CHAPTER I.

A NEW ARRIVAL AT SLEEPING WATER.

"But swift or slow the days will pass, The longest night will have a morn, And to each day is duly born A night from Time's inverted glass."

--_Aminta._

Five years have passed away,--five long years. Five times the Acadien farmers have sown their seeds. Five times they have gathered their crops. Five times summer suns have smiled upon the Bay, and five times winter winds have chilled it. And five times five changes have there been in Sleeping Water, though it is a place that changes little.

Some old people have died, some new ones have been born, but chief among all changes has been the one effected by the sometime presence, and now always absence, of the young Englishman from Boston, who had come so quietly among the Acadiens, and had gone so quietly, and yet whose influence had lingered, and would always linger among them.

In the first place, Rose à Charlitte had given up the inn. Shortly after the Englishman had gone away, her uncle had died, and had left her, not a great fortune, but a very snug little sum of money--and with a part of it she had built herself a cottage on the banks of Sleeping Water River, where she now lived with Célina, her former servant, who had, in her devotion to her mistress, taken a vow never to marry unless Rose herself should choose a husband. This there seemed little likelihood of her doing. She had apparently forsworn marriage when she rejected the Englishman. All the Bay knew that he had been violently in love with her, all the Bay knew that she had sent him away, but none knew the reason for it. She had apparently loved him,--she had certainly never loved any other man. It was suspected that Agapit LeNoir was in the secret, but he would not discuss the Englishman with any one, and, gentle and sweet as Rose was, there were very few who cared to broach the subject to her.

Another change had been the coming to Sleeping Water of a family from up the Bay. They kept the inn now, and they were _protégés_ of the Englishman, and relatives of a young girl that he and his mother had taken away--away across the ocean to France some four years before--because she was a badly brought up child, who did not love her native tongue nor her father's people.

It had been a wonderful thing that had happened to these Watercrows in the coming of the Englishman to the Bay. His mission had been to search for the heirs of Etex LeNoir, who had been murdered by his great-grandfather at the time of the terrible expulsion, and he had found a direct one in the person of this naughty little Bidiane.

She had been a great trouble to him at first, it was said, but, under his wise government, she had soon sobered down; and she had also brought him luck, as much luck as a pot of gold, for, directly after he had discovered her he--who had not been a rich young man, but one largely dependent on his mother--had fallen heir to a large fortune, left to him by a distant relative. This relative had been a great-aunt, who had heard of his romantic and dutiful journey to Acadie, and, being touched by it, and feeling assured that he was a worthy young man, she had immediately made a will, leaving him all that she possessed, and had then died.

He had sought to atone for the sins of his forefathers, and had reaped a rich reward.

A good deal of the Englishman's money had been bestowed on these Watercrows. With kindly tolerance, he had indulged a whim of theirs to go to Boston when they were obliged to leave their heavily mortgaged farm. It was said that they had expected to make vast sums of money there. The Englishman knew that they could not do so, but that they might cease the repinings and see for themselves what a great city really was for poor people, he had allowed them to make a short stay in one.

The result had been that they were horrified; yes, absolutely horrified,--this family transported from the wide, beautiful Bay,--at the narrowness of the streets in the large city of Boston, at the rush of people, the race for work, the general crowding and pushing, the oppression of the poor, the tiny rooms in which they were obliged to live, and the foul air which fairly suffocated them.

They had begged the Englishman to let them come back to the Bay, even if they lived only in a shanty. They could not endure that terrible city.

He generously had given them the Sleeping Water Inn that he had bought when Rose à Charlitte had left it, and there they had tried to keep a hotel, with but indifferent success, until Claudine, the widow of Isidore Kessy, had come to assist them.

The Acadiens in Sleeping Water, with their keen social instincts, and sympathetically curious habit of looking over, and under, and into, and across every subject of interest to them, were never tired of discussing Vesper Nimmo and his affairs. He had still with him the little Narcisse who had run from the Bay five years before, and, although the Englishman himself never wrote to Rose à Charlitte, there came every week to the Bay a letter addressed to her in the handwriting of the young Bidiane LeNoir, who, according to the instructions of the Englishman, gave Rose a full and minute account of every occurrence in her child's life. In this way she was kept from feeling lonely.

