Rose A Charlitte Part 10

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 wors.h.i.+pfully into his face, and stroking his handsome head.

"O G.o.d, 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, "_Arrete-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 "_Arrete-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 a.n.a.lyze 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 gra.s.s-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 gra.s.s-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 pa.s.sing 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 fis.h.i.+ng-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 a 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 Celina was drawing a bucket of water.

"The Englishman has fainted," he said, and he took the bucket from her.

Celina 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 pa.s.sing along the road. "Come a.s.sist me to carry the Englishman into the house. This is something worse than a faint."

CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE SUDDEN SOMETHING ILL.

"Dull days had hung like curtained mysteries, And nights were weary with the starless skies.

At once came life, and fire, and joys untold, And promises for violets to unfold; And every breeze had shreds of melodies, So faint and sweet."

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.