Chapter VI

PIERRE AND POINT A L'EGLISE

"Ah, why should she wish to see you, the American young lady? You have much conceit, Pierre."

The words were French, the voice was Madame Bourque's, and Amy, quickly translating what she overheard, perceived that Madame Bourque was throwing obstacles in the way of the little boy's seeing her.

"Madame Bourque," she cried, stepping out into the hall, "I asked him to come to see me. It is as he says."

"Oh, then excuse me, Mademoiselle. I did not understand. I did not know that you had seen Pierre."

"Ah, yes, he helped me find my way last evening. He may come in, may he not?"

"Ah, surely, since you wish it. Pierre talks much, and I have known those whom he tired. But enter, Pierre, since you have been invited."

Then Pierre followed Amy into the little sitting-room, where Priscilla and Martine were already seated near an open fire; for the gray and damp early morning had introduced a foggy day, and at present sightseeing was out of the question. Priscilla had been writing letters, Amy had been reading a history of the Acadians, and Martine, before Pierre's arrival, had been looking through "Evangeline."

"Pierre," Amy asked, not knowing just what to say to the old-fashioned boy, "do you care for 'Evangeline'?"

"Surely, yes," he replied, his face lighting up. "Your Longfellow has sympathy for the Acadians. A lady who stayed here last summer lent me his poems, but best I understand the 'Evangeline.'

"'Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers. Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside, Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses!'"

Pierre recited with much expression.

"Ah," he continued, "I can say much of that beautiful poem, and indeed it makes me weep to think how they were treated, those poor Acadians, my ancestors. The English were most cruel."

"Amy," half-whispered Martine, "my history is a little rusty, so please tell me if the Acadians were driven out from Little Brook."

"No, my dear, Little Brook was founded by some who made their way back from exile. Pierre," she added in a louder tone, "you are so interested in your people, can you tell us about those who founded Little Brook?"

"Yes, Pierre can tell you all the story," interposed Madame Bourque, who had entered the room to put wood on the fire. "He knows it all from his grandmother, and he remembers."

Pierre, thus commended, flushed even more deeply than he had when Amy made her request; but he remained silent until she spoke again.

"Perhaps it is not everything that you would wish to hear," he said, "that I shall tell; but my grandmother told me that it was all forest in Clare when the Acadians were driven from their homes by the cruel English. There were no farms here then, and so Petit Ruisseau has no sad memories of poor people driven from their homes. But you know that Acadians from Annapolis and Grand Pre and other places farther north were carried off to the English settlements that are now the States, and were treated like beggars; for they had no money, and spoke but a strange tongue. Fathers were separated from children, and brothers and sisters were not often in the same ship. But all were strong in their hearts, and determined to come back to their beautiful Acadia. Some began to come back before the Peace, and walked all the way--hundreds and hundreds of miles--from Boston and New York, until they reached the coast of the Bay. When the war was over, and there was a great Peace, many, many more came, and walked all the way around from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia to find their homes again."

"But I thought that all their houses were burned and that they had no homes to return to."

"That is true; but some knew not this, and even those who had seen the fires from the ships did not believe that everything of theirs was destroyed. So they were very sad when they could find no signs of their old homes, and saw that everything belonged to the English settlers. It was a great crime, sending them away, oh, so many; I am proud my great-great-grandparents were exiles and my great-grandmother was born in Salem; so perhaps I am half Yankee; that's why I speak some English."

At that moment Madame Bourque took part in the conversation. "Ah, it is terrible to think of their sufferings, people of such worth,--it is the crime of history. Just think of Belliveau; you tell about him, Pierre."

"Oh, he was very brave, and the first exile to land in Clare. He and his wife came across the bay in a little boat, bringing their baby too, and they landed safely on the shore that you can see from the window. They had a terrible passage--and to think to-day that some people fear to cross the bay to St. John, even in a steamboat! At first they did have nothing, but they cut wood, and soon other Acadians joined them who had walked all the way around on land."

"Pierre," interposed Amy, "you describe things very well; what do you intend to be when you grow up?"

A shadow crossed Pierre's face. "I should like to be a sailor, and then a great captain, but I am not strong enough, and I shall never grow big; so I think I may be a teacher, and that is why I take trouble to speak and write English."

"You should be here," interrupted Madame Bourque, whose mind still dwelt on the Acadians, "on the fifteenth of August; that is the day of the return from exile that all the people in Clare celebrate."

"We shall hardly be in this part of the country then, Madame Bourque," responded Amy, "but we shall try to know all we can about the early Acadians before we leave Little Brook. But, Pierre," added Amy, "you haven't told us all that you know, have you? Haven't you some stories that your mother or grandmother has told you?"

"One about the cane I like much."

"Then tell it to us."

