The next time St. Pierre came to Grande Pointe--to sell some fish--he came armed with two great words for the final overthrow of all opponents of enlightenment: "Rellroad!--"Migrash"n!"
They had a profound and immediate effect--exactly the opposite of what he had expected.
The school had just been dismissed; the children were still in sight, dispersing this way and that. Sidonie lingered a moment at her desk, putting it in order; Claude, taking all the time he could, was getting his canoe-paddle from a corner; Crebiche was waiting, by the master"s command, to repair some default of the day; and Toutou, outside on his knees in the gra.s.s catching gra.s.shoppers, was tarrying for his sister; when four or five of the village"s best men came slowly and hesitatingly in. It required no power of divination for even the pre-occupied schoolmaster to guess the nature of their errand. "Mian was not among them. Catou was at their head. They silently bowed. The schoolmaster as silently responded. The visitors huddled together.
They came a step nearer.
"Well," said Catou, "we come to see you."
"Sirs, welcome to Gran" Point" school.--Sidonie, Crebiche, Claude, rest in yo" seats."
"Mo" betteh you tu"n "em loose, I t"ink," said Catou amiably; "ain"t it?"
"I rather they stay," replied Bonaventure. All sat down. There was a sustained silence, and then Catou said with quiet abruptness:
"We dawn"t want no mo" school!"
"From what cause?"
""Tain"t no use."
"Sir--sirs, no use? "Tis every use! The schoolhouse? "tis mo" worth than the gole mine. Ah! sirs, tell me: what is gole without education?"
They confronted the riddle for a moment.
"Ed"cation want to change every thin"--rellroad--"migrash"n."
"Change every thing? Yes!--making every thing better! Sirs, where is that country that the people are sorry that the railroad and the schoolhouse have come?" Again the riddle went unanswered; but Catou sat as if in meditation, looking to one side, and presently said:
"I t"ink da.s.s all humbug, dat t.i.tchin" English. What want t.i.tch English faw?"
"Sir," cried Bonaventure, "in America you mus" be American! Three Acadians have been governor of Louisiana! What made them thus to become?" He leaned forward and smote his hands together. "What was it?
"Twas English education!"
The men were silent again. Catou pushed his feet out, and looked at his shoes, put on for the occasion. Presently--
"Ya.s.s," he said, in an unconvinced tone; "ya.s.s, da.s.s all right: but how we know you t.i.tch English? n.o.body can"t tell you t.i.tchin" him right or no."
"And yet--I do! And the time approach when you shall know! Sirs, I make to you a p"oposition. Time is pa.s.sing. It must be soon the State Sup"inten"ent Public Education visit this school. The school is any time ready. Since long time are we waiting. He shall come--he shall examine! The chil"run shall be ignorant this arrangement! Only these shall know--Claude, Sidonie, Crebiche; they will not disclose! And the total chil"run shall exhibit all their previous learning! And welcome the day, when the ad_ver_saries of education shall see those dear chil"run stan" up befo" the a.s.sem"led Gran" Point" spelling co"ectly words of one to eight syllable" and _reading from their readers_! And if one miss--if _one_--_one!_ miss, then let the school be shut and the schoolmaster banish-ed!"
It was so agreed. The debate did not cease at once, but it languished.
Catou thought he had made one strong point when he objected to education as conducive to idle habits; but when the schoolmaster hurled back the fact that communities the world over are industrious just in proportion as they are educated, he was done. He did not know, but when he confronted the a.s.sertion it looked so true that he could not doubt it. He only said:
"Well, anyhow, I t"ink "tain"t no use Crebiche go school no mo"." But when Bonaventure pleaded for the lad"s continuance, that too was agreed upon. The men departed.
"Crebiche," said the master, holding the boy"s hand at parting, "ah!
Crebiche, if thou become not a good scholar"--and read a promise in the boy"s swimming eyes.
"Claude, Claude, I am at yo" mercy now." But the honest gaze of Claude and the pressure of his small strong hand were a pledge. The grateful master turned to Sidonie, and again, as of old, no Sidonie was there.
CHAPTER IX.
READY.
Summer came. The song-birds were all back again, waking at dawn, and making the h.o.a.ry cypress wood merry with their carollings to the wives and younglings in the nests. Busy times. Foraging on the helpless enemy--earth-worm, gnat, grub, gra.s.shopper, weevil, sawyer, dragon-fly--from morning till night: watching for him; scratching for him; picking, pecking, boring for him; poising, swooping, darting for him; standing upside down and peering into c.h.i.n.ks for him; and all for the luxury--not of knowledge, but of love and marriage. The mocking-bird had no rest whatever. Back and forth from dawn to dark, back and forth across and across Grande Pointe clearing, always one way empty and the other way with his beak full of marketing; and then sitting up on an average half the night--sometimes the whole of it--at his own concert. And with military duties too; patrolling the earth below, a large part of it, and all the upper air; driving off the weasel, the black snake, the hawk, the jay, the buzzard, the crow, and all that brigand crew--busy times! All nature in glad, gay earnest.
