Part 63 (1/2)

Rose, with her blue eyes dimmed with tears, looked at her husband. ”Do not be displeased. He will forgive in time; he has been a brother to me all the years that you have been away.”

Charlitte understood Agapit better than she did, and, shrugging his shoulders as if to beg her not to distress herself, he busied himself with staring at Bidiane, whose curiosity and bewilderment had culminated in a kind of stupefaction, in which she stood surrept.i.tiously pinching her arm in order to convince herself that this wonderful reappearance was real,--that the man sitting so quietly before her was actually the husband of her beloved Rose.

Charlitte's eyes twinkled mischievously, as he surveyed her. ”Were you ever s.h.i.+pwrecked, young lady?” he asked.

Bidiane shuddered, and then, with difficulty, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, ”No, never.”

”I was,” said Charlitte, unblus.h.i.+ngly, ”on a cannibal island. All the rest of the crew were eaten. I was the only one spared, and I was left shut up in a hut in a palm grove until six months ago, when a pa.s.sing s.h.i.+p took me off and brought me to New York.”

Bidiane, by means of a vigorous effort, was able to partly restore her mind to working order. Should she believe this man or not? She felt dimly that she did not like him, yet she could not resist Rose's touching, mute entreaty that she should bestow some recognition on the returned one. Therefore she said, confusedly, ”Those cannibals, where did they live?”

”In the South Sea Islands, 'way yonder,” and Charlitte's eyes seemed to twinkle into immense distance.

Rose was hanging her head. This recital pained her, and before Bidiane could again speak, she said, hurriedly, ”Do not mention it. Our Lord and the blessed Virgin have brought you home. Ah! how glad Father Duvair will be, and the village.”

”Good heavens!” said Charlitte. ”Do you think I care for the village. I have come to see you.”

For the first time Rose shrank from him, and Agapit brought down his eyes from the sky to glance keenly at him.

”Charlitte,” faltered Rose, ”there have been great changes since you went away. I--I--” and she hesitated, and looked at Bidiane.

Bidiane shrank behind a spruce-tree near which she was standing, and from its shelter looked out like a small red squirrel of an inquiring turn of mind. She felt that she was about to be banished, and in the present dazed state of her brain she dreaded to be alone.

Agapit's inexorable gaze sought her out, and, taking his pipe from his mouth, he sauntered over to her. ”Wilt thou run away, little one? We may have something to talk of not fit for thy tender ears.”

”Yes, I will,” she murmured, shocked into unexpected submission by the suppressed misery of his voice. ”I will be in the garden,” and she darted away.

The coast was now clear for any action the new arrival might choose to take. His first proceeding was to stare hard at Agapit, as if he wished that he, too, would take himself away; but this Agapit had no intention of doing, and he smoked on imperturbably, pretending not to see Charlitte's irritated glances, and keeping his own fixed on the azure depths of the sky.

”You mention changes,” said Charlitte, at last, turning to his wife.

”What changes?”

”You have just arrived, you have heard nothing,--and yet there would be little to hear about me, and Sleeping Water does not change much,--yet--”

Charlitte's cool glance wandered contemptuously over that part of the village nearest them. ”It is dull here,--as dull as the cannibal islands. I think moss would grow on me if I stayed.”

”But it would break my heart to leave it,” said Rose, desperately.

”I would take good care of you,” he said, jocularly. ”We would go to New Orleans. You would amuse yourself well. There are young men there,--plenty of them,--far smarter than the boys on the Bay.”

Rose was in an agony. With frantic eyes she devoured the cool, cynical face of her husband, then, with a low cry, she fell on her knees before him. ”Charlitte, Charlitte, I must confess.”

Charlitte at once became intensely interested, and forgot to watch Agapit, who, however, got up, and, savagely biting his pipe, strolled to a little distance.

”I have done wrong, my husband,” sobbed Rose.

Charlitte's eyes twinkled. Was he going to hear a confession of guilt that would make his own seem lighter?

”Forgive me, forgive me,” she moaned. ”My heart is glad that you have come back, yet, oh, my husband, I must tell you that it also cries out for another.”