Part 66 (1/2)
The children of the Society of Mary followed them, their white-clad and veiled figures cl.u.s.tering about the pale, pitying Virgin carried by two of their number. A banner waving beside her bore the prayer, ”_Marie, Priez Pour Nous_” (Mary, pray for us), and, as if responding to the pet.i.tion, her two hands were extended in blessing over them.
After the troop of snowy girls walked the black sisters in big bonnets and drooping shawls, and the brown sisters, a.s.sistants to the Eudists, who wore black veils with white flaps against their pale faces. Then came the priests, altar boys, and all the congregation. Until they left the church the organ played an accompaniment to their chanting. On the steps a young deacon put a cornet to his lips, and, taking up the last note of the organ, prolonged it into a vigorous leaders.h.i.+p of the singing:
Ave maris Stella, Dei mater alma, Atque semper virgo Felix coeli porta.
As the congregation sang, they crossed the road to the gates of the college grounds, and divided into two parts, the men, with heads uncovered, going one side, and the women on the other.
Above the gate-posts waved two flags, the union jack and the Acadien national flag,--a French tricolor, crossed by a blue stripe, and pierced with a yellow star.
Slowly and solemnly the long array of men and women pa.s.sed by the glebe-house and the white marble tomb of the good Abbe, whose life was given to the Acadiens of the Bay Saint-Mary. The hymns sung by the priests at the head of the procession floated back to the congregation in the rear, and at the moment when the singing was beginning to die away in the distance and the procession was winding out of sight behind the big college, two strangers suddenly appeared on the scene.
They were a slender, elegant man and a beautiful lad of a clear, healthy pallor of skin. The man, with a look of grave, quiet happiness on his handsome face, stepped from the carriage in which they were driving, fastened his horse to a near fence, and threw a longing glance after the disappearing procession.
”If we hurry, Narcisse,” he said, ”we shall be able to overtake them.”
The lad at once placed himself beside him, and together they went on their way towards the gates.
”Do you remember it?” asked the man, softly, as the boy lifted his hat when they pa.s.sed by the door of the silent, decorated church.
”Yes, perfectly,” he said, with a sweet, delicate intonation of voice.
”It seems as if my mother must be kneeling there.”
Vesper's brow and cheeks immediately became suffused with crimson. ”She is probably on ahead. We will find out. If she is not, we shall drive at once to Sleeping Water.”
They hurried on silently. The procession was now moving through another gate, this one opening on the point of land where are the ruins of the first church that the good Abbe built on the Bay.
Beside its crumbling ruins and the prostrate altarstones a new, fresh altar had been put up,--this one for temporary use. It was a veritable bower of green amid which bloomed many flowers, the fragile nurslings of the sisters in the adjacent convent.
Before this altar the priests and deacons knelt for an instant on colored rugs, then, while the people gathered closely around them, an Acadien Abbe from the neighboring province of New Brunswick ascended the steps of the altar, and, standing beside the embowered Virgin mother, special patron and protectress of his race, he delivered a fervent panegyric on the ancestors of the men and women before him.
While he recounted the struggles and trials of the early Acadiens, many of his hearers wept silently, but when this second good Abbe eloquently exhorted them not to linger too long on a sad past, but to gird themselves for a glorious future, to be constant to their race and to their religion, their faces cleared,--they were no longer a prey to mournful recollections.
Vesper, holding his hat in his hand, and closely accompanied by Narcisse, moved slowly nearer and nearer to a man who stood with his face half hidden by his black hat.
It was Agapit, and at Vesper's touch he started slightly, then, for he would not speak on this solemn occasion, he extended a hand that was grasped in the firm and enduring clasp of a friends.h.i.+p that would not again be broken.
Vesper would never forget that, amid all the bustle and confusion succeeding Charlitte's death, Agapit had found time to send him a cable message,--”Charlitte is dead.”
After communicating with Agapit, Vesper drew the boy nearer to him, and fell back a little. He was inexpressibly moved. A few years ago he would have called this ”perverted Christianity--Mariolatry.” Now, now--”O G.o.d!” he muttered, ”my pure saint, she has genuine piety,” and under wet lashes he stole a glance at one form, preeminently beautiful among the group of straight and slim young Acadien women beyond him. She was there,--his heart's delight, his treasure. She was his. The holy, rapt expression would give place to one more earthly, more self-conscious. He would not surrender her to heaven just yet,--but still, would it not be heaven on earth to be united to her?
She did not know that he was near. In complete oblivion of her surroundings she followed the singing of the Tantum Ergo. When the benediction was over, she lifted her bowed head, her eyes turned once towards the cemetery. She was thinking of Charlitte.
The sensitive Narcisse trembled. The excess of melancholy and sentimental feeling about him penetrated to his soul, and Vesper withdrew with him to the edge of the crowd. Then before the procession re-formed to march back to the church, they took up their station by the college gates.