Part 7 (1/2)
”I will not,” he said, sullenly.
Mrs. Rose a Charlitte's temper gave way. ”Pack up thy clothes,” she said, angrily; ”there is no living with thee,--thou art so disagreeable.
Take thy old trash, thy papers so old and dusty, and leave my house.
Thou wilt make me starve,--my child will not be educated. Go,--I cast thee off.”
Agapit became calm as he contemplated her wrathful, beautiful face.
”Thou art like all women,” he said, composedly, ”a little excitable at times. I am a man, therefore I understand thee,” and pus.h.i.+ng back his coat he stuck his thumbs in the armholes and majestically resumed his walk about the room.
”Come now, cease thy crying,” he went on, uneasily, after a time, when Rose, who had thrown herself into a chair and had covered her face with her hands, did not look at him. ”I shall not leave thee, Rose.”
”He is very distinguished,” she sobbed, ”very polite, and his finger nails are as white as thy bedspread. He is quite a gentleman; why does he write for those wicked journals?”
”Thou hast been talking to him, Rose,” said her cousin, suspiciously, stopping short and fixing her with a fiery glance; ”with thy usual innocence thou hast told him all that thou dost know and ever wilt know.”
Rose shuddered, and withdrew her hands from her eyes. ”I told him nothing, not a word.”
”Thou didst not tell him of thy wish to educate thy boy, of thy two hundred dollars in the bank, of thy husband, who teased thy stepmother till she married thee to him, nor of me, for example?” and his voice rose excitedly.
His cousin was quite composed now. ”I told him nothing,” she repeated, firmly.
”If thou didst do so,” he continued, threateningly, ”it will all come out in a newspaper,--'Melting Innocence of an Acadien Landlady. She Tells a Reporter in Five Minutes the Story of Her Life.'”
”It will not appear,” said Mrs. Rose, hastily. ”He is a worthy young man, and handsome, too. There is not on the Bay a handsomer young man. I will ask him to write nothing, and he will listen to me.”
”Oh, thou false one,” cried the young man, half in vexation, half in perplexity. ”I wish that thou wert a child,--I would shake thee till thy teeth chattered!”
Mrs. Rose ran from the room. ”He is a pig, an imbecile, and he terrifies me so that I tell what is not true. What will Father Duvair say to me? I will rise at six to-morrow, and go to confession.”
Vesper went early to bed that night, and slept soundly until early the next morning, when he opened his eyes to a vision of hazy green fields, a wide sheet of tremulous water, and a quiet, damp road, bordered by silent houses. He sprang from his bed, and went to the open window. The sun was just coming from behind a bank of clouds. He watched the Bay lighting up under its rays, the green fields brightening, the moisture evaporating; then hastily throwing on his clothes, he went down-stairs, unlatched the front door, and hurried across the road into a hay-field, where the newly cut gra.s.s, dripping with moisture, wet his slippered but stockingless feet.
Down by the rocks he saw a small bathing-house. He slipped off his clothes, and, clad only in a thin bathing-suit, stood s.h.i.+vering for an instant at the edge of the water. ”It will be frightfully cold,” he muttered. ”Dare I--yes, I do,” and he plunged boldly into the deliciously salt waves, and swam to and fro, until he was glowing from head to foot.
As he was hurrying up to the inn, a few minutes later, he saw, coming down the road, a small two-wheeled cart, in which was seated Mrs. Rose a Charlitte. She was driving a white pony, and she sat demure, charming, with an air of penitence about her, and wearing the mourning garb of Acadien women,--a plain black dress, a black shawl, and a black silk handkerchief, drawn hood-wise over her flaxen mop of hair and tied under her chin.
The young man surveyed her approvingly. She seemed to belong naturally to the cool, sweet dampness of the morning, and he guessed correctly that she had been to early ma.s.s in the white church whose steeple he could see in the distance. He was amused with the shy, embarra.s.sed ”_Bon jour_” (good morning) that she gave him as she pa.s.sed, and murmuring, ”The shadow of _The Evening News_ is still upon her,” he went to his room, and made his toilet for breakfast.
An hour later, a loud bell rang through the house, and Vesper, in making his way to the dining-room, met a reserved, sulky-faced young man in the hall, who bowed coolly and stepped aside for him to pa.s.s.
”H'm, Agapit LeNoir,” reflected Vesper, darting a critical glance at him. ”The Acadien who was to unbosom himself to me. He does not look as if he would enjoy the process,” and he took his seat at the table, where Mrs. Rose a Charlitte, grown strangely quiet, served his breakfast in an almost unbroken silence.
Vesper thoughtfully poured some of the thick yellow cream on his porridge, and enjoyably dallied over it, but when his landlady would have set before him a dish of smoking hot potatoes and beefsteak, he said, ”I do not care for anything further.”
Rose a Charlitte drew back in undisguised concern. ”But you have eaten nothing. Agapit has taken twice as much as this.”
”That is the young man I met just now?”
”Yes, he is my cousin; very kind to me. His parents are dead, and he was brought up by my stepmother. He is so clever, so clever! It is truly strange what he knows. His uncle, who was a priest, left him many papers, and all day, when Agapit does not work, he sits and writes or reads. Some day he will be a learned man--”
Rose paused abruptly. In her regret at the stranger's want of appet.i.te she was forgetting that she had resolved to have no further conversation with him, and in sudden confusion she made the excuse that she wished to see her child, and melted away like a snowflake, in the direction of the kitchen, where Vesper had just heard Narcisse's sweet voice asking permission to talk to the Englishman from Boston.