"Well, there was one of our family, a great-grand-uncle, I think, who lived down near Cape Sable before the exile; one time he was very kind to a shipwrecked captain and took him into his house and gave him clothes and food; then when my relative was driven from home they took him to Boston, and he had to wander about, begging his bread, for he could not speak English. And then he and his three sons with him were put in jail; then the captain whom he had been kind to heard that these Frenchmen were in jail, and, remembering the kindness he had had, went to visit the prisoners. How surprised he was to find his old acquaintance who had helped him after the shipwreck! My relative was glad to see him too. Then the captain went to the governor and told him about the kind Frenchman who was in jail, and the governor said to bring him before him and perhaps he would pardon him. As my relative had no clothes fit to wear before the governor, the captain bought him a beautiful suit and a cane with a large head. Then the governor, when he saw my grandfather, pardoned him and his three sons, and they stayed in Boston several years, until the Peace, when they all came back to Nova Scotia. I know this story is true, because I have seen the cane, which one of my cousins owns in Pubnico."

"Do you think that is true?" whispered Priscilla to Martine.

"Oh, true enough; it certainly is not very exciting. It has been handed down so long that the point is evidently lost."

Pierre, once started, continued to tell many stories of the hardships borne by the early Acadians, beside which the tale of Evangeline seemed almost cheerful.

"Now, Priscilla," said Martine, when Pierre paused, "you must admit that the English don't show themselves in a very good light compared with the Acadians. Did you ever hear of such cruelty?"

"There must have been some cause for it," rejoined Priscilla, stoutly; "we have heard only one side thus far. Perhaps the Acadians themselves were a little in the wrong."

"They certainly were not perfect," interposed Amy, taking part in the discussion, "as you will admit when you have read their history more carefully. We have not time to go into things more fully now, and I have thought that Grand Pre would be the best place for our study of the causes leading to the exile. It's putting the cart before the horse to talk too much of the effects before we know the causes."

Had Pierre exactly understood Amy he might have entered into a discussion with her, but for the moment he had run to the front door to admit Madame Bourque's little daughters, whom he had seen entering the yard. When he was again in the room Madame Bourque once more joined the group.

"How does it happen, Madame Bourque," asked Martine, mischievously, "that your hotel is the Hotel Paris? You should have named it 'Acadia' or 'Evangeline,' or something like that."

"Ah," responded Madame Bourque, "it is that my husband is a Frenchman, from Paris, and I like my children not to forget that. Some day, when they grow up, they shall go to Paris."

"Have Acadians any real love for France?" asked Amy. "It is certainly a long, long time since their ancestors left it."

"Yes, indeed," replied Madame Bourque, "just as the Englishman always loves England, or the Irishman Ireland; they are still strangers in a strange land, though they must call the English Queen their queen," she concluded sentimentally. "Some Acadians go back to France to study, and some French boys come out to the college at Church Point, and one of them--ah, it is so romantic!--married an Acadienne a few years ago."

"Oh, tell us about it," exclaimed Martine; "I love anything romantic."

"Well, then," said Madame Bourque, "there was such a pretty girl at Church Point in the convent, and this youth was sent by his parents to study at the College of St. Anne. He fell in love with the pretty girl and would marry her, and oh, his father and mother they felt so bad, for they thought Acadians were something like Indians; and so they hurried out to Nova Scotia, and when they saw the girl they fell in love with her too, and knew she was no savage, and say their son can marry her. But the girl would not leave her people, and as the son would not give up the girl, the parents decided to come to Acadia to live, for he was an only son and they were rich. So they have bought much land up beyond Weymouth, and they call it New France. They have a great mill where they cut timber, and a railroad of their own twenty miles long, by which they send it to the sea, and good houses and electric lights--all on account of a pretty Acadienne."

"That's just the kind of story I like," cried Martine. "I suppose history is just as true, but someway I have more interest in things that are happening to-day."

Madame Bourque now left the room to make arrangements for the early dinner. She had foretold that the fog would lift before noon, and accordingly Priscilla, looking out the window, was not surprised to catch a fleeting glimpse of the sun through an opening in the veil of mist.

"We'll take your word that the sun will shine," exclaimed Amy, "and I'll run upstairs and ask mamma if she will drive this afternoon. I imagine that the most there is to be seen is at Church Point, and the sooner we go there the better."

Madame Bourque, when asked, promised to have two carriages ready early in the afternoon, for Amy had not only invited Pierre to dinner, but intended to take him to drive with her.

"Mamma," said Amy, as she gave her mother an account of the morning, "you will find Madame Bourque very amusing. She evidently believes the Acadians to be the salt of the earth; but though I sympathize with their sufferings, I do not believe they were quite the superior beings that she paints them."

"It might be unkind," replied Mrs. Redmond, "to suggest that this is part of her stock in trade; the more remarkable she can represent the old Acadians to have been, the more interested will her guests be in the places associated with them. They were a good, honest people."

