CHAPTER XX.

WITH THE WATERCROWS.

"Her mouth was ever agape, Her ears were ever ajar; If you wanted to find a sweeter fool, You shouldn't have come this far."

--_Old Song._

When the meal was at last prepared, and the whole family were assembled in the sitting-room, where the table had been drawn from the kitchen, they took a united view of Vesper's back; then Claude à Sucre was sent to escort him to the house.

With a rapturous face Mirabelle Marie surveyed the steaming dish of _soupe à la patate_ (potato soup), the mound of buttered toast, the wedge of tough fried steak, the strips of raw dried codfish, the pink cake, and fancy biscuits. Surely the stranger would be impressed by the magnificence of this display, and she glanced wonderingly at Bidiane, whose eyes were lowered to the floor. The little girl had enjoyed advantages superior to her own, in that she mingled freely in English society, where she herself--Mirabelle Marie--was strangely shunned. Could it be that she was ashamed of this board? Certainly she could never have seen anything much grander; and, swelling with gratified pride and ambition, the mistress of the household seated herself behind her portly teapot, from which vantage-ground she beamed, huge and silly, like a full-grown moon upon the occupants of the table.

Her guest was not hungry, apparently, for he scarcely touched the dishes that she pressed upon him. However, he responded so gracefully and with such well-bred composure to her exhortations that he should eat his fill, for there was more in the cellar, that she was far from resenting his lack of appetite. He was certainly a "boss young man;" and as she sat, delicious visions swam through her brain of new implements for the farm, a new barn, perhaps, new furniture for the house, with possibly an organ, a spick and span wagon, and a horse, or even a pair, and the eventual establishment of her two sons in Boston,--the El Dorado of her imagination,--where they would become prosperous merchants, and make heaps of gold for their mother to spend.

In her excitement she began to put her food in her mouth with both hands, until reminded that she was flying in the face of English etiquette by a vigorous kick administered under the table by Bidiane.

Vesper, with an effort, called back his painful wandering thoughts, which had indeed gone down the Bay, and concentrated them upon this picturesquely untidy family. This was an entirely different establishment from that of the Sleeping Water Inn. Fortunately there was no grossness, no clownishness of behavior, which would have irreparably offended his fastidious taste. They were simply uncultured, scrambling, and even interesting with the background of this old homestead, which was one of the most ancient that he had seen on the Bay, and which had probably been built by some of the early settlers.

While he was quietly making his observations, the family finished their meal, and seeing that they were waiting for him to give the signal for leaving the table, he politely rose and stepped behind his chair.

Mirabelle Marie scurried to her feet and pushed the table against the wall. Then the whole family sat down in a semicircle facing a large open fireplace heaped high with the accumulated rubbish of the summer, and breathlessly waited for the stranger to tell them of his place of birth, the amount of his fortune, his future expectations and hopes, his intentions with regard to Bidiane, and of various and sundry other matters that might come in during the course of their conversation.

Vesper, with his usual objection to having any course of action mapped out for him, sat gazing imperturbably at them. He was really sorry for Mirabelle Marie, who was plainly bursting with eagerness. Her husband was more reserved, yet he, too, was suffering from suppressed curiosity, and timidly and wistfully handled his pipe, that he longed to and yet did not dare to smoke.

His two small boys sat dangling their legs from seats that were uncomfortably high for them. They were typical Acadien children,--shy, elusive, and retreating within themselves in the presence of strangers; and if, by chance, Vesper caught a stealthy glance from one of them, the little fellow immediately averted his glossy head, as if afraid that the calm eyes of the stranger might lay bare the inmost secrets of his youthful soul.

Bidiane was the most interesting of the group. She was evidently a born manager and the ruling spirit in the household, for he could see that they all stood in awe of her. She must possess some force of will to enable her to subdue her natural eagerness and vivacity, so as to appear sober and reserved. His presence was evidently a constraint to the little red-haired witch, and he could scarcely have understood her character, if Agapit had not supplied him with a key to it.

