Rose à Charlitte

Pope.

At twelve o'clock Mrs. Rose à Charlitte was standing in her cold pantry deftly putting a cap of icing on a rich rounded loaf of cake, when she heard a question asked, in Vesper's smooth neutral tones, "Where is madame?"

She stepped into the kitchen, and found that he was interrogating her servant Célina.

"I should like to speak to that young man I saw this morning," he said, when he saw her.

"He has gone out, monsieur," she replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"Which is his room?"

"The one by the smoking-room," she answered, with a deep blush.

Vesper's white teeth gleamed through his dark mustache, and, seeing that he was laughing at her, she grew confused, and hung her head.

"Can I get to it by this staircase?" asked Vesper, exposing her petty deceit. "I think I can by going up to the roof, and dropping down."

Mrs. Rose lifted her head long enough to flash him a scrutinizing glance. Then, becoming sensible of the determination of purpose under his indifference of manner, she said, in scarcely audible tones, "I will show you."

"I have only a simple question to ask him," said Vesper, reassuringly, as he followed her towards the staircase.

"Agapit is quick like lightning," she said, over her shoulder, "but his heart is good. He helps to keep our grandmother, who spends her days in bed."

"That is exemplary. I would be the last one to hurt the feelings of the prop of an aged person," murmured Vesper.

Rose à Charlitte was not satisfied. She unwillingly mounted the stairs, and pointed out the door of her cousin's room, then withdrew to the next one, and listened anxiously in case there might be some disturbance between the young men. There was none; so, after a time, she went down-stairs.

Agapit, at Vesper's entrance, abruptly pushed back his chair from the table and, rising, presented a red and angry face to his visitor.

"I have interrupted you, I fear," said Vesper, smoothly. "I will not detain you long. I merely wish to ask a question."

"Will you sit down?" said Agapit, sulkily, and he forced himself to offer the most comfortable chair in the room to his caller.

Vesper did not seat himself until he saw that Agapit was prepared to follow his example. Then he looked into the black eyes of the Acadien, which were like two of the deep, dark pools in the forest, and said, "A matter of business has brought me to this Bay. I may have some inquiries to make, in which I would find myself hampered by any prejudice among persons I might choose to question. I fancy that some of the people here look on me with suspicion. I am quite unaware of having given offence in any way. Possibly you can explain,—I am not bent on an explanation, you understand. If you choose to offer one, I shall be glad to listen."

He spoke listlessly, tapping on the table with his fingers, and allowing his eyes to wander around the room, rather than to remain fixed on Agapit's face.

The young Acadien could scarcely restrain a torrent of words until Vesper had finished speaking.

"Since you ask, I will explain,—yes, I will not be silent. We are not rude here,—oh, no. We are too kind to strangers. Vipers have crept in among us. They have stolen heat and warmth from our bosoms"—he paused, choking with rage.

"And you have reason to suppose that I may prove a viper?" asked Vesper, indolently.

"Yes, you also are one. You come here, we receive you. You depart, you laugh in your sleeve,—a newspaper comes. We see it all. The meek and patient Acadiens are once more held up to be a laughing-stock."

Vesper wrinkled his level eyebrows. "Perhaps you will characterize this viperish conduct?"

Agapit calmed himself slightly. "Wait but an instant. Control your curiosity, and I will give you something to read," and he went on his knees, and rummaged among some loose papers in an open box. "Look at it," he said, at last, springing up and handing his caller a newspaper; "read, and possibly you will understand."

Vesper's quick eye ran over the sheet that he held up. "This is a New York weekly paper. Yes, I know it well. What is there here that concerns you?"

"Look, look here," said Agapit, tapping a column in the paper with an impatient gesture. "Read the nonsense, the drivel, the insanity of the thing—"

"Ah,—'Among the Acadiens, Quaintness Unrivalled, Archaic Forms of Speech, A Dance and a Wedding, The Spirit of Evangeline, Humorous Traits, If You Wish a Good Laugh Go Among Them!'"

"She laughed in print, she screamed in black ink!" exclaimed Agapit. "The silly one,—the witch."

"Who was she,—this lady viper?" asked Vesper, briefly.

"She was a woman—a newspaper woman. She spent a summer among us. She gloomed about the beach with a shawl on her shoulders; a small dog followed her. She laid in bed. She read novels, and then," he continued, with rising voice, "she returned home, she wrote this detestability about us."

"Why need you care?" said Vesper, coolly. "She had to reel off a certain amount of copy. All correspondents have to do so. She only touched up things a little to make lively reading."

"Not touching up, but manufacturing," retorted Agapit, with blazing eyes. "She had nothing to go on, nothing—nothing—nothing. We are just like other people," and he ruffled his coal-black hair with both his hands, and looked at his caller fiercely. "Do you not find us so?"