These letters were said to be delectable, yes, quite delectable. Célina said so, and she ought to know.

The white-headed, red-coated mail-driver, who never flagged in his admiration for Vesper, was just now talking about him. Twice a day during the long five years had Emmanuel de la Rive flashed over the long road to the station. Twice a day had this descendant of the old French nobleman courteously taken off his hat to the woman who kept the station, and then, placing it on his knee, had sat down to discuss calmly and impartially the news of the day with her, in the ten minutes that he allowed himself before the train arrived. He in the village, she at the station, could most agreeably keep the ball of gossip rolling, so that on its way up and down the Bay it might not make too long a tarrying at Sleeping Water.

On this particular July morning he was on his favorite subject. "Has it happened to come to your ears," he said in his shrill, musical voice to Madame Thériault, who, as of old, was rocking a cradle with her foot, and spinning with her hands, "that there is talk of a great scheme that the Englishman has in mind for having cars that will run along the shores of the Bay, without a locomotive?"

"Yes, I have heard."

"It would be a great thing for the Bay, as we are far from these stations in the woods."

"It is my belief that he will some day return, and Rose will then marry him," said the woman, who, true to the traditions of her sex, took a more lively interest in the affairs of the heart than in those connected with means of transportation.

"It is evident that she does not wish to marry now," he said, modestly.

"She lives like a nun. It is incredible; she is young, yet she thinks only of good works."

"At least, her heart is not broken."

"Hearts do not break when one has plenty of money," said Madame Thériault, wisely.

"If it were not for the child, I daresay that she would become a holy woman. Did you hear that the family with typhoid fever can at last leave her house?"

"Yes, long ago,--ages."

"I heard only this morning," he said, dejectedly, then he brightened, "but it was told to me that it is suspected that the young Bidiane LeNoir will come back to the Bay this summer."

"Indeed,--can that be so?"

"It is quite true, I think. I had it from the blacksmith, whose wife Perside heard it from Célina."

"Who had it from Rose--_eh bonn! eh bonn! eh bonn!_" (_Eh bien!_--well, well, well). "The young girl is now old enough to marry. Possibly the Englishman will marry her."

Emmanuel's fine face flushed, and his delicate voice rose high in defence of his adored Englishman. "No, no; he does not change, that one,--not more so than the hills. He waits like Gabriel for Evangeline. This is also the opinion of the Bay. You are quite alone--but hark! is that the train?" and clutching his mail-bag by its long neck, he slipped to the kitchen door, which opened on the platform of the station.

Yes; it was indeed the Flying Bluenose, coming down the straight track from Pointe à l'Eglise, with a shrill note of warning.

Emmanuel hurried to the edge of the platform, and extended his mail-bag to the clerk in shirt-sleeves, who leaned from the postal-car to take it, and to hand him one in return. Then, his duty over, he felt himself free to take observations of any passengers that there might be for Sleeping Water.

There was just one, and--could it be possible--could he believe the evidence of his eyesight--had the little wild, red-haired apostate from up the Bay at last come back, clothed and in her right mind? He made a mute, joyous signal to the station woman who stood in the doorway, then he drew a little nearer to the very composed and graceful girl who had just been assisted from the train, with great deference, by a youthful conductor.

"Are my trunks all out?" she said to him, in a tone of voice that assured the mail-man that, without being bold or immodest, she was quite well able to take care of herself.

The conductor pointed to the brakemen, who were tumbling out some luggage to the platform.

"I hope that they will be careful of my wheel," said the girl.

"It's all right," replied the conductor, and he raised his arm as a signal for the train to move on. "If anything goes wrong with it, send it to this station, and I will take it to Yarmouth and have it mended for you."

"Thank you," said the girl, graciously; then she turned to Emmanuel, and looked steadfastly at his red jacket.