Young as she was, she acutely appreciated the racial differences about her. There were two worlds in her mind,--French and English. The careless predilections of her aunt had become fierce prejudices with her, and, at present, although she was proud to have an Englishman under their roof, she was at the same time tortured by the contrast that she knew he must find between the humble home of her relatives and the more prosperous surroundings of the English people with whom he was accustomed to mingle.

"She is a clever little imp," Agapit had said, "and wise beyond her years."

Vesper, when his unobtrusive examination of her small resolved face was over, glanced about the low, square room in which they sat. The sun was just leaving it. The family would soon be thinking of going to bed. All around the room were other rooms evidently used as sleeping apartments, for through a half-open door he saw an unmade bed, and he knew, from the construction of the house, that there was no upper story.

After a time the silence became oppressive, and Mirabelle Marie, seeing that the stranger would not entertain her, set herself to the task of entertaining him, and with an ingratiating and insinuating smile informed him that the biggest liar on the Bay lived in Bleury.

"His name's Bill," she said, "Blowin' Bill Duckfoot, an' the boys git 'round him an' say, 'Give us a yarn.' He says, 'Well, give me a chaw of 'baccy,' then he starts off. 'Onct when I went to sea'--he's never bin off the Bay, you know--'it blowed as hard as it could for ten days. Then it blowed ten times harder. We had to lash the cook to the mast.' 'What did you do when you wanted grub?' says the boys. 'Oh, we unlashed him for awhile,' says Bill. 'One day the schooner cracked from stern to stem. Cap'en and men begun to holler and says we was goin' to the bottom.' 'Cheer up,' says Bill, 'I'll fix a way.' So he got 'em to lash the anchor chains 'roun' the schooner, an' that hold 'em together till they got to Boston, and there was nothin' too good for Bill. It was cousin Duckfoot, an' brother Duckfoot, and good frien' Duckfoot, and lots of treatin'."

Vesper in suppressed astonishment surveyed Mirabelle Marie, who, at the conclusion of her story, burst into a fit of such hearty laughter that she seemed to be threatened there and then with a fit of apoplexy. Her face grew purple, tears ran down her cheeks, and through eyes that had become mere slits in her face she looked at Claude, who too was convulsed with amusement, at her two small boys, who giggled behind their hands, and at Bidiane, who only smiled sarcastically.

Vesper at once summoned an expression of interest to his face, and Mirabelle Marie, encouraged by it, caught her breath with an explosive sound, wiped the tears from her eyes, and at once continued. "Here's another daisy one. 'Onct,' says Bill, 'all han's was lost 'cept me an' a nigger. I went to the stern as cap'en, and he to the bow as deck-han'. A big wave struck the schooner, and when we righted, wasn't the nigger at stern as cap'en, an' I was at bow as deck-han'!'"

While Vesper was waiting for the conclusion of the story, a burst of joyous cachinnation assured him that it had already come. Mirabelle Marie was again rocking herself to and fro in immoderate delight, her head at each dip forward nearly touching her knees, while her husband was slapping his side vigorously.

Vesper laughed himself. Truly there were many different orders of mind in the universe. He saw nothing amusing in the reported exploits of the liar Duckfoot. They also would not have brought a smile to the face of his beautiful Rose, yet the Corbineaus, or Watercrows, as they translated their name in order to make themselves appear English, found these stories irresistibly comical. It was a blessing for them that they did so, otherwise the whole realm of humor might be lost to them; and he was going off in a dreamy speculation with regard to their other mental proclivities, when he was roused by another story from his hostess.

"Duckfoot is a mason by trade, an' onct he built a chimbley for a woman. 'Make a good draught,' says she. 'You bet,' says he, an' he built his chimbley an' runs away; as he runs he looks back, an' there was the woman's duds that was hangin' by the fire goin' up the chimbley. He had built such a draught that nothin' could stay in the kitchen, so she had to go down on her knees an' beg him to change it."

"To beg him to change it," vociferated Claude, and he soundly smacked his unresisting knee. "Oh, Lord, 'ow funny!" and he roared with laughter so stimulating that he forgot his fear of Vesper and Bidiane, and, boldly lighting his pipe, put it between his lips.

