“F-l-o, flo, warr-de-warr-da,—Florida!”
A smile broke from the visitor’s face unbidden, but—
“Right! my chile! co’ect, Toutou!” cried Bonaventure, running and patting the little hero on the back and head by turns. “Sir, let us”—He stopped short. The eyes of the house were on Chat-oué. He had risen to his feet and made a gesture for the visitor’s attention. As the stranger looked at him he asked:—
“He spell dat las word r-i-i-ight?” But the visitor with quiet gravity said, “Yes, that was all right;”and a companion pulled the Raccoon down into his seat again. Bonaventure resumed.
“Sir, let us not exhoss the time with spelling! You shall now hear them read.”
The bell taps, the class retires; again, and the reading class is up. They are the larger girls and boys. But before they begin the master has a word for their fathers and mothers.
“Friends and fellow-citizens of Gran’ Point’, think not at the suppi-zing goodness of yo’ chil’run’ reading. ’Tis to this branch has been given the largest attention and most assidu’ty, so thus to comprise puffection in the English tongue, whether speaking aw otherwise.” He turned to the stranger beside him. “I am not satisfied whilst the slightest accent of French is remaining. But you shall judge if they read not as if in their own vernaculary. And you shall choose the piece!”
The visitor waived the privilege, but Bonaventure gently insisted, and he selected Jane Taylor’s little poem, “The Violet,” glancing across at Sidonie as he himself read out the first two lines:—
“Down in a green and shady bedA modest violet grew.”
“Down in a green and shady bedA modest violet grew.”
Bonaventure proclaimed the title and page and said:—
“Claude, p’oceed!” And Claude read:—
“’Dthee vy—ee-lit. Dah-oon-a hin hay grin and-a shad-y bade—A mo-dest-a vy-ee-lit grŏo—Hits-a stallk whoz baint hit hawngg-a hits hade—Has hif-a too hah-ed-a frawm ve-ŏo. Hand h-yet it whoz a lo-vlyflow’r—Hits-a co-lors-a brah-eet and fair-a—Heet maheet-a hāve grass-ed a rozzy bow’r—Heenstade-a hof hah-ee-dingg there”—
“Stop!” cried Bonaventure; “stop! You pronounciate’ a word faultily!” He turned to the visitor. “I call not that a miss; but we must inoculate the idea of puffection. So soon the sly-y-test misp’onounciating I pass to the next.” He turned again: “Next!” And a black-haired girl began in a higher key, and very slowly:—
“Yate there eet whoz cawntaint-a too bulloom—Heen mo-dest-a teent z-arrayed—And there-a heet sprade-a heets swit pre-fume-a—Whit-hin thee sy-y-lent-a shade”—
“Stop! Not that you mistook, but—’tis enough. Sir, will you give yourself the pain to tell—not for my sake or reputation, but to the encouragement of the chil’run, and devoid flattery—what is yo’ opinion of that specimen of reading? Not t’oubling you, but, in two or three word’ only—if you will give yo’self the pain”—
“Why, certainly; I think it is—I can hardly find words—it’s remarkable.” Bonaventure started with joy.
“Chil’run, do you hear? Remawkable! But do you not detect no slight—no small faultiness of p’onounciating?”
“No, not the slightest; I smile, but I was thinking of something else.” The visitor’s eye, wandering a trifle, caught Chat-oué giving him one black look that removed his disposition to smile, yet he insisted, “No,sir; I can truthfully say I never heard such a pronunciation.” The audience drank his words.
“Sir,” cried the glad preceptor, “’tis toil have p’oduce it! Toil of the teacher, industry of the chil’run! But it has p’oduce’beside! Sir, look—that school! Since one year commencing the A B C—and now spelling word’ of eight syllabl’!”
“Notthisschool?”
“Sir, you shall see—or, more p’operly, hear. First spelling!”
“Yes,” said the stranger, seeing Sidonie rise, “I’d like to hear that class;” and felt Chat-oué looking at him again.
The bell tapped, and they came forth to battle. There was the line, there was the leader. The great juncture of the day was on him. Was not here the State’s official eye? Did not victory hover overhead? His reserve, the darling regiment, the flower of his army, was dressing for the final charge. There was Claude. Next him, Sidonie!—and Étienne, and Madelaine, Henri and Marcelline,—all waiting for the word—the words—of eight syllables! Supreme moment! Would any betray? Banish the thought! Would any fail?
