tell you; and when I tell you, I’ll astonish you. I +lack education! Now, Claude, I’m taking you into my +confidence. You’ve done nothing but go to school and +study for about six years. I had a different kind of +father from yours; I never got one solid year’s schooling, +all told, in my life. I’ve picked up cords of +information, but an ounce of education’s worth a ton +of information. Don’t you believe that? eh? it is so! +I say it, and I’m the author of the A. of U. I. I like +to call it that, because it brings you and I so near +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> +together; see?” The speaker smiled, was still, and +resumed:</p> + +<p>“That’s why I need you. And I’m just as sure you +need me. I need not only the education you have now, +but what you’re getting every day. When you see me +you see a man who is always looking awa-a-ay ahead. +I see what you’re going to be, and I’m making this +offer to the Claude St. Pierre of the future.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarbox waited for a reply. The avenue had +been passed, the railway crossed, and the hedge skirted. +They loitered slowly into the governor’s grove, under +whose canopy the beams of the late afternoon sun were +striking and glancing. But all their light seemed +hardly as much as that which danced in the blue eyes +of Mr. Tarbox while Claude slowly said:</p> + +<p>“I dunno if we can fix dat. I was glad to see you +comin’. I reckon you jus’ right kind of man I want. +I jus’ make a new invention. I t’ink ’f you find dat’s +good, dat be cawntrac’ enough for right smart while. +And beside’, I t’ink I invent some mo’ b’fo’ long.”</p> + +<p>But Mr. Tarbox was not rash. He only asked quiet +and careful questions for some time. The long sunset +was sending its last rays across the grove-dotted land, +and the birds in every tree were filling the air with their +sunset song-burst, when the two friends re-entered the +avenue of oaks. They had agreed to join their fortunes. +Now their talk drifted upon other subjects.</p> + +<p>“I came back to Vermilionville purposely to see +you,” said Mr. Tarbox. “But I’ll tell you privately, +you wasn’t the only cause of my coming.”</p> + +<p>Claude looked at him suddenly. Was this another +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> +haunted man? Were there two men haunted, and only +one fantasy? He felt ill at ease. Mr. Tarbox saw, +but seemed not to understand. He thought it best to +speak plainly.</p> + +<p>“I’m courting her, Claude; and I think I’m going +to get her.”</p> + +<p>Claude stopped short, with jaws set and a bad look +in his eye.</p> + +<p>“Git who?”</p> + +<p>But Mr. Tarbox was calm—even complacent. He +pushed his silk hat from his forehead, and said:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">... “‘One made up<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of loveliness alone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A woman, of her gentle sex<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The seeming paragon.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>I refer to the Rose of Vermilionville, the Pearl of the +Parish, the loveliest love and fairest fair that ever +wore the shining name of Beausoleil. She’s got to +change it to Tarbox, Claude. Before yon sun has run +its course again, I’m going to ask her for the second +time. I’ve just begun asking, Claude; I’m going to +keep it up till she says yes.”</p> + +<p>“She’s not yondah!” snarled Claude, with the frown +and growl of a mastiff. “She’s gone to de city.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarbox gazed a moment in blank amazement. +Then he slowly lifted his hat from his head, expanded +his eyes, drew a long slow groan, turned slowly half +around, let the inhalation go in a long keen whistle, +and cried:</p> + +<p>“Oh! taste! taste! Who’s got the taste? What +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> +do you take me for? Who <em>are</em> you talking about? +That little monkey? Why, man alive, it’s the mother +I’m after. Ha, ha, ha!”</p> + +<p>If Claude said any thing in reply, I cannot imagine +what it was. Mr. Tarbox had a right to his opinion +and taste, if taste it could be called, and Claude was +helpless to resent it, even in words; but for hours +afterward he execrated his offender’s stupidity, little +guessing that Mr. Tarbox, in a neighboring chamber, +alone and in his night-robe, was bending, smiting his +thigh in silent merriment, and whispering to himself:</p> + +<p>“He thinks I’m an ass! He thinks I’m an ass! +He can’t see that I was simply investigating him!”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XI" id="PART_III_CHAP_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h3> + +<h3>HE ASKS HER AGAIN.</h3> + + +<p>Claude and his father left the next day,—Saturday. +Only the author of the A. of U. I. knew whither they +were gone. As they were going he said very privately +to Claude:</p> + +<p>“I’ll be with you day after to-morrow. You can’t +be ready for me before then, and you and your father +can take Sunday to look around, and kind o’ see the +city. But don’t go into the down-town part; you’ll +not like it; nothing but narrow streets and old buildings +with histories to ’em, and gardens hid away inside +of ’em, and damp archways, and pagan-looking +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> +females who can’t talk English, peeping out over +balconies that offer to drop down on you, and then +don’t keep their word; every thing old-timey, and +Frenchy, and Spanishy; unprogressive—you wouldn’t +like it. Go up-town. That’s American. It’s new and +fresh. There you’ll find beautiful mansions, mostly +frame, it’s true, but made to look like stone, you +know. There you’ll see wealth! There you’ll get +the broad daylight—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘The merry, merry sunshine, that makes the heart so gay.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>See? Yes, and Monday we’ll meet at Jones’s, 17 +Tchoupitoulas Street; all right; I’ll be on hand. But +to-day and to-morrow—‘Alabama’—‘here I rest.’ +I feel constrained”—he laid his hand upon his heart, +closed one eye, and whispered—“to stay. I would +fain spend the sabbath in sweet Vermilionville. You +get my idea?”</p> + +<p>The sabbath afternoon, beyond the town, where +Mr. Tarbox strolled, was lovelier than can be told. +Yet he was troubled. Zoséphine had not thus far +given him a moment alone. I suppose, when a hundred +generations more have succeeded us on the +earth, lovers will still be blind to the fact that women +do not do things our way. How can they? That +would be capitulation at once, and even we should +find the whole business as stupid as shooting barnyard +fowls.</p> + +<p>Zoséphine had walked out earlier than Tarbox. He +had seen her go, but dared not follow. He read “thou +shalt not” as plain as print on her back as she walked +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> +quietly away; that same little peremptory back that +once in her father’s calèche used to hold itself stiff +when ’Thanase rode up behind. The occasional townsman +that lifted his slouch hat in deep deference to her +silent bow, did not read unusual care on her fair brow; +yet she, too, was troubled.</p> + +<p>Marguerite! she was the trouble. Zoséphine knew +her child could never come back to these old surroundings +and be content. The mother was not willing she +should. She looked at a photograph that her daughter +had lately sent her. What a change from the child +that had left her! It was like the change from a leaf +to a flower. There was but one thing to do: follow +her. So Zoséphine had resolved to sell the inn. She +was gone, now, to talk with the old ex-governor about +finding a purchaser. Her route was not by the avenue +of oaks, but around by a northern and then eastern +circuit. She knew Mr. Tarbox must have seen her +go; had a genuine fear that he would guess whither +she was bound, and yet, deeper down in her heart than +woman ever lets soliloquy go, was willing he should. +For she had another trouble. We shall come to that +presently.</p> + +<p>Her suitor walked in the avenue of oaks.</p> + +<p>“She’s gone,” he reckoned to himself, “to consult +the governor about something, and she’ll come back +this way.” He loitered out across fields, but not too +far off or out of sight; and by and by there she came, +with just the slightest haste in her walk. She received +him with kindly reserve, and they went more slowly, +together.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> +She told where she had been, and that the governor +approved a decision she had made.</p> + +<p>“Yass; I goin’ sell my hotel.”</p> + +<p>“He’s right!” exclaimed her companion, with joy; +“and you’re right!”</p> + +<p>“Well, ’tain’t sold yet,” she responded. She did +not smile as she looked at him. He read trouble; +some trouble apart from the subject, in her quiet, +intense eyes.</p> + +<p>“You know sombodie want buy dat?” she asked.</p> + +<p>“I’ll find some one,” he promptly replied. Then +they talked a little about the proper price for it, and +then were very still until Mr. Tarbox said:</p> + +<p>“I walked out here hoping to meet you.”</p> + +<p>Madame Beausoleil looked slightly startled, and then +bowed gravely.</p> + +<p>“Yes; I want your advice. It’s only business, but +it’s important, and it’s a point where a woman’s +instinct is better than a man’s judgment.”</p> + +<p>There was some melancholy satire in her responding +smile; but it passed away, and Mr. Tarbox went +on:</p> + +<p>“You never liked my line of business”—</p> + +<p>Zoséphine interrupted with kind resentment:</p> + +<p>“Ah!”</p> + +<p>“No; I know you didn’t. You’re one of the few +women whose subscription I’ve sought in vain. Till +then I loved my business. I’ve never loved it since. +I’ve decided to sell out and quit. I’m going into +another business, one that you’ll admire. I don’t say +any thing about the man going into it,—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> +<span class="i0">‘Honor and shame from no condition rise:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Act well your part; there all the honor lies,’—<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>but I want your advice about the party I think of +going in with. It’s Claude St. Pierre.”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine turned upon the speaker a look of steady +penetration. He met it with a glance of perfect confiding. +“She sees me,” he said, at the same time, +far within himself.</p> + +<p>It was as natural to Mr. Tarbox to spin a web as it +is for a spider. To manœuvre was the profoundest +instinct of his unprofound nature. Zoséphine felt the +slender threads weaving around her. But in her heart +of hearts there was a certain pleasure in being snared. +It could not, to her, seem wholly bad for Tarbox to +play spider, provided he should play the harmless +spider. Mr. Tarbox spoke again, and she listened +amiably.</p> + +<p>“Claude is talented. He has what I haven’t; I +have what he hasn’t, and together we could make each +other’s fortunes, if he’s only the square, high-style +fellow I think he is. I’m a student of human nature, +and I think I’ve made him out. I think he’ll do to tie +to. But will he? You can tell me. You read people +by instinct. I ask you just as a matter of business +advice and in business confidence. What do you think? +Will you trust me and tell me—as my one only trusted +friend—freely and fully—as I would tell you?”</p> + +<p>Madame Beausoleil felt the odds against her, but she +looked into her companion’s face with bright, frank +eyes and said: “Yass, I t’ink yass; I t’ink <em>’tis</em> so.”</p> + +<p>“Thanks!” said her friend, with unnecessary fervor +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> +and tenderness. “Then Claude will be my partner, +unless—my dear friend, shall you be so kind—I +might almost say confiding—to me, and me not tell +you something I think you’d ought to know? For I +hope we are always to be friends; don’t you?”</p> + +<p>“Yass,” she said, very sadly and sweetly.</p> + +<p>“Thanks! And if Claude and I become partners +that will naturally bring him into our circle, as it +were; see?”</p> + +<p>The little madame looked up with a sudden austere +exaltation of frame and intensity of face, but her companion +rushed on with—“And I’m going to tell you, +let the risk to me be what it may, that it may result in +great unhappiness to Claude; for he loves your daughter, +who, I know, you must think too good for him!”</p> + +<p>Madame Beausoleil blushed as though she herself +were Marguerite and Tarbox were Claude.</p> + +<p>“Ah! love Marguerite! Naw, naw! He dawn’t +love noboddie but hees papa! Hees papa tell me dat! +Ah! naw, ’tis <em>not</em> so!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarbox stopped still; and when Zoséphine saw +they were in the shadow of the trees while all about +them was brightened by the momentary Southern twilight, +she, too, stopped, and he spoke.</p> + +<p>“What brought Claude back here when by right he +should have gone straight to the city? You might +have guessed it when you saw him.” He paused to +let her revolve the thought, and added in his own +mind—“If you had disliked the idea, you’d ’a’ suspected +him quick enough”—and was pleased. He +spoke again. “But I didn’t stop with guessing.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> +Zoséphine looked up to his face from the little foot +that edgewise was writing nothings in the dust.</p> + +<p>“No,” continued her companion: “I walked with +him two evenings ago in this avenue, and right where +we stand now, without his ever knowing it—then or +now—he as good as told me. Yes, Josephine, he +dares to love your beautiful and accomplished daughter! +The thought may offend you, but—was I not right to +tell you?”</p> + +<p>She nodded and began to move slowly on, he following.</p> + +<p>“I’m not betraying anyone’s confidence,” persisted +he; “and I can’t help but have a care for you. Not +that you need it, or anybody’s. You can take care +of yourself if any man or woman can. Every time +your foot touches the ground it says so as plain as +words. That’s what first caught my fancy. You +haven’t got to have somebody to take care of you. +O Josephine! that’s just why I want to take care of +you so bad! I can take care of myself, and I used +to like to do it; I was just that selfish and small; but +love’s widened me. I can take care of myself; but, +oh! what satisfaction is there in it? Is there any? +Now, I ask you! It may do for you, for you’re worth +taking care of; but I want to take care of something +I needn’t be ashamed to love!” He softly stole her +hand as they went. She let it stay, yet looked away +from him, up through the darkling branches, and distressfully +shook her head.</p> + +<p>“Don’t, Josephine!—don’t do that. I want you +to take care of me. You could do better, I know, if +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> +love wasn’t the count; but when it comes to loving +you, I’m the edition deloox! I know you’ve an +aspiring nature, but so have I; and I believe with you +to love and you loving me, and counselling and guiding +me, I could climb high. O Josephine! it isn’t this +poor Tarbox I’m asking you to give yourself to; it’s +the Tarbox that is to be; it’s the coming Tarbox! +Why, it’s even a good business move! If it wasn’t +I wouldn’t say a word! You know I can, and will +take the very best care of every thing you’ve got; and +I know you’ll take the same of mine. It’s a good +move, every way. Why, here’s every thing just fixed +for it! Listen to the mocking-bird! See him yonder, +just at the right of the stile. See! O Josephine! +don’t you see he isn’t</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Still singing where the weeping willow waves’?<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>he’s on the myrtle; the myrtle, Josephine, and the +crape-myrtle at that!—widowhood unwidowed!—Now +he’s on the fence—but he’ll not stay there,—and +you mustn’t either!” The suitor smiled at his +own ludicrousness, yet for all that looked beseechingly +in earnest. He stood still again, continuing to hold +her hand. She stole a furtive glance here and there +for possible spectators. He smiled again.</p> + +<p>“You don’t see anybody; the world waives its +claim.” But there was such distress in her face that +his smile passed away, and he made a new effort +to accommodate his suit to her mood. “Josephine, +there’s no eye on us except it’s overhead. Tell me +this; if he that was yours until ten years ago was +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> +looking down now and could speak to us, don’t you +believe he’d say yes?”</p> + +<p>“Oh! I dunno. Not to-day! Not <em>dis</em> day!” The +widow’s eyes met his gaze of tender inquiry and then +sank to the ground. She shook her head mournfully. +“Naw, naw; not dis day. ’Tis to-day ’Thanase was +kill’!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarbox relaxed his grasp and Zoséphine’s hand +escaped. She never had betrayed to him so much +distress as filled her face now. “De man what kill’ +him git away! You t’ink I git marrie’ while dat man +alive? Ho-o-o! You t’ink I let Marguerite see me +do dat! Ah! naw!” She waved him away and +turned to leave the spot, but he pressed after, and she +paused once more. A new possibility lighted his eyes. +He said eagerly:</p> + +<p>“Describe the man to me. Describe him. How +tall was he? How old would he be now? Did they +try to catch him? Did you hear me talking yesterday +about a man? Is there any picture of him? Have +you got one? Yes, you have; it’s in your pocket now +with your hand on it. Let me see it.”</p> + +<p>“Ah! I di’n’ want you to see dat!”</p> + +<p>“No, I don’t suppose, as far as you know yourself, +you did.” He received it from her, and with his eyes +still on her, continued: “No, but you knew that if I +got a ghost of a chance, I’d see you alone. You knew +what I’d ask you;—yes, you did, Josephine, and you +put this thing into your pocket to make it easier to say +no.”</p> + +<p>“Hah! easier! Hah! easier! I need somethin’ to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> +<em>help</em> me do dat? Hah! ’Tis <em>not</em> so!” But the weakness +of the wordy denial was itself almost a confession.</p> + +<p>They moved on. A few steps brought them into +better light. Mr. Tarbox looked at the picture. +Zoséphine saw a slight flash of recognition. He +handed it back in silence, and they walked on, saying +not a word until they reached the stile. But there, +putting his foot upon it to bar the way, he said:</p> + +<p>“Josephine, the devil never bid so high for me +before in his life as he’s bidding for me now. And +there’s only one thing in the way; he’s bid too late.”</p> + +<p>Her eyes flashed with injured resentment. “Ah, +you! you dawn’t know not’n’—” But he interrupted:</p> + +<p>“Stop, I don’t mean more than just what I say. +Six years ago—six and a half—I met a man of a +kind I’d never met, to know it, before. You know +who’ I mean, don’t you?”</p> + +<p>“Bonaventure?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. That meeting made a turning-point in my +life. You’ve told me that whatever is best in you, +you owe to him. Well, knowing him as I do, I can +believe it; and if it’s true, then it’s the same with me; +for first he, and then you, have made another man out +of me.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, naw! Bonaventure, may<em>be</em>; but not me; +ah, naw!”</p> + +<p>“But I tell you, yes! you, Josephine! I’m poor +sort enough yet; but I could have done things once +that I can’t do now. There was a time when if some +miserable outlaw stood, or even seemed, maybe, to +stand between me and my chances for happiness, I +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> +could have handed him over to human justice, so +called, as easy as wink; but now? No, never any +more! Josephine, I know that man whose picture I’ve +just looked at. I could see you avenged. I could lay +my hands, and the hands of the law, on him inside of +twenty-four hours. You say you can’t marry till the +law has laid its penalties on him, or at least while he +lives and escapes them. Is that right?”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine had set her face to oppose his words only +with unyielding silence, but the answer escaped her:</p> + +<p>“Yass, <em>’tis</em> so. ’Tis ri-ght!”</p> + +<p>“No, Josephine. I know you <em>feel</em> as if it were; +but you don’t <em>think</em> so. No, you don’t; I know you +better in this matter than you know yourself, and you +don’t think it’s right. You know justice belongs to +the State, and that when you talk to yourself about +what <em>you</em> owe to justice, it means something else that +you’re too sweet and good to give the right name to, +and still want it. You don’t want it; you don’t want +revenge, and here’s the proof; for, Josephine, you +know, and I know, that if I—even without speaking—with +no more than one look of the eye—should +offer to buy your favor at that price, even ever so lawfully, +you’d thank me for one minute, and then loathe +me to the end of your days.”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine’s face had lost its hardness. It was drawn +with distress. With a gesture of repulsion and pain +she exclaimed:</p> + +<p>“I di’n’ mean—I di’n’ mean—Ah!”</p> + +<p>“What? private revenge? No, of course you didn’t! +But what else would it be? O Josephine! don’t +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> +I know you didn’t mean it? Didn’t I tell you so? +But I want you to go farther. I want you to put away +forever the <em>feeling</em>. I want to move and stand between +you and it, and say—whatever it costs me to say it—‘God +forbid!’ I do say it; I say it now. I can’t say +more; I can’t say less; and somehow,—I don’t know +how—wherever you learned it—I’ve learned it from +you.”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine opened her lips to refuse; but they closed +and tightened upon each other, her narrowed eyes sent +short flashes out upon his, and her breath came and +went long and deep without sound. But at his last +words she saw—the strangest thing—to be where she +saw it—a tear—<em>tears</em>—standing in his eyes; saw +them a moment, and then could see them no more for +her own. Her lips relaxed, her form drooped, she +lifted her face to reply, but her mouth twitched; she +could not speak.</p> + +<p>“I’m not so foolish as I look,” he said, trying to +smile away his emotion. “If the State chooses to +hunt him out and put him to trial and punishment, +I don’t say I’d stand in the way; that’s the State’s +business; that’s for the public safety. But it’s too +late—you and Bonnyventure have made it too late—for +me to help any one, least of all the one I love, to +be revenged.” He saw his words were prevailing and +followed them up. “Oh! you don’t need it any more +than you really want it, Josephine. You mustn’t ever +look toward it again. I throw myself and my love +across the path. Don’t walk over us. Take my hand; +give me yours; come another way; and if you’ll let +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> +such a poor excuse for a teacher and guide help you, +I’ll help you all I can, to learn to say ‘forgive us our +trespasses.’ You can begin, now, by forgiving me. I +may have thrown away my last chance with you, but +I can’t help it; it’s my love that spoke. And if I have +spoiled all and if I’ve got to pay for the tears you’re +shedding with the greatest disappointment of my life, +still I’ve had the glory and the sanctification of loving +you. If I must say, I can say,</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘’Tis better to have loved and lost<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than never to have loved at all.’<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Must I? Are you going to make me say that?”</p> + +<p>Zoséphine, still in tears, silently and with drooping +head pushed her way across the stile and left him +standing on the other side. He sent one pleading +word after her:</p> + +<p>“Isn’t it most too late to go the rest of the way +alone?”</p> + +<p>She turned, lifted her eyes to his for an instant, and +nodded. In a twinkling he was at her side. She +glanced at him again and said quite contentedly:</p> + +<p>“Yass; <em>’tis</em> so,” and they went the short remnant +of the way together.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XII" id="PART_III_CHAP_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h3> + +<h3>THE BEAUSOLEILS AND ST. PIERRES.</h3> + + +<p>You think of going to New Orleans in the spring. +Certainly, the spring is the time to go. When you +find yourself there go some day for luncheon—if they +haven’t moved it, there is talk of that,—go to the +Christian Women’s Exchange, already mentioned, in the +Rue Bourbon,—French Quarter. You step immediately +from the sidewalk into the former drawing-room of +a house built early in the century as a fashionable residence. +That at least is its aspect. Notice, for +instance, in the back parlor, crowded now, like the +front one, with eating-tables, a really interesting old +wooden mantelpiece. Of course this is not the way +persons used to go in old times. They entered by the +porte-cochère and open carriage-way upon which these +drawing-rooms still open by several glass doors on your +right. Step out there. You find a veranda crowded +with neat white-clothed tables. Before some late alterations +there was a great trellis full of green sunshine +and broken breezes entangled among vines of trumpet-creeper +and the Scuppernong grape. Here you will +be waited on, by small, blue-calico-robed damsels of +Methodist unsophistication and Presbyterian propriety, +to excellent refreshment; only, if you know your soul’s +true interest, eschew their fresh bread and insist on +having yesterday’s.</p> + +<p>However, that is a matter of taste there, and no +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> +matter at all here. All I need to add is that there are +good apartments overhead to be rented to women too +good for this world, and that in the latter end of +April, 1884, Zoséphine and Marguerite Beausoleil here +made their home.</p> + +<p>The tavern was sold. The old life was left far +behind. They had done that dreadful thing that everybody +deprecates and everybody likes to do—left the +country and come to live in the city. And Zoséphine +was well pleased. A man who had tried and failed +to be a merchant in the city, he and his wife, took the +tavern; so Zoséphine had not reduced the rural population—had +not sinned against “stastistics.”</p> + +<p>Besides, she had the good conscience of having fled +from Mr. Tarbox—put U. and I. apart, as it were—and +yet without being so hid but a suitor’s proper +persistency could find her. Just now he was far away +prosecuting the commercial interests of Claude’s one +or two inventions; but he was having great success; +he wrote once or twice—but got no reply—and hoped +to be back within a month.</p> + +<p>When Marguerite, after her mother’s receipt of each +of these letters, thought she saw a cloud on her brow, +Zoséphine explained, with a revival of that old look +of sweet self-command which the daughter so loved to +see, that they contained matters of business not at +all to be called troubles. But the little mother did +not show the letters. She could not; Marguerite did +not even know their writer had changed his business. +As to Claude, his name was never mentioned. Each +supposed the other was ignorant that he was in the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> +city, and because he was never mentioned each one +knew the other was thinking of him.</p> + +<p>Ah, Claude! what are you thinking of? Has not +your new partner in business told you they are here? +No, not a word of it. “That’ll keep till I get back,” +Mr. Tarbox had said to himself; and such shrewdness +was probably not so ungenerous, after all. “If you +want a thing done well, do it yourself,” he said one +evening to a man who could not make out what he +was driving at; and later Mr. Tarbox added to himself, +“The man that flies the kite must hold the +thread.” And so he kept his counsel.</p> + +<p>But that does not explain. For we remember that +Claude already knew that Marguerite was in the city, +at least had her own mother’s word for it. Here, +weeks had passed. New Orleans is not so large; its +active centre is very small. Even by accident, on the +street, Canal Street especially, he should have seen her +time and again.</p> + +<p>And he did not; at any rate not to know it. She +really kept very busy indoors; and in other doors so +did he. More than that, there was his father. When +the two first came to the city St. Pierre endured the +town for a week. But it was martyrdom, doing it. +Claude saw this. Mr. Tarbox was with him the latter +part of the week. He saw it. He gave his suggestive +mind to it for one night. The next day St. Pierre +and he wandered off in street-cars and on foot, and by +the time the sun went down again a new provision had +been made. At about ninety minutes’ jaunt from the +city’s centre, up the river, and on its farther shore, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> +near where the old “Company Canal” runs from a +lock in the river bank, back through the swamps and +into the Baratarian lakes, St. Pierre had bought +with his lifetime savings a neat house and fair-sized +orangery. No fields? None:</p> + +<p>“You see, bom-bye [by-and-by] Claude git doze +new mash-in’ all right, he go to ingineerin’ agin, and +him and you [Tarbox] be takin’ some cawntrac’ for +buil’ levee or break up old steamboat, or raise somet’in’ +what been sunk, or somet’in’ dat way. And den he +certain’ want somboddie to boss gang o’ fellows. +And den he say, ‘Papa, I want you.’ And den I +say how I got fifty arpent’ [42 acres] rice in field. +And den he say, ‘How I goin’ do widout you?’ And +den dare be fifty arpent’ rice gone!” No, no fields.</p> + +<p>Better: here with the vast wet forest at his back; +the river at his feet; the canal, the key to all Barataria, +Lafourche, and Terrebonne, full of Acadian +fishermen, hunters, timber-cutters, moss-gatherers, and +the like; the great city in sight from yonder neighbor’s +balustraded house-top; and Claude there to rally to +his side or he to Claude’s at a moment’s warning; he +would be an operator—think of that!—not of the +telegraph; an operator in the wild products of the +swamp, the <i>prairies tremblantes</i>, the lakes, and in +the small harvests of the <i>pointes</i> and bayou margins: +moss, saw-logs, venison, wild-duck, fish, crabs, shrimp, +melons, garlic, oranges, Périque tobacco. “Knowledge +is power;” he knew wood, water, and sky by +heart, spoke two languages, could read and write, +and understood the ways and tastes of two or three +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> +odd sorts of lowly human kind. Self-command is +dominion; I do not say the bottle went never to his +lips, but it never was lifted high. And now to the +blessed maxim gotten from Bonaventure he added +one given him by Tarbox: “In h-union ees strank!” +Not mere union of hands alone; but of counsels! +There were Claude and Tarbox and he!</p> + +<p>For instance; at Mr. Tarbox’s suggestion Claude +brought to his father from the city every evening, now +the “Picayune” and now the “Times-Democrat.” +From European and national news he modestly turned +aside. Whether he read the book-notices I do not +know; I hope not. But when he had served supper—he +was a capital camp cook—and he and Claude had +eaten, and their pipes were lighted, you should have +seen him scanning the latest quotations and debating +the fluctuations of the moss market, the shrimp market, +and the garlic market.</p> + +<p>Thus Claude was rarely in the city save in the busy +hours of the day. Much oftener than otherwise, he +saw the crimson sunsets, and the cool purple sunrises +as he and St. Pierre pulled in the father’s skiff diagonally +to or fro across the Mississippi, between their +cottage and the sleepy outposts of city street-cars, +just under the levee at the edge of that green oak-dotted +plain where a certain man, as gentle, shy, and +unworldly as our engineer friend thought Claude to +be, was raising the vast buildings of the next year’s +Universal Exposition.</p> + +<p>But all this explains only why Claude did not, to +his knowledge, see Marguerite by accident. Yet by +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> +intention! Why not by intention? First, there was +his fear of sinning against his father’s love. That +alone might have failed to hold him back; but, second, +there was his helplessness. Love made Tarbox, if any +thing were needed to make him, brave; it made Claude +a coward. And third, there was that helpless terror +of society in general, of which we have heard his +friend talk. I have seen a strong horse sink trembling +to the earth at the beating of an empty drum. +Claude looked with amazed despair at a man’s ability +to overtake a pretty girl acquaintance in Canal Street, +and walk and talk with her. He often asked himself +how he had ever been a moment at his ease those +November evenings in the tavern’s back-parlor at +Vermilionville. It was because he had a task there; +sociality was not the business of the hour.</p> + +<p>And now I have something else to confess about +Claude; something mortifying in the extreme. For +you see the poverty of all these explanations. Their +very multitude makes them weak. “Many fires cannot +quench love;” what was the real matter? I will +tell.</p> + +<p>Claude’s love was a deep sentiment. He had never +allowed it to assert itself as a passion. The most he +would allow it to be was a yearning. It was scarcely +personal. While he was with Marguerite, in the inn, +his diffidence alone was enough to hide from him the +impression she was making on his heart. In all their +intercourse he had scarcely twice looked her full in +the face. Afterward she had simply become in memory +the exponent of an ideal. He found himself often, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> +now, asking himself, why are my eyes always looking +for her? Should I actually know her, were I to see +her on this sidewalk, or in this street-car? And while +still asking himself these silent questions, what does +he do one day but fall—to all intents and purposes, +at least—fall in love—pell-mell—up to the eyebrows—with +another girl!</p> + +<p>Do you remember Uncle Remus’s story of Brer +Rabbit with the bucket of honey inverted on him? +It was the same way with Claude. “He wa’n’t des +only bedobble wid it, he wuz des kiver’d.” It happened +thus: An artist friend, whose studio was in +Carondelet Street just off of Canal, had rented to him +for a workroom a little loft above the studio. It had +one window looking out over roofs and chimney-pots +upon the western sky, and another down into the +studio itself. It is right to say friend, although there +was no acquaintanceship until it grew out of this +arrangement. The artist, a single man, was much +Claude’s senior; but Claude’s taste for design, and +love of work, and the artist’s grave sincerity, simplicity, +and cordiality of character—he was a Spaniard, +with a Spaniard’s perfect courtesy—made a mutual +regard, which only a common diffidence prevented from +running into comradeship.</p> + +<p>One Saturday afternoon Claude, thirsting for outdoor +air, left his eyrie for a short turn in Canal Street. The +matinée audiences were just out, and the wide balcony-shaded +sidewalks were crowded with young faces +and bright attires. Claude was crossing the “neutral +ground” toward Bourbon Street, when he saw coming +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> +out of Bourbon Street a young man, who might be a +Creole, and two young girls in light, and what seemed +to him extremely beautiful dresses; especially that of +the farther one, who, as the three turned with buoyant +step into Canal Street to their left, showed for an +instant the profile of her face, and then only her back. +Claude’s heart beat consciously, and he hurried to +lessen the distance between them. He had seen no +more than the profile, but for the moment in which +he saw it, it seemed to be none other than the face of +Marguerite!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XIII" id="PART_III_CHAP_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h3> + +<h3>THE CHASE.</h3> + + +<p>Claude came on close behind. No; now he could +see his mistake, it was not she. But he could not +regret it. This was Marguerite repeated, yet transcended. +The stature was just perceptibly superior. +The breadth and grace of these shoulders were better +than Marguerite’s. The hair, arranged differently and +far more effectively than he had ever seen it on Marguerite’s +head, seemed even more luxurious than hers. +There was altogether a finer dignity in this one’s carriage +than in that of the little maid of the inn. And +see, now,—now!—as she turns her head to glance +into this shop window! It is, and it isn’t, it isn’t, +and it is, and—no, no, it is not Marguerite! It is +like her in profile, singularly like, yet far beyond her; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> +the nose a little too fine, and a certain sad firmness +about the mouth and eyes, as well as he could see in +the profile, but profiles are so deceptive—that he had +never seen in Marguerite.</p> + +<p>“But how do I know? What do I know?” he +asked himself, still following on. “The Marguerite +I know is but a thing of my dreams, and this is not +that Marguerite of my actual sight, to whom I never +gave a word or smile or glance that calls for redemption. +This is the Marguerite of my dreams.”</p> + +<p>Claude was still following, when without any cause +that one could see, the young man of the group looked +back. He had an unpleasant face; it showed a small +offensive energy that seemed to assert simply him and +all his against you and all yours. His eyes were black, +piercing, and hostile. They darted their glances straight +into Claude’s. Guilty Claude! dogging the steps of +ladies on the street! He blushed for shame, turned a +corner into Exchange Alley, walked a little way down +it, came back, saw the great crowd coming and going, +vehicles of all sorts hurrying here and there; ranks of +street-cars waiting their turns to start to all points +of the compass; sellers of peanuts and walking-sticks, +buyers of bouquets, acquaintances meeting or overtaking +one another, nodding bonnets, lifted hats, faces, +faces, faces; but the one face was gone.</p> + +<p>Caught, Claude? And by a mere face? The charge +is too unkind. Young folly, yes, or old folly, may +read goodness rashly into all beauty, or not care to +read it in any. But it need not be so. Upon the face +of youth the soul within writes its confessions and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> +promises; and when the warm pulses of young nature +are sanctified by upward yearnings, and a pure conscience, +the soul that seeks its mate will seek that face +which, behind and through all excellencies of mere tint +and feature, mirrors back the seeker’s own faiths and +hopes; and when that is found, that to such a one is +beauty. Judge not; you never saw this face, fairer than +Marguerite’s, to say whether its beauty was mere face, +or the transparent shrine of an equal nobility within.</p> + +<p>Besides, Claude would have fired up and denied the +first word of the charge with unpleasant flatness. To +be caught means to be in love, to be in love implies a +wish and hope to marry, and these were just what +Claude could not allow. May not a man, nevertheless, +have an ideal of truth and beauty and look worshipfully +upon its embodiment? Humph!</p> + +<p>His eyes sought her in vain not only on that afternoon, +but on many following. The sun was setting +every day later and later through the black lace-work +of pecan-trees and behind low dark curtains of orange +groves, yet he began to be more and more tardy each +succeeding day in meeting his father under the riverside +oaks of the Exposition grounds. And then, on the +seventh day, he saw her again.</p> + +<p>Now he was more confident than ever that this vision +and he, except in dreams, had never spoken to each +other. Yet the likeness was wonderful. But so, too, +was the unlikeness. True, this time, she only flashed +across his sight—out of a bank, into a carriage where +a very “American”-looking lady sat waiting for her +and was gone. But the bank; the carriage; that lady; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> +those earlier companions,—no, this could not be Marguerite. +Marguerite would have been with her mother. +Now, if one could see Madame Beausoleil’s daughter +with Madame Beausoleil at her side to identify her and +distinguish her from this flashing and vanishing apparition +it would clear away a trying perplexity. Why +not be bold and call upon them where they were dwelling? +But where? Their names were not in the directory. +Now, inventive talent, do your best.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>“Well!” said St. Pierre after a long silence. +Claude and he were out on the swollen Mississippi +pulling with steady leisure for the home-side shore, +their skiff pointed half to and half from the boiling +current. The sun was gone; a purple dusk wrapped +either low bank; a steamboat that had passed up +stream was now, at the turning of the bend, only a +cluster of soft red lights; Venus began to make a faint +silvery pathway across the waters. St. Pierre had +the forward seat, at Claude’s back. The father looked +with fond perplexity at the strong young shoulders +swinging silently with his own, forward and backward +in slow, monotonous strokes, and said again:</p> + +<p>“Well? Whass matter? Look like cat got yo’ +tongue. Makin’ new mash-in?” Then in a low dissatisfied +tone—“I reckon somet’in’ mighty curious.” +He repeated the last three words in the Acadian +speech: “Tcheuque-chose bien tchurieux.”</p> + +<p>“Yass,” replied the son, “mighty strange. I tell +you when we come at home.”</p> + +<p>He told all. Recounted all his heart’s longings, all +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> +his dreams, every least pang of self-reproach, the +idealization of Marguerite, and the finding of that +ideal incarnated in one who was and yet seemed not +to be, or rather seemed to be and yet was not, Marguerite. +And then he went on to re-assure his father +that this could never mean marriage, never mean the +father’s supplanting. A man could worship what he +could never hope to possess. He would rather worship +this than win such kind as he would dare woo.</p> + +<p>He said all these things in a very quiet way, with +now and then a silent pause, and now and then a +calm, self-contained tone in resuming; yet his sentences +were often disconnected, and often were half +soliloquy. Such were the only betrayals of emotion +on either side until Claude began to treat—in the +words just given—his father’s own heart interests; +then the father’s eyes stood brimming full. But St. +Pierre did not speak. From the first he had listened +in silence and he offered no interruption until at length +Claude came to that part about the object of his +regard being so far, so utterly, beyond his reach. +Then—</p> + +<p>“Stop! Dass all foolishness! You want her? +You kin have her!”</p> + +<p>“Ah, papa! you dawn’t awnstand! What I am?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, bah! What anybody is? What she is? She +invanted bigger mash-in dan you? a mo’ better corn-stubbl’ +destroyer and plant-corner?” He meant corn-planter. +“She invant a more handier doubl’-action +pea-vine rake? What she done mak’ her so gran’? +Naw, sir! She look fine in de face, yass; and dass +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> +all you know. Well, dass all right; dass de ’Cajun +way—pick ’em out by face. You begin ’Cajun way, +for why you dawn’t finish ’Cajun way? All you got +do, you git good saddle-hoss and ride. Bom-bye you +see her, you ride behind her till you find where her +daddy livin’ at. Den you ride pas’ yondah every day +till fo’, five days, and den you see de ole man come +scrape friend wid you. Den he hass you drop round, +and fus’ t’ing you know—<i>adjieu la calége!</i>”</p> + +<p>Claude did not dispute the point, though he hardly +thought this case could be worked that way. He +returned in silent thought to the question, how to find +Madame Beausoleil. He tried the mail; no response. +He thought of advertising; but that would never do. +Imagine, “If Madame Beausoleil, late of Vermilionville, +will leave her address at this office, she will hear +of something not in the least to her advantage.” He +couldn’t advertise.</p> + +<p>It was midday following the eve of his confession +to his father. For the last eleven or twelve days, ever +since he had seen that blessed apparition turn with +the two young friends into Canal Street out of Bourbon—he +had been venturing daily, for luncheon, just +down into Bourbon Street, to the Christian Women’s +Exchange. Now, by all the laws of fortune he should +in that time have seen in there at least once or twice +a day already, the face he was ever looking for. But +he had not; nor did he to-day. He only saw, or +thought he saw, the cashier—I should say the cashieress—glance +crosswise at him with eyes that seemed +to him to say:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> +“Fool; sneak; whelp; ’Cajun; our private detectives +are watching you.”</p> + +<p>Both rooms and the veranda were full of ladies and +gentlemen whose faces he dared not lift his eyes to +look into. And yet even in that frame there suddenly +came to him one of those happy thoughts that are supposed +to be the inspirations of inventive genius. A +pleasant little female voice near him said:</p> + +<p>“And apartments up-stairs that they rent to ladies +only!” And instantly the thought came that Marguerite +and her mother might be living there. One +more lump of bread, a final gulp of coffee, a short +search for the waiter’s check, and he stands at the +cashieress’s desk. She makes change without looking +at him or ceasing to tell a small hunchbacked spinster +standing by about somebody’s wedding. But suddenly +she starts.</p> + +<p>“Oh! wasn’t that right? You gave me four bits, +didn’t you? And I gave you back two bits and a +picayune, and—sir? Does Madame who? Oh! yes. +I didn’t understand you; I’m a little deaf on this side; +scarlet fever when I was a little girl. I’m not the +regular cashier, she’s gone to attend the wedding of +a lady friend. Just wait a moment, please, while I +make change for these ladies. Oh, dear! ma’am, is +that the smallest you’ve got? I don’t believe I can +change that, ma’am. Yes—no—stop! yes, I can! +no, I can’t! let’s see! yes, yes, yes, I can; I’ve got +it; yes, there! I didn’t think I had it.” She turned +again to Claude with sisterly confidence. “Excuse +me for keeping you waiting; haven’t I met you at the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> +Y. M. C. A. sociable? Well, you must excuse me, +but I was sure I had. Of course I didn’t if you was +never there; but you know in a big city like this you’re +always meeting somebody that’s ne-e-early somebody +else that you know—oh! didn’t you ask me—oh, +yes! Madame Beausoleil! Yes, she lives here, she +and her daughter. But she’s not in. Oh! I’m sorry. +Neither of them is here. She’s not in the city; +hasn’t been for two weeks. They’re coming back; +we’re expecting them every day. She heard of the +death of a relative down in Terrebonne somewhere. +I wish they <em>would</em> come back; we miss them here; I +judge they’re relatives of yours, if I don’t mistake the +resemblance; you seem to take after the daughter; +wait a minute.”</p> + +<p>Some one coming up to pay looked at Claude to +see what the daughter was like, and the young man +slipped away, outblushing the night sky when the +marshes are afire.</p> + +<p>The question was settled; settled the wrong way. +He hurried on across Canal Street. Marguerite had +not been, as he had construed the inaccurate statement, +in the city for two weeks. Resemblances need +delude him no longer. He went on into Carondelet +Street and was drawing near the door and stairway +leading to his friend’s studio and his own little workroom +above it, when suddenly from that very stairway and +door issued she whom, alas! he might now no longer +mistake for Marguerite, yet who, none the less +for lessening hope, held him captive.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XIV" id="PART_III_CHAP_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h3> + +<h3>WHO SHE WAS.</h3> + + +<p>For a moment somewhat more than her profile shone +upon Claude’s bewildered gaze.</p> + +<p>“I shall see her eye to eye at last!” shouted his +heart within: but the next moment she turned away, +and with two companions who came across the same +threshold, moved up the street, and, at the nearest +corner, vanished. Her companions were the American +lady and the artist. Claude wheeled, and hurried +to pass around the square in the opposite direction, +and, as he reached the middle of its third side, saw +the artist hand them into the street-car, lift his hat, and +return towards the studio. The two men met at the +foot of the stairs. The Spaniard’s countenance betrayed +a restrained elation.</p> + +<p>“You goin’ see a picture now,” he said, in a modestly +triumphant tone. “Come in,” he added, as +Claude would have passed the studio door.</p> + +<p>They went in together. The Spaniard talked; Claude +scarcely spoke. I cannot repeat the conversation literally, +but the facts are these: A few evenings before, +the artist had been one of the guests at a musical party +given by a lady whose name he did not mention. He +happened—he modestly believed it accidental—to be +seated beside the hostess, when a young lady—“jung +Creole la-thy,” he called her—who was spending a few +days with her, played the violin. The Spaniard’s delicate +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> +propriety left her also nameless; but he explained +that, as he understood, she was from the Teche. She +played charmingly—“for an amateur,” he qualified: +but what had struck him more than the music was her +beauty, her figure, her picturesque grace. And when +he confessed his delight in these, his hostess, seemingly +on the inspiration of the moment, said:</p> + +<p>“Paint her picture! Paint her just so! I’ll give +you the order. Not a mere portrait—a picture.” +And he had agreed, and the “jung” lady had consented. +The two had but just now left the studio. +To-morrow a servant would bring violin, music-rack, +etc.; the ladies would follow, and then—</p> + +<p>“You hear music, anyhow,” said the artist. That +was his gentle way of intimating that Claude was not +invited to be a looker-on.</p> + +<p>On the next day, Claude, in his nook above, with +the studio below shut from view by the curtain of his +inner window, heard the ladies come. He knows they +are these two, for one voice, the elder, blooms out at +once in a gay abundance of words, and the other speaks +in soft, low tones that, before they reach his ear, run +indistinguishably together.</p> + +<p>Soon there comes the sound of tuning the violin, +while the older voice is still heard praising one thing +and another, and asking careless questions.</p> + +<p>“I suppose that cotton cloth covers something that +is to have a public unveiling some day, doesn’t it?”</p> + +<p>Claude cannot hear the answer; the painter drops +his voice even below its usual quiet tone. But Claude +knows what he must be saying; that the cloth covers +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> +merely a portrait he is finishing of a young man who +has sat for it to please a wifeless, and, but for him, +childless, and fondly devoted father. And now he can +tell by the masculine step, and the lady’s one or two +lively words, that the artist has drawn away the covering +from his (Claude’s) own portrait. But the lady’s +young companion goes on tuning her instrument—“tink, +tink, tink;” and now the bow is drawn.</p> + +<p>“Why, how singular!” exclaims the elder lady. +“Why, my dear, come here and see! Somebody has +got your eyes! Why, he’s got your whole state of +mind, a reduplication of it. And—I declare, he looks +almost as good as you do! If—I”—</p> + +<p>The voice stops short. There is a moment’s silence +in which the unseen hearer doubts not the artist is making +signs that yonder window and curtain are all that +hide the picture’s original, and the voice says again,—</p> + +<p>“I wish you’d paint my picture,” and the violin +sounds once more its experimental notes.</p> + +<p>But there are other things which Claude can neither +hear, nor see, nor guess. He cannot see that the elder +lady is already wondering at, and guardedly watching, +an agitation betrayed by the younger in a tremor of +the hand that fumbles with her music-sheets and music-stand, +in the foot that trembles on the floor, in the reddened +cheek, and in the bitten lip. He may guess that +the painter sits at his easel with kindling eye; but he +cannot guess that just as the elder lady is about to +say,—</p> + +<p>“My dear, if you don’t feel”—the tremor vanishes, +the lips gently set, and only the color remains. But +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> +he hears the first soft moan of the tense string under +the bow, and a second, and another; and then, as he +rests his elbows upon the table before him, and covers +his face in his trembling hands, it seems to him as if +his own lost heart had entered into that vibrant medium, +and is pouring thence to heaven and her ear its prayer +of love.</p> + +<p>Paint, artist, paint! Let your brushes fly! None +can promise you she shall ever look quite like this +again. Catch the lines,—the waving masses and dark +coils of that loose-bound hair; the poise of head and +neck; the eloquent sway of the form; the folds of garments +that no longer hide, but are illumined by, the +plenitude of an inner life and grace; the elastic feet; +the ethereal energy and discipline of arms and shoulders; +the supple wrists; the very fingers quivering on +the strings; the rapt face, and the love-inspired eyes.</p> + +<p>Claude, Claude! when every bird in forest and field +knows the call of its mate, can you not guess the meaning +of those strings? Must she open those sealed lips +and call your very name—she who would rather die +than call it?</p> + +<p>He does not understand. Yet, without understanding, +he answers. He rises from his seat; he moves +to the window; he will not tiptoe or peep; he will be +bold and bad. Brazenly he lifts the curtain and looks +down; and one, one only—not the artist and not the +patroness of art, but that one who would not lift her +eyes to that window for all the world’s wealth—knows +he is standing there, listening and looking down. He +counts himself all unseen, yet presently shame drops +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> +the curtain. He turns away, yet stands hearkening. +The music is about to end. The last note trembles on +the air. There is silence. Then someone moves from +a chair, and then the single cry of admiration and +delight from the player’s companion is the player’s +name,—</p> + +<p>“Marguerite Beausoleil!”</p> + +<p>Hours afterward there sat Claude in the seat where +he had sunk down when he heard that name. The +artist’s visitors had made a long stay, but at length +they were gone. And now Claude, too, rose to go +out. His steps were heard below, and presently the +painter’s voice called persuadingly up:—</p> + +<p>“St. Pierre! St. Pierre! Come, see.”</p> + +<p>They stood side by side before the new work. +Claude gazed in silence. At length he said, still gazing:</p> + +<p>“I’ll buy it when ’tis finish’.”</p> + +<p>But the artist explained again that it was being +painted for Marguerite’s friend.</p> + +<p>“For what she want it?” demanded Claude. +The Spaniard smiled and intimated that the lady probably +thought he could paint. “But at any rate,” he +went on to say, “she seemed to have a hearty affection +for the girl herself, whom,” he said, “she had described +as being as good as she looked.” Claude +turned and went slowly out.</p> + +<p>When at sunset he stood under the honey-locust tree +on the levee where he was wont to find his father +waiting for him, he found himself alone. But within +speaking distance he saw St. Pierre’s skiff just being +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> +drawn ashore by a ragged negro, who presently turned +and came to him, half-lifting the wretched hat that +slouched about his dark brows, and smiling.</p> + +<p>“Sim like you done fo’got me,” he said. “Don’t +you ’member how I use’ live at Belle Alliance? Yes, +seh. I’s de one what show Bonaventure de road to +Gran’ Point’. Yes, seh. But I done lef’ dah since +Mistoo Wallis sole de place. Yes, seh. An’ when I +meet up wid you papa you nevva see a nigger so glad +like I was. No, seh. An’ likewise you papa. Yes, +seh. An’ he ass me is I want to wuck fo’ him, an’ I +see he needin’ he’p, an’ so I tu’n in an’ he’p him. Oh, +yes, seh! dass mo’ ’n a week, now, since I been +wuckin’ fo’ you papa.”</p> + +<p>They got into the skiff and pushed off, the negro +alone at the oars.</p> + +<p>“Pow’ful strong current on udder side,” he said, +pulling quietly up-stream to offset the loss of way he +must make presently in crossing the rapid flood. +“Mistoo Claude, I see a gen’leman dis day noon what +I ain’t see’ befo’ since ’bout six year’ an’ mo’. I +disremember his name, but——”</p> + +<p>“Tarbox?” asked Claude with sudden interest.</p> + +<p>“Yes, seh. Dass it! Tah-bawx. Sim like any +man ought to ’member dat name. Him an’ you papa +done gone down de canal. Yes, seh; in a pirogue. +He come in a big hurry an’ say how dey got a big +crevasse up de river on dat side, an’ he want make +you papa see one man what livin’ on Lac Cataouaché. +Yes, seh. An you papa say you fine you supper in de +pot. An’ Mistoo Tah-bawx he say he want you teck +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> +one hoss an’ ride up till de crevasse an’ you fine one +frien’ of yose yondah, one ingineer; an’ he say—Mistoo +Tah-bawx—how he ’low to meet up wid you +at you papa’ house to-morrow daylight. Yes, seh; +Mistoo Tah-bawx; yes, seh.”</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XV" id="PART_III_CHAP_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h3> + +<h3>CAN THEY CLOSE THE BREAK?</h3> + + +<p>The towering cypresses of the far, southern swamps +have a great width of base, from which they narrow so +rapidly in the first seven or eight feet of their height, +and thence upward taper so gradually, that it is almost +or quite impossible for an axe-man, standing at their +roots, to chop through the great flare that he finds +abreast of him, and bring the trees down. But when +the swamps are deep in water, the swamper may paddle +up to these trees, whose narrowed waists are now within +the swing of his axe, and standing up in his canoe, by +a marvel of balancing skill, cut and cut, until at length +his watchful, up-glancing eye sees the forest giant bow +his head. Then a shove, a few backward sweeps of +the paddle, and the canoe glides aside, and the great +trunk falls, smiting the smooth surface of the water +with a roar that, miles away, reaches the ear like the +thunder of artillery. The tree falls: but if the woodsman +has not known how to judge and choose wisely +when the inner wood is laid bare under the first big +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> +chip that flies, there are many chances that the fallen +tree will instantly sink to the bottom of the water, and +cannot be rafted out. One must know his craft, even +in Louisiana swamps. “Knowledge is power.”</p> + +<p>When Zoséphine and Mr. Tarbox finished out that +Sunday twilight walk, they talked, after leaving the +stile behind, only on business. He told her of having +lately been, with a certain expert, in the swamps of +Barataria, where he had seen some noble cypress +forests tantalizingly near to navigation and market, +but practically a great way off, because the levees of +the great sugar estates on the Mississippi River shut +out all deep overflows. Hence these forests could be +bought for, seemingly, a mere tithe of their value. +Now, he proposed to buy such a stretch of them along +the edge of the shaking prairie north of Lake Cataouaché +as would show on his part, he said, “caution, +but not temerity.”</p> + +<p>He invited her to participate. “And why?” For +the simple reason that the expert, and engineer, had +dropped the remark that, in his opinion, a certain +levee could not possibly hold out against the high +water of more than two or three more years, and that +when it should break it would spread, from three to +nine feet of water, over hundreds of square miles of +swamp forests, <i>prairies tremblantes</i>, and rice and sugar +fields, and many leagues of railway. Zoséphine had +consented; and though Mr. Tarbox had soon after +gone upon his commercial travels, he had effected the +purchase by correspondence, little thinking that the +first news he should hear on returning to New Orleans +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> +would be that the remotely anticipated “break” had +just occurred.</p> + +<p>And now, could and would the breach be closed, or +must all Barataria soon be turned into, and remain for +months, a navigable yellow sea? This, Claude knew, +was what he must hasten to the crevasse to discover, +and return as promptly to report upon, let his heart-strings +draw as they might towards the studio in Carondelet +Street and the Christian Women’s Exchange.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XVI" id="PART_III_CHAP_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h3> + +<h3>THE OUTLAW AND THE FLOOD.</h3> + + +<p>What suffering it costs to be a coward! Some +days before the crevasse occurred, he whom we know +as the pot-hunter stood again on the platform of that +same little railway station whence we once saw him +vanish at sight of Bonaventure Deschamps. He had +never ventured there since, until now. But there was +a new station agent.</p> + +<p>His Indian squaw was dead. A rattlesnake had +given her its fatal sting, and the outcast, dreading all +men and the coroner not the least, had, silently and +alone, buried her on the prairie.</p> + +<p>The train rolled up to the station again as before. +Claude’s friend, the surveyor, stepped off with a cigar +in his mouth, to enjoy in the train’s momentary stay +the delightful air that came across the open prairie. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> +The pot-hunter, who had got rid of his game, ventured +near his former patron. It might be the engineer +could give him work whereby to earn a day’s ready +money. He was not disappointed. The engineer told +him to come in a day or two, by the waterways the +pot-hunter knew so well, across the swamps and prairies +to Bayou Terrebonne and the little court-house town +of Houma. And then he added:</p> + +<p>“I heard this morning that somebody had been +buying the swamp land all around you out on Lake +Cataouaché. Is it so?”</p> + +<p>The Acadian looked vacant and shook his head.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said the other, “a Madame Beausoleil, or +somebod—What’s the matter?”</p> + +<p>“All aboard!” cried the train conductor.</p> + +<p>“The fellow turned pale,” said the surveyor, as he +resumed his seat in the smoking-car and the landscape +began again to whirl by.</p> + +<p>The pot-hunter stood for a moment, and then slowly, +as if he stole away from some sleeping enemy, left +the place. Alarm went with him like an attendant +ghost. A thousand times that day, in the dark swamp, +on the wide prairie, or under his rush-thatch on the +lake-side, he tortured himself with one question: Why +had she—Zoséphine—reached away out from Carancro +to buy the uncultivable and primeval wilderness +round about his lonely hiding-place? Hour after hour +the inexplicable problem seemed to draw near and +nearer to him, a widening, tightening, dreamlike terror, +that, as it came, silently pointed its finger of death at +him. He was glad enough to leave his cabin next day +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +in his small, swift pirogue—shot-gun, axe, and rifle +his only companions—for Terrebonne.</p> + +<p>It chanced to be noon of the day following, when he +glided up the sunny Terrebonne towards the parish +seat. The shores of the stream have many beauties, +but the Acadian’s eyes were alert to any thing but +them. The deep green, waxen-leaved casino hedges; +the hedges of Cherokee rose, and sometimes of rose +and casino mingled; the fields of corn and sugar-cane; +the quaint, railed, floating bridges lying across the +lazy bayou; the orange-groves of aged, giant trees, +their dark green boughs grown all to a tangle with +well-nigh the density of a hedge, and their venerable +trunks hairy with green-gray lichens; the orange-trees +again in the door-yards, with neat pirogues set upon +racks under their deep shade; the indescribable floods +of sunlight and caverns of shadow; the clear, brown +depths beneath his own canoe; or, at the bottom, the +dark, waving, green-brown tresses of water-weeds,—these +were naught to him.</p> + +<p>But the human presence was much; and once, when +just ahead of him he espied a young, sunbonneted +woman crouching in the pouring sunshine beyond +the sod of the bayou’s bank, itself but a few inches +above the level of the stream, on a little pier of one +plank pushed out among the flags and reeds, pounding +her washing with a wooden paddle, he stopped the dip +of his canoe-paddle, and gazed with growing trepidation +and slackening speed. At the outer end of the +plank, the habitual dip of the bucket had driven aside +the water-lilies, and made a round, glassy space that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> +reflected all but perfectly to him her busy, young, +downcast visage.</p> + +<p>“How like”—Just then she lifted her head. He +started as though his boat had struck a snag. How +like—how terribly like to that young Zoséphine whose +ill-concealed scorn he had so often felt in days—in +years—long gone, at Carancro! This was not, and +could not be, the same—lacked half the necessary +years; and yet, in the joy of his relief, he answered +her bow with a question, “Whose was yonder house?”</p> + +<p>She replied in the same Acadian French in which +she was questioned, that there dwelt, or had dwelt, +and about two weeks ago had died, “Monsieur Robichaux.” +The pot-hunter’s paddle dipped again, his +canoe shot on, and two hours later he walked with +dust-covered feet into Houma.</p> + +<p>The principal tavern there stands on that corner of +the court-house square to which the swamper would +naturally come first. Here he was to find the engineer. +But, as with slow, diffident step he set one foot upon +the corner of the threshold, there passed quickly by +him and out towards the court-house, two persons,—one +a man of a county court-room look and with a +handful of documents, and the other a woman whom +he knew at a glance. Her skirts swept his ankles as +he shrank in sudden and abject terror against the wall, +yet she did not see him.</p> + +<p>He turned and retreated the way he had come, nothing +doubting that only by the virtue of a voodoo charm +which he carried in his pocket he had escaped, for the +time being, a plot laid for his capture. For the small, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> +neatly-robed form that you may still see disappearing +within the court-house door beside the limping figure +of the probate clerk is Zoséphine Beausoleil. She will +finish the last pressing matter of the Robichaux succession +now in an hour or so, and be off on the little +branch railway, whose terminus is here, for New +Orleans.</p> + +<p>When the pot-hunter approached Lake Cataouaché +again, he made on foot, under cover of rushes and +reeds taller than he, a wide circuit and reconnoissance +of his hut. While still a long way off, he saw, lighted by +the sunset rays, what he quickly recognized as a canoe +drawn half out of the water almost at his door. He +warily drew nearer. Presently he stopped, and stood +slowly and softly shifting his footing about on the oozy +soil, at a little point of shore only some fifty yards +away from his cabin. His eyes, peering from the +ambush, descried a man standing by the pirogue and +searching with his gaze the wide distances that would +soon be hidden in the abrupt fall of the southern night.</p> + +<p>The pot-hunter knew him. Not by name, but by +face. The day the outlaw saw Bonaventure at the +little railway station this man was with him. The +name the pot-hunter did not know was St. Pierre.</p> + +<p>The ambushed man shrank a step backward into his +hiding-place. His rifle was in his hand and he noiselessly +cocked it. He had not resolved to shoot; but +a rifle is of no use until it is cocked. While he so +stood, another man came into view and to the first +one’s side. This one, too, he knew, despite the soft +hat that had taken the place of the silk one; for this +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> +was Tarbox. The Acadian was confirmed in his conviction +that the surveyor’s invitation for him to come +to Houma was part of a plot to entrap him.</p> + +<p>While he still looked the two men got into the canoe +and St. Pierre paddled swiftly away. The pot-hunter +let down the hammer of his gun, shrank away again, +turned and hurried through the tangle, regained his +canoe, and paddled off. The men’s departure from +the cabin was, in his belief, a ruse. But he knew how +by circuits and short cuts to follow after them unseen, +and this he did until he became convinced that they +were fairly in the Company Canal and gliding up its +dark colonnade in the direction whence they had evidently +come. Then he returned to his cabin and with +rifle cocked and with slow, stealthy step entered it, +and in headlong haste began to prepare to leave it for +a long hiding-out.</p> + +<p>He knew every spot of land and water for leagues +around, as a bear or a fox would know the region +about his den. He had in mind now a bit of dry +ground scarce fifty feet long or wide, deeply hidden +in the swamp to the north of this lake. How it had +ever happened that this dry spot, lifted two or three +feet above the low level around it, had been made, +whether by some dumb force of nature or by the hand +of men yet more untamable than he, had never crossed +his thought. It was beyond measure of more value +to him to know, by what he had seen growing on it +season after season, that for many a long year no +waters had overflowed it. In the lake, close to his +hut, lay moored his small centerboard lugger, and into +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> +this he presently threw his few appliances and supplies, +spread sail, and skimmed away, with his pirogue +towing after.</p> + +<p>His loaded rifle lay within instant reach. By choice +he would not have harmed any living creature that +men call it wrong to injure; but to save himself, not +only from death, but from any risk of death, rightful +or wrongful, he would, not through courage, but in +the desperation of frantic cowardice, have killed a +hundred men, one by one.</p> + +<p>By this time it was night; and when first the lugger +and, after it was hidden away, the pirogue, had carried +him up a slender bayou as near as they could to the +point he wished to reach, he had still to drag the +loaded pirogue no small distance through the dark, +often wet and almost impenetrable woods. He had +taken little rest and less sleep in his late journeyings, +and when at length he cast himself down before his fire +of dead fagots on the raised spot he had chosen, he +slept heavily. He felt safe from man’s world, at least +for the night.</p> + +<p>Only one thing gave him concern as he lay down. +It was the fact that when, with the old woods-habit +strong on him, he had approached his selected camping +ground, with such wariness of movement as the +dragging pirogue would allow, he had got quite in sight +of it before a number of deer on it bounded away. He +felt an unpleasant wonder to know what their unwilling +boldness might signify.</p> + +<p>He did not awake to replenish his fire until there +were only a few live embers shining dimly at his feet. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> +He rose to a sitting posture; and in that same moment +there came a confusion of sound—a trampling through +bushes—that froze his blood, and robbed his open +throat of power to cry. The next instant he knew it +was but those same deer. But the first intelligent +thought brought a new fear. These most timid of +creatures had made but a few leaps and stopped. He +knew what that meant! As he leaped to his feet the +deer started again, and he heard, to his horror,—where +the ground had been dry and caked when he lay +down,—the plash of their feet in water.</p> + +<p>Trembling, he drew his boots on, made and lighted +a torch, and in a moment was dragging his canoe after +him in the direction of the lugger. Presently his steps, +too, were plashing. He stooped, waved the torch low +across the water’s surface, and followed the gleam +with his scrutiny. But he did so not for any doubt +that he would see, as he did, the yellow flood of the +Mississippi. He believed, as he believed his existence, +that his pursuers had let the river in upon the swamp, +ruin whom they might, to drive him from cover.</p> + +<p>Presently he stepped into the canoe, cast his torch +into the water, took his paddle, and glided unerringly +through a darkness and a wild tangle of undergrowth, +large and small, where you or I could not have gone +ten yards without being lost. He emerged successfully +from the forest into the open prairie, and, under +a sky whose stars told him it would soon be day, +glided on down the little bayou lane, between walls of +lofty rushes, up which he had come in the evening, +and presently found the lugger as he had left her, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> +with her light mast down, hidden among the brake +canes that masked a little cove.</p> + +<p>The waters were already in the prairie. As he +boarded the little vessel at the stern, a raccoon waddled +in noiseless haste over the bow, and splashed into +the wet covert of reeds beyond. If only to keep from +sharing his quarters with all the refuge-hunting vermin +of the noisome wilderness, the one human must move +on. He turned the lugger’s prow towards the lake, +and spread her sails to the faint, cool breeze. But +when day broke, the sail was gone.