THE SLEEPING WATER INN.
"Montrez-moi votre menu et je vous montrerai mon coeur."
A few minutes later, the train had again entered the forest, and Vesper,
who had a passion for trees and ranked them with human beings in his
affections, allowed the mystery and charm of these foreigners to steal
over him. In dignified silence and reserve the tall pines seemed to draw
back from the rude contact of the passing train. The more assertive firs
and spruces stood still, while the slender hackmatacks, most beautiful
of all the trees of the wood, writhed and shook with fright, nervously
tossing their tremulous arms and tasselled heads, and breathing long
odoriferous sighs that floated after, but did not at all touch the
sympathies of the roaring monster from the outer world who so often
desecrated their solitude.
Vesper's delicate nostrils dilated as the spicy odors saluted them, and
he thought, with tenderness, of the home trees that he loved, the elms
of the Common and those of the square where he had been born. How many
times he had encircled them with admiring footsteps, noting the
individual characteristics of each tree, and giving to each one a
separate place in his heart. Just for an instant he regretted that for
to-night he could not lie down in their shadow. Then he turned irritably
to the salesman, who was stretching and shaking out his legs, and
performing other calisthenic exploits as accompaniments of waking.
"Haven't we come to Great Scott yet?" he asked, getting up, and
sauntering to Vesper's window.
Vesper consulted his folder. Among the French names he could discover
nothing like this, unless it was Grosses Coques, so called, his
guide-book told him, because the Acadiens had discovered enormous clams
there.
The salesman settled the question by dabbing at the name with his fat
forefinger. "Confound these French names, and thank the Lord they're
beginning to give them up. This Sleeping Water we're coming to used to
be _L'Eau Dormante_. If I had my way, I'd string up on these pines every
fellow that spoke a word of this gibberish. That would cure 'em. Why
can't they have one language, as we do?"
"How would you like to talk French?" asked Vesper, quietly.
The little man laughed shrewdly, and not unkindly. "Every man to his
liking. I guess it's best not to fight too much."
"I get off here," said Vesper, gathering up his papers.
"Happy you,--you won't have to wait for all of Evangeline's heifers to
step off the track between here and Halifax."
Vesper nodded to him, and, swinging himself from the car, went to find
the conductor.
There was ample time to get that gentlemanly official's consent to have
his wheel and trunk put off at this station, instead of at Grand Pré,
and ample time for Vesper to give a long look at the names in the line
of cars, which were, successively, Basil the Blacksmith, Benedict the
Father, René the Notary, and Gabriel the Lover, before the locomotive
snuffed its nostrils and, panting and heaving, started off to trail its
romantic appendages through the country of Evangeline.
When the train had disappeared, Vesper looked about him. He was no
longer in the heart of the forest. An open country and scattering houses
appeared in the distance, and here he could distinctly feel a
mischievous breeze from the Bay that playfully ruffled his hair, and
tossed back the violets at his feet every time that they bent over to
look at their own sweet faces in the black, mirror-like pool of water
set in a mossy bed beside them.
He stooped and picked one of the wistful purple blossoms, then stepped
up on the platform of the gabled station-house. Inside the kitchen, a
woman, sitting with her back to the passing trains, was spinning, and at
the same time rocking a cradle, while near the door stood an individual
who, to Vesper's secret amusement, might have posed either as a member
of the human species, or as one of the class _aves_.
He had many times seen the fellows of this white-haired, smooth-faced
old man, in the Southern States in the shape of cardinal-birds. Those
resplendent creatures in the male sex are usually clothed in gay red
jackets. This male's plumage was also red, but, unlike the
cardinal-birds, it had a trimming of pearl buttons and white lace. The
bird's high and conical crest was expressed in the man by a pointed red
cap. The bird is nondescript as to the legs,--so also was the man; and
the loud and musical note of the Southern songster was reproduced in the
fife-like tones of the Acadien, when he presently spoke.
He was an official, and carried in his hand a locked bag containing her
Majesty's mail for her Acadien subjects of the Bay. Vesper had seen the
mail-carriers along the route, tossing their bags to the passing train,
and receiving others in return, but none as gorgeous as this one, and he
was wondering why the gentle-faced septuagenarian made himself so
peculiar, when he was addressed in a sweet, high voice.
"Sir," said the bird-man, in French,--for was he not Emmanuel Victor De
la Rive, lineal descendant of a French marquis who had married a queen's
maid of honor, and had subsequently bequeathed his bones and his large
family of children to his adored Acadie?--"Sir, is it possible that you
are a guest for the inn?"
"It is possible," said Vesper, gravely.
"Alas!" said the old man, turning to the dark-eyed woman, who had left
her cradle and spinning-wheel, "is it not always so? When Rose à
Charlitte does not send, there are arrivals. When she does, there are
not. She will be in despair. Sir, shall I have the honor of taking you
over in my road-cart?"
"I have a wheel," said Vesper, pointing to the bicycle, leaning
disconsolately against his trunk.
The black-eyed woman immediately put out her hand for his checks.
"Then may I have the honor of showing you the way?" said Monsieur De la
Rive, bowing before Vesper as if he were a divinity. "There are sides of
the road which it is well to avoid."
"I shall be most happy to avail myself of your offer."
"I will send the trunk over," said the station woman. "There is a
constant going that way."
Vesper thanked her, and left the station in the wake of the
cardinal-bird, who sat perched on his narrow seat as easily as if it
were a branch of a tree, turning his crested head at frequent intervals
to look anxiously at the mail-bag which, for reasons best known to
himself, he carried slung to a nail in the back of his cart.
At frequent intervals, too, he piped shrill and sweet remarks to Vesper.
"Courage; the road will soon improve. It is the ox-teams that cut it up.
They load schooners in the Bay. Here at last is a good spot. Monsieur
can mount now. Beware of the sharp stones. All the bones of the earth
stick up in places. Does monsieur intend to stay long in Sleeping Water?
Was it monsieur that Rose à Charlitte expected when she drove through
the pouring rain to the station, two days since? What did he say in the
letter that he sent yesterday in explanation of his change of plans? Did
monsieur come from Halifax, or Boston? Did he know Mrs. de la Rive,
laundress, of Cambridge Street? Had he samples of candy or tobacco in
that big box of his? How much did he charge a pound for his best
peppermints?"
Vesper, fully occupied with keeping his wheel out of the ruts in the
road, and in maintaining a safe distance from the cart, which pressed
him sore if he went ahead and waited for him if he dallied behind,
answered "yes" and "no" at random, until at length he had involved
himself in such a maze of contradictions that Monsieur de la Rive felt
himself forced to pull up his brown pony and remonstrate.
"But it is impossible, monsieur, that you should have seen Mrs. de la
Rive, who has been dying for weeks, dancing at the wedding of the
daughter of her step-uncle, the baker, and yet you say 'yes' when I
remark that she was not there."
The stop and the remonstrance were so birdlike and so quick, that
Vesper, taken aback, fell off his wheel and broke his cyclometer.
He picked himself out of the dust, swearing under his breath, and
Monsieur de la Rive, being a gentleman, and seeing that this quiet young
stranger was disinclined for conversation, suddenly whipped up his pony
and sped madly on ahead, the tails of his red coat streaming out behind
him, the tip of his pointed cap fluttering and nodding over his thick
white locks of hair.
After the lapse of a few minutes, Vesper had recovered his composure,
and was looking calmly about him. The road was better now, and they were
nearing the Bay, that lay shimmering and shining like a great
sea-serpent coiled between purple hills. He did not know what Grand Pré
was like, and was therefore unaware of the extent of the Acadiens' loss
in being driven from it; but this was by no means a barren country. On
either side of him were fairly prosperous farms, each one with a light
painted wooden house, around which clustered usually a group of
children, presided over by a mother, who, as the mail-driver dashed by,
would appear in the doorway, thrusting forth her matronly face, often
partly shrouded by a black handkerchief.
These black handkerchiefs, _la cape Normande_ of old France, were almost
universal on the heads of women and girls. He could see them in the
fields and up and down the roads. They and the vivacious sound of the
French tongue gave the foreign touch to his surroundings, which he
found, but for these reminders, might once again have been those of an
out-of-the-way district in some New England State.
He noticed, with regret, that the forest had all been swept away. The
Acadiens, in their zeal for farming, had wielded their axes so
successfully that scarcely a tree had been left between the station and
the Bay. Here and there stood a lonely guardian angel, in the shape of a
solitary pine, hovering over some Acadien roof-tree, and turning a
melancholy face towards its brothers of the forest,--rugged giants
primeval, now prostrate and forlorn, and being trailed slowly along
towards the waiting schooners in the Bay.
The most of these fallen giants were loaded on rough carts drawn by
pairs of sleek and well-kept oxen who were yoked by the horns. The carts
were covered with mud from the bad roads of the forest, and muddy also
were the boots of the stalwart Acadien drivers, who walked beside the
oxen, whip in hand, and turned frankly curious faces towards the
stranger who flashed by their slow-moving teams on his shining wheel.
The road was now better, and Vesper quickly attained to the top of the
last hill between the station and the Bay.
Ah! now the fields did not appear bare, the houses naked, the whole
country wind-swept and cold, for the wide, regal, magnificent Bay lay
spread out before him. It was no longer a thread of light, a sea-serpent
shining in the distance, but a great, broad, beautiful basin, on whose
placid bosom all the Acadien, New England, and Nova Scotian fleets might
float with never a jostle between any of their ships.
A fire of admiration kindled in his calm eyes, and he allowed himself to
glide rapidly down the hill towards this brilliant blue sweep of water,
along whose nearer shores stretched, as far as his gaze could reach, the
curious dotted line of the French village.
The country had become flat, as flat as Holland, and the fields rolled
down into the water in the softest, most exquisite shades of green,
according to the different kinds of grass or grain flourishing along the
shores. The houses were placed among the fields, some close together,
some far apart, all, however, but a stone's throw from the water's edge,
as if the Acadiens, fearful of another expulsion, held themselves always
in readiness to step into the procession of boats and schooners moored
almost in their dooryards.
At the point where Vesper found himself threatened with precipitation
into the Bay, they struck the village line. Here, at the corner, was the
general shop and post-office of Sleeping Water. The cardinal-bird
fluttered his mail-bag in among the loafers at the door, saw the
shopkeeper catch it, then, swelling out his vermilion breast with
importance, he nimbly took the corner with one wheel in the air and
pulled up before the largest, whitest house on the street, and
flourished a flaming wing in the direction of a swinging sign,--"The
Sleeping Water Inn."
Vesper, biting his lip to restrain a smile, rounded the corner after
him, and leisurely stepped from his wheel in front of the house.
"Ring, sir, and enter," piped the bird, then, wishing him _bonne chance_
(good luck), he flew away.
Vesper pulled the bell, and, as no one answered his summons, he
sauntered through the open door into the hall.
So this was an Acadien house,--and he had expected a log hut. He could
command a view from where he stood of a staircase, a smoking-room, and a
parlor,--all clean, cool, and comfortably furnished, and having easy
chairs, muslin curtains, books, and pictures.
He smiled to himself, murmured "I wonder where the dining-room is? These
flies will probably know," and followed a prosperous-looking swarm
sailing through the hall to a distant doorway.
A table, covered by a snowy cloth and set ready for a meal, stood before
him. He walked around it, rapped on a door, behind which he heard a
murmur of voices, and was immediately favored with a sight of an Acadien
kitchen.
This one happened to be large, lofty, and of a grateful irregularity in
shape. The ceiling was as white as snow, and a delicate blue and cream
paper adorned the walls. The floor was of hard wood and partly covered
with brightly colored mats, made by the skilful fingers of Acadien
women. There were several windows and doors, and two pantries, but no
fireplace. An enormous Boston cooking range took its place. Every cover
on it glistened with blacking, every bit of nickel plating was polished
to the last degree, and, as if to show that this model stove could not
possibly be malevolent enough to throw out impurities in the way of soot
and ashes, there stood beside it a tall clothes-horse full of white
ironed clothes hung up to air.
But the most remarkable thing in this exquisitely clean kitchen was the
mistress of the inn,--tall, willowy Mrs. Rose à Charlitte, who stood
confronting the newcomer with a dish-cover in one hand and a clean
napkin in the other, her pretty oval face flushed from some sacrifice
she had been offering up on her huge Moloch of a stove.
[Illustration: "ROSE À CHARLITTE STOOD CONFRONTING THE NEWCOMER."]
"Can you give me some lunch?" asked Vesper, and he wondered whether he
should find a descendant of the Fiery Frenchman in this placid beauty,
whose limpid blue eyes, girlish, innocent gaze, and thick braid of hair,
with the little confusion of curls on the forehead, reminded him rather
of a Gretchen or a Marguerite of the stage.
"But yes," said Mrs. Rose à Charlitte, in uncertain yet pretty English,
and her gentle and demure glance scrutinized him with some shrewdness
and accurate guessing as to his attainments and station in life.
"Can you give it to me soon?" he asked.
"I can give it soon," she replied, and as she spoke she made an almost
imperceptible motion of her head in the direction of the neat
maid-servant behind her, who at once flew out to the garden for fresh
vegetables, while, with her foot, which was almost as slender as her
hand, Mrs. Rose à Charlitte pulled out a damper in the stove that at
once caused a still more urgent draft to animate the glowing wood
inside.
"Can you let me have a room?" pursued Vesper.
"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Rose, and she turned to the third occupant of the
kitchen, a pale child with a flowerlike face and large, serious eyes,
who sat with folded hands in a little chair. "Narcisse," she said, in
French, "wilt thou go and show the judge's room?"
The child, without taking his fascinated gaze from Vesper, responded, in
a sweet, drawling voice, "_Ou-a-a-y, ma ma-r-re_" (yes, my mother).
Then, rising, he trotted slowly through the dining-room and up the
staircase to a hall above, where he gravely threw open the door of a
good-sized chamber, whose chief ornament was a huge white bed.
"Why do you call this the judge's room?" asked Vesper, in French.
The child answered him in unintelligible childish speech, that made the
young man observe him intently. "I believe you look like me, you black
lily," he said, at last.
There was, indeed, a resemblance between their two heads. Both had pale,
inscrutable faces, dark eyes, and curls like midnight clustering over
their white foreheads. Both were serious, grave, and reserved in
expression. The child stared up at Vesper, then, seizing one of his
hands, he patted it gently with his tiny fingers. They were friends.
[Illustration: "THEY WERE FRIENDS."]
Vesper allowed the child to hold his hand until he plunged his head into
a basin of cold water. Then, with water dripping from his face, he
paused to examine a towel before he would press it against his sensitive
skin. It was fine and perfectly clean, and, with a satisfied air, he
murmured: "So far, Doctor Arseneau has not led me astray."
The child waited patiently until the stranger had smoothed down his
black curls, then, stretching out a hand, he mutely invited him to
descend to the parlor.
Upon arriving there, he modestly withdrew to a corner, after pointing
out a collection of photographs on the table. Vesper made a pretence of
examining them until the entrance of his landlady with the announcement
that his lunch was served.
She shyly set before him a plate of soup, and a dish which she called a
little _ragoût_, "not as good as the _ragoûts_ of Boston, and yet
eatable."
"How do you know that I am from Boston?" asked Vesper.
"I do not know," she murmured, with a quick blush. "Monsieur is from
Halifax, I thought. He seems English. I speak of Boston because it was
there that I learned to cook."
Vesper said nothing, but his silence seemed to invite a further
explanation, and she went on, modestly: "When I received news that my
husband had died of yellow fever in the West Indies, neighbors said,
'What will you do?' My stepmother said, 'Come home;' but I answered,
'No; a child that has left its father's roof does not return. I will
keep hotel. My house is of size. I will go to Boston and learn to cook
better than I know.' So I went, and stayed one week."
"That was a short time to learn cooking," observed Vesper, politely.
"I did not study. I bought _cuisine_ books. I went to grand hotels and
regarded the tables and tasted the dishes. If I now had more money, I
would do similar," and she anxiously surveyed her modest table and the
aristocratic young man seated at it; "but not many people come, and the
money lacks. However, our Lord knows that I wish to educate my child.
Strangers will come when he is older.
"And," she went on, after a time, with mingled reluctance and honesty,
"I must not hide from you that I have already in the bank two hundred
dollars. It is not much; not so much as the Gautreaus, who have six
hundred, and Agapit, who has four, yet it is a starting."
Vesper slightly wrinkled his forehead, and Mrs. Rose, fearful that her
cooking displeased him, for he had scarcely tasted the _ragoût_ and had
put aside a roast chicken, hastened to exclaim, "That pudding is but
overheated, and I did wrong to place it before you. Despise it if you
care, and it will please the hens."
"It is a very good pudding," said Vesper, composedly, and he proceeded
to finish it.
"Here is a custard which is quite fresh," said his landlady, feverishly,
"and bananas, and oranges, and some coffee."
"Thank you. No cream--may I ask why you call that room you put me in the
judge's room?"
"Because we have court near by, every year. The judge who comes exists
in that room. It is a most stirabout time, for many witnesses and
lawyers come. Perhaps monsieur passed the court-house and saw a lady
looking through the bars?"
"No, I did not. Who is the lady?"
"A naughty one, who sold liquor. She had no license, she could not pay
her fine, therefore she must look through those iron bars," and Mrs.
Rose à Charlitte shuddered.
Vesper looked interested, and presently she went on: "But Clothilde
Dubois has some mercies,--one rocking-chair, her own feather bed, some
dainties to eat, and many friends to visit and talk through the bars."
"Is there much drinking among the Acadiens on this Bay?" asked Vesper.
"They do not drink at all," she said, stoutly.
"Really,--then you never see a drunken man?"
"I never see a drunken man," rejoined his pretty hostess.
"Then I suppose there are no fights."
"There are no fights among Acadiens. They are good people. They go to
mass and vespers on Sunday. They listen to their good priests. In the
evening one amuses oneself, and on Monday we rise early to work. There
are no dances, no fights."
Vesper's meditative glance wandered through the window to a square of
grass outside, where some little girls in pink cotton dresses were
playing croquet. He was drinking his coffee and watching their graceful
behavior, when his attention was recalled to the room by hearing Mrs.
Rose à Charlitte say to her child, "There, Narcisse, is a morsel for thy
trees."
The little boy had come from the corner where he had sat like a patient
mouse, and, with some excitement, was heaping a plate with the food that
Vesper had rejected.
"Not so fast, little one," said his mother, with an apologetic glance at
the stranger. "Take these plates to the pantry, it will be better."
"Ah, but they will have a good dinner to-day," said the child. "I will
give most to the French willows, my mother. In the morning it will all
be gone."
"But, my treasure, it is the dogs that get it, not the trees."
"No, my mother," he drawled, "you do not know. In the night the long
branches stretch out their arms; they sweep it up," and he clasped his
tiny hands in ecstasy.
Vesper's curiosity was aroused, although he had not understood half that
the child had said. "Does he like trees?" he asked.
Rose à Charlitte made a puzzled gesture. "Sir, to him the trees, the
flowers, the grass, are quite alive. He will not play croquet with those
dear little girls lest his shoes hurt the grass. If I would allow, he
would take all the food from the house and lay under the trees and the
flowers. He often cries at night, for he says the hollyhocks and
sunflowers are hungry, because they are tall and lean. He suffers
terribly to see the big spruces and pines cut down and dragged to the
shore. The doctor says he should go away for awhile, but it is a puzzle,
for I cannot endure to have him leave me."
Vesper gave more attention than he yet had done to the perusal of the
child's sensitive yet strangely composed face. Then he glanced at the
mother. Did she understand him?
She did. In her deep blue eyes he could readily perceive the quick flash
of maternal love and sympathy whenever her boy spoke to her. She was
young, too, extremely young, to have the care of rearing a child. She
must have been married in her cradle, and with that thought in mind he
said, "Do Acadien women marry at an early age?"
"Not more so than the English," said Mrs. Rose, with a shrug of her
graceful, sloping shoulders, "though I was but young,--but seventeen.
But my husband wished it so. He had built this house. He had been long
ready for marriage," and she glanced at the wall behind Vesper.
The young man turned around. Just behind him hung the enlarged
photograph of a man of middle age,--a man who must have been many years
older than his young wife, and whose death had, evidently, not left a
permanent blank in her affections.
In a naïve, innocent way she imparted a few more particulars to Vesper
with regard to her late husband, and, as he rose from the table, she
followed him to the parlor and said, gently, "Perhaps monsieur will
register."
Vesper sat down before the visitors' book on the table, and, taking up a
pen, wrote, "Vesper L. Nimmo, _The Evening News_, Boston."
After he had pressed the blotting-paper on his words, and pushed the
book from him, his landlady stretched out her hand in childlike
curiosity. "Vesper," she said,--"that name is beautiful; it is in a
hymn to the blessed virgin; but _Evening News_,--surely it means not a
journal?"
Vesper assured her that it did.
The young French widow's face fell. She gazed at him with a sudden and
inexplicable change of expression, in which there was something of
regret, something of reproach. "_Il faut que je m'en aille_" (I must go
away), she murmured, reverting to her native language, and she swiftly
withdrew.
Vesper lifted his level eyebrows and languidly strolled out to the
veranda. "The Acadienne evidently entertains some prejudice against
newspaper men. If my dear father were here he would immediately proceed,
in his inimitable way, to clear it from her mind. As for me, I am not
sufficiently interested," and he listlessly stretched himself out on a
veranda settle.
"Monsieur," said a little voice, in deliberate French, "will you tell me
a story about a tree?"
Vesper understood Narcisse this time, and, taking him on his knee, he
pointed to the wooded hills across the Bay and related a wonderful tale
of a city beyond the sun where the trees were not obliged to stand still
in the earth from morning till night, but could walk about and visit men
and women, who were their brothers and sisters, and sometimes the young
trees would stoop down and play with the children.