He waited an instant while two or three mothersbore out great armfuls of slumbering or fretting infancy and a number of young men sank down into the vacated chairs. Then he stepped down from the platform, drew back four or five yards from the class, opened the spelling-book, scanned the first word, closed the book with his finger at the place, lifted it high above his head, and cried:
“Claude! Claude, my brave scholar, always perfect, ah you ready?” He gave the little book a half whirl round, and dashed forward toward the chosen scholar, crying as he came:
“In-e-rad-i-ca-bility!”
Claude’s face suddenly set in a stony vacancy, and with his eyes staring straight before him he responded:
“I-n, in-, e, inerad-, r-a-d, rad-, inerad-, ineraddy-, ineradica-, c-a, ca, ineradica-, ineradicabili-, b-i-elly-billy, ineradicabili-, ineradicabili-, t-y, ty, ineradicability.”
“Right! Claude, my boy! my always good scholar, right!” The master drew back to his starting-place as he spoke, re-opened the book, shut it again, lifted it high in air, cried, “Madelaine, my dear chile, prepare!” whirled the book and rushed upon her with—
“In-de-fat-i-ga-bil-ly-ty!”
Madelaine turned to stone and began:
“I-n, een, d-e, de-, inde-, indefat-, indefat—fat—f-a-t, fat, indefat, indefatty, i, ty, indefati-, indefatiga-, g-a, ga, indefatiga-, indefatigabilly, b-i-elly, billy, indefatigabili-, t-y, ty, indefatigability.”
“O, Madelaine, my chile, you make yo’ teacher proud! prah-ood, my chile!” Bonaventure’s hand rested a moment tenderly on her head as he looked first toward the audience and then toward the stranger. Then he drew off for the third word. He looked at it twice before he called it. Then—
“Sidonie! ah! Sidonie, be ready! be prepared! fail not yo’ humble school-teacher! In-com”—He looked at the word a third time, and then swept down upon her:
“In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bility!”
Sidonie flinched not nor looked upon him, as he hung over her with the spelling-book at arm’s-reach above them; yet the pause that followed seemed to speak dismay, and throughout the class there was a silent recoil from something undiscovered by the master. But an instant later Sidonie had chosen between the two horns of her agonizing dilemma, and began:
“I-n, een, c-o-m, cawm, eencawm, eencawmpre, p-r-e, pre, eencawmpre, eencawmprehen, prehen, haich-e-n, hen, hen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, b-i-l”—
“Ah! Sidonie! Stop!Arretez!Si-do-nie-e-e-e! Oh! listen—écoutez—Sidonie, my dear!” The master threw his arms up and down in distraction, then suddenly faced his visitor, “Sir, it was my blame! I spoke the word without adequate distinction! Sidonie—maintenant—now!” But a voice in the audience interrupted with—
“Assoiez-vous la, Chat-oué! Seet down yondeh!” And at the potent voice of Maximian Roussel theoffender was pushed silently into the seat he had risen from, and Bonaventure gave the word again.
“In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bil-i-ty!” And Sidonie, blushing like fire, returned to the task:
“I-n, een”—She bit her lip and trembled.
“Right!Right!Tremble not, my Sidonie! fear naught! yo’ loving school-teacher is at thy side!” But she trembled like a red leaf as she spelled on—“Haich-e-n, hen, eencawmprehen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, eencawmprehensi-billy-t-y, ty, incomprehensibility!”
The master dropped his hands and lifted his eyes in speechless despair. As they fell again upon Sidonie, her own met them. She moaned, covered her face in her hands, burst into tears, ran to her desk and threw her hands and face upon it, shaking with noiseless sobs and burning red to the nape of her perfect neck. All Grande Pointe rose to its feet.
“Lost!” cried Bonaventure in a heart-broken voice. “Every thing lost! Farewell, chil’run!” He opened his arms toward them and with one dash all the lesser ones filled them. They wept. Tears welled from Bonaventure’s eyes; and the mothers of Grande Pointe dropped again into their seats and silently added theirs.
The next moment all eyes were on Maximian. His strong figure was mounted on a chair, and he was making a gentle, commanding gesture with one hand as he called:
“Seet down! Seet down, all han’!” And all sank down, Bonaventure in a mass of weeping andclinging children. ’Mian too resumed his seat, at the same time waving to the stranger to speak.
“My friends,” said the visitor, rising with alacrity, “I say when a man makes a bargain, he ought to stick to it!” He paused for them—as many as could—to take in the meaning of his English speech, and, it may be, expecting some demonstration of approval; but dead silence reigned, all eyes on him save Bonaventure’s and Sidonie’s. He began again:
“A bargain’s a bargain!” And Chat-oué nodded approvingly and began to say audibly, “Yass;” but ’Mian thundered out:
“Taise toi, Chat-oué! Shot op!” And the silence was again complete, while the stranger resumed.
