Part 65 (2/2)
The men were all standing around him weeping. They were not ashamed of their tears,--these kind-hearted, gentle Acadiens. Such a calamity had seldom befallen their village. It was equal to the sad wrecks of winter.
Rose's overwrought brain gave way as she gazed, and she fell senseless by Charlitte's dead body.
Agapit carried her to the house, and laid her in her bed in the room that she was not to leave for many days.
”This is an awful time,” said Celina, sobbing bitterly, and addressing the mute and terrified Bidiane. ”Let us pray for the souls of those poor men who died without the last sacraments.”
”Let us pray rather for the soul of one who repented on his death-bed,”
muttered Agapit, staring with white lips at the men who were carrying the body of Charlitte into one of the lower rooms of the house.
CHAPTER XVI.
AN ACADIEN FESTIVAL.
”Vive Jesus!
Vive Jesus!
Avec la croix, son cher partage.
Vive Jesus!
Dans les coeurs de tous les elus!
Portons la croix.
Sans choix, sans ennui, sans murmure, Portons la croix!
Quoique tres amere et tres dure, Malgre les sens et la nature, Portons la croix!”
--_Acadien Song._
Charlitte had been in his grave for nearly two years. He slept peacefully in the little green cemetery hard by the white church where a slender, sorrowful woman came twice every week to hear a priest repeat ma.s.ses for the repose of his soul.
He slept on and gave no sign, and his countrymen came and went above him, reflecting occasionally on their own end, but mostly, after the manner of all men, allowing their thoughts to linger rather on matters pertaining to time than on those of eternity.
One fifteenth of August--the day consecrated by Acadiens all over Canada to the memory of their forefathers--had come and gone, and another had arrived.
This day was one of heavenly peace and calm. The sky was faintly, exquisitely blue, and so placid was the Bay that the occupants of the boats crossing from Digby Neck to some of the churches in Frenchtown were forced to take in their sails, and apply themselves to their oars.
Since early morning the roads of the parish in which Sleeping Water is situated had been black with people, and now at ten o'clock some two thousand Acadiens were a.s.sembled about the doors of the old church at Pointe a l'Eglise.
There was no talking, no laughing. In unbroken silence they waited for the sound of the bell, and when it came they flocked into the church, packing it full, and overflowing out to the broad flight of steps, where they knelt in rows and tried to obtain glimpses over each other's shoulders of the blue and white decorations inside, and of the altar ablaze with lights.
The priests from the college and glebe-house, robed in handsome vestments, filed out from the vestry, and, quietly approaching the silken banners standing against the low gallery, handed them to representatives of different societies connected with the church.
The children of the Guardian Angel received the picture of their patron saint, and, gathering around it, fluttered soberly out to the open air through the narrow lane left among the kneeling wors.h.i.+ppers.
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