Rose à Charlitte

  CHAPTER VI.

  VESPER SUGGESTS AN EXPLANATION.

  "Glad of a quarrel straight I clap the door; Sir, let me see you and your works no more."

  POPE.

  At twelve o'clock Mrs. Rose a Charlitte was standing in her cold pantrydeftly putting a cap of icing on a rich rounded loaf of cake, when sheheard a question asked, in Vesper's smooth neutral tones, "Where ismadame?"

  She stepped into the kitchen, and found that he was interrogating herservant Celina.

  "I should like to speak to that young man I saw this morning," he said,when he saw her.

  "He has gone out, monsieur," she replied, after a moment's hesitation.

  "Which is his room?"

  "The one by the smoking-room," she answered, with a deep blush.

  Vesper's white teeth gleamed through his dark mustache, and, seeing thathe was laughing at her, she grew confused, and hung her head.

  "Can I get to it by this staircase?" asked Vesper, exposing her pettydeceit. "I think I can by going up to the roof, and dropping down."

  Mrs. Rose lifted her head long enough to flash him a scrutinizingglance. Then, becoming sensible of the determination of purpose underhis indifference of manner, she said, in scarcely audible tones, "I willshow you."

  "I have only a simple question to ask him," said Vesper, reassuringly,as he followed her towards the staircase.

  "Agapit is quick like lightning," she said, over her shoulder, "but hisheart is good. He helps to keep our grandmother, who spends her days inbed."

  "That is exemplary. I would be the last one to hurt the feelings of theprop of an aged person," murmured Vesper.

  Rose a Charlitte was not satisfied. She unwillingly mounted the stairs,and pointed out the door of her cousin's room, then withdrew to the nextone, and listened anxiously in case there might be some disturbancebetween the young men. There was none; so, after a time, she wentdown-stairs.

  Agapit, at Vesper's entrance, abruptly pushed back his chair from thetable and, rising, presented a red and angry face to his visitor.

  "I have interrupted you, I fear," said Vesper, smoothly. "I will notdetain you long. I merely wish to ask a question."

  "Will you sit down?" said Agapit, sulkily, and he forced himself tooffer the most comfortable chair in the room to his caller.

  Vesper did not seat himself until he saw that Agapit was prepared tofollow his example. Then he looked into the black eyes of the Acadien,which were like two of the deep, dark pools in the forest, and said, "Amatter of business has brought me to this Bay. I may have some inquiriesto make, in which I would find myself hampered by any prejudice amongpersons I might choose to question. I fancy that some of the people herelook on me with suspicion. I am quite unaware of having given offence inany way. Possibly you can explain,--I am not bent on an explanation, youunderstand. If you choose to offer one, I shall be glad to listen."

  He spoke listlessly, tapping on the table with his fingers, and allowinghis eyes to wander around the room, rather than to remain fixed onAgapit's face.

  The young Acadien could scarcely restrain a torrent of words untilVesper had finished speaking.

  "Since you ask, I will explain,--yes, I will not be silent. We are notrude here,--oh, no. We are too kind to strangers. Vipers have crept inamong us. They have stolen heat and warmth from our bosoms"--he paused,choking with rage.

  "And you have reason to suppose that I may prove a viper?" asked Vesper,indolently.

  "Yes, you also are one. You come here, we receive you. You depart, youlaugh in your sleeve,--a newspaper comes. We see it all. The meek andpatient Acadiens are once more held up to be a laughing-stock."

  Vesper wrinkled his level eyebrows. "Perhaps you will characterize thisviperish conduct?"

  Agapit calmed himself slightly. "Wait but an instant. Control yourcuriosity, and I will give you something to read," and he went on hisknees, and rummaged among some loose papers in an open box. "Look atit," he said, at last, springing up and handing his caller a newspaper;"read, and possibly you will understand."

  Vesper's quick eye ran over the sheet that he held up. "This is a NewYork weekly paper. Yes, I know it well. What is there here that concernsyou?"

