AN INTERRUPTED Ma.s.s.
"Here is our dearest theme where skies are blue and brightest, To sing a single song in places that love it best; Freighting the happy breeze when snowy clouds are lightest; Making a song to cease not when the singer is dumb in rest."
J. F. H.
Away up the Bay, past Sleeping Water and Church Point, past historic Piau"s Isle and Belliveau"s Cove and the lovely Sissiboo River, past Weymouth and the Barrens, and other villages stretched out along this highroad, between Yarmouth and Digby, is Bleury,--beautiful Bleury, which is the final outpost in the long-extended line of Acadien villages. Beyond this, the Bay--what there is of it, for it soon ends this side of Digby--is English.
But beautiful Bleury, which rejoices in a high bluff, a richly wooded sh.o.r.e, swelling hills, and an altogether firmer, bolder outlook than flat Sleeping Water, is not wholly French. Some of its inhabitants are English. Here the English tide meets the French tide, and, swelling up the Bay and back in the woods, they overrun the land, and form curious contrasts and results, unknown and unfelt in the purely Acadien districts nearer the sea.
In Bleury there is one schoolhouse common to both races, and on a certain afternoon, three weeks after little Narcisse"s adventurous voyage in search of the Englishman, the children were tumultuously pouring out from it. Instinctively they formed themselves into four distinct groups. The groups at last resolved themselves into four processions, two going up the road, two down. The French children took one side of the road, the English the other, and each procession kept severely to its own place.
Heading the rows of English children who went up the Bay was a red-haired girl of some twelve summers, whose fiery head gleamed like a torch, held at the head of the procession. As far as the coloring of her skin was concerned, and the exquisite shading of her velvety brown eyes, and the shape of her slightly upturned nose, she might have been English. But her eager gestures, her vivacity, her swiftness and lightness of manner, marked her as a stranger and an alien among the English children by whom she was surrounded.
This was Bidiane LeNoir, Agapit"s little renegade, and just now she was highly indignant over a matter of offended pride. A French girl had taken a place above her in a cla.s.s, and also, secure in the fortress of the schoolroom, had made a detestable face at her.
"I hate them,--those Frenchies," she cried, casting a glance of defiance at the Acadien children meekly filing along beyond her. "I sha"n"t walk beside "em. Go on, you ----," and she added an offensive epithet.
The dark-faced, shy Acadiens trotted soberly on, swinging their books and lunch-baskets in their hands. They would not go out of their way to seek a quarrel.
"Run," said Bidiane, imperiously.
The little Acadiens would not run, they preferred to walk, and Bidiane furiously called to her adherents, "Let"s sing ma.s.s."
This was the deepest insult that could be offered to the children across the road. Sometimes in their childish quarrels ap.r.o.ns and jackets were torn, and faces were slapped, but no bodily injury ever equalled in indignity that put upon the Catholic children when their religion was ridiculed.
However, they did not retaliate, but their faces became gloomy, and they immediately quickened their steps.
"Holler louder," Bidiane exhorted her followers, and she broke into a howling "_Pax vobisc.u.m_," while a boy at her elbow groaned, "_Et c.u.m spiritu tuo_," and the remainder of the children screamed in an irreverent chorus, that ran all up and down the scale, "_Gloria tibi Domine_."
The Acadien children fled now, some of them with fingers in their ears, others casting bewildered looks of horror, as if expecting to see the earth open and swallow up their sacrilegious tormentors, who stood shrieking with delight at the success of their efforts to rid themselves of their undesired companions.
"Shut up," said Bidiane, suddenly, and at once the laughter was stilled.
There was a stranger in their midst. He had come gliding among them on one of the bright shining wheels that went up and down the Bay in such large numbers. Before Bidiane had spoken he had dismounted, and his quick eye was surveying them with a glance like lightning.
The children stared silently at him. Ridicule cuts sharply into the heart of a child, and a sound whipping inflicted on every girl and boy present would not have impressed on them the burden of their iniquity as did the fine sarcasm and disdainful amus.e.m.e.nt with which this handsome stranger regarded them.
One by one they dropped away, and Bidiane only remained rooted to the spot by some magic incomprehensible to her.
"Your name is Bidiane LeNoir," he said, quietly.
"It ain"t," she said, doggedly; "it"s Biddy Ann Black."
"Really,--and there are no LeNoirs about here, nor Corbineaus?"
"Down the Bay are LeNoirs and Corbineaus," said the little girl, defiantly; then she burst out with a question, "You ain"t the Englishman from Boston?"
"I am."
"Gosh!" she said, in profound astonishment; then she lowered her eyes, and traced a serpent in the dust with her great toe. All up and down the Bay had flashed the news of this wonderful stranger who had come to Sleeping Water in quest of an heir or heiress to some vast fortune. The heir had been found in the person of herself,--small, red-haired Biddy Ann Black, and it had been firmly believed among her fellow playmates that at any moment the prince might appear in a golden chariot and whisk her away with him to realms of bliss, where she would live in a gorgeous palace and eat cakes and sweetmeats all day long, sailing at intervals in a boat of her own over a bay of transcendent loveliness, in which she would catch codfish as big as whales. This story had been believed until very recently, when it had somewhat died away by reason of the non-appearance of the prince.
Now he had arrived, and Bidiane"s untrained mind and her little wild beast heart were in a tumult. She felt that he did not approve of her, and she loved and hated him in a breath. He was smooth, and dignified, and sleek, like a priest. He was dark, too, like the French people, and she scowled fiercely. He would see that her cotton gown was soiled; why had she not worn a clean one to-day, and also put on her shoes? Would he really want her to go away with him? She would not do so; and a lump arose in her throat, and with a pa.s.sionate emotion that she did not understand she gazed across the Bay towards the purple hills of Digby Neck.
Vesper, perfectly aware of what was pa.s.sing in her mind, waited for her to recover herself. "I would like to see your uncle and aunt," he said, at last. "Will you take me to them?"
She responded by a gesture in the affirmative, and, still with eyes bent obstinately on the ground, led the way towards a low brown house situated in a hollow between two hills, and surrounded by a grove of tall French poplars, whose ancestors had been nourished by the sweet waters of the Seine.
Vesper"s time was limited, and he was anxious to gain the confidence of the little maid, if possible, but she would not talk to him.
"Do you like cocoanuts?" he said, presently, on seeing in the distance a negro approaching, with a load of this foreign fruit, that he had probably obtained from some schooner.
"You bet," said Bidiane, briefly.
Vesper stopped the negro, and bought as many nuts at five cents apiece as he and Bidiane could carry. Then, trying to make her smile by balancing one on the saddle of his wheel, he walked slowly beside her.
Bidiane solemnly watched him. She would not talk, she would not smile, but she cheerfully dropped her load when one of his cocoanuts rolled in the ditch, and, at the expense of a scratched face from an inquisitive rose-bush that bent over to see what she was doing, she restored it to him.
"Your cheek is bleeding," said Vesper.
"No odds," she remarked, with Indian-like fort.i.tude, and she preceded him into a gra.s.sy dooryard, that was pervaded by a powerful smell of frying doughnuts.
Mirabelle Marie, her fat, good-natured young aunt, stood in the kitchen doorway with a fork in her hand, and seeing that the stranger was English, she beamed a joyous, hearty welcome on him.
"Good day, sir; you"ll stop to supper? That"s right. Shove your wheel ag"in that fence, and come right in. Biddy, git the creamer from the well and give the genl"man a gla.s.s of milk. You won"t?--All right, sir, walk into the settin"-room. What! you"d rather set under the trees? All right. My man"s up in the barn, fussin" with a sick cow that"s lost her cud. He"s puttin" a rind of bacon on her horns. What d"ye say, Biddy?"--this latter in an undertone to the little girl, who was pulling at her dress. "This is the Englishman from Boston--_sakerje_!" and, dropping her fork, she wiped her hands on her dress and darted out to offer Vesper still more effusive expressions of hospitality.
He smiled amiably on her, and presently she returned to the kitchen, silly and distracted in appearance, and telling Bidiane that she felt like a hen with her head cut off. The stranger who was to do so much for them had come. She could have prostrated herself in the dust before him.
"Scoot, Biddy, scoot," she exclaimed; "borry meat of some kind. Go to the Maxwells or to the Whites. Tell "em he"s come, and we"ve got nothin"
but fish and salt pork, and they know the English hate that like pizen.
And git a junk of b.u.t.ter with only a mite of salt in it. Mine"s salted heavy for the market. And skip to the store and ask "em to score us for a pound of cheese and some fancy crackers."
Bidiane ran away, and, as she ran, her ill humor left her, and she felt herself to be a very important personage. Vivaciously and swiftly she exclaimed, "He"s come!" to several children whom she met, and with a keen and exquisite sense of pleasure looked back to see them standing open-mouthed in the road, impressed in a most gratifying way by the news communicated.
In the meantime Mirabelle Marie began to make frantic and ludicrous preparations to set a superfine meal before the stranger, who was now ent.i.tled to a double share of honor. In her extreme haste everything went wrong. She upset her pot of lard; the cat and dog got at her plate of doughnuts, and stole half of them; the hot biscuits that she hastily mixed burnt to a cinder, and the jar of preserved berries that she opened proved to have been employing their leisure time in the cellar by fermenting most viciously.
However, she did not lose her temper, and, as she was not a woman to be cast down by trifles, she seated herself in a rocking-chair, fanned herself vigorously with her ap.r.o.n, and laughed spasmodically.
Bidiane found her there on her return. The little girl possessed a keener sense of propriety than her careless relative; she was also more moody and variable, and immediately falling into a rage, she conveyed some plain truths to Mirabelle Marie, in inelegant language.
The woman continued to laugh, and to stare through the window at Vesper, who sat motionless under the trees. One arm was thrown over the back of his seat, and his handsome head was turned away from the house.
"Poor calf," said Mirabelle Marie, "he looks down the Bay; he is a very divil for good looks. Rose a Charlitte is one big fool."
"We shall have only slops for supper," said Bidiane, in a fury, and swearing under her breath at her.
Mirabelle Marie at this bestirred herself, and tried to evolve a meal from the ruin of her hopes, and the fresh supply of food that her niece had obtained.
The little girl meantime found a clean cloth, and spread it on the table. She carefully arranged on it their heavy white dishes and substantial knives and spoons. Then she blew a horn, which made Claude a Sucre, her strapping great uncle, suddenly loom against the horizon, in the direction of the barn.
He came to the house, and was about to ask a question, but closed his mouth when he saw the stranger in the yard.