Bonaventure Part 8

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. Da.s.s '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!"

"Da.s.s so, boss," exclaimed the negro with the prompt.i.tude of an eye-witness; but the stranger continued:--

"The ancestors of the Acadian'--they are the fathers of the codfish!"

He resumed his walk.

"Da.s.s so, seh; da.s.s true. Yes, seh, you' talkin' mighty true; dey a pow'ful ancestrified peop', dem Cajun'; da.s.s 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 Ma.r.s.e Louis Le Bourgeois yond'

at Belmont. You see! de fust t'ing dey gwine a.s.s 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 gra.s.s.

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 coa.r.s.e 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 c.o.c.kleburs 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 gra.s.sy 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l eye fixed on him distrustfully and askance, moved enough to the right to let him pa.s.s 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!_--schoolt.i.tcher!"

"But," said the stranger, "not worthy the t.i.tle." 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 windla.s.s extended along the top rail of the bal.u.s.trade across one of the galerie's ends. Lines of half-inch gra.s.s 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 windla.s.s. 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 ma.s.s 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 ap.r.o.ns. 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 bal.u.s.trade, or leaned against a galerie post and rubbed one brown bare foot upon another and crowded each other's shoulders without a.s.signable cause, or lopped down upon the gra.s.s and gazed from a distance.

Little conversation was offered. The curiosity was as un.o.btrusive 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 a.s.sume 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, da.s.s 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.