“There was a plain bargain made.” He moved a step forward and laid the matter off on the palm of his hand. “There was to be an examination; the school was not to know; but if one scholar should make one mistake the schoolhouse was to be closed and the schoolmaster sent away. Well, there’s been a mistake made, and I say a bargain’s a bargain.” Dead silence still. The speaker looked at ’Mian. “Do you think they understand me?”
“Dey meck out,” said ’Mian, and shut his firm jaws.
“My friends,” said the stranger once more, “some people think education’s a big thing, and some think it ain’t. Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it ain’t. Now, here’s this man”—he pointed down to where Bonaventure’s dishevelled crown was drooping to his knees—“claims to have taught over thirty of yourchildren to read. Well, what of it? A man can know how to read, and be just as no account as he was before. He brags that he’s taught them to talk English. Well, what does that prove? A manmightspeak English and starve to death. He claims, I am told, to have taught some of them to write. But I know a man in the penitentiary that can write; he wrote too much.”
Bonaventure had lifted his head and was sitting with his eyes upon the speaker in close attention. At this last word he said:
“Ah! sir! too true, too true ah yo’ words; nevertheless, their cooelty! ’Tis not what is print’inthe books, but what you learnthroughthe books!”
“Yes; and so you hadn’t never ought to have made the bargain you made; but, my friends, a bargain’s a bargain, and the teacher’s”—He paused invitingly, and an answer came from the audience. It was Catou who rose and said:
“Naw, sah. Naw; he don’t got to go!” But again ’Mian thundered:
“Taise toi, Catou. Shot op!”
“I say,” continued the stranger, “the mistake’s been made.Threemistakes have been made!”
“Yass!” roared Chat-oué, leaping to his feet and turning upon the assemblage a face fierce with triumph. Suspense and suspicions were past now; he was to see his desire on his enemy. But instantly a dozen men were on their feet—St. Pierre, Catou, Bonaventure himself, with a countenance full of pleading deprecation, and even Claude, flushed with anger.
“Naw, sah! Naw, sah! Waun meesteck?”
“Seet down, all han’!” yelled ’Mian; “all han’ seet dah-oon!” Only Chat-oué took his seat, glancing upon the rest with the exultant look of one who can afford to yield ground.
“The first mistake,” resumed the stranger, addressing himself especially to the risen men still standing, and pointedly to Catou, “the first mistake was in the kind of bargain you made.” He ceased, and passed his eyes around from one to another until they rested an instant on the bewildered countenance of Chat-oué. Then he turned again upon the people, who had sat down, and began to speak with the exultation of a man that feels his subject lifting him above himself.
“I came out here to show up that man as a fraud. But what do I find? A poor, unpaid, half-starved man that loves his thankless work better than his life, teaching what not one schoolmaster in a thousand can teach; teaching his whole school four better things than were ever printed in any school-book,—how to study, how to think, how to value knowledge, and to love one another and mankind. What you’d ought to have done was to agree that such a school should keep open, and such a teacher should stay, if jest one, one lone child should answer one single book-question right! But as I said before, a bargain’s a bargain—Hold on there! Sit down! You sha’n’t interrupt me again!” Men were standing up on every side. There was confusion and a loud buzz of voices. “The second mistake,” the stranger made haste to cry, “was thinking the teacher gave out that last wordright. He gave it wrong! And the third mistake,” he shouted against the rising commotion, “was thinking it was spelt wrong.She spelt it right!And a bargain’s a bargain! The schoolmaster stays!”
He could say no more; the rumble of voices suddenly burst into a cheer. The women and children laughed and clapped their hands,—Toutou his feet also,—and Bonaventure, flirting the leaves of a spelling book till he found the place, looked, cried—“In-com-pre-hen-sibility!” wheeled and dashed upon Sidonie, seized her hands in his as she turned to fly, and gazed speechlessly upon her, with the tears running down his face. Feeling a large hand upon his shoulder, he glanced around and saw ’Mian pointing him to his platform and desk. Thither he went. The stranger had partly restored order. Every one was in his place. But what a change! What a gay flutter throughout the old shed! Bonaventure seemed to have bathed in the fountain of youth. Sidonie, once more the school’s queen-flower, sat calm, with just a trace of tears adding a subtle something to her beauty.
“Chil’run, beloved chil’run,” said Bonaventure, standing once more by his desk, “yo’ school-teacher has the blame of the sole mistake; and, sir, gladly, oh, gladly, sir, would he always have the blame rather than any of his beloved school-chil’run! Sir, I will boldly ask you—ahyou not the State Sup’inten’ent Public Education?”
