LOVE AND DUTY.
Time ran fast. The seasons were as inexorable at Grande Pointe as elsewhere. But there was no fierceness in them. The very frosts were gentle. Slowly and kindly they stripped the green robes from many a tree, from many a thicket ejected like defaulting tenants the blue linnet, the orchard oriole, the nonpareil, took down all its leafy hangings and left it open to the winds and rain of December. The wet ponies and kine turned away from the north and stood in the slanting storm with bowed heads. The great wall of cypress swamp grew spectral.
But its depths, the marshes far beyond sight behind them, and the little, hidden, rushy lakes, were alive with game. No snake crossed the path. Under the roof, on the galerie, the wheel hummed, the loom pounded; inside, the logs crackled and blazed on the hearth; on the board were venison, mallard, teal, rice-birds, _sirop de baterie_, and _quitte_; round the fireside were pipes, pecans, old stories, and the Sat.u.r.day-night contra-dance; and every now and then came sounding on the outer air the long, hoa.r.s.e bellow of some Mississippi steamer, telling of the great world beyond the tree-tops, a little farther than the clouds and nearer than the stars.
Christmas pa.s.sed, and New Year--time runs so fast! Presently yonder was "Mian himself, spading a piece of ground to sow his tobacco-seed in; then Catou and his little boy of twenty-five doing likewise; and then others all about the scattered village. Then there was a general spreading of dry brush over the spaded ground, then the sweet, clean smell of its burning, and, hanging everywhere throughout the clearing, its thin blue smoke. The little frogs began to pipe to each other again in every wet place, the gra.s.s began to freshen, and almost in the calendar"s midwinter the smiles of spring were wreathing everywhere.
What of the schoolmaster and the children? Much, much! The good work went on. Intense days for Bonaventure. The clouds of disfavor darkling in some places, but brightening in others, and, on the whole, he hoped and believed, breaking. A few days of vacation, and then a bright re-union and resumption, the children all his faithful adherents save one--Sidonie. She, a close student, too, but growingly distant and reticent. The State Superintendent still believed to be--
"Impending, impending, chil"run! he is impending! Any day he may precipitate upon us!"
Intense days, too, for Claude. Sidonie openly, and oh, so sweetly, his friend. Loving him? He could neither say nor know; enough, for the present, to be allowed to love her. His love knew no spirit of conquest yet; it was star-worship; it was angel adoration; seraphically pure; something so celestially refined that had it been a tangible object you could have held it up and seen the stars right through it. The thought of acquisition would have seemed like coveting the gold of a temple. And yet already the faintest hint of loss was intolerable. Oh! this happy, happy school-going,--this faring sumptuously on one smile a day! Ah, if it might but continue! But alas! how Sidonie was growing! Growing, growing daily! up, up, up!
While he--there was a tree in the swamp where he measured his stature every day; but in vain, in vain! It never budged! And then--all at once--like the rose-vine on her galerie, Sidonie burst into bloom.
Her smiles were kinder and more frequent now than ever before; but the boy"s heart was wrung. What chance now? In four long years to come he would not yet be quite nineteen, and she was fifteen now. Four years! He was in no hurry himself--could wait forever and be happy every day of it; but she? Such prize as she, somebody would certainly bear away before three years could run by, run they ever so fast.
Sitting and pondering one evening in the little bayou cabin, Claude caught the father"s eye upon him, leaned his forehead upon the parent"s knee, and silently wept. The rough woodman said a kind word, and the boy, without lifting his burning face, told his love. The father made no reply for a long time, and then he said in their quaint old French:
"Claude, tell the young schoolmaster. Of all men, he is the one to help you." And then in English, as you would quote Latin, "Knowledge is power!"
The next day he missed--failed miserably--in every lesson. At its close he sat at his desk, crushed. Bonaventure seemed scarce less tempest-tossed than he; and all about the school the distress spread as wintry gray overcasts a sky. Only Sidonie moved calmly her accustomed round, like some fair, silent, wide-winged bird circling about a wreck.
