THE CAVE OF THE BEARS.
"I had found out a sweet green spot,
Where a lily was blooming fair;
The din of the city disturbed it not;
But the spirit that shades the quiet cot
With its wings of love was there.
"I found that lily's bloom
When the day was dark and chill;
It smiled like a star in a misty gloom,
And it sent abroad a sweet perfume,
Which is floating around me still."
PERCIVAL.
More than twenty miles beyond Sleeping Water is a curious church built
of cobblestones.
Many years ago, the devoted priest of this parish resolved that his
flock must have a new church, and yet how were they to obtain one
without money? He pondered over the problem for some time, and at last
he arrived at a satisfactory solution. Would his parishioners give time
and labor, if he supplied the material for construction?
They would,--and he pointed to the stones on the beach. The Bay already
supplied them with meat and drink, they were now to obtain a place of
worship from it. They worked with a will, and in a short time their
church went up like the temple of old, without the aid of alien labor.
Vesper, on the day after the picnic, had announced his intention of
visiting this church, and Agapit, in unconcealed disapproval and slight
vexation, stood watching him clean his wheel, preparatory to setting out
on the road down the Bay.
He would be sure to overtake Rose, who had shortly before left the inn
with Narcisse. She had had a terrible scene with the child relative to
the approaching departure of the American, and Agapit himself had
advised her to take him to her stepmother. He wished now that he had not
done so, he wished that he could prevent Vesper from going after
her,--he almost wished that this quiet, imperturbable young man had
never come to the Bay.
"And yet, why should I do that?" he reflected, penitently. "Does not
good come when one works from honest motives, though bad only is at
first apparent? Though we suffer now, we may yet be happy," and, casting
a long, reluctant look at the taciturn young American, he rose from his
comfortable seat and went up-stairs. He was tired, out of sorts, and
irresistibly sleepy, having been up all night examining the old
documents left by his uncle, the priest, in the hope of finding
something relating to the Fiery Frenchman, for he was now as anxious to
conclude Vesper's mission to the Bay as he had formerly been to prolong
it.
With a quiet step he crept past the darkened room where Mrs. Nimmo,
after worrying her son by her insistence on doing her own packing, had
been obliged to retire, in a high state of irritation, and with a raging
headache.
He hoped that the poor lady would be able to travel by the morrow; her
son would be, there was no doubt of that. How well and strong he seemed
now, how immeasurably he had gained in physical well-being since coming
to the Bay.
"For that we should be thankful," said Agapit, in sincere admiration and
regard, as he stood by his window and watched Vesper spinning down the
road.
"He goes so cool, so careless, like those soldiers who went to battle
with a rose between their lips, and I do not dare to warn, to question,
lest I bring on what I would keep back. But do thou, my cousin Rose, not
linger on the way. It would be better for thee to bite a piece from thy
little tongue than to have words with this handsome stranger whom I fear
thou lovest. Now to work again, and then, if there is time, half an
hour's sleep before supper, for my eyelids flag strangely."
Agapit sat down before the table bestrewn with papers, while Vesper went
swiftly over the road until he reached the picnic ground of the day
before, now restored to its former quietness as a grazing place for
cows. Of all the cheerful show there was left only the big
merry-go-round, that was being packed in an enormous wagon drawn by four
pairs of oxen.
"What are you going to do with it?" asked Vesper, springing off his
wheel, and addressing the Acadiens at work.
"We take it to a parish farther down the Bay, where there is to be yet
another picnic," said one of them.
"How much did they make yesterday?" pursued Vesper.
"Six hundred dollars, and only four hundred the day before, and three
the first, for you remember those days were partly rainy."
"And some people say that you Acadiens are poor."
The man grinned. "There were many people here, many things. This wooden
darling," and he pointed to the dismembered merry-go-round, "earned one
dollar and twenty cents every five minutes. We need much for our
churches," and he jerked his thumb towards the red cathedral. "The
plaster falls, it must be restored. Do you go far, sir?"
Vesper mentioned his destination.
All the Acadiens on the Bay knew him and took a friendly interest in
his movements, and the man advised him to take in the Cave of the Bears,
that was also a show-place for strangers. "It is three miles farther,
where there is a bite in the shore, and the bluff is high. You will know
it by two yellow houses, like twins. Descend there, and you will see a
troop of ugly bears quite still about a cave. The Indians of this coast
say that their great man, Glooscap, in days before the French came, once
sat in the cave to rest. Some hungry bears came to eat him, but he
stretched out a pine-tree that he carried and they were turned to
stone."
Vesper thanked him, and went on. When he reached the sudden and
picturesque cove in the Bay, his attention was caught, not so much by
its beauty, as by the presence of the inn pony, who neighed a joyful
welcome, and impatiently jerked back and forth the road-cart to which he
was attached.
Vesper glanced sharply at the yellow houses. Perhaps Rose was making a
call in one of them. Then he stroked the pony, who playfully nipped his
coat sleeve, and, after propping his wheel against a stump, ran nimbly
down a grassy road, where a goat was soberly feeding among lobster-traps
and drawn-up boats.
He crossed the strip of sand in the semicircular inlet, and there before
him were the bears,--ugly brown rocks with coats of slippery seaweed,
their grinning heads turned towards the mouth of a black cavern in the
lower part of the bluff, their staring eye-sockets fixed on the dainty
woman's figure inside, as if they would fain devour her.
Rose sat with her face to the sea, her head against the damp rock
wall,--her whole attitude one of abandonment and mournful despair.
Vesper began to hurry towards her, but, catching sight of Narcisse, he
stopped.
The child, with a face convulsed and tear-stained, was angrily seizing
stones from the beach to fling them against the most lifelike bear of
all,--a grotesque, hideous creature, that appeared to be shouldering his
way from the water in order to plunge into the cave.
"Dost thou mock me?" exclaimed Narcisse, furiously. "I will strike thee
yet again, thou hateful thing. Thou shalt not come on shore to eat my
mother and the Englishman," and he dashed a yet larger stone against it.
"Narcisse," said Vesper.
The child turned quickly. Then his trouble was forgotten, and stumbling
and slipping over the seaweed, but at last attaining his goal, he flung
his small unhappy self against Vesper's breast. "I love you, I love
you,--_gros comme la grange à Pinot_" (as much as Pinot's barn),--"yet
my mother carried me away. Take me with you, Mr. Englishman. Narcisse is
very sick without you."
In maternal alarm Rose sprang up at her child's first shriek. Then she
sank back, pale and confused, for Vesper's eye was upon her, although
apparently he was engaged only in fondling the little curly head, and in
allowing the child to stroke his face and dive into his pockets, to pull
out his watch, and indulge in the fond and foolish familiarities
permitted to a child by a loving father.
"Go to her, Narcisse," said Vesper, presently, and the small boy ran
into the cave. "My mother, my mother!" he cried, in an ecstasy; and he
wagged his curly head as if he would shake it from his body. "The
Englishman returns to you and to me,--he will stay away only a short
time. Come, get up, get up. Let us go back to the inn. I am to go no
more to my grandmother. Is it not so?" and he anxiously gazed at Vesper,
who was slowly approaching.
Vesper did not speak, neither did Rose. What was the matter with these
grown people that they stared so stupidly at each other?
"Have you a headache, Mr. Englishman?" he asked, with abrupt childish
anxiety, as he noticed a sudden and unusual wave of color sweeping over
his friend's face. "And you, my mother,--why do you hang your head? Give
only the Englishman your hand and he will lift you from the rock. He is
strong, very strong,--he carries me over the rough places."
"Will you give me your hand, Rose?"
She started back, with a heart-broken gesture.
"But you are imbecile, my darling mother!" cried Narcisse, throwing
himself on her in terror. "The Englishman will become angry,--he will
leave us. Give him your hand, and let us go from this place," and,
resolutely seizing her fluttering fingers in his own soft ones, he
directed them to Vesper's strong, true clasp.
"Go stone the bears again, Narcisse," said the young man, with a strange
quiver in his voice. "I will talk to your mother about going back to the
inn. See, she is not well;" for Rose had bowed her weary head on her
arm.
"Yes, talk to her," said the child, "that is good, and, above all, do
not let her hand go. She runs from me sometimes, the little naughty
mother," and, with affected roguishness that, however, concealed a
certain anxiety, he put his head on one side, and stared affectionately
at her as he left the cave.
He had gone some distance, and Vesper had already whispered a few words
in Rose's ear, when he returned and stared again at them. "Will you tell
me only one little story, Mr. Englishman?"
"About what, you small bother?"
"About bears, big brown bears, not gentle trees."
"There was once a sick bear," said the young man, "and he went all about
the world, but could not get well until he found a quiet spot, where a
gentle lady cured him."
"And then--"
"The lady had a cub," said Vesper, suddenly catching him in his arms and
taking him out to the strip of sand, "a fascinating cub that the bear--I
mean the man--adored."
Narcisse laughed gleefully, snatched Vesper's cap and set off with it,
fell into a pool of water and was rescued, and set to the task of taking
off his shoes and stockings and drying them in the sun, while Vesper
went back to Rose, who still sat like a person in acute distress of body
and mind.
"I was sudden,--I startled you," he murmured.
She made a dissenting gesture, but did not speak.
"Will you look at me, Rose?" he said, softly; "just once."
"But I am afraid," fluttered from her pale lips. "When I gaze into your
eyes it is hard--"
He stood over her in such quiet, breathless sympathy that presently she
looked up, thinking he was gone.
His glance caught and held hers. She got up, allowed him to take her
hands and press them to his lips, and to place on her head the hat that
had fallen to the ground.
"I will say nothing more now," he murmured, "you are shocked and upset.
We had better go home."
"Come and be presented to Mrs. Nimmo," suddenly said a saucy, laughing
voice.
Rose started nervously. Her sister Perside had caught sight of
them,--teasing, yet considerate Perside, since she had bestowed only one
glance on the lovers, and had then gone sauntering past the mouth of the
cave, out to the wide array of black rocks beyond them. She carried a
hooked stick over her shoulder, and a tin pail in her hand, and
sometimes she looked back at a second girl, similarly equipped, who was
running down the grassy road after her.
Nothing could have made Rose more quickly recover herself. "It is not
the time of perigee,--you will find nothing," she called after Perside;
then she added to Vesper, in a low, shy voice, "She seeks lobsters. She
danced so much at the picnic that she was too tired to go home, and had
to stay here with cousins."
"Times and seasons do not matter for some things," returned Perside,
gaily, over her shoulder; "one has the fun."
Narcisse stopped digging his bare toes in the sand and shrieked,
delightedly, "Aunt Perside, aunt Perside, do you know the Englishman
returns to my mother and me? He will never leave us, and I am not to go
to my grandmother." Then, fearful that his assertions had been too
strong, he averted his gaze from the two approaching people, and fixed
it on the blazing sun.
"Will you promise not to make a scene when I leave to-morrow?" said
Vesper.
Narcisse blinked at him, his eyes full of spots and wheels and revolving
lights. He was silly with joy, and gurgled deep down in his little
throat. "Let me kiss your hand, as you kissed my mother's. It is a
pretty sight."
"Will you be a good boy when I leave to-morrow," said Vesper again.
"But why should I cry if you return?" cried the child, excitedly
flinging a handful of sand at his boots. "Narcisse will never again be
bad," and rolling over and over, and kicking his pink heels in glee, he
forced Vesper and Rose to retire to a respectful distance.
They stood watching him for some time, and, as they watched, Rose's
tortured face grew calm, and a spark of the divine passion animating her
lover's face came into her deep blue eyes. She had no right to break the
tender, sensitive little heart given so strangely to this stranger. She
would forget Agapit and his warnings; she would forget the proud women
of her race, who would not wed a stranger, and one of another creed; she
would also forget the nervous, jealous mother who would keep her son
from all women.
"You have asked me for myself," she said, impulsively stretching out her
hands to him, "for myself and my child. We are yours."
Vesper bent down, and pressed her cool fingers against his burning
cheeks. She smiled at him, even laughed gleefully, and passed her hands
over his head in a playful caress; then, with her former expression of
exaltation and virginal modesty and shyness, she ran up the grassy road,
and paused at the top to look back at him, as he toiled up with
Narcisse.
She was vivacious and merry now,--he had never seen her just so before.
In an instant,--a breath,--with her surrender to him, she had seemed to
drop her load of care, that usually made her youthful face so grave and
sweet beyond her years. He would like to see her cheerful and
laughing--thoughtless even; and murmuring endearing epithets under his
breath, he assisted her into the cart, placed the reins in her hands,
tucked Narcisse in by her side, and, surreptitiously lifting a fold of
her dress to his face, murmured, "_Au revoir_, my sweet saint."
Then, stroking his mustache to conceal from the yellow houses his proud
smile of ownership, he watched the upright pose of the light head, and
the contorted appearance of the dark one that was twisted over a little
shoulder as long as the cart was in sight.
He forgot all about the church, and, going back to the beach, he lay for
a long time sunning himself on the sand, and plunged in a delicious
reverie. Then, mounting his wheel, he returned to the inn.
Agapit was running excitedly to and fro on the veranda. "Come, make
haste," he cried, as he caught sight of him in the distance. "Extremely
strange things have happened--Let me assist you with that wheel,--a
malediction on it, these bicycles go always where one does not expect.
There is news of the Fiery Frenchman. I found something, also Father La
Croix."
"This is interesting," said Vesper, good-naturedly, as he folded his
arms, and lounged against one of the veranda posts.
"I was delving among my uncle's papers. I had precipitately come on the
name of LeNoir,--Etex, the son of Raphael, who was a wealthy _bourgeois_
of Calais, and emigrated to Grand Pré. He was dead when the expulsion
came, and of his two sons one, Gabriel LeNoir, escaped up the St. John
River, and that Gabriel was my ancestor, and that of Rose; therefore,
most astonishingly to me, we are related to this family whom you have
sought," and Agapit wound up with a flourish of his hands and his heels.
"I am glad of this," said Vesper, in a deeply gratified voice.
"But more remains. I was shouting over my discovery, when Father La
Croix came. I ran, I descended,--the good man presented his compliments
to madame and you. Several of his people went to him this morning. They
had questioned the old ones. He wrote what they said, and here it is.
See--the son of the murdered Etex was Samson. His mother landed in
Philadelphia. In griping poverty the boy grew up. He went to Boston. He
joined the Acadiens who marched the five hundred miles through the woods
to Acadie. He arrived at the Baie Chaleur, where he married a Comeau. He
had many children, but his eldest, Jean, is he in whom you will interest
yourself, as in the direct line."
"And what of Jean?" asked Vesper, when Agapit stopped to catch his
breath.
Agapit pointed to the Bay. "He lies over Digby Neck, in the Bay of
Fundy, but his only child is on this Bay."
"A boy or a girl?"
"A devil," cried Agapit, in a burst of grief, "a little devil."