Mirabelle Marie, whose flow of eloquence it was difficult to check, related several other tales of Duckfoot Bill. Many times, before the railway in this township of Clare had been built, he had told them of his uncle, who had, he said, a magnificent residence in Louisiana, with a park full of valuable animals called skunks. These animals he had never fully described, and they were consequently enveloped in a cloud of admiration and mystery, until a horde of them came with the railroad to the Bay, when the credulous Acadiens learned for themselves what they really were.

During the recital of this tale, Bidiane's face went from disapproval to disgust, and at last, diving under the table, she seized a basket and went to work vigorously, as if the occupation of her fingers would ease the perturbation of her mind.

Vesper watched her closely. She was picking out the threads of old cotton and woollen garments that had been cut into small pieces. These threads would be washed, laid out on the grass to dry, and then be carded, and spun, and woven over again, according to a thrifty custom of the Acadiens, and made into bedcovers, stockings, and cloth. The child must possess some industry, for this work--"pickings," as it was called--was usually done by the women. In brooding silence the little girl listened to Mirabelle Marie's final tale of Duckfoot Bill, whose wife called out to him, one day, from the yard, that there was a flock of wild geese passing over the house. Without troubling to go out, he merely discharged his gun up the chimney beside which he sat, and the ramrod, carelessly being left in, killed a certain number of geese.

"How many do you guess that ramrod run through?"

Vesper good-naturedly guessed two.

"No,--seven," she shrieked; "they was strung in a row like dried apples," and she burst into fresh peals of laughter, until suddenly plunged into the calmness of despair by a few words from Bidiane, who leaned over and whispered angrily to her.

Mirabelle Marie trembled, and gazed at the stranger. Was it true,--did he wish to commend her to a less pleasant place than Bleury for teasing him with these entrancing stories?

She could gather nothing from his face; so she entered tremulously into a new subject of conversation, and, pointing to Claude's long legs, assured him that his heavy woollen stockings had been made entirely by Bidiane. "She's smart,--as smart as a steel trap," said the aunt. "She can catch the sheeps, hold 'em down, shear the wool, an' spin it."

Bidiane immediately pushed her basket under the table with so fiery and resentful a glance that the unfortunate Mirabelle Marie relapsed into silence.

"Have you ever gone to sea?" asked Vesper, of the silently smoking Claude.

"Yessir, we mos' all goes to sea when we's young."

"Onct he was wrecked," interrupted his wife.

"Yessir, I was. Off Arichat we got on a ledge. We thump up an' down. We was all on deck but the cook. The cap'en sends me to the galley for 'im. 'E come up, we go ashore, an' the schooner go to pieces."

"Tell him about the mouse," said Bidiane, abruptly.

"The mouse?--oh, yess, when I go for the cook I find 'im in the corner, a big stick in his 'and. I dunno 'ow 'e stan'. 'Is stove was upside down, an' there was an awful wariwarie" (racket). "'E seem not to think of danger. ''Ist,' says 'e. 'Don' mek a noise,--I wan' to kill that mouse.'"

Vesper laughed at this, and Mirabelle Marie's face cleared.

"Tell the Englishman who was the cap'en of yous," she said, impulsively, and she resolutely turned her back on Bidiane's terrific frown.

"Well, 'e was smart," said Claude, apologetically. "'E always get on though 'e not know much. One day when 'e fus' wen' to sea 'is wife says, 'All the cap'ens' wives talk about their charts, an' you ain't gut none. I buy one.' So she wen' to Yarmouth, an' buy 'im a chart. She also buy some of that shiny cloth for kitchen table w'at 'as blue scrawly lines like writin' on it. The cap'en leave the nex' mornin' before she was up, an' 'e takes with 'im the oilcloth instid of the chart, an' 'e 'angs it in 'is cabin; 'e didn't know no differ. 'E never could write,--that man. He mek always a pictur of 'is men when 'e wan' to write the fish they ketch. But 'e was smart, very smart. 'E mek also money. Onct 'e was passenger on a schooner that smacks ag'in a steamer in a fog. All 'an's scuttle, 'cause that mek a big scare. They forgit 'im. 'E wake; 'e find 'imself lonely. Was 'e frightful? Oh, no; 'e can't work sails, but 'e steer that schooner to Boston, an' claim salvage."