At length the lad and his teacher were left alone. Claude sat very still, looking at his toil-worn hands lying crossed on the desk.
Presently there sank an arm across his shoulders. It was the master"s.
Drop--drop--two big tears fell upon the rude desk"s sleeve-polished wood. The small, hard, right hand slowly left its fellow, and rubbed off the wet spots.
"Claude, you have something to disclose me?"
The drooping head nodded.
"And "tis not something done wrongly?"
The lad shook his head.
"Then, my poor Claude,"--the teacher"s own voice faltered for a moment,--"then--"tis--"tis she!" He stroked the weeping head that sank into its hands. "Ah! yes, Claude, yes; "tis she; "tis she! And you want me to help you. Alas! in vain you want me! I cannot even try-y-y to help you; you have mentioned it too lately! "Tis right you come to me, despiting discrepancy of years; but alas! the dif_fic_ulty lies in the con_tra_ry; for alas! Claude, our two heart" are of the one, same age!"
They went out; and walking side by side toward the failing sun, with the humble flowers of the field and path newly opened and craving leave to live about their feet and knees, Bonaventure Deschamps revealed his own childlike heart to the simple boy whose hand clasped his.
"Yes, yes; I conceal not from you, Claude, that "tis not alone "thou lovest," but "I love"! If with cause to hope, Claude, I know not. And I must not search to know whilst yet the schoolmaster. And the same to you, Claude, whilst yet a scholah. We mus" let the dissimulation like a worm in the bud to h-eat our cheek. "Tis the voice of honor cry--"Silence." And during the meanwhilst, you? Perchance at the last, the years pa.s.sing and you enlarging in size daily and arriving to budding manhood, may be the successful; for suspect not I consider lightly the youngness of yo" pa.s.sion. Attend what I shall reveal you.
Claude, there once was a boy, yo" size, yo" age, but fierce, selfish, distemperate; still more selfish than yo" schoolmaster of to-day." And there that master went on to tell of an early--like Claude"s, an all too early--rash, and boyish pa.s.sion, whose ragged wound, that he had thought never could heal, was now only a tender scar.
"And you, too, Claude, though now it seem not possible--you shall recuperate from this. But why say I thus? Think you I would inoculate the idea that you must despair? Nay, perchance you shall achieve her."
They stood near the lad"s pirogue about to say adieu; the schoolmaster waved his hand backward toward the farther end of the village. "She is there; in a short time she will cease to continue scholah; then--try."
And again, with still more courageous kindness, he repeated, "Try!
"Tis a lesson that thou shouldest heed--try, try again. If _at_ the first thou doest _not_ succeed, try, try again."
Claude gazed gratefully into the master"s face. Boy that he was, he did not read aright the anguish gathering there. From his own face the clouds melted into a glad sunshine of courage, resolve, and antic.i.p.ation. Bonaventure saw the spark of hope that he had dropped into the boy"s heart blaze up into his face. And what did Claude see?
The hot blood mounting to the master"s brow an instant ere he wheeled and hurried away.
""Sieur Bonaventure!" exclaimed Claude; ""Sieur Bonaventure!"
But deaf to all tones alike, Bonaventure moved straight away along the bushy path, and was presently gone from sight. There is a repentance of good deeds. Bonaventure Deschamps felt it gnawing and tearing hard and harder within his bosom as he strode on through the wild vernal growth that closed in the view on every side. Soon he halted; then turned, and began to retrace his steps.
"Claude!" The tone was angry and imperative. No answer came. He quickened his gait. "Claude!" The voice was petulant and imperious. A turn of the path brought again to view the spot where the two had so lately parted. No one was there. He moaned and then cried aloud, "O thou fool, fool, fool!--Claude!" He ran; faster--faster--down the path, away from all paths, down the little bayou"s margin, into the bushes, into the mud and water. "Claude! Claude! I told you wrongly!
Stop! _Arretez-la!_ I must add somewhat!--Claude!" The bushes s.n.a.t.c.hed away his hat; tore his garments; bled him in hands and face; yet on he went into the edge of the forest. "Claude! Ah! Claude, thou hast ruin"
me! Stop, you young rascal!--thief!--robber!--brigand!" A vine caught and held him fast. "Claude! Claude!"--The echoes multiplied the sound, and scared from their dead-tree roost a flock of vultures. The dense wood was wrapping the little bayou in its premature twilight. The retreating sun, that for a while had shot its flaming arrows through the black boles and branches, had sunk now and was gone. Only a parting ruby glow shone through the tangle where far and wide the echoes were calling for Claude.
"Claude! I mistook the facts in the case. There is no hope for you!
"Tis futile you try--the poem is not for you! I take every thing back!--all back! You shall not once try! You have grasp" the advantage! You got no business, you little rascal! _You_ dare venture to attempt making love in my school! Claude St. Pierre, you are dismiss" the school! Mutiny! mutiny! Claude St. Pierre, for mutinizing, excluded the Gran" Point" school."
He tore himself from his fastenings and hastened back toward the village. The tempest within him was as fierce as ever; but already it, too, had turned and was coming out of the opposite quarter. The better Bonaventure--the Bonaventure purified by fires that Grande Pointe had no knowledge of--was coming back into his gentle self-mastery. And because that other, that old-time Bonaventure, bound in chains deep down within, felt already the triumph of a moment slipping from his grasp, he silently now to the outer air, but loudly within, railed and gnashed and tore himself the more.
He regained the path and hurried along it, hatless, dishevelled, bespattered, and oblivious to every thing save the war within.
Presently there came upon him the knowledge, the certain knowledge, that Claude would come the next morning and ring the chapel bell, take his seat in school, stand in all his cla.s.ses, know every lesson, and go home in the evening happy and all unchallenged of him. He groaned aloud.
"Ah! Claude! To dismiss or not to dismiss, it shall not be mine! But it shall be thine, Sidonie! And whether she is for thee, Claude--so juvenile!--or for me, so unfit, unfit, unfit!--Ah! Sidonie, choose not yet!"--He stood rooted to the spot; while within easy earshot of his lightest word tripped brightly and swiftly across the path from the direction of the chapel a fawn, Claude"s gift, and its mistress, Sidonie--as though she neither saw nor heard.
CHAPTER VIII.
AT CLAUDE"S MERCY.
Time flagged not. The school shone on, within its walls making glad the teacher and the pupils with ever new achievements in knowledge and excellence. Some of the vanguard--Claude, Sidonie, etienne, Madelaine, Henri, Marcelline--actually going into the Third Reader. Such perfection in lessons as they told about at home--such mastery of English, such satisfactory results in p.r.o.nunciation and emphasis!
Reading just as they talked? Oh, no, a thousand times no! The school"s remoter light, its secondary influences, slowly spreading, but so slowly that only the eyes of enmity could see its increase. There were murmurs and head-shakings; but the thirteenth Sunday of the year"s first quarter came, and the sermon whose withholding had been threatened was preached. And on the thirteenth Monday there was Bonaventure, still moving quietly across the green toward the schoolhouse with the children all about him. But a few days later the unexpected happened.
By this time Claude"s father, whose teacher, you remember, was Claude, had learned to read. One day a surveyor, who had employed him as a guide, seeing the Acadian laboring over a fragment of rural newspaper, fell into conversation with him as they sat smoking by their camp-fire, and presently caught some hint of St. Pierre"s aspirations for himself and his son.
"So there"s a public school at Grande Pointe, is there?"
"Oh, ya.s.s; fine school; hondred feet long! and fine t.i.tcher; splendid t.i.tcher; t.i.tch English."
"Well, well!" laughed the surveyor. "Well, the next thing will be a railroad."
St. Pierre"s eyes lighted up.
"You t"ink!"
"Why, yes; you can"t keep railroads away from a place long, once you let in the public school and teach English."
"You t"ink da.s.s good?"
"What, a railroad? Most certainly. It brings immigration."
"Wha.s.s dat--"migrash"n?"
The surveyor explained.