He, meanwhile, politely tried to avert his eyes from her, but he could not do so. She was fresh from the home of the Englishman in Paris, and he could not conceal his tremulous eager interest in her. She was not beautiful, like flaxen-haired Rose à Charlitte, nor dark and statuesque, like the stately Claudine; but she was _distinguée_, yes, _très-distinguée_, and her manner was just what he had imagined that of a true Parisienne would be like. She was small and dainty, and possessed a back as straight as a soldier's, and a magnificent bust. Her round face was slightly freckled, her nose was a little upturned, but the hazy, fine mass of hair that surrounded her head was most beauteous,--it was like the sun shining through the reddish meadow grass.

He was her servant, her devoted slave, and Emmanuel, who had never dreamed that he possessed patrician instincts, bowed low before her, "Mademoiselle, I am at your service."

"_Merci, monsieur_" (thank you, sir), she said, with conventional politeness; then in rapid and exquisite French, that charmed him almost to tears, she asked, mischievously, "But I have never been here before, how do you know me?"

He bowed again. "The name of Mademoiselle Bidiane LeNoir is often on our lips. Mademoiselle, I salute your return."

"You are very kind, Monsieur de la Rive," she said, with a frank smile; then she precipitated herself on a bed of yellow marigolds growing beside the station house. "Oh, the delightful flowers!"

"Is she not charming?" murmured Emmanuel, in a blissful undertone, to Madame Thériault. "What grace, what courtesy!--and it is due to the Englishman."

Madame Thériault's black eyes were critically running over Bidiane's tailor-made gown. "The Englishman will marry her," she said, sententiously. Then she asked, abruptly, "Have you ever seen her before?"

"Yes, once, years ago; she was a little hawk, I assure you."

"She will do now," and the woman approached her. "Mademoiselle, may I ask for your checks."

Bidiane sprang up from the flower bed and caught her by both hands. "You are Madame Thériault--I know of you from Mr. Nimmo. Ah, it is pleasant to be among friends. For days and days it has been strangers--strangers--only strangers. Now I am with my own people," and she proudly held up her red head.

The woman blushed in deep gratification. "Mademoiselle, I am more than glad to see you. How is the young Englishman who left many friends on the Bay?"

"Do you call him young? He is at least thirty."

"But he was young when here."

"True, I forgot that. He is well, very well. He is never ill now. He is always busy, and such a good man--oh, so good!" and Bidiane clasped her hands, and rolled her lustrous, tawny eyes to the sky.

"And the child of Rose à Charlitte?" said Emmanuel, eagerly.

"A little angel,--so calm, so gentle, so polite. If you could see him bow to the ladies,--it is ravishing, I assure you. And he is always spoiled by Mrs. Nimmo, who adores him."

"Will he come back to the Bay?"

"I do not know," and Bidiane's vivacious face grew puzzled. "I do not ask questions--alas! have I offended you?--I assure you I was thinking only of myself. I am curious. I talk too much, but you have seen Mr. Nimmo. You know that beyond a certain point he will not go. I am ignorant of his intentions with regard to the child. I am ignorant of his mother's intentions; all I know is that Mr. Nimmo wishes him to be a forester."

"A forester!" ejaculated Madame Thériault, "and what is that trade?"

Bidiane laughed gaily. "But, my dear madame, it is not a trade. It is a profession. Here on the Bay we do not have it, but abroad one hears often of it. Young men study it constantly. It is to take care of trees. Do you know that if they are cut down, water courses dry up? In Clare we do not think of that, but in other countries trees are thought useful and beautiful, and they keep them."

"Hold--but that is wonderful," said Emmanuel.

Bidiane turned to him with a winning smile. "Monsieur, how am I to get to the shore? I am eaten up with impatience to see Madame de Forêt and my aunt."

"But there is my cart, mademoiselle," and he pointed to the shed beyond them. "I shall feel honored to conduct you."

"I gladly accept your offer, monsieur. _Au revoir_, madame."

Madame Thériault reluctantly watched them depart. She would like to keep this gay, charming creature with her for an hour longer.

"It is wonderful that they did not come to meet you," said Emmanuel, "but they did not expect you naturally."