  "Look, look here," said Agapit, tapping a column in the paper with animpatient gesture. "Read the nonsense, the drivel, the insanity of thething--"

  "Ah,--'Among the Acadiens, Quaintness Unrivalled, Archaic Forms ofSpeech, A Dance and a Wedding, The Spirit of Evangeline, HumorousTraits, If You Wish a Good Laugh Go Among Them!'"

  "She laughed in print, she screamed in black ink!" exclaimed Agapit."The silly one,--the witch."

  "Who was she,--this lady viper?" asked Vesper, briefly.

  "She was a woman--a newspaper woman. She spent a summer among us. Shegloomed about the beach with a shawl on her shoulders; a small dogfollowed her. She laid in bed. She read novels, and then," he continued,with rising voice, "she returned home, she wrote this detestabilityabout us."

  "Why need you care?" said Vesper, coolly. "She had to reel off a certainamount of copy. All correspondents have to do so. She only touched upthings a little to make lively reading."

  "Not touching up, but manufacturing," retorted Agapit, with blazingeyes. "She had nothing to go on, nothing--nothing--nothing. We are justlike other people," and he ruffled his coal-black hair with both hishands, and looked at his caller fiercely. "Do you not find us so?"

  "Not exactly," said Vesper, so dispassionately and calmly, and with suchstatuesque repose of manner, that he seemed rather to breathe the wordsthan to form them with his lips.

  "And you will express that in your paper. You will not tell the truth.My countrymen will never have justice,--never, never. They are alwaysmisrepresented, always."

  "What a firebrand!" reflected Vesper, and he surveyed, with someanimation, the inflamed, suspicious face of the Frenchman.

  "You also will caricature us," pursued Agapit; "others have done so, whyshould not you?"

  Vesper's lips parted. He was on the point of imparting to Agapit thestory of his great-grandfather's letter. Then he closed them. Why shouldhe be browbeaten into communicating his private affairs to a stranger?

  "Thank you," he said, and he rose to leave the room. "I am obliged forthe information you have given me."

  Agapit's face darkened; he would dearly love to secure a promise of goodbehavior from this stranger, who was so non-committal, so reserved, andyet so strangely attractive.

  "See," he said, grandly, and flinging his hand in the direction of hisbooks and papers. "To an honest man, really interested in my people, Iwould be pleased to give information. I have many documents, manybooks."

  "Ah, you take an interest in this sort of thing," said Vesper.

  "An interest--I should die without my books and papers; they are mylife."

  "And yet you were cut out for a farmer," thought Vesper, as he surveyedAgapit's sturdy frame. "I suppose you have the details of the expulsionat your fingers' ends," he said, aloud.

  "Ah, the expulsion," muttered Agapit, turning deathly pale, "theabominable, damnable expulsion!"

  "Your feelings run high on the subject," murmured Vesper.

  "It suffocates me, it chokes me, when I reflect how it was broughtabout. You know, of course, that in the eighteenth century thereflourished a devil,--no, not a devil," contemptuously. "What is that fora word? Devil, devil,--it is so common that there is no badness in it.Even the women say, 'Poor devil, I pity him.' Say, rather, there was agod of infamy, the blackest, the basest, the most infernal of createdbeings that our Lord ever permitted to pollute this earth--"

  For a minute he became incoherent, then he caught his breath. "Thisdemon, this arch-fiend, the misbegotten Lawrence that your historianParkman sets himself to whitewash--"

  "I know of Parkman," said Vesper, coldly, "he was once a neighbor ofours."

  "Was he!" exclaimed Agapi
t, in a paroxysm of excitement. "A fineneighbor, a worthy man! Parkman,--the New England story-teller, thetraducer, who was too careless to set himself to the task ofinvestigating records."

  Vesper was not prepared to hear any abuse of his countryman, and,turning on his heel, he left the room, while Agapit, furious to thinkthat, unasked, he had been betrayed into furnishing a newspapercorrespondent with some crumbs of information that might possibly bedished up in appetizing form for the delectation of American readers,slammed the door behind him, and went back to his writing.