Rose A Charlitte Part 24

"Rose!" said her cousin, in sudden dismay. "Rose--Rose!"

"What is the matter with thee?" she asked, alarmed in her turn by his strange agitation.

"Hush,--walk aside with me. Now tell me, what is this?"

"Narcisse has been a trouble," began Rose, hurriedly; then she calmed herself. "I will not deceive thee,--it is not Narcisse, though he has worried me. Agapit, I wish to go home."

"I will send thee; but be quiet, speak not above thy breath. Tell me, has this Englishman--"

"The Englishman has done nothing," said Rose, brokenly, "except that in two days he goes back to the world."

"And dost thou care? Stop, let me see thy face. Rose, thou art like a sister to me. My poor one, my dear cousin, do not cry. Come, where is thy dignity, thy pride? Remember that Acadien women do not give their hearts; they must be begged."

"I remember," she said, resolutely. "I will be strong. Fear not, Agapit, and let us return. The women will be staring."

She brushed her hand over her face, then by a determined effort of will summoned back her lost composure, and with a firm, light step rejoined the group that they had just left.

"_Mon Dieu!_" muttered Agapit, "my pleasure is gone, and I was lately so happy. I thought of this nightmare, and yet I did not imagine it would come. I might have known,--he is so calm, so cool, so handsome. That kind charms women and men too, for I also love him, yet I must give him up. Rose, my sister, thou must not go home early. I must keep thee here and suffer with thee, for, until the Englishman leaves, thou must be kept from him as a little bunch of tow from a slow fire. Does he already love thee? May the holy saints forbid--yes--no, I cannot tell. He is inscrutable. If he does, I think it not. If he does not, I think it so."

CHAPTER XV.

THE CAVE OF THE BEARS.

"I had found out a sweet green spot, Where a lily was blooming fair; The din of the city disturbed it not; But the spirit that shades the quiet cot With its wings of love was there.

"I found that lily's bloom When the day was dark and chill; It smiled like a star in a misty gloom, And it sent abroad a sweet perfume, Which is floating around me still."

PERCIVAL.

More than twenty miles beyond Sleeping Water is a curious church built of cobblestones.

Many years ago, the devoted priest of this parish resolved that his flock must have a new church, and yet how were they to obtain one without money? He pondered over the problem for some time, and at last he arrived at a satisfactory solution. Would his parishioners give time and labor, if he supplied the material for construction?

They would,--and he pointed to the stones on the beach. The Bay already supplied them with meat and drink, they were now to obtain a place of worship from it. They worked with a will, and in a short time their church went up like the temple of old, without the aid of alien labor.

Vesper, on the day after the picnic, had announced his intention of visiting this church, and Agapit, in unconcealed disapproval and slight vexation, stood watching him clean his wheel, preparatory to setting out on the road down the Bay.

He would be sure to overtake Rose, who had shortly before left the inn with Narcisse. She had had a terrible scene with the child relative to the approaching departure of the American, and Agapit himself had advised her to take him to her stepmother. He wished now that he had not done so, he wished that he could prevent Vesper from going after her,--he almost wished that this quiet, imperturbable young man had never come to the Bay.

"And yet, why should I do that?" he reflected, penitently. "Does not good come when one works from honest motives, though bad only is at first apparent? Though we suffer now, we may yet be happy," and, casting a long, reluctant look at the taciturn young American, he rose from his comfortable seat and went up-stairs. He was tired, out of sorts, and irresistibly sleepy, having been up all night examining the old doc.u.ments left by his uncle, the priest, in the hope of finding something relating to the Fiery Frenchman, for he was now as anxious to conclude Vesper's mission to the Bay as he had formerly been to prolong it.

With a quiet step he crept past the darkened room where Mrs. Nimmo, after worrying her son by her insistence on doing her own packing, had been obliged to retire, in a high state of irritation, and with a raging headache.

He hoped that the poor lady would be able to travel by the morrow; her son would be, there was no doubt of that. How well and strong he seemed now, how immeasurably he had gained in physical well-being since coming to the Bay.

"For that we should be thankful," said Agapit, in sincere admiration and regard, as he stood by his window and watched Vesper spinning down the road.

"He goes so cool, so careless, like those soldiers who went to battle with a rose between their lips, and I do not dare to warn, to question, lest I bring on what I would keep back. But do thou, my cousin Rose, not linger on the way. It would be better for thee to bite a piece from thy little tongue than to have words with this handsome stranger whom I fear thou lovest. Now to work again, and then, if there is time, half an hour's sleep before supper, for my eyelids flag strangely."