"I sent a telegram from Halifax," said Bidiane, "but can you believe it?--I was so stupid as to say Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Therefore Madame de Forêt expects me to-morrow."

"You advised her rather than Mirabelle Marie, but wherefore?"

Bidiane shook her shining head. "I do not know. I did not ask; I did simply as Mr. Nimmo told me. He arranges all. I was with friends until this morning. Only that one thing did I do alone on the journey,--that is to telegraph,--and I did it wrong," and a joyous, subdued peal of laughter rang out on the warm morning air.

Emmanuel reverently assisted her into his cart, and got in beside her. His blood had been quickened in his veins by this unexpected occurrence. He tried not to look too often at this charming girl beside him, but, in spite of his best efforts, his eyes irresistibly and involuntarily kept seeking her face. She was so eloquent, so well-mannered; her clothes were smooth and sleek like satin; there was a faint perfume of lovely flowers about her,--she had come from the very heart and centre of the great world into which he had never ventured. She was charged with magic. What an acquisition to the Bay she would be!

He carefully avoided the ruts and stones of the road. He would not for the world give her an unnecessary shock, and he ardently wished that this highway from the woods to the Bay might be as smooth as his desire would have it.

"And this is Sleeping Water," she said, dreamily.

Emmanuel assured her that it was, and she immediately began to ply him with questions about the occupants of the various farms that they were passing, until a sudden thought flashed into her mind and made her laughter again break out like music.

"I am thinking--ah, me! it is really too absurd for anything--of the astonishment of Madame de Forêt when I walk in upon her. Tell me, I beg you, some particulars about her. She wrote not very much about herself."

Emmanuel had a great liking for Rose, and he joyfully imparted to Bidiane the most minute particulars concerning her dress, appearance, conduct, daily life, her friends and surroundings. He talked steadily for a mile, and Bidiane, whose curiosity seemed insatiable on the subject of Rose, urged him on until he was forced to pause for breath.

Bidiane turned her head to look at him, and immediately had her attention attracted to a new subject. "That red jacket is charming, monsieur," she said, with flattering interest. "If it is quite agreeable, I should like to know where you got it."

"Mademoiselle, you know that in Halifax there are many soldiers."

"Yes,--English ones. There were French ones in Paris. Oh, I adore the short blue capes of the military men."

"The English soldiers wear red coats."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Sometimes they are sold when their bright surface is soiled. Men buy them, and, after cleaning, sell them in the country. It is cheerful to see a farmer working in a field clad in red."

"Ah! this is one that a soldier used to wear."

"No, mademoiselle,--not so fast. I had seen these red coats,--Acadiens have always loved that color above others. I wished to have one; therefore, when asked to sing at a concert many years ago, I said to my sister, 'Buy red cloth and make me a red coat. Put trimmings on it.'"

"And you sang in this?"

"No, mademoiselle,--you are too fast again," and he laughed delightedly at her precipitancy. "I sang in one long years ago, when I was young. Afterwards, to save,--for we Acadiens do not waste, you know,--I wore it to drive in. In time it fell to pieces."

"And you liked it so much that you had another made?"

"Exactly, mademoiselle. You have guessed it now," and his tones were triumphant.

Her curiosity on the subject of the coat being satisfied, she returned to Rose, and finally asked a series of questions with regard to her aunt.

Her chatter ceased, however, when they reached the Bay, and, overcome with admiration, she gazed silently at the place where

From shore to shore the shining waters lay, Beneath the sun, as placid as a cheek.

Emmanuel, discovering that her eyes were full of tears, delicately refrained from further conversation until they reached the corner, when he asked, softly, "To the inn, or to Madame de Forêt's?"

Bidiane started. "To Madame de Forêt's--no, no, to the inn, otherwise my aunt might be offended."

He drew up before the veranda, where Mirabelle Marie and Claude both happened to be standing. There were at first incredulous glances, then a great burst of noise from the woman and an amazed grunt from the man.

Bidiane flew up the steps and embraced them, and Emmanuel lingered on in a trance of ecstasy. He could not tear himself away, and did not attempt to do so until the trio vanished into the house.