Part 64 (2/2)
”Rose cannot love that demon,” exclaimed Bidiane.
”No, she does not love him, but she understands what you will understand when you are older,--the awful sacredness of the marriage tie. Think of one of the sentences that she read to us last Sunday from Thomas a Kempis: 'A pure heart penetrates heaven and h.e.l.l.' She has been in a h.e.l.l of suffering herself. I think when in it she wished her husband were dead. Her charity is therefore infinite towards him. Her sins of thought are equal in her chastened mind to his sins of body.”
”But you will not let her go away with him?”
”She will not wish to go, my treasure. She talks to him, and repent, repent, is, I am sure, the burden of her cry. You do not understand that under her gentleness is a stern resolve. She will be soft and kind, yet she would die rather than live with Charlitte or surrender her child to him.”
”But he may wish to stay here,” faltered Bidiane.
”He will not stay with her, _cherie_. She is no longer a girl, but a woman. She is not resentful, yet Charlitte has sinned deeply against her, and she remembers,--and now I must return to her. Charlitte has little delicacy of feeling, and may stay too long.”
”Wait a minute, Agapit,--is it her money that he is after?”
”No, little one, he is not mercenary. He would not take money from a woman. He also would not give her any unless she begged him to do so. I think that his visit is a mere caprice that, however, if humored, would degenerate into a carrying away of Rose,--and now _au revoir_.”
Bidiane, in her excited, overstrained condition of mind, bestowed one of her infrequent caresses on him, and Agapit, in mingled surprise and gratification, found a pair of loving arms flung around his neck, and heard a frantic whisper: ”If you ever do anything bad, I shall kill you; but you will not, for you are good.”
”Thank you. If I am faithless you may kill me,” and, reluctantly leaving her, he strode along the summit of the slight hill on which the house stood, until he caught sight of the tableau on the lawn.
Charlitte was just leaving his wife. His head was hanging on his breast; he looked ashamed of himself, and in haste to be gone, yet he paused and cast an occasional stealthy and regretful glance at Rose, who, with a face aglow with angelic forgiveness, seemed to be bestowing a parting benediction on him.
The next time that he lifted his head, his small, sharp eyes caught sight of Agapit, whereupon he immediately s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand from Rose, and hastily began to descend the hill towards the river.
Rose remained standing, and silently watched him. She did not look at Agapit,--her eyes were riveted on her husband. Something within her seemed to cry out as his feet carried him down the hill to the brink of the inexorable stream, where the bones of so many of his countrymen lay.
”_Adieu_, my husband,” she called, suddenly and pleadingly, ”thou wilt not forget.”
Charlitte paused just before he reached the bridge, and, little dreaming that his feet were never to cross its planks, he swept a glance over the peaceful Bay, the waiting boat, and the beautiful s.h.i.+p. Then he turned and waved his hand to his wife, and for one instant, they remembered afterwards, he put a finger on his breast, where lay a crucifix that she had just given him.
”_Adjheu_, Rose,” he called, loudly, ”I will remember.” At the same minute, however, that the smile of farewell lighted up his face, an oath slipped to his lips, and he stepped back from the bridge.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGER GOES AWAY WITHOUT HER CAPTAIN.
”Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended G.o.d. Sorrow, fear, and anxiety are properly not parts but adjuncts of repentance, yet they are too closely connected with it to be easily separated.”
--_Rambler._
Charlitte did not plan to show himself at all in Sleeping Water. He possessed a toughened conscience and moral fibre calculated to stand a considerably heavy strain, yet some blind instinct warned him that he had better seek no conversation with his friends of former days.
For this reason he had avoided the corner on his way to Rose's house, but he had not been able to keep secret the news of his arrival. Some women at the windows had recognized him, and a few loungers at the corner had strolled down to his boat, and had conversed with the sailors, who, although Norwegians, yet knew enough English to tell their captain's name, which, according to a custom prevailing among Acadiens, was simply the French name turned into English. Charlitte de Foret had become Charlitte Forrest.
Emmanuel de la Rive was terribly excited. He had just come from the station with the afternoon mail, and, on hearing that Charlitte was alive, and had actually arrived, he had immediately put himself at the head of a contingent of men, who proposed to go up to the cottage and ascertain the truth of the case. If it were so,--and it must be so,--what a wonderful, what an extraordinary occurrence! Sleeping Water had never known anything like this, and he jabbered steadily all the way up to the cottage.
Charlitte saw them coming,--this crowd of old friends, headed by the mail-driver in the red jacket, and he looked helplessly up at Rose.
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