AN INTERRUPTED MASS.
"Here is our dearest theme where skies are blue and brightest,
To sing a single song in places that love it best;
Freighting the happy breeze when snowy clouds are lightest;
Making a song to cease not when the singer is dumb in rest."
J. F. H.
Away up the Bay, past Sleeping Water and Church Point, past historic
Piau's Isle and Belliveau's Cove and the lovely Sissiboo River, past
Weymouth and the Barrens, and other villages stretched out along this
highroad, between Yarmouth and Digby, is Bleury,--beautiful Bleury,
which is the final outpost in the long-extended line of Acadien
villages. Beyond this, the Bay--what there is of it, for it soon ends
this side of Digby--is English.
But beautiful Bleury, which rejoices in a high bluff, a richly wooded
shore, swelling hills, and an altogether firmer, bolder outlook than
flat Sleeping Water, is not wholly French. Some of its inhabitants are
English. Here the English tide meets the French tide, and, swelling up
the Bay and back in the woods, they overrun the land, and form curious
contrasts and results, unknown and unfelt in the purely Acadien
districts nearer the sea.
In Bleury there is one schoolhouse common to both races, and on a
certain afternoon, three weeks after little Narcisse's adventurous
voyage in search of the Englishman, the children were tumultuously
pouring out from it. Instinctively they formed themselves into four
distinct groups. The groups at last resolved themselves into four
processions, two going up the road, two down. The French children took
one side of the road, the English the other, and each procession kept
severely to its own place.
Heading the rows of English children who went up the Bay was a
red-haired girl of some twelve summers, whose fiery head gleamed like a
torch, held at the head of the procession. As far as the coloring of her
skin was concerned, and the exquisite shading of her velvety brown eyes,
and the shape of her slightly upturned nose, she might have been
English. But her eager gestures, her vivacity, her swiftness and
lightness of manner, marked her as a stranger and an alien among the
English children by whom she was surrounded.
This was Bidiane LeNoir, Agapit's little renegade, and just now she was
highly indignant over a matter of offended pride. A French girl had
taken a place above her in a class, and also, secure in the fortress of
the schoolroom, had made a detestable face at her.
"I hate them,--those Frenchies," she cried, casting a glance of defiance
at the Acadien children meekly filing along beyond her. "I sha'n't walk
beside 'em. Go on, you ----," and she added an offensive epithet.
The dark-faced, shy Acadiens trotted soberly on, swinging their books
and lunch-baskets in their hands. They would not go out of their way to
seek a quarrel.
"Run," said Bidiane, imperiously.
The little Acadiens would not run, they preferred to walk, and Bidiane
furiously called to her adherents, "Let's sing mass."
This was the deepest insult that could be offered to the children across
the road. Sometimes in their childish quarrels aprons and jackets were
torn, and faces were slapped, but no bodily injury ever equalled in
indignity that put upon the Catholic children when their religion was
ridiculed.
However, they did not retaliate, but their faces became gloomy, and they
immediately quickened their steps.
"Holler louder," Bidiane exhorted her followers, and she broke into a
howling "_Pax vobiscum_," while a boy at her elbow groaned, "_Et cum
spiritu tuo_," and the remainder of the children screamed in an
irreverent chorus, that ran all up and down the scale, "_Gloria tibi
Domine_."
The Acadien children fled now, some of them with fingers in their ears,
others casting bewildered looks of horror, as if expecting to see the
earth open and swallow up their sacrilegious tormentors, who stood
shrieking with delight at the success of their efforts to rid themselves
of their undesired companions.
"Shut up," said Bidiane, suddenly, and at once the laughter was stilled.
There was a stranger in their midst. He had come gliding among them on
one of the bright shining wheels that went up and down the Bay in such
large numbers. Before Bidiane had spoken he had dismounted, and his
quick eye was surveying them with a glance like lightning.
The children stared silently at him. Ridicule cuts sharply into the
heart of a child, and a sound whipping inflicted on every girl and boy
present would not have impressed on them the burden of their iniquity as
did the fine sarcasm and disdainful amusement with which this handsome
stranger regarded them.