Corn in blossom and rustling in the warm breeze; blackberries ripe; morning-glories under foot; the trumpet-flower flaring from its dense green vine high above on the naked, girdled tree; the cotton-plant blooming white, yellow, and red in the field beneath; honey a-making in the hives and hollow trees; b.u.t.terflies and bees lingering in the fields at sunset; the moth venturing forth at the first sign of dew; and Sidonie--a wild-rose tree.
Mark you, this was in Grande Pointe. I have seen the wild flower taken from its cool haunt in the forest, and planted in the glare of a city garden. Alas! the plight of it, poor outshone, wilting, odorless thing! And then I have seen it again in the forest; and pleasanter than to fill the lap with roses and tulips of the conservatory"s blood-royal it was to find it there, once more the simple queen of that green solitude.
So Sidonie. Acadian maidens are shy as herons. They always see you first. They see you first, silently rise, and are gone--from the galerie. They are more shy than violets. You would think they lived whole days with those dark, black-fringed eyes cast down; but--they see you first. The work about the house is well done where they are; there are apt to be flowers outside round about; while they themselves are as Paul desired to see the women in bishop Timothy"s church, "adorned in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety."
Flowers sprang plentifully where Sidonie dwelt. Her best homespun gown was her own weaving; the old dog lying on the galerie always thumped the floor with his tail and sank his obsequious head as that robe pa.s.sed; the fawn--that Claude had brought--would come trotting and press its head against it; all the small living things of the dooryard would follow it about; and if she stood by the calf-pen the calves would push each other for the nearest place, lay their cheeks upon the fence"s top, and roll their eyes--as many a youth of Grande Pointe would have done if he might. Chat-oue,--I fear I have omitted to mention that the father of Crebiche, like the father of Claude, had lost his wife before he was of age,--Chat-oue looked often over that fence.
When matters take that shape a girl _must_ quit school. And yet Sidonie, when after a short vacation the school resumed its sessions, resumed with it. Toutou, who had to admit now that his sister was even more grand for her age than he, was always available for protection.
There was no wonder that Sidonie wished to continue; Bonaventure explained why:
"So in_ter_esting is that McGuffey"s Third Reader!"
Those at home hesitated, and presently it was the first of October.
Now it was too late to withdraw; the examination was to take place.
The school"s opponents had expressed little impatience at the State Superintendent"s weary delay, but at length Catou asked, "Why dat man don"t nevva come!"
"The wherefore of his non-coming I ignore," said Bonaventure, with a look of old pain in his young face; "but I am ready, let him come or let him come not."
""Tain"t no use wait no longer," said Catou; "jis well have yo" lil show widout him."
"Sir, it shall be had! Revolution never go backwood!"
Much was the toil, many the anxieties, of the preparation. For Bonaventure at once determined to make the affair more than an examination. He set its date on the anniversary of the day when he had come to Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not be spared.
She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe to a star. A child, beholding the little star in the heavens, and wondering what it can be, sparkling diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it not to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender regret the school knew that no more thereafter was Sidonie to twinkle in its firmament.
"Learn yo" lessons hard, chil"run; if the State Sup"inten"ent, even at the last, you know"--Bonaventure could not believe that this important outpost had been forgotten.
CHAPTER X.
CONSPIRACY.
About this time a certain Mr. Tarbox--G. W. Tarbox--was travelling on horseback and touching from house to house of the great sugar-estates of the river "coast," seeing the country and people, and allowing the _elite_ to subscribe to the "Alb.u.m of Universal Information."
One Sunday, resting at College Point, he was led by curiosity to cultivate the acquaintance of three men who had come in from Grande Pointe. One of them was Chat-oue. He could understand them, and make them understand him, well enough to play _vingt et un_ with them the whole forenoon. He won all their money, drank with them, and took their five subscriptions, Chat-oue taking three--one for himself, one for Catou, and one for Crebiche. There was no delivery of goods there and then; they could not write; but they made their marks, and it was agreed that when Mr. Tarbox should come along a few days later to deliver the volumes, they were not to be received or paid for until with his scholarly aid the impostor who pretended to teach English education at Grande Pointe had been put to confusion and to flight.