Agapit sat down before the table bestrewn with papers, while Vesper went swiftly over the road until he reached the picnic ground of the day before, now restored to its former quietness as a grazing place for cows. Of all the cheerful show there was left only the big merry-go-round, that was being packed in an enormous wagon drawn by four pairs of oxen.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked Vesper, springing off his wheel, and addressing the Acadiens at work.

"We take it to a parish farther down the Bay, where there is to be yet another picnic," said one of them.

"How much did they make yesterday?" pursued Vesper.

"Six hundred dollars, and only four hundred the day before, and three the first, for you remember those days were partly rainy."

"And some people say that you Acadiens are poor."

The man grinned. "There were many people here, many things. This wooden darling," and he pointed to the dismembered merry-go-round, "earned one dollar and twenty cents every five minutes. We need much for our churches," and he jerked his thumb towards the red cathedral. "The plaster falls, it must be restored. Do you go far, sir?"

Vesper mentioned his destination.

All the Acadiens on the Bay knew him and took a friendly interest in his movements, and the man advised him to take in the Cave of the Bears, that was also a show-place for strangers. "It is three miles farther, where there is a bite in the sh.o.r.e, and the bluff is high. You will know it by two yellow houses, like twins. Descend there, and you will see a troop of ugly bears quite still about a cave. The Indians of this coast say that their great man, Glooscap, in days before the French came, once sat in the cave to rest. Some hungry bears came to eat him, but he stretched out a pine-tree that he carried and they were turned to stone."

Vesper thanked him, and went on. When he reached the sudden and picturesque cove in the Bay, his attention was caught, not so much by its beauty, as by the presence of the inn pony, who neighed a joyful welcome, and impatiently jerked back and forth the road-cart to which he was attached.

Vesper glanced sharply at the yellow houses. Perhaps Rose was making a call in one of them. Then he stroked the pony, who playfully nipped his coat sleeve, and, after propping his wheel against a stump, ran nimbly down a gra.s.sy road, where a goat was soberly feeding among lobster-traps and drawn-up boats.

He crossed the strip of sand in the semicircular inlet, and there before him were the bears,--ugly brown rocks with coats of slippery seaweed, their grinning heads turned towards the mouth of a black cavern in the lower part of the bluff, their staring eye-sockets fixed on the dainty woman's figure inside, as if they would fain devour her.

Rose sat with her face to the sea, her head against the damp rock wall,--her whole att.i.tude one of abandonment and mournful despair.

Vesper began to hurry towards her, but, catching sight of Narcisse, he stopped.

The child, with a face convulsed and tear-stained, was angrily seizing stones from the beach to fling them against the most lifelike bear of all,--a grotesque, hideous creature, that appeared to be shouldering his way from the water in order to plunge into the cave.

"Dost thou mock me?" exclaimed Narcisse, furiously. "I will strike thee yet again, thou hateful thing. Thou shalt not come on sh.o.r.e to eat my mother and the Englishman," and he dashed a yet larger stone against it.

"Narcisse," said Vesper.

The child turned quickly. Then his trouble was forgotten, and stumbling and slipping over the seaweed, but at last attaining his goal, he flung his small unhappy self against Vesper's breast. "I love you, I love you,--_gros comme la grange a Pinot_" (as much as Pinot's barn),--"yet my mother carried me away. Take me with you, Mr. Englishman. Narcisse is very sick without you."

In maternal alarm Rose sprang up at her child's first shriek. Then she sank back, pale and confused, for Vesper's eye was upon her, although apparently he was engaged only in fondling the little curly head, and in allowing the child to stroke his face and dive into his pockets, to pull out his watch, and indulge in the fond and foolish familiarities permitted to a child by a loving father.

"Go to her, Narcisse," said Vesper, presently, and the small boy ran into the cave. "My mother, my mother!" he cried, in an ecstasy; and he wagged his curly head as if he would shake it from his body. "The Englishman returns to you and to me,--he will stay away only a short time. Come, get up, get up. Let us go back to the inn. I am to go no more to my grandmother. Is it not so?" and he anxiously gazed at Vesper, who was slowly approaching.

Vesper did not speak, neither did Rose. What was the matter with these grown people that they stared so stupidly at each other?

"Have you a headache, Mr. Englishman?" he asked, with abrupt childish anxiety, as he noticed a sudden and unusual wave of color sweeping over his friend's face. "And you, my mother,--why do you hang your head? Give only the Englishman your hand and he will lift you from the rock. He is strong, very strong,--he carries me over the rough places."

"Will you give me your hand, Rose?"