“No, I”—
“But surely, sir, than a greater?—Yes, I discoverit, though you smile. Chil’run—friends—not the State Sup’inten’ent, but greater!—Pardon; have yo’ chair, sir.”
“Why, the examination’s over, isn’t it? Guess you’d better call it finished, hadn’t you?” He made the suggestion softly, but Bonaventure answered aloud:
“Figu’atively speaking, ’tis conclude’; but—pardon—you mention’ writing. Shall you paht f’om us not known—not leaving yo’ name—in a copy-book, for examp’?”
“With pleasure. You do teach writing?”
“If I teach writing? To such with desks, yes. ’Twould be to all but for the privation of desks. You perceive how we have here nothing less than a desk famine. Madelaine! Claude! Sidonie!—present copy-book’! Sir, do you not think every chile should be provided a desk?—Ah! I knew ’twould be yo’ verdic’. But how great trouble I have with that subjec’! Me, I think yes; but the parents,”—he looked tenderly over among them,—“they contend no. Now, sir, here are three copy-books. Inspect; criticise. No, commence rather, if you please, with the copy-book of Madelaine; thenp’oceedto the copy-book of Claude, and finally conclude at the copy-book of Sidonie; thus rising by degrees: good, more good, most good.”
“How about,” asked the stranger, with a smile, as he turned the leaves, “about Toutou and Crébiche; don’t they write?”
“Ah! sir,” said Bonaventure, half to the strangerand half to the assemblage, “they write, yes; but—they ah yet in the pot-hook and chicken-track stage. And now, chil’run, in honor of our eminent friend’s visitation, and of the excellence with which you have been examine’, I p’onounce theexhibitionfinish’—dispensing with ‘Twink’, twink’ lil stah.’ And now, in the book of the best writing scholar in the school—you, sir, deciding that intricacy—shall now be written the name of the eminent frien’ of learning hereinbefo’ confronting.—Claude! a new pen!”
The stranger made his choice among the books.
“Chil’run, he has select’ the book of Sidonie!” Bonaventure reached and swung a chair into place at his desk. The visitor sat down. Bonaventure stood over him, gazing down at the hand that poised the pen. The silence was profound.
“Chil’run—sh-sh-sh!” said the master, lifting his left arm but not his eyes. The stranger wrote a single initial.
“G! chil’run; G!—Sir, does it not signify George?”
“Yes,” murmured the writer; “it stands for George.” He wrote another.
“W! my chil’run; George W!—Sir, does it not sig—Mychil’run! George Washington! George Washington, my chil’run! George Washington, the father of his country! My chil’run and fellow-citizen’ of Gran’ Point’, he is nominated for George Washington, the father of his country! Sir, ah you not a relation?”
“I really can’t tell you,” said the writer, with acalm smile. “I’ve always been too busy to look it up.” He finished his signature as he talked. Bonaventure bent over it.
“Tar-box. Chil’run and friends and fellow-citizen’, I have the p’oudness to int’oduce you the hono’able George Washington Tarbox! And now the exhibition is dismiss’; but stop! Sir, if some—aw all—desire gratefully to shake hand’?”
“I should feel honored.”
“Attention, everybody! Make rank! Everybody by two by two, the school-chil’run coming last,—Claude and Sidonie resting till the end,—pass ’round—shake hand’—walk out—similah a fu-nial.”
So came, shook hands, and passed out and to their simple homes, the manhood, motherhood, maidenhood, childhood of Grande Pointe, not knowing that before many days every household in the village was to be a subscriber to the “Album of Universal Information.”
One of the last of the householders was Chat-oué. But when he grasped the honored hand, he also held it, fixing upon its owner a generous and somewhat bacchanalian smile.
“I’m a fool, butIknow. You been put op a jawb on me. Dass four, five days now I been try to meck out what dat niggah at Belle Alliance holla to me when I gallop down de road.” (Chat-oué’s English had been acquired from negroes in the sugar-house, and was like theirs.) “He been braggin’ dat day befo’”—turning to Bonaventure—“how ’twas him show you de road to Gran’ Point’ las’ year; and so I git mad and tell him, me,” addressing the stranger again, “howwe goin’ git school shot op. Well, dat night I mit him comin’ fum Gran’ Point’ and he hol’ at me. I been try evva since meck out what he say. Yass. An’ Ijismeck it out! He say, ‘Watch out, watch out, ’Mian Roussel and dat book-fellah dawn’t put op jawb onyou.’ Well, I’m a fool, but I know. You put op jawb on me; I know. But dass all right—I don’t take no book.” He laughed with the rest, scratched his tipsy head, and backed out through thepieux.
