Rose A Charlitte Part 25

She started back, with a heart-broken gesture.

"But you are imbecile, my darling mother!" cried Narcisse, throwing himself on her in terror. "The Englishman will become angry,--he will leave us. Give him your hand, and let us go from this place," and, resolutely seizing her fluttering fingers in his own soft ones, he directed them to Vesper's strong, true clasp.

"Go stone the bears again, Narcisse," said the young man, with a strange quiver in his voice. "I will talk to your mother about going back to the inn. See, she is not well;" for Rose had bowed her weary head on her arm.

"Yes, talk to her," said the child, "that is good, and, above all, do not let her hand go. She runs from me sometimes, the little naughty mother," and, with affected roguishness that, however, concealed a certain anxiety, he put his head on one side, and stared affectionately at her as he left the cave.

He had gone some distance, and Vesper had already whispered a few words in Rose's ear, when he returned and stared again at them. "Will you tell me only one little story, Mr. Englishman?"

"About what, you small bother?"

"About bears, big brown bears, not gentle trees."

"There was once a sick bear," said the young man, "and he went all about the world, but could not get well until he found a quiet spot, where a gentle lady cured him."

"And then--"

"The lady had a cub," said Vesper, suddenly catching him in his arms and taking him out to the strip of sand, "a fascinating cub that the bear--I mean the man--adored."

Narcisse laughed gleefully, s.n.a.t.c.hed Vesper's cap and set off with it, fell into a pool of water and was rescued, and set to the task of taking off his shoes and stockings and drying them in the sun, while Vesper went back to Rose, who still sat like a person in acute distress of body and mind.

"I was sudden,--I startled you," he murmured.

She made a dissenting gesture, but did not speak.

"Will you look at me, Rose?" he said, softly; "just once."

"But I am afraid," fluttered from her pale lips. "When I gaze into your eyes it is hard--"

He stood over her in such quiet, breathless sympathy that presently she looked up, thinking he was gone.

His glance caught and held hers. She got up, allowed him to take her hands and press them to his lips, and to place on her head the hat that had fallen to the ground.

"I will say nothing more now," he murmured, "you are shocked and upset.

We had better go home."

"Come and be presented to Mrs. Nimmo," suddenly said a saucy, laughing voice.

Rose started nervously. Her sister Perside had caught sight of them,--teasing, yet considerate Perside, since she had bestowed only one glance on the lovers, and had then gone sauntering past the mouth of the cave, out to the wide array of black rocks beyond them. She carried a hooked stick over her shoulder, and a tin pail in her hand, and sometimes she looked back at a second girl, similarly equipped, who was running down the gra.s.sy road after her.

Nothing could have made Rose more quickly recover herself. "It is not the time of perigee,--you will find nothing," she called after Perside; then she added to Vesper, in a low, shy voice, "She seeks lobsters. She danced so much at the picnic that she was too tired to go home, and had to stay here with cousins."

"Times and seasons do not matter for some things," returned Perside, gaily, over her shoulder; "one has the fun."

Narcisse stopped digging his bare toes in the sand and shrieked, delightedly, "Aunt Perside, aunt Perside, do you know the Englishman returns to my mother and me? He will never leave us, and I am not to go to my grandmother." Then, fearful that his a.s.sertions had been too strong, he averted his gaze from the two approaching people, and fixed it on the blazing sun.

"Will you promise not to make a scene when I leave to-morrow?" said Vesper.

Narcisse blinked at him, his eyes full of spots and wheels and revolving lights. He was silly with joy, and gurgled deep down in his little throat. "Let me kiss your hand, as you kissed my mother's. It is a pretty sight."

"Will you be a good boy when I leave to-morrow," said Vesper again.

"But why should I cry if you return?" cried the child, excitedly flinging a handful of sand at his boots. "Narcisse will never again be bad," and rolling over and over, and kicking his pink heels in glee, he forced Vesper and Rose to retire to a respectful distance.

They stood watching him for some time, and, as they watched, Rose's tortured face grew calm, and a spark of the divine pa.s.sion animating her lover's face came into her deep blue eyes. She had no right to break the tender, sensitive little heart given so strangely to this stranger. She would forget Agapit and his warnings; she would forget the proud women of her race, who would not wed a stranger, and one of another creed; she would also forget the nervous, jealous mother who would keep her son from all women.

"You have asked me for myself," she said, impulsively stretching out her hands to him, "for myself and my child. We are yours."

Vesper bent down, and pressed her cool fingers against his burning cheeks. She smiled at him, even laughed gleefully, and pa.s.sed her hands over his head in a playful caress; then, with her former expression of exaltation and virginal modesty and shyness, she ran up the gra.s.sy road, and paused at the top to look back at him, as he toiled up with Narcisse.

She was vivacious and merry now,--he had never seen her just so before.

In an instant,--a breath,--with her surrender to him, she had seemed to drop her load of care, that usually made her youthful face so grave and sweet beyond her years. He would like to see her cheerful and laughing--thoughtless even; and murmuring endearing epithets under his breath, he a.s.sisted her into the cart, placed the reins in her hands, tucked Narcisse in by her side, and, surrept.i.tiously lifting a fold of her dress to his face, murmured, "_Au revoir_, my sweet saint."

Then, stroking his mustache to conceal from the yellow houses his proud smile of ownership, he watched the upright pose of the light head, and the contorted appearance of the dark one that was twisted over a little shoulder as long as the cart was in sight.

He forgot all about the church, and, going back to the beach, he lay for a long time sunning himself on the sand, and plunged in a delicious reverie. Then, mounting his wheel, he returned to the inn.

Agapit was running excitedly to and fro on the veranda. "Come, make haste," he cried, as he caught sight of him in the distance. "Extremely strange things have happened--Let me a.s.sist you with that wheel,--a malediction on it, these bicycles go always where one does not expect.

There is news of the Fiery Frenchman. I found something, also Father La Croix."

"This is interesting," said Vesper, good-naturedly, as he folded his arms, and lounged against one of the veranda posts.

"I was delving among my uncle's papers. I had precipitately come on the name of LeNoir,--Etex, the son of Raphael, who was a wealthy _bourgeois_ of Calais, and emigrated to Grand Pre. He was dead when the expulsion came, and of his two sons one, Gabriel LeNoir, escaped up the St. John River, and that Gabriel was my ancestor, and that of Rose; therefore, most astonishingly to me, we are related to this family whom you have sought," and Agapit wound up with a flourish of his hands and his heels.

"I am glad of this," said Vesper, in a deeply gratified voice.

"But more remains. I was shouting over my discovery, when Father La Croix came. I ran, I descended,--the good man presented his compliments to madame and you. Several of his people went to him this morning. They had questioned the old ones. He wrote what they said, and here it is.

See--the son of the murdered Etex was Samson. His mother landed in Philadelphia. In griping poverty the boy grew up. He went to Boston. He joined the Acadiens who marched the five hundred miles through the woods to Acadie. He arrived at the Baie Chaleur, where he married a Comeau. He had many children, but his eldest, Jean, is he in whom you will interest yourself, as in the direct line."

"And what of Jean?" asked Vesper, when Agapit stopped to catch his breath.

Agapit pointed to the Bay. "He lies over Digby Neck, in the Bay of Fundy, but his only child is on this Bay."

"A boy or a girl?"

"A devil," cried Agapit, in a burst of grief, "a little devil."

CHAPTER XVI.

FOR THE HONOR OF THEIR RACE.

"Love is the perfect sum Of all delight!

I have no other choice Either for pen or voice To sing or write."