"Tell also the name of the cap'en," said Mirabelle Marie.

Claude moved uneasily in his chair, and would not speak.

"What was it?" asked Vesper.

"It was Crispin," said Mirabelle Marie, solemnly. "Crispin, the brother of Charlitte."

Vesper calmly took a cigarette from his pocket, and lighted it.

"It is a nice place down the Bay," said Mirabelle Marie, uneasily.

"Very nice," responded her guest.

"Rose à Charlitte has a good name," she continued, "a very good name."

Vesper fingered his cigarette, and gazed blankly at her.

"They speak good French there," she said.

Her husband and Bidiane stared at her. They had never heard such a sentiment from her lips before. However, they were accustomed to her ways, and they soon got over their surprise.

"Do you not speak French?" asked Vesper.

Mrs. Watercrow shrugged her shoulders. "It is no good. We are all English about here. How can one be French? Way back, when we went to mass, the priest was always botherin'--'Talk French to your young ones. Don't let them forgit the way the old people talked.' One day I come home and says to my biggest boy, '_Va ramasser des écopeaux_'" (Go pick up some chips). "He snarl at me, 'Do you mean potatoes?' He didn't like it."

"Did he not understand you?" asked Vesper.

"Naw, naw," said Claude, bitterly. "We 'ave French nebbors, but our young ones don' play with. They don' know French. My wife she speak it w'en we don' want 'em to know w'at we say."

"You always like French," said his wife, contemptuously. "I guess you gut somethin' French inside you."

Claude, for some reason or other, probably because, usually without an advocate, he now knew that he had one in Vesper, was roused to unusual animation. He snatched his pipe from his mouth and said, warmly, "It's me 'art that's French, an' sometimes it's sore. I speak not much, but I think often we are fools. Do the Eenglish like us? No, only a few come with us; they grin 'cause we put off our French speakin' like an ole coat. A man say to me one day, 'You 'ave nothin'. You do not go to mass, you preten' to be Protestan', w'en you not brought up to it. You big fool, you don' know w'at it is. If you was dyin' to-morrer you'd sen' for the priest.'"

Mirabelle Marie opened her eyes wide at her husband's eloquence.

He was not yet through. "An' our children, they are silly with it. They donno' w'at they are. All day Sunday they play; sometimes they say cuss words. I say, 'Do it not,' 'an' they ast me w'y. I cannot tell. They are not French, they are not Eenglish. They 'ave no religion. I donno' w'ere they go w'en they die."

Mirabelle Marie boldly determined to make confidences to the Englishman in her turn.

"The English have loads of money. I wish I could go to Boston. I could make it there,--yes, lots of it."

Claude was not to be put down. "I like our own langwidge, oh, yes," he said, sadly. "W'en I was a leetle boy I wen' to school. All was Eenglish. They put in my 'and an Eenglish book. I'd lef my mother, I was stoopid. I thought all the children's teeth was broke, 'cause they spoke so strange. Never will I forgit my firs' day in school. W'y do they teach Eenglish to the French? The words was like fish 'ooks in my flesh."

"Would you be willing to send that little girl down the Bay to a French convent?" said Vesper, waving his cigarette towards Bidiane.

"We can't pay that," said Mirabelle Marie, eagerly.

"But I would."

While she was nodding her head complacently over this, the first of the favors to be showered on them, Claude said, slowly, "Down the Bay is like a bad, bad place to my children; they do not wish to go, not even to ride. They go towards Digby. Biddy Ann would not go to the convent,--would she, Biddy?"

The little girl threw up her head angrily. "I hate Frenchtown, and that black spider, Agapit LeNoir."

Claude's face darkened, and his wife chuckled. Surely now there would be nothing left for the Englishman to do but to transplant them all to Boston.

"Would you not go?" asked Vesper, addressing Bidiane.