One by one they dropped away, and Bidiane only remained rooted to the
spot by some magic incomprehensible to her.
"Your name is Bidiane LeNoir," he said, quietly.
"It ain't," she said, doggedly; "it's Biddy Ann Black."
"Really,--and there are no LeNoirs about here, nor Corbineaus?"
"Down the Bay are LeNoirs and Corbineaus," said the little girl,
defiantly; then she burst out with a question, "You ain't the Englishman
from Boston?"
"I am."
"Gosh!" she said, in profound astonishment; then she lowered her eyes,
and traced a serpent in the dust with her great toe. All up and down the
Bay had flashed the news of this wonderful stranger who had come to
Sleeping Water in quest of an heir or heiress to some vast fortune. The
heir had been found in the person of herself,--small, red-haired Biddy
Ann Black, and it had been firmly believed among her fellow playmates
that at any moment the prince might appear in a golden chariot and whisk
her away with him to realms of bliss, where she would live in a gorgeous
palace and eat cakes and sweetmeats all day long, sailing at intervals
in a boat of her own over a bay of transcendent loveliness, in which she
would catch codfish as big as whales. This story had been believed until
very recently, when it had somewhat died away by reason of the
non-appearance of the prince.
Now he had arrived, and Bidiane's untrained mind and her little wild
beast heart were in a tumult. She felt that he did not approve of her,
and she loved and hated him in a breath. He was smooth, and dignified,
and sleek, like a priest. He was dark, too, like the French people, and
she scowled fiercely. He would see that her cotton gown was soiled; why
had she not worn a clean one to-day, and also put on her shoes? Would he
really want her to go away with him? She would not do so; and a lump
arose in her throat, and with a passionate emotion that she did not
understand she gazed across the Bay towards the purple hills of Digby
Neck.
Vesper, perfectly aware of what was passing in her mind, waited for her
to recover herself. "I would like to see your uncle and aunt," he said,
at last. "Will you take me to them?"
She responded by a gesture in the affirmative, and, still with eyes bent
obstinately on the ground, led the way towards a low brown house
situated in a hollow between two hills, and surrounded by a grove of
tall French poplars, whose ancestors had been nourished by the sweet
waters of the Seine.
Vesper's time was limited, and he was anxious to gain the confidence of
the little maid, if possible, but she would not talk to him.
"Do you like cocoanuts?" he said, presently, on seeing in the distance a
negro approaching, with a load of this foreign fruit, that he had
probably obtained from some schooner.
"You bet," said Bidiane, briefly.
Vesper stopped the negro, and bought as many nuts at five cents apiece
as he and Bidiane could carry. Then, trying to make her smile by
balancing one on the saddle of his wheel, he walked slowly beside her.
Bidiane solemnly watched him. She would not talk, she would not smile,
but she cheerfully dropped her load when one of his cocoanuts rolled in
the ditch, and, at the expense of a scratched face from an inquisitive
rose-bush that bent over to see what she was doing, she restored it to
him.
"Your cheek is bleeding," said Vesper.
"No odds," she remarked, with Indian-like fortitude, and she preceded
him into a grassy dooryard, that was pervaded by a powerful smell of
frying doughnuts.
Mirabelle Marie, her fat, good-natured young aunt, stood in the kitchen
doorway with a fork in her hand, and seeing that the stranger was
English, she beamed a joyous, hearty welcome on him.
"Good day, sir; you'll stop to supper? That's right. Shove your wheel
ag'in that fence, and come right in. Biddy, git the creamer from the
well and give the genl'man a glass of milk. You won't?--All right, sir,
walk into the settin'-room. What! you'd rather set under the trees? All
right. My man's up in the barn, fussin' with a sick cow that's lost her
cud. He's puttin' a rind of bacon on her horns. What d'ye say,
Biddy?"--this latter in an undertone to the little girl, who was pulling
at her dress. "This is the Englishman from Boston--_sakerjé_!" and,
dropping her fork, she wiped her hands on her dress and darted out to
offer Vesper still more effusive expressions of hospitality.
He smiled amiably on her, and presently she returned to the kitchen,
silly and distracted in appearance, and telling Bidiane that she felt
like a hen with her head cut off. The stranger who was to do so much for
them had come. She could have prostrated herself in the dust before him.