"Not exactly," said Vesper, so dispassionately and calmly, and with such statuesque repose of manner, that he seemed rather to breathe the words than to form them with his lips.

"And you will express that in your paper. You will not tell the truth. My countrymen will never have justice,—never, never. They are always misrepresented, always."

"What a firebrand!" reflected Vesper, and he surveyed, with some animation, the inflamed, suspicious face of the Frenchman.

"You also will caricature us," pursued Agapit; "others have done so, why should not you?"

Vesper's lips parted. He was on the point of imparting to Agapit the story of his great-grandfather's letter. Then he closed them. Why should he be browbeaten into communicating his private affairs to a stranger?

"Thank you," he said, and he rose to leave the room. "I am obliged for the information you have given me."

Agapit's face darkened; he would dearly love to secure a promise of good behavior from this stranger, who was so non-committal, so reserved, and yet so strangely attractive.

"See," he said, grandly, and flinging his hand in the direction of his books and papers. "To an honest man, really interested in my people, I would be pleased to give information. I have many documents, many books."

"Ah, you take an interest in this sort of thing," said Vesper.

"An interest—I should die without my books and papers; they are my life."

"And yet you were cut out for a farmer," thought Vesper, as he surveyed Agapit's sturdy frame. "I suppose you have the details of the expulsion at your fingers' ends," he said, aloud.

"Ah, the expulsion," muttered Agapit, turning deathly pale, "the abominable, damnable expulsion!"

"Your feelings run high on the subject," murmured Vesper.

"It suffocates me, it chokes me, when I reflect how it was brought about. You know, of course, that in the eighteenth century there flourished a devil,—no, not a devil," contemptuously. "What is that for a word? Devil, devil,—it is so common that there is no badness in it. Even the women say, 'Poor devil, I pity him.' Say, rather, there was a god of infamy, the blackest, the basest, the most infernal of created beings that our Lord ever permitted to pollute this earth—"

For a minute he became incoherent, then he caught his breath. "This demon, this arch-fiend, the misbegotten Lawrence that your historian Parkman sets himself to whitewash—"

"I know of Parkman," said Vesper, coldly, "he was once a neighbor of ours."

"Was he!" exclaimed Agapit, in a paroxysm of excitement. "A fine neighbor, a worthy man! Parkman,—the New England story-teller, the traducer, who was too careless to set himself to the task of investigating records."

Vesper was not prepared to hear any abuse of his countryman, and, turning on his heel, he left the room, while Agapit, furious to think that, unasked, he had been betrayed into furnishing a newspaper correspondent with some crumbs of information that might possibly be dished up in appetizing form for the delectation of American readers, slammed the door behind him, and went back to his writing.

CHAPTER VII.
A DEADLOCK.

J. F. H.

Three days later, Vesper had only two friends in Sleeping Water,—that is, only two open friends. He knew he had a secret one in Mrs. Rose à Charlitte, who waited on him with the air of a sorrowing saint.

The open friends were the child Narcisse, and Emmanuel Victor de la Rive, the mail-driver. Rose could not keep her child away from the handsome stranger. Narcisse had fallen into a passionate adoration for him, and even in his dreams prattled of the Englishman from Boston.

On the third night of Vesper's stay in Sleeping Water a violent thunder-storm arose. Lying in his bed and watching the weird lighting up of the Bay under the vivid discharges of electricity, he heard a fumbling at his door-knob, and, upon unlocking the door, discovered Narcisse, pale and seraphic, in a long white nightgown, and with beads of distress on his forehead.

"Mr. Englishman," he said to Vesper, who now understood his childish lingo, "I come to you, for my mother sleeps soundly, and she cannot tell me when she wakes,—the trees and the flowers, are they not in a terrible fright?" and, holding up his gown with one hand, he went swiftly to the window, and pointed out towards the willows, writhing and twisting in the wind, and the gentle flowers laid low on the earth.

A yellow glare lighted up the room, a terrible peal of thunder shook the house, but the child did not quail, and stood waiting for an answer to his question.

"Come here," said Vesper, calmly, "and I will explain to you that the thunder does not hurt them, and that they have a way of bending before the blast."

Narcisse immediately drew his pink heels up over the side of Vesper's bed. He was unspeakably soothed by the merest word of this stranger, in whose nervous sensitiveness and reserve he found a spirit more congenial to his own than in that of his physically perfect mother.

Vesper talked to him for some time, and the child at last fell asleep, his tiny hand clasping a scapulary on his breast, his pretty lips murmuring to the picture on it, "Good St. Joseph, Mr. Englishman says that only a few of the trees and flowers are hurt by the storm. Watch over the little willows and the small lilies while I sleep, and do not let them be harmed."

Vesper at first patiently and kindly endured the pressure of the curly head laid on his arm. He would like to have a beautiful child like this for his own. Then thoughts of his childhood began to steal over him. He remembered climbing into his father's bed, gazing worshipfully into his face, and stroking his handsome head.