"Not a damn step," said the girl, in a fury, and, violently pushing back her chair, she rushed from the room. If this young man wished to make a French girl of her, he might go on his way. She would have nothing to do with him. And with a rebellious and angry heart at this traitor to his race, as she regarded him, she climbed up a ladder in the kitchen that led to a sure hiding-place under the roof.

Her aunt clutched her head in despair. Bidiane would ruin everything. "She's all eaten up to go to Boston," she gasped.

"I am not a rich man," said Vesper, coldly. "I don't feel able at present to propose anything further for her than to give her a year or two in a convent."

Mirabelle Marie gaped speechlessly at him. In one crashing ruin her new barn, and farming implements, the wagon and horses, and trunks full of fine clothes fell into the abyss of lost hopes. The prince had not the long purse that she supposed he would have. And yet such was her good-nature that, when she recovered from the shock, she regarded him just as kindly and as admiringly as before, and if he had been in the twinkling of an eye reduced to want she would have been the first to relieve him, and give what aid she could. Nothing could destroy her deep-rooted and extravagant admiration for the English race.

Her fascinated glance followed him as he got up and sauntered to the open door.

"You'll stop all night?" she said, hospitably, shuffling after him. "We have one good bed, with many feathers."

He did not hear her, for in a state of extreme boredom, and slight absent-mindedness, he had stepped out under the poplars.

"Better leave 'im alone, I guess," said Claude; then he slipped off his coat. "I'll go milk."

"An' I'll make up the bed," said his wife; and taking the hairpins out of the switch that Bidiane had made her attach to her own thick lump of hair, she laid it on the shelf by the clock, and allowed her own brown wave to stream freely down her back. Then she unfastened her corsets, which she did not dare to take off, as no woman in Bleury who did not wear that article of dress tightly enfolding her chest and waist was considered to have reached the acme of respectability. However, she could for a time allow them to gape slightly apart, and having by this proceeding added much to her comfort, she entered one of the small rooms near by.

Vesper meanwhile walked slowly towards the gate, while Bidiane watched him through a loophole in the roof. His body only was in Bleury; his heart was in Sleeping Water. Step by step he was following Rose about her daily duties. He knew just at what time of day her slender feet carried her to the stable, to the duck-yard, to the hen-house. He knew the exact hour that she entered her kitchen in the morning, and went from it to the pantry. He could see her beautiful face at the cool pantry window, as she stood mixing various dishes, and occasionally glancing at the passers-by on the road. Sometimes she sang gently to herself, "Rose of the cross, thou mystic flower," or "Dear angel ever at my side," or some of the Latin hymns to the Virgin.

At this present moment her tasks would all be done. If there were guests who desired her presence, she might be seated with them in the little parlor. If there were none, she was probably alone in her room. Of what was she thinking? The blood surged to his face, there was a beating in his ears, and he raised his suffering glance to the sky. "O God! now I know why I suffered when my father died. It was to prepare me for this."

Then his mind went back to Rose. Had she succeeded in driving his image from her pure mind and imagination? Alas! he feared not,--he would like to know. He had heard nothing of her since leaving Sleeping Water. Agapit had written once, but he had not mentioned her.

This inaction was horrible,--this place wearied him insufferably. He glanced towards his wheel, and a sentence from one of Agapit's books came into his mind. It contained the advice of an old monk to a penitent, "My son, when in grievous temptation from trouble of the mind, engage violently in some exercise of the body."

He was a swift rider, and there was no need for him to linger longer here. These people were painfully subservient. If at any time anything came into his mind to be done for the little girl, they would readily agree to it; that is, if the small tigress concurred; at present there was nothing to be done for her.

He laid his hand on his bicycle and went towards the house again. There was no one to be seen, so he hurried up to the rickety barn where Claude sat on a milking-stool, trying to keep his long legs out of the way of a frisky cow.

The Frenchman was overcome with stolid dismay when Vesper briefly bade him good-by, and going to the barn door, he stared regretfully after him.

Mirabelle Marie, in blissful unconsciousness of the sudden departure, went on with her bed-making, but Bidiane, through the crack in the roof, saw him go, and in childish contradiction of spirit shed tears of anger and disappointment at the sight.