She turned to him. "You remember what our doctor says when he looks over my little one,--that he is weak, and the air of the Bay is too strong for him?"
"The doctors in Boston also say it," responded Vesper. "Mrs. Nimmo has taken him to them."
Rose flashed a glance of inexpressible grat.i.tude at Vesper.
"You wish him to remain in Boston?" said Agapit.
"Yes, yes,--if they will be so kind, and if it is right that we allow that they keep him for a time."
Agapit reflected a minute. Could Rose endure the double blow of a separation from her child and from her lover? Yes, he knew her well enough to understand that, although her mother heart and her woman"s heart would be torn, she would, after the first sharp pang was over, cheerfully endure any torture in order to contribute to the welfare of the two beings that she loved best on earth. Narcisse would be benefited physically by the separation, Vesper would be benefited mentally. He knew, in addition, that a haunting dread of Charlitte possessed her.
Although he was a fickle, unfaithful man, the paternal instinct might some day awake in him, and he would return and demand his child. Agapit would not himself be surprised to see him reappear at any time in Sleeping Water, therefore he said, shortly, "It is a good plan."
"We can at least try it," said Vesper. "I will report how it works."
"And while he is with you, you will have some instruction in his own religion given him?" said Rose, timidly.
"You need not mention that," said Vesper; "it goes without saying."
Rose took a crucifix from her breast and handed it to him. "You will give him that from his mother," she said, with trembling lips.
Vesper held it in his hand for a minute, then he silently put it in his pocket.
There was a long pause, broken at last by Agapit, who said, "Will you get the breakfast, Rose? Mr. Nimmo a.s.sured me that he wished to start at once. Is it not so?"
"Yes," said Vesper, shortly.
Rose got up and went to the pantry.
"Will you put the things on this table?" said Vesper. "And will not you and Agapit have breakfast with me?"
Rose nodded her head, and, with a breaking heart, she went to and fro, her feet touching the hardwood floor and the rugs as noiselessly as if there had been a death in the house.
The two young men sat and stared at the stove or out the windows. Agapit was anathematizing Vesper for returning to settle a matter that could have been arranged by writing, and Vesper was alternately in a dumb fury with Agapit for not leaving him alone with Rose, or in a state of extravagant laudation because he did not do so. What a watch-dog he was,--what a sure guardian to leave over his beautiful sweetheart!
Dispirited and without appet.i.te, the three at last a.s.sembled around the table. Rose choked over every morsel that she ate, until, unable longer to endure the trial, she left the table, and contented herself with waiting upon them.
Vesper was famished, having eaten so little the evening before, yet he turned away from the toast and coffee and chops that Rose set before him.
"I will go now; Agapit, come to the gate with me. I want to speak to you."
Rose started violently. It seemed to her that her whole agitated, overwrought soul had gone out to her lover in a shriek of despair, yet she had not uttered a sound.
Vesper could not endure the agony of her eyes. "Rose," he said, stretching out his hands to her, "will you do as I wish?"
"No," said Agapit, stepping between them.
"Rose," said Vesper, caressingly, "shall I go to see Charlitte?"
"Yes, yes," she moaned, desperately, and sinking to a chair, she dropped her swimming head on the table.
"No," said Agapit, again, "you shall not break G.o.d"s laws. Rose is married to Charlitte."
Vesper tried to pa.s.s him, to a.s.sist Rose, who was half fainting, but Agapit"s burly form was immovable, and the furious young American lifted his arm to strike him.
"_Nani_," said Agapit, tossing his arm in the air, "two blows from no man for me," and he promptly knocked Vesper down.
Rose, shocked and terrified, instantly recovered. She ran to her fallen hero, bent over him with fond and distracted words, and when he struggled to his feet, and with a red and furious face would have flown at Agapit, she restrained him, by clinging to his arm.
"Dear fools," said Agapit, "I would have saved you this humbling, but you would not listen. It is now time to part. The doctor comes up the road."
Vesper made a superhuman effort at self-control, and pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, to clear away the mists of pa.s.sion. Then he looked through the kitchen window. The doctor was indeed driving up to the inn.
"Good-by, Rose," he exclaimed, "and do you, Agapit," and he surveyed the Acadien in bitter resentment, "treat Charlitte as you have treated me, if he comes for her."
Even in her despair Rose reflected that they were parting in anger.
"Vesper, Vesper,--most darling of men," she cried, wildly, detaining him, "shake hands, at least."
"I will not," he muttered, then he gently put her from him, and flung himself from the room.
"One does not forget those things," said Agapit, gloomily, and he followed her out-of-doors.
Vesper, staggering so that he could hardly mount his wheel, was just about to leave the yard. Rose clung to the doorpost, and watched him; then she ran to the gate.
Down, down the Bay he went; farther, farther, always from her. First the two shining wheels disappeared, then his straight blue back, then the curly head with the little cap. She had lost him,--perhaps forever; and this time she fainted in earnest, and Agapit carried her to the kitchen, where the English doctor, who had been the one to attend Vesper, stood, with a shrewd and pitying look on his weather-beaten face.
BOOK II.
BIDIANE
CHAPTER I.
A NEW ARRIVAL AT SLEEPING WATER.
"But swift or slow the days will pa.s.s, The longest night will have a morn, And to each day is duly born A night from Time"s inverted gla.s.s."
--_Aminta._
Five years have pa.s.sed 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.