"O God, my father!" he muttered, "I have lost him," and, unable to endure the presence of the child, he softly waked him. "Go back to your mother, Narcisse. She may miss you."

The child sleepily obeyed him, and went to continue his dreams by his mother's side, while Vesper lay awake until the morning, a prey to recollections at once tender and painful.

Vesper's second friend, the mail-driver, never failed to call on him every morning. If one could put a stamp on a letter it was permissible at any point on the route to call, "Arrête-toi" (stop), to the crimson flying bird. If one could not stamp a letter, it was illegal to detain him.

Vesper never had, however, to call "Arrête-toi." Of his own accord Emmanuel Victor de la Rive, upon arriving before the inn, would fling the reins over his pony's back, and spring nimbly out. He was sure to find Vesper lolling on the seat under the willows, or lying in the hammock, with Narcisse somewhere near, whereupon he would seat himself for a few minutes, and in his own courteous and curious way would ask various and sundry questions of this stranger, who had fascinated him almost as completely as he had Narcisse.

On the morning after the thunder-storm he had fallen into an admiration of Vesper's beautiful white teeth. Were they all his own, and not artificial? With such teeth he could marry any woman. He was a bachelor now, was he not? Did he always intend to remain one? How much longer would he stay in Sleeping Water? And Vesper, parrying his questions with his usual skill, sent him away with his ears full of polite sentences that, when he came to analyze them, conveyed not a single item of information to his surprised brain.

However, he felt no resentment towards Vesper. His admiration rose superior to any rebuffs. It even soared above the warning intimations he received from many Acadiens to the effect that he was laying himself open to hostile criticism by his intercourse with the enemy within the camp.

Vesper was amused by him, and on this particular morning, after he left, he lay back in the hammock, his mind enjoyably dwelling on the characteristics of the volatile Acadien.

Narcisse, who stood beside him in the centre of the bare spot on the lawn, by the hammock, in vain begged for a story, and at last, losing patience, knelt down and put his head to the ground. The Englishman had told him that each grass-blade came up from the earth with a tale on the tip of its quivering tongue, and that all might hear who bent an ear to listen. Narcisse wished to get news of the storm in the night, and really fancied that the grass-blades told him it had prevailed in the bowels of the earth. He sprang up to impart the news to Vesper, and Agapit, who was passing down the lane by the house to the street, scowled, disapprovingly, at the pretty, wagging head and animated gestures.

Vesper gazed after him, and paid no attention to Narcisse. "I wonder," he murmured, languidly, "what spell holds me in the neighborhood of this Acadien demagogue who has turned his following against me. It must be the Bay," and in a trance of pleasure he surveyed its sparkling surface.

Always beautiful,—never the same. Was ever another sheet of water so wholly charming, was ever another occupation so fitted for unstrung nerves as this placid watching of its varying humors and tumults?

This morning it was like crystal. A fleet of small boats was dancing out to the deep sea fishing-grounds, and three brown-sailed schooners were gliding up the Bay to mysterious waters unknown to him. As soon as he grew stronger, he must follow them up to the rolling country and the fertile fields beyond Sleeping Water. Just now the mere thought of leaving the inn filled him with nervous apprehension, and he started painfully and irritably as the sharp clang of the dinner-bell rang out through the open windows of the house.

Followed by Narcisse, he sauntered to the table, where he caused Rose à Charlitte's heart a succession of pangs and anxieties.

"He does not like my cooking; he eats nothing," she said, mournfully, to Agapit, who was taking a substantial dinner at the kitchen table.

"I wish that he would go away," said Agapit, "I hate his insolent face."

"But he is not insolent," said Rose, pleadingly. "It is only that he does not care for us; he is likely rich, and we are but poor."

"Do many millionaires come to thy quiet inn?" asked Agapit, ironically.

Rose reluctantly admitted that, so far, her patrons had not been people of wealth.

"He is probably a beggar," said Agapit. "He has paid thee nothing yet. I dare say he has only old clothes in that trunk of his. Perhaps he was forced to leave his home. He intends to spend the rest of his life here."

"If he would work," said Rose, timidly, "he could earn his board. If thou goest away, I shall need a man for the stable."

"Look at his white hands," said Agapit, "he is lazy,—and dost thou think I would leave thee with that young sprig? His character may be of the worst. What do we know of him?" and he tramped out to the stable, while Mrs. Rose confusedly withdrew to her pantry.

An hour later, while Agapit was grooming Toochune, the thoroughbred black horse that was the wonder of the Bay, Narcisse came and stood in the stable door, and for a long time silently watched him.

Then he heaved a small sigh. He was thinking neither of the horse nor of Agapit, and said, wistfully, "The Englishman from Boston sleeps as well as my mother. I have tried to wake him, but I cannot."

Agapit paid no attention to him, but the matter was weighing on the child's mind, and after a time he continued, "His face is very white, as white as the breast of the ducks."

