Rose A Charlitte Part 65

"Come back," she called; "come and receive your friends with me."

Charlitte, however, glanced at Agapit, and preferred to stay where he was, and in a trice Emmanuel and the other men and boys were beside him, grasping his hands, vociferating congratulations on his escape from death, and plying him with inquiries as to the precise quarter of the globe in which the last few years of his existence had been pa.s.sed.

Charlitte, unable to stave off the questions showered upon him, was tortured by a desire to yield to his rough and sailorlike sense of humor, and entertain himself for a few minutes at the expense of his friends by regaling them with his monstrous yarns of shipwreck and escape from the cannibal islands.

Something restrained him. He glanced up at Rose, and saw that she had lost hope of his returning to her. She was gliding down the hill towards him,--a loving, anxious, guardian angel.

He could not tell lies in her presence. "Come, boys," he said, with coa.r.s.e good nature. "Come on to my ship, I'll take you all aboard."

Emmanuel, in a perfect intoxication of delight and eager curiosity, crowded close to Charlitte, as the throng of men and boys turned and began to surge over the bridge, and the hero of the moment, his attention caught by the bright jacket, singled Emmanuel out for special attention, and even linked his arm in his as they went.

Bidiane, weary of her long stay in the garden, at that minute came around the corner of the house on a reconnoitring expedition. Her brown eyes took in the whole scene,--Rose hurrying down the hill, Agapit standing silently on it, and the swarm of men surrounding the newcomer like happy buzzing bees, while they joyfully escorted him away from the cottage.

This was the picture for an instant before her, then simultaneously with a warning cry from Agapit,--"The bridge, _mon Dieu_! Do not linger on it; you are a strong pressure!"--there was a sudden crash, a brief and profound silence, then a great splashing, accompanied by shouts and cries of astonishment.

The slight rustic structure had given way under the unusually heavy weight imposed upon it, and a score or two of the men of Sleeping Water were being subjected to a thorough ducking.

However, they were all used to the water, their lives were partly pa.s.sed on the sea, and they were all accomplished swimmers. As one head after another came bobbing up from the treacherous river, it was greeted with cries and jeers from dripping figures seated on the gra.s.s, or crawling over the muddy banks.

Celina ran from the house, and Jovite from the stable, both shrieking with laughter. Only Agapit looked grave, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing a hammock from a tree, he ran down the hill to the place where Rose stood with clasped hands.

"Where is Charlitte?" she cried, "and Emmanuel?--they were close together; I do not see them."

A sudden hush followed her words. Every man sprang to his feet.

Emmanuel's red jacket was nowhere to be seen,--in the first excitement they had not missed him,--neither was Charlitte visible.

They must be still at the bottom of the river, locked in a friendly embrace. Rose's wild cry pierced the hearts of her fellow countrymen, and in an instant some of the dripping figures were again in the river.

Agapit was one of the most expert divers present, and he at once took off his coat and his boots. Bidiane threw herself upon him, but he pushed her aside and, putting his hands before him, plunged down towards the exact spot where he had last seen Charlitte.

The girl, in wild terror, turned to Rose, who stood motionless, her lips moving, her eyes fixed on the black river. "Ah, G.o.d! there is no bottom to it,--Rose, Rose, call him back!"

Rose did not respond, and Bidiane ran frantically to and fro on the bank. The muddy water was splashed up in her face, there was a constant appearance of heads, and disappearance of feet. Her lover would be suffocated there below, he stayed so long,--and in her despair she was in danger of slipping in herself, until Rose came to her rescue and held her firmly by her dress.

After a s.p.a.ce of time, that seemed interminably long, but that in reality lasted only a few minutes, there was a confused disturbance of the surface of the water about the remains of the wrecked bridge. Then two or three arms appeared,--a muddy form encased in a besmeared bright jacket was drawn out, and willing hands on the bank received it, and in desperate haste made attempts at resuscitation.

"Go, Celina, to the house,--heat water and blankets," said Rose, turning her deathly pale face towards her maid; "and do you, Lionel and Sylvain, kindly help her. Run, Jovite, and telephone for a doctor--oh, be quick!

Ah, Charlitte, Charlitte!" and with a distracted cry she fell on her knees beside the inanimate drenched form laid at her feet. Tears rained down her cheeks, yet she rapidly and skilfully superintended the efforts made for restoration. Her hands a.s.sisted in raising the inert back. She feverishly lifted the silent tongue, and endeavored to force air to the choked lungs, and her friends, with covert pitying glances, zealously a.s.sisted her.

"There is no hope, Rose," said Agapit, at last. "You are wasting your strength, and keeping these brave fellows in their wet clothes."

Her face grew stony, yet she managed to articulate, "But I have heard even if after the lapse of hours,--if one works hard--"

"There is no hope," he said, again. "We found him by the bank. There was timber above him, he was suffocated in mud."

She looked up at him piteously, then she again burst into tears, and threw herself across the body. "Go, dear friends,--leave me alone with him. Oh, Charlitte, Charlitte!--that I should have lived to see this day."

"Emmanuel is also dead," said Agapit, in a low voice.

"Emmanuel,--good, kind Emmanuel,--the beloved of all the village; not so--" and she painfully lifted her head and stared at the second prostrate figure.

The men were all standing around him weeping. They were not ashamed of their tears,--these kind-hearted, gentle Acadiens. Such a calamity had seldom befallen their village. It was equal to the sad wrecks of winter.

Rose's overwrought brain gave way as she gazed, and she fell senseless by Charlitte's dead body.

Agapit carried her to the house, and laid her in her bed in the room that she was not to leave for many days.

"This is an awful time," said Celina, sobbing bitterly, and addressing the mute and terrified Bidiane. "Let us pray for the souls of those poor men who died without the last sacraments."

"Let us pray rather for the soul of one who repented on his death-bed,"

muttered Agapit, staring with white lips at the men who were carrying the body of Charlitte into one of the lower rooms of the house.

CHAPTER XVI.

AN ACADIEN FESTIVAL.

"Vive Jesus!

Vive Jesus!

Avec la croix, son cher partage.

Vive Jesus!

Dans les coeurs de tous les elus!

Portons la croix.

Sans choix, sans ennui, sans murmure, Portons la croix!

Quoique tres amere et tres dure, Malgre les sens et la nature, Portons la croix!"

--_Acadien Song._

Charlitte had been in his grave for nearly two years. He slept peacefully in the little green cemetery hard by the white church where a slender, sorrowful woman came twice every week to hear a priest repeat ma.s.ses for the repose of his soul.

He slept on and gave no sign, and his countrymen came and went above him, reflecting occasionally on their own end, but mostly, after the manner of all men, allowing their thoughts to linger rather on matters pertaining to time than on those of eternity.

One fifteenth of August--the day consecrated by Acadiens all over Canada to the memory of their forefathers--had come and gone, and another had arrived.

This day was one of heavenly peace and calm. The sky was faintly, exquisitely blue, and so placid was the Bay that the occupants of the boats crossing from Digby Neck to some of the churches in Frenchtown were forced to take in their sails, and apply themselves to their oars.

Since early morning the roads of the parish in which Sleeping Water is situated had been black with people, and now at ten o'clock some two thousand Acadiens were a.s.sembled about the doors of the old church at Pointe a l'Eglise.

There was no talking, no laughing. In unbroken silence they waited for the sound of the bell, and when it came they flocked into the church, packing it full, and overflowing out to the broad flight of steps, where they knelt in rows and tried to obtain glimpses over each other's shoulders of the blue and white decorations inside, and of the altar ablaze with lights.

The priests from the college and glebe-house, robed in handsome vestments, filed out from the vestry, and, quietly approaching the silken banners standing against the low gallery, handed them to representatives of different societies connected with the church.

The children of the Guardian Angel received the picture of their patron saint, and, gathering around it, fluttered soberly out to the open air through the narrow lane left among the kneeling worshippers.