</p> + +<p>Far and wide lay the pale green leagues of reeds +and bulrushes, with only here and there a low willow +or two beside some unseen lagoon, or a sinuous band +of darker green, where round rushes and myrtle bushes +followed the shore of some hidden bayou. The waters +of the lake were gleaming and crinkling in tints of +lilac and silver stolen from the air; and away to the +right, and yet farther to the left, stood the dark +phalanxes of cypress woods.</p> + +<p>Thus had a thousand mornings risen on the scene in +the sight of the outlaw. Numberless birds fluttered +from place to place, snatching their prey, carolling, +feeding their young, chattering, croaking, warbling, +and swinging on the bending rush. But if you looked +again, strange signs of nature’s mute anguish began +to show. On every log or bit of smaller drift that +rain-swollen bayous had ever brought from the forest +and thrown upon their banks some wild tenant of the +jungle, hare or weasel, cat, otter, or raccoon, had taken +refuge, sometimes alone, but oftener sharing it, in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> +common misery and silent truce, with deadly foes. For +under all that expanse of green beauty, the water, +always abundant, was no longer here and there, but +everywhere.</p> + +<p>See yonder reed but a few yards away. What singular +dark enlargement of stem is that near its top, +that curious spiral growth?—growth! It is a great +serpent that has climbed and twined himself there, +and is holding on for the life he loves as we love +ours. And see! On a reed near by him, another; +and a little farther off, another; and another—and +another! Where were our eyes until now? The surface +of the vast brake, as far as one can see such small +things, is dotted with like horrid burdens. And somewhere +in this wild desolation, in this green prospect of +a million deaths waiting in silence alike for harmful +and harmless creatures, one man is hiding from all +mankind.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XVII" id="PART_III_CHAP_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h3> + +<h3>WELL HIDDEN.</h3> + + +<p>Of all the teeming multitudes of the human world, +the pot-hunter knows not one soul who is on his side; +not one whom he dare let see his face or come between +him and a hiding-place. The water is rising fast. He +dare not guess how high it will come; but rise as it +may, linger at its height as it may, he will not be +driven out. In his belief a hundred men are ready, at +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> +every possible point where his foot could overstep the +line of this vast inundation, to seize him and drag him +to the gallows. Ah, the gallows! Not being dead—not +God’s anger—not eternal burnings; but simply +facing death! The gallows! The tree above his head—the +rope around his neck—the signal about to be +spoken—the one wild moment after it! These keep +him here.</p> + +<p>He has taken down sail and mast. The rushes are +twelve feet high. They hide him well. With oars, +mast, and the like, he has contrived something by +which he can look out over their tops. He has powder +and shot, coffee, salt, and rice; he will not be driven +out! At night he spreads his sail and seeks the open +waters of the lake, where he can sleep, by littles, without +being overrun by serpents; but when day breaks, +there is no visible sign of his presence. Yet he is +where he can see his cabin. It is now deep in the +water, and the flood is still rising. He is quite sure +no one has entered it since he left it. But—the strain +of perpetual watching!</p> + +<p>When at dawn of the fifth day he again looked for +cover in the prairie, the water was too high to allow +him concealment, and he sought the screen of some +willows that fringed the edge of the swamp forest, +anchoring in a few rods’ width of open water between +them and the woods. He did not fear to make, on +the small hearth of mud and ashes he had improvised +in his lugger, the meagre fire needed to prepare his +food. Its slender smoke quickly mingled with the +hazy vapors and shadows of the swamp. As he cast +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> +his eye abroad, he found nowhere any sign of human +approach. Here and there the tops of the round rushes +still stood three feet above the water, but their slender +needles were scarcely noticeable. Far and near, over +prairie as over lake, lay the unbroken yellow flood. +There was no flutter of wings, no whistle of feathered +mate to mate, no call of nestlings from the ruined +nests. Except the hawk and vulture, the birds were +gone. Untold thousands of dumb creatures had clung +to life for a time, but now were devoured by birds of +prey and by alligators, or were drowned. Thousands +still lived on. Behind him in the swamp the wood-birds +remained, the gray squirrel still barked and +leaped from tree to tree, the raccoon came down to +fish, the plundering owl still hid himself through the +bright hours, and the chilled snake curled close in the +warm folds of the hanging moss. Nine feet of water +below. In earlier days, to the northward through the +forest, many old timbers rejected in railway construction +or repair, with dead logs and limbs, had been +drifted together by heavy rains, and had gathered a +covering of soil; canebrake, luxurious willow-bushes, +and tough grasses had sprung up on them and bound +them with their roots. These floating islands the flood, +now covering the dense underbrush of the swamp, lifted +on its free surface, and, in its slow creep southward, +bore through the pillared arcades of the cypress wood +and out over the submerged prairies. Many a cowering +deer in those last few days that had made some +one of these green fragments of the drowned land a +haven of despair, the human castaway left unharmed.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> +Of all sentient creatures in that deluge he was +suffering most. He was gaunt and haggard with +watching. The thought of pursuit bursting suddenly +around him now fastened permanently upon his imagination. +He feared to sleep. From the direction of +the open water surprise seemed impossible; but from +the forest! what instant might it not ring with the +whoop of discovery, the many-voiced halting challenge, +and the glint of loaded Winchester? And another +fear had come. Many a man not a coward, and as +used to the sight of serpents as this man, has never +been able to be other than a coward concerning them. +The pot-hunter held them in terror. It was from fear +of them that he had lighted his torch the night of his +bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their +ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding +them had made the swamp and prairie life bearable. +Now all was changed. They were driven from their +dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the +hand to lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching +glance had failed to find the glittering eye and forked +tongue that meant “Beware!” In the flooded prairie +the willow-trees were loaded with the knotted folds of +the moccasin, the rattlesnake, and I know not how +many other sorts of deadly or only loathsome serpents. +Some little creatures at the bottom of the water, feeding +on the soft white part of the round rush near its +root, every now and then cut a stem free from its base, +and let it spring to the surface and float away. Often +a snake had wrapped himself about the end above the +water, and when this refuge gave way and drifted +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> +abroad he would cling for a time, until some less forlorn +hope came in sight, and then swim for it. Thus +scarce a minute of the day passed, it seemed, but one, +two, or three of these creatures, making for their fellow-castaway’s +boat, were turned away by nervous +waving of arms. The nights had proved that they +could not climb the lugger’s side, and when he was +in her the canoe was laid athwart her gunwales; but at +night he had to drop the bit of old iron that served +for an anchor, and the very first night a large moccasin—not +of the dusky kind described in books, but of +that yet deadlier black sort, an ell in length, which the +swampers call the Congo—came up the anchor-rope. +The castaway killed it with an oar; but after that +who would have slept?</p> + +<p>About sunset of the fifth day, though it was bright +and beautiful, the hunter’s cunning detected the first +subtle signs of a coming storm. He looked about him +to see what provision was needed to meet and weather +its onset. On the swamp side the loftiest cypresses, +should the wind bring any of them down, would not +more than cast the spray of their fall as far as his +anchorage. The mass of willows on the prairie side +was nearer, but its trees stood low,—already here and +there the branches touched the water; the hurricane +might tear away some boughs, but could do no more. +He shortened the anchor-rope, and tried the hold of +the anchor on the bottom to make sure the lugger +might not swing into the willows, for in every fork of +every bough was a huge dark mass of serpents plaited +and piled one upon another, and ready at any moment +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> +to glide apart towards any new shelter that might be +reached.</p> + +<p>While eye and hand were thus engaged, the hunter’s +ear was attentive to sounds that he had been hearing +for more than an hour. These were the puff of ’scape-pipes +and plash of a paddle-wheel, evidently from a +small steamer in the Company Canal. She was coming +down it; that is, from the direction of the river +and the city.</p> + +<p>Whither was she bound? To some one of the hundred +or more plantations and plantation homes that the +far-reaching crevasse had desolated? Likely enough. +In such event she would not come into view, although +for some time now he had seen faint shreds of smoke in +the sky over a distant line of woods. But it filled him +with inward tremors to know that if she chose to leave +the usual haunts of navigation on her left, and steam +out over the submerged prairies and the lake, and into the +very shadow of these cypresses, she could do it without +fear of a snag or a shallow. He watched anxiously as +the faint smoke reached a certain point. If the next +thin curl should rise farther on, it would mean safety. +But when it came it seemed to be in the same place as +the last; and another the same, and yet another the +same: she was making almost a straight line for the +spot where he stood. Only a small low point of forest +broke the line, and presently, far away, she slowly +came out from behind it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XVIII" id="PART_III_CHAP_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3> + +<h3>THE TORNADO.</h3> + + +<p>The Acadian stooped at once and with a quick +splash launched his canoe. A minute later he was in +it, gliding along and just within the edge of the forest +where it swept around nearly at right angles to the +direction in which the steamboat was coming. Thus +he could watch the approaching steamer unseen, while +every moment putting distance between himself and +the lugger.</p> + +<p>The strange visitor came on. How many men there +were on her lower deck! Were they really negroes, or +had they blackened their faces, as men sometimes do +when they are going to hang a poor devil in the woods? +On the upper deck are two others whose faces do not +seem to be blackened. But a moment later they are +the most fearful sight of all; for only too plainly does +the fugitive see that they are the same two men who +stood before the doorway of his hut six days before. +And see how many canoes on the lower deck!</p> + +<p>While the steamer is yet half a mile away from the +hidden lugger, her lamps and fires and their attendant +images in the water beneath glow softly in the fast +deepening twilight, and the night comes swiftly down. +The air is motionless. Across the silent waste an engine +bell jangles; the puff of steam ceases; the one +plashing paddle-wheel at the stern is still; the lights +glide more and more slowly; with a great crash and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> +rumble, that is answered by the echoing woods, the +anchor-chain runs out its short measure, and the +steamer stops.</p> + +<p>Gently the pot-hunter’s paddle dipped again, and +the pirogue moved back towards the lugger. It may +be that the flood was at last numbing his fear, as it had +so soon done that of all the brute-life around him; it +was in his mind to do something calling for more courage +than he had ever before commanded in his life, +save on that one day in Carancro, when, stung to +madness by the taunts of a brave man, and driven to +the wall, he had grappled and slain his tormentor. +He had the thought now to return, and under cover of +the swamp’s deep outer margin of shadow, silently lift +into the canoe the bit of iron that anchored the lugger, +and as noiselessly draw her miles away to another +covert; or if the storm still held back, even at length +to step the mast, spread the sail, and put the horizon +between him and the steamer before daybreak. This +he had now started to do, and would do, if only courage +would hold on and the storm hold off.</p> + +<p>For a time his canoe moved swiftly; but as he drew +near the lugger his speed grew less and less, and eye +and ear watched and hearkened with their intensest +might. He could hear talking on the steamer. There +was a dead calm. He had come to a spot just inside +the wood, abreast of the lugger. His canoe slowly +turned and pointed towards her, and then stood still. +He sat there with his paddle in the water, longing like +a dumb brute; longing, and, without a motion, struggling +for courage enough to move forward. It would +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> +not come. His heart jarred his frame with its beating. +He could not stir.</p> + +<p>As he looked out upon the sky a soft, faint tremor +of light glimmered for a moment over it, without disturbing +a shadow below. The paddle stirred gently, +and the canoe slowly drew back; the storm was coming +to betray him with its lightnings. In the black forest’s +edge the pot-hunter lingered trembling. Oh for the +nerve to take a brave man’s chances! A little courage +would have saved his life. He wiped the dew +from his brow with his sleeve; every nerve had let go. +Again there came across the water the very words of +those who talked together on the steamer. They were +saying that the felling of trees would begin in the +morning; but they spoke in a tongue which Acadians +of late years had learned to understand, though many +hated it, but of which he had never known twenty +words, and what he had known were now forgotten—the +English tongue. Even without courage, to have +known a little English would have made the difference +between life and death. Another glimmer spread +dimly across the sky, and a faint murmur of far-off +thunder came to the ear. He turned the pirogue and +fled.</p> + +<p>Soon the stars are hidden. A light breeze seems +rather to tremble and hang poised than to blow. The +rolling clouds, the dark wilderness, and the watery +waste shine out every moment in the wide gleam of +lightnings still hidden by the wood, and are wrapped +again in ever-thickening darkness over which thunders +roll and jar, and answer one another across the sky. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> +Then, like a charge of ten thousand lancers, come the +wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the artillery +of heaven. The lightnings leap, hiss, and blaze; +the thunders crack and roar; the rain lashes; the +waters writhe; the wind smites and howls. For five, +for ten, for twenty minutes,—for an hour, for two +hours,—the sky and the flood are never for an instant +wholly dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; +but while the universal roar sinks and swells, and the +wide, vibrant illumination shows all things in ghostly +half-concealment, fresh floods of lightning every moment +rend the dim curtain and leap forth; the glare +of day falls upon the swaying wood, the reeling, bowing, +tossing willows, the seething waters, the whirling +rain, and in the midst the small form of the distressed +steamer, her revolving paddle-wheels toiling behind to +lighten the strain upon her anchor-chains; then all +are dim ghosts again, while a peal, as if the heavens +were rent, rolls off around the sky, comes back in +shocks and throbs, and sinks in a long roar that before +it can die is swallowed up in the next flash and peal.</p> + +<p>The deserted lugger is riding out the tornado. +Whirled one moment this way and another that, now +and again taking in water, her forest-shelter breaks the +force of many a gust that would have destroyed her +out in the open. But in the height of the storm her +poor substitute for an anchor lets go its defective hold +on the rushy bottom and drags, and the little vessel +backs, backs, into the willows. She escapes such entanglement +as would capsize her, and by and by, when +the wind lulls for a moment and then comes with all +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> +its wrath from the opposite direction, she swings clear +again and drags back nearly to her first mooring and +lies there, swinging, tossing, and surviving still,—a +den of snakes.</p> + +<p>The tempest was still fierce, though abating, and +the lightning still flashed, but less constantly, when +at a point near the lugger the pirogue came out of the +forest, laboring against the wind and half-filled with +water. On the face of the storm-beaten man in it +each gleam of the lightning showed the pallid confession +of mortal terror. Where that frail shell had been, +or how often it had cast its occupant out, no one can +ever know. He was bareheaded and barefooted. +One cannot swim in boots; without them, even one +who has never dared learn how may hope to swim +a little.</p> + +<p>In the darkness he drew alongside the lugger, rose, +balanced skilfully, seized his moment, and stepped +safely across her gunwale. A slight lurch caused him +to throw his arms out to regain his poise; the line by +which he still held the canoe straightened out its length +and slipped from his grasp. In an instant the pirogue +was gone. A glimmer of lightning showed her driving +off sidewise before the wind. But it revealed +another sight also. It was dark again, black; but the +outcast stood freezing with horror and fright, gazing +just in advance of his feet and waiting for the next +gleam. It came, brighter than the last; and scarcely +a step before him he saw three great serpents moving +towards the spot that gave him already such slender +footing. He recoiled a step—another; but instantly +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> +as he made the second a cold, living form was under +his foot, its folds flew round his ankle, and once! +twice! it struck! With a frantic effort he spurned it +from him; all in the same instant a blaze of lightning +discovered the maimed form and black and red markings +of a “bastard hornsnake,” and with one piercing +wail of despair, that was drowned in the shriek of the +wind and roar of the thunder, he fell.</p> + +<p>A few hours later the winds were still, the stars +were out, a sweet silence had fallen upon water and +wood, and from her deck the watchmen on the steamer +could see in the north-eastern sky a broad, soft, illumination, +and knew it was the lights of slumbering New +Orleans, eighteen miles away.</p> + +<p>By and by, farther to the east, another brightness +began to grow and gather this light into its outstretched +wings. In the nearest wood a soft twitter +came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered +it. A different note came from a third quarter; there +were three or four replies; the sky turned to blue, and +began to flush; a mocking-bird flew out of the woods +on her earliest quest for family provision; a thrush +began to sing; and in a moment more the whole forest +was one choir.</p> + +<p>What wonderful purity was in the fragrant air; +what color was on the calm waters and in the deep +sky; how beautiful, how gentle was Nature after her +transport of passion! Shall we ever subdue her and +make her always submissive and compliant? Who +knows? Who knows what man may do with her when +once he has got self, the universal self, under perfect +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> +mastery? See yonder huge bull-alligator swimming +hitherward out of the swamp. Even as you point he +turns again in alarm and is gone. Once he was man’s +terror, Leviathan. The very lions of Africa and the +grizzlies of the Rockies, so they tell us, are no longer +the bold enemies of man they once were. “Subdue +the earth”—it is being done. Science and art, commerce +and exploration, are but parts of religion. +Help us, brothers all, with every possible discovery +and invention to complete the conquest begun in that +lost garden whence man and woman first came forth, +not for vengeance but for love, to bruise the serpent’s +head. But as yet, both within us and without us, +what terrible revolts doth Nature make! what awful +victories doth she have over us, and then turn and +bless and serve us again!</p> + +<p>As the sun was rising, one of the timber-cutters +from the steamer stood up in his canoe about half a +mile away, near the wood and beside some willows, +and halloed and beckoned. And when those on the +steamer hearkened he called again, bidding them tell +“de boss” that he had found a canoe adrift, an anchored +boat, and a white man in her, dead.</p> + +<p>Tarbox and St. Pierre came in a skiff.</p> + +<p>“Is he drowned?” asked Mr. Tarbox, while still +some distance off.</p> + +<p>“Been struck by lightnin’ sim like,” replied the +negro who had found the body.—“Watch out, Mistoo +Tah-bawx!” he added, as the skiff drew near; “dat +boat dess lousy wid snake’!”</p> + +<p>Tarbox stood up in the skiff and looked sadly upon +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> +the dead face. “It’s our man,” he said to St. +Pierre.</p> + +<p>“Dass what I say!” exclaimed the negro. “Yes, +seh, so soon I see him I say, mos’ sholy dass de same +man what Mistoo Tah-bawx lookin’ faw to show him +’roun’ ’bout de swamp! Yes, seh, not-instandin’ I +never see him befo’! No, seh.—Lawd! look yondeh! +look dat big bahsta’d hawn-snake! He kyant git +away: he’s hu’t! Lawd! dass what kill dat man! +Dat man trawmp on him in de dark, and he strack him +wid his hawny tail! Look at dem fo’ li’l’ spot’ on de +man’ foot! Now, Mistoo Tah-bawx! You been talk’ +’bout dem ah bahsta’d hawn-snake not pizen! Well, +mos’ sholy dey <em>bite</em> ain’t pizen; but if dat hawn on de +een of his tail dess on’y tetch you, you’ gone! Look +at dat man! Kill’ him so quick dey wa’n’t time for +de place to swell whah he was hit!” But Tarbox +quietly pointed out to St. Pierre that the tiny wounds +were made by the reptile’s teeth.</p> + +<p>“The coroner’s verdict will probably be ‘privation +and exposure,’” said he softly; “but it ought to be, +‘killed by fright and the bite of a harmless snake.’”</p> + +<p>On his murmured suggestion, St. Pierre gave orders +that, with one exception, every woodsman go to his +tree-felling, and that the lugger and canoe, with the +dead man lying untouched, be towed by skiff and a +single pair of oars to the head of the canal for inquest +and burial.</p> + +<p>“I’ll go with him,” said Tarbox softly to St. Pierre. +“We owe him all we’re going to get out of these +woods, and I owe him a great deal more.” When a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> +little later he was left for a moment without a hearer, +he said to the prostrate form, “Poor fellow! And to +think I had her message to you to come out of this +swamp and begin to live the life of a live man!”</p> + +<p>The rude funeral moved away, and soon the woods +were ringing with the blow of axes and the shout and +song of black timber-men as gayly as though there +never had been or was to be a storm or a death.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XIX" id="PART_III_CHAP_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h3> + +<h3>“TEARS AND SUCH THINGS.”</h3> + + +<p>Marguerite and her friend had no sooner taken +their seats to drive home from the studio the day the +sketch was made than Marguerite began a perfect +prattle. Her eyes still shone exaltedly, and leaped +and fell and darkened and brightened with more than +the swift variety of a fountain in the moonlight, while +she kept trying in vain to meet her companion’s looks +with a moment’s steady regard.</p> + +<p>Claude was found! and she trembled with delight. +But, alas! he had heard her passionate call and yet +stood still; had looked down upon her in silence, and +drawn again the curtain between them. She had +thought until the last moment, “He will come; he +will confront us as we pass out the door—will overtake +us at the foot of the stairs—on the sidewalk—at +the carriage window.” But it had not been so; and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> +now they were gone from the place; and here sat this +friend, this gay, cynical knower of men’s and women’s +ways, answering her chatter in short, smiling responses, +with a steady eye fixed on her, and reading, +Marguerite believed, as plainly as if it were any of the +sign-boards along the rattling street, the writing on her +fluttering heart. And so, even while she trembled +with strange delight, pain, shame, and alarm pleaded +through her dancing glances, now by turns and now in +confusion together, for mercy and concealment. But +in fact, as this friend sat glancing upon the young face +beside her with secret sympathy and admiration, it +was only this wild fear of betrayal that at length +betrayed.</p> + +<p>Reaching the house, the street door was hardly shut +behind them when Marguerite would have darted up +to her chamber; but her friend caught her hands +across the balustrade, and said, with roguery in her +own eyes:</p> + +<p>“Marguerite, you sweet rowdy—”</p> + +<p>“W’at?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, <em>what</em>. There’s something up; what is it?”</p> + +<p>The girl tried to put on surprise; but her eyes failed +her again. She leaned on the rail and looked down, +meanwhile trying softly to draw away up-stairs; but +her friend held on to one hand and murmured:</p> + +<p>“Just one question, dearie, just one. I’ll not ask +another: I’ll die first. You’ll probably find me <i>in +articulo mortis</i> when you come down-stairs. Just one +question, lovie.”</p> + +<p>“<em>W’at</em> it is?”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> +“It’s nothing but this; I ask for information.” The +voice dropped to a whisper,—“Is he as handsome as +his portrait?”</p> + +<p>The victim rallied all her poor powers of face, and +turned feebly upon the questioner:</p> + +<p>“Po’trait? Who?” Her voice was low, and she +glanced furtively at the nearest door. “I dawn’t +awnstan you.” Her hand pulled softly for its freedom, +and she turned to go, repeating, with averted +face, “I dawn’t awnstan you ’t all.”</p> + +<p>“Well, never mind then, dear, if you don’t understand,” +responded the tease, with mock tenderness. +“But, <i>ma belle Créole</i>—”</p> + +<p>“<i>Je suis Acadienne.</i>”</p> + +<p>“You’re an angel, faintly disguised. Only—look +around here—only, Angelica, don’t try to practise +woman’s humbug on a woman. At least, not on this +old one. It doesn’t work. I’ll tell you whom I +mean.” She pulled, but Marguerite held off. “I +mean,” she hoarsely whispered,—“I mean the young +inventor that engineer told us about. Remember?”</p> + +<p>Marguerite, with her head bowed low, slowly dragged +her hand free, and moved with growing speed up the +stairs, saying:</p> + +<p>“I dawn’t know what is dat. I dawn’t awnstan +you ’t all.” Her last words trembled as if nigh to +tears. At the top of the stairs the searching murmur +of her friend’s voice came up, and she turned and +looked back.</p> + +<p>“Forgive me!” said the figure below. The girl +stood a moment, sending down a re-assuring smile.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> +“You young rogue!” murmured the lady, looking +up with ravished eyes. Then she lifted herself on +tiptoe, made a trumpet of both little hands, and +whispered:</p> + +<p>“Don’t—worry! We’ll bring it out—all right!”</p> + +<p>Whereat Marguerite blushed from temple to throat, +and vanished.</p> + +<p>The same day word came from her mother of her +return from Terrebonne, and she hastened to rejoin +her in their snug rooms over the Women’s Exchange. +When she snatched Zoséphine into her arms and shed +tears, the mother merely wiped and kissed them away, +and asked no explanation.</p> + +<p>The two were soon apart. For Marguerite hungered +unceasingly for solitude. Only in solitude could she, +or dared she, give herself up to the constant recapitulation +of every minutest incident of the morning. And +that was ample employment. They seemed the happenings +of a month ago. She felt as if it were imperative +to fix them in her memory now, or lose them in +confusion and oblivion forever. Over them all again +and again she went, sometimes quickening memory +with half-spoken words, sometimes halting in long +reverie at some intense juncture: now with tingling +pleasure at the unveiling of the portrait, the painter’s +cautionary revelation of the personal presence above, +or Claude’s appearance at the window; now with +burnings of self-abasement at the passionate but ineffectual +beseechings of her violin; and always ending +with her face in her hands, as though to hide her face +even from herself for shame that with all her calling—her +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> +barefaced, as it seemed to her, her abject calling—he +had not come.</p> + +<p>“Marguerite, my child, it is time for bed.”</p> + +<p>She obeyed. It was all one, the bed or the window. +Her mother, weary with travel, fell asleep; but she—she +heard the clock down-stairs strike, and a clock +next door attest, twelve—one—two—three—four, +and another day began to shine in at the window. As +it brightened, her spirits rose. She had been lying +long in reverie; now she began once more the oft-repeated +rehearsal. But the new day shone into it +also. When the silent recital again reached its end, +the old distress was no longer there, but in its place +was a new, sweet shame near of kin to joy. The face, +unhidden, looked straight into the growing light. +Whatever else had happened, this remained,—that +Claude was found. She silently formed the name on +her parted lips—“Claude! Claude! Claude! Claude!” +and could not stop though it gave her pain, the pain +was so sweet. She ceased only when there rose before +her again the picture of him drawing the curtain and +disappearing; but even then she remembered the +words, “Don’t worry; we’ll bring it out all right,” +and smiled.</p> + +<p>When Zoséphine, as the first sunbeam struck the +window-pane, turned upon her elbow and looked into +the fair face beside her, the eyes were closed in sleep. +She arose, darkened the room, and left it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XX" id="PART_III_CHAP_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h3> + +<h3>LOVE, ANGER, AND MISUNDERSTANDING.</h3> + + +<p>The city bells had sounded for noon when the +sleeper opened her eyes. While she slept, Claude had +arrived again at his father’s cottage from the scene +of the crevasse, and reported to Tarbox the decision of +himself and the engineer, that the gap would not be +closed for months to come. While he told it, they sat +down with St. Pierre to breakfast. Claude, who had had +no chance even to seek sleep, ate like a starved horse. +Tarbox watched him closely, with hidden and growing +amusement. Presently their eyes fastened on each +other steadily. Tarbox broke the silence.</p> + +<p>“<em>You</em> don’t care how the crevasse turns out. I’ve +asked you a question now twice, and you don’t even +hear.”</p> + +<p>“Why you don’t ass ag’in?” responded the younger +man, reaching over to the meat-dish and rubbing his +bread in the last of the gravy. Some small care called +St. Pierre away from the board. Tarbox leaned forward +on his elbows, and, not knowing he quoted, said +softly,—</p> + +<p>“There’s something up. What is it?”</p> + +<p>“Op?” asked Claude, in his full voice, frowning. +“Op where?—w’at, <em>w’at</em> is?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, yes!” said Tarbox, with affected sadness. +“Yes, that’s it; I thought so.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Oh-hon for somebody, oh hey for somebody.’”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> +Claude stopped with a morsel half-way to his mouth, +glared at him several seconds, and then resumed his +eating; not like a horse now, but like a bad dog gnawing +an old bone. He glanced again angrily at the +embodiment of irreverence opposite. Mr. Tarbox +smiled. Claude let slip, not intending it, an audible +growl, with his eyes in the plate. Mr. Tarbox’s smile +increased to a noiseless laugh, and grew and grew until +it took hopeless possession of him. His nerves relaxed, +he trembled, the table trembled with him, his +eyes filled with tears, his brows lifted laboriously, he +covered his lips with one hand, and his abdomen shrank +until it pained him. And Claude knew, and showed +he knew it all; that was what made it impossible to +stop. At length, with tottering knees, Mr. Tarbox +rose and started silently for the door. He knew +Claude’s eyes were following. He heard him rise to +his feet. He felt as though he would have given a +thousand dollars if his legs would but last him through +the doorway. But to crown all, St. Pierre met him +just on the threshold, breaking, with unintelligent +sympathy, into a broad, simple smile. Tarbox laid +one hand upon the door for support, and at that moment +there was a hurtling sound; something whizzed +by Tarbox’s ear, and the meat-dish crashed against +the door-post, and flew into a hundred pieces.</p> + +<p>The book-agent ran like a deer for a hundred yards +and fell grovelling upon the turf, the laugh still griping +him with the energy of a panther’s jaws, while Claude, +who, in blind pursuit, had come threshing into his +father’s arms, pulled his hat over his eyes and strode +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> +away towards the skiff ferry. As Mr. Tarbox returned +towards the cottage, St. Pierre met him, looking +very grave, if not displeased. The swamper spoke +first.</p> + +<p>“Dass mighty good for you I was yondah to stop +dat boy. He would ’a’ half-kill’ you.”</p> + +<p>“He’d have served me ex-actly right,” said the +other, and laughed again. St. Pierre shook his head, +as though this confession were poor satisfaction, and +said,—</p> + +<p>“Dass not safe—make a ’Cajun mad. He dawn’t +git mad easy, but when he <em>git</em> mad it bre’k out all ove’ +him, yass. He goin’ feel bad all day now; I see tear’ +in his eye when he walk off.”</p> + +<p>“I’m sorry,” said Tarbox sincerely, and presently +added, “Now, while you look up a picked gang of +timber-men, I’ll see if I can charter a little stern-wheel +steamer, get that written permission from Madame +Beausoleil to cut trees on her land, and so forth, and +so forth. You’ll hardly see me before bedtime +again.”</p> + +<p>It was the first hour of the afternoon when Claude +left his little workroom and walked slowly down to, +and across, Canal Street and into Bourbon. He had +spent the intervening hours seated at his work-table +with his face in his hands. He was in great bitterness. +His late transport of anger gave him no burdensome +concern. Indeed, there was consolation in the thought +that he should, by and by, stand erect before one who +was so largely to blame, and make that full confession +and apology which he believed his old-time Grande +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> +Pointe schoolmaster would have offered could Bonaventure +ever have so shamefully forgotten himself. +Yet the chagrin of having at once so violently and so +impotently belittled himself added one sting more to his +fate. He was in despair. An escaped balloon, a burst +bubble, could hardly have seemed more utterly beyond +his reach than now did Marguerite. And he could not +blame her. She was right, he said sternly to himself—right +to treat his portrait as something that reminded +her of nothing, whether it did so or not; to play on +with undisturbed inspiration; to lift never a glance to +his window; and to go away without a word, a look, +a sign, to any one, when the least breath or motion +would have brought him instantly into her sacred +presence. She was right. She was not for him. +There is a fitness of things, and there was no fitness—he +said—of him for her. And yet she must and +would ever be more to him than any one else. He +would glory in going through life unloved, while his +soul lived in and on the phantom companionship of +that vision of delight which she was and should ever +be. The midday bells sounded softly here and there. +He would walk.</p> + +<p>As I say, he went slowly down the old rue Bourbon. +He had no hunger; he would pass by the Women’s +Exchange. There was nothing to stop there for; was +not Madame Beausoleil in Terrebonne, and Marguerite +the guest of that chattering woman in silk and laces? +But when he reached the Exchange doors he drifted in +as silently and supinely as any drift-log would float +into the new crevasse.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> +The same cashier was still on duty. She lighted up +joyously as he entered, and, when he had hung his +hat near the door, leaned forward to address him; but +with a faint pain in his face, and loathing in his heart, +he passed on and out into the veranda. The place was +well filled, and he had to look about to find a seat. +The bare possibility that <em>she</em> might be there was overpowering. +There was a total suspension of every sort +of emotion. He felt, as he took his chair and essayed +to glance casually around, as light and unreal as any +one who ever walked the tight-rope in a dream. The +blood leaped in torrents through his veins, and yet his +movements, as he fumbled aimlessly with his knife, +fork, and glass, were slow and languid.</p> + +<p>A slender young waitress came, rested her knuckles +on the table, and leaned on them, let her opposite arm +hang limply along the sidewise curve of her form, and +bending a smile of angelic affection upon the young +Acadian, said in a confidential undertone:</p> + +<p>“The cashier told me to tell you those ladies have +come.”</p> + +<p>Claude rose quickly and stood looking upon the face +before him, speechless. It was to him exactly as if a +man in uniform had laid a hand upon his shoulder and +said, “You’re my prisoner.” Then, still gazing, and +aware of others looking at him, he slowly sank again +into his seat.</p> + +<p>“She just told me to tell you,” said the damsel. +“Yes, sir. Have you ordered?”</p> + +<p>“Humph?” He was still looking at her.</p> + +<p>“I say, have you given your order?”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> +“Yass.”</p> + +<p>She paused awkwardly, for she knew he had not, +and saw that he was trying vainly to make her words +mean something in his mind.</p> + +<p>“Sha’n’t I get you some coffee and rolls—same as +day before yesterday?”</p> + +<p>“Yass.” He did not know what she said. His +heart had stopped beating; now it began again at a +gallop. He turned red. He could see the handkerchief +that was wadded into his outer breast-pocket jar +in time with the heavy thump, thump, thump beneath it. +The waitress staid an awful time. At last she came.</p> + +<p>“I waited,” she sweetly said, “to get <em>hot</em> ones.” +He drew the refreshments towards him mechanically. +The mere smell of food made him sick. It seemed +impossible that he should eat it. She leaned over him +lovingly and asked, as if referring to the attitude, +“Would you like any thing more?—something sweet?” +His flesh crawled. He bent over his plate, shook his +head, and stirred his coffee without having put any thing +into it.</p> + +<p>She tripped away, and he drew a breath of momentary +relief, leaned back in his chair, and warily passed +his eyes around to see if there was anybody who was +not looking at him and waiting for him to begin to +eat.</p> + +<p>Ages afterward—to speak with Claude’s feelings—he +rose, took up his check, and went to the desk. The +cashier leaned forward and said with soft blitheness:</p> + +<p>“They’re here. They’re up-stairs now.”</p> + +<p>Claude answered never a word. He paid his check. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> +As he waited for change, he cast another glance over +the various groups at the tables. All were strangers. +Then he went out. On the single sidewalk step he +halted, and red and blind with mortification, turned +again into the place; he had left his hat. With one +magnificent effort at dignity and unconcern he went to +the rack, took down the hat, and as he lowered it +towards his head cast a last look down the room, and—there +stood Marguerite. She had entered just in +time, it seemed to him, but just too late, in fact, to see +and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They bowed +to each other with majestic faintness, and then each +from each was gone. The girl at the desk saw it and +was dumb.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XXI" id="PART_III_CHAP_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h3> + +<h3>LOVE AND LUCK BY ELECTRIC LIGHT.</h3> + + +<p>Mr. Tarbox was really a very brave man. For, +had he not been, how could he have ventured, something +after the middle of that afternoon, in his best +attire, up into Claude’s workroom? He came to +apologize. But Claude was not there.</p> + +<p>He waited, but the young man did not return. The +air was hot and still. Mr. Tarbox looked at his watch—it +was a quarter of five. He rose and descended +to the street, looked up and down it, and then moved +briskly down to, and across, Canal Street and into +Bourbon. He had an appointment.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> +Claude had not gone back to his loft at all. He +was wandering up and down the streets. About four +he was in Bienville Street, where the pleasure-trains +run through it on their way out to Spanish Fort, a +beautiful pleasure-ground some six miles away from +the city’s centre, on the margin of Lake Pontchartrain. +He was listlessly crossing the way as a train came +along, and it was easy for the habit of the aforetime +brakeman to move him. As the last platform passed +the crossing, he reached out mechanically and swung +aboard.</p> + +<p>Spanish Fort is at the mouth of Bayou St. John. +A draw-bridge spans the bayou. On the farther, the +eastern, side, Claude stood leaning against a pile, looking +off far beyond West End to where the sun was +setting in the swamps about Lake Maurepas. There—there—not +seen save by memory’s eye, yet there +not the less, was Bayou des Acadiens. Ah me! there +was Grande Pointe.</p> + +<p>“O Bonaventure! Do I owe you”—Claude’s +thought was in the old Acadian tongue—“Do I owe +you malice for this? No, no, no! Better <em>this</em> than +<em>less</em>.” And then he recalled a writing-book copy that +Bonaventure had set for him, of the schoolmaster’s +own devising: <em>Better Great Sorrow than Small Delight.</em> +His throat tightened and his eyes swam.</p> + +<p>A pretty schooner, with green hull and new sails, +came down the bayou. As he turned to gaze on her, +the bridge, just beyond his feet, began to swing open. +He stepped upon it and moved towards its centre, his +eyes still on the beautiful silent advance of the vessel. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> +With a number of persons who had gathered from both +ends of the bridge, he paused and leaned over the rail +as the schooner, with her crew looking up into the +faces of the throng, glided close by. A female form +came beside him, looking down with the rest and shedding +upon the air the soft sweetness of perfumed +robes. A masculine voice, just beyond, said:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”<br /></span> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Claude started and looked up, and behold, Marguerite +on the arm of Tarbox!</p> + +<p>His movement drew their glance, and the next instant +Mr. Tarbox, beaming apology and pouring out +glad greetings, had him by the hand. Burning, choking, +stammering, Claude heard and answered, he knew +not how, the voice of the queen of all her kind. +Another pair pressed forward to add their salutations. +They were Zoséphine and the surveyor.</p> + +<p>Because the facilities for entertaining a male visitor +were slender at the Women’s Exchange, because +there was hope of more and cooler air at the lake-side, +because Spanish Fort was a pretty and romantic spot +and not so apt to be thronged as West End, and because +Marguerite, as she described it, was tired of +houses and streets, and also because he had something +to say to Zoséphine, Mr. Tarbox had brought the +pretty mother and daughter out here. The engineer +had met the three by chance only a few minutes before, +and now as the bridge closed again he passed +Zoséphine over to Claude, walked only a little way +with them down a path among the shrubbery, and then +lifted his hat and withdrew.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> +For once in his life Mr. G. W. Tarbox, as he walked +with Marguerite in advance of Claude and her mother, +was at a loss what to say. The drollness of the situation +was in danger of overcoming him again. Behind +him was Claude, his mind tossed on a wild sea of +doubts and suspicions.</p> + +<p>“I told him,” thought Tarbox, while the girl on his +arm talked on in pretty, broken English and sprightly +haste about something he had lost the drift of—“I +told him I was courting Josephine. But I never +proved it to him. And now just look at this! Look +at the whole sweet mess! Something has got to be +done.” He did not mean something direct and openhanded; +that would never have occurred to him. He +stopped, and with Marguerite faced the other pair. +One glance into Claude’s face, darkened with perplexity, +anger, and a distressful effort to look amiable and +comfortable, was one too many; Tarbox burst into a +laugh.</p> + +<p>“Pardon!” he exclaimed, checking himself until he +was red; “I just happened to think of something very +funny that happened last week in Arkansas—Madame +Beausoleil, I know it must look odd,”—his voice still +trembled a little, but he kept a sober face—“and +yet I must take just a moment for business. Claude, +can I see you?”</p> + +<p>They went a step aside. Mr. Tarbox put on a +business frown, and said to Claude in a low voice,—</p> + +<p>“Hi! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the +cow jumped over the moon the little dog laughed to +see the sport and the dish ran away with the spoon +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> +you understand I’m simply talking for talk’s sake as +we resume our walk we’ll inadvertently change partners—a +kind of Women’s Exchange as it were +old Mother Hubbard she went to the cupboard to get +her poor dog a bone but when she got there the cupboard—don’t +smile so broadly—was bare and so the +poor dog had none will that be satisfactory?”</p> + +<p>Claude nodded, and as they turned again to their +companions the exchange was made with the grace, +silence, and calm unconsciousness of pure oversight,—or +of general complicity. Very soon it suited Zoséphine +and Tarbox to sit down upon a little bench +beside a bed of heart’s-ease and listen to the orchestra. +But Marguerite preferred to walk in and out among +the leafy shadows of the electric lamps.</p> + +<p>And so, side by side, as he had once seen Bonaventure +and Sidonie go, they went, Claude and Marguerite, +away from all windings of disappointment, all shadows +of doubt, all shoals of misapprehension, out upon the +open sea of mutual love. Not that the great word of +words—affirmative or interrogative—was spoken then +or there. They came no nearer to it than this,—</p> + +<p>“I wish,” murmured Claude,—they had gone over +all the delicious “And-I-thought-that-you’s” and the +sweetly reproachful “Did-you-think-that-I’s,” and had +covered the past down to the meeting on the bridge,—“I +wish,” he murmured, dropping into the old +Acadian French, which he had never spoken to her +before,—“I wish”—</p> + +<p>“What?” she replied, softly and in the same +tongue.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> +“I wish,” he responded, “that this path might +never end.” He wondered at his courage, and feared +that now he had ruined all; for she made no answer. +But when he looked down upon her she looked up and +smiled. A little farther on she dropped her fan. He +stooped and picked it up, and, in restoring it, somehow +their hands touched,—touched and lingered; and then—and +then—through one brief unspeakable moment, +a maiden’s hand, for the first time in his life, lay willingly +in his. Then, as glad as she was frightened, +Marguerite said she must go back to her mother, and +they went.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="PART_III_CHAP_XXII" id="PART_III_CHAP_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h3> + +<h3>A DOUBLE LOVE-KNOT.</h3> + + +<p>Spanish Fort—West End—they are well enough; +but if I might have one small part of New Orleans to +take with me wherever I may wander in this earthly +pilgrimage, I should ask for the old Carrollton Gardens.</p> + +<p>They lie near the farthest upper limit of the expanded +city. I should want, of course, to include the +levee, under which runs one side of the gardens’ fence; +also the opposite shore of the Mississippi, with its just +discernible plantation houses behind their levee; and +the great bend of the river itself, with the sun setting +in unutterable gorgeousness behind the distant, low-lying +pecan groves of Nine-mile Point, and the bronzed +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> +and purpled waters kissing the very crown of the great +turfed levee, down under whose land side the gardens +blossom and give forth their hundred perfumes and +bird songs to the children and lovers that haunt their +winding alleys of oleander, jasmine, laurestine, orange, +aloe, and rose, the grove of magnolias and oaks, and +come out upon the levee’s top as the sun sinks, to +catch the gentle breeze and see the twilight change +to moonlight on the water.</p> + +<p>One evening as I sat on one of the levee benches +here, with one whose I am and who is mine beside me, +we noticed on the water opposite us, and near the +farther shore, a large skiff propelled with two pairs +of oars and containing, besides the two rowers, half a +dozen passengers.</p> + +<p>Then I remembered that I had seen the same craft +when it was farther down the stream. The river is of +a typical character about here. Coming around the +upper bend, the vast current sweeps across to this, the +Carrollton side, and strikes it just above the gardens +with an incalculable gnawing, tearing power. Hence +the very high levee here; the farther back the levee +builders are driven by the corroding waters the lower +the ground is under them, and the higher they must +build to reach the height they reached before. From +Carrollton the current rebounds, and swinging over to +the other shore strikes it, boiling like a witch’s caldron, +just above and along the place where you may +descry the levee lock of the Company Canal.</p> + +<p>I knew the waters all about there, and knew that +this skiff full of passengers, some of whom we could +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> +see were women, having toiled through the seething +current below, was now in a broad eddy, and, if it +was about to cross the stream, would do so only after +it had gone some hundred yards farther up the river. +There it could cross almost with the current.</p> + +<p>And so it did. I had forgotten it again, when presently +it showed itself with all its freight, silhouetted +against the crimson sky. I said quickly:</p> + +<p>“I believe Bonaventure Deschamps is in that boat!”</p> + +<p>I was right. The skiff landed, and we saw its passengers +step ashore. They came along the levee’s +crown towards us, “by two, by two.” Bonaventure +was mated with a young Methodist preacher, who had +been my playmate in boyhood, and who lived here in +Carrollton. Behind him came St. Pierre and Sidonie. +Then followed Claude and Marguerite; and, behind +all, Zoséphine and Tarbox.</p> + +<p>They had come, they explained to us, from a funeral +at the head of the canal. They did not say the funeral +of a friend, and yet I could see that every one of +them, even the preacher, had shed tears. The others +had thought it best and pleasantest to accompany the +minister thus far towards his home, then take a turn in +the gardens, and then take the horse-cars for the city’s +centre. Bonaventure and Sidonie were to return next +day by steamer to Belle Alliance and Grande Pointe. +The thoughtful Tarbox had procured Bonaventure’s +presence at the inquest of the day before as the identifying +witness, thus to save Zoséphine that painful +office. And yet it was of Zoséphine’s own motion, +and by her sad insistence, that she and her daughter +followed the outcast to his grave.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> +“Yes,” she had said, laying one hand in Bonaventure’s +and the other in Sidonie’s and speaking in the +old Acadian tongue, “when I was young and proud I +taught ’Thanase to despise and tease him. I did not +know then that I was such a coward myself. If I had +been a better scholar, Bonaventure, when we used to +go to school to the curé together—a better learner—not +in the books merely, but in those things that are so +much better than the things books teach—how different +all might have been! Thank God, Bonaventure, one of +us was.” She turned to Sidonie to add,—“But that +one was Bonaventure. We will all go”—to the +funeral—“we will all go and bury vain regrets—with +the dead.”</p> + +<p>The influence of the sad office they had just performed +was on the group still, as they paused to give +us the words of greeting we coveted. Yet we could see +that a certain sense of being very, very rich in happiness +was on them all, though differently on every one.</p> + +<p>Zoséphine wore the pear-shaped pearl.</p> + +<p>The preacher said good-day, and started down the +steps that used to lead from the levee down across +a pretty fountained court and into the town. But my +friend Tarbox—for I must tell you I like to call him +my friend, and like it better every day; we can’t all +be one sort; you’d like him if you knew him as I do—my +friend Tarbox beckoned me to detain him.</p> + +<p>“Christian!” I called—that is the preacher’s real +name. He turned back and met Tarbox just where +I stood. They laid their arms across each other’s +shoulders in a very Methodist way, and I heard Tarbox +say:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> +“I want to thank you once more. We’ve put you +to a good deal of trouble. You gave us the best +you had: I’ll never forget what you said about ‘them +who through fear of death are all their life-time subject +to bondage.’ I wish you were a Catholic priest.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“So we could pay you for your trouble. I don’t +think you ought to take it hard if you get a check in +to-morrow’s mail.”</p> + +<p>“Thy money survive with thee,” said the preacher. +“Is that all you want me to be a priest for? Isn’t +there another reason?” His eyes twinkled. “Isn’t +there something else I could do for you—you or +Claude—if I should turn priest?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Tarbox, with grave lips, but merry +eyes; “we’ve both got to have one.”</p> + +<p>In fact they had two. Yet I have it from her husband +himself, that Madame Tarbox insists to this day, +always with the same sweet dignity, that she never did +say yes.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, when Claude and Marguerite +were kneeling at the altar the proud St. Pierre, senior, +spoke an audible and joyously impatient affirmative +every time either of them was asked a question. When +the time came for kissing, Sidonie, turning from both +brides, kissed St. Pierre the more for that she kissed +not Claude, then turned again and gave a tear with +the kiss she gave to Zoséphine. But the deepest, gladdest +tears at those nuptials were shed by Bonaventure +Deschamps.</p> + +<div class="footnotes" style="margin-bottom: 5em;"> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Acadians.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Raccoon.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> During the war.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Écrevisse</i>, crawfish.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The “shaking prairie,” “trembling prairie,” or <i>prairie tremblante</i>, +is low, level, treeless delta land, having a top soil of vegetable mould overlying +immense beds of quicksand.</p></div> +</div> + +<div class="bbox"> +<p><b>Transcriber's Note</b></p> + +<p>Minor typographic errors have been corrected without note.</p> + +<p>This work contains a lot of dialect, which includes unusual spelling and +hyphenation. This has been retained as printed throughout.</p> + +<p>A small portion of the text was obscured on page 90. With the context and +available space, 'Claude had' would seem to be the most appropriate for +the original, and has been used here. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Bonaventure + A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana + + +Author: George Washington Cable + + + +Release Date: December 30, 2007 [eBook #24078] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BONAVENTURE*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Sam W., and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). Music transcribed by +Linda Cantoni. + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations and + an audio file of music. + See 24078-h.htm or 24078-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/0/7/24078/24078-h/24078-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/0/7/24078/24078-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + There are a small number of characters with diacritical marks, + which are as follows: + + [)o] is o with a breve (u shaped symbol) above it; + + [=a] is a with a macron (straight line) above it. + + Additional notes will be found at the end of the book. + + + + + +BONAVENTURE + +A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana + +by + +GEORGE W. CABLE + + + + + + + +New York +International Association of Newspapers and Authors +1901 + +Copyright, 1887, 1888, by George W. Cable. + +Braunworth, Munn & Barber +Printers and Binders +Brooklyn, N. Y. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +_CARANCRO._ + + CHAPTER. PAGE. + + I. SOSTHENE 1 + + II. BONAVENTURE AND ZOSEPHINE 4 + + III. ATHANASIUS 9 + + IV. THE CONSCRIPT OFFICER 15 + + V. THE CURE OF CARANCRO 24 + + VI. MISSING 33 + + VII. A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK 42 + + VIII. THE QUEST ENDED 47 + + IX. THE WEDDING 55 + + X. AFTER ALL 62 + + +_GRANDE POINTE._ + + CHAPTER. PAGE. + + I. A STRANGER 73 + + II. IN A STRANGE LAND 77 + + III. THE HANDSHAKING 81 + + IV. HOW THE CHILDREN RANG THE BELL 86 + + V. INVITED TO LEAVE 91 + + VI. WAR OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT 98 + + VII. LOVE AND DUTY 103 + + VIII. AT CLAUDE'S MERCY 111 + + IX. READY 116 + + X. CONSPIRACY 119 + + XI. LIGHT, LOVE, AND VICTORY 129 + + +_AU LARGE._ + + CHAPTER. PAGE. + + I. THE POT-HUNTER 142 + + II. CLAUDE 147 + + III. THE TAVERN FIRESIDE 152 + + IV. MARGUERITE 167 + + V. FATHER AND SON 179 + + VI. CONVERGING LINES 188 + + VII. 'THANASE'S VIOLIN 201 + + VIII. THE SHAKING PRAIRIE 213 + + IX. NOT BLUE EYES, NOR YELLOW HAIR 221 + + X. A STRONG TEAM 226 + + XI. HE ASKS HER AGAIN 235 + + XII. THE BEAUSOLEILS AND ST. PIERRES 248 + + XIII. THE CHASE 255 + + XIV. WHO SHE WAS 263 + + XV. CAN THEY CLOSE THE BREAK? 269 + + XVI. THE OUTLAW AND THE FLOOD 271 + + XVII. WELL HIDDEN 280 + + XVIII. THE TORNADO 286 + + XIX. "TEARS AND SUCH THINGS" 294 + + XX. LOVE, ANGER, AND MISUNDERSTANDING 299 + + XXI. LOVE AND LUCK BY ELECTRIC LIGHT 305 + + XXII. A DOUBLE LOVE-KNOT 310 + + + + +BONAVENTURE. + + + + +CARANCRO. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +SOSTHENE. + + +Bayou Teche is the dividing line. On its left is the land of bayous, +lakes, and swamps; on its right, the beautiful short-turfed prairies +of Western Louisiana. The Vermilion River divides the vast prairie +into the countries of Attakapas on the east and Opelousas on the west. +On its west bank, at its head of navigation, lies the sorry little +town of Vermilionville, near about which on the north and east the +prairie rises and falls with a gentle swell, from whose crests one +may, as from the top of a wave, somewhat overlook the surrounding +regions. + +Until a few years ago, stand on whichever one you might, the prospect +stretched away, fair and distant, in broad level or gently undulating +expanses of crisp, compact turf, dotted at remote intervals by farms, +each with its low-roofed house nestled in a planted grove of oaks, or, +oftener, Pride of China trees. Far and near herds of horses and +cattle roamed at will over the plain. If for a moment, as you passed +from one point of view to another, the eye was shut in, it was only +where in some lane you were walled in by fields of dense tall +sugar-cane or cotton, or by huge green Chickasaw hedges, studded with +their white-petalled, golden-centred roses. Eastward the plain broke +into slight ridges, which, by comparison with the general level, were +called hills; while toward the north it spread away in quieter swells, +with more frequent fields and larger houses. + +North, south, east, and west, far beyond the circle of these horizons, +not this parish of Lafayette only, but St. Landry, St. Martin, Iberia, +St. Mary's, Vermilion,--all are the land of the Acadians. This quarter +off here to northward was named by the Nova-Scotian exiles, in memory +of the land from which they were driven, the Beau Bassin. These small +homestead groves that dot the plain far and wide are the homes of +their children. Here is this one on a smooth green billow of the land, +just without the town. It is not like the rest,--a large brick house, +its Greek porch half hid in a grove of oaks. On that dreadful day, +more than a century ago, when the British in far-off Acadie shut into +the chapel the villagers of Grand Pre, a certain widow fled with her +children to the woods, and there subsisted for ten days on roots and +berries, until finally, the standing crops as well as the houses being +destroyed, she was compelled to accept exile, and in time found her +way, with others, to these prairies. Her son founded Vermilionville. +Her grandson rose to power,--sat in the Senate of the United States. +From early manhood to hale gray age, the people of his State were +pleased to hold him, now in one capacity, now in another, in their +honored service; they made him Senator, Governor, President of +Convention, what you will. I have seen the portrait for which he sat +in early manhood to a noted English court painter: dark waving locks; +strong, well-chiselled features; fine clear eyes; an air of warm, +steady-glowing intellectual energy. It hangs still in the home of +which I speak. And I have seen an old ambrotype of him, taken in the +days of this story: hair short-cropped, gray; eyes thoughtful, +courageous; mouth firm, kind, and ready to smile. + +It must have been some years before this picture was taken, that, as +he issued from his stately porch,--which the oaks, young then, did not +hide from view as they do now,--coming forth to mount for his regular +morning ride, a weary-faced woman stood before him, holding by the +hand a little toddling boy. She was sick; the child was hungry. He +listened to her tale. Their conversation was in French. + +"Widow, are you? And your husband was a Frenchman: yes, I see. Are you +an Acadian? You haven't the accent." + +"I am a Creole," she said, with a perceptible flush of resentment. So +that he responded amiably:-- + +"Yes, and, like all Creoles, proud of it, as you are right to be. But +I am an Acadian of the Acadians, and never wished I was any thing +else." + +He found her a haven a good half-day's ride out across the prairies +north-westward, in the home of his long-time acquaintance, Sosthene +Gradnego, who had no more heart than his wife had to say No to either +their eminent friend or a houseless widow; and, as to children, had so +many already, that one more was nothing. They did not feel the burden +of her, she died so soon; but they soon found she had left with them a +positive quantity in her little prattling, restless, high-tempered +Bonaventure. Bonaventure Deschamps: he was just two years younger than +their own little Zosephine. + +Sosthene was already a man of some note in this region,--a region +named after a bird. Why would it not often be well so to name +places,--for the bird that most frequents the surrounding woods or +fields? How pleasant to have one's hamlet called Nightingale, or +Whippoorwill, or Goldfinch, or Oriole! The home of Zosephine and +Bonaventure's childhood was in the district known as Carancro; in +bluff English, Carrion Crow. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +BONAVENTURE AND ZOSEPHINE. + + +They did not live _a la chapelle_; that is, in the village of six or +eight houses clustered about the small wooden spire and cross of the +mission chapel. Sosthene's small ground-story cottage, with garret +stairs outside in front on the veranda and its five-acre farm behind, +was not even on a highway nor on the edge of any rich _bas +fond_,--creek-bottom. It was _au large_,--far out across the smooth, +unscarred turf of the immense prairie, conveniently near one of the +clear circular ponds--_maraises_--which one sees of every size and in +every direction on the seemingly level land. Here it sat, as still as +a picture, within its hollow square of China-trees, which every third +year yielded their limbs for fuel; as easy to overlook the first +time--as easy to see the next time--as a bird sitting on her eggs. +Only the practised eye could read aright the infrequent obscure signs +of previous travel that showed the way to it,--sometimes no more than +the occasional soilure of the short turf by a few wheels or hoofs +where the route led into or across the _coolees_--rivulets--that from +_marais_ to _marais_ slipped southward toward the great marshes of the +distant, unseen Gulf. + +When I say the parent of one of these two children and guardian of the +other was a man of note, I mean, for one thing, his house was painted. +That he was the owner of thousands of cattle, one need not mention, +for so were others who were quite inconspicuous, living in unpainted +houses, rarely seeing milk, never tasting butter; men who at call of +their baptismal names would come forth from these houses barefooted +and bareheaded in any weather, and, while their numerous progeny +grouped themselves in the doorway one behind another in inverse order +of age and stature, would either point out your lost way, or, quite as +readily as Sosthene, ask you in beneath a roof where the coffee-pot +never went dry or grew cold by day. Nor would it distinguish him from +them to say he had many horses or was always well mounted. It was a +land of horsemen. One met them incessantly; men in broad hats and dull +homespun, with thin, soft, untrimmed brown beards, astride of small +but handsome animals, in Mexican saddles, the girths and bridles of +plaited hair, sometimes a _pialle_ or _arriatte_--lasso, lariat--of +plaited rawhide coiled at the saddle-bow. "Adieu, Onesime"--always +adieu at meeting, the same as at parting. "Adieu, Francois; adieu, +Christophe; adieu, Lazare;" and they with their gentle, brown-eyed, +wild-animal gaze, "Adjieu." + +What did make Sosthene notable was the quiet thing we call thrift, +made graceful by certain rudiments of taste. To say Sosthene, means +Madame Sosthene as well; and this is how it was that Zosephine +Gradnego and Bonaventure Deschamps, though they went not to school, +nevertheless had "advantages." For instance, the clean, hard-scrubbed +cypress floors beneath their pattering feet; the neat round +parti-colored mats at the doors that served them for towns and +villages; the strips of home-woven carpet that stood for roads--this +one to Mermentau, that one to Cote Gelee, a third _a la chapelle_; the +walls of unpainted pine; the beaded joists under the ceiling; the +home-made furniture, bedsteads and wardrobes of stained woods, and +hickory chairs with rawhide seats, hair uppermost; the white fringed +counterpanes on the high featherbeds; especially, in the principal +room, the house's one mantelpiece, of wood showily stained in three +colors and surmounted by a pair of gorgeous vases, beneath which the +two children used to stand and feast their eyes, worth fifty cents if +they were worth one,--these were as books to them indoors; and out in +the tiny garden, where they played wild horse and wild cow, and lay in +ambush for butterflies, they came under the spell of marigolds, +prince's-feathers, lady-slippers, immortelles, portulaca, jonquil, +lavender, althaea, love-apples, sage, violets, amaryllis, and that +grass ribbon they call _jarretiere de la vierge_,--the virgin's +garter. + +Time passed; the children grew. The children older than they in the +same house became less and less like children, and began to disappear +from the family board and roof by a mysterious process called marrying, +which greatly mystified Zosephine, but equally pleased her by the +festive and jocund character of the occasions, times when there was a +ravishing abundance of fried rice-cakes and _boulettes_--beef-balls. + +To Bonaventure these affairs brought less mystery and less unalloyed +pleasure. He understood them better. Some boys are born lovers. From +the time they can reach out from the nurse's arms, they must be +billing and cooing and choosing a mate. Such was ardent little +Bonaventure; and none of the Gradnego weddings ever got quite through +its ceremony without his big blue eyes being found full of +tears--tears of mingled anger and desolation--because by some +unpardonable oversight he and Zosephine were still left unmarried. So +that the pretty damsel would have to take him aside, and kiss him as +they clasped, and promise him, "Next time--next time, without fail!" + +Nevertheless, he always reaped two proud delights from these events. +For one, Sosthene always took him upon his lap and introduced him as +his little Creole. And the other, the ex-governor came to these +demonstrations--the great governor! who lifted him to his knee and +told him of those wonderful things called cities, full of people that +could read and write; and about steamboats and steam-cars. + +At length one day, when weddings had now pretty well thinned out the +ranks of Sosthene's family, the ex-governor made his appearance though +no marriage was impending. Bonaventure, sitting on his knee, asked why +he had come, and the ex-governor told him there was war. + +"Do you not want to make haste and grow up and be a dragoon?" + +The child was silent, and Sosthene laughed a little as he said +privately in English, which tongue his exceptional thrift had put him +in possession of: + +"Aw, naw!"--he shook his head amusedly--"he dawn't like hoss. Go to +put him on hoss, he kick like a frog. Yass; squeal wuss'n a pig. But +still, sem time, you know, he ain't no coward; git mad in minute; +fight like little ole ram. Dawn't ondstand dat little fellah; he love +flower' like he was a gal." + +"He ought to go to school," said the ex-governor. And Sosthene, half +to himself, responded in a hopeless tone: + +"Yass." Neither Sosthene nor any of his children had ever done that. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +ATHANASIUS. + + +War it was. The horsemen grew scarce on the wide prairies of +Opelousas. Far away in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, on bloody fields, +many an Acadian volunteer and many a poor conscript fought and fell +for a cause that was really none of theirs, simple, non-slaveholding +peasants; and many died in camp and hospital--often of wounds, often +of fevers, often of mere longing for home. Bonaventure and Zosephine +learned this much of war: that it was a state of affairs in which dear +faces went away, and strange ones came back with tidings that brought +bitter wailings from mothers and wives, and made _les vieux_--the old +fathers--sit very silent. Three times over that was the way of it in +Sosthene's house. + +It was also a condition of things that somehow changed boys into men +very young. A great distance away, but still in sight south-westward +across the prairie, a dot of dark green showed where dwelt a sister +and brother-in-law of Sosthene's _vieille_,--wife. There was not the +same domestic excellence there as at Sosthene's; yet the dooryard was +very populous with fowls; within the house was always heard the hard +thump, thump, of the loom, or the loud moan of the spinning-wheel; and +the children were many. The eldest was Athanase. Though but fifteen he +was already stalwart, and showed that intelligent sympathy in the +family cares that makes such offspring the mother's comfort and the +father's hope. At that age he had done but one thing to diminish that +comfort or that hope. One would have supposed an ambitious chap like +him would have spent his first earnings, as other ambitious ones did, +for a saddle; but 'Thanase Beausoleil had bought a fiddle. + +He had hardly got it before he knew how to play it. Yet, to the +father's most welcome surprise, he remained just as bold a rider and +as skilful a thrower of the _arriatte_ as ever. He came into great +demand for the Saturday-night balls. When the courier with a red +kerchief on a wand came galloping round, the day before, from _ile_ to +_ile_,--for these descendants of a maritime race call their homestead +groves islands,--to tell where the ball was to be, he would assert, if +there was even a hope of it, that 'Thanase was to be the fiddler. + +In this way 'Thanase and his pretty little _jarmaine_--first +cousin--Zosephine, now in her fourteenth year, grew to be well +acquainted. For at thirteen, of course, she began to move in society, +which meant to join in the contra-dance. 