"His face is always white," growled Agapit.

Narcisse went away, and sat patiently down by the hammock, while Agapit, who kept an eye on him despite himself, took occasion a little later to go to the garden, ostensibly to mend a hole in the fence, in reality to peer through the willows at Vesper.

What he saw caused him to drop his knife, and go to the well, where Célina was drawing a bucket of water.

"The Englishman has fainted," he said, and he took the bucket from her. Célina ran after him, and watched him thrust Narcisse aside and dash a handful of water in Vesper's marble, immobile face.

Narcisse raised one of his tiny fists and struck Agapit a smart blow, and, in spite of their concern for the Englishman, both the grown people turned and stared in surprise at him. For the first time they saw the sweet-tempered child in a rage.

"Go away," he said, in a choking voice, "you shall not hurt him."

"Hush, little rabbit," said the young man. "I try to do him good. Christophe! Christophe!" and he hailed an Acadien who was passing along the road. "Come assist me to carry the Englishman into the house. This is something worse than a faint."

CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE SUDDEN SOMETHING ILL.

J. F. Herbin.

One midnight, three weeks later, when perfect silence and darkness brooded over Sleeping Water, and the only lights burning were the stars up aloft, and two lamps in two windows of the inn, Vesper opened his eyes and looked about him.

He saw for some dreamy moments only a swimming curtain of black, with a few familiar objects picked out against the gloom. He could distinguish his trunk sailing to and fro, a remembered mirror before which he had brushed his hair, a book in a well-known binding, and a lamp with a soft yellow globe, that immediately took him to a certain restaurant in Paris, and made him fancy that he was dining under the yellow lights in its ceiling.

Where was he,—in what country had he been having this long, dreamless sleep? And by dint of much brain racking, which bathed his whole body in a profuse perspiration, he at length retraced his steps back into his life, and decided that he was in the last place that he remembered before he fell into this disembodied-spirit condition of mind,—his room in the Sleeping Water Inn.

There was the open window, through which he had so often listened to the soothing murmur of the sea; there were the easy chairs, the chest of drawers, the little table, that, as he remembered it last, was not covered with medicine-bottles. The child's cot was a wholly new object. Had the landlady's little boy been sharing his quarters? What was his name? Ah, yes, Narcisse,—and what had they called the sulky Acadien who had hung about the house, and who now sat reading in a rocking-chair by the table?

Agapit—that was it; but why was he here in his room? Some one had been ill. "I am that person," suddenly drifted into his tortured mind. "I have been very ill; perhaps I am going to die." But the thought caused him no uneasiness, no regret; he was conscious only of an indescribably acute and nervous torture as his weary eyes glued themselves to the unconscious face of his watcher.

Agapit would soon lift his head, would stare at him, would utter some exclamation; and, in mute, frantic expectation, Vesper waited for the start and the exclamation. If they did come he felt that they would kill him; if they did not, he felt that nothing less than a sudden and immediate felling to the floor of his companion would satisfy the demands of his insane and frantic agitation.

Fortunately Agapit soon turned his anxious face towards the bed. He did not start, he did not exclaim: he had been too well drilled for that; but a quick, quiet rapture fell upon him that was expressed only by the trembling of his finger tips.

The young American had come out of the death-like unconsciousness of past days and nights; he now had a chance to recover; but while a thanksgiving to the mother of angels was trembling on his lips, his patient surveyed him in an ecstasy of irritation and weakness that found expression in hysterical laughter.

Agapit was alarmed. He had never heard Vesper laugh in health. He had rarely smiled. Possibly he might be calmed by the offer of something to eat, and, picking up a bowl of jelly, he approached the bed.

Vesper made a supreme effort, slightly moved his head from the descending spoon, and uttered the worst expression that he could summon from his limited vocabulary of abuse of former days.

Agapit drew back, and resignedly put the jelly on the table. "He remembers the past," he reflected, with hanging head.

Vesper did not remember the past; he was conscious of no resentment. He was possessed only of a wild desire to be rid of this man, whose presence inflamed him to the verge of madness.

After sorrowfully surveying him, while retreating further and further from his inarticulate expressions of rage, Agapit stepped into the hall. In a few minutes he returned with Rose, who looked pale and weary, as if she, too, were a watcher by a sick-bed. She glanced quickly at Vesper, suppressed a smile when he made a face at Agapit, and signed to the latter to leave the room.

Vesper became calm. Instead of sitting down beside him, or staring at him, she had gone to the window, and stood with folded hands, looking out into the night. After some time she went to the table, took up a bottle, and, carefully examining it, poured a few drops into a spoon.

Vesper took the liquid from her, with no sense of irritation; then, as she quickly turned away, he felt himself sinking down, down, through his bed, through the floor, through the crust of the earth, into regions of infinite space, from which he had come back to the world for a time.

