"Well, then," said Agapit, sullenly, "I surrender. Tell you this stranger; let him have part in an unusual shame of our people."
"I tell him!" and she drew back, hurt and startled. "No, Agapit, that confession comes better from thee. Adieu, adieu," and she turned, in a paroxysm of tenderness, to Vesper, and in her anguish burst into her native language. "After this minute, I must put thee far from my thoughts,--thou, so good, so kind, that I had hoped to walk with through life. But purgatory does not last forever; the blessed saints also suffered. After we die, perhaps--" and she buried her face in her hands, and wept violently.
"But do not thou remember," she said at last, checking her tears. "Go out into the world and find another, better wife. I release thee, go, go--"
Vesper said nothing, but he gave Agapit a terrible glance, and that young man, although biting his lip and scowling fiercely, discreetly stepped into the hall.
For half a minute Rose lay unresistingly in Vesper"s arms, then she gently forced him from the room, and with a low and bitter cry, "For this I must atone," she opened her prayer-book, and again dropped on her knees.
Once more the two young men found themselves in the smoking-room.
"Now, what is it?" asked Vesper, sternly.
Agapit hung his head. In accents of deepest shame he murmured, "Charlitte yet lives."
"Charlitte--what, Rose"s husband?"
A miserable nod from Agapit answered his question.
"It is rumor," stammered Vesper; "it cannot be. You said that he was dead."
"He has been seen,--the miserable man lives with another woman."
Vesper had received the worst blow of his life, yet his black eyes fixed themselves steadily on Agapit"s face. "What proof have you?"
Agapit stumbled through some brief sentences. "An Acadien--Michel Amireau--came home to die. He was a sailor. He had seen Charlitte in New Orleans. He had changed his name, yet Michel knew him, and went to the uncle of Rose, on the Bayou Vermilion. The uncle promised to watch him.
That is why he is so kind to Rose, this good uncle, and sends her so much. But Charlitte goes no more to sea, but lives with this woman. He is happy; such a devil should die."
Vesper was stunned and bewildered, yet his mind had never worked more clearly. "Does any other person know?" he asked, sharply.
"No one; Michel would not tell, and he is dead."
Vesper leaned on a chair-back, and convulsively clasped his fingers until every drop of blood seemed to have left them. "Why did he leave Rose?"
"Who can tell?" said Agapit, drearily. "Rose is beautiful; this other woman unbeautiful and older, much older. But Charlitte was always gross like a pig,--but good-natured. Rose was too fine, too spiritual. She smiled at him, she did not drink, nor dance, nor laugh loudly. These are the women he likes."
"How old is he?"
"Not old,--fifty, perhaps. If our Lord would only let him die! But those men live forever. He is strong, very strong."
"Would Rose consent to a divorce?"
"A divorce! _Mon Dieu_, she is a good Catholic."
Vesper sank into a chair and dropped his head on his hand. Hot, rebellious thoughts leaped into his heart. Yesterday he had been so happy; to-day--
"My friend," said Agapit, softly, "do not give way."
His words stung Vesper as if they had been an insult.
"I am not giving way," he said, fiercely. "I am trying to find a way out of this diabolical sc.r.a.pe."
"But surely there is only one road to follow."
Vesper said nothing, but his eyes were blazing, and Agapit recoiled from him with a look of terror.
"You surely would not influence one who loves you to do anything wrong?"
"Rose is mine," said Vesper, grimly.
"But she is married to Charlitte."
"To a dastardly villain,--she must separate from him."
"But she cannot."
"She will if I ask her," and Vesper started up, as if he were about to seek her.
"Stop but an instant," and Agapit pressed both hands to his forehead with a gesture of bewilderment. "Let me say over some things first to you. Think of what you have done here,--you, so quiet, so strong,--so pretending not to be good, and yet very good. You have led Rose as a grown one leads a child. Before you came I did not revere her as I do at present. She is now so careful, she will not speak even the least of untruths; she wishes to improve herself,--to be more fitted for the company of the blessed in heaven."
Vesper made some inarticulate sound in his throat, and Agapit went on hurriedly. "Women are weak, men are imperious; she may, perhaps, do anything you say, but is it not well to think over exactly what one would tell her? She is in trouble now, but soon she will recover and look about her. She will see all the world equally so. There are good priests with sore hearts, also holy women, but they serve G.o.d. All the world cannot marry. Marriage, what is it?--a little living together,--a separation. There is also a holy union of hearts. We can live for G.o.d, you, and I, and Rose, but for a time is it not best that we do not see each other?"
Again Vesper did not reply except by a convulsive movement of his shoulders, and an impatient drumming on the table with his fingers.
"Dear young man, whom I so much admire," said Agapit, leaning across towards him, "I have confidence in you. You, who think so much of the honor of your race,--you who shielded the name of your ancestor lest dishonor should come on it, I trust you fully. You will, some day when it seems good to you, find out this child who has cast off her race; and now go,--the door is open, seek Rose if you will. You will say nothing unworthy to her. You know love, the greatest of things, but you also know duty, the sublimest."
His voice died away, and Vesper still preserved a dogged silence. At last, however, his struggle with himself was over, and in a harsh, rough voice, utterly unlike his usual one, he looked up and said, "Have we time to catch the train?"
"By driving fast," said Agapit, mildly, "we may. Possibly the train is late also."
"Make haste then," said Vesper, and he hurried to his mother, whose voice he heard in the hall.
Agapit fairly ran to the stable, and as he ran he muttered, "We are all very young,--the old ones say that trouble cuts into the hearts of youth. Let us pray our Lord for old age."
CHAPTER XVIII.
NARCISSE GOES IN SEARCH OF THE ENGLISHMAN.
"L"homme s"agite, Dieu le mene."
Mrs. Nimmo was a very unhappy woman. She had never before had a trouble equal to this trouble, and, as she sat at the long window in the bedroom of her absent son, she drearily felt that it was eating the heart and spirit out of her.
Vesper was away, and she had refused to share his unhappy wanderings, for she knew that he did not wish her to do so. Very calmly and coldly he had told her that his engagement to Rose a Charlitte was over. He a.s.signed no cause for it, and Mrs. Nimmo, in her desperation, earnestly wished that he had never heard of the Acadiens, that Rose a Charlitte had never been born, and that the little peninsula of Nova Scotia had never been traced on the surface of the globe.