Rose A Charlitte Part 22

"Come seek the lunch-tables," said Agapit, presently bursting out on them, and mopping his perspiring face with his handkerchief. "Most ambrosial dainties are known to the cooks of this parish."

CHAPTER XIV.

WITH THE OLD ONES.

"The fresh salt breezes mingle with the smell Of clover fields and ripened hay beside; And Nature, musing, happy and serene, Hath here for willing man her sweetest spell."

J. F. H.

After lunch, the Sleeping Water party separated. The Pitres found some old friends from up the Bay. Agapit wandered away with some young men, and Vesper, lazily declining to saunter with them, stood leaning against a tree behind a bench on which his mother and Rose were seated.

The latter received and exchanged numerous greetings with her acquaintances who pa.s.sed by, sometimes detaining them for an introduction to Mrs. Nimmo, who was making a supreme effort to be gracious and agreeable to the woman that the fates had apparently destined to be her daughter-in-law.

Vesper looked on, well pleased. "Why do you not introduce me?" he said, mischievously, while his mother's attention was occupied with two Acadien girls.

Rose gave him a troubled glance. She took no pleasure in his presence now,--his mother had spoiled all that, and, although naturally simple and unaffected, she was now tortured by self-consciousness.

"I think that you do not care," she said, in a low voice.

Vesper did not pursue the subject. "Have all Acadien women gentle manners?" he asked, with a glance at the pair of shy, retiring ones talking to his mother.

A far-away look came into Rose's eyes, and she replied, with more composure: "The Abbe Casgrain says--he who wrote 'A Pilgrimage to the Land of Evangeline'--that over all Acadiens hangs a quietness and melancholy that come from the troubles of long ago; but Agapit does not find it so."

"What does Agapit say?"

"He finds," and Rose drew her slight figure up proudly, "that we are born to good manners. It was the best blood of France that settled Acadie. Did our forefathers come here poor? No, they brought much money.

They built fine houses of stone, not wood; Grand Pre was a very fine village. They also built chateaux. Then, after scatteration, we became poor; but can we not keep our good manners?"

Vesper was much diverted by the glance with which his mother, having bowed farewell to her new acquaintances, suddenly favored Rose. There was pride in it,--pride in the beauty and distinction of the woman beside her who was scarcely more than a girl; yet there was also in her glance a jealousy and aversion that could not yet be overcome. Time alone could effect this; and smothering a sigh, Vesper lifted his head towards Narcisse, who had crawled from his shoulder to a most uncomfortable seat on the lower limb of a pine-tree, where, however, he professed to be most comfortable, and sat with his head against the rough bark as delightedly as if it were the softest of cushions.

"I am quite right," said Narcisse, in English, which language he was learning with astonishing rapidity, and Vesper again turned his attention to the picturesque, constantly changing groups of people. He liked best the brown and wrinkled old faces belonging to farmers and their wives who were enjoying a well-earned holiday. The young men in gray suits, he heard Rose telling his mother, were sailors from up the Bay, whose schooners had arrived just in time for them to throw themselves on their wheels and come to the picnic. The smooth-faced girls in blue, with pink handkerchiefs on their heads, were from a settlement back in the woods. The dark-eyed maidens in sailor hats, who looked like a troop of young Evangelines, were the six demoiselles Aucoin, the daughters of a lawyer in Meteghan, and the tall lady in blue was an Acadienne from New York, who brought her family every summer to her old home on the Bay.

"And that tall priest in the distance," said Rose, "is the father in whose parish we are. Once he was a colonel in the army of France."

"There is something military in his figure," murmured Mrs. Nimmo.

"He was born among the Acadiens in France. They did not need him to ministrate, so when he became a priest he journeyed here," continued Rose, hurriedly, for the piercing eyes of the kindly-faced ecclesiastic had sought out Vesper and his mother, and he was approaching them with an uplifted hat.

Rose got up and said, in a fluttering voice, "May I present you, Father La Croix, to Mrs. Nimmo, and also her son?"

The priest bowed gracefully, and begged to a.s.sure madame and her son that their fame had already preceded them, and that he was deeply grateful to them for honoring his picnic with their presence.

"I suppose there are not many English people here to-day," said Mrs.

Nimmo, smiling amiably, while Vesper contented himself with a silent bow.

Father La Croix gazed about the crowd, now greatly augmented. "As far as I can see, madame, you and your son are the only English that we have the pleasure of entertaining. You are now in the heart of the French district of Clare."

"And yet I hear a good deal of English spoken."

Father La Croix smiled. "We all understand it, and you see here a good many young people employed in the States, who are home for their holidays."

"And I suppose we are the only Protestants here," continued Mrs. Nimmo.

"The only ones,--you are also alone in the parish of Sleeping Water. If at any time a sense of isolation should prey upon madame and her son--"

He did not finish his sentence except by another smile of infinite amus.e.m.e.nt, and a slight withdrawal of his firm lips from his set of remarkably white teeth.

Rose was disturbed. Vesper noticed that the mention of the word Protestant at any time sent her into a transport of uneasiness. She was terrified lest a word might be said to wound his feelings or those of his mother.

"_Monsieur le cure_ is jesting, Madame de Foret," he said, rea.s.suringly.

"He is quite willing that we should remain heretics."

Rose's face cleared, and Vesper said to the priest, "Are there any old people here to-day who would be inclined to talk about the early settlers?"

"Yes, and they would be flattered,--up behind the lunch-tables is a knot of old men exchanging reminiscences of early days. May I have the pleasure of introducing you to them?"

"I shall be gratified if you will do so," and both men lifted their hats to Mrs. Nimmo and Rose, and then disappeared among the crowd.

Narcisse immediately demanded to be taken from the tree, and, upon reaching the ground, burst into tears. "Look, my mother,--I did not see before."

Rose followed the direction of his pointing finger. He pretended to have just discovered that under the feet of this changeful a.s.semblage were millions of crushed and suffering gra.s.s-blades.

Rose exchanged a glance with Mrs. Nimmo. This was a stroke of childish diplomacy. He wished to follow Vesper.

"Show him something to distract his attention," whispered the elder woman. "I will go talk to Madame Pitre."

"See, Narcisse, this little revolver," said Rose, leading him up to a big wheel of fortune, before which a dozen men sat holding numbered sticks in their hands. "When the wheel stops, some men lose, others gain."

"I see only the gra.s.s-blades," wailed Narcisse. "My mother, does it hurt them to be trampled on?"

"No, my child; see, they fly back again. I have even heard that it made them grow."

"Let us walk where there is no gra.s.s," said Narcisse, pa.s.sionately, and, drawing her along with him, he went obliviously past the fruit and candy booths, and the spread tables, to a little knoll where sat three old men on rugs.

Vesper lay stretched on the gra.s.s before them, and, catching sight of Narcisse, who was approaching so boldly, and his mother, who was holding back so shyly, he craved permission from the old men to seat them on one of the rugs.

The permission was gladly given, and Rose shook hands with the three old men, whom she knew well. Two of them were brothers, from Meteghan, the other was a cousin, from up the Bay, whom they rarely saw. The brothers were slim, well-made, dapper old men; the cousin was a fat, jolly farmer, dressed in homespun.

"I can tell you one of olden times," said this latter, in a thick, syrupy voice, "better dan dat last."

"Suppose we have it then," said Vesper.

"Dere was Pierre Belliveau,--Pierre aged dwenty-one and a half at de drama of 1755. His fadder was made prisoner. Pierre, he run to de fores'

wid four,--firs' Cyprian Gautreau and de tree brudders, Joseph _dit_ Coudgeau, Charlitte _dit_ Le Fort--"