Only a fairy number remained, grouped around the honorable Tarbox. They were St. Pierre, Bonaventure,—Maximian detaining a middle-aged pair, Sidonie’s timorous guardians,—and two others, who held back, still waiting to shake hands.
“Claude,” cried Bonaventure; “Sidonie.”
They came. Claude shook hands and stepped inside. Sidonie, with eyes on the ground, put forth her hand. The honored guest held it lingeringly, and the ceremonies were at an end.
“Come,” said ’Mian, beckoning away the great G. W.’s probable relative. They passed out together. “Come!” he repeated, looking back and beckoning again; “walk een! all han’! walk een house!”
The guardian pair followed, hand in hand.
“Claude,” said Bonaventure tenderly; but—
“Claude,” more firmly said St. Pierre.
The boy looked for one instant from the master’s face to Sidonie’s; then turned, grasped his father’s hand, and followed the others.
A blaze of light filled Bonaventure’s heart. He turned to Sidonie to give his hand—both her handswere clasped upon each other, and they only tightened. But their eyes met—ah! those Acadian maidens, they do it all with their eyes!—and lover and maiden passed out and walked forth side by side. They are going that way still, only—with hands joined.
The sun was just rising, as a man stepped from his slender dug-out and drew half its length out upon the oozy bank of a pretty bayou. Before him, as he turned away from the water, a small gray railway-platform and frame station-house, drowsing on long legs in the mud and water, were still veiled in the translucent shade of the deep cypress swamp, whose long moss drapings almost overhung them on the side next the brightening dawn. The solemn gray festoons did overhang the farthest two or three of a few flimsy wooden houses and a saw-mill with its lumber, logs, and sawdust, its cold furnace and idle engine.
As with gun and game this man mounted by a short, rude ladder to firmer footing on the platform, a negro, who sat fishing for his breakfast on the bank a few yards up the stream, where it bent from the north and west, slowly lifted his eyes, noted that the other was a white man, an Acadian, and brought his gaze back again to hook and line.
He had made out these facts by the man’s shapeand dress, for the face was in shade. The day, I say, was still in its genesis. The waters that slid so languidly between the two silent men as not to crook one line of the station-house’s image inverted in their clear dark depths, had not yet caught a beam upon their whitest water-lily, nor yet upon their tallest bulrush; but the tops of the giant cypresses were green and luminous, and as the Acadian glanced abroad westward, in the open sky far out over the vast marshy breadths of the “shaking prairie,”[5]two still clouds, whose under surfaces were yet dusky and pink, sparkled on their sunward edges like a frosted fleece. You could not have told whether the Acadian saw the black man or not. His dog, soiled and wet, stood beside his knee, pricked his ears for a moment at sight of the negro, and then dropped them.
It was September. The comfortable air could only near by be seen to stir the tops of the high reeds whose crowding myriads stretched away south, west, and north, an open sea of green, its immense distances relieved here and there by strips of swamp forest tinged with their peculiar purple haze. Eastward the railroad’s long causeway and telegraph-poles narrowed on the view through its wide axe-hewn lane in the overtowering swamp. New Orleans, sixty miles or more away, was in that direction. Westward, rails, causeway, and telegraph, tapered away again across the illimitable hidden quicksands of the “tremblingprairie” till the green disguise of reeds and rushes closed in upon the attenuated line, and only a small notch in a far strip of woods showed where it still led on toward Texas. Behind the Acadian the smoke of woman’s early industry began to curl from two or three low chimneys.
But his eye lingered in the north. He stood with his dog curled at his feet beside a bunch of egrets,—killed for their plumage,—the butt of his long fowling-piece resting on the platform, and the arm half outstretched whose hand grasped the barrels near the muzzle. The hand, toil-hardened and weather-browned, showed, withal, antiquity of race. His feet were in rough muddy brogans, but even so they were smallish and shapely. His garments were coarse, but there were no tatters anywhere. He wore a wide Campeachy hat. His brown hair was too long, but it was fine. His eyes, too, were brown, and, between brief moments of alertness, sedate. Sun and wind had darkened his face, and his pale brown beard curled meagre and untrimmed on a cheek and chin that in forty years had never felt a razor.
Some miles away in the direction in which he was looking, the broadening sunlight had struck and brightened the single red lug-sail of a boat whose unseen hull, for all the eye could see, was coming across the green land on a dry keel. But the bayou, hidden in the tall rushes, was its highway; for suddenly the canvas was black as it turned its shady side, and soon was red again as another change of direction caught the sunbeams upon its tense width and showed that,with much more wind out there than it would find by and by in here under the lee of the swamp, it was following the unseen meanderings of the stream. Presently it reached a more open space where a stretch of the water lay shining in the distant view. Here the boat itself came into sight, showed its bunch of some half-dozen passengers for a minute or two, and vanished again, leaving only its slanting red sail skimming nautilus-like over the vast breezy expanse.
Yet more than two hours later the boat’s one blue-shirted, barefoot Sicilian sailor in red worsted cap had with one oar at the stern just turned her drifting form into the glassy calm by the railway-station, tossed her anchor ashore, and was still busy with small matters of boat-keeping, while his five passengers clambered to the platform.
The place showed somewhat more movement now. The negro had long ago wound his line upon its crooked pole, gathered up his stiffened fishes from the bank, thrust them into the pockets of his shamelessly ragged trousers, and was gone to his hut in the underbrush. But the few amphibious households round about were passing out and in at the half-idle tasks of their slow daily life, and a young white man was bustling around, now into the station and now out again upon the platform, with authority in his frown and a pencil and two matches behind his ear. It was Monday. Two or three shabby negroes with broad, collapsed, glazed leather travelling-bags of the old carpet-sack pattern dragged their formless feet about, waiting to take the train for the next station to hire out there as riceharvesters, and one, with his back turned, leaned motionless against an open window gazing in upon the ticking telegraph instruments. A black woman in blue cotton gown, red-and-yellow Madras turban, and some sportsman’s cast-off hunting-shoes minus the shoe-strings, crouched against the wall. Beside her stood her shapely mulatto daughter, with head-covering of white cotton cloth, in which female instinct had discovered the lines of grace and disposed them after the folds of the Egyptian fellah head—dress. A portly white man, with decided polish in his commanding air, evidently a sugar-planter from the Mississippi “coast” ten miles northward, moved about in spurred boots, and put personal questions to the negroes, calling them “boys,” and the mulattress, “girl.”
The pot-hunter was still among them; or rather, he had drawn apart from the rest, and stood at the platform’s far end, leaning on his gun, an innocent, wild-animal look in his restless eyes, and a slumberous agility revealed in his strong, supple loins. The station-agent went to him, and with abrupt questions and assertions, to which the man replied in low, grave monosyllables, bought his game,—as he might have done two hours before, but—an Acadian can wait. There was some trouble to make exact change, and the agent, saying “Hold on, I’ll fix it,” went into the station just as the group from the Sicilian’s boat reached the platform. The agent came bustling out again with his eyes on his palm, counting small silver.
“Here!” But he spoke to the empty air. He glanced about with an offended frown.
“Achille!” There was no reply. He turned to one of the negroes: “Where’s that ’Cajun?” Nobody knew. Down where his canoe had lain, tiny rillets of muddy water were still running into its imprint left in the mire; but canoe, dog, and man had vanished into the rank undergrowth of the swamp.
Of the party that had come in the Sicilian’s boat four were men and one a young woman. She was pretty; so pretty, and of such restful sweetness of countenance, that the homespun garb, the brand-new creaking gaiters, and a hat that I dare not describe were nothing against her. Her large, soft, dark eyes, more sweetly but not less plainly than the attire, confessed her a denizen of the woods.
Not so the man who seemed to be her husband. His dress was rustic enough; and yet you would have seen at once that it was not the outward circumstance, but an inward singularity, that had made him and must always keep him a stranger to the ordinary ways of men. There was an emotional exaltation in his face as he hastily led his companions with military directness to the ticket window. Two others of the men were evidently father and son, the son barely twenty years of age, the parent certainly not twice as old;and the last of the group was a strong, sluggish man of years somewhat near, but under, fifty.
They bought but one ticket; but, as one may say, they all bought it, the youngest extricating its price with difficulty from the knotted corner of his red handkerchief, and the long, thin hand of the leader making the purchase, while the eyes of the others followed every movement with unconscious absorption.
The same unemotional attentiveness was in their forms as their slow feet drifted here and there always after the one leader, their eyes on his demonstrative hands, and their ears drinking in his discourse. He showed them the rails of the track, how smooth they were, how they rested on their cross-ties, and how they were spiked in place always the same width apart. They crowded close about him at the telegraph-window while he interpreted with unconscious originality the wonders of electricity. Their eyes rose slowly from the window up and out along the ascending wires to where they mounted the poles and eastward and westward leaped away sinking and rising from insulator to insulator. One of the party pointed at these green dots of glass and murmured a question, and the leader’s wife laid her small hand softly upon his arm to check the energy of his utterance as he said, audibly to all on the platform, and with a strong French accent:
“They?—are there lest the heat of the telegraph fluid inflame the post-es!” He laid his own hand tenderly upon his wife’s in response to its warning pressure, yet turned to the sugar-planter and asked:
“Sir, pardon; do I not explain truly?”