'Thanase did not dance with +her, or with any one. She wondered why he did not; but many other +girls had similar thoughts about themselves. He only played, his +playing growing better and better, finer and finer, every time he was +heard anew. As to the few other cavaliers, very willing were they to +have it so. The music could not be too good, and if 'Thanase was +already perceptibly a rival when hoisted up in a chair on top of a +table, fiddle and bow in hand, "twisting," to borrow their own +phrase--"twisting the ears of that little red beast and rubbing his +abdomen with a stick," it was just as well not to urge him to come +down into the lists upon the dancing-floor. But they found one night, +at length, that the music could be too good--when 'Thanase struck up +something that was not a dance, and lads and damsels crowded around +standing and listening and asking ever for more, and the ball turned +out a failure because the concert was such a success. + +The memory of that night was of course still vivid next day, Sunday, +and Zosephine's memory was as good as any one's. I wish you might have +seen her in those days of the early bud. The time had returned when +Sosthene could once more get all his household--so had marriages +decimated it--into one vehicle, a thing he had not been able to do for +almost these twenty years. Zosephine and Bonaventure sat on a back +seat contrived for them in the family caleche. In front were the +broad-brimmed Campeachy hat of Sosthene and the meek, limp sunbonnet +of _la vieille_. About the small figure of the daughter there was +always something distinguishing, even if you rode up from behind, that +told of youth, of mettle, of self-regard; a neatness of fit in the +dress, a firm erectness in the little slim back, a faint proudness of +neck, a glimpse of ribbon at the throat, another at the waist; a +something of assertion in the slight crispness of her homespun +sunbonnet, and a ravishing glint of two sparks inside it as you got +one glance within--no more. And as you rode on, if you were a young +blade, you would be--as the soldier lads used to say--all curled up; +but if you were an old mustache, you would smile inwardly and say to +yourself, "She will have her way; she will make all winds blow in her +chosen direction; she will please herself; she will be her own good +luck and her own commander-in-chief, and, withal, nobody's misery or +humiliation, unless you count the swain after swain that will sigh in +vain." As for Bonaventure, sitting beside her, you could just see his +bare feet limply pendulous under his wide palm-leaf hat. And yet he +was a very real personage. + +"Bonaventure," said Zosephine,--this was as they were returning from +church, the wide rawhide straps of their huge wooden two-wheeled +vehicle creaking as a new saddle would if a new saddle were as big as +a house,--"Bonaventure, I wish you could learn how to dance. I am +tired trying to teach you." (This and most of the unbroken English of +this story stands for Acadian French.) + +Bonaventure looked meek for a moment, and then resentful as he said: + +"'Thanase does not dance." + +"'Thanase! Bah! What has 'Thanase to do with it? Who was even thinking +of 'Thanase? Was he there last night? Ah yes! I just remember now he +was. But even he could dance if he chose; while you--you can't learn! +You vex me. 'Thanase! What do you always bring him up for? I wish you +would have the kindness just not to remind me of him! Why does not +some one tell him how he looks, hoisted up with his feet in our faces, +scratching his fiddle? Now, the fiddle, Bonaventure--the fiddle would +just suit you. Ah, if you could play!" But the boy's quick anger so +flashed from his blue eyes that she checked herself and with +contemplative serenity added: + +"Pity nobody else can play so well as that tiresome fellow. It was +positively silly, the way some girls stood listening to him last +night. I'd be ashamed, or, rather, too proud, to flatter such a +high-headed care-for-nobody. I wish he wasn't my cousin!" + +Bonaventure, still incensed, remarked with quiet intensity that he +knew why she wished 'Thanase was not a cousin. + +"It's no such a thing!" exclaimed Zosephine so forcibly that Madame +Sosthene's sunbonnet turned around, and a murmur of admonition came +from it. But the maiden was smiling and saying blithely to +Bonaventure: + +"Oh, you--you can't even guess well." She was about to say more, but +suddenly hushed. Behind them a galloping horse drew near, softly +pattering along the turfy road. As he came abreast, he dropped into a +quiet trot. + +The rider was a boyish yet manly figure in a new suit of gray +home-made linsey, the pantaloons thrust into the tops of his sturdy +russet boots, and the jacket ending underneath a broad leather belt +that carried a heavy revolver in its holster at one hip. A Campeachy +hat shaded his face and shoulders, and a pair of Mexican spurs tinkled +their little steel bells against their huge five-spiked rowels on his +heels. He scarcely sat in the saddle-tree--from hat to spurs you might +have drawn a perpendicular line. It would have taken in shoulders, +thighs, and all. + +"Adjieu," said the young centaur; and Sosthene replied from the +creaking caleche, "Adjieu, 'Thanase," while the rider bestowed his +rustic smile upon the group. Madame Sosthene's eyes met his, and her +lips moved in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little +daughter were in her lap. Bonaventure's gaze was hostile. A word or +two passed between uncle and nephew, including a remark and admission +that the cattle-thieves were getting worse than ever; and with a touch +of the spur, the young horseman galloped on. + +It seems enough to admit that Zosephine's further remarks were silly +without reporting them in full. + +"Look at his back! What airs! If I had looked up I should have laughed +in his face!" etc. "Well," she concluded, after much such chirruping, +"there's one comfort--he doesn't care a cent for me. If I should die +to-morrow, he would forget to come to the funeral. And you think I +wouldn't be glad? Well, you're mistaken, as usual. I hate him, and I +just know he hates me! Everybody hates me!" + +The eyes of her worshipper turned upon her. But she only turned her +own away across the great plain to the vast arching sky, and patted +the caleche with a little foot that ached for deliverance from its +Sunday shoe. Then her glance returned, and all the rest of the way +home she was as sweet as the last dip of cane-juice from the boiling +battery. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE CONSCRIPT OFFICER. + + +By and by 'Thanase was sixteen. Eighteen was the lowest age for +conscription, yet he was in the Confederate uniform. But then so was +his uncle Sosthene; so was his father. It signified merely that he had +been received into the home guard. The times were sadly unsettled. +Every horseman, and how much more every group of horsemen, that one +saw coming across the prairie, was watched by anxious eyes, from the +moment they were visible specks, to see whether the uniform would turn +out to be the blue or the gray. Which was the more unwelcome I shall +not say, but this I can, that the blue meant invasion and the gray +meant conscription. Sosthene was just beyond the limit of age, and +'Thanase two years below it; but 'Thanase's father kept a horse +saddled all the time, and slept indoors only on stormy nights. + +Do not be misled: he was neither deserter nor coward; else the +nickname which had quite blotted out his real name would not have been +Chaouache--savage, Indian. He was needed at home, and--it was not his +war. His war was against cattle-thieves and like marauders, and there +was no other man in all Carancro whom these would not have had on +their track rather than him. But one gray dawn they found there was +another not unlike him. They had made an attempt upon Sosthene's +cattle one night; had found themselves watched and discovered; had +turned and fled westward half the night, and had then camped in the +damp woods of a _bas fond_; when, just as day was breaking and they +were looking to their saddles about to mount--there were seven of +them--just then--listen!--a sound of hoofs! + +Instantly every left foot is in stirrup; but before they can swing +into the saddle a joyous cry is in their ears, and pop! pop! pop! pop! +ring the revolvers as, with the glad, fierce cry still resounding, +three horsemen launch in upon them--only three, but those three a +whirlwind. See that riderless horse, and this one, and that one! And +now for it--three honest men against four remaining thieves! Pop! pop! +dodge, and fire as you dodge! Pop! pop! pop! down he goes; well done, +gray-bearded Sosthene! Shoot there! Wheel here! Wounded? Never +mind--_ora!_ Another rogue reels! Collar him, Chaouache! drag him from +the saddle--down he goes! What, again? Shoot there! Look out, that +fellow's getting away! Ah! down goes Sosthene's horse, breaking his +strong neck in the tumble. Up, bleeding old man--bang! bang! Ha, ha, +_ora!_ that finishes--_ora!_ 'Twas the boy saved your life with that +last shot, Sosthene, and the boy--the youth is 'Thanase. + +He has not stopped to talk; he and his father are catching the horses +of the dead and dying jayhawkers. Now bind up Sosthene's head, and now +'Thanase's hip. Now strip the dead beasts, and take the dead men's +weapons, boots, and spurs. Lift this one moaning villain into his +saddle and take him along, though he is going to die before ten miles +are gone over. So they turn homeward, leaving high revel for the +carrion-crows. + +Think of Bonaventure, the slender, the intense, the reticent--with +'Thanase limping on rude but glorious crutches for four consecutive +Saturdays and Sundays up and down in full sight of Zosephine, savior +of her mother from widowhood, owner of two fine captured horses, and +rewarded by Sosthene with five acres of virgin prairie. If the young +fiddler's music was an attraction before, fancy its power now, when +the musician had to be lifted to his chair on top of the table! + +Bonaventure sought comfort of Zosephine, and she gave it, tittering at +'Thanase behind his back, giving Bonaventure knowing looks, and +sticking her sunbonnet in her mouth. + +"Oh, if the bullet had only gone into the dandy's fiddle-bow arm!" she +whispered gleefully. + +"I wish he might never get well!" said the boy. + +The girl's smile vanished; her eyes flashed lightning for an instant; +the blood flew to her cheeks, and she bit her lip. + +"Why don't you, now while he cannot help himself--why don't you go to +him and hit him square in the face, like"--her arm flew up, and she +smote him with her sunbonnet full between the eyes--"like that!" She +ran away, laughing joyously, while Bonaventure sat down and wept with +rage and shame. + +Day by day he went about his trivial tasks and efforts at pastime with +the one great longing that Zosephine would more kindly let him be her +slave, and something--any thing--take 'Thanase beyond reach. + +Instead of this 'Thanase got well, and began to have a perceptible +down on his cheek and upper lip, to the great amusement of Zosephine. + +"He had better take care," she said one day to Bonaventure, her eyes +leaving their mirth and expanding with sudden seriousness, "or the +conscript officer will be after him, though he is but sixteen." + +Unlucky word! Bonaventure's bruised spirit seized upon the thought. +They were on their way even then _a la chapelle_; and when they got +there he knelt before Mary's shrine and offered the longest and most +earnest prayer, thus far, of his life, and rose to his feet under a +burden of guilt he had never known before. + +It was November. The next day the wind came hurtling over the plains +out of the north-west, bitter cold. The sky was all one dark gray. At +evening it was raining. Sosthene said, as he sat down to supper, that +it was going to pour and blow all night. Chaouache said much the same +thing to his wife as they lay down to rest. Farther away from Carancro +than many of Carancro's people had ever wandered, in the fire-lighted +public room of a village tavern, twelve or fifteen men were tramping +busily about, in muddy boots and big clanking spurs, looking to +pistols and carbines of miscellaneous patterns, and securing them +against weather under their as yet only damp and slightly bespattered +great-coats, no two of which were alike. They spoke to each other +sometimes in French, sometimes in English that betrayed a Creole +rather than an Acadian accent. A young man with a neat _kepi_ tipped +on one side of his handsome head stood with his back to the fire, a +sabre dangling to the floor from beneath a captured Federal overcoat. +A larger man was telling him a good story. He listened smilingly, +dropped the remnant of an exhausted cigarette to the floor, put his +small, neatly booted foot upon it, drew from his bosom one of those +silken tobacco-bags that our sisters in war-time used to make for all +the soldier boys, made a new cigarette, lighted it with the flint and +tinder for which the Creole smokers have such a predilection, and put +away his appliances, still hearkening to the story. He nodded his head +in hearty approval as the tale was finished. It was the story of +Sosthene, Chaouache, 'Thanase, and the jayhawkers. He gathered up his +sabre and walked out, followed by the rest. A rattle of saddles, a +splashing of hoofs, and then no sound was heard but the wind and the +pouring rain. The short column went out of the village at full gallop. + +Day was fully come when Chaouache rose and stepped out upon his +galerie. He had thought he could venture to sleep in bed such a night; +and, sure enough, here morning came, and there had been no intrusion. +'Thanase, too, was up. It was raining and blowing still. Across the +prairie, as far as the eye could reach, not a movement of human life +could be seen. They went in again, made a fire of a few fagots and an +armful of cotton-seed, hung the kettle, and emptied the old coffee +from the coffee-pot. + +The mother and children rose and dressed. The whole family huddled +around the good, hot, cotton-seed fire. No one looked out of window or +door; in such wind and rain, where was the need? In the little log +stable hard by, the two favorite saddle-horses remained unsaddled and +unbridled. The father's and son's pistol-belts, with revolvers +buttoned in their holsters, hung on the bedposts by the headboards of +their beds. A long sporting rifle leaned in a corner near the chimney. + +Chaouache and 'Thanase got very busy plaiting a horse-hair halter, and +let time go by faster than they knew. Madame Chaouache, so to call +her, prepared breakfast. The children played with the dog and cat. +Thus it happened that still nobody looked out into the swirling rain. +Why should they? Only to see the wide deluged plain, the round +drenched groves, the _maraises_ and sinuous _coolees_ shining with +their floods, and long lines of benumbed, wet cattle seeking in +patient, silent Indian file for warmer pastures. They knew it all by +heart. + +Yonder farthest _ile_ is Sosthene's. The falling flood makes it almost +undiscernible. Even if one looked, he would not see that a number of +horsemen have come softly plashing up to Sosthene's front fence, for +Sosthene's house and grove are themselves in the way. They spy +Bonaventure. He is just going in upon the galerie with an armful of +China-tree fagots. Through their guide and spokesman they utter, not +the usual halloo, but a quieter hail, with a friendly beckon. + +"Adjieu." The men were bedraggled, and so wet one could not make out +the color of the dress. One could hardly call it a uniform, and pretty +certainly it was not blue. + +"Adjieu," responded Bonaventure, with some alarm; but the spokesman +smiled re-assuringly. He pointed far away south-westward, and asked if +a certain green spot glimmering faintly through the rain was not +Chaouache's _ile_; and Bonaventure, dumb in the sight of his prayer's +answer, nodded. + +"And how do you get there?" the man asks, still in Acadian French; for +he is well enough acquainted with prairies to be aware that one needs +to know the road even to a place in full view across the plain. +Bonaventure, with riot in his heart, and feeling himself drifting over +the cataract of the sinfullest thing that ever in his young life he +has had the chance to do, softly lays down his wood, and comes to the +corner of the galerie. + +It is awful to him, even while he is doing it, the ease with which he +does it. If, he says, they find it troublesome crossing the marshy +place by Numa's farm,--_le platin a cote d' l'habitation a +Numa_,--then it will be well to _virer de bord_--go about, _et +naviguer au large_--sail across the open prairie. "Adjieu." He takes +up his fagots again, and watches the spattering squad trot away in the +storm, wondering why there is no storm in his own heart. + +They are gone. Sosthene, inside the house, has heard nothing. The +tempest suffocates all sounds not its own, and the wind is the wrong +way anyhow. Now they are far out in the open. Chaouache's _ile_ still +glimmers to them far ahead in the distance, but if some one should +only look from the front window of its dwelling, he could see them +coming. And that would spoil the fun. So they get it into line with +another man's grove nearer by, and under that cover quicken to a +gallop. Away, away; splash, splash, through the _coolees_, around the +_maraises_, clouds of wild fowl that there is no time to shoot into +rising now on this side, now on that; snipe without number, gray as +the sky, with flashes of white, trilling petulantly as they flee; +giant snowy cranes lifting and floating away on waving pinions, and +myriads of ducks in great eruptions of hurtling, whistling wings. On +they gallop; on they splash; heads down; water pouring from soaked +hats and caps; cold hands beating upon wet breasts; horses throwing +steaming muzzles down to their muddy knees, and shaking the rain from +their worried ears; so on and on and on. + +The horse-hair halter was nearly done. The breakfast was smoking on +the board. The eyes of the family group were just turning toward it +with glances of placid content, when a knock sounded on the door, and +almost before father or son could rise or astonishment dart from eye +to eye, the door swung open, and a man stood on the threshold, all mud +and water and weapons, touching the side of his cap with the edge of +his palm and asking in French, with an amused smile forcing its way +about his lips:-- + +"Can fifteen of us get something to eat, and feed our horses?" + +Chaouache gave a vacant stare, and silently started toward the +holsters that hung from the bedpost; but the stranger's right hand +flashed around to his own belt, and, with a repeater half drawn, he +cried: + +"Halt!" And then, more quietly, "Look out of the door, look out the +window." + +Father and son looked. The house was surrounded. + +Chaouache turned upon his wife one look of silent despair. Wife and +children threw themselves upon his neck, weeping and wailing. 'Thanase +bore the sight a moment, maybe a full minute; then drew near, pressed +the children with kind firmness aside, pushed between his father and +mother, took her tenderly by the shoulders, and said in their antique +dialect, with his own eyes brimming:-- + +"Hush! hush! he will not have to go." + + * * * * * + +At a gentle trot the short column of horsemen moves again, but with +its head the other way. The wind and rain buffet and pelt horse and +rider from behind. Chaouache's door is still open. He stands in it +with his red-eyed wife beside him and the children around them, all +gazing mutely, with drooping heads and many a slow tear, after the +departing cavalcade. + +None of the horsemen look back. Why should they? To see a barefoot man +beside a woman in dingy _volante_ and _casaquin_, with two or three +lads of ten or twelve in front, whose feet have known sunburn and +frost but never a shoe, and a damsel or two in cotton homespun dress +made of one piece from collar to hem, and pantalettes of the same +reaching to the ankles--all standing and looking the picture of +witless incapacity, and making no plea against tyranny! Is that a +thing worth while to turn and look back upon? If the blow fell upon +ourselves or our set, that would be different; but these illiterate +and lowly ones--they are--you don't know--so dull and insensible. Yes, +it may be true that it is only _some_ of them who feel less acutely +than _some_ of us--we admit that generously; but when you insinuate +that when we overlook parental and fraternal anguish tearing at such +hearts the dulness and insensibility are ours, you make those people +extremely offensive to us, whereas you should not estrange them from +our tolerance. + +Ah, poor unpitied mother! go back to your toils; they are lightened +now--a little; the cooking, the washing, the scrubbing. Spread, day by +day, the smoking board, and call your spared husband and your little +ones to partake; but you--your tears shall be your meat day and night, +while underneath your breath you moan, "'Thanase! 'Thanase!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE CURE OF CARANCRO. + + +It was an unexpected and capital exchange. They had gone for a +conscript; they came away with a volunteer. + +Bonaventure sat by the fire in Sosthene's cottage, silent and heavy, +holding his small knees in his knit hands and gazing into the flames. +Zosephine was washing the household's few breakfast dishes. _La +vieille_--the mother--was spinning cotton. _Le vieux_--Sosthene--sat +sewing up a rent in a rawhide chair-bottom. He paused by and by, +stretched, and went to the window. His wife caught the same spirit of +relaxation, stopped her wheel, looked at the boy moping in the +chimney-corner, and, passing over to his side, laid a hand upon his +temple to see if he might have fever. + +The lad's eyes did not respond to her; they were following Sosthene. +The husband stood gazing out through the glass for a moment, and then, +without moving, swore a long, slow execration. The wife and daughter +pressed quickly to his either side and looked forth. + +There they came, the number increased to eighteen now, trotting +leisurely through the subsiding storm. The wife asked what they were, +but Sosthene made no reply; he was counting them: twelve, thirteen, +fourteen--fourteen with short guns, another one who seemed to wear a +sword, and three, that must be-- + +"Cawnscreep," growled Sosthene, without turning his eyes. But the next +moment an unusual sound at his elbow drew his glance upon Zosephine. +"_Diable!_" He glared at her weeping eyes, his manner demanding of her +instant explanation. She retreated a step, moved her hand toward the +approaching troop, and cried distressfully: + +"_Tu va oere!_"--"You will see!" + +His glance was drawn to Bonaventure. The lad had turned toward them, +and was sitting upright, his blue eyes widened, his face pale, and his +lips apart; but ere Sosthene could speak his wife claimed his +attention. + +"Sosthene!" she exclaimed, pressing against the window-pane, "ah, +Sosthene! Ah, ah! they have got 'Thanase!" + +Father, mother, and daughter crowded against the window and one +another, watching the body of horse as it drew nigh. Bonaventure went +slowly and lay face downward on the bed. + +Now the dripping procession is at hand. They pass along the dooryard +fence. At the little garden gate they halt. Only 'Thanase dismounts. +The commander exchanges a smiling word or two with him, and the youth +passes through the gate, and, while his companions throw each a tired +leg over the pommel and sit watching him, comes up the short, flowery +walk and in at the opening door. + +There is nothing to explain, the family have guessed it; he goes in +his father's stead. There is but a moment for farewells. + +"Adjieu, Bonaventure." + +The prostrate boy does not move. 'Thanase strides up to the bed and +looks at one burning cheek, then turns to his aunt. + +"_Li malade?_"--"Is he ill?" + +"_Sa l'air a ca_," said the aunt. (_Il a l'air_--he seems so.) + +"Bien, n'onc' Sosthene, adjieu." Uncle and nephew shake hands stoutly. +"Adjieu," says the young soldier again to his aunt. She gives her +hand and turns to hide a tear. The youth takes one step toward +Zosephine. She stands dry-eyed, smiling on her father. As the youth +comes her eyes, without turning to him, fill. He puts out his hand. +She lays her own on it. He gazes at her for a moment, with beseeching +eye--"Adjieu." Her eyes meet his one instant--she leaps upon his +neck--his strong arms press her to his bosom--her lifted face lights +up--his kiss is on her lips--it was there just now, and now--'Thanase +is gone, and she has fled to an inner room. + +Bonaventure stood in the middle of the floor. Why should the boy look +so strange? Was it anger, or fever, or joy? He started out. + +"_A ou-ce-tu va Bonaventure?_"--"Whereabouts are you going?" + +"_Va crier les vaches._"--"Going to call the cows." + +"At this time of day?" demanded _la vieille_, still in the same +tongue. "Are you crazy?" + +"Oh!--no!" the boy replied, looking dazed. "No," he said; "I was going +for some more wood." He went out, passed the woodpile by, got round +behind a corn-crib, and stood in the cold, wet gale watching the +distant company lessening on the view. It was but a short, dim, dark +streak, creeping across the field of vision like some slow insect on a +window-glass. A spot just beyond it was a grove that would presently +shut the creeping line finally from sight. They reached it, passed +beyond, and disappeared; and then Bonaventure took off the small, +soft-brimmed hat that hung about his eyes, and, safe from the sight +and hearing of all his tiny world, lifted his voice, and with face +kindling with delight swung the sorry covering about his head and +cried three times: + +"Ora! Or-r-ra! Ora-a-a-a!" + +But away in the night Madame Sosthene, hearing an unwonted noise, went +to Bonaventure's bedside and found him sobbing as if his heart had +broken. + +"He has had a bad dream," she said; for he would not say a word. + +The cure of Vermilionville and Carancro was a Creole gentleman who +looked burly and hard when in meditation; but all that vanished when +he spoke and smiled. In the pocket of his cassock there was always a +deck of cards, but that was only for the game of solitaire. You have +your pipe or cigar, your flute or violoncello; he had his little table +under the orange-tree and his game of solitaire. + +He was much loved. To see him beyond earshot talking to other men you +would say he was by nature a man of affairs, whereas, when you came to +hear him speak you find him quite another sort: one of the Elisha +kind, as against the Elijahs; a man of the domestic sympathies, whose +influence on man was personal and familiar; one of the sort that heal +bitter waters with a handful of salt, make poisonous pottage wholesome +with a little meal, and find easy, quiet ways to deliver poor widows +from their creditors with no loss to either; a man whom men +reverenced, while women loved and children trusted him. + +The ex-governor was fond of his company, although the cure only +smiled at politics and turned the conversation back to family matters. +He had a natural gift for divining men's, women's, children's personal +wants, and every one's distinctively from every other one's. So that +to everybody he was an actual personal friend. He had been a long time +in this region. It was he who buried Bonaventure's mother. He was the +connecting link between Bonaventure and the ex-governor. Whenever the +cure met this man of worldly power, there were questions asked and +answered about the lad. + +A little after 'Thanase's enlistment the priest and the ex-governor, +who, if I remember right, was home only transiently from camp, met on +the court-house square of Vermilionville, and stood to chat a bit, +while others contemplated from across the deep mud of the street these +two interesting representatives of sword and gown. Two such men +standing at that time must naturally, one would say, have been talking +of the strength of the defences around Richmond, or the Emperor +Maximilian's operations in Mexico, or Kirby Smith's movements, hardly +far enough away to make it seem comfortable. But in reality they were +talking about 'Thanase. + +"He cannot write," said the cure; "and if he could, no one at home +could read his letters." + +The ex-governor promised to look after him. + +"And how," he asked, "does Sosthene's little orphan get on?" + +The cure smiled. "He is well--physically. A queer, high-strung child; +so old, yet so young. In some things he will be an infant as long as +he lives; in others, he has been old from the cradle. He takes every +thing in as much earnest as a man of fifty. What is to become of him?" + +"Oh! he will come out all right," said the ex-governor. + +"That depends. Some children are born with fixed characters: you can +tell almost from the start what they are going to be. Be they much or +little, they are complete in themselves, and it makes comparatively +little difference into what sort of a world you drop them." + +"'Thanase, for instance," said the ex-governor. + +"Yes, you might say 'Thanase; but never Bonaventure. He is the other +type; just as marked and positive traits, but those traits not yet +builded into character: a loose mass of building-material, and the +beauty or ugliness to which such a nature may arrive depends on who +and what has the building of it into form. What he may turn out to be +at last will be no mere product of circumstances; he is too original +for that. Oh, he's a study! Another boy under the same circumstances +might turn out entirely different; and yet it will make an immense +difference how his experiences are allowed to combine with his +nature." The speaker paused a moment, while Bonaventure's other friend +stood smiling with interest; then the priest added, "He is just now +struggling with his first great experience." + +"What is that?" + +"It belongs," replied the cure, smiling in his turn, "to the +confidences of the confessional. But," he added, with a little anxious +look, "I can tell you what it will do; it will either sweeten his +whole nature more and more, or else make it more and more bitter, from +this time forth. And that is no trifle to you or me; for whether for +good or bad, in a large way or in a small way, he is going to make +himself felt." + +The ex-governor mused. "I'm glad the little fellow has you for a +friend, father.--I'll tell you; if Sosthene and his wife will part +with him, and you will take him to live with you, and, mark you, not +try too hard to make a priest of him, I will bear his expenses." + +"I will do it," said the cure. + +It required much ingenuity of argument to make the Gradnego pair see +the matter in the desired light; but when the cure promised Sosthene +that he would teach the lad to read and write, and then promised _la +vieille_ that Zosephine should share this educational privilege with +him, they let him go. + +Zosephine was not merely willing, but eager, to see the arrangements +made. She beckoned the boy aside and spoke to him alone. + +"You must go, Bonaventure. You will go, will you not--when I ask you? +Think how fine that will be--to be educated! For me, I cannot endure +an uneducated person. But--ah! _ca sre vaillant, pour savoir lire_. +[It will be bully to know how to read.] _Aie ya yaie!_"--she stretched +her eyes and bit her lip with delight--"_C'est t'y gai, pour savoir +ecrire!_ [That's fine to know how to write.] I will tell you a secret, +dear Bonaventure. Any girl of sense is _bound_ to think it much +greater and finer for a man to read books than to ride horses. She may +not want to, but she has to do it; she can't help herself!" + +Still Bonaventure looked at her mournfully. She tried again. + +"When I say any girl of sense I include myself--of course! I think +more of a boy--or man, either--who can write letters than of one who +can play the fiddle. There, now, I have told you! And when you have +learned those things, I will be proud of you! And besides, you know, +if you don't go, you make me lose my chance of learning the same +things; but if you go, we will learn them together." + +He consented. She could not understand the expression of his face. She +had expected gleams of delight. There were none. He went with silent +docility, and without a tear; but also without a smile. When in his +new home the cure from time to time stole glances at his face fixed in +unconscious revery, it was full of a grim, unhappy satisfaction. + +"Self is winning, or dying hard. I wish no ill to 'Thanase; but if +there is to be any bad news of him, I hope, for the sake of this boy's +soul, it will come quickly." So spoke the cure alone, to his cards. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +MISSING. + + +The war was in its last throes even when 'Thanase enlisted. Weeks and +months passed. Then a soldier coming home to Carancro--home-comers +were growing plentiful--brought the first news of him. An officer +making up a force of picked men for an expedition to carry important +despatches eastward across the Mississippi and far away into Virginia +had chosen 'Thanase. The evening the speaker left for home on his +leave of absence 'Thanase was still in camp, but was to start the next +morning. It was just after Sunday morning mass that Sosthene and +Chaouache, with their families and friends, crowded around this bearer +of tidings. + +"Had 'Thanase been in any battles?" + +"Yes, two or three." + +"And had not been wounded?" + +"No, although he was the bravest fellow in his company." + +Sosthene and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, smiled, and +swore two simultaneous oaths of admiration. Zosephine softly pinched +her mother, and whispered something. Madame Sosthene addressed the +home-comer aloud: + +"Did 'Thanase send no other message except that mere 'How-d'ye all +do?'" + +"No." + +Zosephine leaned upon her mother's shoulder, and softly breathed: + +"He is lying." + +The mother looked around upon her daughter in astonishment. The flash +of scorn was just disappearing from the girl's eyes. She gave a little +smile and chuckle, and murmured, with her glance upon the man: + +"He has no leave of absence. He is a deserter." + +Then Madame Sosthene saw two things at once: that the guess was a good +one, and that Zosephine had bidden childhood a final "adjieu." + +The daughter felt Bonaventure's eyes upon her. He was standing only a +step or two away. She gave him a quick, tender look that thrilled him +from head to foot, then lifted her brows and made a grimace of +pretended weariness. She was growing prettier almost from day to day. + +And Bonaventure, he had no playmates--no comrades--no amusements. This +one thing, which no one knew but the cure, had taken possession of +him. The priest sometimes seemed to himself cruel, so well did it +please him to observe the magnitude Bonaventure plainly attributed to +the matter. The boy seemed almost physically to bow under the burden +of his sense of guilt. + +"It is quickening all his faculties," said the cure to himself. +Zosephine had hardly yet learned to read without stammering, when +Bonaventure was already devouring the few French works of the cure's +small bookshelf. Silent on other subjects, on one he would talk till +a pink spot glowed on either cheek-bone and his blue eyes shone like a +hot noon sky;--casuistry. He would debate the right and wrong of any +thing, every thing, and the rights and wrongs of men in every relation +of life. + +Blessed was it for him then that the tactful cure was his father and +mother in one, and the surgeon and physician of his mind. Thus the +struggle brought him light. To the boy's own eyes it seemed to be +bringing him only darkness, but the priest saw better. + +"That is but his shadow; he is standing in it; it is deepening; that +shows the light is increasing." Thus spake the cure to himself as he +sat at solitaire under his orange-tree one afternoon. + +The boy passed out of sight, and the cure's eyes returned to his game +of solitaire; but as he slowly laid one card upon another, now here, +now there, he still thought of Bonaventure. + +"There will be no peace for him, no sweetness of nature, no green +pastures and still waters, within or without, while he seeks life's +adjustments through definitions of mere right and rights. No, boy; you +will ever be a restless captive, pacing round and round those limits +of your enclosure. Worse still if you seek those definitions only to +justify your overriding another's happiness in pursuit of your own." +The boy was not in hearing; this was apostrophe. + +"Bonaventure," he said, as the lad came by again; and Bonaventure +stopped. The player pushed the cards from him, pile by pile, leaned +back, ran his fingers slowly through his thin gray hair, and smiled. + +"Bonaventure, I have a riddle for you. It came to me as I was playing +here just now. If everybody could do just as he pleased; if he had, as +the governor would say, all his rights,--life, liberty, pursuit of +happiness,--if everybody had this, I say, why should we still be +unhappy?" + +The boy was silent. + +"Well, I did not suppose you would know. Would you like me to tell +you? It is because happiness pursued is never overtaken. And can you +guess why that is? Well, never mind, my son. But--would you like to do +something for me?" + +Bonaventure nodded. The cure rose, taking from his bosom as he left +his chair a red silk handkerchief and a pocket-worn note-book. He laid +the note-book on the table, and drawing back with a smile said: + +"Here, sit down in my place, and write what I tell you, while I +stretch my legs. So; never mind whether you understand or not. I am +saying it for myself: it helps _me_ to understand it better. Now, as I +walk, you write. 'Happiness pursued is never overtaken, because'--have +you written that?--'because, little as we are, God's image makes us so +large that we cannot live within ourselves, nor even for ourselves, +and be satisfied.' Have you got that down? Very well--yes--the +spelling could be improved, but that is no matter. Now wait a moment; +let me walk some more. Now write: 'It is not good for man to be alone, +because'--because--let me see; where--ah, yes!--'because rightly self +is the'--Ah! no, no, my boy; not a capital S for 'self'--ah! that's +the very point,--small _s_,--'because rightly self is the smallest +part of us. Even God found it good not to be alone, but to +create'--got that?--'to create objects for His love and benevolence.' +Yes--'And because in my poor, small way I am made like Him, the whole +world becomes a part of me'--small _m_, yes, that is right!" From +bending a moment over the writer, the priest straightened up and took +a step backward. The boy lifted his glance to where the sunlight and +leaf-shadows were playing on his guardian's face. The cure answered +with a warm smile, saying: + +"My boy, God is a very practical God--no, you need not write it; +just listen a moment. Yes; and so when He gave us natures like +His, He gave men not wives only, but brethren and sisters and +companions and strangers, in order that benevolence, yes, and even +self-sacrifice,--mistakenly so called,--might have no lack of +direction and occupation; and then bound the whole human family +together by putting every one's happiness into some other one's +hands. I see you do not understand: never mind; it will come to you +little by little. It was a long time coming to me. Let us go in to +supper." + +The good man had little hope of such words taking hold. At school next +day there was Zosephine with her soft electric glances to make the boy +forget all; and at the Saturday-night balls there she was again. + +"Bonaventure," her manner plainly said, "did you ever see any thing +else in this wide world so tiresome as these boys about here? Stay +with me; it keeps them away." She never put such thoughts into words. +With an Acadian girl such a thing was impossible But girls do not need +words. She drew as potently, and to all appearances as impassively, as +a loadstone. All others than Bonaventure she repelled. If now and then +she toyed with a heart, it was but to see her image in it once or +twice and toss it aside. All got one treatment in the main. Any one of +them might gallop by her father's veranda seven times a day, but not +once in all the seven would she be seen at the window glancing up at +the weather or down at her flowers; nor on the veranda hanging up +fresh hanks of yarn; nor at the well with the drinking-pail, getting +fresh water, as she might so easily have been, had she so chosen. +Yonder was Sosthene hoeing leisurely in the little garden, and +possibly the sunbonnet of _la vieille_ half seen and half hidden among +her lima-beans; but for the rest there was only the house, silent at +best, or, worse, sending out through its half-open door the long, +scornful No-o-o! of the maiden's unseen spinning-wheel. No matter the +fame or grace of the rider. All in vain, my lad: pirouette as you +will; sit your gallantest; let your hat blow off, and turn back, and +at full speed lean down from the saddle, and snatch it airily from the +ground, and turn again and gallop away; all is in vain. For by her +estimate either you are living in fear of the conscript officer; or, +if you are in the service, and here only transiently on leave of +absence, your stay seems long, and it is rumored your leave has +expired; or, worse, you cannot read; or, worst, your age, for all your +manly airs, is so near Zosephine's as to give your attentions strong +savor of presumption. But let any fortune bring Bonaventure in any +guise--sorriest horseman of all, youngest, slenderest, and stranger to +all the ways that youth loves--and at once she is visible; nay, more, +accessible; and he, welcome. So accessible she, so welcome he, that +more than once she has to waft aside her mother's criticisms by +pleading Bonaventure's foster-brotherhood and her one or two superior +years. + +"Poor 'Thanase!" said the youths and maidens. + + * * * * * + +And now the war came to an end. Bonaventure was glad. 'Thanase was +expected home, but--let him come. If the absent soldier knew what the +young folks at the balls knew, he would not make haste in his return. +And he did not, as it seemed. Day after day, in group after group, +without shouting and without banners, with wounds and scars and +tattered garments, some on horses, but many more on foot, the loved +ones--the spared ones, remnants of this command and that command and +'Thanase's command--came home. But day by day brought no 'Thanase. + +Bonaventure began to wish for him anxiously. He wanted him back so +that this load might be lifted. Thus the bitter would pass out of the +sweet; the haunting fear of evil tidings from the absent rival would +haunt no more. Life would be what it was to other lads, and Zosephine +one day fall to his share by a better title than he could ever make +with 'Thanase in exile. Come, 'Thanase, come, come! + +More weeks passed. The youth's returned comrades were all back at +their ploughs again and among their herds. 'Thanase would be along by +and by, they said; he could not come with them, for he had not been +paroled with them; he had been missing--taken prisoner, no doubt--in +the very last fight. But presently they who had been prisoners were +home also, and still 'Thanase had not come. And then, instead of +'Thanase coming, Chaouache died. + +A terror took up its home in the heart of Bonaventure. Every thing he +looked upon, every creature that looked upon him, seemed to offer an +unuttered accusation. Least of all could he bear the glance of +Zosephine. He did not have to bear it. She kept at home now closely. +She had learned to read, and Sosthene and his _vieille_ had pronounced +her education completed. + +In one direction only could the eyes of Bonaventure go, and meet +nothing that accused him: that was into the face of the cure. And lest +accusation should spring up there, he had omitted his confession for +weeks. He was still child enough not to see that the priest was +watching him narrowly and tenderly. + +One night, away in the small hours, the cure was aroused by the +presence of some one in his room. + +"Who is that?" He rose from his pillow. + +"It is I, father," said a low voice, and against the darkness of an +inner door he saw dimly the small, long nightdress of the boy he +loved. + +"What gets you up, Bonaventure? Come here. What troubles you?" + +"I cannot sleep," murmured the lad, noiselessly moving near. The +priest stroked the lad's brow. + +"Have you not been asleep at all?" + +"Yes." + +"But you have had bad dreams that woke you?" + +"Only one." + +"And what was that?" + +There was a silence. + +"Did you dream about--'Thanase, for example?" + +"Yes." + +The priest reached out and took the boy's small, slender hands in his. +They were moist and cold. + +"And did you dream"-- + +"I dreamed he was dead. I dream it every night." + +"But, my child, that does not make it so. Would you like to get into +bed here with me? No?--or to go back now to your own bed? No? What, +then?" + +"I do not want to go back to bed any more. I want to go and find +'Thanase." + +"Why, my child, you are not thoroughly awake, are you?" + +"Yes, I want to go and find 'Thanase. I have been thinking to-night of +all you have told me--of all you said that day in the garden,--and--I +want to go and find 'Thanase." + +"My boy," said the priest, drawing the lad with gentle force to his +bosom, "my little old man, does this mean that you have come to the +end of all self-service?--that self is never going to be spelt with a +capital S any more? Will it be that way if I let you go?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, then, my son--God only knows whether I am wise or foolish, +but--you may go." + +The boy smiled for the first time in weeks, then climbed half upon +the bed, buried his face in the priest's bosom, and sobbed as though +his heart had broken. + +"It has broken," said the cure to himself as he clasped him tightly. +"It has broken--thank God!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK. + + +In such and such a battle, in the last charge across a certain +cornfield, or in the hurried falling back through a certain wood, with +the murderous lead singing and hitting from yonder dark mass +descending on the flank, and the air full of imperious calls, +"Halt!"--"Surrender!" a man disappeared. He was not with those who +escaped, nor with the dead when they were buried, nor among the +wounded anywhere, nor in any group of prisoners. But long after the +war was over, another man, swinging a bush scythe among the overgrown +corners of a worm fence, found the poor remnant of him, put it +scarcely underground, and that was the end. How many times that +happened! + +Was it so with 'Thanase? No. For Sosthene's sake the ex-governor had +taken much pains to correspond with officials concerning the missing +youth, and had secured some slender re-assurances. 'Thanase, though +captured, had not been taken to prison. Tidings of general surrender +had overhauled him on the way to it, near, I think, the city of +Baltimore--somewhere in that region, at any rate; and he had been +paroled and liberated, and had started penniless and on foot, +south-westward along the railway-tracks. + +To find him, Bonaventure must set out, like him on foot, +south-eastward over some fifty miles of wagon-road to the nearest +railway; eastward again over its cross-ties eighty miles to _la +ville_, the great New Orleans, there to cross the Mississippi. Then +away northward, through the deep, trestled swamps, leagues and +leagues, across Bayou La Branche and Bayou Desair, and Pass Manchac +and North Manchac, and Pontchatoula River two or three times; and out +of the swamps and pine barrens into the sweet pine hills, with their +great resinous boles rising one hundred--two hundred feet overhead; +over meadows and fields and many and many a beautiful clear creek, and +ten or more times over the winding Tangipahoa, by narrow clearings, +and the old tracks of forgotten hurricanes, and many a wide +plantation; until more than two hundred miles from the great city, +still northward across the sinking and swelling fields, the low, dark +dome of another State's Capitol must rise amid spires and trees into +the blue, and the green ruins of fortifications be passed, and the +iron roads be found branching west, north, and east. + +Thence all was one wide sea of improbability. Even before a quarter of +that distance should have been covered, how many chances of every sort +there were against the success of such a search! + +"It is impossible that he should find him," said the ex-governor. + +"Well,"--the cure shrugged,--"if he finds no one, yet he may succeed +in losing himself." But in order that Bonaventure in losing himself +should not be lost, the priest gave him pens and paper, and took his +promise to write back as he went step by step out into the world. + +"And learn English, my boy; learn it with all speed; you will find it +vastly, no telling how vastly, to your interest--I should say your +usefulness. I am sorry I could not teach it to you myself. Here is a +little spelling-book and reader for you to commence with. Make haste +to know English; in America we should be Americans; would that I could +say it to all our Acadian people! but I say it to you, learn English. +It may be that by not knowing it you may fail, or by knowing it +succeed, in this errand. And every step of your way let your first +business be the welfare of others. Hundreds will laugh at you for it: +never mind; it will bring you through. Yes, I will tell Sosthene and +the others good-by for you. I will tell them you had a dream that +compelled you to go at once. Adieu." And just as the rising sun's +first beam smote the cure's brimming eyes, his "little old man" turned +his face toward a new life, and set forward to enter it. + +"Have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a young man named +'Thanase Beausoleil?"--This question to every one met, day in, day +out, in early morning lights, in noonday heats, under sunset glows, +by a light figure in thin, clean clothing, dusty shoes, and with limp +straw hat lowered from the head. By and by, as first the land of the +Acadians and then the land of the Creoles was left behind, a man every +now and then would smile and shake his head to mean he did not +understand--for the question was in French. But then very soon it +began to be in English too, and by and by not in French at all. + +"Sir, have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a young man +named 'Thanase Beausoleil?" + +But no one had seen him. + +Travel was very slow. Not only because it was done afoot. Many a day +he had to tarry to earn bread, for he asked no alms. But after a while +he passed eastward into a third State, and at length into the +mountains of a fourth. + +Meantime the weeks were lengthening into months; the year was in its +decline. Might not 'Thanase be even then at home? No. Every week +Bonaventure wrote back, "Has he come?" and the answer came back, "He +is not here." + +But one evening, as he paced the cross-ties of a railway that hugged a +huge forest-clad mountain-side, with the valley a thousand feet below, +its stony river shining like a silken fabric in the sunset lights, the +great hillsides clad in crimson, green, and gold, and the long, +trailing smoke of the last train--a rare, motionless blue gauze--gone +to rest in the chill mid-air, he met a man who suddenly descended upon +the track in front of him from higher up the mountain,--a great, lank +mountaineer. And when Bonaventure asked the apparition the untiring +question to which so many hundreds had answered No, the tall man +looked down upon the questioner, a bright smile suddenly lighting up +the unlovely chin-whiskered face, and asked: + +"Makes a fiddle thess talk an' cry?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, he hain't been gone from hyer two weeks." + +It was true. Only a few weeks before, gaunt, footsore, and ragged, +tramping the cross-ties yonder where the railway comes from the +eastward, curving into view out of that deep green and gray defile, +'Thanase had come into this valley. So short a time before, because +almost on his start homeward illness had halted him by the way and +held him long in arrest. But at length he had reached the valley, and +had lingered here for days; for it happened that a man in bought +clothing was there just then, roaming around and hammering pieces off +the rocks, who gave 'Thanase the chance to earn a little something +from him, with which the hard-marched wanderer might take the train +instead of the cross-ties for as far as the pittance would carry him. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE QUEST ENDED. + + +The next sunrise saw Bonaventure, with a new energy in his step, +journeying back the way he had come. And so anew the weeks wore by. +Once more the streams ran southward, and the landscapes opened wide +and fertile. + +"Sir,--pardon your stopping,--in what State should I find myself at +the present?" + +The person inquired of looked blank, examined the questioner from head +to foot, and replied: + +"In what--oh! I understand; yes. What State--Alabama, yes, Alabama. +You must excuse me, I didn't understand you at first. Yes, this is +Alabama." + +"Thank you, sir. Have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a +young man named 'Thanase Beausoleil?" + +"Back from the war! Why, everybody done got back from the war long +ago." "Lawng ago-o-o," the speaker pronounced it, but the +pronunciation could not be as untrue as the careless assertion. + +A second time, and again a third, Bonaventure fell upon the trail. But +each time it was colder than before. And yet he was pushing on as fast +as he dared. Many a kind man's invitation to tarry and rest was +gratefully declined. Once, where two railways parted, one leading +south, the other west, he followed the southern for days, and then +came back to the point of separation, and by and by found the lost +thread again on the more westward road. But the time since 'Thanase +had passed was the longest yet. Was it certainly 'Thanase? Yes; the +fiddle always settled that question. And had he not got home? He had +not come. Somewhere in the long stretch between Bonaventure and +Carancro there must be strange tidings. + +On the first New Year's eve after the war, as the sun was sinking upon +the year's end, Bonaventure turned that last long curve of the New +Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad, through the rushes, +flags, willows, and cypress-stumps of the cleared swamp behind the +city of the Creoles, and, passing around the poor shed called the +depot, paused at the intersection of Calliope and Magnolia Streets, +waiting the turn of chance. + +Trace of the lost 'Thanase had brought him at length to this point. +The word of a fellow-tramp, pledged on the honor of his guild, gave +assurance that thus far the wanted man had come in strength and +hope--but more than a month before. + +The necessity of moving on presently carried Bonaventure aimlessly +into the city along the banks of the New Canal. The lad had shot up in +these few months into the full stature, without the breadth, of +manhood. The first soft, uneven curls of a light-brown beard were on +his thin cheek and chin. Patient weariness and humble perseverance +were in his eyes. His coarse, ill-matched attire was whole and, but +for the soilure of foot-travel, clean. Companioning with nature had +browned his skin, and dried his straight fine hair. Any reader of +faces would have seen the lines of unselfish purpose about his lips, +and, when they parted nervously for speech, the earnest glow of that +purpose in a countenance that neither smiled nor frowned, and, though +it was shaded, cast no shadow. + +The police very soon knew him. They smiled at one another and tapped +the forehead with one finger, as he turned away with his question +answered by a shake of the head. It became their habit. They would +jerk a thumb over a shoulder after him facetiously. + +"Goes to see every unknown white man found dead or drowned. And yet, +you know, he's happy. He's a heap sight"--sometimes they used other +adjectives--"a heap sight happier than us, with his trampin' around +all day and his French and English books at night, as old Tony says. +He bunks with old Tony, you know, what keeps that little grocery in +Solidelle Street. Tony says his candles comes to more than his bread +and meat, or, rather, his rice and crawfish. He's the funniest crazy +_I_ ever see. All the crazies I ever see is got some grind for +pleasing number one; but this chap is everlastin'ly a-lookin' out for +everybody _but_ number one. Oh, yes, the candles and books,--I reckon +they are for number one,--that's so; but anyhow, that's what I hear +Madame Tony allow." + +The short, wet winter passed. The search stretched on into the spring. +It did not, by far, take up the seeker's whole daily life. Only it was +a thread that ran all through it, a dye that colored it. Many other +factors--observations, occupations, experiences--were helping to make +up that life, and to make it, with all its pathetic slenderness, far +more than it was likely ever to have been made at Carancro. Through +hundreds of miles of tramping the lad had seen, in a singularly +complete yet inhostile disentanglement from it, the world of men; +glimpses of the rich man's world with its strivings, steadier views of +the poor man's world with its struggles. The times were strong and +rude. Every step of his way had been through a land whose whole civil +order had been condemned, shattered, and cast into the mill of +revolution for a total remoulding. Every day came like the discharge +of a great double-shotted gun. It could not but be that, humble as his +walk was, and his years so few, his fevered mind should leap into the +questions of the hour like a naked boy into the surf. He made +mistakes, sometimes in a childish, sometimes in an older way, some +against most worthy things. But withal he managed to keep the main +direction of truth, after his own young way of thinking and telling +it. He had no such power to formulate his large conclusions as you or +even I have; but whatever wrought to enlighten the unlettered, +whatever cherished manhood's rights alike in lofty and lowly, whatever +worked the betterment of the poor, whatever made man not too much and +not too little his brother's keeper,--his keeper not by mastery, but +by fraternal service,--whatever did these things was to him good +religion, good politics. So, at least, the cure told the ex-governor, +as from time to time they talked of the absent Bonaventure and of his +letters. However, they had to admit one thing: all this did not find +'Thanase. + +And why, now, should 'Thanase longer be sought? Was there any thing to +gain by finding him dead? Not for Bonaventure; he felt, as plainly as +though he had seen an angel write the decree, that to Bonaventure +Deschamps no kind of profit or advantage under the sun must come by +such a way. But was there any thing to be gained in finding that +'Thanase still lived? The police will tell you, as they told +Bonaventure, that in these days of steam and steel and yoked lightning +a man may get lost and be found again; but that when he stays lost, +and is neither dead nor mad, it is because he wants to be lost. So +where was to be the gain in finding 'Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed, +to Bonaventure! The star of a new hope shot up into his starless sky +when that thought came, and in that star trembled that which he had +not all these weary months of search dared see even with fancy's +eye,--the image of Zosephine! This--this! that he had never set out to +achieve--this! if he could but stand face to face with evidence that +'Thanase could have reached home and would not. + +This thought was making new lines in the young care-struck face, +when-- + +"See here," said a voice one day. Bonaventure's sleeve was caught by +the thumb and forefinger of a man to whom, in passing, he had touched +his hat. The speaker was a police captain. + +"Come with me." They turned and walked, Bonaventure saying not a word. +They passed a corner, turned to the right, passed two more, turned to +the left,--high brick walls on either side, damp, ill-smelling +pavements under foot,--and still strode on in silence. As they turned +once more to the right in a dim, narrow way, the captain patted the +youth softly on the back, and said: + +"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies." + +So Bonaventure asked none. But presently, in one of those dens called +sailors' boarding-houses, somewhere down on the water-front near the +Mint, he was brought face to face with a stranger whose manner seemed +to offer the reverse proposition. Of him the youth asked questions and +got answers. + +'Thanase Beausoleil still lived, far beyond seas. How? why? If this +man spake truly, because here in New Orleans, at the last turn in the +long, weary journey that was to have brought the young volunteer home, +he had asked and got the aid of this informant to ship--before the +mast--for foreign parts. But why? Because his ambition and pride, +explained the informant, had outgrown Carancro, and his heart had +tired of the diminished memory of the little Zosephine. + +Bonaventure hurried away. What storms buffeted one another in his +bosom! + +Night had fallen upon the great city. Long stretches of street lay now +between high walls, and now between low-hanging eaves, empty of human +feet and rife with solitude. Through long distances he could run and +leap, and make soft, mild pretence of shouting and smiting hands. The +quest was ended! rivalry gone of its own choice, guilt washed from the +hands, love returned to her nest. Zosephine! Zosephine! Away now, +away to the reward of penance, patience, and loyalty! Unsought, +unhoped-for reward! As he ran, the crescent moon ran before him in the +sky, and one glowing star, dipping low, beckoned him into the west. + +And yet that night a great riot broke out in his heart; and in the +morning there was a look on his face as though in that tumult +conscience had been drugged, beaten, stoned, and left for dead outside +the gate of his soul. + +There was something of defiance in his eye, not good to see, as he +started down the track of the old Opelousas Railroad, with the city +and the Mississippi at his back. When he had sent a letter ahead of +him, he had no money left to pay for railway passage. Should he delay +for that or aught else, he might never start; for already the ghost of +conscience was whispering in at the barred windows of his heart: + +"It is not true. The man has told you falsely. It is not true." + +And so he was tramping once more--toward Carancro. And never before +with such determined eagerness. Nothing could turn him about now. Once +a train came in sight in front of him just as he had started across a +trestle-work; but he ran forward across the open ties, and leaped +clear of the track on the farther side, just when another instant +would have been too late. He stood a moment, only half-pausing among +the palmettos and rushes as the hurtling mass thundered by; then +pushed quickly into the whirling dust of the track and hurried on +between the clicking rails, not knowing that yonder dark, dwindling +speck behind was bearing away from him strange tidings from the cure. + +The summer was coming on; the suns were hot. There were leagues on +leagues of unbroken shaking prairie with never a hand-breadth of +shade, but only the glowing upper blue, with huge dazzling clouds +moving, like herds of white elephants pasturing across heavenly +fields, too slowly for the eye to note their motion; and below, the +far-reaching, tremulous sheen of reed and bulrush, the wet lair of +serpent, wild-cat, and alligator. Now and then there was the cool blue +of sunny, wind-swept waters winding hither and thither toward the sea, +and sometimes miles of deep forest swamp through which the railroad +went by broad, frowzy, treeless clearings flanked with impassable oozy +ditches; but shade there was none. + +Nor was there peace. Always as he strode along, something he could not +outgo was at his side, gaunt, wounded, soiled, whispering: "Turn back; +turn back, and settle with me," and ever put off with promises--after +that fashion as old as the world--to do no end of good things if only +the one right thing might be left undone. + +And so because there were no shade, no peace, and no turning back, no +one day's march made him stronger for the next; and at length, when he +came to the low thatch of a negro-cabin, under the shadow of its +bananas he sank down in its doorway, red with fever. + +There he had to stay many days; but in the end he was up and on his +way again. He left the Atchafalaya behind him. It was easier going +now. There was shade. Under his trudging feet was the wagon-road +along the farther levee of the Teche. Above him great live-oaks +stretched their arms clad in green vestments and gray drapings, the +bright sugar-cane fields were on his left, and on his right the +beautiful winding bayou. In his face, not joy, only pallid eagerness, +desire fixed upon fulfilment, and knowledge that happiness was +something else; a young, worn face, with hard lines about the mouth +and neck; the face of one who had thought self to be dead and buried, +and had seen it rise to life again, and fallen captive to it. So he +was drawing near to Carancro. Make haste, Bonaventure! + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +THE WEDDING. + + +A horse and buggy have this moment been stopped and are standing on a +faint rise of ground seven miles out beyond the south-western outskirt +of Carancro. The two male occupants of the vehicle are lifting their +heads, and looking with well-pleased faces at something out over the +plain. You know the cure?--and the ex-governor. + +In the far distance, across the vast level, something that looks +hardly so large on the plain as an ant on the floor, is moving this +way across it. This is what the cure and his friend are watching. Open +in the cure's hand, as if he had just read it aloud again, is that +last letter of Bonaventure's, sent ahead of him from New Orleans and +received some days ago. The governor holds the reins. + +What do they see? Some traveller afoot? Can it be that Bonaventure is +in sight? That is not even the direction from which Bonaventure, when +he comes, will appear. No, speck though it is, the object they are +looking at is far larger than a man afoot, or any horse, or horse and +caleche. It is a house. It is on wheels, and is drawn by many yoke of +oxen. From what the cure is saying we gather that Sosthene has bought +this very small dwelling from a neighbor, and is moving it to land of +his own. Two great beams have been drawn under the sills at each end, +the running gear of two heavy ox-wagons is made to bear up the four +ends of these beams, all is lashed firmly into place, the oxen are +slowly pulling, the long whips are cracking, the house is answering +the gentle traction, and, already several miles away from its first +site, it will to-morrow settle down upon new foundations, a homely +type of one whose wreath will soon be a-making, and who will soon +after come to be the little house's mistress. + +But what have we done--let time slip backward? A little; not much; for +just then, as the ex-governor said, "And where is Bonaventure by this +time?" Bonaventure had been only an hour or two in the negro-cabin +where fever had dragged him down. + +Since then the house had not only settled safely upon its new +foundations, but Sosthene, in the good, thorough way that was his own, +had carried renovation to a point that made the cottage to all +intents and purposes a new house. And the cure had looked upon it +again, much nearer by; for before a bride dared enter a house so +nearly new, it had been deemed necessary for him to come and, before a +temporary altar within the dwelling, to say mass in the time of full +moon. But not yet was the house really a dwelling; it, and all +Carancro, were waiting for the wedding. Make haste, Bonaventure! + +He had left the Teche behind him on the east. And now a day breaks +whose sunset finds him beyond the Vermilion River. He cannot go aside +to the ex-governor's, over yonder on the right. He is making haste. +This day his journey will end. His heart is light; he has thought out +the whole matter now; he makes no doubt any longer that the story told +him is true. And he knows now just what to do: this very sunset he +will reach his goal; he goes to fill 'Thanase's voided place; to lay +his own filial service at the feet of the widowed mother; to be a +brother in the lost brother's place; and Zosephine?--why, she shall be +her daughter, the same as though 'Thanase, not he, had won her. And +thus, too, Zosephine shall have her own sweet preference--that +preference which she had so often whispered to him--for a scholar +rather than a soldier. Such is the plan, and Conscience has given her +consent. + +The sun soars far overhead. It, too, makes haste. But the wasted, +flushed, hungry-eyed traveller is putting the miles behind him. He +questions none to-day that pass him or whom he overtakes; only bows, +wipes his warm brow, and presses on across the prairie. Straight +before him, though still far away, a small, white, wooden steeple +rises from out a tuft of trees. It is _la chapelle_! + +The distance gets less and less. See! the afternoon sunlight strikes +the roofs of a few unpainted cottages that have begun to show +themselves at right and left of the chapel. And now he sees the green +window-shutters of such as are not without them, and their copperas or +indigo-dyed curtains blowing in and out. Nearer; nearer; here is a +house, and yonder another, newly built. Carancro is reached. + +He enters a turfy, cattle-haunted lane between rose-hedges. In a +garden on one side, and presently in another over the way, children +whom he remembers--but grown like weeds since he saw them last--are at +play; but when they stop and gaze at him, it is without a sign of +recognition. Now he walks down the village street. How empty it seems! +was it really always so? Still, yonder is a man he knows--and yonder a +woman--but they disappear without seeing him. + +How familiar every thing is! There are the two shops abreast of the +chapel, Marx's on this side, Lichtenstein's on that, their dingy false +fronts covered with their same old huge rain-faded words of promise. +Yonder, too, behind the blacksmith's shop, is the little schoolhouse, +dirty, half-ruined, and closed--that is, wide-open and empty--it may +be for lack of a teacher, or funds, or even of scholars. + +"It shall not be so," said the traveller to himself, "when _she_ and +I"-- + +His steps grow slow. Yet here, not twenty paces before him, is the +home of the cure. Ah! that is just the trouble. Shall he go here +first? May he not push on and out once more upon the prairie and make +himself known first of all to _her_? Stopping here first, will not the +cure say tarry till to-morrow? His steps grow slower still. + +And see, now. One of the Jews in the shop across the street has +observed him. Now two stand together and scrutinize him; and now there +are three, looking and smiling. Plainly, they recognize him. One +starts to come across, but on that instant the quiet of the hamlet is +broken by a sound of galloping hoofs. + +Bonaventure stands still. How sudden is this change! He is not noticed +now; every thing is in the highest animation. There are loud calls and +outcries; children are shouting and running, and women's heads are +thrust out of doors and windows. Horsemen come dashing into the +village around through the lanes and up the street. Look! they wheel, +they rein up, they throw themselves from the rattling saddles; they +leave the big wooden stirrups swinging and the little unkempt ponies +shaking themselves, and rush into the _boutique de_ Monsieur +Lichtenstein, and are talking like mad and decking themselves out on +hats and shoulders with ribbons in all colors of the rainbow! + +Suddenly they shout, all together, in answer to a shout outside. More +horsemen appear. Lichtenstein's store belches all its population. + +"_La calege! La calege!_" The caleche is coming! + +Something, he knows not what, makes Bonaventure tremble. + +"Madame," he says in French to a chattering woman who has just run +out of her door, and is standing near him tying a red Madras kerchief +on her head as she prattles to a girl,--"madame, what wedding is +this?" + +"_C'est la noce a_ Zosephine," she replies, without looking at him, +and goes straight on telling her companion how fifty dollars has been +paid for the Pope's dispensation, because the bridal pair are first +cousins. + +Bonaventure moves back and leans against a paling fence, pallid and +faint. But there is no time to notice him--look, look! + +Some women on horseback come trotting into the street. Cheers! cheers! +and in a moment louder cheers yet--the caleche with the bride and +groom and another with the parents have come. + +Throw open the church door! + +Horsemen alight, horsewomen descend; down, also, come they that were +in the caleche. Look, Bonaventure! They form by twos--forward--in they +go. "Hats off, gentlemen! Don't forget the rule!--Now--silence! +softly, softly; speak low--or speak not at all; sh-sh! Silence! The +pair are kneeling. Hush-sh! Frown down that little buzz about the +door! Sh-sh!" + +Bonaventure has rushed in with the crowd. He cannot see the kneeling +pair; but there is the cure standing over them and performing the holy +rite. The priest stops--he has seen Bonaventure! He stammers, and then +he goes on. Here beside Bonaventure is a girl so absorbed in the scene +that she thinks she is speaking to her brother, when presently she +says to the haggard young stranger, letting herself down from her +tiptoes and drawing a long breath: + +"_La sarimonie est fait._" + +It is true; the ceremony is ended. She rises on tiptoe again to see +the new couple sign the papers. + +Slowly! The bridegroom first, his mark. Step back. Now the little +bride--steady! Zosephine, _sa marque_. She turns; see her, everybody; +see her! brown and pretty as a doe! They are kissing her. Hail, Madame +'Thanase! + +"Make way, make way!" The man and wife come forth.