The next time he waked up, Agapit was again with him. The former pantomime would have been repeated if Agapit had not at once precipitated himself from the room, and sent Rose to take his place.

This time she smiled at Vesper, and made an effort to retain his attention, even going so far as to leave the room and reënter with a wan effigy of Narcisse in her arms,—a pale and puny thing that stared languidly at him, and attempted to kiss his hand.

Vesper tried to speak to the child, lost himself in the attempt, then roused his slumbering fancy once more and breathed a question to Mrs. Rose,—"My mother?"

"Your mother is well, and is here," murmured his landlady. "You shall see her soon."

Vesper's periods of slumber after this were not of so long duration, and one warm and delicious afternoon, when the sunlight was streaming in and flooding his bed, he opened his eyes on a frail, happy figure fluttering about the room. "Ah, mother," he said, calmly, "you are here."

She flew to the bed, she hovered over him, embraced him, turned away, came back to him, and finally, rigidly clasping her hands to ensure self-control, sat down beside him.

At first she would not talk, the doctor would not permit it; but after some days her tongue was allowed to take its course freely and uninterruptedly.

"My dear boy, what a horrible fright you gave me! Your letters came every day for a week, then they stopped. I waited two days, thinking you had gone to some other place, then I telegraphed. You were ill. You can imagine how I hurried here, with Henry to take care of me. And what do you think I found? Such a curious state of affairs. Do you know that these Acadiens hated you at first?"

"Yes, I remember that."

"But when you fell ill, that young man, Agapit, installed himself as your nurse. They spoke of getting a Sister of Charity, but had some scruples, thinking you might not like it, as you are a Protestant. Mrs. de Forêt closed her inn; she would receive no guests, lest they might disturb you. She and her cousin nursed you. They got an English doctor to drive twelve miles every day,—they thought you would prefer him to a French one. Then her little boy fell ill; he said the young man Agapit had hurt you. They thought he would die, for he had brain fever. He called all the time for you, and when he had lucid intervals, they could only convince him you were not dead by bringing him in, and putting him in this cot. Really, it was a most deplorable state of affairs. But the charming part is that they thought you were a pauper. When I arrived, they were thunderstruck. They had not opened your trunk, which you left locked, though they said they would have done so if I had not come, for they feared you might die, and they wanted to get the addresses of your friends, and every morning, my dear boy, for three days after you were taken ill, you started up at nine o'clock, the time that queer, red postman used to come,—and wrote a letter to me."

Mrs. Nimmo paused, hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears. "It almost broke my heart when I heard it,—to think of you rousing yourself every day from your semi-unconsciousness to write to your mother. I cannot forgive myself for letting you go away without me."

"Why did they not write from here to you?" asked Vesper.

"They did not know I was your mother. I don't think they looked at the address of the letters you had sent. They thought you were poor, and an adventurer."

"Why did they not write to The Evening News?"

"My dear boy, they were doing everything possible for you, and they would have written in time."

"You have, of course, told them that they shall suffer no loss by all this?"

"Yes, yes; but they seem almost ashamed to take money from me. That charming landlady says, 'If I were rich I would pay all, myself.' Vesper, she is a wonderful woman."

"Is she?" he said, languidly.

"I never saw any one like her. My darling, how do you feel? Mayn't I give you some wine? I feel as if I had got you back from the grave, I can never be sufficiently thankful. The doctor says you may be carried out-of-doors in a week, if you keep on improving, as you are sure to do. The air here seems to suit you perfectly. You would never have been ill if you had not been run down when you came. That young man Agapit is making a stretcher to carry you. He is terribly ashamed of his dislike for you, and he fairly worships you now."

"I suppose you went through my trunk," said Vesper, in faint, indulgent tones.

"Well, yes," said Mrs. Nimmo, reluctantly. "I thought, perhaps, there might be something to be attended to."

"And you read my great-grandfather's letter?"

"Yes,—I will tell you exactly what I did. I found the key the second day I came, and I opened the trunk. When I discovered that old yellow letter, I knew it was something important. I read it, and of course recognized that you had come here in search of the Fiery Frenchman's children. However, I did not think you would like me to tell these Acadiens that, so I merely said, 'How you have misunderstood my son! He came here to do good to some of your people. He is looking for the descendants of a poor unhappy man. My son has money, and would help you.'"

Vesper tried to keep back the little crease of amusement forming itself about his wasted lips. He had rarely seen his mother so happy and so excited. She prattled on, watching him sharply to see the effect of her words, and hovering over him like a kind little mother-bird. In some way she reminded him curiously enough of Emmanuel de la Rive.