"But they were peasants, were they not, mamma? You would think to hear her talk that they were very near nobility."

"Oh, among the Acadians of to-day are doubtless many descendants of men of good family in France. Indeed, some of them can claim for ancestors Charles de la Tour and Baron D'Entremont; but the peasant blood is in the ascendant, and the strain of nobility must be very slight."

At the dinner-table Pierre won Mrs. Redmond's heart by the gentleness of his manner, and she told Martine that Amy's protege would be a close rival of hers.

"No, indeed," replied Martine; "no one can rival Yvonne. Just think of her voice and her little curls and her pink cheeks."

"I'll admit that Pierre lacks these characteristics, though all in all they would hardly enhance his value. From what Amy says, however, I should judge that Pierre, even if he has neither curls nor pink cheeks, has a voice that is very effective when he uses it in telling stories."

Fearing that Pierre might overhear these personalities, Mrs. Redmond changed the conversation. "Amy," she said in a somewhat louder voice, "where do you suppose Fritz is now?"

"Oh, if Pubnico is as fascinatingly French as he expected it to be, he is probably there still. I doubt if he will be better entertained than we have been."

"I almost wish he were with us," rejoined Mrs. Redmond, "for he is always a fund of entertainment in himself; I have thought of him many times this dull morning, and I hope that we shall find a letter from him awaiting us at Digby."

If Amy agreed with her mother, she did not so express herself at this moment; yet if the truth were known, it must be said that more than once since their parting at Yarmouth she had regretted that she had not at least given Fritz a chance to join their party.

When the carriages came to the door in the afternoon Amy recognized them as having formed part of the funeral procession; they were shabby, with hard seats, and the horses, as well as the vehicles, looked as if they had seen better days. It was arranged that Amy and Pierre should go in the small carriage, as Madame Bourque's husband assured them that the horse was perfectly safe for a lady to drive. "Ah, he could not run away!"

"I should think not," said Amy. "If he manages to carry us even the three miles to Church Point I shall be surprised; he seems so dispirited that I imagine the funeral has made more impression on him than on Madame Bourque herself."

Mrs. Redmond, Priscilla, and Martine were in the second carriage, and Madame Bourque was the driver.

Amy noticed in gardens and windows fewer hollyhocks, oleanders, and other bright flowers than she had seen at Meteghan. The houses, too, were painted in less bright colors, and the village street had a less stirring appearance.

Pierre was a good cicerone; he pointed out near the edge of the sea the spot where the first of the returning exiles had landed. He also showed Amy a little one-story house on a slight elevation, said to be the oldest in the town, and to date but little later than the landing.

"It is hard," he said in his precise way, "to imagine that it was all forest here in those first years, since now there is hardly a tree in sight except the fruit trees in the orchards. The first comers had large grants of land from the government; thus the English tried to make up for the wrong they had done."

"But the farms are very small now," ventured Amy. "The yards are so close together."

"Ah, yes, that is it; each father had many children and divided his land among his sons, and as every one wanted his house to be on the village street, they have kept it up, cutting it up into long narrow strips, some of them running back one or two miles; and away at the end of the strips there are still forests that are worth money."

Some time before they reached Church Point, the lighthouse and the college buildings were seen in imposing outline in the distance.

Their horse justified Amy's forebodings, and when they overtook Madame Bourque and her party the latter were standing near a monument before the large building that Pierre had said was the College of St. Anne. Amy, though undisturbed by Martine's gibes at the slowness of her steed, was glad enough to get out of the carriage. Both horses were left in charge of a boy whom Madame Bourque knew, while the sight-seers started to walk to the shrines of the Acadians--for by this term did Madame Bourque describe the burying-ground and site of the early houses.

"It is not a long walk," the voluble Frenchwoman had explained, "unless you go out to the lighthouse, for which we have not time to-day."

Priscilla lingered behind the others to copy the inscription on the monument. It was in honor of the Abbe Sigogne, to whom the Acadians of Clare owe more than to any other one person.

Priscilla, reading the inscription, wondered why she had never before heard of this man, who evidently had been so much to his own people. Acadia is not far from Massachusetts, and yet already she realized that this was a corner of the world of which she knew far too little. Amy, however, could tell her what she wished to know, and she hurried on to join the others, who were now far ahead.

"Amy," she cried, overtaking her friend, "tell me something about the Abbe Sigogne; I am ashamed to say that I never heard of him before."

Pierre glanced at the American girl with an expression of absolute amazement at her ignorance.

"There is so much to tell," said Amy, "that it would be too long a story for the time that we have now; yet as we walk along I can give you a little idea of his work. He was a French priest of good family, who barely escaped losing his head during the French Revolution. After fleeing from France he lived a few years in England. When he heard that the poor Acadians of Clare were without a clergyman, he decided to go to them, and from that time he made their lot his. This was in 1799, about thirty years after their return from exile, and though they had cleared the forest and built houses, they had made little progress in other ways; they were without schools and almost without religion, but the good Abbe built them a church, established schools, and made frequent visits to all the little settlements along St. Mary's Bay, often travelling along the coast in a small, open boat. He taught them many things besides religion. He made them firm in their allegiance to Great Britain, and when he died, in 1844, he was bitterly mourned by all who knew him, whether English or French."

When Amy and Priscilla and Pierre caught up with the others, they were in a large field, looking at a spot of ground on which Madame Bourque said had stood the very first house at Point a l'Eglise, built after the exile. Near by was a little old graveyard, where the first generation of returning exiles had been buried. Only a few graves were marked, and these with rough stones without inscriptions. A rude arch of whalebone formed the entrance to this little enclosure. It was not very far from the point of land on which stood the lighthouse, near which, along the edge of the sea, a file of black-coated priests was walking. Though they were indistinctly seen in the distance, their large caps and flapping surtouts gave them a picturesque appearance.

A strange structure like a shrine of open slats decorated with spruce boughs attracted Martine's attention, and she insisted on making a sketch of it.

"It is a repository," explained Pierre, politely, "where the priest stands, as a station for the procession, on festival days."

When they returned to the College of St. Anne, Madame Bourque grew more and more eloquent.

"Is it not wonderful," she said, "that all this great building is restored since the fire of two years ago? You will come inside, ladies, and see how pleasant the rooms are."

"I will stay outside," replied Priscilla, "and watch the horses," she concluded rather lamely.

"Nonsense," began Amy, but looking at Priscilla, she saw that the young girl was in earnest, and so insisted no further.

"Amy," whispered Priscilla, as her friend drew near her, "I was sorry afterwards that I went into the convent yesterday, and so I would much rather not go into a priest's house."

"I had no idea that you would be so narrow," rejoined Amy.

"I don't mean to be narrow," responded Priscilla, "but I really don't feel like going inside."

So Priscilla sat down on the grass near the monument and all the others went inside the main building of the College of St. Anne. Not very long afterwards Mrs. Redmond came out again, with her sketch-book in her hand. "I thought it a good time now to make a sketch of the church. I have seen many other schools like this one, for, after all, it's only a boys' boarding-school. The girls enjoy practising their French with the Eudist Father, who is taking them about, and it will probably be some time before they are ready to leave. I think you make a mistake, Priscilla, in not joining them."

"It isn't a very old building," said Priscilla, implying that this was sufficient reason for her staying away from the party.

"It is certainly not very old," rejoined Mrs. Redmond; "the college has been established less than ten years. It is a great thing to have founded it here in the midst of the Acadians, and it has made the boys of Clare much more ambitious."

"What good is a college education to them?" asked Priscilla; "fishing and farming seem to be their chief occupations."

"This is really only a preparatory school," replied Mrs. Redmond, "and the boys who are going into the Church or into the professions enter other colleges in Canada or in France. The Father told us with pride of the high standing of some of the graduates in their work in other colleges."

"If I do not care for the college," said Priscilla, "I love this church of Abbe Sigogne's; it makes me think of a New England meeting-house, with its white walls and steeple."

Mrs. Redmond's sketch was hardly finished when the others came out from the college. Madame Bourque was in her most talkative mood, as she led them across the road into the white church. This time Priscilla went with them and looked with some interest at the paintings on the wall, and the sacred emblems, and the tablet inscribed to the memory of Abbe Sigogne.

Martine, it must be admitted, found something amusing even in this church, for inside the gallery where the choir boys sat were many pictures of little boats, and even of full-rigged ships scratched in deeply with a penknife, presumably by the fingers of mischievous young singers.

Pierre, who happened to be with Martine when she made this discovery, did not laugh with her, but shaking his head solemnly, said, "Ah, those pictures show what really fills the heart of the Acadian boy."

Madame Bourque was disappointed that her party of Americans did not care to visit the girls' school near by, but the hour was late, and the tired-looking horses were not likely to make speed on the way home.

"We have really seen so much," said Mrs. Redmond, "that we shall need to think it all over before seeing more, and you have been so good a guide that in our one visit to Church Point we have learned as much as most persons do in two."

"We have learned a great deal," murmured Priscilla to Amy, "but I always feel that Madame Bourque paints the Acadians as much more remarkable than they are. But I should like to have seen Father Sigogne baptizing Indian pappooses; they say that he used to wipe their faces with his gown to find a spot where he could kiss them."

"Yes, and Madame Bourque says that there are people still living who can remember great crowds of Indians filing through the woods to Church Point that they might receive Abbe Sigogne's blessing on St Anne's Day."