--Ah! 'Thanase +Beausoleil, so tall and strong, so happy and hale, you do not look +to-day like the poor decoyed, drugged victim that woke up one morning +out in the Gulf of Mexico to find yourself, without fore-intent or +knowledge, one of a ship's crew bound for Brazil and thence to the +Mediterranean!--"Make way, make way!" They mount the caleches, +Sosthene after Madame Sosthene; 'Thanase after Madame 'Thanase. "To +horse, ladies and gentlemen!" Never mind now about the youth who has +been taken ill in the chapel, and whom the cure has borne almost +bodily in his arms to his own house. "Mount! Mount! Move aside for the +wedding singers!"--The wedding singers take their places, one on this +side the bridal caleche, the other on that, and away it starts, +creaking and groaning. + +"_Mais, arretez!_--Stop, stop! Before going, _passez le +'nisette_!--pass the anisette!" May the New-Orleans compounder be +forgiven the iniquitous mixture! "_Boir les dames avant!_--Let the +ladies drink first!" Aham! straight from the bottle. + +Now, go. The caleche moves. Other caleches bearing parental and +grandparental couples follow. And now the young men and maidens gallop +after; the cavalcade stretches out like the afternoon shadows, and +with shout and song and waving of hats and kerchiefs, away they go! +while from window and door and village street follows the wedding cry: + +"_Adjieu, la calege! Adjieu, la calege!_--God speed the wedding pair!" + +Coming at first from the villagers, it is continued at length, faint +and far, by the attending cavaliers. As mile by mile they drop aside, +singly or in pairs, toward their homes, they rise in their stirrups, +and lifting high their ribbon-decked hats, they shout and curvette and +curvette and shout until the eye loses them, and the ear can barely +catch the faint farewell: + +"_Adjieu, la calege! Adjieu, les mariees!_" + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +AFTER ALL. + + +Adieu; but only till the fall of night shall bring the wedding ball. + +One little tune--and every Acadian fiddler in Louisiana knows +it--always brings back to Zosephine the opening scene of that festive +and jocund convocation. She sees again the great clean-swept +seed-cotton room of a cotton-gin house belonging to a cousin of the +ex-governor, lighted with many candles stuck into a perfect wealth of +black bottles ranged along the beams of the walls. The fiddler's seat +is mounted on a table in the corner, the fiddler is in it, each beau +has led a maiden into the floor, the sets are made for the +contra-dance, the young men stand expectant, their partners wait with +downcast eyes and mute lips as Acadian damsels should, the music +strikes up, and away they go. + +Yes, Zosephine sees the whole bright scene over again whenever that +strain sounds. + +[Music] + +It was fine from first to last! The ball closed with the bride's +dance. Many a daughter Madame Sosthene had waltzed that farewell +measure with, and now Zosephine was the last. So they danced it, they +two, all the crowd looking on: the one so young and lost in self, the +other so full of years and lost to self; eddying round and round each +other in this last bright embrace before they part, the mother to +swing back into still water, the child to enter the current of a new +life. + +And then came the wedding supper! At one end of the long table the +bride and groom sat side by side, and at their left and right the +wedding singers stood and sang. In each corner of the room there was a +barrel of roasted sweet potatoes. How everybody ate, that night! Rice! +beef-balls! pass them here! pass them there! help yourself! reach them +with a fork! _des riz! des boulettes!_ more down this way! pass them +over heads! _des riz! des boulettes!_ And the anisette!--bad whiskey +and oil of anise--never mind that; pour, fill, empty, fill again! +Don't take too much--and make sure not to take too little! How merrily +all went on! How gay was Zosephine! + +"Does she know that Bonaventure, too, has come back?" the young +maidens whisper, one to another; for the news was afloat. + +"Oh, yes, of course; some one had to let it slip. But if it makes any +difference, she is only brighter and prettier than before. I tell +you--it seems strange, but I believe, now, she never cared for anybody +but 'Thanase. When she heard Bonaventure had come back, she only let +one little flash out of her eyes at the fool who told her, then said +it was the best news that could be, and has been as serene as the +picture of a saint ever since." + +The serenity of the bride might have been less perfect, and the one +flash of her eyes might have been two, had she known what the cure was +that minute saying to the returned wanderer, with the youth's head +pressed upon his bosom, in the seclusion of his own chamber: + +"It is all for the best, Bonaventure. It is not possible that thou +shouldst see it so now, but thou shalt hereafter. It is best this +way." And the tears rolled silently down his cheek as the weary head +in his bosom murmured back: + +"It is best. It is best." + +The cure could only press him closer then. It was much more than a +year afterward when he for the first time ventured to add: + +"I never wanted you to get her, my dear boy; she is not your kind at +all--nay, now, let me say it, since I have kept it unsaid so long and +patiently. Do you imagine she could ever understand an unselfish life, +or even one that tried to be unselfish? She makes an excellent Madame +'Thanase. 'Thanase is a good, vigorous, faithful, gentle animal, that +knows how to graze and lie in the shade and get up and graze again. +But you--it is not in you to know how poor a Madame Bonaventure she +would have been; not now merely, but poorer and poorer as the years go +by. + +"And so I say, do not go away. I know why you want to go; you want to +run away from a haunting thought that some unlikely accident or other +may leave Madame 'Thanase a widow, and you step into his big shoes. +They would not fit. Do not go. That thing is not going to happen; and +the way to get rid of the troublesome notion is to stay and see +yourself outgrow it--and her." + +Bonaventure shook his head mournfully, but staid. From time to time +Madame 'Thanase passed before his view in pursuit of her outdoor and +indoor cares. But even when he came under her galerie roof he could +see that she never doubted she had made the very best choice in all +Carancro. + +And yet people knew--she knew--that Bonaventure not only enjoyed the +acquaintance, but sometimes actually went from one place to another on +the business, of the great ex-governor. Small matters they may have +been, but, anyhow, just think! + +Sometimes as he so went or came he saw her squatting on a board at the +edge of a _coolee_, her petticoat wrapped snugly around her limbs, and +a limp sunbonnet hiding her nut-brown face, pounding her washing with +a wooden paddle. She was her own housekeeper, chambermaid, cook, +washerwoman, gooseherd, seamstress, nurse, and all the rest. Her +floors, they said, were always _bien fourbis_ (well scrubbed); her +beds were high, soft, snug, and covered with the white mesh of her own +crochet-needle. + +He saw her the oftener because she worked much out on her low veranda. +From that place she had a broad outlook upon the world, with 'Thanase +in the foreground, at his toil, sometimes at his sport. His cares as a +herder, _vacheur_,--_vache_, he called it,--were wherever his +slender-horned herds might roam or his stallions lead their mares in +search of the sweetest herbage; and when rains filled the _maraises_, +and the cold nor'westers blew from Texas and the sod was spongy with +much water, and he went out for feathered game, the numberless +mallards, black ducks, gray ducks, teal--with sometimes the +canvas-back--and the _poules-d'eau_--the water-hens and the rails, and +the _cache-cache_--the snipe--were as likely to settle or rise just +before his own house as elsewhere, and the most devastating shot that +hurtled through those feathered multitudes was that sent by her +husband--hers--her own--possessive case--belonging to her. She was +proud of her property. + +Sometimes _la vieille_--for she was _la vieille_ from the very day +that she counted her wedding presents, mostly chickens, and turned +them loose in the dooryard--sometimes she enjoyed the fine excitement +of seeing her _vieux_ catching and branding his yearling colts. Small +but not uncomely they were: tougher, stronger, better when broken, +than the mustang, though, like the mustang, begotten and foaled on the +open prairie. Often she saw him catch two for the plough in the +morning, turn them loose at noon to find their own food and drink, and +catch and work another pair through the afternoon. So what did not +give her pride gave her quiet comfort. Sometimes she looked forth with +an anxious eye, when a colt was to be broken for the saddle; for as +its legs were untied, and it sprang to its feet with 'Thanase in the +saddle, and the blindfold was removed from its eyes, the strain on the +young wife's nerves was as much as was good, to see the creature's +tremendous leaps in air and not tremble for its superb, unmovable +rider. + +Could scholarship be finer than--or as fine as--such horsemanship? And +yet, somehow, as time ran on, Zosephine, like all the rest of +Carancro, began to look up with a certain deference, half-conscious, +half-unconscious, to the needy young man who was nobody's love or +lover, and yet, in a gentle, unimpassioned way, everybody's; +landless, penniless, artless Bonaventure, who honestly thought there +was no girl in Carancro who was not much too good for him, and of whom +there was not one who did not think him much too good for her. He was +quite outside of all their gossip. How could they know that with all +his learning--for he could read and write in two languages and took +the Vermilionville newspaper--and with all his books, almost an entire +mantel-shelf full--he was feeling heart-hunger the same as any +ordinary lad or lass unmated? Zosephine found her eyes, so to speak, +lifting, lifting, more and more as from time to time she looked upon +the inoffensive Bonaventure. But so her satisfaction in her own +husband was all the more emphatic. If she had ever caught a real +impulse toward any thing that even Carancro would have called culture, +she had cast it aside now--as to herself; her children--oh! yes; but +that would be by and by. + +Even of pastimes and sports she saw almost none. For 'Thanase there +was, first of all, his fiddle; then _la chasse_, the chase; the +_papegaie_, or, as he called it, _pad-go_--the shooting-match; _la +galloche_, pitch-farthing; the cock-fight; the five-arpent pony-race; +and too often, also, _chin-chin_, twenty-five-cent poker, and the +gossip and glass of the roadside "store." But for Madame 'Thanase +there was only a seat against the wall at the Saturday-night dance, +and mass _a la chapelle_ once in two or three weeks; these, and infant +baptisms. These showed how fast time and life were hurrying along. The +wedding seemed but yesterday, and yet here was little Sosthene, and +tiny Marguerite, and cooing Zosephine the younger--how fast history +repeats itself! + +But one day, one Sunday, it repeated itself in a different way. +'Thanase was in gay humor that morning. He kissed his wife, tossed his +children, played on his fiddle that tune they all liked best, and, +while Zosephine looked after him with young zest in her eye, sprang +into the saddle and galloped across the prairie _a la chapelle_ to +pass a jolly forenoon at _chin-chin_ in the village grocery. + +Since the war almost every one went armed--not for attack, of course; +for defence. 'Thanase was an exception. + +"My fists," he said, in the good old drawling Acadian dialect and with +his accustomed smile,--"my fists will take care of me." + +One of the party that made up the game with 'Thanase was the fellow +whom you may remember as having brought that first news of 'Thanase +from camp to Carancro, and whom Zosephine had discredited. The young +husband had never liked him since. + +But, as I say, 'Thanase was in high spirits. His jests came thick and +fast, and some were hard and personal, and some were barbed with +truth, and one, at length, ended in the word "deserter." The victim +grew instantly fierce and red, leaped up crying "Liar," and was +knocked backward to the ground by the long-reaching fist of 'Thanase. +He rose again and dashed at his assailant. The rest of the company +hastily made way to right and left, chairs were overturned, over went +the table, the cards were underfoot. Men ran in from outside and from +over the way. The two foes clash together, 'Thanase smites again with +his fist, and the other grapples. They tug and strain-- + +"Separate them!" cry two or three of the packed crowd in suppressed +earnestness. "Separate them! Bonaventure is coming! And here from the +other side the cure too! Oh, get them apart!" But the half-hearted +interference is shaken off. 'Thanase sees Bonaventure and the cure +enter; mortification smites him; a smothered cry of rage bursts from +his lips; he tries to hurl his antagonist from him; and just as the +two friends reach out to lay hands upon the wrestling mass, it goes +with a great thud to the ground. The crowd recoils and springs back +again; then a cry of amazement and horror from all around, the arm of +the under man lifted out over the back of the other, a downward flash +of steel--another--and another! the long, subsiding wail of a strong +man's sudden despair, the voice of one crying,-- + +"Zosephine! Ah! Zosephine! _ma vieille! ma vieille!_"--one long moan +and sigh, and the finest horseman, the sweetest musician, the bravest +soldier, yes, and the best husband, in all Carancro, was dead. + +Poor old Sosthene and his wife! How hard they tried, for days, for +weeks, to comfort their widowed child! But in vain. Day and night she +put them away in fierce grief and silence, or if she spoke wailed +always the one implacable answer,-- + +"I want my husband!" And to the cure the same words,-- + +"Go tell God I want my husband!" + +But when at last came one who, having come to speak, could only hold +her hand in his and silently weep with her, she clung to his with both +her own, and looking up into his young, thin face, cried,--not with +grace of words, and yet with some grace in all her words' Acadian +ruggedness,-- + +"Bonaventure! Ah! Bonaventure! thou who knowest the way--teach me, my +brother, how to be patient." + +And so--though the ex-governor had just offered him a mission in +another part of the Acadians' land, a mission, as he thought, far +beyond his deserving, though, in fact, so humble that to tell you what +it was would force your smile--he staid. + +A year went by, and then another. Zosephine no longer lifted to heaven +a mutinous and aggrieved countenance. Bonaventure was often nigh, and +his words were a deep comfort. Yet often, too, her spirit flashed +impatience through her eyes when in the childish philosophizing of +which he was so fond he put forward--though ever so impersonally and +counting himself least of all to have attained--the precepts of +self-conquest and abnegation. And then as the flash passed away, with +a moisture of the eye repudiated by the pride of the lip, she would +slowly shake her head and say: + +"It is of no use; I can't do it! I may be too young--I may be too bad, +but--I can't learn it!" + +At last, one September evening, Bonaventure stood at the edge of +Sosthene's galerie, whither Zosephine had followed out, leaving _le +vieux_ and _la vieille_ in the house. On the morrow Bonaventure was +to leave Carancro. And now he said,-- + +"Zosephine, I must go." + +"Ah, Bonaventure!" she replied, "my children--what will my children +do? It is not only that you have taught them to spell and read, though +God will be good to you for that! But these two years you have been +every thing to them--every thing. They will be orphaned over again, +Bonaventure." Tears shone in her eyes, and she turned away her face +with her dropped hands clasped together. + +The young man laid his hand upon her drooping brow. She turned again +and lifted her eyes to his. His lips moved silently, but she read upon +them the unheard utterance: it was a word of blessing and farewell. +Slowly and tenderly she drew down his hand, laid a kiss upon it, and +said,-- + +"_Adjieu--adjieu_," and they parted. + +As Zosephine, with erect form and firm, clear tread, went by her +parents and into the inner room where her children lay in their +trundle-bed, the old mother said to _le vieux_,-- + +"You can go ahead and repair the schoolhouse now. Our daughter will +want to begin, even to-morrow, to teach the children of the +village--_les zonfants a la chapelle_." + +"You think so?" said Sosthene, but not as if he doubted. + +"Yes; it is certain now that Zosephine will always remain the Widow +'Thanase." + + + + +GRANDE POINTE. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A STRANGER. + + +From College Point to Bell's Point, sixty miles above New Orleans, the +Mississippi runs nearly from west to east. Both banks, or "coasts," +are lined with large and famous sugar-plantations. Midway on the +northern side, lie the beautiful estates of "Belmont" and "Belle +Alliance." Early one morning in the middle of October, 1878, a young +man, whose age you would have guessed fifteen years too much, stood in +scrupulously clean, ill-fitting, flimsy garments, on the strong, high +levee overlooking these two plantations. He was asking the way to a +place called Grande Pointe. Grand Point, he called it, and so may we: +many names in Louisiana that retain the French spelling are habitually +given an English pronunciation. + +A tattered negro mounted on a sunburnt, unshod, bare-backed mule, down +in the dusty gray road on the land-side of the embankment, was his +only hearer. Fifteen years earlier these two men, with French accents, +strangers to each other, would hardly have conversed in English; but +the date made the difference. We need not inexorably render the +dialect of the white man; pretty enough to hear, it would often be +hideous to print. The letter _r_, for instance, that plague of all +nations--before consonants it disappeared; before vowels the tongue +failed of that upward curve that makes the good strong _r_'s of Italy +and Great Britain. + +The negro pointed over his mule's ears. + +"You see Belle Alliance sugah-house yondeh? Well, behine dah you fine +one road go stret thoo the plantation till de wood. Dass 'bout mile, +you know. Den she keep stret on thoo de wood 'bout two mile' mo', an' +dat fetch you at Gran' Point'. Hole on; I show you." + +The two men started down the road, the negro on his mule, the stranger +along the levee's crown. + +"Dat Gran' Point'," resumed the black; "'tain't no point on de riveh, +you know, like dat Bell' Point, w'at you see yondeh 'twixt dem ah +batture willows whah de sun all spread out on the wateh; no, seh. 'Tis +jis lil place back in de _swamp_, raise' 'bout five, six feet 'bove de +wateh. Yes, seh; 'bout t'ree mile' long, 'alf mile wide. Don't nobody +but Cajun'[1] live back dah. Seem droll you goin' yondeh." + + [1] Acadians. + +"'Tis the reason I go," said the other, without looking up. + +"Yes, seh."--A short silence.--"Dass nigh fifty year', now, dat place +done been settle'. Ole 'Mian Roussel he was gret hunter. He know dat +place. He see 'tis rich groun'. One day he come dare, cut some tree', +buil' house, plant lil tobahcah. Nex' year come ole man Le Blanc; den +Poche, den St. Pierre, den Martin,--all Cajun'. Oh! dass mo'n fifty +year' 'go. Dey all comes from dis yeh riveh coast; 'caze de rich +Creole', dey buy 'em out. Yes, seh, dat use' be de _Cote Acadien'_, +right yeh whar yo' feet stan'in' on. _C'est la cote Acadien', just +ici, oui._" The trudging stranger waived away the right of +translation. He had some reason for preferring English. But his manner +was very gentle, and in a moment the negro began again. + +"Gret place, dat Gran' Point'. Yes, seh; fo' tobahcah. Dey make de +bes' Perique tobahcah in de worl'. Yes, seh, right yond' at Gran' +Point'; an' de bes' Perique w'at come from Gran' Point', dass de +Perique of Octave Roussel, w'at dey use call 'im Chat-oue;[2] but he +git tired dat name, and now he got lil boy 'bout twenny-five year' +ole, an' dey call de ole man Catou, an' call his lil _boy_ Chat-oue. +Dey fine dat wuck mo' betteh. Yes, seh. An' he got bruddeh name' 'Mian +Roussel. But dat not de ole, ole 'Mian--like dey say de ole he one. +'Caze, you know, he done peg out. Oh, yes, he peg out in de du'in' o' +de waugh.[3] But he lef' heap-sight chillen; you know, he got a year' +staht o' all de res', you know. Yes, seh. Dey got 'bout hund'ed fifty +peop' yond' by Gran' Point', and sim like dey mos' all name Roussel. +_Sim_ dat way to _me_. An' ev'y las' one got a lil fahm so lil you +can't plow her; got dig her up wid a spade. Yes, seh, same like you +diggin' grave; yes, seh." + + [2] Raccoon. + + [3] During the war. + +The gentle stranger interrupted, still without lifting his eyes from +the path. "'Tis better narrowness of land than of virtue." The negro +responded eagerly: + +"Oh, dey good sawt o' peop', yes. Dey deals fair an' dey deals square. +Dey keeps de peace. Dass 'caze dey mos'ly don't let whisky git on deir +blin' side, you know. Dey _does_ love to dance, and dey marries +mawnstus young; but dey not like some niggehs: dey stays married. An' +modess? Dey dess so modess dey shy! Yes, seh, dey de shyes', +easy-goin'es', modesses', most p'esumin' peop' in de whole worl'! I +don't see fo' why folks talk 'gin dem Cajun'; on'y dey a lil bit +slow." + +The traveller on the levee's top suddenly stood still, a soft glow on +his cheek, a distension in his blue eyes. "My friend, what was it, the +first American industry? Was it not the Newfoundland fisheries? Who +inaugu'ate them, if not the fishermen of Normandy and Bretagne? And +since how long? Nearly fo' hundred years!" + +"Dass so, boss," exclaimed the negro with the promptitude of an +eye-witness; but the stranger continued:-- + +"The ancestors of the Acadian'--they are the fathers of the codfish!" +He resumed his walk. + +"Dass so, seh; dass true. Yes, seh, you' talkin' mighty true; dey a +pow'ful ancestrified peop', dem Cajun'; dass w'at make dey so shy, you +know. An' dey mighty good han' in de sugah-house. Dey des watchin', +now, w'en dat sugah-cane git ready fo' biggin to grind; so soon dey +see dat, dey des come a-lopin' in here to Mistoo Wallis' sugah-house +here at Belle Alliance, an' likewise to Marse Louis Le Bourgeois yond' +at Belmont. You see! de fust t'ing dey gwine ass you when you come at +Gran' Point'--'Is Mistoo Wallis biggin to grind?' Well, seh, like I +tell you, yeh de sugah-house, an' dah de road. Dat road fetch you at +Gran' Point'." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +IN A STRANGE LAND. + + +An hour later the stranger, quite alone, had left behind him the broad +smooth road, between rustling walls of sugar-cane, that had brought +him through Belle Alliance plantation. The way before him was little +more than a bridle-path along the earth thrown up beside a +draining-ditch in a dense swamp. The eye could run but a little way +ere it was confused by the tangle of vegetation. The trees of the +all-surrounding forest--sweet-gums, water-oaks, magnolias--cast their +shade obliquely along and across his way, and wherever it fell the +undried dew still sparkled on the long grass. + +A pervading whisper seemed to say good-by to the great human world. +Scarce the note of an insect joined with his footsteps in the coarse +herbage to break the stillness. He made no haste. Ferns were often +about his feet, and vines were both there and everywhere. The soft +blue tufts of the ageratum were on each side continually. Here and +there in wet places clumps of Indian-shot spread their pale scroll +leaves and sent up their green and scarlet spikes. Of stature greater +than his own the golden-rod stood, crested with yellow plumes, +unswayed by the still air. Often he had to push apart the brake-canes +and press through with bowed head. Nothing met him in the path. Now +and then there were faint signs underfoot as if wheels might have +crushed the ragged turf long weeks before. Now and then the print of a +hoof was seen in the black soil, but a spider had made it her home and +spread across it her silken snares. If he halted and hearkened, he +heard far away the hawk screaming to his mate, and maybe, looking up, +caught a glimpse of him sailing in the upper air with the sunlight +glowing in his pinions; or in some bush near by heard the soft rustle +of the wren, or the ruffling whiff and nervous "chip" of the cardinal, +or saw for an instant the flirt of his crimson robes as he rattled the +stiff, jagged fans of the palmetto. + +At length the path grew easier and lighter, the woods on the right +gave place to a field half claimed for cotton and half given up to +persimmon saplings, blackberry-bushes, and rampant weeds. A furry pony +with mane and tail so loaded with cockleburs that he could not shake +them, lifted his head and stared. A moment afterward the view opened +to right and left, and the path struck a grassy road at right angles +and ended. Just there stood an aged sow. + +"Unclean one," said the grave wayfarer, "where dwells your +master?--Ignore you the English tongue? But I shall speak not in +another; 'tis that same that I am arriving to bring you." + +The brute, with her small bestial eye fixed on him distrustfully and +askance, moved enough to the right to let him pass on the other hand, +and with his coat on his arm--so strong was the October sun--he turned +into the road westward, followed one or two of its slight curves, and +presently saw neat fields on either hand, walled in on each farther +side by the moss-hung swamp; and now a small, gray, unpainted house, +then two or three more, the roofs of others peering out over the dense +verdure, and down at the end of the vista a small white spire and +cross. Then, at another angle, two men seated on the roadside. Their +diffident gaze bore that look of wild innocence that belongs to those +who see more of dumb nature than of men. Their dress was homespun. The +older was about fifty years old, the other much younger. + +"Sirs, have I already reach Gran' Point'?" + +The older replied in an affirmative that could but just be heard, laid +back a long lock of his straight brown hair after the manner of a +short-haired girl, and rose to his feet. + +"I hunt," said the traveller slowly, "Mr. Maximian Roussel." + +A silent bow. + +"'Tis you?" + +The same motion again. + +The traveller produced a slip of paper folded once and containing a +line or two of writing hastily pencilled that morning at Belle +Alliance. Maximian received it timidly and held it helplessly before +his downcast eyes with the lines turned perpendicularly, while the +pause grew stifling, and until the traveller said:-- + +"'Tis Mr. Wallis make that introduction." + +At the name of the owner of the beautiful plantation the man who had +not yet spoken rose, covered with whittlings. It was like a steer +getting up out of the straw. He spoke. + +"M'sieu' Walleece, _a commence a mouliner_? Is big-in to gryne?" + +"He shall commence in the centre of the next week." + +Maximian's eyes rose slowly from the undeciphered paper. The +traveller's met them. He pointed to the missive. + +"The schoolmaster therein alluded--'tis me." + +"Oh!" cried the villager joyously, "_maitre d'ecole!_--schooltitcher!" + +"But," said the stranger, "not worthy the title." He accepted +gratefully the hand of one and then of the other. + +"Walk een!" said Maximian, "all hand', walk een house." They went, +Indian file, across the road, down a sinuous footpath, over a stile, +and up to his little single-story unpainted house, and tramped in upon +the railed galerie. + +"_Et_ M'sieu' Le Bourgeois," said the host, as the schoolmaster +accepted a split-bottomed chair, "he's big-in to gryne?" + +Within this ground-floor veranda--chief appointment of all Acadian +homes--the traveller accepted a drink of water in a blue tumbler, +brought by the meek wife. The galerie just now was scattered with the +husband's appliances for making Perique tobacco into "carats"--the +carat-press. Its small, iron-ratcheted, wooden windlass extended along +the top rail of the balustrade across one of the galerie's ends. Lines +of half-inch grass rope, for wrapping the carats into diminished bulk +and solid shape, lay along under foot. Beside one of the doors, in +deep hickory baskets, were the parcels of cured tobacco swaddled in +cotton cloths and ready for the torture of ropes and windlass. From +the joists overhead hung the pods of tobacco-seed for next year's +planting. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE HANDSHAKING. + + +There was news in Grande Pointe. The fair noon sky above, with its +peaceful flocks of clouds; the solemn, wet forest round about; the +harvested fields; the dishevelled, fragrant fallows; the reclining, +ruminating cattle; the little chapel of St. Vincent de Paul in the +midst, open for mass once a fortnight, for a sermon in French four +times a year,--these were not more tranquil in the face of the fact +that a schoolmaster had come to Grande Pointe to _stay_ than outwardly +appeared the peaceful-minded villagers. Yet as the tidings floated +among the people, touching and drifting on like thistle-down, they +were stirred within, and came by ones, by twos, slow-stepping, +diffidently smiling, to shake hands with the young great man. They +wiped their own before offering them--the men on their strong thighs, +the women on their aprons. Children came, whose courage would carry +them no nearer than the galerie's end or front edge, where they lurked +and hovered, or gazed through the balustrade, or leaned against a +galerie post and rubbed one brown bare foot upon another and crowded +each other's shoulders without assignable cause, or lopped down upon +the grass and gazed from a distance. + +Little conversation was offered. The curiosity was as unobtrusive as +the diffidence was without fear; and when a villager's soft, low +speech was heard, it was generally in answer to inquiries necessary +for one to make who was about to assume the high office of educator. +Moreover, the schoolmaster revealed, with all gentleness, his +preference for the English tongue, and to this many could only give +ear. Only two or three times did the conversation rise to a pitch that +kindled even the ready ardor of the young man of letters. Once, after +a prolonged silence, the host, having gazed long upon his guest, said, +without preface:-- + +"Tough jawb you got," and waved a hand toward the hovering children. + +"Sir," replied the young scholar, "is it not the better to do whilse +it is the mo' tough? The mo' toughness, the mo' honor." He rose +suddenly, brushed back the dry, brown locks of his fine hair, and +extending both hands, with his limp straw hat dangling in one, said: +"Sir, I will ask you; is not the schoolmaster the true patriot? Shall +his honor be less than that of the soldier? Yet I ask not honor; for +me, I am not fit; yet, after my poor capacities"--He resumed his seat. + +An awesome quiet followed. Then some one spoke to him, too low to be +heard. He bent forward to hear the words repeated, and 'Mian said for +the timorous speaker:-- + +"Aw, dass nut'n; he jis only say, 'Is M'sieu' Walleece big-in to +gryne?'" + +Few tarried long, though one man--he whom the schoolmaster had found +sitting on the roadside with Maximian--staid all day; and even among +the villagers themselves there was almost no loquacity. Maximian, it +is true, as the afternoon wore along, and it seemed plain that the +reception was a great and spontaneous success, spoke with growing +frequency and heartiness; and, when the guest sat down alone at a +table within, where _la vieille_--the wife--was placing half-a-dozen +still sputtering fried eggs, a great wheaten loaf, a yellow gallon +bowl of boiled milk, a pewter ladle, a bowie-knife, the blue tumbler, +and a towel; and out on the galerie the callers were still coming: his +simple neighbors pardoned the elation that led him to take a chair +himself a little way off, sit on it sidewise, cross his legs gayly, +and with a smile and wave of his good brown hand say:-- + +"_Servez-vous!_ He'p you'se'f! Eat much you like; till you swell up!" + +Even he asked no questions. Only near the end of the day, when the +barefoot children by gradual ventures had at length gathered close about +and were softly pushing for place on his knees, and huddling under his +arms, and he was talking French,--the only language most of them +knew,--he answered the first personal inquiry put to him since arriving. +"His name," he replied to the tiny, dark, big-eyed boy who spoke for his +whispering fellows, "his name was Bonaventure--Bonaventure Deschamps." + +As the great October sun began to dip his crimson wheel behind the low +black line of swamp, and the chapel cross stood out against a band of +yellow light that spanned the west, he walked out to see the village, +a little girl on either hand and little boys round about. The children +talked apace. Only the girl whose hand he held in his right was mute. +She was taller than the rest; yet it was she to whom the little +big-eyed boy pointed when he said, vain of his ability to tell it in +English:-- + +"I don't got but eight year' old, me. I'm gran' for my age; but she, +she not gran' for her age--Sidonie; no; she not gran' at all for _her_ +age." + +They told the story of the chapel: how some years before, in the +Convent of the Sacred Heart, at the parish seat a few miles away on +the Mississippi, a nun had by the Pope's leave cast off the veil; how +she had come to Grande Pointe and taken charge of her widowed +brother's children; and how he had died, and she had found means, the +children knew not how, to build this chapel. And now she was buried +under it, they said. It seemed, from what they left unsaid as well as +what they said, that the simple influence of her presence had kindled +a desire for education in Grande Pointe not known before. + +"Dass my _tante_--my hant. She _was_ my hant befo' she die'," said the +little man of eight years, hopping along the turf in front of the +rest. He dropped into a walk that looked rapid, facing round and +moving backward. "She learn me English, my _tante_. And she try to +learn Sidonie; but Sidonie, Sidonie fine that too strong to learn, +that English, Sidonie." He hopped again, talking as he hopped, and +holding the lifted foot in his hand. He could do that and speak +English at the same time, so talented was Toutou. + +Thus the sun went down. And at Maximian's stile again Bonaventure +Deschamps took the children's cheeks into his slender fingers and +kissed them, one by one, beginning at the least, and so up, slowly, +toward Sidonie Le Blanc. With very earnest tenderness it was done, +some grave word of inspiration going before each caress; but when at +last he said, "To-morrow, dear chil'run, the school-bell shall ring in +Gran' Point'!" and turned to finish with Sidonie--she was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +HOW THE CHILDREN RANG THE BELL. + + +Where the fields go wild and grow into brakes, and the soil becomes +fenny, on the north-western edge of Grande Pointe, a dark, slender +thread of a bayou moves loiteringly north-eastward into a swamp of +huge cypresses. In there it presently meets another like itself, the +Bayou Tchackchou, slipping around from the little farm village's +eastern end as silently as a little mother comes out of a bower where +she has just put her babe to sleep. A little farther on they are +joined as noiselessly by Blind River, and the united waters slip on +northward through the dim, colonnaded, watery-floored, green-roofed, +blue-vapored, moss-draped wilderness, till in the adjoining parish of +Ascension they curve around to the east and issue into the sunny +breadth of Lake Maurepas. Thus they make the Bayou des Acadiens. From +Lake Maurepas one can go up Amite or Tickfaw River, or to Pass Manchac +or Pontchatoula, anywhere in the world, in fact,--where a canoe can +go. + +On a bank of this bayou, no great way from Grande Pointe, but with the +shadow of the swamp at its back and a small, bright prairie of rushes +and giant reeds stretching away from the opposite shore, stood, more +in the water than on the land, the palmetto-thatched fishing and +hunting lodge and only home of a man who on the other side of the +Atlantic you would have known for a peasant of Normandy, albeit he +was born in this swamp,--the man who had tarried all day at the +schoolmaster's handshaking. + +What a day that had been! Once before he had witnessed a positive +event. That was when, one day, he journeyed purposely to the levee of +Belle Alliance, waited from morning till evening, and at last saw the +steamer "Robert E. Lee" come by, and, as fortune would have it, land! +loaded with cotton from the water to the hurricane deck. He had gone +home resolved from that moment to save his money, and be something +more than he was. + +But that event had flashed before his eyes, and in a quarter-hour was +gone, save in his memory. The coming of the schoolmaster, all +unforeseen, had lasted a day, and he had seen it from beginning to +end. All day long on 'Mian's galerie, standing now here, now there, he +had got others to interpret for him, where he could not guess, the +meanings of the wise and noble utterances that fell every now and then +from the lips of the young soldier of learning, and stored them away +in his now greedy mind. + +One saying in particular, whose originality he did not dream of +questioning, took profound hold of his conviction and admiration; and +two or three times that evening, as his canoe glided homeward in the +twilight, its one long, smooth ripple gleaming on this side and that +as it widened away toward the bayou's dark banks, he rested for a +moment on his tireless paddle, and softly broke the silence of the +wilderness with its three simple words, so trite to our ears, so +strange to his:-- + +"Knowledge is power." + +In years he was but thirty-five; but he was a widower, and the one son +who was his only child and companion would presently be fourteen. + +"Claude," he said, as they rose that evening from their hard supper in +the light and fumes of their small kerosene-lamp, "_I' faut z-ahler +coucher._" (We must go to bed.) + +"_Quofoir?_" asked the sturdy lad. (_Pourquoi?_ Why?) + +"Because," replied the father in the same strange French in which he +had begun, "at daybreak to-morrow, and every day thereafter, you must +be in your dug-out on your way to Grande Pointe, to school. My son, +you are going to learn how to read!" + +So came it that, until their alphabetical re-arrangement, the first of +all the thirty-five names on the roll was Claude St. Pierre, and that +every evening thenceforward when that small kerosene-lamp glimmered in +the deep darkness of Bayou des Acadiens, the abecedarian Claude was a +teacher. + +But even before the first rough roll was made he was present, under +the little chapel-tower, when for the first time its bell rang for +school. The young master was there, and all the children; so that +really there was nothing to ring the bell for. They could, all +together, have walked quietly across the village green to the forlorn +tobacco-shed that 'Mian had given them for a schoolhouse, and begun +the session. Ah! say not so! It was good to ring the bell. A few of +the stronger lads would even have sent the glad clang abroad before +the time, but Bonaventure restrained them. For one thing, there must +be room for every one to bear a hand. So he tied above their best +reach three strands of "carat" cord to the main rope. Even then he was +not ready. + +"No, dear chil'run; but grasp hold, every one, the ropes, the +cawds,--the shawt chil'run reaching up shawtly, the long chil'run the +more longly." + +Few understood his words, but they quietly caught the idea, and +yielded themselves eagerly to his arranging hand. The highest grasp +was Claude's. There was a little empty space under it, and then one +only of Sidonie's hands, timid, smooth, and brown. And still the +master held back the word. + +"Not yet! not yet! The pear is not ripe!" He stood apart from them, +near the chapel-door, where the light was strong, his silver watch +open in his left hand, his form erect, his right hand lifted to the +brim of his hat, his eyes upon the dial. + +"Not yet, dear chil'run. Not yet. Two minute mo'.--Be ready.--Not +yet!--One minute mo'!--Have the patience. Hold every one in his aw her +place. Be ready! Have the patience." But at length when the little +ones were frowning and softly sighing with the pain of upheld arms, +their waiting eyes saw his dilate. "Be ready!" he said, with low +intensity: "Be ready!" He soared to his tiptoes, the hat flounced from +his head and smote his thigh, his eyes turned upon them blazing, and +he cried, "Ring, chil'run, ring!" + +The elfin crew leaped up the ropes and came crouching down. The bell +pealed; the master's hat swung round his head. His wide eyes were +wet, and he cried again, "Ring! ring! for God, light, libbutty, +education!" He sprang toward the leaping, sinking mass; but the right +feeling kept his own hands off. And up and down the children went, the +bell answering from above, peal upon peal; when just as they had +caught the rhythm of Claude's sturdy pull, and the bell could sound no +louder, the small cords gave way from their fastenings, the little +ones rolled upon their backs, the bell gave one ecstatic double clang +and turned clear over, the swift rope straightened upward from its +coil, and Claude and Sidonie, her hands clasped upon each other about +the rope and his hands upon hers, shot up three times as high as their +finest leap could have carried them. For an instant they hung; then +with another peal the bell turned back and they came blushing to the +floor. A swarm of hands darted to the rope, but Bonaventure's was on +it first. + +"'Tis sufficient!" he said, his face all triumph. The bell gave a +lingering clang or two and ceased, and presently the happy company +walked across the green. "Sufficient," the master had said; but it was +more than sufficient. In that moment of suspension, with Sidonie's +great brown frightened eyes in his, and their four hands clasped +together, Claude had learned, for his first lesson, that knowledge is +not the only or the greatest power. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +INVITED TO LEAVE. + + +After that, every school-day morning Claude rang the bell. Always full +early his pirogue came gliding out of the woods and up through the +bushy fen to the head of canoe navigation and was hauled ashore. +Bonaventure had fixed his home near the chapel and not far from +Claude's landing-place. Thus the lad could easily come to his door +each morning at the right moment--reading it by hunter's signs in +nature's book--to get the word to ring. There were none of the usual +reasons that the schoolmaster should live close to the schoolhouse. +There was no demand for its key. + +Not of that schoolhouse! A hundred feet length by twenty-five breadth, +of earth-floored, clapboard-roofed, tumbling shed, rudely walled with +cypress split boards,--_pieux_,--planted endwise in the earth, like +palisades, a hand-breadth space between every two, and sunlight and +fresh air and the gleams of green fields coming in; the scores of +little tobacco-presses that had stood in ranks on the hard earth +floor, the great sapling levers, and the festoons of curing tobacco +that had hung from the joists overhead, all removed, only the odor +left; bold gaps here and there in the _pieux_, made by that mild +influence which the restless call decay, and serving for windows and +doors; the eastern end swept clean and occupied by a few benches and +five or six desks, strong, home-made, sixty-four pounders. + +Life had broadened with Claude in two directions. On one side opened, +fair and noble, the acquaintanceship of Bonaventure Deschamps, a man +who had seen the outside world, a man of books, of learning, a man who +could have taught even geography, had there been any one to learn it; +and on the other side, like a garden of roses and spices, the +schoolmateship of Sidonie Le Blanc. To you and me she would have +seemed the merest little brown sprout of a thing, almost nothing but +two big eyes--like a little owl. To Claude it seemed as though nothing +older or larger could be so exactly in the prime of beauty; the path +to learning was the widest, floweriest, fragrantest path he had ever +trod. + +Sidonie did not often speak with him. At recess she usually staid at +her desk, studying, quite alone but for Bonaventure silently busy at +his, and Claude himself, sitting farther away, whenever the teacher +did not see him and drive him to the playground. If he would only +drive Sidonie out! But he never did. + +One day, after quite a contest of learning, and as the hour of +dismission was scattering the various groups across the green, Toutou, +the little brother who was grand for his age, said to Claude, hanging +timidly near Sidonie:-- + +"_Alle est plus_ smart' _que vous_." (She is smarter than you.) + +Whereupon Sidonie made haste to say in their Acadian French, "Ah! +Master Toutou, you forget we went to school to our dear aunt. And +besides, I am small and look young, but I am nearly a year older than +Claude." She had wanted to be kind, but that was the first thorn. +Older than he! + +And not only that; nearly fifteen! Why, at fifteen--at fifteen girls +get married! The odds were heavy. He wished he had thought of that at +first. He was sadly confused. Sometimes when Bonaventure spoke words +of enthusiasm and regard to him after urging him fiercely up some hill +of difficulty among the bristling heights of English pronunciation, he +yearned to seek him alone and tell him this difficulty of the heart. +There was no fear that Bonaventure would laugh; he seemed scarce to +know how; and his smiles were all of tenderness and zeal. Claude did +not believe the ten years between them would matter; had not +Bonaventure said to him but yesterday that to him all loveliness was +the lovelier for being very young? Yet when the confession seemed +almost on Claude's lips it was driven back by an alien mood in the +master's face. There were troubles in Bonaventure's heart that Claude +wot not of. + +One day who should drop in just as school was about to begin but the +priest from College Point! Such order as he found! Bonaventure stood +at his desk like a general on a high hill, his large hand-bell in his +grasp, passed his eyes over the seventeen demure girls, with their +large, brown-black, liquid eyes, their delicately pencilled brows, +their dark, waveless hair, and sounded one tap! The sport outside +ceased, the gaps at the shed's farther end were darkened by small +forms that came darting like rabbits into their burrows, eighteen +small hats came off, and the eighteen boys came softly forward and +took their seats. Such discipline! + +"Sir," said Bonaventure, "think you 'tis arising, f'om the strickness +of the teacher? 'Tis f'om the goodness of the chil'run! How I long the +State Sup'inten'ent Public Education to see them!" + +The priest commended the sight and the wish with smiling affirmations +that somehow seemed to lack sympathy. He asked the names of two or +three pupils. That little fellow with soft, tanned, chubby cheeks and +great black eyes, tiny mouth, smooth feet so shapely and small, still +wet to their ankles with dew, and arms that he could but just get +folded, was Toutou. That lad with the strong shoulders, good wide +brows, steady eye, and general air of manliness,--that was Claude St. +Pierre. And this girl over on the left here,--"You observe," said +Bonaventure, "I situate the lambs on the left and the kids on the +right,"--this little, slender crescent of human moonlight, with her +hair in two heavy, black, down-falling plaits, meek, drooping eyes, +long lashes, soft childish cheeks and full throat, was Sidonie Le +Blanc. Bonaventure murmured:-- + +"Best scholah in the school, yet the _only_--that loves not her +teacher. But I give always my interest, not according to the +interestingness, but rather to the necessitude, of each." + +The visit was not long. Standing, about to depart, the visitor seemed +still, as at the first, a man of many reservations under his polite +smiles. But just then he dropped a phrase that the teacher recognized +as an indirect quotation, and Bonaventure cried, with greedy eyes:-- + +"You have read Victor Hugo?" + +"Yes." + +"Oh, sir, that grea-a-at man! That father of libbutty! Other patriots +are the sons, but he the father! Is it not thus?" + +The priest shrugged and made a mouth. The young schoolmaster's face +dropped. + +"Sir, I must ask you--is he not the frien' of the poor and downtrod?" + +The visitor's smile quite disappeared. He said:-- + +"Oh!"--and waved a hand impatiently; "Victor Hugo"--another +mouth--"Victor Hugo"--replying in French to the schoolmaster's +English--"is not of my party." And then he laughed unpleasantly and +said good-day. + +The State Superintendent did not come, but every day--"It is perhaps +he shall come to-mo'w, chil'run; have yo' lessons well!" + +The whole tiny army of long, blue, ankle-hiding cottonade pantalettes +and pantaloons tried to fulfil the injunction. Not one but had a warm +place in the teacher's heart. But Toutou, Claude, Sidonie, anybody who +glanced into that heart could see sitting there enthroned. And some +did that kind of reconnoitring. Catou, 'Mian's older brother, was much +concerned. He saw no harm in a little education, but took no +satisfaction in the introduction of English speech; and speaking to +'Mian of that reminded him to say he believed the schoolmaster +himself was aware of the three children's pre-eminence in his heart. +But 'Mian only said:-- + +"_Ah bien, c'est_ all right, _alors_!" (Well, then, it's all right.) +Whether all right or not, Bonaventure was aware of it, and tried to +hide it under special kindnesses to others, and particularly to the +dullard of the school, grandson of Catou and nicknamed _Crebiche_[4]. +The child loved him; and when Claude rang the chapel bell, and before +its last tap had thrilled dreamily on the morning air, when the +urchins playing about the schoolhouse espied another group coming +slowly across the common with Bonaventure in the midst of them, his +coat on his arm and the children's hands in his, there among them came +Crebiche, now on one side, now running round to the other, hoping so +to get a little nearer to the master. + + [4] _Ecrevisse_, crawfish. + +"None shall have such kindness to-day as thou," Bonaventure would +silently resolve as he went in through a gap in the _pieux_. And the +children could not see but he treated them all alike. They saw no +unjust inequality even when, Crebiche having three times spelt "earth" +with an _u_, the master paced to and fro on the bare ground among the +unmatched desks and break-back benches, running his hands through his +hair and crying:-- + +"Well! well aht thou name' the crawfish; with such rapiditive +celeritude dost thou progress backwardly!" + +It must have been to this utterance that he alluded when at the close +of that day he walked, as he supposed, with only birds and +grasshoppers for companions, and they grew still, and the turtle-doves +began to moan, and he smote his breast and cried: + +"Ah! rules, rules! how easy to make, likewise break! Oh! the shame, +the shame! _If_ Victor Hugo had seen that! And if George Washington! +But thou,"--some one else, not mentioned,--"thou sawedst it!" + +The last word was still on the speaker's lips, when--there beside the +path, with heavy eye and drunken frown, stood the father of Crebiche, +the son of Catou, the little boy of twenty-five known as Chat-oue. He +spoke: + +"To who is dat you speak? Talk wid de dev'?" + +Bonaventure murmured a salutation, touched his hat, and passed. +Chat-oue moved a little, and delivered a broadside: + +"Afteh dat, you betteh leave! Yes, you betteh leave Gran' Point'!" + +"Sir," said Bonaventure, turning with flushed face, "I stay." + +"Yes," said the other, "dass righ'; you betteh go way and +stay. _Magicien_," he added as the schoolmaster moved on, +"_sorcier!_--Voudou!--jackass!" + +What did all this mean? + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +WAR OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT. + + +Catou, it seems, had gone one day to College Point with a pair of wild +ducks that he had shot,--first of the season,--and offered them to the +priest who preached for Grande Pointe once a quarter. + +"Catou," said the recipient, in good French but with a cruel hardness +of tone, "why does that man out there teach his school in English?" +The questioner's intentions were not unkind. He felt a protector's +care for his Acadian sheep, whose wants he fancied he, if not he only, +understood. He believed a sudden overdose of enlightenment would be to +them a real disaster, and he proposed to save them from it by the kind +of management they had been accustomed to--they and their fathers--for +a thousand years. + +Catou answered the question only by a timid smile and shrug. The +questioner spoke again: + +"Why do you Grande Pointe folk allow it? Do you want your children +stuffed full of American ideas? What is in those books they are +studying? You don't know? Neither do I. I would not look into one of +them. But you ought to know that to learn English is to learn +free-thinking. Do you know who print those books that your children +are rubbing their noses in? Yankees! Oh, I doubt not they have been +sharp enough to sprinkle a little of the stuff _they_ call religion +here and there in them; 'tis but the bait on the hook! But you silly +'Cadians think your children are getting education, and that makes up +for every thing else. Do you know what comes of it? Discontent. +Vanity. Contempt of honest labor. Your children are going to be +discontented with their lot. It will soon be good-by to sunbonnets; +good-by to homespun; good-by to Grande Pointe,--yes, and good-by to +the faith of your fathers. Catou, what do you know about that man, +anyhow? You ask him no questions, you 'Cadians, and he--oh, he is too +modest to tell you who or what he is. _Who pays him?_" + +"He say pay is way behine. He say he don't get not'in' since he come +yondeh," said Catou, the distress that had gathered on his face +disappearing for a moment. + +The questioner laughed contemptuously. + +"Do you suppose he works that way for nothing? How do you know, at +all, that his real errand is to teach school? A letter from Mr. +Wallis! who simply told your simple-minded brother what the fellow +told him! See here, Catou; you owe a tax as a raiser of tobacco, eh? +And besides that, hasn't every one of you an absurd little sign stuck +up on the side of his house, as required by the Government, to show +that you owe another tax as a tobacco manufacturer? But still you have +a little arrangement to neutralize that, eh? How do you know this man +is not among you to look into that? Do you know that he _can_ teach? +No wonder he prefers to teach in English! I had a conversation with +him the other day; I want no more; he preferred to talk to _me_ in +English. That is the good manners he is teaching; light-headed, +hero-worshipping, free-thinker that he is." + +Catou was sore dismayed. He had never heard of hero-worship or +free-thinking before, but did not doubt their atrocity. It had never +occurred to him that a man with a few spelling-books and elementary +readers could be so dangerous to society. + +"I wish he clear out from yondeh," said Catou. He really made his +short responses in French, but in a French best indicated in bad +English. + +"Not for my sake," replied the priest, coldly smiling. "I shall just +preach somewhere else on the thirteenth Sunday of each quarter, and +let Grande Pointe go to the devil; for there is where your new friend +is sure to land you. Good-day, I am very busy this morning." + +These harsh words--harsh barking of the shepherd dog--spread an unseen +consternation in Grande Pointe. Maximian was not greatly concerned. +When he heard of the threat to cut off the spiritual table-crumbs with +which the villagers had so scantily been fed, he only responded that +in his opinion the dominie was no such a fool as that. But others +could not so easily dismiss their fears. They began to say privately, +leaning on fences and lingering at stiles, that they had felt from the +very day of that first mad bell-ringing that the whole movement was +too headlong; that this opening the sluices of English education would +make trouble. Children shouldn't be taught what their parents do not +understand. Not that there was special harm in a little spelling, +adding, or subtracting, but--the notions they and the teacher +produced! Here was the school's influence going through all the place +like the waters of a rising tide. All Grande Pointe was lifting from +the sands, and in danger of getting afloat and drifting toward the +current of the great world's life. Personally, too, the schoolmaster +seemed harmless enough. From the children and he loving each other, +the hearts of the seniors had become entangled. The children had come +home from the atmosphere of that old tobacco-shed, and persuaded the +very grandmothers to understand vaguely--very vaguely and dimly--that +the day of liberty which had come to the world at large a hundred +years before had come at last to them; that in France their race had +been peasants; in Acadia, forsaken colonists; in Massachusetts, +Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, exiles alien to the land, the +language, and the times; in St. Domingo, penniless, sick, unwelcome +refugees; and for just one century in Louisiana the jest of the proud +Creole, held down by the triple fetter of illiteracy, poverty, and the +competition of unpaid, half-clad, swarming slaves. But that now the +slave was free, the school was free, and a new, wide, golden future +waited only on their education in the greatest language of the world. + +All this was pleasant enough to accept even in a dim way, though too +good to be more than remotely grasped. But just when, as music in a +sleeper's ear, it is taking hold of their impulses somewhat, comes the +word of their hereditary dictator that this man is among them only for +their destruction. What could they reply? They were a people around +whom the entire world's thought had swirled and tumbled for four +hundred years without once touching them. Their ancestors had left +France before Descartes or Newton had begun to teach the modern world +to think. They knew no method of reasoning save by precedent, and had +never caught the faintest reflection from the mind of that great, +sweet thinker who said, "A stubborn retention of customs is a +turbulent thing, no less than the introduction of new." To such +strangers in the world of to-day now came the contemptuous challenge +of authority, defying them to prove that one who proposed to launch +them forth upon a sea of changes out of sight of all precedent and +tradition was not the hireling of some enemy's gold secretly paid to +sap the foundations of all their spiritual and temporal interests and +plunge them into chaos. + +They blamed Bonaventure; he had got himself hated and them rebuked; it +was enough. They said little to each other and nothing to him; but +they felt the sleepy sense of injury we all know so well against one +who was disturbing their slumber; and some began to suspect and +distrust him, others to think hard of him for being suspected and +distrusted. Yet all this reached not his ears, and the first betrayal +of it was from the lips of Chat-oue, when, in his cups, he +unexpectedly invited the schoolmaster to leave Grande Pointe. + +After that, even the unconscious schoolmaster could feel the faint +chill of estrangement. But he laid it not to his work, but to his +personal unloveliness, and said to 'Mian he did not doubt if he were +more engaging there would not be so many maidens kept at the wheel and +loom in the priceless hours of school, or so many strapping youths +sent, all unlettered, to the sugar-kettles of the coast plantations +what time M'sieu' Walleece big-in to gryne. + +"'Tain't dat," said 'Mian. He had intended to tell the true reason, +but his heart failed him; and when Bonaventure asked what, then, it +was, he replied: + +"Aw, dey don't got no time. Time run so fas',--run like a scared dog. +I dunno fo' w'at dey make dat time run so fas' dat way." + +"O my friend," cried the young schoolmaster, leaping from his chair, +"say not that! If God did not make time to p'oceed with rapidness, who +would ever do his best?" + +It was such lessons as this that made the children--Crebiche among +them--still gather round the humble master and love to grasp his hand. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +LOVE AND DUTY. + + +Time ran fast. The seasons were as inexorable at Grande Pointe as +elsewhere. But there was no fierceness in them. The very frosts were +gentle. Slowly and kindly they stripped the green robes from many a +tree, from many a thicket ejected like defaulting tenants the blue +linnet, the orchard oriole, the nonpareil, took down all its leafy +hangings and left it open to the winds and rain of December. The wet +ponies and kine turned away from the north and stood in the slanting +storm with bowed heads. The great wall of cypress swamp grew spectral. +But its depths, the marshes far beyond sight behind them, and the +little, hidden, rushy lakes, were alive with game. No snake crossed +the path. Under the roof, on the galerie, the wheel hummed, the loom +pounded; inside, the logs crackled and blazed on the hearth; on the +board were venison, mallard, teal, rice-birds, _sirop de baterie_, and +_quitte_; round the fireside were pipes, pecans, old stories, and the +Saturday-night contra-dance; and every now and then came sounding on +the outer air the long, hoarse bellow of some Mississippi steamer, +telling of the great world beyond the tree-tops, a little farther than +the clouds and nearer than the stars. + +Christmas passed, and New Year--time runs so fast! Presently yonder +was 'Mian himself, spading a piece of ground to sow his tobacco-seed +in; then Catou and his little boy of twenty-five doing likewise; and +then others all about the scattered village. Then there was a general +spreading of dry brush over the spaded ground, then the sweet, clean +smell of its burning, and, hanging everywhere throughout the clearing, +its thin blue smoke. The little frogs began to pipe to each other +again in every wet place, the grass began to freshen, and almost in +the calendar's midwinter the smiles of spring were wreathing +everywhere. + +What of the schoolmaster and the children? Much, much! The good work +went on. Intense days for Bonaventure. The clouds of disfavor darkling +in some places, but brightening in others, and, on the whole, he hoped +and believed, breaking. A few days of vacation, and then a bright +re-union and resumption, the children all his faithful adherents save +one--Sidonie. She, a close student, too, but growingly distant and +reticent. The State Superintendent still believed to be-- + +"Impending, impending, chil'run! he is impending! Any day he may +precipitate upon us!" + +Intense days, too, for Claude. Sidonie openly, and oh, so sweetly, his +friend. Loving him? He could neither say nor know; enough, for the +present, to be allowed to love her. His love knew no spirit of +conquest yet; it was star-worship; it was angel adoration; +seraphically pure; something so celestially refined that had it been a +tangible object you could have held it up and seen the stars right +through it. The thought of acquisition would have seemed like coveting +the gold of a temple. And yet already the faintest hint of loss was +intolerable. Oh! this happy, happy school-going,--this faring +sumptuously on one smile a day! Ah, if it might but continue! But +alas! how Sidonie was growing! Growing, growing daily! up, up, up! +While he--there was a tree in the swamp where he measured his stature +every day; but in vain, in vain! It never budged! And then--all at +once--like the rose-vine on her galerie, Sidonie burst into bloom. + +Her smiles were kinder and more frequent now than ever before; but +the boy's heart was wrung. What chance now? In four long years to come +he would not yet be quite nineteen, and she was fifteen now. Four +years! He was in no hurry himself--could wait forever and be happy +every day of it; but she? Such prize as she, somebody would certainly +bear away before three years could run by, run they ever so fast. + +Sitting and pondering one evening in the little bayou cabin, Claude +caught the father's eye upon him, leaned his forehead upon the +parent's knee, and silently wept. The rough woodman said a kind word, +and the boy, without lifting his burning face, told his love. The +father made no reply for a long time, and then he said in their quaint +old French: + +"Claude, tell the young schoolmaster. Of all men, he is the one to +help you." And then in English, as you would quote Latin, "Knowledge +is power!" + +The next day he missed--failed miserably--in every lesson. At its +close he sat at his desk, crushed. Bonaventure seemed scarce less +tempest-tossed than he; and all about the school the distress spread +as wintry gray overcasts a sky. Only Sidonie moved calmly her +accustomed round, like some fair, silent, wide-winged bird circling +about a wreck. + +At length the lad and his teacher were left alone. Claude sat very +still, looking at his toil-worn hands lying crossed on the desk. +Presently there sank an arm across his shoulders. It was the master's. +Drop--drop--two big tears fell upon the rude desk's sleeve-polished +wood. The small, hard, right hand slowly left its fellow, and rubbed +off the wet spots. + +"Claude, you have something to disclose me?" + +The drooping head nodded. + +"And 'tis not something done wrongly?" + +The lad shook his head. + +"Then, my poor Claude,"--the teacher's own voice faltered for a +moment,--"then--'tis--'tis she!" He stroked the weeping head that sank +into its hands. "Ah! yes, Claude, yes; 'tis she; 'tis she! And you +want me to help you. Alas! in vain you want me! I cannot even try-y-y +to help you; you have mentioned it too lately! 'Tis right you come to +me, despiting discrepancy of years; but alas! the dif_fic_ulty lies in +the con_tra_ry; for alas! Claude, our two heart' are of the one, same +age!" + +They went out; and walking side by side toward the failing sun, with +the humble flowers of the field and path newly opened and craving +leave to live about their feet and knees, Bonaventure Deschamps +revealed his own childlike heart to the simple boy whose hand clasped +his. + +"Yes, yes; I conceal not from you, Claude, that 'tis not alone 'thou +lovest,' but 'I love'! If with cause to hope, Claude, I know not. And +I must not search to know whilst yet the schoolmaster. And the same to +you, Claude, whilst yet a scholah. We mus' let the dissimulation like +a worm in the bud to h-eat our cheek. 'Tis the voice of honor +cry--'Silence.' And during the meanwhilst, you? Perchance at the last, +the years passing and you enlarging in size daily and arriving to +budding manhood, may be the successful; for suspect not I consider +lightly the youngness of yo' passion. Attend what I shall reveal you. +Claude, there once was a boy, yo' size, yo' age, but fierce, selfish, +distemperate; still more selfish than yo' schoolmaster of to-day." And +there that master went on to tell of an early--like Claude's, an all +too early--rash, and boyish passion, whose ragged wound, that he had +thought never could heal, was now only a tender scar. + +"And you, too, Claude, though now it seem not possible--you shall +recuperate from this. But why say I thus? Think you I would inoculate +the idea that you must despair? Nay, perchance you shall achieve her." +They stood near the lad's pirogue about to say adieu; the schoolmaster +waved his hand backward toward the farther end of the village. "She is +there; in a short time she will cease to continue scholah; then--try." +And again, with still more courageous kindness, he repeated, "Try! +'Tis a lesson that thou shouldest heed--try, try again. If _at_ the +first thou doest _not_ succeed, try, try again." + +Claude gazed gratefully into the master's face. Boy that he was, he +did not read aright the anguish gathering there. From his own face the +clouds melted into a glad sunshine of courage, resolve, and +anticipation. Bonaventure saw the spark of hope that he had dropped +into the boy's heart blaze up into his face. And what did Claude see? +The hot blood mounting to the master's brow an instant ere he wheeled +and hurried away. + +"'Sieur Bonaventure!" exclaimed Claude; "'Sieur Bonaventure!" + +But deaf to all tones alike, Bonaventure moved straight away along +the bushy path, and was presently gone from sight. There is a +repentance of good deeds. Bonaventure Deschamps felt it gnawing and +tearing hard and harder within his bosom as he strode on through the +wild vernal growth that closed in the view on every side. Soon he +halted; then turned, and began to retrace his steps. + +"Claude!" The tone was angry and imperative. No answer came. He +quickened his gait. "Claude!" The voice was petulant and imperious. A +turn of the path brought again to view the spot where the two had so +lately parted. No one was there. He moaned and then cried aloud, "O +thou fool, fool, fool!--Claude!" He ran; faster--faster--down the +path, away from all paths, down the little bayou's margin, into the +bushes, into the mud and water. "Claude! Claude! I told you wrongly! +Stop! _Arretez-la!_ I must add somewhat!--Claude!" The bushes snatched +away his hat; tore his garments; bled him in hands and face; yet on he +went into the edge of the forest. "Claude! Ah! Claude, thou hast ruin' +me! Stop, you young rascal!--thief!--robber!--brigand!" A vine caught +and held him fast. "Claude! Claude!"--The echoes multiplied the sound, +and scared from their dead-tree roost a flock of vultures. The dense +wood was wrapping the little bayou in its premature twilight. The +retreating sun, that for a while had shot its flaming arrows through +the black boles and branches, had sunk now and was gone. Only a +parting ruby glow shone through the tangle where far and wide the +echoes were calling for Claude. + +"Claude! I mistook the facts in the case. There is no hope for you! +'Tis futile you try--the poem is not for you! I take every thing +back!--all back! You shall not once try! You have grasp' the +advantage! You got no business, you little rascal! _You_ dare venture +to attempt making love in my school! Claude St. Pierre, you are +dismiss' the school! Mutiny! mutiny! Claude St. Pierre, for +mutinizing, excluded the Gran' Point' school." + +He tore himself from his fastenings and hastened back toward the +village. The tempest within him was as fierce as ever; but already it, +too, had turned and was coming out of the opposite quarter. The better +Bonaventure--the Bonaventure purified by fires that Grande Pointe had +no knowledge of--was coming back into his gentle self-mastery. And +because that other, that old-time Bonaventure, bound in chains deep +down within, felt already the triumph of a moment slipping from his +grasp, he silently now to the outer air, but loudly within, railed and +gnashed and tore himself the more. + +He regained the path and hurried along it, hatless, dishevelled, +bespattered, and oblivious to every thing save the war within. +Presently there came upon him the knowledge, the certain knowledge, +that Claude would come the next morning and ring the chapel bell, take +his seat in school, stand in all his classes, know every lesson, and +go home in the evening happy and all unchallenged of him. He groaned +aloud. + +"Ah! Claude! To dismiss or not to dismiss, it shall not be mine! But +it shall be thine, Sidonie! And whether she is for thee, Claude--so +juvenile!--or for me, so unfit, unfit, unfit!--Ah! Sidonie, choose not +yet!"--He stood rooted to the spot; while within easy earshot of his +lightest word tripped brightly and swiftly across the path from the +direction of the chapel a fawn, Claude's gift, and its mistress, +Sidonie--as though she neither saw nor heard. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +AT CLAUDE'S MERCY. + + +Time flagged not. The school shone on, within its walls making glad +the teacher and the pupils with ever new achievements in knowledge and +excellence. Some of the vanguard--Claude, Sidonie, Etienne, Madelaine, +Henri, Marcelline--actually going into the Third Reader. Such +perfection in lessons as they told about at home--such mastery of +English, such satisfactory results in pronunciation and emphasis! +Reading just as they talked? Oh, no, a thousand times no! The school's +remoter light, its secondary influences, slowly spreading, but so +slowly that only the eyes of enmity could see its increase. There were +murmurs and head-shakings; but the thirteenth Sunday of the year's +first quarter came, and the sermon whose withholding had been +threatened was preached. And on the thirteenth Monday there was +Bonaventure, still moving quietly across the green toward the +schoolhouse with the children all about him. But a few days later the +unexpected happened. + +By this time Claude's father, whose teacher, you remember, was Claude, +had learned to read. One day a surveyor, who had employed him as a +guide, seeing the Acadian laboring over a fragment of rural newspaper, +fell into conversation with him as they sat smoking by their +camp-fire, and presently caught some hint of St. Pierre's aspirations +for himself and his son. + +"So there's a public school at Grande Pointe, is there?" + +"Oh, yass; fine school; hondred feet long! and fine titcher; splendid +titcher; titch English." + +"Well, well!" laughed the surveyor. "Well, the next thing will be a +railroad." + +St. Pierre's eyes lighted up. + +"You t'ink!" + +"Why, yes; you can't keep railroads away from a place long, once you +let in the public school and teach English." + +"You t'ink dass good?" + +"What, a railroad? Most certainly. It brings immigration." + +"Whass dat--'migrash'n?" + +The surveyor explained. + +The next time St. Pierre came to Grande Pointe--to sell some fish--he +came armed with two great words for the final overthrow of all +opponents of enlightenment: "Rellroad!