"I simply told them how good you are, and how you hate to have a fuss made over you. The young Acadien man actually writhed, and Mrs. de Forêt cried like a baby. Then they said, 'Oh, why did he put the name of a paper after his name?' 'How cruel in you to say that!' I replied to them. 'He does that because it reminds him of his dead father, whom he adored. My husband was editor and proprietor of the paper, and my son owns a part of it.' You should have seen the young Acadien. He put his head down on his arms, then he lifted it, and said, 'But does your son not write?' 'Write!' I exclaimed, indignantly, 'he hates writing. To me, his own mother, he only sends half a dozen lines. He never wrote a newspaper article in his life.' They would have been utterly overcome if I had not praised them for their disinterestedness in taking care of you in spite of their prejudice against you. Vesper, they will do anything for you now; and that exquisite child,—it is just like a romance that he should have fallen ill because you did."

"Is he better?"

"Almost well. They often bring him in when you are asleep. I daresay it would amuse you to have him sit on your bed for awhile."

Vesper was silent, and, after a time, his mother ran on: "This French district is delightfully unique. I never was in such an out-of-the-world place except in Europe. I feel as if I had been moved back into a former century, when I see those women going about in their black handkerchiefs. I sit at the window and watch them going by,—I should never weary of them."

Vesper said nothing, but he reflected affectionately and acutely that in a fortnight his appreciative but fickle mother would be longing for the rustle of silks, the flutter of laces, and the hum of fashionable conversation on a veranda, which was her idea of an enjoyable summer existence.

CHAPTER IX.
A TALK ON THE WHARF.

J. F. H.

"There goes the priest of the parish in his buggy," said Mrs. Nimmo. "He must have a sick call."

She sat on a garden chair, crocheting a white shawl and watching the passers-by on the road.

"And there are some Sisters of Charity from one of the convents and an old Indian with a load of baskets is begging from them—Don't you want to look at these bicyclists, Vesper? One, two, three, four, five, six. They are from Boston, I know, by the square collars on their jerseys. The Nova Scotians do not dress in that way."

Vesper gave only a partial though pleased attention to his mother, who had picked up an astonishing amount of neighborhood news, and as he lay on a rug at her feet, with his hat pulled over his brows, his mind soared up to the blue sky above him. During his illness he had always seemed to be sinking down into blackness and desolation. With returning health and decreased nervousness his soul mounted upward, and he would lie for hours at a time bathed in a delicious reverie and dreaming of "a nest among the stars."

"And there is the blacksmith from the corner," continued Mrs. Nimmo, "who comes here so often to borrow things that a blacksmith is commonly supposed to have. Yesterday he wanted a hammer. 'Not a hammer,' said Célina to me, 'but a wife.'"

Vesper's brain immediately turned an abrupt somersault in a descent from the sky to earth. "What did you say, mother?"

"Merely that the blacksmith wishes to marry our landlady. It will be an excellent match for her. Don't you think so?"

"In some respects,—yes."

"She is too young, and too handsome, to remain a widow. Célina says that she has had a great many admirers, but she has never seemed to fancy any one but the blacksmith. She went for a drive with him last Sunday evening. You know that is the time young Acadiens call on the girls they admire. You see them walking by, or driving in their buggies. If a girl's fiancé did not call on her that evening she would throw him over—There she is now with your beef tea," and Mrs. Nimmo admiringly watched Rose coming from the kitchen and carefully guarding a dainty china cup in her hand.

Vesper got up and took it from her. "Don't you think it is nonsense for me to be drinking this every morning?" he asked.

Rose looked up at him as he stood, tall, keen-eyed, interested, and waiting for her answer. "What does madame, your mother, say?" she asked, indicating Mrs. Nimmo, by a pretty gesture.

"His mother says," remarked Mrs. Nimmo, indulgently, "that her son should take any dose, no matter how disagreeable, if it has for its object the good of his health."

Vesper glanced sharply at her, then poured the last few drops of his tea on the ground.

"Ah," said Mrs. Rose, anxiously, "I feared that I had not put in enough salt. Now I know."

"It was perfect," said Vesper. "I am only offering a libation to those pansies," and he inclined his dark head towards Narcisse, who was seated cross-legged in the hammock.

Rose took the cup, smiled innocently and angelically on her child and the young man and his mother, and returned to the house.

Agapit presently came hurrying by the fence. "Ah, that is good!" he exclaimed, when he saw Vesper sauntering to and fro; "do you not think you could essay a walk to the wharf?"

"Yes," said Vesper, while his mother anxiously looked up from her work.

"Then come,—let me have the honor of escorting you," and Agapit showed his big white teeth in an ecstatic smile.

Vesper extended a hand to Narcisse, and, lifting his cap to his mother, went slowly down the lane to the road.

Agapit could scarcely contain his delight. He grinned broadly at every one they met, tried to accommodate his pace to Vesper's, kept forgetting and striding ahead, and finally, cramming his hands in his pockets, fell behind and muttered, "I feel as if I had known you a hundred years."

"You didn't feel that way six weeks ago," said Vesper, good-humoredly.

