VESPER SUGGESTS AN EXPLANATION.
"Glad of a quarrel straight I clap the door;
Sir, let me see you and your works no more."
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.