The planter, with restrained smile, was about to reply, when some one called, “There she comes!” and every eye was turned to the east.
“Truly!” exclaimed the inquirer, in a voice made rich with emotion. “Truly, she comes! She comes! The iron horse, though they call him ‘she’!” He turned to the planter—“Ah! sir, why say they thus many or thus many horse-power, when truly”—his finger-tip pattered upon his temple—“truly it is mind-power!”
The planter, smiling decorously, turned away, and the speaker looked again down the long vacant track to where the small dark focus of every one’s attention was growing on the sight. He spoke again, in lower voice but with larger emotion.
“Mind-power! thought-power! knowledge-power! learning and thinking power!” He caught his wife’s arm. “See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her enhancing in magnitude so fastly approaching!” As he spoke a puff of white vapor lifted from the object and spread out against the blue, the sunbeams turned it to silver and pearl, and a moment later came the far-away, long, wild scream of the locomotive.
“Retire!” exclaimed the husband, drawing back all his gazing companions at once. “Retire! retire! the whisttel is to signify warning to retire from too close the edge of the galérie! There! rest at this point. ’Tis far enough. Now, each and all resolve to stand and shrink not whilst that iron mare, eating coal, drinking hot water, and spitting fire, shall seem,but falsely, threatening to come on the platform. Ah! Claude!” he cried to the youngest of the group, “now shall you behold what I have told you—that vast am-azement of civilize-ation anni-high-lating space and also time at the tune of twenty miles the hour!” He wheeled upon the planter—“Sir, do I exaggerate?”
“Forty miles,” replied the planter; “sometimes fifty.”
“Friends,—confirmated! more than twicefold confirmated. Forty, sometimes fifty! Thou heardest it, Maximian Roussel! Not from me, but from the gentleman himself! Forty, sometimes fifty! Such the march, the forward march of civilize-ation!”
His words were cut short by the unearthly neigh of the engine. Sidonie smote herself backward against her husband.
“Nay, Sidonie, fear thou nothing! Remember, dear Sidonie, thy promise of self-control! Stand boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son, stand.” The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, and shaking the earth, the engine and train loomed up to the platform and stopped.
“Come!” cried Bonaventure Deschamps; “lose no moment, dear friends. Tide and time—even less the railroad—wait for nobody. Claude, remember; give your ticket of passage to none save the conductor only. ’Tis print’ in letter’ of gold on front his cap—‘Conductor’—Stop! he is here.—Sir, this young man, inexperienced, is taking passage for”—
“Shoot him aboard,” replied a uniformed man, and walked on without a pause. Claude moved towardthe train. Bonaventure seized him by both arms and gazed on him.
“Claude St. Pierre! Claude, my boy, pride of Grande Pointe, second only with Sidonie, farewell!”
Tears leaped into the eyes of both. Bonaventure snatched Claude to his arms and kissed him. It was less than nothing to him that every eye on and off the train was on them. He relaxed his grasp. “Sidonie! tell him farewell!—ah! nay! shake not hands only! Kiss her, Claude! Kiss him, my own Sidonie, kiss him farewell!”
It was done. Claude blushed red, and Sidonie stepped back, wiping her eyes. Maximian moved into the void, and smiling gave his hand to the young adventurer.
“Adjieu, Claude.” He waved a hand awkwardly. “Teck care you’seff,” and dropped the hand audibly against his thigh.
Claude’s eye sought his father. St. Pierre pressed forward, laid his right hand upon his son’s shoulder, and gazed into his face. His voice was low and husky. He smiled.
“Claude,”—tears rose in his eyes, but he swallowed them down,—“Claude,—my baby,”—and the flood came. The engine-bell rang. The conductor gave the warning word, the youth leaped upon his father’s neck. St. Pierre thrust him off, caught his two cheeks between fluttering palms and kissed him violently; the train moved, the young man leaped aboard, the blue uniforms disappeared, save one on the rear platform, the bell ceased, the gliding massshrunk and dwindled away, the rails clicked more and more softly, the tearful group drew closer together as they gazed after the now-unheard train. It melted to a point and disappeared, the stillness of forest and prairie fell again upon the place, the soaring sun shone down, and Claude St. Pierre was gone to seek his fortune.
I call to mind a certain wild, dark night in November. St. Pierre lay under his palmetto thatch in the forest behind Grande Pointe, and could not sleep for listening to the wind, and wondering where his son was, in that wild Texas norther. On the Mississippi a steamer, upward bound, that had whistled to land at Belmont or Belle Alliance plantation, seemed to be staying there afraid to venture away. Miles southward beyond the river and the lands on that side, Lake des Allemands was combing with the tempest and hissing with the rain. Still farther away, on the little bayou and at the railway-station in the edge of the swamp that we already know, and westward over the prairie where Claude had vanished into the world, all life was hidden and mute. And farther still, leagues and leagues away, the mad tempest was riding the white-caps in Berwick’s Bay and Grande Lake; and yet beyond, beyond New Iberia, and up by Carancro, andaround again by St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Grand Coteau, and Opelousas, and down once more across the prairies of Vermilion, the marshes about Côte Blanche Bay, and the islands in the Gulf, it came bounding, screaming, and buffeting. And all the way across that open sweep from Mermentau to Côte Gelée it was tearing the rain to mist and freezing it wherever it fell, only lulling and warming a little about Joseph Jefferson’s Island, as if that prank were too mean a trick to play upon his orange-groves.
In Vermilionville the wind came around every corner piercing and pinching to the bone. The walking was slippery; and though it was still early bedtime and the ruddy lamp-light filled the wet panes of some window every here and there, scarce a soul was stirring without, on horse or afoot, to be guided by its kindly glow.
At the corner of two streets quite away from the court-house square, a white frame tavern, with a wooden Greek porch filling its whole two-story front and a balcony built within the porch at the second-story windows in oddest fashion, was glowing with hospitable firelight. It was not nearly the largest inn of the place, nor the oldest, nor the newest, nor the most accessible. There was no clink of glass there. Yet in this, only third year of its present management, it was the place where those who knew best always put up.
Around the waiting-room fire this evening sat a goodly semicircle of men,—commercial travellers. Some of them were quite dry and comfortable, andwore an air of superior fortune over others whose shoes and lower garments sent out more or less steam and odor toward the open fireplace. Several were smoking. One who neither smoked nor steamed stood with his back to the fire and the skirts of his coat lifted forward on his wrists. He was a rather short, slight, nervy man, about thirty years of age, with a wide pink baldness running so far back from his prominent temples and forehead that when he tipped his face toward the blue joists overhead, enjoying the fatigue of a well-filled day, his polished skull sent back the firelight brilliantly. There was a light skirmish of conversation going on, in which he took no part. No one seemed really acquainted with another. Presently a man sitting next on the left of him put away a quill toothpick in his watch-pocket, looked up into the face of the standing man, and said, with a faint smile:
“That job’s done!”
With friendly gravity the other looked down and replied, “I never use a quill toothpick.”
“Yes,” said the one who sat, “it’s bad. Still I do it.”
“Nothing,” continued the other,—“nothing harder than a sharpened white-pine match should ever go between the teeth. Brush thoroughly but not violently once or twice daily with a moderately stiff brush dipped in soft water into which has been dropped a few drops of the tincture of myrrh. A brush of badger’s hair is best. If tartar accumulates, have it removed by a dentist. Do not bite thread or crack nuts with the teeth, or use the teeth for other purposes than thosefor which nature designed them.” He bent toward his hearer with a smile of irresistible sweetness, drew his lips away from his gums, snapped his teeth together loudly twice or thrice, and smiled again, modestly. The other man sought defence in buoyancy of manner.
“Right you are!” he chirruped. He reached up to his adviser’s blue and crimson neck-scarf, and laid his finger and thumb upon a large, solitary pear-shaped pearl. “You’re like me; you believe in the real thing.”
“I do,” said the pearl’s owner; “and I like people that like the real thing. A pearl of the first waterisreal. There’s no sham there; no deception—except the iridescence, which is, as you doubtless know, an optical illusion attributable to the intervention of rays of light reflected from microscopic corrugations of the nacreous surface. But for that our eye is to blame, not the pearl. See?”
The seated man did not reply; but another man on the speaker’s right, a large man, widest at the waist, leaned across the arm of his chair to scrutinize the jewel. Its owner turned his throat for the inspection, despite a certain grumness and crocodilian aggressiveness in the man’s interest.
“I like a diamond, myself,” said the new on-looker, dropped back in his chair, and met the eyes of the pearl’s owner with a heavy glance.
“Tastes differ,” kindly responded the wearer of the pearl. “Are you acquainted with the language of gems?”
The big-waisted man gave a negative grunt, and spatbravely into the fire. “Didn’t know gems could talk,” he said.
“They do not talk, they speak,” responded their serene interpreter. The company in general noticed that, with all his amiability of tone and manner, his mild eyes held the big-waisted man with an uncomfortable steadiness. “They speak not to the ear, but to the eye and to the thought: