Bonaventure Part 7

Even of pastimes and sports she saw almost none. For 'Thanase there was, first of all, his fiddle; then _la cha.s.se_, the chase; the _papegaie_, or, as he called it, _pad-go_--the shooting-match; _la galloche_, pitch-farthing; the c.o.c.k-fight; the five-arpent pony-race; and too often, also, _chin-chin_, twenty-five-cent poker, and the gossip and gla.s.s of the roadside "store." But for Madame 'Thanase there was only a seat against the wall at the Sat.u.r.day-night dance, and ma.s.s _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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sailant. 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 ma.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 p.r.o.nunciation.

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. Da.s.s '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 n.o.body 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.--"Da.s.s 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! da.s.s 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', da.s.s 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] Racc.o.o.n.

[3] During the war.