--'Migrash'n!" + +They had a profound and immediate effect--exactly the opposite of what +he had expected. + +The school had just been dismissed; the children were still in sight, +dispersing this way and that. Sidonie lingered a moment at her desk, +putting it in order; Claude, taking all the time he could, was getting +his canoe-paddle from a corner; Crebiche was waiting, by the master's +command, to repair some default of the day; and Toutou, outside on his +knees in the grass catching grasshoppers, was tarrying for his sister; +when four or five of the village's best men came slowly and +hesitatingly in. It required no power of divination for even the +pre-occupied schoolmaster to guess the nature of their errand. 'Mian +was not among them. Catou was at their head. They silently bowed. The +schoolmaster as silently responded. The visitors huddled together. +They came a step nearer. + +"Well," said Catou, "we come to see you." + +"Sirs, welcome to Gran' Point' school.--Sidonie, Crebiche, Claude, +rest in yo' seats." + +"Mo' betteh you tu'n 'em loose, I t'ink," said Catou amiably; "ain't +it?" + +"I rather they stay," replied Bonaventure. All sat down. There was a +sustained silence, and then Catou said with quiet abruptness: + +"We dawn't want no mo' school!" + +"From what cause?" + +"'Tain't no use." + +"Sir--sirs, no use? 'Tis every use! The schoolhouse? 'tis mo' worth +than the gole mine. Ah! sirs, tell me: what is gole without +education?" + +They confronted the riddle for a moment. + +"Ed'cation want to change every thin'--rellroad--'migrash'n." + +"Change every thing? Yes!--making every thing better! Sirs, where is +that country that the people are sorry that the railroad and the +schoolhouse have come?" Again the riddle went unanswered; but Catou +sat as if in meditation, looking to one side, and presently said: + +"I t'ink dass all humbug, dat titchin' English. What want titch +English faw?" + +"Sir," cried Bonaventure, "in America you mus' be American! Three +Acadians have been governor of Louisiana! What made them thus to +become?" He leaned forward and smote his hands together. "What was it? +'Twas English education!" + +The men were silent again. Catou pushed his feet out, and looked at +his shoes, put on for the occasion. Presently-- + +"Yass," he said, in an unconvinced tone; "yass, dass all right: but +how we know you titch English? Nobody can't tell you titchin' him +right or no." + +"And yet--I do! And the time approach when you shall know! Sirs, I +make to you a p'oposition. Time is passing. It must be soon the State +Sup'inten'ent Public Education visit this school. The school is any +time ready. Since long time are we waiting. He shall come--he shall +examine! The chil'run shall be ignorant this arrangement! Only these +shall know--Claude, Sidonie, Crebiche; they will not disclose! And the +total chil'run shall exhibit all their previous learning! And welcome +the day, when the ad_ver_saries of education shall see those dear +chil'run stan' up befo' the assem'led Gran' Point' spelling co'ectly +words of one to eight syllable' and _reading from their readers_! And +if one miss--if _one_--_one!_ miss, then let the school be shut and +the schoolmaster banish-ed!" + +It was so agreed. The debate did not cease at once, but it languished. +Catou thought he had made one strong point when he objected to +education as conducive to idle habits; but when the schoolmaster +hurled back the fact that communities the world over are industrious +just in proportion as they are educated, he was done. He did not know, +but when he confronted the assertion it looked so true that he could +not doubt it. He only said: + +"Well, anyhow, I t'ink 'tain't no use Crebiche go school no mo'." But +when Bonaventure pleaded for the lad's continuance, that too was +agreed upon. The men departed. + +"Crebiche," said the master, holding the boy's hand at parting, "ah! +Crebiche, if thou become not a good scholar"--and read a promise in +the boy's swimming eyes. + +"Claude, Claude, I am at yo' mercy now." But the honest gaze of Claude +and the pressure of his small strong hand were a pledge. The grateful +master turned to Sidonie, and again, as of old, no Sidonie was there. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +READY. + + +Summer came. The song-birds were all back again, waking at dawn, and +making the hoary cypress wood merry with their carollings to the wives +and younglings in the nests. Busy times. Foraging on the helpless +enemy--earth-worm, gnat, grub, grasshopper, weevil, sawyer, +dragon-fly--from morning till night: watching for him; scratching for +him; picking, pecking, boring for him; poising, swooping, darting for +him; standing upside down and peering into chinks for him; and all for +the luxury--not of knowledge, but of love and marriage. The +mocking-bird had no rest whatever. Back and forth from dawn to dark, +back and forth across and across Grande Pointe clearing, always one +way empty and the other way with his beak full of marketing; and then +sitting up on an average half the night--sometimes the whole of it--at +his own concert. And with military duties too; patrolling the earth +below, a large part of it, and all the upper air; driving off the +weasel, the black snake, the hawk, the jay, the buzzard, the crow, and +all that brigand crew--busy times! All nature in glad, gay earnest. +Corn in blossom and rustling in the warm breeze; blackberries ripe; +morning-glories under foot; the trumpet-flower flaring from its dense +green vine high above on the naked, girdled tree; the cotton-plant +blooming white, yellow, and red in the field beneath; honey a-making +in the hives and hollow trees; butterflies and bees lingering in the +fields at sunset; the moth venturing forth at the first sign of dew; +and Sidonie--a wild-rose tree. + +Mark you, this was in Grande Pointe. I have seen the wild flower taken +from its cool haunt in the forest, and planted in the glare of a city +garden. Alas! the plight of it, poor outshone, wilting, odorless +thing! And then I have seen it again in the forest; and pleasanter +than to fill the lap with roses and tulips of the conservatory's +blood-royal it was to find it there, once more the simple queen of +that green solitude. + +So Sidonie. Acadian maidens are shy as herons. They always see you +first. They see you first, silently rise, and are gone--from the +galerie. They are more shy than violets. You would think they lived +whole days with those dark, black-fringed eyes cast down; but--they +see you first. The work about the house is well done where they are; +there are apt to be flowers outside round about; while they themselves +are as Paul desired to see the women in bishop Timothy's church, +"adorned in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety." + +Flowers sprang plentifully where Sidonie dwelt. Her best homespun gown +was her own weaving; the old dog lying on the galerie always thumped +the floor with his tail and sank his obsequious head as that robe +passed; the fawn--that Claude had brought--would come trotting and +press its head against it; all the small living things of the dooryard +would follow it about; and if she stood by the calf-pen the calves +would push each other for the nearest place, lay their cheeks upon the +fence's top, and roll their eyes--as many a youth of Grande Pointe +would have done if he might. Chat-oue,--I fear I have omitted to +mention that the father of Crebiche, like the father of Claude, had +lost his wife before he was of age,--Chat-oue looked often over that +fence. + +When matters take that shape a girl _must_ quit school. And yet +Sidonie, when after a short vacation the school resumed its sessions, +resumed with it. Toutou, who had to admit now that his sister was even +more grand for her age than he, was always available for protection. +There was no wonder that Sidonie wished to continue; Bonaventure +explained why: + +"So in_ter_esting is that McGuffey's Third Reader!" + +Those at home hesitated, and presently it was the first of October. +Now it was too late to withdraw; the examination was to take place. +The school's opponents had expressed little impatience at the State +Superintendent's weary delay, but at length Catou asked, "Why dat man +don't nevva come!" + +"The wherefore of his non-coming I ignore," said Bonaventure, with a +look of old pain in his young face; "but I am ready, let him come or +let him come not." + +"'Tain't no use wait no longer," said Catou; "jis well have yo' lil +show widout him." + +"Sir, it shall be had! Revolution never go backwood!" + +Much was the toil, many the anxieties, of the preparation. For +Bonaventure at once determined to make the affair more than an +examination. He set its date on the anniversary of the day when he had +come to Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not be spared. +She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe to a star. A child, +beholding the little star in the heavens, and wondering what it can +be, sparkling diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it not +to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender regret the school +knew that no more thereafter was Sidonie to twinkle in its firmament. + +"Learn yo' lessons hard, chil'run; if the State Sup'inten'ent, even at +the last, you know"--Bonaventure could not believe that this important +outpost had been forgotten. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CONSPIRACY. + + +About this time a certain Mr. Tarbox--G. W. Tarbox--was travelling on +horseback and touching from house to house of the great sugar-estates +of the river "coast," seeing the country and people, and allowing the +_elite_ to subscribe to the "Album of Universal Information." + +One Sunday, resting at College Point, he was led by curiosity to +cultivate the acquaintance of three men who had come in from Grande +Pointe. One of them was Chat-oue. He could understand them, and make +them understand him, well enough to play _vingt et un_ with them the +whole forenoon. He won all their money, drank with them, and took +their five subscriptions, Chat-oue taking three--one for himself, one +for Catou, and one for Crebiche. There was no delivery of goods there +and then; they could not write; but they made their marks, and it was +agreed that when Mr. Tarbox should come along a few days later to +deliver the volumes, they were not to be received or paid for until +with his scholarly aid the impostor who pretended to teach English +education at Grande Pointe had been put to confusion and to flight. + +"All right," said Tarbox; "all _right_. I'm the kind of State +Superintendent you want. I like an adventure; and if there's any thing +I just love, it's exposing a fraud! What day shall I come? Yes, I +understand--middle of the day. I'll be on hand." + +The fateful day came. In every house and on every galerie the morning +tasks were early done. Then the best of every wardrobe was put on, the +sun soared high, and by noon every chair in Grande Pointe was in the +tobacco-shed where knowledge poured forth her beams, and was occupied +by one or two persons. And then, at last, the chapel bell above +Claude's head pealed out the final signal, and the schoolmaster moved +across the green. Bonaventure Deschamps was weary. Had aught gone +wrong? Far from it. But the work had been great, and it was now done. +Every thing was at stake: the cause of enlightenment and the fortunes +of his heart hung on the issue of the next few hours. Three pupils, +one the oftenest rebuked of all the school, one his rival in love, +one the queen of his heart, held his fate in their hands and knew it. +With these thoughts mingled the pangs of an unconfessed passion and +the loneliness of a benevolent nature famishing for a word of thanks. +Yea, and to-day he must be his own judge. + +His coat was on his arm, and the children round about him in their +usual way as they came across the common; but his words, always so +kind, were, on this day of all days, so dejected and so few that the +little ones stole glances into his face and grew silent. Then, all at +once, he saw,--yea, verily, he _saw_,--standing near the school +entrance, a man from the great outer world! + +He knew it by a hundred signs--the free attitude, the brilliant silk +hat, the shaven face, and every inch of the attire. As plainly as one +knows a green tree from a dead one, the Crusoe of Grande Pointe +recognized one who came from the haunts of men; from some great +nerve-centre of human knowledge and power where the human mind, +trained and equipped, had piled up the spoils of its innumerable +conquests. His whole form lighted up with a new life. His voice +trembled with pent feeling as he said in deep undertone: + +"Be callm, chil'run; be callm. Refrain excitement. Who you behole +befo' you, yondeh, I ignore. But who shall we expect to see if not the +State Sup'inten'ent Public Education? And if yea, then welcome, thrice +welcome, the surprise! We shall not inquire him; but as a stranger we +shall show him with how small reso'ce how large result." He put on his +coat. + +Mr. Tarbox had just reached the school-ground. His horse was fastened +by the bridle to a picket in a fence behind him. A few boys had been +out before the schoolhouse, and it was the sudden cessation of their +clamor that had drawn Bonaventure's attention. Some of them were still +visible, silently slipping through the gaps in the _pieux_ and +disappearing within. Bonaventure across the distance marked him beckon +persuasively to one of them. The lad stopped, came forward, and gave +his hand; and thereupon a second, a third, fourth, fifth, tenth, +without waiting for invitation, emerged again and advanced to the same +grave and silent ceremony. Two or three men who stood near did the +same. The handshaking was just ending when Bonaventure and the +stranger raised their hats to each other. + +"Trust I don't intrude?" + +"Sir, we are honored, not intruded, as you shall witness. Will you +give yourself the pain to enter the school-place? I say not +schoolhouse; 'tis, as its humble teacher, not fitly so nominated. But +you shall therein find a school which, the more taken by surprise, not +the less prepared." + +"The State ought to build you a good schoolhouse," said the stranger, +with a slight frown that seemed official. + +"Ah! sir," cried the young schoolmaster, beaming gratitude from his +whole surface, "I--I"--he smote his breast,--"I would reimburst her in +good citizen' and mother' of good citizen'! And both reading, writing, +and also ciphering,--arithmeticulating, in the English tongue, and +grammatically! But enter and investigate." + +A hush fell upon the school and the audience beyond it as the two men +came in. Every scholar was in place--the little ones with bare, +dangling feet, their shapely sun-tanned ankles just peeping from +pantaloons and pantalettes of equal length; the older lads beyond +them; and off at the left the larger girls, and Sidonie. The visitor, +as his eye fell last upon her, silently and all to himself drew a long +whistle of admiration. The master stood and eyed him with unspoken but +confessed pride. A little maiden of six slipped from the bench to the +earth floor, came forward, gave her hand, and noiselessly returned. +One by one, with eyes dropped, the remaining sixteen girls followed. +It seemed for a moment as if the contagion might break out in the +audience, but the symptom passed. + +There was just room on the teacher's little platform for Bonaventure +to seat his visitor a little at one side and stand behind his desk. +The fateful moment had come. The master stood nervously drawn up, bell +in hand. With a quick, short motion he gave it one tap, and set it +down. + +"That, sir, is to designate attention!" He waved a triumphant hand +toward the spectacle before them. + +"Perfect!" murmured the stranger. A look of earnest ecstasy broke out +upon the master's face. He turned at first upon the audience and then +upon the school. + +"Chil'run, _chil'run_, he p'onounce you perfect!" He turned again upon +the visitor, threw high his right hand, flirted it violently, and +cried:-- + +"At random! exclusively at random; state what class! at random!" + +"I--I doubt if I under"-- + +"Name any class, exclusively at random, and you shall see with what +promptness and quietude the chil'run shall take each one their exactly +co'ect places." + +"Oh, I understand. You want me to designate"-- + +"Any class! at yo' caprice." + +"Well, if you have--third class in geography." + +"Or spelling?" cried Bonaventure, a momentary look of dismay giving +place to fresh enthusiasm. + +"Yes--spell--I meant spelling." + +"Third spelling!" The tongue of the bell fell with the emphasis, and +as silently as sleep the tiniest seven in the school, four pairs of +pantaloons, three of pantalettes, with seven of little bare feet at +their borders and seven of hands pointed down stiffly at their sides, +came out and stood a-row. The master turned to the visitor. + +"Now, commencing wherever, even at the foot if desired! ask, sir, if +you please, any English word of one syllable, of however difficult!" + +"No matter how difficult?" + +"Well, they are timid, as you see; advance by degrees." + +"Very well, then," said the visitor with much kindness of tone; "I +will ask the little boy at this end"-- + +"At the foot--but--still, 'tis well. Only--ah, Crebiche! every thing +depend! Be prepared, Crebiche!" + +"Yes," said the stranger; "I will ask him to spell hoss." + +The child drew himself up rigidly, pointed his stiffened fingers down +his thighs, rounded his pretty red mouth, and said slowly, in a low, +melodious, distinct voice:-- + +"'O-double eth, awth." + +Bonaventure leapt from the platform and ran to the child. + +"_Ah! mon p'tit garcon_--ah! my lil boy! 'O-double eth, listten, my +chile. O, sir, he did not hear the word precisely. Listten, my chile, +to yo' teacher! remember that his honor and the school's honor is in +yo' spelling!" He drew back a step, poised himself, and gave the word. +It came like an anchor-chain crashing through a hawse-hole. + +"Or-r-r-r-rus-seh!" And the child, winking at vacancy in the intensity +of his attention, spelled:-- + +"Haich-o-r-eth-e, 'Orthe." + +The breathless audience, leaning forward, read the visitor's +commendation in his face. Bonaventure, beaming upon him, extended one +arm, the other turned toward the child, and cried, shaking both hands +tremulously:-- + +"Another! another word! another to the same!" + +"Mouse," said the stranger, and Bonaventure turned and cried:-- + +"Mah-ooseh! my nob'e lil boy! Mah-ooseh!" and Crebiche, a speaking +statue, spelled:-- + +"M-o-u-eth-e, mouthe." + +"Co'ect, my chile! And yet, sir, and yet, 'tis he that they call +Crebiche, because like the crawfish advancing backwardly. But to the +next! another word! another word!" + +The spelling, its excitements, its moments of agonizing suspense, and +its triumphs, went on. The second class is up. It spells in two, even +in three, syllables. Toutou is in it. He gets tremendously wrought up; +cannot keep two feet on the ground at once; spells fast when the word +is his; smiles in response to the visitor's smile, the only one who +dares; leans out and looks down the line with a knuckle in his mouth +as the spelling passes down; wrings one hand as his turn approaches +again; catches his word in mid-air and tosses it off, and marks with +ecstasy the triumph and pride written on the face of his master. + +"But, sir," cries Bonaventure, "why consume the spelling-book? Give, +yourself, if you please, to Toutou, a word not therein comprise'." He +glanced around condescendingly upon the people of Grande Pointe. +Chat-oue is in a front seat. Toutou gathers himself for the spring, +and the stranger ponders a moment and then gives--"Florida!" + +"F-l-o, flo, warr-de-warr-da,--Florida!" + +A smile broke from the visitor's face unbidden, but-- + +"Right! my chile! co'ect, Toutou!" cried Bonaventure, running and +patting the little hero on the back and head by turns. "Sir, let +us"--He stopped short. The eyes of the house were on Chat-oue. He had +risen to his feet and made a gesture for the visitor's attention. As +the stranger looked at him he asked:-- + +"He spell dat las word r-i-i-ight?" But the visitor with quiet gravity +said, "Yes, that was all right;" and a companion pulled the Raccoon +down into his seat again. Bonaventure resumed. + +"Sir, let us not exhoss the time with spelling! You shall now hear +them read." + +The bell taps, the class retires; again, and the reading class is up. +They are the larger girls and boys. But before they begin the master +has a word for their fathers and mothers. + +"Friends and fellow-citizens of Gran' Point', think not at the +suppi-zing goodness of yo' chil'run' reading. 'Tis to this branch has +been given the largest attention and most as_sid_u'ty, so thus to +comprise puffection in the English tongue, whether speaking aw +otherwise." He turned to the stranger beside him. "I am not satisfied +whilst the slightest accent of French is remaining. But you shall +judge if they read not as if in their own vernaculary. And you shall +choose the piece!" + +The visitor waived the privilege, but Bonaventure gently insisted, and +he selected Jane Taylor's little poem, "The Violet," glancing across +at Sidonie as he himself read out the first two lines:-- + + "Down in a green and shady bed + A modest violet grew." + +Bonaventure proclaimed the title and page and said:-- + +"Claude, p'oceed!" And Claude read:-- + +"'Dthee vy--ee-lit. Dah-oon-a hin hay grin and-a shad-y bade--A +mo-dest-a vy-ee-lit gr[)o]o--Hits-a stallk whoz baint hit hawngg-a +hits hade--Has hif-a too hah-ed-a frawm ve-[)o]o. Hand h-yet it whoz a +lo-vly flow'r--Hits-a co-lors-a brah-eet and fair-a--Heet maheet-a +h[=a]ve grass-ed a rozzy bow'r--Heenstade-a hof hah-ee-dingg there"-- + +"Stop!" cried Bonaventure; "stop! You pronounciate' a word faultily!" +He turned to the visitor. "I call not that a miss; but we must +inoculate the idea of puffection. So soon the sly-y-test +misp'onounciating I pass to the next." He turned again: "Next!" And a +black-haired girl began in a higher key, and very slowly:-- + +"Yate there eet whoz cawntaint-a too bulloom--Heen mo-dest-a teent +z-arrayed--And there-a heet sprade-a heets swit pre-fume-a--Whit-hin +thee sy-y-lent-a shade"-- + +"Stop! Not that you mistook, but--'tis enough. Sir, will you give +yourself the pain to tell--not for my sake or reputation, but to the +encouragement of the chil'run, and devoid flattery--what is yo' +opinion of that specimen of reading? Not t'oubling you, but, in two or +three word' only--if you will give yo'self the pain"-- + +"Why, certainly; I think it is--I can hardly find words--it's +remarkable." Bonaventure started with joy. + +"Chil'run, do you hear? Remawkable! But do you not detect no +slight--no small faultiness of p'onounciating?" + +"No, not the slightest; I smile, but I was thinking of something +else." The visitor's eye, wandering a trifle, caught Chat-oue giving +him one black look that removed his disposition to smile, yet he +insisted, "No, sir; I can truthfully say I never heard such a +pronunciation." The audience drank his words. + +"Sir," cried the glad preceptor, "'tis toil have p'oduce it! Toil of +the teacher, in_dust_ry of the chil'run! But it has p'oduce' _beside_! +Sir, look--that school! Since one year commencing the A B C--and now +spelling word' of eight syllabl'!" + +"Not _this_ school?" + +"Sir, you shall see--or, more p'operly, hear. First spelling!" + +"Yes," said the stranger, seeing Sidonie rise, "I'd like to hear that +class;" and felt Chat-oue looking at him again. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +LIGHT, LOVE, AND VICTORY. + + +The bell tapped, and they came forth to battle. There was the line, +there was the leader. The great juncture of the day was on him. Was +not here the State's official eye? Did not victory hover overhead? His +reserve, the darling regiment, the flower of his army, was dressing +for the final charge. There was Claude. Next him, Sidonie!--and +Etienne, and Madelaine, Henri and Marcelline,--all waiting for the +word--the words--of eight syllables! Supreme moment! Would any betray? +Banish the thought! Would any fail? + +He waited an instant while two or three mothers bore out great +armfuls of slumbering or fretting infancy and a number of young men +sank down into the vacated chairs. Then he stepped down from the +platform, drew back four or five yards from the class, opened the +spelling-book, scanned the first word, closed the book with his finger +at the place, lifted it high above his head, and cried: + +"Claude! Claude, my brave scholar, always perfect, ah you ready?" He +gave the little book a half whirl round, and dashed forward toward the +chosen scholar, crying as he came: + +"In-e-rad-i-ca-bility!" + +Claude's face suddenly set in a stony vacancy, and with his eyes +staring straight before him he responded: + +"I-n, in-, e, inerad-, r-a-d, rad-, inerad-, ineraddy-, ineradica-, +c-a, ca, ineradica-, ineradicabili-, b-i-elly-billy, ineradicabili-, +ineradicabili-, t-y, ty, ineradicability." + +"Right! Claude, my boy! my always good scholar, right!" The master +drew back to his starting-place as he spoke, re-opened the book, shut +it again, lifted it high in air, cried, "Madelaine, my dear chile, +prepare!" whirled the book and rushed upon her with-- + +"In-de-fat-i-ga-bil-ly-ty!" + +Madelaine turned to stone and began: + +"I-n, een, d-e, de-, inde-, indefat-, indefat--fat--f-a-t, fat, +indefat, indefatty, i, ty, indefati-, indefatiga-, g-a, ga, +indefatiga-, indefatigabilly, b-i-elly, billy, indefatigabili-, t-y, +ty, indefatigability." + +"O, Madelaine, my chile, you make yo' teacher proud! prah-ood, my +chile!" Bonaventure's hand rested a moment tenderly on her head as he +looked first toward the audience and then toward the stranger. Then he +drew off for the third word. He looked at it twice before he called +it. Then-- + +"Sidonie! ah! Sidonie, be ready! be prepared! fail not yo' humble +school-teacher! In-com"--He looked at the word a third time, and then +swept down upon her: + +"In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-_bility_!" + +Sidonie flinched not nor looked upon him, as he hung over her with the +spelling-book at arm's-reach above them; yet the pause that followed +seemed to speak dismay, and throughout the class there was a silent +recoil from something undiscovered by the master. But an instant later +Sidonie had chosen between the two horns of her agonizing dilemma, and +began: + +"I-n, een, c-o-m, cawm, eencawm, eencawmpre, p-r-e, pre, eencawmpre, +eencawmprehen, prehen, haich-e-n, hen, hen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, +eencawmprehensi-, b-i-l"-- + +"Ah! Sidonie! Stop! _Arretez!_ Si-do-nie-e-e-e! Oh! listen--_ecoutez_-- +Sidonie, my dear!" The master threw his arms up and down in distraction, +then suddenly faced his visitor, "Sir, it was my blame! I spoke the word +without adequate distinction! Sidonie--_maintenant_--now!" But a voice +in the audience interrupted with-- + +"_Assoiez-vous la_, Chat-oue! Seet down yondeh!" And at the potent +voice of Maximian Roussel the offender was pushed silently into the +seat he had risen from, and Bonaventure gave the word again. + +"In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bil-i-ty!" And Sidonie, blushing like fire, +returned to the task: + +"I-n, een"--She bit her lip and trembled. + +"Right! _Right!_ Tremble not, my Sidonie! fear naught! yo' loving +school-teacher is at thy side!" But she trembled like a red leaf as she +spelled on--"Haich-e-n, hen, eencawmprehen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, +eencawmprehensi-, eencawmprehensi-billy-t-y, ty, incomprehensibility!" + +The master dropped his hands and lifted his eyes in speechless +despair. As they fell again upon Sidonie, her own met them. She +moaned, covered her face in her hands, burst into tears, ran to her +desk and threw her hands and face upon it, shaking with noiseless sobs +and burning red to the nape of her perfect neck. All Grande Pointe +rose to its feet. + +"Lost!" cried Bonaventure in a heart-broken voice. "Every thing lost! +Farewell, chil'run!" He opened his arms toward them and with one dash +all the lesser ones filled them. They wept. Tears welled from +Bonaventure's eyes; and the mothers of Grande Pointe dropped again +into their seats and silently added theirs. + +The next moment all eyes were on Maximian. His strong figure was +mounted on a chair, and he was making a gentle, commanding gesture +with one hand as he called: + +"Seet down! Seet down, all han'!" And all sank down, Bonaventure in a +mass of weeping and clinging children. 'Mian too resumed his seat, at +the same time waving to the stranger to speak. + +"My friends," said the visitor, rising with alacrity, "I say when a +man makes a bargain, he ought to stick to it!" He paused for them--as +many as could--to take in the meaning of his English speech, and, it +may be, expecting some demonstration of approval; but dead silence +reigned, all eyes on him save Bonaventure's and Sidonie's. He began +again: + +"A bargain's a bargain!" And Chat-oue nodded approvingly and began to +say audibly, "Yass;" but 'Mian thundered out: + +"_Taise toi_, Chat-oue! Shot op!" And the silence was again complete, +while the stranger resumed. + +"There was a plain bargain made." He moved a step forward and laid the +matter off on the palm of his hand. "There was to be an examination; +the school was not to know; but if one scholar should make one mistake +the schoolhouse was to be closed and the schoolmaster sent away. Well, +there's been a mistake made, and I say a bargain's a bargain." Dead +silence still. The speaker looked at 'Mian. "Do you think they +understand me?" + +"Dey meck out," said 'Mian, and shut his firm jaws. + +"My friends," said the stranger once more, "some people think +education's a big thing, and some think it ain't. Well, sometimes it +is and sometimes it ain't. Now, here's this man"--he pointed down to +where Bonaventure's dishevelled crown was drooping to his +knees--"claims to have taught over thirty of your children to read. +Well, what of it? A man can know how to read, and be just as no +account as he was before. He brags that he's taught them to talk +English. Well, what does that prove? A man _might_ speak English and +starve to death. He claims, I am told, to have taught some of them to +write. But I know a man in the penitentiary that can write; he wrote +too much." + +Bonaventure had lifted his head and was sitting with his eyes upon the +speaker in close attention. At this last word he said: + +"Ah! sir! too true, too true ah yo' words; nevertheless, their +cooelty! 'Tis not what is print' _in_ the books, but what you learn +_through_ the books!" + +"Yes; and so you hadn't never ought to have made the bargain you made; +but, my friends, a bargain's a bargain, and the teacher's"--He paused +invitingly, and an answer came from the audience. It was Catou who +rose and said: + +"Naw, sah. Naw; he don't got to go!" But again 'Mian thundered: + +"_Taise toi_, Catou. Shot op!" + +"I say," continued the stranger, "the mistake's been made. _Three_ +mistakes have been made!" + +"Yass!" roared Chat-oue, leaping to his feet and turning upon the +assemblage a face fierce with triumph. Suspense and suspicions were +past now; he was to see his desire on his enemy. But instantly a dozen +men were on their feet--St. Pierre, Catou, Bonaventure himself, with a +countenance full of pleading deprecation, and even Claude, flushed +with anger. + +"Naw, sah! Naw, sah! Waun meesteck?" + +"Seet down, all han'!" yelled 'Mian; "all han' seet dah-oon!" Only +Chat-oue took his seat, glancing upon the rest with the exultant look +of one who can afford to yield ground. + +"The first mistake," resumed the stranger, addressing himself +especially to the risen men still standing, and pointedly to Catou, +"the first mistake was in the kind of bargain you made." He ceased, +and passed his eyes around from one to another until they rested an +instant on the bewildered countenance of Chat-oue. Then he turned +again upon the people, who had sat down, and began to speak with the +exultation of a man that feels his subject lifting him above himself. + +"I came out here to show up that man as a fraud. But what do I find? A +poor, unpaid, half-starved man that loves his thankless work better +than his life, teaching what not one schoolmaster in a thousand can +teach; teaching his whole school four better things than were ever +printed in any school-book,--how to study, how to think, how to value +knowledge, and to love one another and mankind. What you'd ought to +have done was to agree that such a school should keep open, and such a +teacher should stay, if jest one, one lone child should answer one +single book-question right! But as I said before, a bargain's a +bargain--Hold on there! Sit down! You sha'n't interrupt me again!" Men +were standing up on every side. There was confusion and a loud buzz of +voices. "The second mistake," the stranger made haste to cry, "was +thinking the teacher gave out that last word right. He gave it wrong! +And the third mistake," he shouted against the rising commotion, "was +thinking it was spelt wrong. _She spelt it right!_ And a bargain's a +bargain! The schoolmaster stays!" + +He could say no more; the rumble of voices suddenly burst into a cheer. +The women and children laughed and clapped their hands,--Toutou his feet +also,--and Bonaventure, flirting the leaves of a spelling book till he +found the place, looked, cried--"In-com-pre-hen-_sibility_!" wheeled and +dashed upon Sidonie, seized her hands in his as she turned to fly, and +gazed speechlessly upon her, with the tears running down his face. +Feeling a large hand upon his shoulder, he glanced around and saw 'Mian +pointing him to his platform and desk. Thither he went. The stranger had +partly restored order. Every one was in his place. But what a change! +What a gay flutter throughout the old shed! Bonaventure seemed to have +bathed in the fountain of youth. Sidonie, once more the school's +queen-flower, sat calm, with just a trace of tears adding a subtle +something to her beauty. + +"Chil'run, beloved chil'run," said Bonaventure, standing once more by +his desk, "yo' school-teacher has the blame of the sole mistake; and, +sir, gladly, oh, gladly, sir, would he always have the blame rather +than any of his beloved school-chil'run! Sir, I will boldly ask +you--_ah_ you not the State Sup'inten'ent Public Education?" + +"No, I"-- + +"But surely, sir, than a greater?--Yes, I discover it, though you +smile. Chil'run--friends--not the State Sup'inten'ent, but +greater!--Pardon; have yo' chair, sir." + +"Why, the examination's over, isn't it? Guess you'd better call it +finished, hadn't you?" He made the suggestion softly, but Bonaventure +answered aloud: + +"Figu'atively speaking, 'tis conclude'; but--pardon--you mention' +writing. Shall you paht f'om us not known--not leaving yo' name--in a +copy-book, for examp'?" + +"With pleasure. You do teach writing?" + +"If I teach writing? To such with desks, yes. 'Twould be to all but +for the privation of desks. You perceive how we have here nothing less +than a desk famine. Madelaine! Claude! Sidonie!--present copy-book'! +Sir, do you not think every chile should be provided a desk?--Ah! I +knew 'twould be yo' verdic'. But how great trouble I have with that +subjec'! Me, I think yes; but the parents,"--he looked tenderly over +among them,--"they contend no. Now, sir, here are three copy-books. +Inspect; criticise. No, commence rather, if you please, with the +copy-book of Madelaine; then _p'oceed_ to the copy-book of Claude, and +finally conclude at the copy-book of Sidonie; thus rising by degrees: +good, more good, most good." + +"How about," asked the stranger, with a smile, as he turned the +leaves, "about Toutou and Crebiche; don't they write?" + +"Ah! sir," said Bonaventure, half to the stranger and half to the +assemblage, "they write, yes; but--they ah yet in the pot-hook and +chicken-track stage. And now, chil'run, in honor of our eminent +friend's visitation, and of the excellence with which you have been +examine', I p'onounce the _exhibition_ finish'--dispensing with +'Twink', twink' lil stah.' And now, in the book of the best writing +scholar in the school--you, sir, deciding that intricacy--shall now be +written the name of the eminent frien' of learning hereinbefo' +confronting.--Claude! a new pen!" + +The stranger made his choice among the books. + +"Chil'run, he has select' the book of Sidonie!" Bonaventure reached +and swung a chair into place at his desk. The visitor sat down. +Bonaventure stood over him, gazing down at the hand that poised the +pen. The silence was profound. + +"Chil'run--sh-sh-sh!" said the master, lifting his left arm but not +his eyes. The stranger wrote a single initial. + +"G! chil'run; G!--Sir, does it not signify George?" + +"Yes," murmured the writer; "it stands for George." He wrote another. + +"W! my chil'run; George W!--Sir, does it not sig--_My_ chil'run! +George Washington! George Washington, my chil'run! George Washington, +the father of his country! My chil'run and fellow-citizen' of Gran' +Point', he is nominated for George Washington, the father of his +country! Sir, ah you not a relation?" + +"I really can't tell you," said the writer, with a calm smile. "I've +always been too busy to look it up." He finished his signature as he +talked. Bonaventure bent over it. + +"Tar-box. Chil'run and friends and fellow-citizen', I have the +p'oudness to int'oduce you the hono'able George Washington Tarbox! And +now the exhibition is dismiss'; but stop! Sir, if some--aw all--desire +gratefully to shake hand'?" + +"I should feel honored." + +"Attention, everybody! Make rank! Everybody by two by two, the +school-chil'run coming last,--Claude and Sidonie resting till the +end,--pass 'round--shake hand'--walk out--similah a fu-nial." + +So came, shook hands, and passed out and to their simple homes, the +manhood, motherhood, maidenhood, childhood of Grande Pointe, not +knowing that before many days every household in the village was to be +a subscriber to the "Album of Universal Information." + +One of the last of the householders was Chat-oue. But when he grasped +the honored hand, he also held it, fixing upon its owner a generous +and somewhat bacchanalian smile. + +"I'm a fool, but _I_ know. You been put op a jawb on me. Dass four, +five days now I been try to meck out what dat niggah at Belle Alliance +holla to me when I gallop down de road." (Chat-oue's English had been +acquired from negroes in the sugar-house, and was like theirs.) "He +been braggin' dat day befo'"--turning to Bonaventure--"how 'twas him +show you de road to Gran' Point' las' year; and so I git mad and tell +him, me," addressing the stranger again, "how we goin' git school +shot op. Well, dat night I mit him comin' fum Gran' Point' and he hol' +at me. I been try evva since meck out what he say. Yass. An' I _jis_ +meck it out! He say, 'Watch out, watch out, 'Mian Roussel and dat +book-fellah dawn't put op jawb on _you_.' Well, I'm a fool, but I +know. You put op jawb on me; I know. But dass all right--_I don't take +no book._" He laughed with the rest, scratched his tipsy head, and +backed out through the _pieux_. + +Only a fairy number remained, grouped around the honorable Tarbox. +They were St. Pierre, Bonaventure,--Maximian detaining a middle-aged +pair, Sidonie's timorous guardians,--and two others, who held back, +still waiting to shake hands. + +"Claude," cried Bonaventure; "Sidonie." + +They came. Claude shook hands and stepped inside. Sidonie, with eyes +on the ground, put forth her hand. The honored guest held it +lingeringly, and the ceremonies were at an end. + +"Come," said 'Mian, beckoning away the great G. W.'s probable +relative. They passed out together. "Come!" he repeated, looking back +and beckoning again; "walk een! all han'! walk een house!" + +The guardian pair followed, hand in hand. + +"Claude," said Bonaventure tenderly; but-- + +"Claude," more firmly said St. Pierre. + +The boy looked for one instant from the master's face to Sidonie's; +then turned, grasped his father's hand, and followed the others. + +A blaze of light filled Bonaventure's heart. He turned to Sidonie to +give his hand--both her hands were clasped upon each other, and they +only tightened. But their eyes met--ah! those Acadian maidens, they do +it all with their eyes!--and lover and maiden passed out and walked +forth side by side. They are going that way still, only--with hands +joined. + + + + +AU LARGE. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE POT-HUNTER. + + +The sun was just rising, as a man stepped from his slender dug-out and +drew half its length out upon the oozy bank of a pretty bayou. Before +him, as he turned away from the water, a small gray railway-platform +and frame station-house, drowsing on long legs in the mud and water, +were still veiled in the translucent shade of the deep cypress swamp, +whose long moss drapings almost overhung them on the side next the +brightening dawn. The solemn gray festoons did overhang the farthest +two or three of a few flimsy wooden houses and a saw-mill with its +lumber, logs, and sawdust, its cold furnace and idle engine. + +As with gun and game this man mounted by a short, rude ladder to +firmer footing on the platform, a negro, who sat fishing for his +breakfast on the bank a few yards up the stream, where it bent from +the north and west, slowly lifted his eyes, noted that the other was a +white man, an Acadian, and brought his gaze back again to hook and +line. + +He had made out these facts by the man's shape and dress, for the +face was in shade. The day, I say, was still in its genesis. The +waters that slid so languidly between the two silent men as not to +crook one line of the station-house's image inverted in their clear +dark depths, had not yet caught a beam upon their whitest water-lily, +nor yet upon their tallest bulrush; but the tops of the giant +cypresses were green and luminous, and as the Acadian glanced abroad +westward, in the open sky far out over the vast marshy breadths of the +"shaking prairie,"[5] two still clouds, whose under surfaces were yet +dusky and pink, sparkled on their sunward edges like a frosted fleece. +You could not have told whether the Acadian saw the black man or not. +His dog, soiled and wet, stood beside his knee, pricked his ears for a +moment at sight of the negro, and then dropped them. + + [5] The "shaking prairie," "trembling prairie," or + _prairie tremblante_, is low, level, treeless delta + land, having a top soil of vegetable mould overlying + immense beds of quicksand. + +It was September. The comfortable air could only near by be seen to +stir the tops of the high reeds whose crowding myriads stretched away +south, west, and north, an open sea of green, its immense distances +relieved here and there by strips of swamp forest tinged with their +peculiar purple haze. Eastward the railroad's long causeway and +telegraph-poles narrowed on the view through its wide axe-hewn lane in +the overtowering swamp. New Orleans, sixty miles or more away, was in +that direction. Westward, rails, causeway, and telegraph, tapered away +again across the illimitable hidden quicksands of the "trembling +prairie" till the green disguise of reeds and rushes closed in upon +the attenuated line, and only a small notch in a far strip of woods +showed where it still led on toward Texas. Behind the Acadian the +smoke of woman's early industry began to curl from two or three low +chimneys. + +But his eye lingered in the north. He stood with his dog curled at his +feet beside a bunch of egrets,--killed for their plumage,--the butt of +his long fowling-piece resting on the platform, and the arm half +outstretched whose hand grasped the barrels near the muzzle. The hand, +toil-hardened and weather-browned, showed, withal, antiquity of race. +His feet were in rough muddy brogans, but even so they were smallish +and shapely. His garments were coarse, but there were no tatters +anywhere. He wore a wide Campeachy hat. His brown hair was too long, +but it was fine. His eyes, too, were brown, and, between brief moments +of alertness, sedate. Sun and wind had darkened his face, and his pale +brown beard curled meagre and untrimmed on a cheek and chin that in +forty years had never felt a razor. + +Some miles away in the direction in which he was looking, the +broadening sunlight had struck and brightened the single red lug-sail +of a boat whose unseen hull, for all the eye could see, was coming +across the green land on a dry keel. But the bayou, hidden in the tall +rushes, was its highway; for suddenly the canvas was black as it +turned its shady side, and soon was red again as another change of +direction caught the sunbeams upon its tense width and showed that, +with much more wind out there than it would find by and by in here +under the lee of the swamp, it was following the unseen meanderings of +the stream. Presently it reached a more open space where a stretch of +the water lay shining in the distant view. Here the boat itself came +into sight, showed its bunch of some half-dozen passengers for a +minute or two, and vanished again, leaving only its slanting red sail +skimming nautilus-like over the vast breezy expanse. + +Yet more than two hours later the boat's one blue-shirted, barefoot +Sicilian sailor in red worsted cap had with one oar at the stern just +turned her drifting form into the glassy calm by the railway-station, +tossed her anchor ashore, and was still busy with small matters of +boat-keeping, while his five passengers clambered to the platform. + +The place showed somewhat more movement now. The negro had long ago +wound his line upon its crooked pole, gathered up his stiffened fishes +from the bank, thrust them into the pockets of his shamelessly ragged +trousers, and was gone to his hut in the underbrush. But the few +amphibious households round about were passing out and in at the +half-idle tasks of their slow daily life, and a young white man was +bustling around, now into the station and now out again upon the +platform, with authority in his frown and a pencil and two matches +behind his ear. It was Monday. Two or three shabby negroes with broad, +collapsed, glazed leather travelling-bags of the old carpet-sack +pattern dragged their formless feet about, waiting to take the train +for the next station to hire out there as rice harvesters, and one, +with his back turned, leaned motionless against an open window gazing +in upon the ticking telegraph instruments. A black woman in blue +cotton gown, red-and-yellow Madras turban, and some sportsman's +cast-off hunting-shoes minus the shoe-strings, crouched against the +wall. Beside her stood her shapely mulatto daughter, with +head-covering of white cotton cloth, in which female instinct had +discovered the lines of grace and disposed them after the folds of the +Egyptian fellah head--dress. A portly white man, with decided polish +in his commanding air, evidently a sugar-planter from the Mississippi +"coast" ten miles northward, moved about in spurred boots, and put +personal questions to the negroes, calling them "boys," and the +mulattress, "girl." + +The pot-hunter was still among them; or rather, he had drawn apart +from the rest, and stood at the platform's far end, leaning on his +gun, an innocent, wild-animal look in his restless eyes, and a +slumberous agility revealed in his strong, supple loins. The +station-agent went to him, and with abrupt questions and assertions, +to which the man replied in low, grave monosyllables, bought his +game,--as he might have done two hours before, but--an Acadian can +wait. There was some trouble to make exact change, and the agent, +saying "Hold on, I'll fix it," went into the station just as the group +from the Sicilian's boat reached the platform. The agent came bustling +out again with his eyes on his palm, counting small silver. + +"Here!" But he spoke to the empty air. He glanced about with an +offended frown. + +"Achille!" There was no reply. He turned to one of the negroes: +"Where's that 'Cajun?" Nobody knew. Down where his canoe had lain, +tiny rillets of muddy water were still running into its imprint left +in the mire; but canoe, dog, and man had vanished into the rank +undergrowth of the swamp. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +CLAUDE. + + +Of the party that had come in the Sicilian's boat four were men and +one a young woman. She was pretty; so pretty, and of such restful +sweetness of countenance, that the homespun garb, the brand-new +creaking gaiters, and a hat that I dare not describe were nothing +against her. Her large, soft, dark eyes, more sweetly but not less +plainly than the attire, confessed her a denizen of the woods. + +Not so the man who seemed to be her husband. His dress was rustic +enough; and yet you would have seen at once that it was not the +outward circumstance, but an inward singularity, that had made him and +must always keep him a stranger to the ordinary ways of men. There was +an emotional exaltation in his face as he hastily led his companions +with military directness to the ticket window. Two others of the men +were evidently father and son, the son barely twenty years of age, the +parent certainly not twice as old; and the last of the group was a +strong, sluggish man of years somewhat near, but under, fifty. + +They bought but one ticket; but, as one may say, they all bought it, +the youngest extricating its price with difficulty from the knotted +corner of his red handkerchief, and the long, thin hand of the leader +making the purchase, while the eyes of the others followed every +movement with unconscious absorption. + +The same unemotional attentiveness was in their forms as their slow +feet drifted here and there always after the one leader, their eyes on +his demonstrative hands, and their ears drinking in his discourse. He +showed them the rails of the track, how smooth they were, how they +rested on their cross-ties, and how they were spiked in place always +the same width apart. They crowded close about him at the +telegraph-window while he interpreted with unconscious originality the +wonders of electricity. Their eyes rose slowly from the window up and +out along the ascending wires to where they mounted the poles and +eastward and westward leaped away sinking and rising from insulator to +insulator. One of the party pointed at these green dots of glass and +murmured a question, and the leader's wife laid her small hand softly +upon his arm to check the energy of his utterance as he said, audibly +to all on the platform, and with a strong French accent: + +"They?--are there lest the heat of the telegraph fluid inflame the +post-es!" He laid his own hand tenderly upon his wife's in response to +its warning pressure, yet turned to the sugar-planter and asked: + +"Sir, pardon; do I not explain truly?" + +The planter, with restrained smile, was about to reply, when some one +called, "There she comes!" and every eye was turned to the east. + +"Truly!" exclaimed the inquirer, in a voice made rich with emotion. +"Truly, she comes! She comes! The iron horse, though they call him +'she'!" He turned to the planter--"Ah! sir, why say they thus many or +thus many horse-power, when truly"--his finger-tip pattered upon his +temple--"truly it is mind-power!" + +The planter, smiling decorously, turned away, and the speaker looked +again down the long vacant track to where the small dark focus of +every one's attention was growing on the sight. He spoke again, in +lower voice but with larger emotion. + +"Mind-power! thought-power! knowledge-power! learning and thinking +power!" He caught his wife's arm. "See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her +enhancing in magnitude so fastly approaching!" As he spoke a puff of +white vapor lifted from the object and spread out against the blue, +the sunbeams turned it to silver and pearl, and a moment later came +the far-away, long, wild scream of the locomotive. + +"Retire!" exclaimed the husband, drawing back all his gazing +companions at once. "Retire! retire! the whisttel is to signify +warning to retire from too close the edge of the galerie! There! rest +at this point. 'Tis far enough. Now, each and all resolve to stand and +shrink not whilst that iron mare, eating coal, drinking hot water, and +spitting fire, shall seem, but falsely, threatening to come on the +platform. Ah! Claude!" he cried to the youngest of the group, "now +shall you behold what I have told you--that vast am-azement of +civilize-ation anni-_high_-lating space and also time at the tune of +twenty miles the hour!" He wheeled upon the planter--"Sir, do I +exaggerate?" + +"Forty miles," replied the planter; "sometimes fifty." + +"Friends,--confirmated! more than twicefold confirmated. Forty, +sometimes fifty! Thou heardest it, Maximian Roussel! Not from me, but +from the gentleman himself! Forty, sometimes fifty! Such the march, +the forward march of civilize-ation!" + +His words were cut short by the unearthly neigh of the engine. Sidonie +smote herself backward against her husband. + +"Nay, Sidonie, fear thou nothing! Remember, dear Sidonie, thy promise +of self-control! Stand boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son, +stand." The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, and +shaking the earth, the engine and train loomed up to the platform and +stopped. + +"Come!" cried Bonaventure Deschamps; "lose no moment, dear friends. +Tide and time--even less the railroad--wait for nobody. Claude, +remember; give your ticket of passage to none save the conductor only. +'Tis print' in letter' of gold on front his cap--'Conductor'--Stop! he +is here.--Sir, this young man, inexperienced, is taking passage for"-- + +"Shoot him aboard," replied a uniformed man, and walked on without a +pause. Claude moved toward the train. Bonaventure seized him by both +arms and gazed on him. + +"Claude St. Pierre! Claude, my boy, pride of Grande Pointe, second +only with Sidonie, farewell!" + +Tears leaped into the eyes of both. Bonaventure snatched Claude to his +arms and kissed him. It was less than nothing to him that every eye on +and off the train was on them. He relaxed his grasp. "Sidonie! tell +him farewell!--ah! nay! shake not hands only! Kiss her, Claude! Kiss +him, my own Sidonie, kiss him farewell!" + +It was done. Claude blushed red, and Sidonie stepped back, wiping her +eyes. Maximian moved into the void, and smiling gave his hand to the +young adventurer. + +"Adjieu, Claude." He waved a hand awkwardly. "Teck care you'seff," and +dropped the hand audibly against his thigh. + +Claude's eye sought his father. St. Pierre pressed forward, laid his +right hand upon his son's shoulder, and gazed into his face. His voice +was low and husky. He smiled. + +"Claude,"--tears rose in his eyes, but he swallowed them +down,--"Claude,--my baby,"--and the flood came. The engine-bell rang. +The conductor gave the warning word, the youth leaped upon his +father's neck. St. Pierre thrust him off, caught his two cheeks +between fluttering palms and kissed him violently; the train moved, +the young man leaped aboard, the blue uniforms disappeared, save one +on the rear platform, the bell ceased, the gliding mass shrunk and +dwindled away, the rails clicked more and more softly, the tearful +group drew closer together as they gazed after the now-unheard train. +It melted to a point and disappeared, the stillness of forest and +prairie fell again upon the place, the soaring sun shone down, and +Claude St. Pierre was gone to seek his fortune. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE TAVERN FIRESIDE. + + +I call to mind a certain wild, dark night in November. St. Pierre lay +under his palmetto thatch in the forest behind Grande Pointe, and +could not sleep for listening to the wind, and wondering where his son +was, in that wild Texas norther. On the Mississippi a steamer, upward +bound, that had whistled to land at Belmont or Belle Alliance +plantation, seemed to be staying there afraid to venture away. Miles +southward beyond the river and the lands on that side, Lake des +Allemands was combing with the tempest and hissing with the rain. +Still farther away, on the little bayou and at the railway-station in +the edge of the swamp that we already know, and westward over the +prairie where Claude had vanished into the world, all life was hidden +and mute. And farther still, leagues and leagues away, the mad tempest +was riding the white-caps in Berwick's Bay and Grande Lake; and yet +beyond, beyond New Iberia, and up by Carancro, and around again by +St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Grand Coteau, and Opelousas, and down +once more across the prairies of Vermilion, the marshes about Cote +Blanche Bay, and the islands in the Gulf, it came bounding, screaming, +and buffeting. And all the way across that open sweep from Mermentau +to Cote Gelee it was tearing the rain to mist and freezing it wherever +it fell, only lulling and warming a little about Joseph Jefferson's +Island, as if that prank were too mean a trick to play upon his +orange-groves. + +In Vermilionville the wind came around every corner piercing and +pinching to the bone. The walking was slippery; and though it was +still early bedtime and the ruddy lamp-light filled the wet panes of +some window every here and there, scarce a soul was stirring without, +on horse or afoot, to be guided by its kindly glow. + +At the corner of two streets quite away from the court-house square, a +white frame tavern, with a wooden Greek porch filling its whole +two-story front and a balcony built within the porch at the +second-story windows in oddest fashion, was glowing with hospitable +firelight. It was not nearly the largest inn of the place, nor the +oldest, nor the newest, nor the most accessible. There was no clink of +glass there. Yet in this, only third year of its present management, +it was the place where those who knew best always put up. + +Around the waiting-room fire this evening sat a goodly semicircle of +men,--commercial travellers. Some of them were quite dry and +comfortable, and wore an air of superior fortune over others whose +shoes and lower garments sent out more or less steam and odor toward +the open fireplace. Several were smoking. One who neither smoked nor +steamed stood with his back to the fire and the skirts of his coat +lifted forward on his wrists. He was a rather short, slight, nervy +man, about thirty years of age, with a wide pink baldness running so +far back from his prominent temples and forehead that when he tipped +his face toward the blue joists overhead, enjoying the fatigue of a +well-filled day, his polished skull sent back the firelight +brilliantly. There was a light skirmish of conversation going on, in +which he took no part. No one seemed really acquainted with another. +Presently a man sitting next on the left of him put away a quill +toothpick in his watch-pocket, looked up into the face of the standing +man, and said, with a faint smile: + +"That job's done!" + +With friendly gravity the other looked down and replied, "I never use +a quill toothpick." + +"Yes," said the one who sat, "it's bad. Still I do it." + +"Nothing," continued the other,--"nothing harder than a sharpened +white-pine match should ever go between the teeth. Brush thoroughly +but not violently once or twice daily with a moderately stiff brush +dipped in soft water into which has been dropped a few drops of the +tincture of myrrh. A brush of badger's hair is best. If tartar +accumulates, have it removed by a dentist. Do not bite thread or crack +nuts with the teeth, or use the teeth for other purposes than those +for which nature designed them." He bent toward his hearer with a +smile of irresistible sweetness, drew his lips away from his gums, +snapped his teeth together loudly twice or thrice, and smiled again, +modestly. The other man sought defence in buoyancy of manner. + +"Right you are!" he chirruped. He reached up to his adviser's blue and +crimson neck-scarf, and laid his finger and thumb upon a large, +solitary pear-shaped pearl. "You're like me; you believe in the real +thing." + +"I do," said the pearl's owner; "and I like people that like the real +thing. A pearl of the first water _is_ real. There's no sham there; no +deception--except the iridescence, which is, as you doubtless know, an +optical illusion attributable to the intervention of rays of light +reflected from microscopic corrugations of the nacreous surface. But +for that our eye is to blame, not the pearl. See?" + +The seated man did not reply; but another man on the speaker's right, +a large man, widest at the waist, leaned across the arm of his chair +to scrutinize the jewel. Its owner turned his throat for the +inspection, despite a certain grumness and crocodilian aggressiveness +in the man's interest. + +"I like a diamond, myself," said the new on-looker, dropped back in +his chair, and met the eyes of the pearl's owner with a heavy glance. + +"Tastes differ," kindly responded the wearer of the pearl. "Are you +acquainted with the language of gems?" + +The big-waisted man gave a negative grunt, and spat bravely into the +fire. "Didn't know gems could talk," he said. + +"They do not talk, they speak," responded their serene interpreter. +The company in general noticed that, with all his amiability of tone +and manner, his mild eyes held the big-waisted man with an +uncomfortable steadiness. "They speak not to the ear, but to the eye +and to the thought: + + 'Thought is deeper than all speech; + Feeling deeper than all thought; + Souls to souls can never teach + What unto themselves was taught.'" + +The speaker's victim writhed, but the riveted gaze and an uplifted +finger pinioned him. "You should know--every one should know--the +language of gems. There is a language of flowers: + + 'To me the meanest flower that blows can give + Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' + +But the language of gems is as much more important than that of +flowers as the imperishable gem is itself more enduring than the +withering, the evanescent blossom. A gentleman may not with safety +present to a lady a gem of whose accompanying sentiment he is +ignorant. But with the language of gems understood between them, how +could a sentiment be more exquisitely or more acceptably expressed +than by the gift of a costly gem uttering that sentiment with an +unspoken eloquence! Did you but know the language of gems, your choice +would not be the diamond. 'Diamond me no diamonds,' emblems of pride-- + + 'Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, + I see the lords of humankind pass by.' + +"Your choice would have been the pearl, symbol of modest loveliness. + + 'Full many a gem of purest ray serene + The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;' + + 'Orient pearls at random strung;' + + 'Fold, little trembler, thy fluttering wing, + Freely partake of love's fathomless spring; + So hallowed thy presence, the spirit within + Hath whispered, "The angels protect thee from sin."'" + +The speaker ceased, with his glance hovering caressingly over the +little trembler with fluttering wing, that is, the big-waisted man. +The company sat in listening expectancy; and the big-waisted man, +whose eyes had long ago sought refuge in the fire, lifted them and +said, satirically, "Go on," at the same time trying to buy his way out +with a smile. + +"It's your turn," quickly responded the jewel's owner, with something +droll in his manner that made the company laugh at the other's +expense. The big-waisted man kindled, then smiled again, and said: + +"Was that emblem of modest loveliness give' to you symbolically, or +did you present it to yourself?" + +"I took it for a debt," replied the wearer, bowing joyously. + +"Ah!" said the other. "Well, I s'pose it was either that or her +furniture?" + +"Thanks, yes." There was a pause, and then the pearl's owner spoke on. +"Strange fact. That was years ago. And yet"--he fondled his gem with +thumb and finger and tender glance--"you're the first man I've met to +whom I could sincerely and symbolically present it, and you don't want +it. I'm sorry." + +"I see," said the big-waisted man, glaring at him. + +"So do I," responded the pearl's owner. A smile went round, and the +company sat looking into the fire. Outside the wind growled and +scolded, shook and slapped the house, and thrashed it with the rain. A +man sitting against the chimney said: + +"If this storm keeps on six hours longer I reduce my estimate of the +cotton-crop sixty-five thousand bales." But no one responded; and as +the importance died out of his face he dropped his gaze into the fire +with a pretence of deep meditation. Presently another, a good-looking +young fellow, said: + +"Well, gents, I never cared much for jewelry. But I like a nice +scarf-pin; it's nobby. And I like a handsome seal-ring." He drew one +from a rather chubby finger, and passed it to his next neighbor, +following it with his eyes, and adding: "That's said to be a real +intaglio. But--now, one thing I don't like, that's to see a lady wear +a quantity of diamond rings outside of her glove, and heavy gold +chains, and"--He was interrupted. A long man, with legs stiffened out +to the fire, lifted a cigar between two fingers, sent a soft jet of +smoke into the air, and began monotonously: + + "'Chains on a Southern woman? Chains?' + +I know the lady that wrote that piece." He suddenly gathered himself +up for some large effort. "I can't recite it as she used to, but"--And +to the joy of all he was interrupted. + +"Gentlemen," said one, throwing a cigarette stump into the fire, +"that brings up the subject of the war. By the by, do you know what +that war cost the Government of the United States?" He glanced from +one to another until his eye reached the wearer of the pearl, who had +faced about, and stood now, with the jewel glistening in the +firelight, and who promptly said: + +"Yes; how much?" + +"Well," said the first questioner with sudden caution, "I may be +mistaken, but I've heard that it cost six--I think they say +six--billion dollars. Didn't it?" + +"It did," replied the other, with a smile of friendly commendation; +"it cost six billion, one hundred and eighty-nine million, nine +hundred and twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and eight dollars. The +largest item is interest; one billion, seven hundred and one million, +two hundred and fifty-six thousand, one hundred and ninety-eight +dollars, forty-two cents. The next largest, the pay of troops; the +next, clothing the army. If there's any item of the war's expenses you +would like to know, ask me. Capturing president Confederate +States--ninety-seven thousand and thirty-one dollars, three cents." +The speaker's manner grew almost gay. The other smiled defensively, +and responded: + +"You've got a good memory for sta-stistics. I haven't; and yet I +always did like sta-stistics. I'm no sta-stitian, and yet if I had the +time sta-stistics would be my favorite study; I s'pose it's yours." + +The wearer of the pearl shook his head. "No. But I like it. I like +the style of mind that likes it." The two bowed with playful +graciousness to each other. "Yes, I do. And I've studied it, some +little. I can tell you the best time of every celebrated trotter in +this country; the quickest trip a steamer ever made between Queenstown +and New York, New York and Queenstown, New Orleans and New York; the +greatest speed ever made on a railroad or by a yacht, pedestrian, +carrier-pigeon, or defaulting cashier; the rate of postage to every +foreign country; the excess of women over men in every State of the +Union so afflicted--or blessed, according to how you look at it; the +number of volumes in each of the world's ten largest libraries; the +salary of every officer of the United-States Government; the average +duration of life in a man, elephant, lion, horse, anaconda, tortoise, +camel, rabbit, ass, etcetera-etcetera; the age of every crowned head +in Europe; each State's legal and commercial rate of interest; and how +long it takes a healthy boy to digest apples, baked beans, cabbage, +dates, eggs, fish, green corn, h, i, j, k, l-m-n-o-p, quinces, rice, +shrimps, tripe, veal, yams, and any thing you can cook commencing with +z. It's a fascinating study. But it's not my favorite. + + 'The proper study of mankind is man. + * * * * * + Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, + The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!' + +"I love to study human nature. That's my favorite study! The art of +reading the inner human nature by the outer aspect is of immeasurable +interest and boundless practical value, and the man who can practise +it skilfully and apply it sagaciously is on the high road to fortune, +and why? Because to know it thoroughly is to know whom to trust and +how far; to select wisely a friend, a confidant, a partner in any +enterprise; to shun the untrustworthy, to anticipate and turn to our +personal advantage the merits, faults, and deficiencies of all, and to +evolve from their character such practical results as we may choose +for our own ends; but a thorough knowledge is attained only by +incessant observation and long practice; like music, it demands a +special talent possessed by different individuals in variable quantity +or not at all. You, gentlemen, all are, what I am not, commercial +tourists. Before you I must be modest. You, each of you, have been +chosen from surrounding hundreds or thousands for your superior +ability, natural or acquired, to scan the human face and form and know +whereof you see. I look you in the eye--you look me in the eye--for +the eye, though it does not tell all, tells much--it is the key of +character--it has been called the mirror of the soul-- + + 'And looks commercing with the skies, + Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.' + +And so looking you read me. You say to yourself, 'There's a man with +no concealments, yet who speaks not till he's spoken to; knows when to +stop, and stops.' You note my pale eyebrows, my slightly prominent and +pointed chin, somewhat over-sized mouth; small, well-spread ears, +faintly aquiline nose; fine, thin, blonde hair, a depression in the +skull where the bump of self-conceit ought to be, and you say, 'A man +that knows his talents without being vain of them; who not only minds +his own business, but loves it, and who in that business, be it +buggy-whips or be it washine, or be it something far nobler,'--which, +let me say modestly, it is,--'simply goes to the head of the class and +stays there.' Yes, sirs, if I say that reading the human countenance +is one of my accomplishments, I am diffidently mindful that in this +company, I, myself, am read, perused; no other probably so well +read--I mean so exhaustively perused. For there is one thing about me, +gentlemen, if you'll allow me to say it, I'm short metre, large print, +and open to the public seven days in the week. And yet you probably +all make one mistake about me: you take me for the alumni of some +university. Not so. I'm a self-made man. I made myself; and +considering that I'm the first man I ever made, I think--pardon the +seeming egotism--I think I've done well. A few years ago there dwelt +in humble obscurity among the granite hills of New England, earning +his bread by the sweat of his brow upon his father's farm, a youth to +fortune and to fame unknown. But one day a voice within him said, +'Tarbox'--George W.,--namesake of the man who never told a lie,--'do +you want to succeed in life? Then leave the production of tobacco and +cider to unambitious age, and find that business wherein you can +always give a man ten times as much for his dollar as his dollar is +worth.' The meaning was plain, and from that time forth young Tarbox +aspired to become a book-agent. 'Twas not long ere he, like + + 'Young Harry Bluff, left his friends and his home, + And his dear native land, o'er the wide world to roam.' + +Books became his line, and full soon he was the head of the line. +And why? Was it because in the first short twelve months of his +career he sold, delivered, and got the money for, 5107 copies of +'Mend-me-at-Home'? No. Was it, then, because three years later he +sold in one year, with no other assistance than a man to drive the +horse and wagon, hold the blackboard, and hand out the books, 10,003 +copies of 'Rapid 'Rithmetic'? It was not. Was it, then, because in +1878, reading aright the public mind, he said to his publishers, +whose confidence in him was unbounded, 'It ain't "Mend-me-at-Home" +the people want most, nor "Rapid 'Rithmetic," nor "Heal Thyself," +nor "I meet the Emergency," nor the "Bouquet of Poetry and Song." +What they want is all these in one.'--'Abridged?' said the +publishers. 