"Scoot, Biddy, scoot," she exclaimed; "borry meat of some kind. Go to
the Maxwells or to the Whites. Tell 'em he's come, and we've got nothin'
but fish and salt pork, and they know the English hate that like pizen.
And git a junk of butter with only a mite of salt in it. Mine's salted
heavy for the market. And skip to the store and ask 'em to score us for
a pound of cheese and some fancy crackers."
Bidiane ran away, and, as she ran, her ill humor left her, and she felt
herself to be a very important personage. Vivaciously and swiftly she
exclaimed, "He's come!" to several children whom she met, and with a
keen and exquisite sense of pleasure looked back to see them standing
open-mouthed in the road, impressed in a most gratifying way by the news
communicated.
In the meantime Mirabelle Marie began to make frantic and ludicrous
preparations to set a superfine meal before the stranger, who was now
entitled to a double share of honor. In her extreme haste everything
went wrong. She upset her pot of lard; the cat and dog got at her plate
of doughnuts, and stole half of them; the hot biscuits that she hastily
mixed burnt to a cinder, and the jar of preserved berries that she
opened proved to have been employing their leisure time in the cellar by
fermenting most viciously.
However, she did not lose her temper, and, as she was not a woman to be
cast down by trifles, she seated herself in a rocking-chair, fanned
herself vigorously with her apron, and laughed spasmodically.
Bidiane found her there on her return. The little girl possessed a
keener sense of propriety than her careless relative; she was also more
moody and variable, and immediately falling into a rage, she conveyed
some plain truths to Mirabelle Marie, in inelegant language.
The woman continued to laugh, and to stare through the window at Vesper,
who sat motionless under the trees. One arm was thrown over the back of
his seat, and his handsome head was turned away from the house.
"Poor calf," said Mirabelle Marie, "he looks down the Bay; he is a very
divil for good looks. Rose à Charlitte is one big fool."
"We shall have only slops for supper," said Bidiane, in a fury, and
swearing under her breath at her.
Mirabelle Marie at this bestirred herself, and tried to evolve a meal
from the ruin of her hopes, and the fresh supply of food that her niece
had obtained.
The little girl meantime found a clean cloth, and spread it on the
table. She carefully arranged on it their heavy white dishes and
substantial knives and spoons. Then she blew a horn, which made Claude à
Sucre, her strapping great uncle, suddenly loom against the horizon, in
the direction of the barn.
He came to the house, and was about to ask a question, but closed his
mouth when he saw the stranger in the yard.
"Go change," said Bidiane, pouncing upon him.
Claude knew what she meant, and glanced resignedly from his homespun
suit to her resolved face. There was no appeal, so he went to his
bedroom to don his Sunday garments. He had not without merit gained his
nickname of Sugar Claude; for he was, if possible, more easy-going than
his wife.
Bidiane next attacked her aunt, whose face was the color of fire, from
bending over the stove. "Go put on clean duds; these are dirty."
"Go yourself, you little cat," said Mirabelle Marie, shaking her
mountain of flesh with a good-natured laugh.
"I'm going--I ain't as dirty as you, anyway--and take off those sneaks."
Mirabelle Marie stuck out one of the flat feet encased in rubber-soled
shoes. "My land! if I do, I'll go barefoot."
Bidiane subsided and went to the door to look for her two boy cousins.
Where were they? She shaded her eyes with her two brown hands, and her
gaze swept the land and the water. Where were those boys? Were they back
in the pasture, or down by the river, or playing in the barn, or out in
the boat? A small schooner beating up the Bay caught her eye. That was
Johnny Maxwell's schooner. She knew it by the three-cornered patch on
the mainsail. And in Captain Johnny's pockets, when he came from Boston,
were always candy, nuts, and raisins,--and the young Maxwells were of a
generous disposition, and the whole neighborhood knew it. Her cousins
would be on the wharf below the house, awaiting his arrival. Well, they
should come to supper first; and, like a bird of prey, she swooped down
the road upon her victims, and, catching them firmly by the shoulders,
marched them up to the house.