Rose A Charlitte Part 34

"The mouse?--oh, yess, when I go for the cook I find 'im in the corner, a big stick in his 'and. I dunno 'ow 'e stan'. 'Is stove was upside down, an' there was an awful wariwarie" (racket). "'E seem not to think of danger. "Ist,' says 'e. 'Don' mek a noise,--I wan' to kill that mouse.'"

Vesper laughed at this, and Mirabelle Marie's face cleared.

"Tell the Englishman who was the cap'en of yous," she said, impulsively, and she resolutely turned her back on Bidiane's terrific frown.

"Well, 'e was smart," said Claude, apologetically. "'E always get on though 'e not know much. One day when 'e fus' wen' to sea 'is wife says, 'All the cap'ens' wives talk about their charts, an' you ain't gut none.

I buy one.' So she wen' to Yarmouth, an' buy 'im a chart. She also buy some of that s.h.i.+ny cloth for kitchen table w'at 'as blue scrawly lines like writin' on it. The cap'en leave the nex' mornin' before she was up, an' 'e takes with 'im the oilcloth instid of the chart, an' 'e 'angs it in 'is cabin; 'e didn't know no differ. 'E never could write,--that man.

He mek always a pictur of 'is men when 'e wan' to write the fish they ketch. But 'e was smart, very smart. 'E mek also money. Onct 'e was pa.s.senger on a schooner that smacks ag'in a steamer in a fog. All 'an's scuttle, 'cause that mek a big scare. They forgit 'im. 'E wake; 'e find 'imself lonely. Was 'e frightful? Oh, no; 'e can't work sails, but 'e steer that schooner to Boston, an' claim salvage."

"Tell also the name of the cap'en," said Mirabelle Marie.

Claude moved uneasily in his chair, and would not speak.

"What was it?" asked Vesper.

"It was Crispin," said Mirabelle Marie, solemnly. "Crispin, the brother of Charlitte."

Vesper calmly took a cigarette from his pocket, and lighted it.

"It is a nice place down the Bay," said Mirabelle Marie, uneasily.

"Very nice," responded her guest.

"Rose a Charlitte has a good name," she continued, "a very good name."

Vesper fingered his cigarette, and gazed blankly at her.

"They speak good French there," she said.

Her husband and Bidiane stared at her. They had never heard such a sentiment from her lips before. However, they were accustomed to her ways, and they soon got over their surprise.

"Do you not speak French?" asked Vesper.

Mrs. Watercrow shrugged her shoulders. "It is no good. We are all English about here. How can one be French? Way back, when we went to ma.s.s, the priest was always botherin'--'Talk French to your young ones.

Don't let them forgit the way the old people talked.' One day I come home and says to my biggest boy, '_Va rama.s.ser des ecopeaux_'" (Go pick up some chips). "He snarl at me, 'Do you mean potatoes?' He didn't like it."

"Did he not understand you?" asked Vesper.

"Naw, naw," said Claude, bitterly. "We 'ave French nebbors, but our young ones don' play with. They don' know French. My wife she speak it w'en we don' want 'em to know w'at we say."

"You always like French," said his wife, contemptuously. "I guess you gut somethin' French inside you."

Claude, for some reason or other, probably because, usually without an advocate, he now knew that he had one in Vesper, was roused to unusual animation. He s.n.a.t.c.hed his pipe from his mouth and said, warmly, "It's me 'art that's French, an' sometimes it's sore. I speak not much, but I think often we are fools. Do the Eenglish like us? No, only a few come with us; they grin 'cause we put off our French speakin' like an ole coat. A man say to me one day, 'You 'ave nothin'. You do not go to ma.s.s, you preten' to be Protestan', w'en you not brought up to it. You big fool, you don' know w'at it is. If you was dyin' to-morrer you'd sen'

for the priest.'"

Mirabelle Marie opened her eyes wide at her husband's eloquence.

He was not yet through. "An' our children, they are silly with it. They donno' w'at they are. All day Sunday they play; sometimes they say cuss words. I say, 'Do it not,' 'an' they ast me w'y. I cannot tell. They are not French, they are not Eenglish. They 'ave no religion. I donno' w'ere they go w'en they die."

Mirabelle Marie boldly determined to make confidences to the Englishman in her turn.

"The English have loads of money. I wish I could go to Boston. I could make it there,--yes, lots of it."

Claude was not to be put down. "I like our own langwidge, oh, yes," he said, sadly. "W'en I was a leetle boy I wen' to school. All was Eenglish. They put in my 'and an Eenglish book. I'd lef my mother, I was stoopid. I thought all the children's teeth was broke, 'cause they spoke so strange. Never will I forgit my firs' day in school. W'y do they teach Eenglish to the French? The words was like fish 'ooks in my flesh."

"Would you be willing to send that little girl down the Bay to a French convent?" said Vesper, waving his cigarette towards Bidiane.

"We can't pay that," said Mirabelle Marie, eagerly.

"But I would."

While she was nodding her head complacently over this, the first of the favors to be showered on them, Claude said, slowly, "Down the Bay is like a bad, bad place to my children; they do not wish to go, not even to ride. They go towards Digby. Biddy Ann would not go to the convent,--would she, Biddy?"

The little girl threw up her head angrily. "I hate Frenchtown, and that black spider, Agapit LeNoir."

Claude's face darkened, and his wife chuckled. Surely now there would be nothing left for the Englishman to do but to transplant them all to Boston.

"Would you not go?" asked Vesper, addressing Bidiane.

"Not a d.a.m.n step," said the girl, in a fury, and, violently pus.h.i.+ng back her chair, she rushed from the room. If this young man wished to make a French girl of her, he might go on his way. She would have nothing to do with him. And with a rebellious and angry heart at this traitor to his race, as she regarded him, she climbed up a ladder in the kitchen that led to a sure hiding-place under the roof.

Her aunt clutched her head in despair. Bidiane would ruin everything.

"She's all eaten up to go to Boston," she gasped.

"I am not a rich man," said Vesper, coldly. "I don't feel able at present to propose anything further for her than to give her a year or two in a convent."

Mirabelle Marie gaped speechlessly at him. In one cras.h.i.+ng ruin her new barn, and farming implements, the wagon and horses, and trunks full of fine clothes fell into the abyss of lost hopes. The prince had not the long purse that she supposed he would have. And yet such was her good-nature that, when she recovered from the shock, she regarded him just as kindly and as admiringly as before, and if he had been in the twinkling of an eye reduced to want she would have been the first to relieve him, and give what aid she could. Nothing could destroy her deep-rooted and extravagant admiration for the English race.

Her fascinated glance followed him as he got up and sauntered to the open door.

"You'll stop all night?" she said, hospitably, shuffling after him. "We have one good bed, with many feathers."

He did not hear her, for in a state of extreme boredom, and slight absent-mindedness, he had stepped out under the poplars.

"Better leave 'im alone, I guess," said Claude; then he slipped off his coat. "I'll go milk."

"An' I'll make up the bed," said his wife; and taking the hairpins out of the switch that Bidiane had made her attach to her own thick lump of hair, she laid it on the shelf by the clock, and allowed her own brown wave to stream freely down her back. Then she unfastened her corsets, which she did not dare to take off, as no woman in Bleury who did not wear that article of dress tightly enfolding her chest and waist was considered to have reached the acme of respectability. However, she could for a time allow them to gape slightly apart, and having by this proceeding added much to her comfort, she entered one of the small rooms near by.

Vesper meanwhile walked slowly towards the gate, while Bidiane watched him through a loophole in the roof. His body only was in Bleury; his heart was in Sleeping Water. Step by step he was following Rose about her daily duties. He knew just at what time of day her slender feet carried her to the stable, to the duck-yard, to the hen-house. He knew the exact hour that she entered her kitchen in the morning, and went from it to the pantry. He could see her beautiful face at the cool pantry window, as she stood mixing various dishes, and occasionally glancing at the pa.s.sers-by on the road. Sometimes she sang gently to herself, "Rose of the cross, thou mystic flower," or "Dear angel ever at my side," or some of the Latin hymns to the Virgin.

At this present moment her tasks would all be done. If there were guests who desired her presence, she might be seated with them in the little parlor. If there were none, she was probably alone in her room. Of what was she thinking? The blood surged to his face, there was a beating in his ears, and he raised his suffering glance to the sky. "O G.o.d! now I know why I suffered when my father died. It was to prepare me for this."

Then his mind went back to Rose. Had she succeeded in driving his image from her pure mind and imagination? Alas! he feared not,--he would like to know. He had heard nothing of her since leaving Sleeping Water.

Agapit had written once, but he had not mentioned her.

This inaction was horrible,--this place wearied him insufferably. He glanced towards his wheel, and a sentence from one of Agapit's books came into his mind. It contained the advice of an old monk to a penitent, "My son, when in grievous temptation from trouble of the mind, engage violently in some exercise of the body."

He was a swift rider, and there was no need for him to linger longer here. These people were painfully subservient. If at any time anything came into his mind to be done for the little girl, they would readily agree to it; that is, if the small tigress concurred; at present there was nothing to be done for her.