'Enlarged!' said young Tarbox,--'enlarged and copiously +illustrated, complete in one volume, price, cloth, three dollars, +sheep four, half morocco, gilt edges, five; real value to the +subscriber, two hundred and fifty; title, "The Album of Universal +Information; author, G. W. Tarbox; editor, G. W. T.; agent for the +United States, the Canadas, and Mexico, G. W. Tarbox," that is to +say, myself.' That, gentlemen, is the reason I stand at the head of +my line; not merely because on every copy sold I make an author's as +well as a solicitor's margin; but because, being the author, I know +whereof I sell. A man that's got my book has got a college +education; and when a man taps me,--for, gentlemen, I never spout +until I'm tapped,--and information bursts from me like water from a +street hydrant, and he comes to find out that every thing I tell is +in that wonderful book, and that every thing that is in that +wonderful book I can tell, he wants to own a copy; and when I tell +him I can't spare my sample copy, but I'll take his subscription, he +smiles gratefully"-- + +A cold, wet blast, rushing into the room from the hall, betrayed the +opening of the front door. The door was shut again, and a well-formed, +muscular young man who had entered stood in the parlor doorway lifting +his hat from his head, shaking the rain from it, and looking at it +with amused diffidence. Mr. Tarbox turned about once more with his +back to the fire, gave the figure a quick glance of scrutiny, then a +second and longer one, and then dropped his eyes to the floor. The +big-waisted man shifted his chair, tipped it back, and said: + +"He smiles gratefully, you say?" + +"Yes." + +"And subscribes?" + +"If he's got any sense," Mr. Tarbox replied in a pre-occupied tone. +His eyes were on the young man who still stood in the door. This +person must have reached the house in some covered conveyance. Even +his boot-tops were dry or nearly so. He was rather pleasing to see; of +good stature, his clothing cheap. A dark-blue flannel sack of the +ready-made sort hung on him not too well. Light as the garment was, he +showed no sign that he felt the penetrating cold out of which he had +just come. His throat and beardless face had the good brown of outdoor +life, his broad chest strained the two buttons of his sack, his head +was well-poised, his feet were shapely, and but for somewhat too much +roundness about the shoulder-blades, noticeable in the side view as he +carefully stood a long, queer package that was not buggy-whips against +the hat-rack, it would have been fair to pronounce him an athlete. + +The eyes of the fireside group were turned toward him; but not upon +him. They rested on a girl of sixteen who had come down the hall, and +was standing before the new-comer just beyond the door. The +registry-book was just there on a desk in the hall. She stood with a +freshly dipped pen in her hand, ignoring the gaze from the fireside +with a faintly overdone calmness of face. The new guest came forward, +and, in a manner that showed slender acquaintance with the operation, +slowly registered his name and address. + +He did it with such pains-taking, that, upside down as the writing +was, she read it as he wrote. As the Christian name appeared, her +perfunctory glance became attention. As the surname followed, the +attention became interest and recognition. And as the address was +added, Mr. Tarbox detected pleasure dancing behind the long fringe of +her discreet eyes, and marked their stolen glance of quick inspection +upon the short, dark locks and strong young form still bent over the +last strokes of the writing. But when he straightened up, carefully +shut the book, and fixed his brown eyes upon hers in guileless +expectation of instructions, he saw nothing to indicate that he was +not the entire stranger that she was to him. + +"You done had sopper?" she asked. The uncommon kindness of such a +question at such an hour of a tavern's evening was lost on the young +man's obvious inexperience, and as one schooled to the hap-hazard of +forest and field he merely replied: + +"Naw, I didn' had any." + +The girl turned--what a wealth of black hair she had!--and disappeared +as she moved away along the hall. Her voice was heard: "Mamma?" Then +there was the silence of an unheard consultation. The young man moved +a step or two into the parlor and returned toward the door as a light +double foot-fall approached again down the hall and the girl appeared +once more, somewhat preceded by a small, tired-looking, pretty woman +some thirty-five years of age, of slow, self-contained movement and +clear, meditative eyes. + +But the guest, too, had been re-enforced. A man had come silently from +the fireside, taken his hand, and now, near the doorway, was softly +shaking it and smiling. Surprise, pleasure, and reverential regard +were mingled in the young man's face, and his open mouth was gasping-- + +"Mister Tarbox!" + +"Claude St. Pierre, after six years, I'm glad to see you.--Madame, +take good care of Claude.--No fear but she will, my boy; if anybody +in Louisiana knows how to take care of a traveller, it's Madame +Beausoleil." He smiled for all. The daughter's large black eyes +danced, but the mother asked Claude, with unmoved countenance and soft +tone: + +"You are Claude St. Pierre?--from Gran' Point'?" + +"Yass." + +"Dass lately since you left yondah?" + +"About two month'." + +"Bonaventure Deschamps--he was well?" + +"Yass." Claude's eyes were full of a glad surprise, and asked a +question that his lips did not dare to venture upon. Madame Beausoleil +read it, and she said: + +"We was raise' together, Bonaventure and me." She waved her hand +toward her daughter. "He teach her to read. Seet down to the fire; we +make you some sopper." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +MARGUERITE. + + +Out in the kitchen, while the coffee was dripping and the ham and eggs +frying, the mother was very silent, and the daughter said little, but +followed her now and then with furtive liftings of her young black +eyes. Marguerite remembered Bonaventure Deschamps well and lovingly. +For years she had seen the letters that at long intervals came from +him at Grande Pointe to her mother here. In almost every one of them +she had read high praises of Claude. He had grown, thus, to be the +hero of her imagination. She had wondered if it could ever happen that +he would come within her sight, and if so, when, where, how. And now, +here at a time of all times when it would have seemed least possible, +he had, as it were, rained down. + +She wondered to-night, with more definiteness of thought than ever +before, what were the deep feelings which her reticent little +mother--Marguerite was an inch the taller--kept hid in that dear +breast. Rarely had emotion moved it. She remembered its terrible +heavings at the time of her father's death, and the later silent +downpour of tears when her only sister and brother were taken in one +day. Since then, those eyes had rarely been wet; yet more than once or +twice she had seen tears in them when they were reading a letter from +Grande Pointe. Had her mother ever had something more than a sister's +love for Bonaventure? Had Bonaventure loved her? And when? Before her +marriage, or after her widowhood? + +The only answer that came to her as she now stood, knife in hand, by +the griddle, was a roar of laughter that found its way through the +hall, the dining-room, and two closed doors, from the men about the +waiting-room fireside. That was the third time she had heard it. What +could have put them so soon into such gay mood? Could it be Claude? +Somehow she hoped it was not. Her mother reminded her that the +batter-cakes would burn. She quickly turned them. The laugh came +again. + +When by and by she went to bid Claude to his repast, the laughter, as +she reached the door of the waiting-room, burst upon her as the storm +would have done had she opened the front door. It came from all but +Claude and Mr. Tarbox. Claude sat with a knee in his hands, smiling. +The semicircle had widened out from the fire, and in the midst Mr. +Tarbox stood telling a story, of which Grande Pointe was the scene, +Bonaventure Deschamps the hero, a school-examination the circumstance, +and he, G. W., the accidental arbiter of destinies that hung upon its +results. The big-waisted man had retired for the night, and half an +eye could see that the story-teller had captivated the whole remaining +audience. He was just at the end as Marguerite re-appeared at the +door. The laugh suddenly ceased, and then all rose; it was high +bedtime. + +"And did they get married?" asked one. Three or four gathered close to +hear the answer. + +"Who? Sidonie and Bonnyventure? Yes. I didn't stay to see. I went away +into Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama, and just only a few weeks +ago took a notion to try this Attakapas and Opelousas region. But +that's what Claude tells me to-night--married more than five years +ago.--Claude, your supper wants you. Want me to go out and sit with +you? Oh, no trouble! not the slightest! It will make me feel as if I +was nearer to Bonnyventure." + +And so the group about Claude's late supper numbered four. And because +each had known Bonaventure, though each in a very different way from +any other, they were four friends when Claude had demolished the ham +and eggs, the strong black coffee, and the griddle-cakes and +sirop-de-batterie. + +At the top of the hall stairway, as Mr. Tarbox was on his way to bed, +one of the dispersed fireside circle stopped him, saying: + +"That's an awful good story!" + +"I wouldn't try a poor one on you." + +"Oh!--but really, now, in good earnest, it is good. It's good in more +ways than one. Now, you know, that man, hid away there in the swamp at +Grande Pointe, he little thinks that six or eight men away off here in +Vermilionville are going to bed to-night better men--that's it, +sir--yes, sir, that's it--yes, sir!--better men--just for having heard +of him!" + +Mr. Tarbox smiled with affectionate approval, and began to move away; +but the other put out a hand-- + +"Say, look here; I'm going away on that two o'clock train to-night. I +want that book of yours. And I don't want to subscribe and wait. I +want the book now. That's my way. I'm just that kind of a man; I'm the +nowest man you ever met up with. That book's just the kind of thing +for a man like me who ain't got no time to go exhaustively delving and +investigating and researching into things, and yet has got to keep as +sharp as a brier." + +Mr. Tarbox, on looking into his baggage, found he could oblige this +person. Before night fell again he had done virtually the same thing, +one by one, for all the rest. By that time they were all gone; but Mr. +Tarbox made Vermilionville his base of operations for several days. + +Claude also tarried. For reasons presently to appear, the "ladies +parlor," a small room behind the waiting-room, with just one door, +which let into the hall at the hall's inner end, was given up to his +use; and of evenings not only Mr. Tarbox, but Marguerite and her +mother as well, met with him, gathering familiarly about a lamp that +other male lodgers were not invited to hover around. + +The group was not idle. Mr. Tarbox held big hanks of blue and yellow +yarn, which Zosephine wound off into balls. A square table quite +filled the centre of the room. There was a confusion of objects on it, +and now on one side and now on another Claude leaned over it and +slowly toiled, from morning until evening alone, and in the evening +with these three about him; Marguerite, with her sewing dropped upon +the floor, watching his work with an interest almost wholly silent, +only making now and then a murmured comment, her eyes passing at +intervals from his pre-occupied eyes to his hands, and her hand now +and then guessing and supplying his want as he looked for one thing or +another that had got out of sight. What was he doing? + +As to Marguerite, more than he was aware of, Zosephine Beausoleil saw, +and was already casting about somewhat anxiously in her mind to think +what, if any thing, ought to be done about it. She saw her child's +sewing lie forgotten on the floor, and the eyes that should have been +following the needle, fixed often on the absorbed, unconscious, +boyish-manly face so near by. She saw them scanning the bent brows, +the smooth bronzed cheek, the purposeful mouth, and the unusual +length of dark eyelashes that gave its charm to the whole face; and +she saw them quickly withdrawn whenever the face with those lashes was +lifted and an unsuspecting smile of young companionship broke slowly +about the relaxing lips and the soft, deep-curtained eyes. No; Claude +little knew what he was doing. Neither did Marguerite. But, aside from +her, what was his occupation? I will explain. + +About five weeks earlier than this, a passenger on an eastward-bound +train of Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railway stood at the rear door +of the last coach, eying critically the track as it glided swiftly +from under the train and shrank perpetually into the west. The coach +was nearly empty. No one was near him save the brakeman, and by and by +he took his attention from the track and let it rest on this person. +There he found a singular attraction. Had he seen that face before, or +why did it provoke vague reminiscences of great cypresses overhead, +and deep-shaded leafy distances with bayous winding out of sight +through them, and cane-brakes impenetrable to the eye, and +axe-strokes--heard but unseen--slashing through them only a few feet +away? Suddenly he knew. + +"Wasn't it your father," he said, "who was my guide up Bayou des +Acadiens and Blind River the time I made the survey in that big swamp +north of Grande Pointe? Isn't your name Claude St. Pierre?" And +presently they were acquainted. + +"You know I took a great fancy to your father. And you've been clear +through the arithmetic twice? Why, see here; you're just the sort of +man I--Look here; don't you want to learn to be a surveyor?" The +questioner saw that same ambition which had pleased him so in the +father, leap for joy in the son's eyes. + +An agreement was quickly reached. Then the surveyor wandered into +another coach, and nothing more passed between them that day save one +matter, which, though trivial, has its place. When the surveyor +returned to the rear train, Claude was in a corner seat gazing +pensively through the window and out across the wide, backward-flying, +purpling green cane-fields of St. Mary, to where on the far left the +live-oaks of Bayou Teche seemed hoveringly to follow on the flank of +their whooping and swaggering railway-train. Claude turned and met the +stranger's regard with a faint smile. His new friend spoke first. + +"Matters may turn out so that we can have your father"-- + +Claude's eyes answered with a glad flash. "Dass what I was t'inkin'!" +he said, with a soft glow that staid even when he fell again into +revery. + +But when the engineer--for it seems that he was an engineer, chief of +a party engaged in redeeming some extensive waste swamp and marsh +lands--when the chief engineer, on the third day afterward, drew near +the place where he suddenly recollected Claude would be waiting to +enter his service, and recalled this part of their previous interview, +he said to himself, "No, it would be good for the father, but not best +for the son," and fell to thinking how often parents are called upon +to wrench their affections down into cruel bounds to make the +foundations of their children's prosperity. + +Claude widened to his new experience with the rapidity of something +hatched out of a shell. Moreover, accident was in his favor; the party +was short-handed in its upper ranks, and Claude found himself by this +stress taken into larger and larger tasks as fast as he could, though +ever so crudely, qualify for them. + +"'Tisn't at all the best thing for you," said one of the surveyors, +"but I'll lend you some books that will teach you the why as well as +the how." + +In the use of these books by lantern-light certain skill with the pen +showed itself; and when at length one day a despatch reached camp from +the absent "chief" stating that in two or three days certain matters +would take him to Vermilionville, and ordering that some one be sent +at once with all necessary field notes and appliances, and give his +undivided time to the making of certain urgently needed maps, and the +only real draughtsman of the party was ill with swamp-fever, Claude +was sent. + +On his last half-day's journey toward the place, he had fallen in with +an old gentleman whom others called "Governor," a tall, trim figure, +bent but little under fourscore years, with cheerful voice and ready +speech, and eyes hidden behind dark glasses and flickering in their +deep sockets. + +"Go to Madame Beausoleil's," he advised Claude. "That is the place for +you. Excellent person; I've known her from childhood; a woman worthy a +higher station." And so, all by accident, chance upon chance, here +was Claude making maps; and this delightful work, he thought, was +really all he was doing, in Zosephine's little inner parlor. + +By and by it was done. The engineer had not yet arrived. The storm had +delayed work in one place and undone work in another, and he was +detained beyond expectation. But a letter said he would come in a day +or two more, and some maps of earlier surveys, drawn by skilled +workmen in great New Orleans, arrived; seeing which, Claude blushed +for his own and fell to work to make them over. + +"If at first you not succeed," said Claude,-- + +"Try--try aga-a-ain," responded Marguerite; "Bonaventure learn me that +poetry; and you?" + +"Yass," said Claude. He stood looking down at his work and not seeing +it. What he saw was Grande Pointe in the sunset hour of a spring day +six years gone, the wet, spongy margin of a tiny bayou under his feet, +the great swamp at his back, the leafy undergrowth all around; his +canoe and paddle waiting for him, and Bonaventure repeating to +him--swamp urchin of fourteen--the costliest words of kindness--to +both of them the costliest--that he had ever heard, ending with these +two that Marguerite had spoken. As he resumed his work, he said, +without lifting his eyes: + +"Seem' to me 'f I could make myself like any man in dat whole worl', I +radder make myself like Bonaventure. And you?" + +She was so slow to answer that he looked at her. Even then she merely +kept on sweeping her fingers slowly and idly back and forth on the +table, and, glancing down upon them, said without enthusiasm: "Yass." + +Yet they both loved Bonaventure, each according to knowledge of him. +Nor did their common likings stop with him. The things he had taught +Claude to love and seek suddenly became the admiration of Marguerite. +Aspirations--aspirations!--began to stir and hum in her young heart, +and to pour forth like waking bees in the warm presence of spring. +Claude was a new interpretation of life to her; as one caught abed by +the first sunrise at sea, her whole spirit leaped, with unmeasured +self-reproach, into fresh garments and to a new and beautiful stature, +and looked out upon a wider heaven and earth than ever it had seen or +desired to see before. All at once the life was more than meat and the +body than raiment. Presently she sprang to action. In the convent +school, whose white belfry you could see from the end of Madame +Beausoleil's balcony, whither Zosephine had sent her after teaching +her all she herself knew, it had been "the mind for knowledge;" now it +was "knowledge for the mind." Mental training and enrichment had a +value now, never before dreamed of. The old school-books were got +down, recalled from banishment. Nothing ever had been hard to learn, +and now she found that all she seemed to have forgotten merely +required, like the books, a little beating clear of dust. + +And Claude was there to help. "If C"----C!----"having a start of one +hundred miles, travels"--so and so, and so and so,--"how fast must I +travel in order to"--etc. She cannot work the problem for thinking of +what it symbolizes. As C himself takes the slate, her dark eyes, +lifted an instant to his, are large with painful meaning, for she sees +at a glance she must travel--if the arithmetical is the true +answer--more than the whole distance now between them. But Claude says +there is an easy way. She draws her chair nearer and nearer to his; he +bows over the problem, and she cannot follow his pencil without +bending her head very close to his--closer--closer--until fluffy bits +of her black hair touch the thick locks on his temples. Look to your +child, Zosephine Beausoleil, look to her! Ah! she can look; but what +can she do? + +She saw the whole matter; saw more than merely an unripe girl +smitten with the bright smile, goodly frame, and bewitching eyes of +a promising young rustic; saw her heart ennobled, her nature +enlarged, and all the best motives of life suddenly illuminated by +the presence of one to be mated with whom promised the key-note of +all harmonies; promised heart-fellowship in the ever-hoping effort +to lift poor daily existence higher and higher out of the dust and +into the light. What could she say? If great spirits in men or +maidens went always or only with high fortune, a mere Acadian lass, +a tavern maiden, were safe enough, come one fate or another. If +Marguerite were like many a girl in high ranks and low, to whom any +husband were a husband, any snug roof a home, and any living +life--But what may a maiden do, or a mother bid her do, when she +looks upon the youth so shaped without and within to her young +soul's belief in its wants, that all other men are but beasts of the +field and creeping things, and he alone Adam? To whom could the +widow turn? Father, mother?--Gone to their rest. The cure who had +stood over her in baptism, marriage, and bereavement?--Called long +ago to higher dignities and wider usefulness in distant fields. Oh +for the presence and counsel of Bonaventure! It is true, here was +Mr. Tarbox, so kind, and so replete with information; so shrewd and +so ready to advise. She spurned the thought of leaning on him; and +yet the oft-spurned thought as often returned. Already his generous +interest had explored her pecuniary affairs, and his suggestions, +too good to be ignored, had moulded them into better shape, and +enlarged their net results. And he could tell how many eight-ounce +tacks make a pound, and what electricity is, and could cure a wart +in ten minutes, and recite "Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be +proud?" And this evening, the seventh since the storm, when for one +weak moment she had allowed the conversation to drift toward +wedlock, he had stated a woman's chances of marrying between the +ages of fifteen and twenty, to wit, 14-1/2 per cent; and between thirty +and thirty-five, 15-1/2. + +"Hah!" exclaimed Zosephine, her eyes flashing as they had not done in +many a day, "'tis not dat way!--not in Opelousas!" + +"Arithmetically speaking!" the statistician quickly explained. He +ventured to lay a forefinger on the back of her hand, but one glance +of her eye removed it. "You see, that's merely arithmetically +considered. Now, of course, looking at it geographically--why, of +course! And--why, as to that, there are ladies"-- + +Madame Beausoleil rose, left Mr. Tarbox holding the yarn, and went +down the hall, whose outer door had opened and shut. A moment later +she entered the room again. + +"Claude!" + +Marguerite's heart sank. Her guess was right: the chief engineer had +come. And early in the morning Claude was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +FATHER AND SON. + + +Such strange things storms do,--here purifying the air, yonder +treading down rich harvests, now replenishing the streams, and now +strewing shores with wrecks; here a blessing, there a calamity. See +what this one had done for Marguerite! Well, what? She could not +lament; she dared not rejoice. Oh! if she were Claude and Claude were +she, how quickly-- + +She wondered how many miles a day she could learn to walk if she +should start out into the world on foot to find somebody, as she had +heard that Bonaventure had once done to find her mother's lover. There +are no Bonaventures now, she thinks, in these decayed times. + +"Mamma,"--her speech was French,--"why do we never see Bonaventure? +How far is it to Grande Pointe?" + +"Ah! my child, a hundred miles; even more." + +"And to my uncle Rosamond's,--Rosamond Robichaux, on Bayou +Terrebonne?" + +"Fully as far, and almost the same journey." + +There was but one thing to be done,--crush Claude out of her heart. + +The storm had left no wounds on Grande Pointe. Every roof was safe, +even the old tobacco-shed where Bonaventure had kept school before the +schoolhouse was built. The sheltering curtains of deep forest had +broken the onset of the wind, and the little cotton, corn, and tobacco +fields, already harvested, were merely made a little more tattered and +brown. The November air was pure, sunny, and mild, and thrilled every +now and then with the note of some lingering bird. A green and bosky +confusion still hid house from house and masked from itself the all +but motionless human life of the sleepy woods village. Only an +adventitious China-tree here and there had been stripped of its golden +foliage, and kept but its ripened berries with the red birds darting +and fluttering around them like so many hiccoughing Comanches about a +dramseller's tent. And here, if one must tell a thing so painful, our +old friend the mocking-bird, neglecting his faithful wife and letting +his home go to decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting +the berries' rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you +know,--"Lost so many children, and the rest gone off in ungrateful +forgetfulness of their old hard-working father; yes;" and ready to +sing or fight, just as any other creature happened not to wish; and +going home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and getting to bed +barely able to hang on to the roost. It would have been bad enough, +even for a man; but for a bird--and a mocking-bird! + +But the storm wrought a great change in one small house not in Grande +Pointe, yet of it. Until the storm, ever since the day St. Pierre had +returned from the little railway-station where Claude had taken the +cars, he had seemed as patiently resigned to the new loneliness of +Bayou des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which day by day sat so silent +between the edges of the dark forest and the darker stream, looking +out beyond the farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes +with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously now this way and +now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows passing slowly across from one +far line of cypress wood to another. But since that night when the +hut's solitary occupant could not sleep for the winds and for thought +of Claude, there was a great difference inside. And this did not +diminish; it grew. It is hard for a man to be both father and mother, +and at the same time be childless. The bonds of this condition began +slowly to tighten around St. Pierre's heart and then to cut into it. +And so, the same day on which Claude in Vermilionville left the +Beausoleils' tavern, the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, ever in his +mind's eye, was empty, and in Grande Pointe his father stood on the +one low step at the closed door of Bonaventure's little frame +schoolhouse. + +He had been there a full minute and had not knocked. Every movement, +to-day, came only after an inward struggle. Many associations crowded +his mind on this doorstep. Six years before, almost on this spot, a +mere brier-patch then, he and Maximian Roussel had risen from the +grassy earth and given the first two welcoming hand-grasps to the +schoolmaster. And now, as one result, Claude, who did not know his +letters then, was rising--nay, had risen--to greatness! Claude, whom +once he would have been glad to make a good fisherman and swamper, or +at the utmost a sugar-boiler, was now a greater, in rank at least, +than the very schoolmaster. Truly "knowledge is power"--alas! yes; for +it had stolen away that same Claude. The College Point priest's +warning had come true: it was "good-by to Grande Pointe!"--Nay, nay, +it must not be! Is that the kind of power education is? Power to tear +children from their parents? Power to expose their young heads to +midnight storms? Power to make them eager to go, and willing to stay +away, from their paternal homes? Then indeed the priest had said only +too truly, that these public schools teach every thing except morals +and religion! From the depth of St. Pierre's heart there quickly came +a denial of the charge; and on the moment, like a chanted response, +there fell upon his listening ear a monotonous intonation from within +the door. A reading-class had begun its exercise. He knew the words by +heart, so often had Claude and he read them together. He followed the +last stanza silently with his own lips. + + "Remember, child, remember + That you love, with all your might, + The God who watches o'er us + And gives us each delight, + Who guards us ever in the day, + And saves as in the night." + +Tears filled the swamper's eyes. He moved as if to leave the place. +But again he paused, with one foot half lowered to the ground. His +jaws set, a frown came between his eyes; he drew back the foot, turned +again to the door, and gave a loud, peremptory knock. + +Bonaventure came to the door. Anxiety quickly overspread his face as +he saw the gloom on St. Pierre's. He stood on the outer edge of the +sill, and drew the door after him. + +"I got good news," said St. Pierre, with no softening of countenance. + +"Good news?" + +"Yass.--I goin' make Claude come home." + +Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. St. Pierre looked +away and continued: + +"'S no use. Can't stand it no longer." He turned suddenly upon the +schoolmaster. "Why you di'n' tell me ed'cation goin' teck my boy 'way +from me?" In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification +quickly changed to one of anxious compassion. + +"Wait!" he said. He went back into the schoolroom, leaving St. Pierre +in the open door, and said: + +"Dear chil'run, I perceive generally the aspects of fatigue. You have +been good scholars. I pronounce a half-hollyday till to-morrow +morning. Come, each and every one, with lessons complete." + +The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another to shake the +schoolmaster's hand as they passed him. When they were gone he put on +his coarse straw hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as +they went, down the green road that years before had first brought the +educator to Grande Pointe. + +"Dear friend," said the schoolmaster, "shall education be to blame for +this separation? Is not also non-education responsible? Is it not by +the non-education of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit here for +Claude's staying?" + +"You stay!" + +"I? I stay? Ah! sir, I stay, yes! Because like Claude, leaving my home +and seeking by wandering to find the true place of my utility, a voice +spake that I come at Grande Pointe. Behole me! as far from my +childhood home as Claude from his. Friend,--ah! friend, what shall +I,--shall Claude,--shall any man do with education! Keep it? Like a +miser his gol'? What shall the ship do when she is load'? Dear +friend,"--they halted where another road started away through the +underbrush at an abrupt angle on their right,--"where leads this +narrow road? To Belle Alliance plantation only, or not also to the +whole worl'? So is education! That road here once fetch me at Grande +Pointe; the same road fetch Claude away. Education came whispering, +'Claude St. Pierre, come! I have constitute' you citizen of the worl'. +Come, come, forgetting self!' Oh, dear friend, education is not for +self alone! Nay, even self is not for self!" + +"Well, den,"--the deep-voiced woodman stood with one boot on a low +stump, fiercely trimming a branch that he had struck from the parent +stem with one blow of his big, keen clasp-knife,--"self not for +self,--for what he gone off and lef' me in de swamp?" + +"Ah, sir!" replied Bonaventure, "what do I unceasingly tell those dear +school-chil'run? 'May we not make the most of self, yet not for +self?'" He laid his hand upon St. Pierre's shoulder. "And who sent +Claude hence if not his unselfish father?" + +"I was big fool," said St. Pierre, whittling on. + +"Nay, wise! Discovering the great rule of civilize-ation. Every man +not for self, but for every other!" + +The swamper disclaimed the generous imputation with a shake of the +head. + +"Naw, I dunno nut'n' 'bout dat. I look out for me and my boy, me.--And +beside,"--he abruptly threw away the staff he had trimmed, shut his +knife with a snap, and thrust it into his pocket,--"I dawn't see +ed'cation make no diff'ence. You say ed'cation--priest say +religion--me, I dawn't see neider one make no diff'ence. I see every +man look out for hisself and his li'l' crowd. Not you, but"--He waved +his hand bitterly toward the world at large. + +"Ah, sir!" cried Bonaventure, "'tis not something what you can see all +the time, like the horns on a cow! And yet, sir,--and yet!"--he lifted +himself upon tiptoe and ran his fingers through his thin hair--"the +education that make' no difference is but a dead body! and the +religion that make' no difference is a ghost! Behole! behole two +thing' in the worl', where all is giving and getting, two thing', +con_tra_ry, yet resem'ling! 'Tis the left han'--alas, alas!--giving +only to get; and the right, blessed of God, getting only to give! How +much resem'ling, yet how con_tra_ry! The one--han' of all strife; the +other--of all peace. And oh! dear friend, there are those who call the +one civilize-ation, and the other religion. Civilize-ation? Religion? +They are one! They are body and soul! I care not what religion the +priest teach you; in God's religion is comprise' the total _mecanique_ +of civilize-ation. We are all in it; you, me, Claude, Sidonie; all in +it! Each and every at his task, however high, however low, working not +to get, but to give, and not to give only to his own li'l' crowd, but +to all, to all!" The speaker ceased, for his hearer was nodding his +head with sceptical impatience. + +"Yass," said the woodman, "yass; but look, Bonaventure. Di'n' you said +one time, 'Knowledge is power'?" + +"Yes, truly; and it is." + +"But what use knowledge be power if goin' give ev't'in' away?" + +Bonaventure drew back a step or two, suddenly jerked his hat from his +head, and came forward again with arms stretched wide and the hat +dangling from his hand. "Because--because God will not let it sta-a-ay +given away! 'Give--it shall be give' to you.' Every thing given out +into God's worl' come back to us roun' God's worl'! Resem'ling the +stirring of water in a bucket." + +But St. Pierre frowned. "Yass,--wat' in bucket,--yass. Den no man +dawn't keep nut'n'. Dawn't own nut'n' he got." + +"Ah! sir, there is a better owning than to _own_. 'Tis giving, dear +friend; 'tis giving. To get? To have? That is not to own. The giver, +not the getter; the giver! he is the true owner. Live thou not to get, +but to give." Bonaventure's voice trembled; his eyes were full of +tears. + +The swamper stood up with his own eyes full, but his voice was firm. +"Bonaventure, I don't got much. I got dat li'l' shanty on Bayou des +Acadiens, and li'l' plunder inside--few kittle', and pan',--cast-net, +fish-line', two, t'ree gun', and--my wife' grave, yond' in graveyard. +But I got Claude,--my boy, my son. You t'ink God want me give my son +to whole worl'?" + +The schoolmaster took the woodsman's brown wrist tenderly into both +his hands, and said, scarce above a whisper, "He gave His, first. He +started it. Who can refuse, He starting it? And thou wilt not refuse." +The voice rose--"I see, I see the victory! Well art thou nominated +'St. Pierre!' for on that rock of giving"-- + +"Naw, sir! Stop!" The swamper dashed the moisture from his eyes and +summoned a look of stubborn resolve. "Mo' better you call me St. +Pierre because I'm a fisherman what cuss when I git mad. Look! You +dawn't want me git Claude back in Gran' Point'. You want me to give, +give. Well, all right! I goin' _quit_ Gran' Point' and give myself, +me, to Claude. I kin read, I kin write, I t'ink kin do better 'long +wid Claude dan livin' all 'lone wid snake' and alligator. I t'ink dass +mo' better for everybody; and anyhow, I dawn't care; I dawn't give my +son to nobody; I give myself to Claude." + +Bonaventure and his friend gazed into each other's wet eyes for a +moment. Then the schoolmaster turned, lifted his eyes and one arm +toward the west, and exclaimed: + +"Ah, Claude! thou receivest the noblest gift in Gran' Point'!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +CONVERGING LINES. + + +On the prairies of Vermilion and Lafayette, winter is virtually over +by the first week in February. From sky to sky, each tree and field, +each plain and plantation grove, are putting on the greenery of a +Northern May. Even on Cote Gelee the housewife has persuaded _le +vieux_ to lay aside his gun, and the early potatoes are already +planted. If the moon be at the full, much ground is ready for the +sower; and those ploughmen and pony teams and men working along behind +them with big, clumsy hoes, over in yonder field, are planting corn. +Those silent, tremulous strands of black that in the morning sky come +gliding, high overhead, from the direction of the great sea-marshes +and fade into the northern blue, are flocks that have escaped the +murderous gun of the pot-hunter. Spring and Summer are driving these +before them as the younger and older sister, almost abreast, come +laughing, and striving to outrun each other across the Mexican Gulf. + +Those two travellers on horseback, so dwarfed by distance, whom you +see approaching out of the north-west, you shall presently find have +made, in their dress, no provision against cold. At Carancro, some +miles away to the north-east, there is a thermometer; and somewhere in +Vermilionville, a like distance to the south-east, there might +possibly be found a barometer; but there is no need of either to tell +that the air to-day is threescore and ten and will be more before it +is less. Before the riders draw near you have noticed that only one is +a man and the other a woman. And now you may see that he is sleek and +alert, blonde and bland, and the savage within us wants to knock off +his silk hat. All the more so for that she is singularly pretty to be +met in his sole care. The years count on her brows, it is true, but +the way in which they tell of matronhood--and somehow of widowhood +too--is a very fair and gentle way. Her dress is plain, but its lines +have a grace that is also dignity; and the lines of her face--lines is +too hard a word for them--are not those of time, but of will and of +care, that have chastened and refined one another. She speaks only now +and then. Her companion's speech fills the wide intervals. + +"Yesterday morning," he says, "as I came along here a little after +sunrise, there was a thin fog lying only two or three feet deep, close +to the level ground as far as you could see, hiding the whole prairie, +and making it look for all the world like a beautiful lake, with every +here and there a green grove standing out of it like a real little +island." + +She replies that she used to see it so in her younger days. The +Acadian accent is in her words. She lifts her black eyes, looks toward +Carancro, and is silent. + +"You're thinking of the changes," says her escort. + +"Yass; _'tis_ so. Dey got twenty time' many field' like had befo'. +Peop' don't raise cattl' no more; raise crop'. Dey say even dat land +changin'." + +"How changing?" + +"I dunno. I dunno if _'tis_ so. Dey say prairie risin' mo' higher +every year. I dunno if _'tis_ so. I t'ink dat land don't change much; +but de peop', yass." + +"Still, the changes are mostly good changes," responds the male rider. +"'Tisn't the prairie, but the people that are rising. They've got the +schoolhouse, and the English language, and a free paid labor system, +and the railroads, and painted wagons, and Cincinnati furniture, and +sewing-machines, and melodeons, and Horsford's Acid Phosphate; and +they've caught the spirit of progress!" + +"Yass, _'tis_ so. Dawn't see nobody seem satisfied--since de +army--since de railroad." + +"Well, that's right enough; they oughtn't to be satisfied. You're not +satisfied, are you? And yet you've never done so well before as you +have this season. I wish I could say the same for the 'Album of +Universal Information;' but I can't. I tell you that, Madame +Beausoleil; I wouldn't tell anybody else." + +Zosephine responds with a dignified bow. She has years ago noticed in +herself, that, though she has strength of will, she lacks clearness +and promptness of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to do +with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. But there is always +a plausible explanation of his presence, and a person of more tactful +propriety, it seems to her, never put his name upon her tavern +register or himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow or +specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions +in her that Bonaventure lighted; and although Mr. Tarbox's modest +loveliness is not visible, yet a certain fundamental rectitude, +discernible behind all his nebulous gaudiness, confirms her liking. +Then, too, he has earned her gratitude. She has inherited not only her +father's small fortune, but his thrift as well. She can see the +sagacity of Mr. Tarbox's advice in pecuniary matters, and once and +once again, when he has told her quietly of some little operation into +which he and the ex-governor--who "thinks the world of me," he +says--were going to dip, and she has accepted his invitation to +venture in also, to the extent of a single thousand dollars, the money +has come back handsomely increased. Even now, the sale of all her +prairie lands to her former kinsmen-in-law, which brought her out here +yesterday and lets her return this morning, is made upon his +suggestion, and is so advantageous that somehow, she doesn't know +why, she almost fears it isn't fair to the other side. The fact is, +the country is passing from the pastoral to the agricultural life, the +prairies are being turned into countless farms, and the people are +getting wealth. So explains Mr. Tarbox, whose happening to come along +this morning bound in her direction is pure accident--pure accident. + +"No, the 'A. of U. I.' hasn't done its best," he says again. "For one +thing, I've had other fish to fry. You know that." He ventures a +glance at her eyes, but they ignore it, and he adds, "I mean other +financial matters." + +"_'Tis_ so," says Zosephine; and Mr. Tarbox hopes the reason for this +faint repulse is only the nearness of this farmhouse peeping at them +through its pink veil of blossoming peach-trees, as they leisurely +trot by. + +"Yes," he says; "and, besides, 'Universal Information' isn't what this +people want. The book's too catholic for them." + +"Too Cat'oleek!" Zosephine raises her pretty eyebrows in grave +astonishment--"'Cadian' is all Cat'oleek." + +"Yes, yes, ecclesiastically speaking, I know. That wasn't my meaning. +Your smaller meaning puts my larger one out of sight; yes, just as +this Cherokee hedge puts out of sight the miles of prairie fields, and +even that house we just passed. No, the 'A. of U. I.,'--I love to call +it that; can you guess why?" There is a venturesome twinkle in his +smile, and even a playful permission in her own as she shakes her +head. + +"Well, I'll tell you; it's because it brings U and I so near +together." + +"Hah!" exclaims Madame Beausoleil, warningly, yet with sunshine and +cloud on her brow at once. She likes her companion's wit, always so +deep, and yet always so delicately pointed! His hearty laugh just now +disturbs her somewhat, but they are out on the wide plain again, +without a spot in all the sweep of her glance where an eye or an ear +may ambush them or their walking horses. + +"No," insists her fellow-traveller; "I say again, as I said before, +the 'A. of U. I.'"--he pauses at the initials, and Zosephine's faint +smile gives him ecstasy--"hasn't done its best. And yet it has done +beautifully! Why, when did you ever see such a list as this?" He +dexterously draws from an extensive inner breast-pocket, such as no +coat but a book-agent's or a shoplifter's would be guilty of, a wide, +limp, morocco-bound subscription-book. "Here!" He throws it open upon +the broad Texas pommel. "Now, just for curiosity, look at it--oh! you +can't see it from away off there, looking at it sideways!" He gives +her a half-reproachful, half-beseeching smile and glance, and gathers +up his dropped bridle. They come closer. Their two near shoulders +approach each other, the two elbows touch, and two dissimilar hands +hold down the leaves. The two horses playfully bite at each other; it +is their way of winking one eye. + +"Now, first, here's the governor's name; and then his son's, and his +nephew's, and his other son's, and his cousin's. And here's Pierre +Cormeaux, and Baptiste Clement, you know, at Carancro; and here's +Basilide Sexnailder, and Joseph Cantrelle, and Jacques Hebert; see? +And Gaudin, and Laprade, Blouin, and Roussel,--old Christofle Roussel +of Beau Bassin,--Duhon, Roman and Simonette Le Blanc, and Judge +Landry, and Theriot,--Colonel Theriot,--Martin, Hebert again, +Robichaux, Mouton, Mouton again, Robichaux again, Mouton--oh, I've got +'em all!--Castille, Beausoleil--cousin of yours? Yes, he said so; good +fellow, thinks you're the greatest woman alive." The two dissimilar +hands, in turning a leaf, touch, and the smaller one leaves the book. +"And here's Guilbeau, and Latiolais, and Thibodeaux, and Soudrie, and +Arcenaux--flowers of the community--'I gather them in,'--and here's a +page of Cote Gelee people, and--Joe Jefferson hadn't got back to the +Island yet, but I've got his son; see? And here's--can you make out +this signature? It's written so small"-- + +Both heads,--with only the heavens and the dear old earth-mother to +see them,--both heads bend over the book; the hand that had retreated +returns, but bethinks itself and withdraws again; the eyes of Mr. +Tarbox look across their corners at the sedate brow so much nearer his +than ever it has been before, until that brow feels the look, and +slowly draws away. Look to your mother, Marguerite; look to her! But +Marguerite is not there, not even in Vermilionville; nor yet in +Lafayette parish; nor anywhere throughout the wide prairies of +Opelousas or Attakapas. Triumph fills Mr. Tarbox's breast. + +"Well," he says, restoring the book to its hiding-place, "seems like +I ought to be satisfied with that; doesn't it to you?" + +It does; Zosephine says so. She sees the double meaning, and Mr. +Tarbox sees that she sees it, but must still move cautiously. So he +says: + +"Well, I'm not satisfied. It's perfect as far as it goes, but don't +expect me to be satisfied with it. If I've seemed satisfied, shall I +tell you why it was, my dear--friend?" + +Zosephine makes no reply; but her dark eyes meeting his for a moment, +and then falling to her horse's feet, seem to beg for mercy. + +"It's because," says Mr. Tarbox, while her heart stands still, "it's +because I've made"--there is an awful pause--"more money without the +'A. of U. I.' this season than I've made with it." + +Madame Beausoleil catches her breath, shows relief in every feature, +lifts her eyes with sudden brightness, and exclaims: + +"Dass good! Dass mighty good, yass! _'Tis_ so." + +"Yes, it is; and I tell you, and you only, because I'm proud to +believe you're my sincere friend. Am I right?" + +Zosephine busies herself with her riding-skirt, shifts her seat a +little, and with studied carelessness assents. + +"Yes," her companion repeats; "and so I tell you. The true business +man is candid to all, communicative to none. And yet I open my heart +to you. I can't help it; it won't stay shut. And you must see, I'm +sure you must, that there's something more in there besides money; +don't you?" His tone grows tender. + +Madame Beausoleil steals a glance toward him,--a grave, timid glance. +She knows there is safety in the present moment. Three horsemen, +strangers, far across the field in their front, are coming toward +them, and she feels an almost proprietary complacence in a suitor whom +she can safely trust to be saying just the right nothings when those +shall meet them and ride by. She does not speak; but he says: + +"You know there is, dear Jos----friend!" He smiles with modest +sweetness. "G. W. Tarbox doesn't run after money, and consequently he +never runs past much without picking it up." They both laugh in +decorous moderation. The horsemen are drawing near; they are Acadians. +"I admit I love to make money. But that's not my chief pleasure. My +chief pleasure is the study of human nature. + + 'The proper study of mankind is man. + * * * * * + Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, + The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.' + +"This season I've been studying these Acadian people. And I like them! +They don't like to be reminded that they're Acadians. Well, that's +natural; the Creoles used to lord it over them so when the Creoles +were slave-holding planters and they were small farmers. That's about +past now. The Acadians are descended from peasants, that's true, while +some Creoles are from the French nobility. But, hooh! wouldn't any +fair-minded person"--the horsemen are within earshot; they are +staring at the silk hat--"Adjieu." + +"Adjieu." They pass. + +"--Wouldn't any fair-minded person that knows what France was two or +three hundred years ago--show you some day in the 'Album'--about as +lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good +deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dear--friend, the day's +coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there +is in Louisiana! They're the only white people that ever trod this +continent--island or mainland--who never on their own account +oppressed anybody. Some little depredation on their British neighbors, +out of dogged faithfulness to their king and church,--that's the worst +charge you can make. Look at their history! all poetry and pathos! +Look at their character! brave, peaceable, loyal, industrious, +home-loving"-- + +But Zosephine was looking at the speaker. Her face is kindled with the +inspiration of his praise. His own eyes grow ardent. + +"Look at their women! Ah, Josephine, I'm looking at one! Don't turn +away. + + --'One made up + Of loveliness alone; + A woman, of her gentle sex + The seeming paragon.' + + 'The reason firm, the temperate will, + Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; + A perfect woman nobly planned, + To warn, to comfort, and command.' + +"You can't stop me, Josephine; it's got to come, and come right now. +I'm a homeless man, Josephine, tired of wandering, with a heart bigger +and weaker than I ever thought I had. I want you! I love you! I've +never loved anybody before in my life except myself, and I don't find +myself as lovely as I used. Oh, take me, Josephine! I don't ask you to +love as if you'd never loved another. I'll take what's left, and be +perfectly satisfied! I know you're ambitious, and I love you for that! +But I do think I can give you a larger life. With you for a wife, I +believe I could be a man you needn't be ashamed of. I'm already at the +head of my line. Best record in the United States, Josephine, whether +by the day, week, month, year, or locality. But if you don't like the +line, I'll throw up the 'A. of U. I.' and go into any thing you say; +for I want to lift you higher, Josephine. You're above me already, by +nature and by rights, but I can lift you, I know I can. You've got no +business keeping tavern; you're one of Nature's aristocrats. Yes, you +are! and you're too young and lovely to stay a widow--in a State where +there's more men than there's women. There's a good deal of the hill +yet to climb before you start down. Oh, let's climb it together, +Josephine! I'll make you happier than you are, Josephine; I haven't +got a bad habit left; such as I had, I've quit; it don't pay. I don't +drink, chew, smoke, tell lies, swear, quarrel, play cards, make debts, +nor belong to a club--be my wife! Your daughter 'll soon be leaving +you. You can't be happy alone. Take me! take me!" He urges his horse +close--her face is averted--and lays his hand softly but firmly on +her two, resting folded on the saddle-horn. They struggle faintly and +are still; but she slowly shakes her hanging head. + +"O Josephine! you don't mean no, do you? Look this way! you don't mean +no?" He presses his hand passionately down upon hers. Her eyes do not +turn to his; but they are lifted tearfully to the vast, unanswering +sky, and as she mournfully shakes her head again, she cries,-- + +"I dunno! I dunno! I can't tell! I got to see Marguerite." + +"Well, you'll see her in an hour, and if she"-- + +"Naw, naw! 'tis not so; Marguerite is in New Orleans since Christmas." + +Very late in the evening of that day Mr. Tarbox entered the principal +inn of St. Martinville, on the Teche. He wore an air of blitheness +which, though silent, was overdone. As he pushed his silk hat back on +his head, and registered his name with a more than usual largeness of +hand, he remarked: + + "'Man wants but little here below, + Nor wants that little long.' + +"Give me a short piece of candle and a stumpy candlestick--and + + 'Take me up, and bear me hence + Into some other chamber'"-- + +"Glad to see you back, Mr. Tarbox," responded the host; and as his +guest received the candle and heard the number of his room,--"books +must 'a' went well this fine day." + +Mr. Tarbox fixed him with his eye, drew a soft step closer, said in a +low tone: + + "'My only books + Were woman's looks, + And folly's all they've taught me.'" + +The landlord raised his eyebrows, rounded his mouth, and darted out +his tongue. The guest shifted the candle to his left hand, laid his +right softly upon the host's arm, and murmured: + +"List! Are we alone? If I tell thee something, wilt thou tell it +never?" + +The landlord smiled eagerly, shook his head, and bent toward his +speaker. + +"Friend Perkins," said Mr. Tarbox, in muffled voice-- + + "'So live, that when thy summons comes to join + The innumerable caravan which moves + To that mysterious realm where each shall take + His chamber in the silent halls of death, + Thou go not, like the quarry-slave, at night, + Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed + By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave + Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch + About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.' + +"Don't let the newspapers get hold of it--good-night." + +But it was only at daybreak that Mr. Tarbox disordered the drapery of +his couch to make believe he had slept there, and at sunrise he was +gone to find Claude. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +'THANASE'S VIOLIN. + + +Had Marguerite gone to New Orleans the better to crush Claude out of +her heart? No, no! Her mother gave an explanation interesting and +reasonable enough, and at the same time less uncomfortably romantic. +Marguerite had gone to the city to pursue studies taught better there +than in Opelousas; especially music. + +Back of this was a reason which she had her mother's promise not to +mention,--the physician's recommendation--a change of scene. He spoke +of slight malarial influences, and how many odd forms they took; of +dyspepsia and its queer freaks; of the confining nature of house +cares, and of how often they "ran down the whole system." His phrases +were French, but they had all the weary triteness of these; while +Marguerite rejoiced that he did not suspect the real ailment, and +Zosephine saw that he divined it perfectly. + +A change of scene. Marguerite had treated the suggestion lightly, as +something amusingly out of proportion to her trivial disorder, but +took pains not to reject it. Zosephine had received it with troubled +assent, and mentioned the small sugar-farm and orangery of the kinsman +Robichaux, down on Bayou Terrebonne. But the physician said, "If that +would not be too dull;" mentioned, casually, the city, and saw +Marguerite lighten up eagerly. The city was chosen; the physician's +sister, living there, would see Marguerite comfortably established. +All was presently arranged. + +"And you can take your violin with you, and study music," he said. +Marguerite had one, and played it with a taste and skill that knew no +competitor in all the surrounding region. + +It had belonged to her father. Before she was born, all Lafayette +parish had known it tenderly. Before she could talk she had +danced--courtesied and turned, tiptoed and fallen and risen again, +latter end first, to the gay strains he had loved to wring from it. +Before it seemed safe, for the instrument, to trust it in her hands, +she had learned to draw its bow; and for years, now, there had been no +resident within the parish who could not have been her scholar better +than to be her teacher. + +When Claude came, she had shut the violin in its case, and left the +poor thing hidden away, despising its powers to charm, lost in +self-contempt, and helpless under the spell of a chaste passion's +first enchantment. When he went, she still forgot the instrument for +many days. She returned with more than dutiful energy to her full part +in the household cares, and gave every waking hour not so filled to +fierce study. If she could not follow him--if a true maiden must wait +upon faith--at least she would be ready if fate should ever bring him +back. + +But one night, when she had conned her simple books until the words +ran all together on the page, some good angel whispered, "The +violin!" She took it and played. The music was but a song, but from +some master of song. She played it, it may be, not after the best +rules, yet as one may play who, after life's first great billow has +gone over him, smites again his forgotten instrument. With tears, of +all emotions mingled, starting from her eyes, and the bow trembling on +the strings, she told the violin her love. And it answered her: + +"Be strong! be strong! you shall not love for naught. He shall--he +shall come back--he shall come back and lead us into joy." From that +time the violin had more employment than ever before in all its days. + +So it and Marguerite were gone away to the great strange city +together. The loneliness they left behind was a sad burden to +Zosephine. No other one thing had had so much influence to make so +nearly vulnerable the defences of her heart when Mr. Tarbox essayed to +storm them. On the night following that event, the same that he had +spent so sleeplessly in St. Martinville, she wrote a letter to +Marguerite, which, though intended to have just the opposite effect, +made the daughter feel that this being in New Orleans, and all the +matter connected with it, were one unmixed mass of utter selfishness. +The very written words that charged her to stay on seemed to say, +"Come home!" Her strong little mother! always quiet and grave, it is +true, and sometimes sad; yet so well poised, so concentrated, so equal +to every passing day and hour!--she to seem--in this letter--far out +of her course, adrift, and mutely and dimly signalling for aid! The +daughter read the pages again and again. What could they mean? Here, +for instance, this line about the mother's coming herself to the city, +if, and if, and if! + +The letter found Marguerite in the bosom of a family that dwelt in the +old Rue Bourbon, only a short way below Canal Street, the city's +centre. The house stands on the street, its drawing-room windows +opening upon the sidewalk, and a narrow balcony on the story above +shading them scantily at noon. A garden on the side is visible from +the street through a lofty, black, wrought-iron fence. Of the details +within the enclosure, I remember best the vines climbing the walls of +the tall buildings that shut it in, and the urns and vases, and the +evergreen foliage of the Japan plum-trees. A little way off, and +across the street, was the pleasant restaurant and salesroom of the +Christian Women's Exchange. + +The family spoke English. Indeed, they spoke it a great deal; and +French--also a great deal. The younger generation, two daughters and a +son, went much into society. Their name was that of an ancient French +noble house, with which, in fact, they had no connection. They took +great pains to call themselves Creoles, though they knew well enough +they were Acadians. The Acadian caterpillar often turns into a Creole +butterfly. Their great-grandfather, one of the children of the +Nova-Scotian deportation, had been a tobacco-farmer on the old Cote +Acadien in St. John the Baptist parish. Lake des Allemands lay there, +just behind him. In 1815, his son, their grandfather, in an excursion +through the lake and bayou beyond, discovered, far south-eastward in +the midst of the Grande Prairie des Allemands, a "pointe" of several +hundred acres extent. Here, with one or two others, he founded the +Acadian settlement of "La Vacherie," and began to build a modest +fortune. The blood was good, even though it was not the blood of +ancient robbers; and the son in the next generation found his way, by +natural and easy stages, through Barataria and into the city, and +became the "merchant" of his many sugar and rice planting kinsmen and +neighbors. + +It was a great favor to Marguerite to be taken into such a household +as this. She felt it so. The household felt it so. Yet almost from the +start they began to play her, in their social world, as their best +card--when they could. She had her hours of school and of home study; +also her music, both lessons and practice; was in earnest both as to +books and violin, and had teachers who also were in earnest; and so +she found little time for social revels. Almost all sociality is revel +in New-Orleans society, and especially in the society she met. + +But when she did appear, somehow she shone. A native instinct in +dress,--even more of it than her mother had at the same age,--and in +manners and speech, left only so little rusticity as became itself a +charm rather than a blemish, suggested the sugar-cane fields; the +orange-grove; the plantation-house, with pillared porch, half-hidden +in tall magnolias and laurestines and bushes of red and white +camellias higher and wider than arms can reach, and covered with +their regal flowers from the ground to their tops; and the bayou front +lined with moss-draped live-oaks, their noonday shadows a hundred feet +across. About her there was not the faintest hint of the country +tavern. She was but in her seventeenth year; but on her native +prairies, where girls are women at fourteen, seventeen was almost an +advanced stage of decay. She seemed full nineteen, and a very +well-equipped nineteen as social equipments went in the circle she had +entered. Being a schoolgirl was no drawback; there are few New-Orleans +circles where it is; and especially not in her case, for she needed +neither to titter nor chatter,--she could talk. And then, her violin +made victory always easy and certain. + +Sometimes the company was largely of down-town Creoles; sometimes of +up-town people,--"Americans;" and often equally of the two sorts, +talking French and English in most amusing and pleasing confusion. For +the father of the family had lately been made president of a small +bank, and was fairly boxing the social compass in search of +depositors. Marguerite had not yet discovered that--if we may drag the +metaphor ashore--to enter society is not to emerge upon an unbroken +table-land, or that she was not on its highest plateau. She noticed +the frequency with which she encountered unaccomplished fathers, +stupid mothers, rude sons and daughters, and ill-distributed personal +regard; but she had the common-sense not to expect more of society +than its nature warrants, guessed rightly that she would find the +same thing anywhere else, and could not know that these elements were +less mixed with better here than in many other of the city's circles, +of whose existence she had not even heard. However: + +Society, at its very best, always needs, and at its best or worst +always contains, a few superior members, who make themselves a +blessing by working a constant, tactful redistribution of individuals +by their true values, across the unworthy lines upon which society +ever tends to stratify. Such a person, a matron, sat with Marguerite +one April evening under a Chinese lantern in the wide, curtained +veranda of an Esplanade-street house whose drawing-room and Spanish +garden were filled with company. + +Marguerite was secretly cast down. This lady had brought her here, +having met her but a fortnight before and chosen her at once, in her +own private counsels, for social promotion. And Marguerite had played +the violin. In her four months' advanced training she had accomplished +wonders. Her German professor made the statement, while he warned her +against enthusiastic drawing-room flattery. This evening she had +gotten much praise and thanks. Yet these had a certain discriminative +moderation that was new to her ear, and confirmed to her, not in the +pleasantest way, the realization that this company was of higher +average intelligence and refinement than any she had met before. She +little guessed that the best impression she had ever made she made +here to-night. + +Of course it was not merely on account of the violin. She had beauty, +not only of face and head, but of form and carriage. So that when she +stood with her instrument, turning, as it were, every breath of air +into music, and the growing volume of the strains called forth all her +good Acadian strength of arms and hand, she charmed not merely the +listening ear, but the eye, the reason, and the imagination in its +freest range. + +But, indeed, it was not the limitations of her social triumphs +themselves that troubled her. Every experience of the evening had +helped to show her how much wider the world was than she had dreamed, +and had opened new distances on the right, on the left, and far ahead; +and nowhere in them all could eye see, or ear hear, aught of that one +without whom to go back to old things was misery, and to go on to new +was mere weariness. And the dear little mother at home!--worth nine +out of any ten of all this crowd--still at home in that old +tavern-keeping life, now intolerable to think of, and still writing +those yearning letters that bade the daughter not return! No wonder +Marguerite's friend had divined her feelings, and drawn her out to the +cool retreat under the shadow of the veranda lanterns. + +A gentleman joined them, who had "just come," he said. Marguerite's +companion and he were old friends. Neither he nor Marguerite heard +each other's name, nor could see each other's face more than dimly. He +was old enough to be twitted for bachelorhood, and to lay the blame +upon an outdoor and out-of-town profession. Such words drew +Marguerite's silent but close attention. + +The talk turned easily from this to the ease with which the fair sex, +as compared with the other, takes on the graces of the drawing-room. +"Especially," the two older ones agreed, "if the previous lack is due +merely to outward circumstances." But Marguerite was still. Here was a +new thought. One who attained all those graces and love's prize also +might at last, for love's sake, have to count them but dross, or carry +them into retirement, the only trophies of abandoned triumphs. While +she thought, the conversation went on. + +"Yes," said her friend, replying to the bachelor, "we acquire +drawing-room graces more easily; but why? Because most of us think we +must. A man may find success in one direction or another; but a woman +has got to be a social success, or she's a complete failure. She can't +snap her fingers at the drawing-room." + +"Ah!" exclaimed Marguerite, "she can if she want!" She felt the +strength to rise that moment and go back to Opelousas, if only--and +did not see, until her companions laughed straight at her, that the +lady had spoken in jest. + +"Still," said the bachelor, "the drawing-room is woman's +element--realm--rather than man's, whatever the reasons may be. I had +a young man with me last winter"-- + +"I knew it!" thought Marguerite. + +"--until lately, in fact; he's here in town now,--whom I have tried +once or twice to decoy into company in a small experimental way. It's +harder than putting a horse into a ship. He seems not to know what +social interchange is for." + +"Thinks it's for intellectual profit and pleasure," interrupted the +ironical lady. + +"No, he just doesn't see the use or fun of it. And yet, really, that's +his only deficiency. True, he listens better than he talks--overdoes +it; but when a chap has youth, intelligence, native refinement, +integrity, and good looks, as far above the mean level as many of our +society fellows are below it, it seems to me he ought to be"-- + +"Utilized," suggested the lady, casting her eyes toward Marguerite and +withdrawing them as quickly, amused at the earnestness of her +attention. + +"Yes," said the bachelor, and mused a moment. "He's a talented fellow. +It's only a few months ago that he really began life. Now he's +outgrown my service." + +"Left the nest," said the lady. + +"Yes, indeed. He has invented"-- + +"Oh, dear!" + +The bachelor was teased. "Ah! come, now; show your usual kindness; he +has, really, made a simple, modest agricultural machine that--meets a +want long felt. Oh! you may laugh; but he laughs last. He has not only +a patent for it, but a good sale also, and is looking around for other +worlds to conquer." + +"And yet spurns society? Ours!" + +"No, simply develops no affinity for it; would like to, if only to +please me; but can't. Doesn't even make intimate companions among men; +simply clings to his fond, lone father, and the lone father to him, +closer than any pair of twin orphan girls that ever you saw. I don't +believe any thing in life could divide them." + +"Ah, don't you trust him! Man proposes, Cupid disposes. A girl will +stick to her mother; but a man? Why, the least thing--a pair of blue +eyes, a yellow curl"-- + +The bachelor gayly shook his head, and, leaning over with an air of +secrecy, said: "A pair of blue eyes have shot him through and through, +and a yellow curl is wound all round him from head to heel, and yet he +sticks to his father." + +"He can't live," said the lady. Marguerite's hand pressed her arm, and +they rose. As the bachelor drew the light curtain of a long window +aside, that they might pass in, the light fell upon Marguerite's face. +It was entirely new to him. It seemed calm. Yet instantly the question +smote him, "What have I done? what have I said?" She passed, and +turned to give a parting bow. The light fell upon him. She was right; +it was Claude's friend, the engineer. + +When he came looking for them a few minutes later, he only caught, by +chance, a glimpse of them, clouded in light wraps and passing to their +carriage. It was not yet twelve. + +Between Marguerite's chamber and that of one of the daughters of the +family there was a door that neither one ever fastened. Somewhere +down-stairs a clock was striking three in the morning, when this door +softly opened and the daughter stole into Marguerite's room in her +night-robe. With her hair falling about her, her hands unconsciously +clasped, her eyes starting, and an outcry of amazement checked just +within her open, rounded mouth, she stopped and stood an instant in +the brightly lighted chamber. + +Marguerite sat on the bedside exactly as she had come from the +carriage, save that a white gossamer web had dropped from her head and +shoulders, and lay coiled about her waist. Her tearless eyes were wide +and filled with painful meditation, even when she turned to the +alarmed and astonished girl before her. With suppressed exclamations +of wonder and pity the girl glided forward, cast her arms about the +sitting figure, and pleaded for explanation. + +"It is a headache," said Marguerite, kindly but firmly lifting away +the intwining arms.--"No, no, you can do nothing.--It is a +headache.--Yes, I will go to bed presently; you go to yours.--No, +no"-- + +The night-robed girl looked for a moment more into Marguerite's eyes, +then sank to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and wept. +Marguerite laid her hands upon the bowed head and looked down with dry +eyes. "No," she presently said again, "it is a headache. Go back to +your bed.--No, there is nothing to tell; only I have been very, very +foolish and very, very selfish, and I am going home to-morrow. +Good-night." + +The door closed softly between the two. Then Marguerite sank slowly +back upon the bed, closed her eyes, and rocking her head from side to +side, said again and again, in moans that scarcely left the lips: + +"My mother! my mother! Take me back! Oh! take me back, my mother! my +mother!" + +At length she arose, put off her attire, lay down to rest, and, even +while she was charging sleep with being a thousand leagues +away--slept. + +When she awoke, the wide, bright morning filled all the room. Had some +sound wakened her? Yes, a soft tapping came again upon her door. She +lay still. It sounded once more. For all its softness, it seemed +nervous and eager. A low voice came with it: + +"Marguerite!" + +She sprang from her pillow.--"Yes!" + +While she answered, it came again,-- + +"Marguerite!" + +With a low cry, she cast away the bed-coverings, threw back the white +mosquito-curtain and the dark masses of her hair, and started up, +lifted and opened her arms, cried again, but with joy, "My mother! my +mother!" and clasped Zosephine to her bosom. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE SHAKING PRAIRIE. + + +Manifestly it was a generous overstatement for Claude's professional +friend to say that Claude had outgrown his service. It was true only +that by and by there had come a juncture in his affairs where he could +not, without injustice to others, make a place for Claude which he +could advise Claude to accept, and they had parted with the mutual +hope that the separation would be transient. But the surveyor could +not but say to himself that such incidents, happening while we are +still young, are apt to be turning-points in our lives, if our lives +are going to have direction and movement of their own at all. + +St. Pierre had belted his earnings about him under the woollen sash +that always bound his waist, shouldered his rifle, taken one last, +silent look at the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, stood for a few +moments with his hand in Bonaventure's above one green mound in the +churchyard at Grande Pointe, given it into the schoolmaster's care, +and had gone to join his son. Of course, not as an idler; such a +perfect woodsman easily made himself necessary to the engineer's +party. The company were sorry enough to lose him when Claude went +away; but no temptation that they could invent could stay him from +following Claude. Father and son went in one direction, and the camp +in another. + +I must confess to being somewhat vague as to just where they were. I +should have to speak from memory, and I must not make another slip in +topography. The changes men have made in Southern Louisiana these last +few years are great. I say nothing, again, of the vast widths of +prairie stripped of the herds and turned into corn and cane fields: +when I came, a few months ago, to that station on Morgan's Louisiana +and Texas Railroad where Claude first went aboard a railway-train, +somebody had actually moved the bayou, the swamp, and the prairie +apart! + +However, the exact whereabouts of the St. Pierres is not important to +us. Mr. Tarbox, when in search of the camp he crossed the Teche at St. +Martinville, expected to find it somewhere north-eastward, between +that stream and the Atchafalaya. But at the Atchafalaya he found that +the work in that region had been finished three days before, and that +the party had been that long gone to take part in a new work down in +the _prairies tremblantes_ of Terrebonne Parish. The Louisiana Land +Reclamation Company,--I think that was the name of the concern +projecting the scheme. This was back in early February, you note. + +Thither Mr. Tarbox followed. The "Album of Universal Information" went +along, and "did well." It made his progress rather slow, of course; +but one of Mr. Tarbox's many maxims was, never to make one day pay for +another when it could be made to pay for itself, and during this +season--this Louisiana campaign, as he called it--he had developed a +new art,--making each day pay for itself several times over. + +"Many of these people," he said,--but said it solely and silently to +himself,--"are ignorant, shiftless, and set in their ways; and even +when they're not they're out of the current, as it were; they haven't +headway; and so they never--or seldom ever--see any way to make money +except somehow in connection with the plantations. There's no end of +chances here to a man that's got money-sense, and nerve to use it." He +wrote that to Zosephine, but she wrote no answer. A day rarely passed +that he did not find some man making needless loss through ignorance +or inactivity; whereupon he would simply put in the sickle of his +sharper wit, and garner the neglected harvest. Or, seeing some +unesteemed commodity that had got out of, or had never been brought +into, its best form, time, or place, he knew at sight just how, and at +what expense, to bring it there, and brought it. + +"Give me the gains other men pass by," he said, "and I'll be +satisfied. The saying is, 'Buy wisdom;' but I sell mine. I like to +sell. I enjoy making money. It suits my spirit of adventure. I like an +adventure. And if there's any thing I love, it's an adventure with +money in it! But even that isn't my chief pleasure: my chief +pleasure's the study of human nature. + + 'The proper study of mankind is man. + * * * * * + Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, + The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.'" + +This spoiling of Assyrian camps, so to speak, often detained Mr. +Tarbox within limited precincts for days at a time; but "Isn't that +what time is for?" he would say to those he had been dealing with, as +he finally snapped the band around his pocket-book; and they would +respond, "Yes, that's so." + +And then he would wish them a hearty farewell, while they were +thinking that at least he might know it was his treat. + +Thus it was the middle of February when at Houma, the parish seat of +Terrebonne, he passed the last rootlet of railway, and, standing +finally under the blossoming orange-trees of Terrebonne Bayou far +down toward the Gulf, heard from the chief of the engineering party +that Claude was not with him. + +"He didn't leave us; we left him; and up to the time when we left he +hadn't decided where he would go or what he would do. His father and +he are together, you know, and of course that makes it harder for them +to know just how to move." + +The speaker was puzzled. What could this silk-hatted, cut-away-coated, +empearled, free lance of a fellow want with Claude? He would like to +find out. So he added, "I may get a letter from him to-morrow; suppose +you stay with me until then." And, to his astonishment, Mr. Tarbox +quickly jumped at the proposition. + +No letter came. But when the twenty-four hours had passed, the +surveyor had taken that same generous--not to say credulous--liking +for Mr. Tarbox that we have seen him show for St. Pierre and for +Claude. He was about to start on a tour of observation eastward +through a series of short canals that span the shaking prairies from +bayou to bayou, from Terrebonne to Lafourche, Lafourche to Des +Allemands, so through Lake Ouacha into and up Barataria, again across +prairie, and at length, leaving Lake Cataouache on the left, through +cypress-swamp to the Mississippi River, opposite New Orleans. He would +have pressed Mr. Tarbox to bear him company; but before he could ask +twice, Mr. Tarbox had consented. They went in a cat-rigged skiff, with +a stalwart negro rowing or towing whenever the sail was not the best. + +"It's all of sixty miles," said the engineer; "but if the wind +doesn't change or drop we can sleep to-night in Achille's hut, send +this man and skiff back, and make Achille, with his skiff, put us on +board the Louisiana-avenue ferry-launch to-morrow afternoon." + +"Who is Achille?" + +"Achille? Oh! he's merely a 'Cajun pot-hunter living on a shell bank +at the edge of Lake Cataouache, with an Indian wife. Used to live +somewhere on Bayou des Allemands, but last year something or other +scared him away from there. He's odd--seems to be a sort of self-made +outcast. I don't suppose he's ever done anybody any harm; but he just +seems to be one of that kind that can't bear to even try to keep up +with the rest of humanity; the sort of man swamps and shaking prairies +were specially made for, you know. He's living right on top of a bank +of fossil shells now,--thousands of barrels of them,--that he knows +would bring him a little fortune if only he could command the +intelligence and the courage to market them in New Orleans. There's a +chance for some bright man who isn't already too busy. Why didn't I +think to mention it to Claude? But then neither he nor his father have +got the commercial knowledge they would need. Now"--The speaker +suddenly paused, and, as the two men sat close beside each other under +an umbrella in the stern of the skiff, looked into Mr. Tarbox's +pale-blue eyes, and smiled, and smiled. + +"I'm here," said Mr. Tarbox. + +"Yes," responded the other, "and I've just made out why! And you're +right, Tarbox; you and Claude, with or without his father, will make +a strong team. You've got no business to be canvassing books, you"-- + +"It's my line," said the canvasser, smiling fondly and pushing his hat +back,--it was wonderful how he kept that hat smooth,--"and I'm the +head of the line: + + 'A voice replied far up the height, + Excelsior!' + +I was acquainted with Mr. Longfellow." + +"Tarbox," persisted the engineer, driving away his own smile, "you +know what you are; you are a born contractor! You've found it out, +and"--smiling again--"that's why you're looking for Claude." + +"Where is he?" asked Mr. Tarbox. + +"Well, I told you the truth when I said I didn't know; but I haven't a +doubt he's in Vermilionville." + +"Neither have I," said the book-agent; "and if I had, I wouldn't give +it room. If I knew he was in New Jersey, still I'd think he was in +Vermilionville, and go there looking for him. And wherefore? For +occult reasons." The two men looked at each other smilingly in the +eye, and the boat glided on. + +The wind favored them. With only now and then the cordelle, and still +more rarely the oars, they moved all day across the lands and waters +that were once the fastnesses of the Baratarian pirates. The engineer +made his desired observations without appreciable delays, and at night +they slept under Achille's thatch of rushes. + +As the two travellers stood alone for a moment next morning, the +engineer said: + +"You seem to be making a study of my pot-hunter." + +"It's my natural instinct," replied Mr. Tarbox. "The study of human +nature comes just as natural to me as it does to a new-born duck to +scratch the back of its head with its hind foot; just as natural--and +easier. The pot-hunter is a study; you're right." + +"But he reciprocates," said the engineer; "he studies you." + +The student of man held his smiling companion's gaze with his own, +thrust one hand into his bosom, and lifted the digit of the other: +"The eyes are called the windows of the soul,-- + + 'And looks commercing with the skies, + Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.' + +"Have you tried to look into his eyes? You can't do it. He won't let +you. He's got something in there that he doesn't want you to see." + +In the middle of the afternoon, when Achille's skiff was already +re-entering the shades of the swamp on his way homeward, and his two +landed passengers stood on the levee at the head of Harvey's Canal +with the Mississippi rolling by their feet and on its farther side the +masts and spires of the city, lighted by the western sun, swinging +round the long bend of her yellow harbor, Mr. Tarbox offered his hand +to say good-by. The surveyor playfully held it. + +"I mean no disparagement to your present calling," he said, "but the +next time we meet I hope you'll be a contractor." + +"Ah!" responded Tarbox, "it's not my nature. I cannot contract; I +must always expand. And yet--I thank you. + + "'Pure thoughts are angel visitors. Be such + The frequent inmates of thy guileless breast.' + +"Good luck! Good-by!" + +One took the ferry; the other, the west bound train at Gretna. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +NOT BLUE EYES, NOR YELLOW HAIR. + + +When the St. Pierres found themselves really left with only each +other's faces to look into, and the unbounded world around them, it +was the father who first spoke: + +"Well, Claude, where you t'ink 'better go?" + +There had been a long, silent struggle in both men's minds. And now +Claude heard with joy this question asked in English. To ask it in +their old Acadian tongue would have meant retreat; this meant advance. +And yet he knew his father yearned for Bayou des Acadiens. Nay, not +his father; only one large part of his father's nature; the old, +French, home-loving part. + +What should Claude answer? Grande Pointe? Even for St. Pierre alone +that was impossible. "Can a man enter a second time into his mother's +womb?" No; the thatched cabin stood there,--stands there now; but, be +he happy or unhappy, no power can ever make St. Pierre small enough +again to go back into that shell. Let it stand, the lair of one of +whom you may have heard, who has retreated straight backward from +Grande Pointe and from advancing enlightenment and order,--the village +drunkard, Chat-oue. + +Claude's trouble, then, was not that his father's happiness beckoned +in one direction and his in another; but that his father's was linked +on behind his. Could the father endure the atmosphere demanded by the +son's widening power? Could the second nature of lifetime habits bear +the change? Of his higher spirit there was no doubt. Neither father +nor son had any conception of happiness separate from noble +aggrandizement. Nay, that is scant justice; far more than they knew, +or than St. Pierre, at least, would have acknowledged, they had caught +the spirit of Bonaventure, to call it by no higher name, and saw that +the best life for self is to live the best possible for others. "For +all others," Bonaventure would have insisted; but "for Claude," St. +Pierre would have amended. They could not return to Grande Pointe. + +Where, then, should they go? Claude stood with his arms akimbo, looked +into his father's face, tried to hide his perplexity under a smile, +and then glanced at their little pile of effects. There lay their +fire-arms, the same as ever; but the bundles in Madras handkerchiefs +had given place to travelling-bags, and instead of pots and pans here +were books and instruments. What reply did these things make? New +Orleans? The great city? Even Claude shrank from that thought. + +No, it was the name of quite a different place they spoke; a name that +Claude's lips dared not speak, because, for lo! these months and +months his heart had spoken it,--spoken it at first in so soft a +whisper that for a long time he had not known it was his heart he +heard. When something within uttered and re-uttered the place's name, +he would silently explain to himself: "It is because I am from home. +It is this unfixed camp-life, this life without my father, without +Bonaventure, that does it. This is not love, of course; I know that: +for, in the first place, I was in love once, when I was fourteen, and +it was not at all like this; and in the second place, it would be +hopeless presumption in me, muddy-booted vagabond that I am; and in +the third place, a burnt child dreads fire. And so it cannot be love. +When papa and I are once more together, this unaccountable longing +will cease." + +But, instead of ceasing, it had grown. The name of the place was still +the only word the heart would venture; but it meant always one pair of +eyes, one young face, one form, one voice. Still it was not love--oh, +no! Now and then the hospitality of some plantation-house near the +camp was offered to the engineers; and sometimes, just to prove that +this thing was not love, he would accept such an invitation, and even +meet a pretty maiden or two, and ask them for music and song--for +which he had well-nigh a passion--and talk enough to answer their +questions and conjectures about a surveyor's life, etc.; but when he +got back to camp, matters within his breast were rather worse than +better. + +He had then tried staying in camp, but without benefit,--nothing +cured, every thing aggravated. And yet he knew so perfectly well that +he was not in love, that just to realize the knowledge, one evening, +when his father was a day's march ahead, and he was having a pleasant +chat with the "chief," no one else nigh, and they were dawdling away +its closing hour with pipes, metaphysics, psychology, and like +trifles, which Claude, of course, knew all about,--Claude told him of +this singular and amusing case of haunting fantasy in his own +experience. His hearer had shown even more amusement than he, and had +gone on smiling every now and then afterward, with a significance that +at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him and still more with +himself. There had been one offsetting comfort; an unintentional +implication had somehow slipped in between his words, that the +haunting fantasy had blue eyes and yellow hair. + +"All right," the angry youth had muttered, tossing on his iron couch, +"let him think so!" And then he had tossed again, and said below his +breath, "It is not love: it is not. But I must never answer its call; +if I do, love is what it will be. My father, my father! would that I +could give my whole heart to thee as thou givest all to me!" + +God has written on every side of our nature,--on the mind, on the +soul, yes, and in our very flesh,--the interdict forbidding love to +have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed. +This Claude vaguely felt; but lacking the clear thought, he could +only cry, "Oh, is it, _is it_, selfishness for one's heart just to be +hungry and thirsty?" + +And now here sat his father, on all their worldly goods, his rifle +between his knees, waiting for his son's choice, and ready to make it +his own. And here stood the son, free of foot to follow that voice +which was calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling assured +that to follow it meant love without hope for him, and for this dear +father the pain of yielding up the larger share of his son's +heart,--as if love were subject to arithmetic!--yielding it to one +who, thought Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress of +her black hair, one lash of her dark eyes. While he still pondered, +the father spoke. + +"Claude, I tell you!" his face lighted up with courage and ambition. +"We better go--Mervilionville!" + +Claude's heart leaped, but he kept his countenance. "Vermilionville? +No, papa; you will not like Vermilionville." + +"Yaas! I will like him. 'Tis good place! Bonaventure come from yondah. +When I was leav' Gran' Point', Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I +tole you. He tell Sidonie he bringin' ed'cation at Gran' Point' to +make Gran' Point' more better, but now ed'cation drive bes' men 'way +from Gran' Point'. And den he say, 'St. Pierre, may bee you go +Mervilionville; dat make me glad,' he say: 'dat way,' he say, 'what I +rob Peter I pay John.' Where we go if dawn't go Mervilionville? St. +Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me. +Can't go to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn't like +Mervilionville? You write me letter, when you was yondah, you like him +fus' class!" + +Claude let silence speak consent. He stooped, and began to load +himself with their joint property. He had had, in his life, several +sorts of trouble of mind; but only just now at twenty was he making +the acquaintance of his conscience. Vermilionville was the call that +had been sounding within him all these months, and Marguerite was the +haunting fantasy. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +A STRONG TEAM. + + +I would not wish to offend the self-regard of Vermilionville. +But--what a place in which to seek enlargement of life! I know worth +and greatness have sometimes, not to say ofttimes, emerged from much +worse spots; from little lazy villages, noisy only on Sunday, with +grimier court-houses, deeper dust and mud, their trade more entirely +in the hands of rat-faced Isaacs and Jacobs, with more frequent huge +and solitary swine slowly scavenging about in abysmal self-occupation, +fewer vine-clad cottages, raggeder negroes, and more decay. +Vermilionville is not the worst, at all. I have seen large, and +enlarging, lives there. + +Hither came the two St. Pierres. "No," Claude said; "they would not +go to the Beausoleil house." Privately he would make himself believe +he had not returned to any thing named Beausoleil, but only and simply +to Vermilionville. On a corner opposite the public square there was +another "hotel;" and it was no great matter to them if it was mostly +pine-boards, pale wall-paper, and transferable whitewash. But, not to +be outdone by its rival round the corner, it had, besides, a piano, of +a quality you may guess, and a landlady's daughter who seven times a +day played and sang "I want to be somebody's darling," and had no want +beyond. The travellers turned thence, found a third house full, +conjectured the same of the only remaining one, and took their way, +after all, towards Zosephine's. It was quite right, now, to go there, +thought Claude, since destiny led; and so he let it lead both his own +steps and the thrumping boots of this dear figure in Campeachy hat and +soft untrimmed beard, that followed ever at his side. + +And then, after all!--looking into those quiet black eyes of +Zosephine's,--to hear that Marguerite was not there! Gone! Gone to the +great city, the place "too big to live in." Gone there for knowledge, +training, cultivation, larger life, and finer uses! Gone to study an +art,--an art! Risen beyond him "like a diamond in the sky." And he +fool enough to come rambling back, blue-shirted and brown-handed, +expecting to find her still a tavern maid! So, farewell fantasy! 'Twas +better so; much better. Now life was simplified. Oh, yes; and St. +Pierre made matters better still by saying to Zosephine: + +"I dinn' know you got one lill gal. Claude never tell me 'bout dat. I +spec' dat why he dawn't want 'come yeh. He dawn't like gal; he run +f'om 'em like dog from yalla-jacket. He dawn't like none of 'm. What +he like, dass his daddy. He jus' married to his daddy." The father +dropped his hand, smilingly, upon his son's shoulder with a weight +that would have crushed it in had it been ordinary cast-iron. + +Claude took the hand and held it, while Zosephine smiled and secretly +thanked God her child was away. In her letters to Marguerite she made +no haste to mention the young man's re-appearance, and presently a +small thing occurred that made it well that she had left it untold. + +With Claude and his father some days passed unemployed. Yet both felt +them to be heavy with significance. The weight and pressure of new +and, to them, large conditions, were putting their inmost quality to +proof. Claude saw, now, what he could not see before; why his friend +the engineer had cast him loose without a word of advice as to where +he should go or what he should do. It was because by asking no advice +he had really proposed to be his own master. And now, could he do it? +Dare he try it? + +The first step he took was taken, I suppose, instinctively rather than +intelligently; certainly it was perilous: he retreated into himself. +St. Pierre found work afield, for of this sort there was plenty; the +husbandmen's year, and the herders' too, were just gathering good +momentum. But Claude now stood looking on empty-handed where other men +were busy with agricultural utensils or machines; or now kept his +room, whittling out a toy miniature of some apparatus, which when made +was not like the one he had seen, at last. A great distress began to +fill the father's mind. There had been a time when he could be idle +and whittle, but that time was gone by; that was at Grande Pointe; and +now for his son--for Claude--to become a lounger in tavern +quarters--Claude had not announced himself to Vermilionville as a +surveyor, or as any thing--Claude to be a hater of honest labor--was +this what Bonaventure called civilize-ation? Better, surely better, go +back to the old pastoral life. How yearningly it was calling them to +its fragrant bosom! And almost every thing was answering the call. The +town was tricking out its neglected decay with great trailing robes of +roses. The spade and hoe were busy in front flower-beds and rear +kitchen-gardens. Lanes were green, skies blue, roads good. In the _bas +fonds_ the oaks of many kinds and the tupelo-gums were hiding all +their gray in shimmering green; in these coverts and in the reedy +marshes, all the feathered flocks not gone away north were broken into +nesting pairs; in the fields, crops were springing almost at the +sower's heels; on the prairie pastures, once so vast, now being +narrowed so rapidly by the people's thrift, the flocks and herds ate +eagerly of the bright new grass, and foals, calves, and lambs stood +and staggered on their first legs, while in the door-yards housewives, +hens, and mother-geese warned away the puppies and children from downy +broods under the shade of the China-trees. But Claude? Even his books +lay unstudied, and his instruments gathered dust, while he pottered +over two or three little wooden things that a boy could not play with +without breaking. At last St. Pierre could bear it no longer. + +"Well, Claude, dass ten days han'-runnin' now, we ain't do not'in' but +whittlin'." + +Claude slowly pushed his model from him, looked, as one in a dream, +into his father's face, and suddenly and for the first time saw what +that father had suffered for a fortnight. But into his own face there +came no distress; only, for a moment, a look of tender protestation, +and then strong hope and confidence. + +"Yass," he said, rising, "dass true. But we dawn't got whittle no +mo'." He pointed to the model, then threw his strong arms akimbo and +asked, "You know what is dat?" + +"Naw," replied the father, "I dunno. I t'ink 'taint no real mash-in' +[machine] 'cause I dawn't never see nuttin' like dat at Belle Alliance +plant-ation, neider at Belmont; and I know, me, if anybody got one +mash-in', any place, for do any t'in' mo' betteh or mo' quicker, +Mistoo Walleece an' M'sieu Le Bourgeois dey boun' to 'ave 'im. Can't +hitch nuttin' to dat t'ing you got dare; she too small for a rat. What +she is, Claude?" + +A yet stronger hope and courage lighted Claude's face. He laid one +hand upon the table before him and the other upon the shoulder of his +sitting companion: + +"Papa, if you want to go wid me to de city, we make one big enough for +two mule'. Dass a mash-in'--a new mash-in'--my mash-in'--my +invention!" + +"Invench? What dat is--invench?" + +Some one knocked on the door. Claude lifted the model, moved on +tiptoe, and placed it softly under the bed. As he rose and turned +again with reddened face, a card was slipped under the door. He took +it and read, in a pencil scrawl,-- + + "State Superintendent of Public Education,"-- + +looked at his father with a broad grin, and opened the door. + +Mr. Tarbox had come at the right moment. There was a good hour and a +half of the afternoon still left, and he and Claude took a walk +together. Beyond a stile and a frail bridge that spanned a gully at +one end of the town, a noble avenue of oaks leads toward Vermilion +River. On one side of this avenue the town has since begun to spread, +but at that time there were only wide fields on the right hand and on +the left. At the farther end a turn almost at right angles to the left +takes you through a great gate and across the railway, then along a +ruined hedge of roses, and presently into the oak-grove of the old +ex-governor's homestead. This was their walk. + +By the time they reached the stile, Claude had learned that his friend +was at the head of his line, and yet had determined to abandon that +line for another + + "Far up the height-- + Excelsior!" + +Also that his friend had liked him, had watched him, would need him, +and was willing then and there to assure him a modest salary, whose +amount he specified, simply to do whatever he might call upon him to +do in his (Claude's) "line." + +They were walking slowly, and now and then slower still. As they +entered the avenue of oaks, Claude declined the offer. Then they went +very slowly indeed. Claude learned that Mr. Tarbox, by some chance not +explained, had been in company with his friend the engineer; that the +engineer had said, "Tarbox, you're a born contractor," and that Claude +and he would make a "strong team;" that Mr. Tarbox's favorite study +was human nature; that he knew talent when he saw it; had studied +Claude; had fully expected him to decline to be his employee, and +liked him the better for so doing. + +"That was just a kind of test vote; see?" + +Then Mr. Tarbox offered Claude a partnership; not an equal one, but +withal a fair interest. + +"We've got to commence small and branch out gradually; see?" And +Claude saw. + +"Now, you wonder why I don't go in alone. Well, I'll tell you; and +when I tell you, I'll astonish you. I lack education! Now, Claude, I'm +taking you into my confidence. You've done nothing but go to school +and study for about six years. I had a different kind of father from +yours; I never got one solid year's schooling, all told, in my life. +I've picked up cords of information, but an ounce of education's worth +a ton of information. Don't you believe that? eh? it is so! I say it, +and I'm the author of the A. of U. I. I like to call it that, because +it brings you and I so near together; see?" The speaker smiled, was +still, and resumed: + +"That's why I need you. And I'm just as sure you need me. I need not +only the education you have now, but what you're getting every day. +When you see me you see a man who is always looking awa-a-ay ahead. I +see what you're going to be, and I'm making this offer to the Claude +St. Pierre of the future." + +Mr. Tarbox waited for a reply. The avenue had been passed, the railway +crossed, and the hedge skirted. They loitered slowly into the +governor's grove, under whose canopy the beams of the late afternoon +sun were striking and glancing. But all their light seemed hardly as +much as that which danced in the blue eyes of Mr. Tarbox while Claude +slowly said: + +"I dunno if we can fix dat. I was glad to see you comin'. I reckon you +jus' right kind of man I want. I jus' make a new invention. I t'ink 'f +you find dat's good, dat be cawntrac' enough for right smart while. +And beside', I t'ink I invent some mo' b'fo' long." + +But Mr. Tarbox was not rash. He only asked quiet and careful questions +for some time. The long sunset was sending its last rays across the +grove-dotted land, and the birds in every tree were filling the air +with their sunset song-burst, when the two friends re-entered the +avenue of oaks. They had agreed to join their fortunes. Now their talk +drifted upon other subjects. + +"I came back to Vermilionville purposely to see you," said Mr. Tarbox. +"But I'll tell you privately, you wasn't the only cause of my coming." + +Claude looked at him suddenly. Was this another haunted man? Were +there two men haunted, and only one fantasy? He felt ill at ease. Mr. +Tarbox saw, but seemed not to understand. He thought it best to speak +plainly. + +"I'm courting her, Claude; and I think I'm going to get her." + +Claude stopped short, with jaws set and a bad look in his eye. + +"Git who?" + +But Mr. Tarbox was calm--even complacent. He pushed his silk hat from +his forehead, and said: + + ... "'One made up + Of loveliness alone; + A woman, of her gentle sex + The seeming paragon.' + +I refer to the Rose of Vermilionville, the Pearl of the Parish, the +loveliest love and fairest fair that ever wore the shining name of +Beausoleil. She's got to change it to Tarbox, Claude. Before yon sun +has run its course again, I'm going to ask her for the second time. +I've just begun asking, Claude; I'm going to keep it up till she says +yes." + +"She's not yondah!" snarled Claude, with the frown and growl of a +mastiff. "She's gone to de city." + +Mr. Tarbox gazed a moment in blank amazement. Then he slowly lifted +his hat from his head, expanded his eyes, drew a long slow groan, +turned slowly half around, let the inhalation go in a long keen +whistle, and cried: + +"Oh! taste! taste! Who's got the taste? What do you take me for? Who +_are_ you talking about? That little monkey? Why, man alive, it's the +mother I'm after. Ha, ha, ha!" + +If Claude said any thing in reply, I cannot imagine what it was. Mr. +Tarbox had a right to his opinion and taste, if taste it could be +called, and Claude was helpless to resent it, even in words; but for +hours afterward he execrated his offender's stupidity, little guessing +that Mr. Tarbox, in a neighboring chamber, alone and in his +night-robe, was bending, smiting his thigh in silent merriment, and +whispering to himself: + +"He thinks I'm an ass! He thinks I'm an ass! He can't see that I was +simply investigating him!" + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +HE ASKS HER AGAIN. + + +Claude and his father left the next day,--Saturday. Only the author of +the A. of U. I. knew whither they were gone. As they were going he +said very privately to Claude: + +"I'll be with you day after to-morrow. You can't be ready for me +before then, and you and your father can take Sunday to look around, +and kind o' see the city. But don't go into the down-town part; you'll +not like it; nothing but narrow streets and old buildings with +histories to 'em, and gardens hid away inside of 'em, and damp +archways, and pagan-looking females who can't talk English, peeping +out over balconies that offer to drop down on you, and then don't keep +their word; every thing old-timey, and Frenchy, and Spanishy; +unprogressive--you wouldn't like it. Go up-town. That's American. It's +new and fresh. There you'll find beautiful mansions, mostly frame, +it's true, but made to look like stone, you know. There you'll see +wealth! There you'll get the broad daylight-- + + 'The merry, merry sunshine, that makes the heart so gay.' + +See? Yes, and Monday we'll meet at Jones's, 17 Tchoupitoulas Street; +all right; I'll be on hand. But to-day and to-morrow--'Alabama'--'here +I rest.' I feel constrained"--he laid his hand upon his heart, closed +one eye, and whispered--"to stay. I would fain spend the sabbath in +sweet Vermilionville. You get my idea?" + +The sabbath afternoon, beyond the town, where Mr. Tarbox strolled, was +lovelier than can be told. Yet he was troubled. Zosephine had not thus +far given him a moment alone. I suppose, when a hundred generations +more have succeeded us on the earth, lovers will still be blind to the +fact that women do not do things our way. How can they? That would be +capitulation at once, and even we should find the whole business as +stupid as shooting barnyard fowls. + +Zosephine had walked out earlier than Tarbox. He had seen her go, but +dared not follow. He read "thou shalt not" as plain as print on her +back as she walked quietly away; that same little peremptory back +that once in her father's caleche used to hold itself stiff when +'Thanase rode up behind. The occasional townsman that lifted his +slouch hat in deep deference to her silent bow, did not read unusual +care on her fair brow; yet she, too, was troubled. + +Marguerite! she was the trouble. Zosephine knew her child could never +come back to these old surroundings and be content. The mother was not +willing she should. She looked at a photograph that her daughter had +lately sent her. What a change from the child that had left her! It +was like the change from a leaf to a flower. There was but one thing +to do: follow her. So Zosephine had resolved to sell the inn. She was +gone, now, to talk with the old ex-governor about finding a purchaser. +Her route was not by the avenue of oaks, but around by a northern and +then eastern circuit. She knew Mr. Tarbox must have seen her go; had a +genuine fear that he would guess whither she was bound, and yet, +deeper down in her heart than woman ever lets soliloquy go, was +willing he should. For she had another trouble. We shall come to that +presently. + +Her suitor walked in the avenue of oaks. + +"She's gone," he reckoned to himself, "to consult the governor about +something, and she'll come back this way." He loitered out across +fields, but not too far off or out of sight; and by and by there she +came, with just the slightest haste in her walk. She received him with +kindly reserve, and they went more slowly, together. + +She told where she had been, and that the governor approved a +decision she had made. + +"Yass; I goin' sell my hotel." + +"He's right!" exclaimed her companion, with joy; "and you're right!" + +"Well, 'tain't sold yet," she responded. She did not smile as she +looked at him. He read trouble; some trouble apart from the subject, +in her quiet, intense eyes. + +"You know sombodie want buy dat?" she asked. + +"I'll find some one," he promptly replied. Then they talked a little +about the proper price for it, and then were very still until Mr. +Tarbox said: + +"I walked out here hoping to meet you." + +Madame Beausoleil looked slightly startled, and then bowed gravely. + +"Yes; I want your advice. It's only business, but it's important, and +it's a point where a woman's instinct is better than a man's +judgment." + +There was some melancholy satire in her responding smile; but it +passed away, and Mr. Tarbox went on: + +"You never liked my line of business"-- + +Zosephine interrupted with kind resentment: + +"Ah!" + +"No; I know you didn't. You're one of the few women whose subscription +I've sought in vain. Till then I loved my business. I've never loved +it since. I've decided to sell out and quit. I'm going into another +business, one that you'll admire. I don't say any thing about the man +going into it,-- + + 'Honor and shame from no condition rise: + Act well your part; there all the honor lies,'-- + +but I want your advice about the party I think of going in with. It's +Claude St. Pierre." + +Zosephine turned upon the speaker a look of steady penetration. He met +it with a glance of perfect confiding. "She sees me," he said, at the +same time, far within himself. + +It was as natural to Mr. Tarbox to spin a web as it is for a spider. +To manoeuvre was the profoundest instinct of his unprofound nature. +Zosephine felt the slender threads weaving around her. But in her +heart of hearts there was a certain pleasure in being snared. It could +not, to her, seem wholly bad for Tarbox to play spider, provided he +should play the harmless spider. Mr. Tarbox spoke again, and she +listened amiably. + +"Claude is talented. He has what I haven't; I have what he hasn't, and +together we could make each other's fortunes, if he's only the square, +high-style fellow I think he is. I'm a student of human nature, and I +think I've made him out. I think he'll do to tie to. But will he? You +can tell me. You read people by instinct. I ask you just as a matter +of business advice and in business confidence. What do you think? Will +you trust me and tell me--as my one only trusted friend--freely and +fully--as I would tell you?" + +Madame Beausoleil felt the odds against her, but she looked into her +companion's face with bright, frank eyes and said: "Yass, I t'ink +yass; I t'ink _'tis_ so." + +"Thanks!" said her friend, with unnecessary fervor and tenderness. +"Then Claude will be my partner, unless--my dear friend, shall you be +so kind--I might almost say confiding--to me, and me not tell you +something I think you'd ought to know? For I hope we are always to be +friends; don't you?" + +"Yass," she said, very sadly and sweetly. + +"Thanks! And if Claude and I become partners that will naturally bring +him into our circle, as it were; see?" + +The little madame looked up with a sudden austere exaltation of frame +and intensity of face, but her companion rushed on with--"And I'm +going to tell you, let the risk to me be what it may, that it may +result in great unhappiness to Claude; for he loves your daughter, +who, I know, you must think too good for him!" + +Madame Beausoleil blushed as though she herself were Marguerite and +Tarbox were Claude. + +"Ah! love Marguerite! Naw, naw! He dawn't love noboddie but hees papa! +Hees papa tell me dat! Ah! naw, 'tis _not_ so!" + +Mr. Tarbox stopped still; and when Zosephine saw they were in the +shadow of the trees while all about them was brightened by the +momentary Southern twilight, she, too, stopped, and he spoke. + +"What brought Claude back here when by right he should have gone +straight to the city? You might have guessed it when you saw him." He +paused to let her revolve the thought, and added in his own mind--"If +you had disliked the idea, you'd 'a' suspected him quick enough"--and +was pleased. He spoke again. "But I didn't stop with guessing." + +Zosephine looked up to his face from the little foot that edgewise +was writing nothings in the dust. + +"No," continued her companion: "I walked with him two evenings ago in +this avenue, and right where we stand now, without his ever knowing +it--then or now--he as good as told me. Yes, Josephine, he dares to +love your beautiful and accomplished daughter! The thought may offend +you, but--was I not right to tell you?" + +She nodded and began to move slowly on, he following. + +"I'm not betraying anyone's confidence," persisted he; "and I can't +help but have a care for you. Not that you need it, or anybody's. You +can take care of yourself if any man or woman can. Every time your +foot touches the ground it says so as plain as words. That's what +first caught my fancy. You haven't got to have somebody to take care +of you. O Josephine! that's just why I want to take care of you so +bad! I can take care of myself, and I used to like to do it; I was +just that selfish and small; but love's widened me. I can take care of +myself; but, oh! what satisfaction is there in it? Is there any? Now, +I ask you! It may do for you, for you're worth taking care of; but I +want to take care of something I needn't be ashamed to love!" He +softly stole her hand as they went. She let it stay, yet looked away +from him, up through the darkling branches, and distressfully shook +her head. + +"Don't, Josephine!--don't do that. I want you to take care of me. You +could do better, I know, if love wasn't the count; but when it comes +to loving you, I'm the edition deloox! I know you've an aspiring +nature, but so have I; and I believe with you to love and you loving +me, and counselling and guiding me, I could climb high. O Josephine! +it isn't this poor Tarbox I'm asking you to give yourself to; it's the +Tarbox that is to be; it's the coming Tarbox! Why, it's even a good +business move! If it wasn't I wouldn't say a word! You know I can, and +will take the very best care of every thing you've got; and I know +you'll take the same of mine. It's a good move, every way. Why, here's +every thing just fixed for it! Listen to the mocking-bird! See him +yonder, just at the right of the stile. See! O Josephine! don't you +see he isn't + + 'Still singing where the weeping willow waves'? + +he's on the myrtle; the myrtle, Josephine, and the crape-myrtle at +that!--widowhood unwidowed!--Now he's on the fence--but he'll not stay +there,--and you mustn't either!" The suitor smiled at his own +ludicrousness, yet for all that looked beseechingly in earnest. He +stood still again, continuing to hold her hand. She stole a furtive +glance here and there for possible spectators. He smiled again. + +"You don't see anybody; the world waives its claim." But there was +such distress in her face that his smile passed away, and he made a +new effort to accommodate his suit to her mood. "Josephine, there's no +eye on us except it's overhead. Tell me this; if he that was yours +until ten years ago was looking down now and could speak to us, don't +you believe he'd say yes?" + +"Oh! I dunno. Not to-day! Not _dis_ day!" The widow's eyes met his +gaze of tender inquiry and then sank to the ground. She shook her head +mournfully. "Naw, naw; not dis day. 'Tis to-day 'Thanase was kill'!" + +Mr. Tarbox relaxed his grasp and Zosephine's hand escaped. She never +had betrayed to him so much distress as filled her face now. "De man +what kill' him git away! You t'ink I git marrie' while dat man alive? +Ho-o-o! You t'ink I let Marguerite see me do dat! Ah! naw!" She waved +him away and turned to leave the spot, but he pressed after, and she +paused once more. A new possibility lighted his eyes. He said eagerly: + +"Describe the man to me. Describe him. How tall was he? How old would +he be now? Did they try to catch him? Did you hear me talking +yesterday about a man? Is there any picture of him? Have you got one? +Yes, you have; it's in your pocket now with your hand on it. Let me +see it." + +"Ah! I di'n' want you to see dat!" + +"No, I don't suppose, as far as you know yourself, you did." He +received it from her, and with his eyes still on her, continued: "No, +but you knew that if I got a ghost of a chance, I'd see you alone. You +knew what I'd ask you;--yes, you did, Josephine, and you put this +thing into your pocket to make it easier to say no." + +"Hah! easier! Hah! easier! I need somethin' to _help_ me do dat? Hah! +'Tis _not_ so!" But the weakness of the wordy denial was itself almost +a confession. + +They moved on. A few steps brought them into better light. Mr. Tarbox +looked at the picture. Zosephine saw a slight flash of recognition. He +handed it back in silence, and they walked on, saying not a word until +they reached the stile. But there, putting his foot upon it to bar the +way, he said: + +"Josephine, the devil never bid so high for me before in his life as +he's bidding for me now. And there's only one thing in the way; he's +bid too late." + +Her eyes flashed with injured resentment. "Ah, you! you dawn't know +not'n'--" But he interrupted: + +"Stop, I don't mean more than just what I say. Six years ago--six and +a half--I met a man of a kind I'd never met, to know it, before. You +know who' I mean, don't you?" + +"Bonaventure?" + +"Yes. That meeting made a turning-point in my life. You've told me +that whatever is best in you, you owe to him. Well, knowing him as I +do, I can believe it; and if it's true, then it's the same with me; +for first he, and then you, have made another man out of me." + +"Ah, naw! Bonaventure, may_be_; but not me; ah, naw!" + +"But I tell you, yes! you, Josephine! I'm poor sort enough yet; but I +could have done things once that I can't do now. There was a time when +if some miserable outlaw stood, or even seemed, maybe, to stand +between me and my chances for happiness, I could have handed him over +to human justice, so called, as easy as wink; but now? No, never any +more! Josephine, I know that man whose picture I've just looked at. I +could see you avenged. I could lay my hands, and the hands of the law, +on him inside of twenty-four hours. You say you can't marry till the +law has laid its penalties on him, or at least while he lives and +escapes them. Is that right?" + +Zosephine had set her face to oppose his words only with unyielding +silence, but the answer escaped her: + +"Yass, _'tis_ so. 'Tis ri-ght!" + +"No, Josephine. I know you _feel_ as if it were; but you don't _think_ +so. No, you don't; I know you better in this matter than you know +yourself, and you don't think it's right. You know justice belongs to +the State, and that when you talk to yourself about what _you_ owe to +justice, it means something else that you're too sweet and good to +give the right name to, and still want it. You don't want it; you +don't want revenge, and here's the proof; for, Josephine, you know, +and I know, that if I--even without speaking--with no more than one +look of the eye--should offer to buy your favor at that price, even +ever so lawfully, you'd thank me for one minute, and then loathe me to +the end of your days." + +Zosephine's face had lost its hardness. It was drawn with distress. +With a gesture of repulsion and pain she exclaimed: + +"I di'n' mean--I di'n' mean--Ah!" + +"What? private revenge? No, of course you didn't! But what else would +it be? O Josephine! don't I know you didn't mean it? Didn't I tell +you so? But I want you to go farther. I want you to put away forever +the _feeling_. I want to move and stand between you and it, and +say--whatever it costs me to say it--'God forbid!' I do say it; I say +it now. I can't say more; I can't say less; and somehow,--I don't know +how--wherever you learned it--I've learned it from you." + +Zosephine opened her lips to refuse; but they closed and tightened +upon each other, her narrowed eyes sent short flashes out upon his, +and her breath came and went long and deep without sound. But at his +last words she saw--the strangest thing--to be where she saw it--a +tear--_tears_--standing in his eyes; saw them a moment, and then could +see them no more for her own. Her lips relaxed, her form drooped, she +lifted her face to reply, but her mouth twitched; she could not speak. + +"I'm not so foolish as I look," he said, trying to smile away his +emotion. "If the State chooses to hunt him out and put him to trial +and punishment, I don't say I'd stand in the way; that's the State's +business; that's for the public safety. But it's too late--you and +Bonnyventure have made it too late--for me to help any one, least of +all the one I love, to be revenged." He saw his words were prevailing +and followed them up. "Oh! you don't need it any more than you really +want it, Josephine. You mustn't ever look toward it again. I throw +myself and my love across the path. Don't walk over us. Take my hand; +give me yours; come another way; and if you'll let such a poor excuse +for a teacher and guide help you, I'll help you all I can, to learn to +say 'forgive us our trespasses.' You can begin, now, by forgiving me. +I may have thrown away my last chance with you, but I can't help it; +it's my love that spoke. And if I have spoiled all and if I've got to +pay for the tears you're shedding with the greatest disappointment of +my life, still I've had the glory and the sanctification of loving +you. If I must say, I can say, + + ''Tis better to have loved and lost + Than never to have loved at all.' + +Must I? Are you going to make me say that?" + +Zosephine, still in tears, silently and with drooping head pushed her +way across the stile and left him standing on the other side. He sent +one pleading word after her: + +"Isn't it most too late to go the rest of the way alone?" + +She turned, lifted her eyes to his for an instant, and nodded. In a +twinkling he was at her side. She glanced at him again and said quite +contentedly: + +"Yass; _'tis_ so," and they went the short remnant of the way +together. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +THE BEAUSOLEILS AND ST. PIERRES. + + +You think of going to New Orleans in the spring. Certainly, the spring +is the time to go. When you find yourself there go some day for +luncheon--if they haven't moved it, there is talk of that,--go to the +Christian Women's Exchange, already mentioned, in the Rue +Bourbon,--French Quarter. You step immediately from the sidewalk into +the former drawing-room of a house built early in the century as a +fashionable residence. That at least is its aspect. Notice, for +instance, in the back parlor, crowded now, like the front one, with +eating-tables, a really interesting old wooden mantelpiece. Of course +this is not the way persons used to go in old times. They entered by +the porte-cochere and open carriage-way upon which these drawing-rooms +still open by several glass doors on your right. Step out there. You +find a veranda crowded with neat white-clothed tables. Before some +late alterations there was a great trellis full of green sunshine and +broken breezes entangled among vines of trumpet-creeper and the +Scuppernong grape. Here you will be waited on, by small, +blue-calico-robed damsels of Methodist unsophistication and +Presbyterian propriety, to excellent refreshment; only, if you know +your soul's true interest, eschew their fresh bread and insist on +having yesterday's. + +However, that is a matter of taste there, and no matter at all here. +All I need to add is that there are good apartments overhead to be +rented to women too good for this world, and that in the latter end of +April, 1884, Zosephine and Marguerite Beausoleil here made their home. + +The tavern was sold. The old life was left far behind. They had done +that dreadful thing that everybody deprecates and everybody likes to +do--left the country and come to live in the city. And Zosephine was +well pleased. A man who had tried and failed to be a merchant in the +city, he and his wife, took the tavern; so Zosephine had not reduced +the rural population--had not sinned against "stastistics." + +Besides, she had the good conscience of having fled from Mr. +Tarbox--put U. and I. apart, as it were--and yet without being so hid +but a suitor's proper persistency could find her. Just now he was far +away prosecuting the commercial interests of Claude's one or two +inventions; but he was having great success; he wrote once or +twice--but got no reply--and hoped to be back within a month. + +When Marguerite, after her mother's receipt of each of these letters, +thought she saw a cloud on her brow, Zosephine explained, with a +revival of that old look of sweet self-command which the daughter so +loved to see, that they contained matters of business not at all to be +called troubles. But the little mother did not show the letters. She +could not; Marguerite did not even know their writer had changed his +business. As to Claude, his name was never mentioned. Each supposed +the other was ignorant that he was in the city, and because he was +never mentioned each one knew the other was thinking of him. + +Ah, Claude! what are you thinking of? Has not your new partner in +business told you they are here? No, not a word of it. "That'll keep +till I get back," Mr. Tarbox had said to himself; and such shrewdness +was probably not so ungenerous, after all. "If you want a thing done +well, do it yourself," he said one evening to a man who could not make +out what he was driving at; and later Mr. Tarbox added to himself, +"The man that flies the kite must hold the thread." And so he kept his +counsel. + +But that does not explain. For we remember that Claude already knew +that Marguerite was in the city, at least had her own mother's word +for it. Here, weeks had passed. New Orleans is not so large; its +active centre is very small. Even by accident, on the street, Canal +Street especially, he should have seen her time and again. + +And he did not; at any rate not to know it. She really kept very busy +indoors; and in other doors so did he. More than that, there was his +father. When the two first came to the city St. Pierre endured the +town for a week. But it was martyrdom, doing it. Claude saw this. Mr. +Tarbox was with him the latter part of the week. He saw it. He gave +his suggestive mind to it for one night. The next day St. Pierre and +he wandered off in street-cars and on foot, and by the time the sun +went down again a new provision had been made. At about ninety +minutes' jaunt from the city's centre, up the river, and on its +farther shore, near where the old "Company Canal" runs from a lock in +the river bank, back through the swamps and into the Baratarian lakes, +St. Pierre had bought with his lifetime savings a neat house and +fair-sized orangery. No fields? None: + +"You see, bom-bye [by-and-by] Claude git doze new mash-in' all right, +he go to ingineerin' agin, and him and you [Tarbox] be takin' some +cawntrac' for buil' levee or break up old steamboat, or raise +somet'in' what been sunk, or somet'in' dat way. And den he certain' +want somboddie to boss gang o' fellows. And den he say, 'Papa, I want +you.' And den I say how I got fifty arpent' [42 acres] rice in field. +And den he say, 'How I goin' do widout you?' And den dare be fifty +arpent' rice gone!" No, no fields. + +Better: here with the vast wet forest at his back; the river at his +feet; the canal, the key to all Barataria, Lafourche, and Terrebonne, +full of Acadian fishermen, hunters, timber-cutters, moss-gatherers, +and the like; the great city in sight from yonder neighbor's +balustraded house-top; and Claude there to rally to his side or he to +Claude's at a moment's warning; he would be an operator--think of +that!--not of the telegraph; an operator in the wild products of the +swamp, the _prairies tremblantes_, the lakes, and in the small +harvests of the _pointes_ and bayou margins: moss, saw-logs, venison, +wild-duck, fish, crabs, shrimp, melons, garlic, oranges, Perique +tobacco. "Knowledge is power;" he knew wood, water, and sky by heart, +spoke two languages, could read and write, and understood the ways and +tastes of two or three odd sorts of lowly human kind. Self-command is +dominion; I do not say the bottle went never to his lips, but it never +was lifted high. And now to the blessed maxim gotten from Bonaventure +he added one given him by Tarbox: "In h-union ees strank!" Not mere +union of hands alone; but of counsels! There were Claude and Tarbox +and he! + +For instance; at Mr. Tarbox's suggestion Claude brought to his father +from the city every evening, now the "Picayune" and now the +"Times-Democrat." From European and national news he modestly turned +aside. Whether he read the book-notices I do not know; I hope not. But +when he had served supper--he was a capital camp cook--and he and +Claude had eaten, and their pipes were lighted, you should have seen +him scanning the latest quotations and debating the fluctuations of +the moss market, the shrimp market, and the garlic market. + +Thus Claude was rarely in the city save in the busy hours of the day. +Much oftener than otherwise, he saw the crimson sunsets, and the cool +purple sunrises as he and St. Pierre pulled in the father's skiff +diagonally to or fro across the Mississippi, between their cottage and +the sleepy outposts of city street-cars, just under the levee at the +edge of that green oak-dotted plain where a certain man, as gentle, +shy, and unworldly as our engineer friend thought Claude to be, was +raising the vast buildings of the next year's Universal Exposition. + +But all this explains only why Claude did not, to his knowledge, see +Marguerite by accident. Yet by intention! Why not by intention? +First, there was his fear of sinning against his father's love. That +alone might have failed to hold him back; but, second, there was his +helplessness. Love made Tarbox, if any thing were needed to make him, +brave; it made Claude a coward. And third, there was that helpless +terror of society in general, of which we have heard his friend talk. +I have seen a strong horse sink trembling to the earth at the beating +of an empty drum. Claude looked with amazed despair at a man's ability +to overtake a pretty girl acquaintance in Canal Street, and walk and +talk with her. He often asked himself how he had ever been a moment at +his ease those November evenings in the tavern's back-parlor at +Vermilionville. It was because he had a task there; sociality was not +the business of the hour. + +And now I have something else to confess about Claude; something +mortifying in the extreme. For you see the poverty of all these +explanations. Their very multitude makes them weak. "Many fires cannot +quench love;" what was the real matter? I will tell. + +Claude's love was a deep sentiment. He had never allowed it to assert +itself as a passion. The most he would allow it to be was a yearning. +It was scarcely personal. While he was with Marguerite, in the inn, +his diffidence alone was enough to hide from him the impression she +was making on his heart. In all their intercourse he had scarcely +twice looked her full in the face. Afterward she had simply become in +memory the exponent of an ideal. He found himself often, now, asking +himself, why are my eyes always looking for her? Should I actually +know her, were I to see her on this sidewalk, or in this street-car? +And while still asking himself these silent questions, what does he do +one day but fall--to all intents and purposes, at least--fall in +love--pell-mell--up to the eyebrows--with another girl! + +Do you remember Uncle Remus's story of Brer Rabbit with the bucket of +honey inverted on him? It was the same way with Claude. "He wa'n't des +only bedobble wid it, he wuz des kiver'd." It happened thus: An artist +friend, whose studio was in Carondelet Street just off of Canal, had +rented to him for a workroom a little loft above the studio. It had +one window looking out over roofs and chimney-pots upon the western +sky, and another down into the studio itself. It is right to say +friend, although there was no acquaintanceship until it grew out of +this arrangement. The artist, a single man, was much Claude's senior; +but Claude's taste for design, and love of work, and the artist's +grave sincerity, simplicity, and cordiality of character--he was a +Spaniard, with a Spaniard's perfect courtesy--made a mutual regard, +which only a common diffidence prevented from running into +comradeship. + +One Saturday afternoon Claude, thirsting for outdoor air, left his +eyrie for a short turn in Canal Street. The matinee audiences were +just out, and the wide balcony-shaded sidewalks were crowded with +young faces and bright attires. Claude was crossing the "neutral +ground" toward Bourbon Street, when he saw coming out of Bourbon +Street a young man, who might be a Creole, and two young girls in +light, and what seemed to him extremely beautiful dresses; especially +that of the farther one, who, as the three turned with buoyant step +into Canal Street to their left, showed for an instant the profile of +her face, and then only her back. Claude's heart beat consciously, and +he hurried to lessen the distance between them. He had seen no more +than the profile, but for the moment in which he saw it, it seemed to +be none other than the face of Marguerite! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +THE CHASE. + + +Claude came on close behind. No; now he could see his mistake, it was +not she. But he could not regret it. This was Marguerite repeated, yet +transcended. The stature was just perceptibly superior. The breadth +and grace of these shoulders were better than Marguerite's. The hair, +arranged differently and far more effectively than he had ever seen it +on Marguerite's head, seemed even more luxurious than hers. There was +altogether a finer dignity in this one's carriage than in that of the +little maid of the inn. And see, now,--now!--as she turns her head to +glance into this shop window! It is, and it isn't, it isn't, and it +is, and--no, no, it is not Marguerite! It is like her in profile, +singularly like, yet far beyond her; the nose a little too fine, and +a certain sad firmness about the mouth and eyes, as well as he could +see in the profile, but profiles are so deceptive--that he had never +seen in Marguerite. + +"But how do I know? What do I know?" he asked himself, still following +on. "The Marguerite I know is but a thing of my dreams, and this is +not that Marguerite of my actual sight, to whom I never gave a word or +smile or glance that calls for redemption. This is the Marguerite of +my dreams." + +Claude was still following, when without any cause that one could see, +the young man of the group looked back. He had an unpleasant face; it +showed a small offensive energy that seemed to assert simply him and +all his against you and all yours. His eyes were black, piercing, and +hostile. They darted their glances straight into Claude's. Guilty +Claude! dogging the steps of ladies on the street! He blushed for +shame, turned a corner into Exchange Alley, walked a little way down +it, came back, saw the great crowd coming and going, vehicles of all +sorts hurrying here and there; ranks of street-cars waiting their +turns to start to all points of the compass; sellers of peanuts and +walking-sticks, buyers of bouquets, acquaintances meeting or +overtaking one another, nodding bonnets, lifted hats, faces, faces, +faces; but the one face was gone. + +Caught, Claude? And by a mere face? The charge is too unkind. Young +folly, yes, or old folly, may read goodness rashly into all beauty, or +not care to read it in any. But it need not be so. Upon the face of +youth the soul within writes its confessions and promises; and when +the warm pulses of young nature are sanctified by upward yearnings, +and a pure conscience, the soul that seeks its mate will seek that +face which, behind and through all excellencies of mere tint and +feature, mirrors back the seeker's own faiths and hopes; and when that +is found, that to such a one is beauty. Judge not; you never saw this +face, fairer than Marguerite's, to say whether its beauty was mere +face, or the transparent shrine of an equal nobility within. + +Besides, Claude would have fired up and denied the first word of the +charge with unpleasant flatness. To be caught means to be in love, to +be in love implies a wish and hope to marry, and these were just what +Claude could not allow. May not a man, nevertheless, have an ideal of +truth and beauty and look worshipfully upon its embodiment? Humph! + +His eyes sought her in vain not only on that afternoon, but on many +following. The sun was setting every day later and later through the +black lace-work of pecan-trees and behind low dark curtains of orange +groves, yet he began to be more and more tardy each succeeding day in +meeting his father under the riverside oaks of the Exposition grounds. +And then, on the seventh day, he saw her again. + +Now he was more confident than ever that this vision and he, except in +dreams, had never spoken to each other. Yet the likeness was +wonderful. But so, too, was the unlikeness. True, this time, she only +flashed across his sight--out of a bank, into a carriage where a very +"American"-looking lady sat waiting for her and was gone. But the +bank; the carriage; that lady; those earlier companions,--no, this +could not be Marguerite. Marguerite would have been with her mother. +Now, if one could see Madame Beausoleil's daughter with Madame +Beausoleil at her side to identify her and distinguish her from this +flashing and vanishing apparition it would clear away a trying +perplexity. Why not be bold and call upon them where they were +dwelling? But where? Their names were not in the directory. Now, +inventive talent, do your best. + + * * * * * + +"Well!" said St. Pierre after a long silence. Claude and he were out +on the swollen Mississippi pulling with steady leisure for the +home-side shore, their skiff pointed half to and half from the boiling +current. The sun was gone; a purple dusk wrapped either low bank; a +steamboat that had passed up stream was now, at the turning of the +bend, only a cluster of soft red lights; Venus began to make a faint +silvery pathway across the waters. St. Pierre had the forward seat, at +Claude's back. The father looked with fond perplexity at the strong +young shoulders swinging silently with his own, forward and backward +in slow, monotonous strokes, and said again: + +"Well? Whass matter? Look like cat got yo' tongue. Makin' new +mash-in?" Then in a low dissatisfied tone--"I reckon somet'in' mighty +curious." He repeated the last three words in the Acadian speech: +"Tcheuque-chose bien tchurieux." + +"Yass," replied the son, "mighty strange. I tell you when we come at +home." + +He told all. Recounted all his heart's longings, all his dreams, +every least pang of self-reproach, the idealization of Marguerite, and +the finding of that ideal incarnated in one who was and yet seemed not +to be, or rather seemed to be and yet was not, Marguerite. And then he +went on to re-assure his father that this could never mean marriage, +never mean the father's supplanting. A man could worship what he could +never hope to possess. He would rather worship this than win such kind +as he would dare woo. + +He said all these things in a very quiet way, with now and then a +silent pause, and now and then a calm, self-contained tone in +resuming; yet his sentences were often disconnected, and often were +half soliloquy. Such were the only betrayals of emotion on either side +until Claude began to treat--in the words just given--his father's own +heart interests; then the father's eyes stood brimming full. But St. +Pierre did not speak. From the first he had listened in silence and he +offered no interruption until at length Claude came to that part about +the object of his regard being so far, so utterly, beyond his reach. +Then-- + +"Stop! Dass all foolishness! You want her? You kin have her!" + +"Ah, papa! you dawn't awnstand! What I am?" + +"Ah, bah! What anybody is? What she is? She invanted bigger mash-in +dan you? a mo' better corn-stubbl' destroyer and plant-corner?" He +meant corn-planter. "She invant a more handier doubl'-action pea-vine +rake? What she done mak' her so gran'? Naw, sir! She look fine in de +face, yass; and dass all you know. Well, dass all right; dass de +'Cajun way--pick 'em out by face. You begin 'Cajun way, for why you +dawn't finish 'Cajun way? All you got do, you git good saddle-hoss and +ride. Bom-bye you see her, you ride behind her till you find where her +daddy livin' at. Den you ride pas' yondah every day till fo', five +days, and den you see de ole man come scrape friend wid you. Den he +hass you drop round, and fus' t'ing you know--_adjieu la calege!_" + +Claude did not dispute the point, though he hardly thought this case +could be worked that way. He returned in silent thought to the +question, how to find Madame Beausoleil. He tried the mail; no +response. He thought of advertising; but that would never do. Imagine, +"If Madame Beausoleil, late of Vermilionville, will leave her address +at this office, she will hear of something not in the least to her +advantage." He couldn't advertise. + +It was midday following the eve of his confession to his father. For +the last eleven or twelve days, ever since he had seen that blessed +apparition turn with the two young friends into Canal Street out of +Bourbon--he had been venturing daily, for luncheon, just down into +Bourbon Street, to the Christian Women's Exchange. Now, by all the +laws of fortune he should in that time have seen in there at least +once or twice a day already, the face he was ever looking for. But he +had not; nor did he to-day. He only saw, or thought he saw, the +cashier--I should say the cashieress--glance crosswise at him with +eyes that seemed to him to say: + +"Fool; sneak; whelp; 'Cajun; our private detectives are watching +you." + +Both rooms and the veranda were full of ladies and gentlemen whose +faces he dared not lift his eyes to look into. And yet even in that +frame there suddenly came to him one of those happy thoughts that are +supposed to be the inspirations of inventive genius. A pleasant little +female voice near him said: + +"And apartments up-stairs that they rent to ladies only!" And +instantly the thought came that Marguerite and her mother might be +living there. One more lump of bread, a final gulp of coffee, a short +search for the waiter's check, and he stands at the cashieress's desk. +She makes change without looking at him or ceasing to tell a small +hunchbacked spinster standing by about somebody's wedding. But +suddenly she starts. + +"Oh! wasn't that right? You gave me four bits, didn't you? And I gave +you back two bits and a picayune, and--sir? Does Madame who? Oh! yes. +I didn't understand you; I'm a little deaf on this side; scarlet fever +when I was a little girl. I'm not the regular cashier, she's gone to +attend the wedding of a lady friend. Just wait a moment, please, while +I make change for these ladies. Oh, dear! ma'am, is that the smallest +you've got? I don't believe I can change that, ma'am. Yes--no--stop! +yes, I can! no, I can't! let's see! yes, yes, yes, I can; I've got it; +yes, there! I didn't think I had it." She turned again to Claude with +sisterly confidence. "Excuse me for keeping you waiting; haven't I met +you at the Y. M. C. A. sociable? Well, you must excuse me, but I was +sure I had. Of course I didn't if you was never there; but you know in +a big city like this you're always meeting somebody that's ne-e-early +somebody else that you know--oh! didn't you ask me--oh, yes! Madame +Beausoleil! Yes, she lives here, she and her daughter. But she's not +in. Oh! I'm sorry. Neither of them is here. She's not in the city; +hasn't been for two weeks. They're coming back; we're expecting them +every day. She heard of the death of a relative down in Terrebonne +somewhere. I wish they _would_ come back; we miss them here; I judge +they're relatives of yours, if I don't mistake the resemblance; you +seem to take after the daughter; wait a minute." + +Some one coming up to pay looked at Claude to see what the daughter +was like, and the young man slipped away, outblushing the night sky +when the marshes are afire. + +The question was settled; settled the wrong way. He hurried on across +Canal Street. Marguerite had not been, as he had construed the +inaccurate statement, in the city for two weeks. Resemblances need +delude him no longer. He went on into Carondelet Street and was +drawing near the door and stairway leading to his friend's studio and +his own little workroom above it, when suddenly from that very +stairway and door issued she whom, alas! he might now no longer +mistake for Marguerite, yet who, none the less for lessening hope, +held him captive. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +WHO SHE WAS. + + +For a moment somewhat more than her profile shone upon Claude's +bewildered gaze. + +"I shall see her eye to eye at last!" shouted his heart within: but +the next moment she turned away, and with two companions who came +across the same threshold, moved up the street, and, at the nearest +corner, vanished. Her companions were the American lady and the +artist. Claude wheeled, and hurried to pass around the square in the +opposite direction, and, as he reached the middle of its third side, +saw the artist hand them into the street-car, lift his hat, and return +towards the studio. The two men met at the foot of the stairs. The +Spaniard's countenance betrayed a restrained elation. + +"You goin' see a picture now," he said, in a modestly triumphant tone. +"Come in," he added, as Claude would have passed the studio door. + +They went in together. The Spaniard talked; Claude scarcely spoke. I +cannot repeat the conversation literally, but the facts are these: A +few evenings before, the artist had been one of the guests at a +musical party given by a lady whose name he did not mention. He +happened--he modestly believed it accidental--to be seated beside the +hostess, when a young lady--"jung Creole la-thy," he called her--who +was spending a few days with her, played the violin. The Spaniard's +delicate propriety left her also nameless; but he explained that, as +he understood, she was from the Teche. She played charmingly--"for an +amateur," he qualified: but what had struck him more than the music +was her beauty, her figure, her picturesque grace. And when he +confessed his delight in these, his hostess, seemingly on the +inspiration of the moment, said: + +"Paint her picture! Paint her just so! I'll give you the order. Not a +mere portrait--a picture." And he had agreed, and the "jung" lady had +consented. The two had but just now left the studio. To-morrow a +servant would bring violin, music-rack, etc.; the ladies would follow, +and then-- + +"You hear music, anyhow," said the artist. That was his gentle way of +intimating that Claude was not invited to be a looker-on. + +On the next day, Claude, in his nook above, with the studio below shut +from view by the curtain of his inner window, heard the ladies come. +He knows they are these two, for one voice, the elder, blooms out at +once in a gay abundance of words, and the other speaks in soft, low +tones that, before they reach his ear, run indistinguishably together. + +Soon there comes the sound of tuning the violin, while the older voice +is still heard praising one thing and another, and asking careless +questions. + +"I suppose that cotton cloth covers something that is to have a public +unveiling some day, doesn't it?" + +Claude cannot hear the answer; the painter drops his voice even below +its usual quiet tone. But Claude knows what he must be saying; that +the cloth covers merely a portrait he is finishing of a young man who +has sat for it to please a wifeless, and, but for him, childless, and +fondly devoted father. And now he can tell by the masculine step, and +the lady's one or two lively words, that the artist has drawn away the +covering from his (Claude's) own portrait. But the lady's young +companion goes on tuning her instrument--"tink, tink, tink;" and now +the bow is drawn. + +"Why, how singular!" exclaims the elder lady. "Why, my dear, come here +and see! Somebody has got your eyes! Why, he's got your whole state of +mind, a reduplication of it. And--I declare, he looks almost as good +as you do! If--I"-- + +The voice stops short. There is a moment's silence in which the unseen +hearer doubts not the artist is making signs that yonder window and +curtain are all that hide the picture's original, and the voice says +again,-- + +"I wish you'd paint my picture," and the violin sounds once more its +experimental notes. + +But there are other things which Claude can neither hear, nor see, nor +guess. He cannot see that the elder lady is already wondering at, and +guardedly watching, an agitation betrayed by the younger in a tremor +of the hand that fumbles with her music-sheets and music-stand, in the +foot that trembles on the floor, in the reddened cheek, and in the +bitten lip. He may guess that the painter sits at his easel with +kindling eye; but he cannot guess that just as the elder lady is about +to say,-- + +"My dear, if you don't feel"--the tremor vanishes, the lips gently +set, and only the color remains. But he hears the first soft moan of +the tense string under the bow, and a second, and another; and then, +as he rests his elbows upon the table before him, and covers his face +in his trembling hands, it seems to him as if his own lost heart had +entered into that vibrant medium, and is pouring thence to heaven and +her ear its prayer of love. + +Paint, artist, paint! Let your brushes fly! None can promise you she +shall ever look quite like this again. Catch the lines,--the waving +masses and dark coils of that loose-bound hair; the poise of head and +neck; the eloquent sway of the form; the folds of garments that no +longer hide, but are illumined by, the plenitude of an inner life and +grace; the elastic feet; the ethereal energy and discipline of arms +and shoulders; the supple wrists; the very fingers quivering on the +strings; the rapt face, and the love-inspired eyes. + +Claude, Claude! when every bird in forest and field knows the call of +its mate, can you not guess the meaning of those strings? Must she +open those sealed lips and call your very name--she who would rather +die than call it? + +He does not understand. Yet, without understanding, he answers. He +rises from his seat; he moves to the window; he will not tiptoe or +peep; he will be bold and bad. Brazenly he lifts the curtain and looks +down; and one, one only--not the artist and not the patroness of art, +but that one who would not lift her eyes to that window for all the +world's wealth--knows he is standing there, listening and looking +down. He counts himself all unseen, yet presently shame drops the +curtain. He turns away, yet stands hearkening. The music is about to +end. The last note trembles on the air. There is silence. Then someone +moves from a chair, and then the single cry of admiration and delight +from the player's companion is the player's name,-- + +"Marguerite Beausoleil!" + +Hours afterward there sat Claude in the seat where he had sunk down +when he heard that name. The artist's visitors had made a long stay, +but at length they were gone. And now Claude, too, rose to go out. His +steps were heard below, and presently the painter's voice called +persuadingly up:-- + +"St. Pierre! St. Pierre! Come, see." + +They stood side by side before the new work. Claude gazed in silence. +At length he said, still gazing: + +"I'll buy it when 'tis finish'." + +But the artist explained again that it was being painted for +Marguerite's friend. + +"For what she want it?" demanded Claude. The Spaniard smiled and +intimated that the lady probably thought he could paint. "But at any +rate," he went on to say, "she seemed to have a hearty affection for +the girl herself, whom," he said, "she had described as being as good +as she looked." Claude turned and went slowly out. + +When at sunset he stood under the honey-locust tree on the levee where +he was wont to find his father waiting for him, he found himself +alone. But within speaking distance he saw St. Pierre's skiff just +being drawn ashore by a ragged negro, who presently turned and came +to him, half-lifting the wretched hat that slouched about his dark +brows, and smiling. + +"Sim like you done fo'got me," he said. "Don't you 'member how I use' +live at Belle Alliance? Yes, seh. I's de one what show Bonaventure de +road to Gran' Point'. Yes, seh. But I done lef' dah since Mistoo +Wallis sole de place. Yes, seh. An' when I meet up wid you papa you +nevva see a nigger so glad like I was. No, seh. An' likewise you papa. +Yes, seh. An' he ass me is I want to wuck fo' him, an' I see he +needin' he'p, an' so I tu'n in an' he'p him. Oh, yes, seh! dass mo' 'n +a week, now, since I been wuckin' fo' you papa." + +They got into the skiff and pushed off, the negro alone at the oars. + +"Pow'ful strong current on udder side," he said, pulling quietly +up-stream to offset the loss of way he must make presently in crossing +the rapid flood. "Mistoo Claude, I see a gen'leman dis day noon what I +ain't see' befo' since 'bout six year' an' mo'. I disremember his +name, but----" + +"Tarbox?" asked Claude with sudden interest. + +"Yes, seh. Dass it! Tah-bawx. Sim like any man ought to 'member dat +name. Him an' you papa done gone down de canal. Yes, seh; in a +pirogue. He come in a big hurry an' say how dey got a big crevasse up +de river on dat side, an' he want make you papa see one man what +livin' on Lac Cataouache. Yes, seh. An you papa say you fine you +supper in de pot. An' Mistoo Tah-bawx he say he want you teck one +hoss an' ride up till de crevasse an' you fine one frien' of yose +yondah, one ingineer; an' he say--Mistoo Tah-bawx--how he 'low to meet +up wid you at you papa' house to-morrow daylight. Yes, seh; Mistoo +Tah-bawx; yes, seh." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +CAN THEY CLOSE THE BREAK? + + +The towering cypresses of the far, southern swamps have a great width +of base, from which they narrow so rapidly in the first seven or eight +feet of their height, and thence upward taper so gradually, that it is +almost or quite impossible for an axe-man, standing at their roots, to +chop through the great flare that he finds abreast of him, and bring +the trees down. But when the swamps are deep in water, the swamper may +paddle up to these trees, whose narrowed waists are now within the +swing of his axe, and standing up in his canoe, by a marvel of +balancing skill, cut and cut, until at length his watchful, +up-glancing eye sees the forest giant bow his head. Then a shove, a +few backward sweeps of the paddle, and the canoe glides aside, and the +great trunk falls, smiting the smooth surface of the water with a roar +that, miles away, reaches the ear like the thunder of artillery. The +tree falls: but if the woodsman has not known how to judge and choose +wisely when the inner wood is laid bare under the first big chip that +flies, there are many chances that the fallen tree will instantly sink +to the bottom of the water, and cannot be rafted out. One must know +his craft, even in Louisiana swamps. "Knowledge is power." + +When Zosephine and Mr. Tarbox finished out that Sunday twilight walk, +they talked, after leaving the stile behind, only on business. He told +her of having lately been, with a certain expert, in the swamps of +Barataria, where he had seen some noble cypress forests tantalizingly +near to navigation and market, but practically a great way off, +because the levees of the great sugar estates on the Mississippi River +shut out all deep overflows. Hence these forests could be bought for, +seemingly, a mere tithe of their value. Now, he proposed to buy such a +stretch of them along the edge of the shaking prairie north of Lake +Cataouache as would show on his part, he said, "caution, but not +temerity." + +He invited her to participate. "And why?" For the simple reason that +the expert, and engineer, had dropped the remark that, in his opinion, +a certain levee could not possibly hold out against the high water of +more than two or three more years, and that when it should break it +would spread, from three to nine feet of water, over hundreds of +square miles of swamp forests, _prairies tremblantes_, and rice and +sugar fields, and many leagues of railway. Zosephine had consented; +and though Mr. Tarbox had soon after gone upon his commercial travels, +he had effected the purchase by correspondence, little thinking that +the first news he should hear on returning to New Orleans would be +that the remotely anticipated "break" had just occurred. + +And now, could and would the breach be closed, or must all Barataria +soon be turned into, and remain for months, a navigable yellow sea? +This, Claude knew, was what he must hasten to the crevasse to +discover, and return as promptly to report upon, let his heart-strings +draw as they might towards the studio in Carondelet Street and the +Christian Women's Exchange. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +THE OUTLAW AND THE FLOOD. + + +What suffering it costs to be a coward! Some days before the crevasse +occurred, he whom we know as the pot-hunter stood again on the +platform of that same little railway station whence we once saw him +vanish at sight of Bonaventure Deschamps. He had never ventured there +since, until now. But there was a new station agent. + +His Indian squaw was dead. A rattlesnake had given her its fatal +sting, and the outcast, dreading all men and the coroner not the +least, had, silently and alone, buried her on the prairie. + +The train rolled up to the station again as before. Claude's friend, +the surveyor, stepped off with a cigar in his mouth, to enjoy in the +train's momentary stay the delightful air that came across the open +prairie. The pot-hunter, who had got rid of his game, ventured near +his former patron. It might be the engineer could give him work +whereby to earn a day's ready money. He was not disappointed. The +engineer told him to come in a day or two, by the waterways the +pot-hunter knew so well, across the swamps and prairies to Bayou +Terrebonne and the little court-house town of Houma. And then he +added: + +"I heard this morning that somebody had been buying the swamp land all +around you out on Lake Cataouache. Is it so?" + +The Acadian looked vacant and shook his head. + +"Yes," said the other, "a Madame Beausoleil, or somebod--What's the +matter?" + +"All aboard!" cried the train conductor. + +"The fellow turned pale," said the surveyor, as he resumed his seat in +the smoking-car and the landscape began again to whirl by. + +The pot-hunter stood for a moment, and then slowly, as if he stole +away from some sleeping enemy, left the place. Alarm went with him +like an attendant ghost. A thousand times that day, in the dark swamp, +on the wide prairie, or under his rush-thatch on the lake-side, he +tortured himself with one question: Why had she--Zosephine--reached +away out from Carancro to buy the uncultivable and primeval wilderness +round about his lonely hiding-place? Hour after hour the inexplicable +problem seemed to draw near and nearer to him, a widening, tightening, +dreamlike terror, that, as it came, silently pointed its finger of +death at him. He was glad enough to leave his cabin next day in his +small, swift pirogue--shot-gun, axe, and rifle his only +companions--for Terrebonne. + +It chanced to be noon of the day following, when he glided up the +sunny Terrebonne towards the parish seat. The shores of the stream +have many beauties, but the Acadian's eyes were alert to any thing but +them. The deep green, waxen-leaved casino hedges; the hedges of +Cherokee rose, and sometimes of rose and casino mingled; the fields of +corn and sugar-cane; the quaint, railed, floating bridges lying across +the lazy bayou; the orange-groves of aged, giant trees, their dark +green boughs grown all to a tangle with well-nigh the density of a +hedge, and their venerable trunks hairy with green-gray lichens; the +orange-trees again in the door-yards, with neat pirogues set upon +racks under their deep shade; the indescribable floods of sunlight and +caverns of shadow; the clear, brown depths beneath his own canoe; or, +at the bottom, the dark, waving, green-brown tresses of +water-weeds,--these were naught to him. + +But the human presence was much; and once, when just ahead of him he +espied a young, sunbonneted woman crouching in the pouring sunshine +beyond the sod of the bayou's bank, itself but a few inches above the +level of the stream, on a little pier of one plank pushed out among +the flags and reeds, pounding her washing with a wooden paddle, he +stopped the dip of his canoe-paddle, and gazed with growing +trepidation and slackening speed. At the outer end of the plank, the +habitual dip of the bucket had driven aside the water-lilies, and made +a round, glassy space that reflected all but perfectly to him her +busy, young, downcast visage. + +"How like"--Just then she lifted her head. He started as though his +boat had struck a snag. How like--how terribly like to that young +Zosephine whose ill-concealed scorn he had so often felt in days--in +years--long gone, at Carancro! This was not, and could not be, the +same--lacked half the necessary years; and yet, in the joy of his +relief, he answered her bow with a question, "Whose was yonder house?" + +She replied in the same Acadian French in which she was questioned, +that there dwelt, or had dwelt, and about two weeks ago had died, +"Monsieur Robichaux." The pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, his canoe +shot on, and two hours later he walked with dust-covered feet into +Houma. + +The principal tavern there stands on that corner of the court-house +square to which the swamper would naturally come first. Here he was to +find the engineer. But, as with slow, diffident step he set one foot +upon the corner of the threshold, there passed quickly by him and out +towards the court-house, two persons,--one a man of a county +court-room look and with a handful of documents, and the other a woman +whom he knew at a glance. Her skirts swept his ankles as he shrank in +sudden and abject terror against the wall, yet she did not see him. + +He turned and retreated the way he had come, nothing doubting that +only by the virtue of a voodoo charm which he carried in his pocket he +had escaped, for the time being, a plot laid for his capture. For the +small, neatly-robed form that you may still see disappearing within +the court-house door beside the limping figure of the probate clerk is +Zosephine Beausoleil. She will finish the last pressing matter of the +Robichaux succession now in an hour or so, and be off on the little +branch railway, whose terminus is here, for New Orleans. + +When the pot-hunter approached Lake Cataouache again, he made on foot, +under cover of rushes and reeds taller than he, a wide circuit and +reconnoissance of his hut. While still a long way off, he saw, lighted +by the sunset rays, what he quickly recognized as a canoe drawn half +out of the water almost at his door. He warily drew nearer. Presently +he stopped, and stood slowly and softly shifting his footing about on +the oozy soil, at a little point of shore only some fifty yards away +from his cabin. His eyes, peering from the ambush, descried a man +standing by the pirogue and searching with his gaze the wide distances +that would soon be hidden in the abrupt fall of the southern night. + +The pot-hunter knew him. Not by name, but by face. The day the outlaw +saw Bonaventure at the little railway station this man was with him. +The name the pot-hunter did not know was St. Pierre. + +The ambushed man shrank a step backward into his hiding-place. His +rifle was in his hand and he noiselessly cocked it. He had not +resolved to shoot; but a rifle is of no use until it is cocked. While +he so stood, another man came into view and to the first one's side. +This one, too, he knew, despite the soft hat that had taken the place +of the silk one; for this was Tarbox. The Acadian was confirmed in +his conviction that the surveyor's invitation for him to come to Houma +was part of a plot to entrap him. + +While he still looked the two men got into the canoe and St. Pierre +paddled swiftly away. The pot-hunter let down the hammer of his gun, +shrank away again, turned and hurried through the tangle, regained his +canoe, and paddled off. The men's departure from the cabin was, in his +belief, a ruse. But he knew how by circuits and short cuts to follow +after them unseen, and this he did until he became convinced that they +were fairly in the Company Canal and gliding up its dark colonnade in +the direction whence they had evidently come. Then he returned to his +cabin and with rifle cocked and with slow, stealthy step entered it, +and in headlong haste began to prepare to leave it for a long +hiding-out. + +He knew every spot of land and water for leagues around, as a bear or +a fox would know the region about his den. He had in mind now a bit of +dry ground scarce fifty feet long or wide, deeply hidden in the swamp +to the north of this lake. How it had ever happened that this dry +spot, lifted two or three feet above the low level around it, had been +made, whether by some dumb force of nature or by the hand of men yet +more untamable than he, had never crossed his thought. It was beyond +measure of more value to him to know, by what he had seen growing on +it season after season, that for many a long year no waters had +overflowed it. In the lake, close to his hut, lay moored his small +centerboard lugger, and into this he presently threw his few +appliances and supplies, spread sail, and skimmed away, with his +pirogue towing after. + +His loaded rifle lay within instant reach. By choice he would not have +harmed any living creature that men call it wrong to injure; but to +save himself, not only from death, but from any risk of death, +rightful or wrongful, he would, not through courage, but in the +desperation of frantic cowardice, have killed a hundred men, one by +one. + +By this time it was night; and when first the lugger and, after it was +hidden away, the pirogue, had carried him up a slender bayou as near +as they could to the point he wished to reach, he had still to drag +the loaded pirogue no small distance through the dark, often wet and +almost impenetrable woods. He had taken little rest and less sleep in +his late journeyings, and when at length he cast himself down before +his fire of dead fagots on the raised spot he had chosen, he slept +heavily. He felt safe from man's world, at least for the night. + +Only one thing gave him concern as he lay down. It was the fact that +when, with the old woods-habit strong on him, he had approached his +selected camping ground, with such wariness of movement as the +dragging pirogue would allow, he had got quite in sight of it before a +number of deer on it bounded away. He felt an unpleasant wonder to +know what their unwilling boldness might signify. + +He did not awake to replenish his fire until there were only a few +live embers shining dimly at his feet. He rose to a sitting posture; +and in that same moment there came a confusion of sound--a trampling +through bushes--that froze his blood, and robbed his open throat of +power to cry. The next instant he knew it was but those same deer. But +the first intelligent thought brought a new fear. These most timid of +creatures had made but a few leaps and stopped. He knew what that +meant! As he leaped to his feet the deer started again, and he heard, +to his horror,--where the ground had been dry and caked when he lay +down,--the plash of their feet in water. + +Trembling, he drew his boots on, made and lighted a torch, and in a +moment was dragging his canoe after him in the direction of the +lugger. Presently his steps, too, were plashing. He stooped, waved the +torch low across the water's surface, and followed the gleam with his +scrutiny. But he did so not for any doubt that he would see, as he +did, the yellow flood of the Mississippi. He believed, as he believed +his existence, that his pursuers had let the river in upon the swamp, +ruin whom they might, to drive him from cover. + +Presently he stepped into the canoe, cast his torch into the water, +took his paddle, and glided unerringly through a darkness and a wild +tangle of undergrowth, large and small, where you or I could not have +gone ten yards without being lost. He emerged successfully from the +forest into the open prairie, and, under a sky whose stars told him it +would soon be day, glided on down the little bayou lane, between walls +of lofty rushes, up which he had come in the evening, and presently +found the lugger as he had left her, with her light mast down, hidden +among the brake canes that masked a little cove. + +The waters were already in the prairie. As he boarded the little +vessel at the stern, a raccoon waddled in noiseless haste over the +bow, and splashed into the wet covert of reeds beyond. If only to keep +from sharing his quarters with all the refuge-hunting vermin of the +noisome wilderness, the one human must move on. He turned the lugger's +prow towards the lake, and spread her sails to the faint, cool breeze. +But when day broke, the sail was gone. + +Far and wide lay the pale green leagues of reeds and bulrushes, with +only here and there a low willow or two beside some unseen lagoon, or +a sinuous band of darker green, where round rushes and myrtle bushes +followed the shore of some hidden bayou. The waters of the lake were +gleaming and crinkling in tints of lilac and silver stolen from the +air; and away to the right, and yet farther to the left, stood the +dark phalanxes of cypress woods. + +Thus had a thousand mornings risen on the scene in the sight of the +outlaw. Numberless birds fluttered from place to place, snatching +their prey, carolling, feeding their young, chattering, croaking, +warbling, and swinging on the bending rush. But if you looked again, +strange signs of nature's mute anguish began to show. On every log or +bit of smaller drift that rain-swollen bayous had ever brought from +the forest and thrown upon their banks some wild tenant of the jungle, +hare or weasel, cat, otter, or raccoon, had taken refuge, sometimes +alone, but oftener sharing it, in common misery and silent truce, +with deadly foes. For under all that expanse of green beauty, the +water, always abundant, was no longer here and there, but everywhere. + +See yonder reed but a few yards away. What singular dark enlargement +of stem is that near its top, that curious spiral growth?--growth! It +is a great serpent that has climbed and twined himself there, and is +holding on for the life he loves as we love ours. And see! On a reed +near by him, another; and a little farther off, another; and +another--and another! Where were our eyes until now? The surface of +the vast brake, as far as one can see such small things, is dotted +with like horrid burdens. And somewhere in this wild desolation, in +this green prospect of a million deaths waiting in silence alike for +harmful and harmless creatures, one man is hiding from all mankind. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +WELL HIDDEN. + + +Of all the teeming multitudes of the human world, the pot-hunter knows +not one soul who is on his side; not one whom he dare let see his face +or come between him and a hiding-place. The water is rising fast. He +dare not guess how high it will come; but rise as it may, linger at +its height as it may, he will not be driven out. In his belief a +hundred men are ready, at every possible point where his foot could +overstep the line of this vast inundation, to seize him and drag him +to the gallows. Ah, the gallows! Not being dead--not God's anger--not +eternal burnings; but simply facing death! The gallows! The tree above +his head--the rope around his neck--the signal about to be spoken--the +one wild moment after it! These keep him here. + +He has taken down sail and mast. The rushes are twelve feet high. They +hide him well. With oars, mast, and the like, he has contrived +something by which he can look out over their tops. He has powder and +shot, coffee, salt, and rice; he will not be driven out! At night he +spreads his sail and seeks the open waters of the lake, where he can +sleep, by littles, without being overrun by serpents; but when day +breaks, there is no visible sign of his presence. Yet he is where he +can see his cabin. It is now deep in the water, and the flood is still +rising. He is quite sure no one has entered it since he left it. +But--the strain of perpetual watching! + +When at dawn of the fifth day he again looked for cover in the +prairie, the water was too high to allow him concealment, and he +sought the screen of some willows that fringed the edge of the swamp +forest, anchoring in a few rods' width of open water between them and +the woods. He did not fear to make, on the small hearth of mud and +ashes he had improvised in his lugger, the meagre fire needed to +prepare his food. Its slender smoke quickly mingled with the hazy +vapors and shadows of the swamp. As he cast his eye abroad, he found +nowhere any sign of human approach. Here and there the tops of the +round rushes still stood three feet above the water, but their slender +needles were scarcely noticeable. Far and near, over prairie as over +lake, lay the unbroken yellow flood. There was no flutter of wings, no +whistle of feathered mate to mate, no call of nestlings from the +ruined nests. Except the hawk and vulture, the birds were gone. Untold +thousands of dumb creatures had clung to life for a time, but now were +devoured by birds of prey and by alligators, or were drowned. +Thousands still lived on. Behind him in the swamp the wood-birds +remained, the gray squirrel still barked and leaped from tree to tree, +the raccoon came down to fish, the plundering owl still hid himself +through the bright hours, and the chilled snake curled close in the +warm folds of the hanging moss. Nine feet of water below. In earlier +days, to the northward through the forest, many old timbers rejected +in railway construction or repair, with dead logs and limbs, had been +drifted together by heavy rains, and had gathered a covering of soil; +canebrake, luxurious willow-bushes, and tough grasses had sprung up on +them and bound them with their roots. These floating islands the +flood, now covering the dense underbrush of the swamp, lifted on its +free surface, and, in its slow creep southward, bore through the +pillared arcades of the cypress wood and out over the submerged +prairies. Many a cowering deer in those last few days that had made +some one of these green fragments of the drowned land a haven of +despair, the human castaway left unharmed. + +Of all sentient creatures in that deluge he was suffering most. He +was gaunt and haggard with watching. The thought of pursuit bursting +suddenly around him now fastened permanently upon his imagination. He +feared to sleep. From the direction of the open water surprise seemed +impossible; but from the forest! what instant might it not ring with +the whoop of discovery, the many-voiced halting challenge, and the +glint of loaded Winchester? And another fear had come. Many a man not +a coward, and as used to the sight of serpents as this man, has never +been able to be other than a coward concerning them. The pot-hunter +held them in terror. It was from fear of them that he had lighted his +torch the night of his bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their +ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding them had made the +swamp and prairie life bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven +from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to +lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to +find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant "Beware!" In the +flooded prairie the willow-trees were loaded with the knotted folds of +the moccasin, the rattlesnake, and I know not how many other sorts of +deadly or only loathsome serpents. Some little creatures at the bottom +of the water, feeding on the soft white part of the round rush near +its root, every now and then cut a stem free from its base, and let it +spring to the surface and float away. Often a snake had wrapped +himself about the end above the water, and when this refuge gave way +and drifted abroad he would cling for a time, until some less forlorn +hope came in sight, and then swim for it. Thus scarce a minute of the +day passed, it seemed, but one, two, or three of these creatures, +making for their fellow-castaway's boat, were turned away by nervous +waving of arms. The nights had proved that they could not climb the +lugger's side, and when he was in her the canoe was laid athwart her +gunwales; but at night he had to drop the bit of old iron that served +for an anchor, and the very first night a large moccasin--not of the +dusky kind described in books, but of that yet deadlier black sort, an +ell in length, which the swampers call the Congo--came up the +anchor-rope. The castaway killed it with an oar; but after that who +would have slept? + +About sunset of the fifth day, though it was bright and beautiful, the +hunter's cunning detected the first subtle signs of a coming storm. He +looked about him to see what provision was needed to meet and weather +its onset. On the swamp side the loftiest cypresses, should the wind +bring any of them down, would not more than cast the spray of their +fall as far as his anchorage. The mass of willows on the prairie side +was nearer, but its trees stood low,--already here and there the +branches touched the water; the hurricane might tear away some boughs, +but could do no more. He shortened the anchor-rope, and tried the hold +of the anchor on the bottom to make sure the lugger might not swing +into the willows, for in every fork of every bough was a huge dark +mass of serpents plaited and piled one upon another, and ready at any +moment to glide apart towards any new shelter that might be reached. + +While eye and hand were thus engaged, the hunter's ear was attentive +to sounds that he had been hearing for more than an hour. These were +the puff of 'scape-pipes and plash of a paddle-wheel, evidently from a +small steamer in the Company Canal. She was coming down it; that is, +from the direction of the river and the city. + +Whither was she bound? To some one of the hundred or more plantations +and plantation homes that the far-reaching crevasse had desolated? +Likely enough. In such event she would not come into view, although +for some time now he had seen faint shreds of smoke in the sky over a +distant line of woods. But it filled him with inward tremors to know +that if she chose to leave the usual haunts of navigation on her left, +and steam out over the submerged prairies and the lake, and into the +very shadow of these cypresses, she could do it without fear of a snag +or a shallow. He watched anxiously as the faint smoke reached a +certain point. If the next thin curl should rise farther on, it would +mean safety. But when it came it seemed to be in the same place as the +last; and another the same, and yet another the same: she was making +almost a straight line for the spot where he stood. Only a small low +point of forest broke the line, and presently, far away, she slowly +came out from behind it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE TORNADO. + + +The Acadian stooped at once and with a quick splash launched his +canoe. A minute later he was in it, gliding along and just within the +edge of the forest where it swept around nearly at right angles to the +direction in which the steamboat was coming. Thus he could watch the +approaching steamer unseen, while every moment putting distance +between himself and the lugger. + +The strange visitor came on. How many men there were on her lower +deck! Were they really negroes, or had they blackened their faces, as +men sometimes do when they are going to hang a poor devil in the +woods? On the upper deck are two others whose faces do not seem to be +blackened. But a moment later they are the most fearful sight of all; +for only too plainly does the fugitive see that they are the same two +men who stood before the doorway of his hut six days before. And see +how many canoes on the lower deck! + +While the steamer is yet half a mile away from the hidden lugger, her +lamps and fires and their attendant images in the water beneath glow +softly in the fast deepening twilight, and the night comes swiftly +down. The air is motionless. Across the silent waste an engine bell +jangles; the puff of steam ceases; the one plashing paddle-wheel at +the stern is still; the lights glide more and more slowly; with a +great crash and rumble, that is answered by the echoing woods, the +anchor-chain runs out its short measure, and the steamer stops. + +Gently the pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, and the pirogue moved +back towards the lugger. It may be that the flood was at last numbing +his fear, as it had so soon done that of all the brute-life around +him; it was in his mind to do something calling for more courage than +he had ever before commanded in his life, save on that one day in +Carancro, when, stung to madness by the taunts of a brave man, and +driven to the wall, he had grappled and slain his tormentor. He had +the thought now to return, and under cover of the swamp's deep outer +margin of shadow, silently lift into the canoe the bit of iron that +anchored the lugger, and as noiselessly draw her miles away to another +covert; or if the storm still held back, even at length to step the +mast, spread the sail, and put the horizon between him and the steamer +before daybreak. This he had now started to do, and would do, if only +courage would hold on and the storm hold off. + +For a time his canoe moved swiftly; but as he drew near the lugger his +speed grew less and less, and eye and ear watched and hearkened with +their intensest might. He could hear talking on the steamer. There was +a dead calm. He had come to a spot just inside the wood, abreast of +the lugger. His canoe slowly turned and pointed towards her, and then +stood still. He sat there with his paddle in the water, longing like a +dumb brute; longing, and, without a motion, struggling for courage +enough to move forward. It would not come. His heart jarred his frame +with its beating. He could not stir. + +As he looked out upon the sky a soft, faint tremor of light glimmered +for a moment over it, without disturbing a shadow below. The paddle +stirred gently, and the canoe slowly drew back; the storm was coming +to betray him with its lightnings. In the black forest's edge the +pot-hunter lingered trembling. Oh for the nerve to take a brave man's +chances! A little courage would have saved his life. He wiped the dew +from his brow with his sleeve; every nerve had let go. Again there +came across the water the very words of those who talked together on +the steamer. They were saying that the felling of trees would begin in +the morning; but they spoke in a tongue which Acadians of late years +had learned to understand, though many hated it, but of which he had +never known twenty words, and what he had known were now +forgotten--the English tongue. Even without courage, to have known a +little English would have made the difference between life and death. +Another glimmer spread dimly across the sky, and a faint murmur of +far-off thunder came to the ear. He turned the pirogue and fled. + +Soon the stars are hidden. A light breeze seems rather to tremble and +hang poised than to blow. The rolling clouds, the dark wilderness, and +the watery waste shine out every moment in the wide gleam of +lightnings still hidden by the wood, and are wrapped again in +ever-thickening darkness over which thunders roll and jar, and answer +one another across the sky. Then, like a charge of ten thousand +lancers, come the wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the +artillery of heaven. The lightnings leap, hiss, and blaze; the +thunders crack and roar; the rain lashes; the waters writhe; the wind +smites and howls. For five, for ten, for twenty minutes,--for an hour, +for two hours,--the sky and the flood are never for an instant wholly +dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; but while the universal +roar sinks and swells, and the wide, vibrant illumination shows all +things in ghostly half-concealment, fresh floods of lightning every +moment rend the dim curtain and leap forth; the glare of day falls +upon the swaying wood, the reeling, bowing, tossing willows, the +seething waters, the whirling rain, and in the midst the small form of +the distressed steamer, her revolving paddle-wheels toiling behind to +lighten the strain upon her anchor-chains; then all are dim ghosts +again, while a peal, as if the heavens were rent, rolls off around the +sky, comes back in shocks and throbs, and sinks in a long roar that +before it can die is swallowed up in the next flash and peal. + +The deserted lugger is riding out the tornado. Whirled one moment this +way and another that, now and again taking in water, her +forest-shelter breaks the force of many a gust that would have +destroyed her out in the open. But in the height of the storm her poor +substitute for an anchor lets go its defective hold on the rushy +bottom and drags, and the little vessel backs, backs, into the +willows. She escapes such entanglement as would capsize her, and by +and by, when the wind lulls for a moment and then comes with all its +wrath from the opposite direction, she swings clear again and drags +back nearly to her first mooring and lies there, swinging, tossing, +and surviving still,--a den of snakes. + +The tempest was still fierce, though abating, and the lightning still +flashed, but less constantly, when at a point near the lugger the +pirogue came out of the forest, laboring against the wind and +half-filled with water. On the face of the storm-beaten man in it each +gleam of the lightning showed the pallid confession of mortal terror. +Where that frail shell had been, or how often it had cast its occupant +out, no one can ever know. He was bareheaded and barefooted. One +cannot swim in boots; without them, even one who has never dared learn +how may hope to swim a little. + +In the darkness he drew alongside the lugger, rose, balanced +skilfully, seized his moment, and stepped safely across her gunwale. A +slight lurch caused him to throw his arms out to regain his poise; the +line by which he still held the canoe straightened out its length and +slipped from his grasp. In an instant the pirogue was gone. A glimmer +of lightning showed her driving off sidewise before the wind. But it +revealed another sight also. It was dark again, black; but the outcast +stood freezing with horror and fright, gazing just in advance of his +feet and waiting for the next gleam. It came, brighter than the last; +and scarcely a step before him he saw three great serpents moving +towards the spot that gave him already such slender footing. He +recoiled a step--another; but instantly as he made the second a cold, +living form was under his foot, its folds flew round his ankle, and +once! twice! it struck! With a frantic effort he spurned it from him; +all in the same instant a blaze of lightning discovered the maimed +form and black and red markings of a "bastard hornsnake," and with one +piercing wail of despair, that was drowned in the shriek of the wind +and roar of the thunder, he fell. + +A few hours later the winds were still, the stars were out, a sweet +silence had fallen upon water and wood, and from her deck the watchmen +on the steamer could see in the north-eastern sky a broad, soft, +illumination, and knew it was the lights of slumbering New Orleans, +eighteen miles away. + +By and by, farther to the east, another brightness began to grow and +gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a +soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it. +A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four +replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird +flew out of the woods on her earliest quest for family provision; a +thrush began to sing; and in a moment more the whole forest was one +choir. + +What wonderful purity was in the fragrant air; what color was on the +calm waters and in the deep sky; how beautiful, how gentle was Nature +after her transport of passion! Shall we ever subdue her and make her +always submissive and compliant? Who knows? Who knows what man may do +with her when once he has got self, the universal self, under perfect +mastery? See yonder huge bull-alligator swimming hitherward out of the +swamp. Even as you point he turns again in alarm and is gone. Once he +was man's terror, Leviathan. The very lions of Africa and the +grizzlies of the Rockies, so they tell us, are no longer the bold +enemies of man they once were. "Subdue the earth"--it is being done. +Science and art, commerce and exploration, are but parts of religion. +Help us, brothers all, with every possible discovery and invention to +complete the conquest begun in that lost garden whence man and woman +first came forth, not for vengeance but for love, to bruise the +serpent's head. But as yet, both within us and without us, what +terrible revolts doth Nature make! what awful victories doth she have +over us, and then turn and bless and serve us again! + +As the sun was rising, one of the timber-cutters from the steamer +stood up in his canoe about half a mile away, near the wood and beside +some willows, and halloed and beckoned. And when those on the steamer +hearkened he called again, bidding them tell "de boss" that he had +found a canoe adrift, an anchored boat, and a white man in her, dead. + +Tarbox and St. Pierre came in a skiff. + +"Is he drowned?" asked Mr. Tarbox, while still some distance off. + +"Been struck by lightnin' sim like," replied the negro who had found +the body.--"Watch out, Mistoo Tah-bawx!" he added, as the skiff drew +near; "dat boat dess lousy wid snake'!" + +Tarbox stood up in the skiff and looked sadly upon the dead face. +"It's our man," he said to St. Pierre. + +"Dass what I say!" exclaimed the negro. "Yes, seh, so soon I see him I +say, mos' sholy dass de same man what Mistoo Tah-bawx lookin' faw to +show him 'roun' 'bout de swamp! Yes, seh, not-instandin' I never see +him befo'! No, seh.--Lawd! look yondeh! look dat big bahsta'd +hawn-snake! He kyant git away: he's hu't! Lawd! dass what kill dat +man! Dat man trawmp on him in de dark, and he strack him wid his hawny +tail! Look at dem fo' li'l' spot' on de man' foot! Now, Mistoo +Tah-bawx! You been talk' 'bout dem ah bahsta'd hawn-snake not pizen! +Well, mos' sholy dey _bite_ ain't pizen; but if dat hawn on de een of +his tail dess on'y tetch you, you' gone! Look at dat man! Kill' him so +quick dey wa'n't time for de place to swell whah he was hit!" But +Tarbox quietly pointed out to St. Pierre that the tiny wounds were +made by the reptile's teeth. + +"The coroner's verdict will probably be 'privation and exposure,'" +said he softly; "but it ought to be, 'killed by fright and the bite of +a harmless snake.'" + +On his murmured suggestion, St. Pierre gave orders that, with one +exception, every woodsman go to his tree-felling, and that the lugger +and canoe, with the dead man lying untouched, be towed by skiff and a +single pair of oars to the head of the canal for inquest and burial. + +"I'll go with him," said Tarbox softly to St. Pierre. "We owe him all +we're going to get out of these woods, and I owe him a great deal +more." When a little later he was left for a moment without a hearer, +he said to the prostrate form, "Poor fellow! And to think I had her +message to you to come out of this swamp and begin to live the life of +a live man!" + +The rude funeral moved away, and soon the woods were ringing with the +blow of axes and the shout and song of black timber-men as gayly as +though there never had been or was to be a storm or a death. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +"TEARS AND SUCH THINGS." + + +Marguerite and her friend had no sooner taken their seats to drive +home from the studio the day the sketch was made than Marguerite began +a perfect prattle. Her eyes still shone exaltedly, and leaped and fell +and darkened and brightened with more than the swift variety of a +fountain in the moonlight, while she kept trying in vain to meet her +companion's looks with a moment's steady regard. + +Claude was found! and she trembled with delight. But, alas! he had +heard her passionate call and yet stood still; had looked down upon +her in silence, and drawn again the curtain between them. She had +thought until the last moment, "He will come; he will confront us as +we pass out the door--will overtake us at the foot of the stairs--on +the sidewalk--at the carriage window." But it had not been so; and +now they were gone from the place; and here sat this friend, this gay, +cynical knower of men's and women's ways, answering her chatter in +short, smiling responses, with a steady eye fixed on her, and reading, +Marguerite believed, as plainly as if it were any of the sign-boards +along the rattling street, the writing on her fluttering heart. And +so, even while she trembled with strange delight, pain, shame, and +alarm pleaded through her dancing glances, now by turns and now in +confusion together, for mercy and concealment. But in fact, as this +friend sat glancing upon the young face beside her with secret +sympathy and admiration, it was only this wild fear of betrayal that +at length betrayed. + +Reaching the house, the street door was hardly shut behind them when +Marguerite would have darted up to her chamber; but her friend caught +her hands across the balustrade, and said, with roguery in her own +eyes: + +"Marguerite, you sweet rowdy--" + +"W'at?" + +"Yes, _what_. There's something up; what is it?" + +The girl tried to put on surprise; but her eyes failed her again. She +leaned on the rail and looked down, meanwhile trying softly to draw +away up-stairs; but her friend held on to one hand and murmured: + +"Just one question, dearie, just one. I'll not ask another: I'll die +first. You'll probably find me _in articulo mortis_ when you come +down-stairs. Just one question, lovie." + +"_W'at_ it is?" + +"It's nothing but this; I ask for information." The voice dropped to +a whisper,--"Is he as handsome as his portrait?" + +The victim rallied all her poor powers of face, and turned feebly upon +the questioner: + +"Po'trait? Who?" Her voice was low, and she glanced furtively at the +nearest door. "I dawn't awnstan you." Her hand pulled softly for its +freedom, and she turned to go, repeating, with averted face, "I dawn't +awnstan you 't all." + +"Well, never mind then, dear, if you don't understand," responded the +tease, with mock tenderness. "But, _ma belle Creole_--" + +"_Je suis Acadienne._" + +"You're an angel, faintly disguised. Only--look around here--only, +Angelica, don't try to practise woman's humbug on a woman. At least, +not on this old one. It doesn't work. I'll tell you whom I mean." She +pulled, but Marguerite held off. "I mean," she hoarsely whispered,--"I +mean the young inventor that engineer told us about. Remember?" + +Marguerite, with her head bowed low, slowly dragged her hand free, and +moved with growing speed up the stairs, saying: + +"I dawn't know what is dat. I dawn't awnstan you 't all." Her last +words trembled as if nigh to tears. At the top of the stairs the +searching murmur of her friend's voice came up, and she turned and +looked back. + +"Forgive me!" said the figure below. The girl stood a moment, sending +down a re-assuring smile. + +"You young rogue!" murmured the lady, looking up with ravished eyes. +Then she lifted herself on tiptoe, made a trumpet of both little +hands, and whispered: + +"Don't--worry! We'll bring it out--all right!" + +Whereat Marguerite blushed from temple to throat, and vanished. + +The same day word came from her mother of her return from Terrebonne, +and she hastened to rejoin her in their snug rooms over the Women's +Exchange. When she snatched Zosephine into her arms and shed tears, +the mother merely wiped and kissed them away, and asked no +explanation. + +The two were soon apart. For Marguerite hungered unceasingly for +solitude. Only in solitude could she, or dared she, give herself up to +the constant recapitulation of every minutest incident of the morning. +And that was ample employment. They seemed the happenings of a month +ago. She felt as if it were imperative to fix them in her memory now, +or lose them in confusion and oblivion forever. Over them all again +and again she went, sometimes quickening memory with half-spoken +words, sometimes halting in long reverie at some intense juncture: now +with tingling pleasure at the unveiling of the portrait, the painter's +cautionary revelation of the personal presence above, or Claude's +appearance at the window; now with burnings of self-abasement at the +passionate but ineffectual beseechings of her violin; and always +ending with her face in her hands, as though to hide her face even +from herself for shame that with all her calling--her barefaced, as +it seemed to her, her abject calling--he had not come. + +"Marguerite, my child, it is time for bed." + +She obeyed. It was all one, the bed or the window. Her mother, weary +with travel, fell asleep; but she--she heard the clock down-stairs +strike, and a clock next door attest, twelve--one--two--three--four, +and another day began to shine in at the window. As it brightened, her +spirits rose. She had been lying long in reverie; now she began once +more the oft-repeated rehearsal. But the new day shone into it also. +When the silent recital again reached its end, the old distress was no +longer there, but in its place was a new, sweet shame near of kin to +joy. The face, unhidden, looked straight into the growing light. +Whatever else had happened, this remained,--that Claude was found. She +silently formed the name on her parted lips--"Claude! Claude! Claude! +Claude!" and could not stop though it gave her pain, the pain was so +sweet. She ceased only when there rose before her again the picture of +him drawing the curtain and disappearing; but even then she remembered +the words, "Don't worry; we'll bring it out all right," and smiled. + +When Zosephine, as the first sunbeam struck the window-pane, turned +upon her elbow and looked into the fair face beside her, the eyes were +closed in sleep. She arose, darkened the room, and left it. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +LOVE, ANGER, AND MISUNDERSTANDING. + + +The city bells had sounded for noon when the sleeper opened her eyes. +While she slept, Claude had arrived again at his father's cottage from +the scene of the crevasse, and reported to Tarbox the decision of +himself and the engineer, that the gap would not be closed for months +to come. While he told it, they sat down with St. Pierre to breakfast. +Claude, who had had no chance even to seek sleep, ate like a starved +horse. Tarbox watched him closely, with hidden and growing amusement. +Presently their eyes fastened on each other steadily. Tarbox broke the +silence. + +"_You_ don't care how the crevasse turns out. I've asked you a +question now twice, and you don't even hear." + +"Why you don't ass ag'in?" responded the younger man, reaching over to +the meat-dish and rubbing his bread in the last of the gravy. Some +small care called St. Pierre away from the board. Tarbox leaned +forward on his elbows, and, not knowing he quoted, said softly,-- + +"There's something up. What is it?" + +"Op?" asked Claude, in his full voice, frowning. "Op where?--w'at, +_w'at_ is?" + +"Ah, yes!" said Tarbox, with affected sadness. "Yes, that's it; I +thought so. + + 'Oh-hon for somebody, oh hey for somebody.'" + +Claude stopped with a morsel half-way to his mouth, glared at him +several seconds, and then resumed his eating; not like a horse now, +but like a bad dog gnawing an old bone. He glanced again angrily at +the embodiment of irreverence opposite. Mr. Tarbox smiled. Claude let +slip, not intending it, an audible growl, with his eyes in the plate. +Mr. Tarbox's smile increased to a noiseless laugh, and grew and grew +until it took hopeless possession of him. His nerves relaxed, he +trembled, the table trembled with him, his eyes filled with tears, his +brows lifted laboriously, he covered his lips with one hand, and his +abdomen shrank until it pained him. And Claude knew, and showed he +knew it all; that was what made it impossible to stop. At length, with +tottering knees, Mr. Tarbox rose and started silently for the door. He +knew Claude's eyes were following. He heard him rise to his feet. He +felt as though he would have given a thousand dollars if his legs +would but last him through the doorway. But to crown all, St. Pierre +met him just on the threshold, breaking, with unintelligent sympathy, +into a broad, simple smile. Tarbox laid one hand upon the door for +support, and at that moment there was a hurtling sound; something +whizzed by Tarbox's ear, and the meat-dish crashed against the +door-post, and flew into a hundred pieces. + +The book-agent ran like a deer for a hundred yards and fell grovelling +upon the turf, the laugh still griping him with the energy of a +panther's jaws, while Claude, who, in blind pursuit, had come +threshing into his father's arms, pulled his hat over his eyes and +strode away towards the skiff ferry. As Mr. Tarbox returned towards +the cottage, St. Pierre met him, looking very grave, if not +displeased. The swamper spoke first. + +"Dass mighty good for you I was yondah to stop dat boy. He would 'a' +half-kill' you." + +"He'd have served me ex-actly right," said the other, and laughed +again. St. Pierre shook his head, as though this confession were poor +satisfaction, and said,-- + +"Dass not safe--make a 'Cajun mad. He dawn't git mad easy, but when he +_git_ mad it bre'k out all ove' him, yass. He goin' feel bad all day +now; I see tear' in his eye when he walk off." + +"I'm sorry," said Tarbox sincerely, and presently added, "Now, while +you look up a picked gang of timber-men, I'll see if I can charter a +little stern-wheel steamer, get that written permission from Madame +Beausoleil to cut trees on her land, and so forth, and so forth. +You'll hardly see me before bedtime again." + +It was the first hour of the afternoon when Claude left his little +workroom and walked slowly down to, and across, Canal Street and into +Bourbon. He had spent the intervening hours seated at his work-table +with his face in his hands. He was in great bitterness. His late +transport of anger gave him no burdensome concern. Indeed, there was +consolation in the thought that he should, by and by, stand erect +before one who was so largely to blame, and make that full confession +and apology which he believed his old-time Grande Pointe schoolmaster +would have offered could Bonaventure ever have so shamefully forgotten +himself. Yet the chagrin of having at once so violently and so +impotently belittled himself added one sting more to his fate. He was +in despair. An escaped balloon, a burst bubble, could hardly have +seemed more utterly beyond his reach than now did Marguerite. And he +could not blame her. She was right, he said sternly to himself--right +to treat his portrait as something that reminded her of nothing, +whether it did so or not; to play on with undisturbed inspiration; to +lift never a glance to his window; and to go away without a word, a +look, a sign, to any one, when the least breath or motion would have +brought him instantly into her sacred presence. She was right. She was +not for him. There is a fitness of things, and there was no +fitness--he said--of him for her. And yet she must and would ever be +more to him than any one else. He would glory in going through life +unloved, while his soul lived in and on the phantom companionship of +that vision of delight which she was and should ever be. The midday +bells sounded softly here and there. He would walk. + +As I say, he went slowly down the old rue Bourbon. He had no hunger; +he would pass by the Women's Exchange. There was nothing to stop there +for; was not Madame Beausoleil in Terrebonne, and Marguerite the guest +of that chattering woman in silk and laces? But when he reached the +Exchange doors he drifted in as silently and supinely as any drift-log +would float into the new crevasse. + +The same cashier was still on duty. She lighted up joyously as he +entered, and, when he had hung his hat near the door, leaned forward +to address him; but with a faint pain in his face, and loathing in his +heart, he passed on and out into the veranda. The place was well +filled, and he had to look about to find a seat. The bare possibility +that _she_ might be there was overpowering. There was a total +suspension of every sort of emotion. He felt, as he took his chair and +essayed to glance casually around, as light and unreal as any one who +ever walked the tight-rope in a dream. The blood leaped in torrents +through his veins, and yet his movements, as he fumbled aimlessly with +his knife, fork, and glass, were slow and languid. + +A slender young waitress came, rested her knuckles on the table, and +leaned on them, let her opposite arm hang limply along the sidewise +curve of her form, and bending a smile of angelic affection upon the +young Acadian, said in a confidential undertone: + +"The cashier told me to tell you those ladies have come." + +Claude rose quickly and stood looking upon the face before him, +speechless. It was to him exactly as if a man in uniform had laid a +hand upon his shoulder and said, "You're my prisoner." Then, still +gazing, and aware of others looking at him, he slowly sank again into +his seat. + +"She just told me to tell you," said the damsel. "Yes, sir. Have you +ordered?" + +"Humph?" He was still looking at her. + +"I say, have you given your order?" + +"Yass." + +She paused awkwardly, for she knew he had not, and saw that he was +trying vainly to make her words mean something in his mind. + +"Sha'n't I get you some coffee and rolls--same as day before +yesterday?" + +"Yass." He did not know what she said. His heart had stopped beating; +now it began again at a gallop. He turned red. He could see the +handkerchief that was wadded into his outer breast-pocket jar in time +with the heavy thump, thump, thump beneath it. The waitress staid an +awful time. At last she came. + +"I waited," she sweetly said, "to get _hot_ ones." He drew the +refreshments towards him mechanically. The mere smell of food made him +sick. It seemed impossible that he should eat it. She leaned over him +lovingly and asked, as if referring to the attitude, "Would you like +any thing more?--something sweet?" His flesh crawled. He bent over his +plate, shook his head, and stirred his coffee without having put any +thing into it. + +She tripped away, and he drew a breath of momentary relief, leaned +back in his chair, and warily passed his eyes around to see if there +was anybody who was not looking at him and waiting for him to begin to +eat. + +Ages afterward--to speak with Claude's feelings--he rose, took up his +check, and went to the desk. The cashier leaned forward and said with +soft blitheness: + +"They're here. They're up-stairs now." + +Claude answered never a word. He paid his check. As he waited for +change, he cast another glance over the various groups at the tables. +All were strangers. Then he went out. On the single sidewalk step he +halted, and red and blind with mortification, turned again into the +place; he had left his hat. With one magnificent effort at dignity and +unconcern he went to the rack, took down the hat, and as he lowered it +towards his head cast a last look down the room, and--there stood +Marguerite. She had entered just in time, it seemed to him, but just +too late, in fact, to see and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They +bowed to each other with majestic faintness, and then each from each +was gone. The girl at the desk saw it and was dumb. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +LOVE AND LUCK BY ELECTRIC LIGHT. + + +Mr. Tarbox was really a very brave man. For, had he not been, how +could he have ventured, something after the middle of that afternoon, +in his best attire, up into Claude's workroom? He came to apologize. +But Claude was not there. + +He waited, but the young man did not return. The air was hot and +still. Mr. Tarbox looked at his watch--it was a quarter of five. He +rose and descended to the street, looked up and down it, and then +moved briskly down to, and across, Canal Street and into Bourbon. He +had an appointment. + +Claude had not gone back to his loft at all. He was wandering up and +down the streets. About four he was in Bienville Street, where the +pleasure-trains run through it on their way out to Spanish Fort, a +beautiful pleasure-ground some six miles away from the city's centre, +on the margin of Lake Pontchartrain. He was listlessly crossing the +way as a train came along, and it was easy for the habit of the +aforetime brakeman to move him. As the last platform passed the +crossing, he reached out mechanically and swung aboard. + +Spanish Fort is at the mouth of Bayou St. John. A draw-bridge spans +the bayou. On the farther, the eastern, side, Claude stood leaning +against a pile, looking off far beyond West End to where the sun was +setting in the swamps about Lake Maurepas. There--there--not seen save +by memory's eye, yet there not the less, was Bayou des Acadiens. Ah +me! there was Grande Pointe. + +"O Bonaventure! Do I owe you"--Claude's thought was in the old Acadian +tongue--"Do I owe you malice for this? No, no, no! Better _this_ than +_less_." And then he recalled a writing-book copy that Bonaventure had +set for him, of the schoolmaster's own devising: _Better Great Sorrow +than Small Delight._ His throat tightened and his eyes swam. + +A pretty schooner, with green hull and new sails, came down the bayou. +As he turned to gaze on her, the bridge, just beyond his feet, began +to swing open. He stepped upon it and moved towards its centre, his +eyes still on the beautiful silent advance of the vessel. With a +number of persons who had gathered from both ends of the bridge, he +paused and leaned over the rail as the schooner, with her crew looking +up into the faces of the throng, glided close by. A female form came +beside him, looking down with the rest and shedding upon the air the +soft sweetness of perfumed robes. A masculine voice, just beyond, +said: + + "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." + +Claude started and looked up, and behold, Marguerite on the arm of +Tarbox! + +His movement drew their glance, and the next instant Mr. Tarbox, +beaming apology and pouring out glad greetings, had him by the hand. +Burning, choking, stammering, Claude heard and answered, he knew not +how, the voice of the queen of all her kind. Another pair pressed +forward to add their salutations. They were Zosephine and the +surveyor. + +Because the facilities for entertaining a male visitor were slender at +the Women's Exchange, because there was hope of more and cooler air at +the lake-side, because Spanish Fort was a pretty and romantic spot and +not so apt to be thronged as West End, and because Marguerite, as she +described it, was tired of houses and streets, and also because he had +something to say to Zosephine, Mr. Tarbox had brought the pretty +mother and daughter out here. The engineer had met the three by chance +only a few minutes before, and now as the bridge closed again he +passed Zosephine over to Claude, walked only a little way with them +down a path among the shrubbery, and then lifted his hat and withdrew. + +For once in his life Mr. G. W. Tarbox, as he walked with Marguerite +in advance of Claude and her mother, was at a loss what to say. The +drollness of the situation was in danger of overcoming him again. +Behind him was Claude, his mind tossed on a wild sea of doubts and +suspicions. + +"I told him," thought Tarbox, while the girl on his arm talked on in +pretty, broken English and sprightly haste about something he had lost +the drift of--"I told him I was courting Josephine. But I never proved +it to him. And now just look at this! Look at the whole sweet mess! +Something has got to be done." He did not mean something direct and +openhanded; that would never have occurred to him. He stopped, and +with Marguerite faced the other pair. One glance into Claude's face, +darkened with perplexity, anger, and a distressful effort to look +amiable and comfortable, was one too many; Tarbox burst into a laugh. + +"Pardon!" he exclaimed, checking himself until he was red; "I just +happened to think of something very funny that happened last week in +Arkansas--Madame Beausoleil, I know it must look odd,"--his voice +still trembled a little, but he kept a sober face--"and yet I must +take just a moment for business. Claude, can I see you?" + +They went a step aside. Mr. Tarbox put on a business frown, and said +to Claude in a low voice,-- + +"Hi! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the +moon the little dog laughed to see the sport and the dish ran away +with the spoon you understand I'm simply talking for talk's sake as +we resume our walk we'll inadvertently change partners--a kind of +Women's Exchange as it were old Mother Hubbard she went to the +cupboard to get her poor dog a bone but when she got there the +cupboard--don't smile so broadly--was bare and so the poor dog had +none will that be satisfactory?" + +Claude nodded, and as they turned again to their companions the +exchange was made with the grace, silence, and calm unconsciousness of +pure oversight,--or of general complicity. Very soon it suited +Zosephine and Tarbox to sit down upon a little bench beside a bed of +heart's-ease and listen to the orchestra. But Marguerite preferred to +walk in and out among the leafy shadows of the electric lamps. + +And so, side by side, as he had once seen Bonaventure and Sidonie go, +they went, Claude and Marguerite, away from all windings of +disappointment, all shadows of doubt, all shoals of misapprehension, +out upon the open sea of mutual love. Not that the great word of +words--affirmative or interrogative--was spoken then or there. They +came no nearer to it than this,-- + +"I wish," murmured Claude,--they had gone over all the delicious +"And-I-thought-that-you's" and the sweetly reproachful "Did-you- +think-that-I's," and had covered the past down to the meeting on the +bridge,--"I wish," he murmured, dropping into the old Acadian French, +which he had never spoken to her before,--"I wish"-- + +"What?" she replied, softly and in the same tongue. + +"I wish," he responded, "that this path might never end." He wondered +at his courage, and feared that now he had ruined all; for she made no +answer. But when he looked down upon her she looked up and smiled. A +little farther on she dropped her fan. He stooped and picked it up, +and, in restoring it, somehow their hands touched,--touched and +lingered; and then--and then--through one brief unspeakable moment, a +maiden's hand, for the first time in his life, lay willingly in his. +Then, as glad as she was frightened, Marguerite said she must go back +to her mother, and they went. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +A DOUBLE LOVE-KNOT. + + +Spanish Fort--West End--they are well enough; but if I might have one +small part of New Orleans to take with me wherever I may wander in +this earthly pilgrimage, I should ask for the old Carrollton Gardens. + +They lie near the farthest upper limit of the expanded city. I should +want, of course, to include the levee, under which runs one side of +the gardens' fence; also the opposite shore of the Mississippi, with +its just discernible plantation houses behind their levee; and the +great bend of the river itself, with the sun setting in unutterable +gorgeousness behind the distant, low-lying pecan groves of Nine-mile +Point, and the bronzed and purpled waters kissing the very crown of +the great turfed levee, down under whose land side the gardens blossom +and give forth their hundred perfumes and bird songs to the children +and lovers that haunt their winding alleys of oleander, jasmine, +laurestine, orange, aloe, and rose, the grove of magnolias and oaks, +and come out upon the levee's top as the sun sinks, to catch the +gentle breeze and see the twilight change to moonlight on the water. + +One evening as I sat on one of the levee benches here, with one whose +I am and who is mine beside me, we noticed on the water opposite us, +and near the farther shore, a large skiff propelled with two pairs of +oars and containing, besides the two rowers, half a dozen passengers. + +Then I remembered that I had seen the same craft when it was farther +down the stream. The river is of a typical character about here. +Coming around the upper bend, the vast current sweeps across to this, +the Carrollton side, and strikes it just above the gardens with an +incalculable gnawing, tearing power. Hence the very high levee here; +the farther back the levee builders are driven by the corroding waters +the lower the ground is under them, and the higher they must build to +reach the height they reached before. From Carrollton the current +rebounds, and swinging over to the other shore strikes it, boiling +like a witch's caldron, just above and along the place where you may +descry the levee lock of the Company Canal. + +I knew the waters all about there, and knew that this skiff full of +passengers, some of whom we could see were women, having toiled +through the seething current below, was now in a broad eddy, and, if +it was about to cross the stream, would do so only after it had gone +some hundred yards farther up the river. There it could cross almost +with the current. + +And so it did. I had forgotten it again, when presently it showed +itself with all its freight, silhouetted against the crimson sky. I +said quickly: + +"I believe Bonaventure Deschamps is in that boat!" + +I was right. The skiff landed, and we saw its passengers step ashore. +They came along the levee's crown towards us, "by two, by two." +Bonaventure was mated with a young Methodist preacher, who had been my +playmate in boyhood, and who lived here in Carrollton. Behind him came +St. Pierre and Sidonie. Then followed Claude and Marguerite; and, +behind all, Zosephine and Tarbox. + +They had come, they explained to us, from a funeral at the head of the +canal. They did not say the funeral of a friend, and yet I could see +that every one of them, even the preacher, had shed tears. The others +had thought it best and pleasantest to accompany the minister thus far +towards his home, then take a turn in the gardens, and then take the +horse-cars for the city's centre. Bonaventure and Sidonie were to +return next day by steamer to Belle Alliance and Grande Pointe. The +thoughtful Tarbox had procured Bonaventure's presence at the inquest +of the day before as the identifying witness, thus to save Zosephine +that painful office. And yet it was of Zosephine's own motion, and by +her sad insistence, that she and her daughter followed the outcast to +his grave. + +"Yes," she had said, laying one hand in Bonaventure's and the other +in Sidonie's and speaking in the old Acadian tongue, "when I was young +and proud I taught 'Thanase to despise and tease him. I did not know +then that I was such a coward myself. If I had been a better scholar, +Bonaventure, when we used to go to school to the cure together--a +better learner--not in the books merely, but in those things that are +so much better than the things books teach--how different all might +have been! Thank God, Bonaventure, one of us was." She turned to +Sidonie to add,--"But that one was Bonaventure. We will all go"--to +the funeral--"we will all go and bury vain regrets--with the dead." + +The influence of the sad office they had just performed was on the +group still, as they paused to give us the words of greeting we +coveted. Yet we could see that a certain sense of being very, very +rich in happiness was on them all, though differently on every one. + +Zosephine wore the pear-shaped pearl. + +The preacher said good-day, and started down the steps that used to +lead from the levee down across a pretty fountained court and into the +town. But my friend Tarbox--for I must tell you I like to call him my +friend, and like it better every day; we can't all be one sort; you'd +like him if you knew him as I do--my friend Tarbox beckoned me to +detain him. + +"Christian!" I called--that is the preacher's real name. He turned +back and met Tarbox just where I stood. They laid their arms across +each other's shoulders in a very Methodist way, and I heard Tarbox +say: + +"I want to thank you once more. We've put you to a good deal of +trouble. You gave us the best you had: I'll never forget what you said +about 'them who through fear of death are all their life-time subject +to bondage.' I wish you were a Catholic priest." + +"Why?" + +"So we could pay you for your trouble. I don't think you ought to take +it hard if you get a check in to-morrow's mail." + +"Thy money survive with thee," said the preacher. "Is that all you +want me to be a priest for? Isn't there another reason?" His eyes +twinkled. "Isn't there something else I could do for you--you or +Claude--if I should turn priest?" + +"Yes," said Tarbox, with grave lips, but merry eyes; "we've both got +to have one." + +In fact they had two. Yet I have it from her husband himself, that +Madame Tarbox insists to this day, always with the same sweet dignity, +that she never did say yes. + +On the other hand, when Claude and Marguerite were kneeling at the +altar the proud St. Pierre, senior, spoke an audible and joyously +impatient affirmative every time either of them was asked a question. +When the time came for kissing, Sidonie, turning from both brides, +kissed St. Pierre the more for that she kissed not Claude, then turned +again and gave a tear with the kiss she gave to Zosephine. But the +deepest, gladdest tears at those nuptials were shed by Bonaventure +Deschamps. + + + + * * * * * + + + +Transcriber's Note + +Minor typographic errors have been corrected without note. + +This work contains a lot of dialect, which includes unusual spelling +and hyphenation. This has been retained as printed throughout. + +A small portion of the text was obscured on page 90. With the context +and available space, 'Claude had' would seem to be the most +appropriate for the original, and has been used here. It now reads, +"... four hands clasped together, Claude had learned, for ..." + +The original text contained a small piece of music notation; this has +not been preserved in this version, and is noted simply as [Music]. + +The single oe ligature has not been retained. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BONAVENTURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 24078.txt or 24078.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/0/7/24078 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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