"I blush for it,—I am ashamed, but can you blame me? Since days of long ago, Acadiens have been so much maligned. You do not find that we are worse than others?"

"Well, I think you would have been a pretty ticklish fellow to have handled at the time of the expulsion."

"Our dear Lord knew better than to bring me into the world then," said Agapit, naïvely. "I should have urged the Acadiens to take up arms. There were enough of them to kill those devilish English."

"Do all the Acadiens hate the English as much as you do?"

"I hate the English?" cried Agapit. "How grossly you deceive yourself!"

"What do you mean then by that strong language?"

Agapit threw himself into an excited attitude. "Let you dare—you youthful, proud young republic,—to insult our Canadian flag. You would see where stands Agapit LeNoir! England is the greatest nation in the world," and proudly swelling out his breast, he swept his glance over the majestic Bay before them.

"Yes, barring the United States of America."

"I cannot quarrel with you," said Agapit, and the fire left his glance, and moisture came to his eyes. "Let us each hold to our own opinion."

"And suppose insults not forthcoming,—give me some further explanation meantime."

"My quarrel is not with the great-minded," said Agapit, earnestly, "the eagerly anxious-for-peace Englishmen in years gone by, who reinforced the kings and queens of England. No,—I impeach the low-born upstarts and their colonial accomplices. Do you know, can you imagine, that the diabolical scheme of the expulsion of the Acadiens was conceived by a barber, and carried into decapitation by a house painter?"

"Not possible," murmured Vesper.

"Yes, possible,—let me find you a seat. I shall not forgive myself if I weary you, and those women will kill me."

They had reached the wharf, and Agapit pointed to a pile of boards against the wooden breastwork that kept the waves from dashing over in times of storm.

"That infamous letter is always like a scroll of fire before me," he exclaimed, pacing restlessly to and fro before Vesper and the child. "In it the once barber and footman, Craggs, who was then secretary of state, wrote to the governor of Nova Scotia: 'I see you do not get the better of the Acadiens. It is singular that those people should have preferred to lose their goods rather than be exposed to fight against their brethren. This sentimentality is stupid.' Ah, let it be stupid!" exclaimed Agapit, breaking off. "Let us once more have an expulsion. The Acadiens will go, they will suffer, they will die, before they give up sentimentality."

"Hear, hear!" observed Vesper.

Agapit surveyed him with a glowing eye. "Listen to further words from this solemn official, this barber secretary: 'These people are evidently too much attached to their fellow countrymen and to their religion ever to make true Englishmen.' Of what are true Englishmen made, Mr. Englishman from Boston?"

"Of poor Frenchmen, according to the barber."

"Now hear more courtly language from the honorable Craggs: 'It must be avowed that your position is deucedly critical. It was very difficult to prevent them from departing after having left the bargain to their choice—'"

"What does he mean by that?" asked Vesper.

"Call to your memory the terms of the treaty of Utrecht."

"I don't remember a word of it,—bear in mind, my friend, that I am not an Acadien, and this question does not possess for me the moving interest it does for you. I only know Longfellow's 'Evangeline,'—which, until lately, has always seemed to me to be a pretty myth dressed up to please the public, and make money for the author,—some magazine articles, and Parkman, my favorite historian, whom you, nevertheless, seem to dislike."

Agapit dropped on a block of wood, and rocked himself to and fro, as if in distress. "I will not characterize Parkman, since he is your countryman; but I would dearly love—I would truly admire to say what I think of him. Now as to the treaty of Utrecht; think just a moment, and you will remember that it transferred the Acadiens as the subjects of Louis XIV. of France to the good Queen Anne of England."

Vesper, instead of puzzling his brain with historical reminiscences, immediately began to make preparations for physical comfort, and stretched himself out on the pile of boards, with his arm for a pillow.

"Do not sleep, but conversate," said Agapit, eagerly. "It is cool here, you possibly would get cold if you shut your eyes. I will change this matter of talk,—there is one I would fain introduce."

Vesper, in inward diversion, found that a new solemnity had taken possession of the young Acadien. He looked unutterable things at the Bay, indescribable things at the sky, and mysterious things at the cook of the schooner, who had just thrust his head through a window in his caboose.

At last he gave expression to his emotion. "Would this not be a fitting time to talk of the wonderful letter of which madame, your mother, hinted?"

Vesper, without a word, drew a folded paper from his pocket, and handed it to him.

Agapit took it reverently, swayed back and forth while devouring its contents, then, unable to restrain himself, sprang up, and walked, or rather ran, to and fro while perusing it a second time.

At last he came to a dead halt, and breathing hard, and with eyes aflame, ejaculated, "Thank you, a thousand, thousand time for showing me this precious letter." Then pressing it to his breast, he disappeared entirely from Vesper's range of vision.

After a time he came back. Some of his excitement had gone from his head through his heels, and he sank heavily on a block of wood.

"You do not know, you cannot tell," he said, "what this letter means to us."

"What does it mean?"

"It means—I do not know that I can say the word, but I will try—cor-rob-oration."

"Explain a little further, will you?"

"In the past all was for the English. Now records are being discovered, old documents are coming to light. The guilty colonial authorities suppressed them. Now these records declare for the Acadiens."

"So—this letter, being from one on the opposite side, is valuable."

"It is like a diamond unearthed," said Agapit, turning it over; "but,"—in sudden curiosity,—"this is a copy mutilated, for the name of the captain is not here. From whom did you have it, if I am permitted to ask?"

"From the great-grandson of the old fellow mentioned."

"And he does not wish his name known?"

"Well, naturally one does not care to shout the sins of one's ancestors."

"The noble young man, the dear young man," said Agapit, warmly. "He will atone for the sins of his fathers."

"Not particularly noble, only business-like."

"And has he much money, that he wishes to aid this family of Acadiens?"

"No, not much. His father's family never succeeded in making money and keeping it. His mother is rich."

"I should like to see him," exclaimed Agapit, and his black eyes flashed over Vesper's composed features. "I should love him for his sensitive heart."

"There is nothing very interesting about him," said Vesper. "A sick, used-up creature."

"Ah,—he is delicate."

"Yes, and without courage. He is a college man and would have chosen a profession if his health had not broken down."

"I pity him from my heart; I send good wishes to his sick-bed," said Agapit, in a passion of enthusiasm. "I will pray to our Lord to raise him."

"Can you give him any assistance?" asked Vesper, nodding towards the letter.

"I do not know; I cannot tell. There are many LeNoirs. But I will go over my papers; I will sit up at night, as I now do some writing for the post-office. You know I am poor, and obliged to work. I must pay Rose for my board. I will not depend on a woman."

Vesper half lifted his drooping eyelids. "What are you going to make of yourself?"

"I wish to study law. I save money for a period in a university."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-three."

"Your cousin looks about that age."

"She is twenty-four,—a year older; and you,—may I ask your age?"

"Guess."

Agapit studied his face. "You are twenty-six."

"No."

"I daresay we are both younger than Rose," said Agapit, ingenuously, "and she has less sense than either."

"Did your ancestors come from the south of France?" asked Vesper, abruptly.

"Not the LeNoirs; but my mother's family was from Provence. Why do you ask?"

"You are like a Frenchman of the south."

"I know that I am impetuous," pursued Agapit. "Rose says that I resemble the tea-kettle. I boil and bubble all the time that I am not asleep, and"—uneasily—"she also says that I speak too hastily of women; that I do not esteem them as clever as they are. What do you think?"

Vesper laughed quickly. "Southerners all have a slight contempt for women. However, they are frank about it. Is there one thought agitating your bosom that you do not express?"

"No; most unfortunately. It chagrins me that I speak everything. I feel, and often speak before I feel, but what can one do? It is my nature. Rose also follows her nature. She is beautiful, but she studies nothing, absolutely nothing, but the science of cooking."

"Without which philosophers would go mad from indigestion."

"Yes; she was born to cook and to obey. Let her keep her position, and not say, 'Agapit, thou must do so and so,' as she sometimes will, if I am not rocky with her."

"Rocky?" queried Vesper.

"Firmy, firm," said Agapit, in confusion. "The words twist in my mind, unless my blood is hot, when I speak better. Will you not correct me? Upon going out in the world I do not wish to be laughed."

"To be laughed at," said his new friend. "Don't worry yourself. You speak well enough, and will improve."

Agapit grew pale with emotion. "Ah, but we shall miss you when you go! There has been no Englishman here that we so liked. I hope that you will be long in finding the descendants of the Fiery Frenchman."

"Perhaps I shall find some of them in you and your cousin," said Vesper.

"Ah, if you could, what joy! what bliss!—but I fear it is not so. Our forefathers were not of Grand Pré."

Vesper relapsed into silence, only occasionally rousing himself to answer some of Agapit's restless torrent of remarks about the ancient letter. At last he grew tired, and, sitting up, laid a caressing hand on the head of Narcisse, who was playing with some shells beside him. "Come, little one, we must return to the house."

On the way back they met the blacksmith. Agapit snickered gleefully, "All the world supposes that he is making the velvet paw to Rose."

"She drives with him," said Vesper, indifferently.

"Yes, but to obtain news of her sister who flouts him. She is down the Bay, and Rose receives news of her. She will no longer drive with him if she hears this gossip."

"Why should she not?"

"I do not know, but she will not. Possibly because she is no coquette."

"She will probably marry some one."

"She cannot," muttered Agapit, and he fell into a quiet rage, and out of it again in the duration of a few seconds. Then he resumed a light-hearted conversation with Vesper, who averted his curious eyes from him.

CHAPTER X.
BACK TO THE CONCESSION.