Читать книгу Bonaventure: A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana - George Washington Cable - Страница 16

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The war was in its last throes even when ’Thanase enlisted. Weeks and months passed. Then a soldier coming home to Carancro—home-comers were growing plentiful—brought the first news of him. An officer making up a force of picked men for an expedition to carry important despatches eastward across the Mississippi and far away into Virginia had chosen ’Thanase. The evening the speaker left for home on his leave of absence ’Thanase was still in camp, but was to start the next morning. It was just after Sunday morning mass that Sosthène and Chaouache, with their families and friends, crowded around this bearer of tidings.

“Had ’Thanase been in any battles?”

“Yes, two or three.”

“And had not been wounded?”

“No, although he was the bravest fellow in his company.”

Sosthène and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, smiled, and swore two simultaneous oaths of admiration. Zoséphine softly pinched her mother, and whispered something. Madame Sosthène addressed the home-comer aloud:

“Did ’Thanase send no other message except that mere ‘How-d’ye all do?’ ”

“No.”

Zoséphine leaned upon her mother’s shoulder, and softly breathed:

“He is lying.”

The mother looked around upon her daughter in astonishment. The flash of scorn was just disappearing from the girl’s eyes. She gave a little smile and chuckle, and murmured, with her glance upon the man:

“He has no leave of absence. He is a deserter.”

Then Madame Sosthène saw two things at once: that the guess was a good one, and that Zoséphine had bidden childhood a final “adjieu.”

The daughter felt Bonaventure’s eyes upon her. He was standing only a step or two away. She gave him a quick, tender look that thrilled him from head to foot, then lifted her brows and made a grimace of pretended weariness. She was growing prettier almost from day to day.

And Bonaventure, he had no playmates—no comrades—no amusements. This one thing, which no one knew but the curé, had taken possession of him. The priest sometimes seemed to himself cruel, so well did it please him to observe the magnitude Bonaventure plainly attributed to the matter. The boy seemed almost physically to bow under the burden of his sense of guilt.

“It is quickening all his faculties,” said the curé to himself. Zoséphine had hardly yet learned to read without stammering, when Bonaventure was already devouring the few French works of the curé’s small bookshelf. Silent on other subjects, on one he would talk till a pink spot glowed on either cheek-bone and his blue eyes shone like a hot noon sky;—casuistry. He would debate the right and wrong of any thing, every thing, and the rights and wrongs of men in every relation of life.

Blessed was it for him then that the tactful curé was his father and mother in one, and the surgeon and physician of his mind. Thus the struggle brought him light. To the boy’s own eyes it seemed to be bringing him only darkness, but the priest saw better.

“That is but his shadow; he is standing in it; it is deepening; that shows the light is increasing.” Thus spake the curé to himself as he sat at solitaire under his orange-tree one afternoon.

The boy passed out of sight, and the curé’s eyes returned to his game of solitaire; but as he slowly laid one card upon another, now here, now there, he still thought of Bonaventure.

“There will be no peace for him, no sweetness of nature, no green pastures and still waters, within or without, while he seeks life’s adjustments through definitions of mere right and rights. No, boy; you will ever be a restless captive, pacing round and round those limits of your enclosure. Worse still if you seek those definitions only to justify your overriding another’s happiness in pursuit of your own.” The boy was not in hearing; this was apostrophe.

“Bonaventure,” he said, as the lad came by again; and Bonaventure stopped. The player pushed the cards from him, pile by pile, leaned back, ran his fingers slowly through his thin gray hair, and smiled.

“Bonaventure, I have a riddle for you. It came to me as I was playing here just now. If everybody could do just as he pleased; if he had, as the governor would say, all his rights—life, liberty, pursuit of happiness—if everybody had this, I say, why should we still be unhappy?”

The boy was silent.

“Well, I did not suppose you would know. Would you like me to tell you? It is because happiness pursued is never overtaken. And can you guess why that is? Well, never mind, my son. But—would you like to do something for me?”

Bonaventure nodded. The curé rose, taking from his bosom as he left his chair a red silk handkerchief and a pocket-worn note-book. He laid the note-book on the table, and drawing back with a smile said:

“Here, sit down in my place, and write what I tell you, while I stretch my legs. So; never mind whether you understand or not. I am saying it for myself: it helps me to understand it better. Now, as I walk, you write. ‘Happiness pursued is never overtaken, because’—have you written that?—‘because, little as we are, God’s image makes us so large that we cannot live within ourselves, nor even for ourselves, and be satisfied.’ Have you got that down? Very well—yes—the spelling could be improved, but that is no matter. Now wait a moment; let me walk some more. Now write: ‘It is not good for man to be alone, because’—because—let me see; where—ah, yes!—‘because rightly self is the’—Ah! no, no, my boy; not a capital S for ‘self’—ah! that’s the very point—small s—‘because rightly self is the smallest part of us. Even God found it good not to be alone, but to create’—got that?—‘to create objects for His love and benevolence.’ Yes—‘And because in my poor, small way I am made like Him, the whole world becomes a part of me’—small m, yes, that is right!” From bending a moment over the writer, the priest straightened up and took a step backward. The boy lifted his glance to where the sunlight and leaf-shadows were playing on his guardian’s face. The curé answered with a warm smile, saying: