Bonaventure Part 5

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 p.r.o.nounced it, but the p.r.o.nunciation could not be as untrue as the careless a.s.sertion.

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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sing 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 a.s.surance 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 Ca.n.a.l. 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sing, he had touched his hat. The speaker was a police captain.

"Come with me." They turned and walked, Bonaventure saying not a word.

They pa.s.sed a corner, turned to the right, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage. 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 ma.s.s 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 impa.s.sable 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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"--