Читать книгу Rose à Charlitte - Marshall Saunders - Страница 3

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"Hast committed a crime, and think'st thou to escape? Alas, my father!"—Old Play.

"Evil deeds do not die," and the handsome young man stretched out in an easy chair by the fire raised his curly black head and gazed into the farthest corner of the comfortably furnished room as if challenging a denial of this statement.

No one contradicted him, for he was alone, and with a slightly satirical smile he went on. "One fellow sows the seeds, and another has to reap them—no, you don't reap seeds, you reap what springs up. Deadly plants, we will say, nightshades and that sort of thing; and the surprised and inoffensive descendants of sinful sires have to drop their ordinary occupations and seize reaping-hooks to clean out these things that shoot up in their paths. Here am I, for example, a comparatively harmless product of the nineteenth century, confronted with a upas-tree planted by my great-grandfather of the eighteenth,—just one hundred and forty years ago. It was certainly very heedless in the old boy," and he smiled again and stared indolently at the leaping flames in the grate.

The fire was of wood,—sections of young trees cut small and laid crosswise,—and from their slender stems escaping gases choked and sputtered angrily.

"I am burning miniature trees," drawled the young man; "by the way, they seem to be assisting in my soliloquy. Perhaps they know this little secret," and with sudden animation he put out his hand and rang the bell beside him.

A colored boy appeared. "Henry," said the young man, "where did you get this wood?"

"I got it out of a schooner, sir, down on one of the wharves."

"What port did the schooner hail from?"

"From Novy Scoshy, sir."

"Were the crew Acadiens?"

"What, sir?"

"Were there any French sailors on her?"

"Yes, sir, I guess so. I heard 'em jabbering some queer kind of talk."

"Listen to the wood in that fire,—what does it say to you?"

Henry grinned broadly. "It sounds like as if it was laughing at me, sir."

"You think so? That will do."

The boy closed the door softly and went away, and the young man murmured, "Just what I thought. They do know. Now, Acadien treelets, gasping your last to throw a gleam of brightness into my lazy life, tell me, is anything worth while? If there had been a curse laid on your ancestors in the forest, would you devote your last five minutes to lifting it?"

The angry gasping and sobbing in the fire had died away. Two of the topmost billets of wood rolled gently over and emitted a soft muttering.

"You would, eh?" said the young man, with a sweet, subtle smile. "You would spend your last breath for the good of your race. You have left some saplings behind you in the forest. You hope that they will be happy, and should I, a human being, be less disinterested than you?"

"Vesper," said a sudden voice, from the doorway, "are you talking to yourself?"

The young man deliberately turned his head. The better to observe the action of the sticks of wood, and to catch their last dying murmurs, he had leaned forward, and sat with his hands on his knees. Now he got up, drew a chair to the fire for his mother, then sank back into his own.

"I do not like to hear you talking to yourself," she went on, in a querulous, birdlike voice, "it seems like the habit of an old man or a crazy person."

"One likes sometimes to have a little confidential conversation, my mother."

"You always were secretive and unlike other people," she said, in acute maternal satisfaction and appreciation. "Of all the boys on the hill there was none as clever as you in keeping his own counsel."

"So you think, but remember that I happened to be your son," he said, protestingly.

"Others have remarked it. Even your teachers said they could never make you out," and her caressing glance swept tenderly over his dark curly head, his pallid face, and slender figure.

His satirical yet affectionate eyes met hers, then he looked at the fire. "Mother, it is getting hot in Boston."

"Hot, Vesper?" and she stretched out one little white hand towards the fireplace.

"This is an exceptional day. The wind is easterly and raw, and it is raining. Remember what perfect weather we have had. It is the first of June; it ought to be getting warm."

"I do not wish to leave Boston until the last of the month," said the little lady, decidedly, "unless,—unless," and she wistfully surveyed him, "it is better for your health to go away."

"Suppose, before we go to the White Mountains, I take a trial trip by myself, just to see if I can get on without coddling?"

"I could not think of allowing you to go away alone," she said, with a shake of her white head. "It would seriously endanger your health."

"I should like to go," he said, shortly. "I am better now."

He had made up his mind to leave her, and, after a brief struggle with herself, during which she clasped her hands painfully on her lap, the little lady yielded with a good grace. "Where do you wish to go?"

"I have not decided. Do you know anything about Nova Scotia?"

"I know where it is, on the map," she said, doubtfully. "I once had a housemaid from there. She was a very good girl."

"Perhaps I will take a run over there."

"I have never been to Nova Scotia," she said, gently.

"If it is anything of a place, I will take you some other time. I don't know anything about the hotels now."

"But you, Vesper," she said, anxiously, "you will suffer more than I would."

"Then I shall not stay."

"How long will you be gone?"

"I do not know,—mother, your expression is that of a concerned hen whose chicken is about to have its first run. I have been away from you before."

"Not since you have been ill so much," and she sighed, heavily. "Vesper, I wish you had a wife to go with you."

"Really,—another woman to run after me with pill-boxes and medicine-bottles. No, thank you."

Her face cleared. She did not wish him to get married, and he knew it. Slightly moving his dark head back and forth against the cushions of his chair, he averted his eyes from the widow's garments that she wore. He never looked at them without feeling a shock of sympathy for her, although her loss in parting from a kind and tender husband had not been equal to his in losing a father who had been an almost perfect being to him. His mother still had him,—the son who was the light of her frail little life,—and he had her, and he loved her with a kind, indulgent, filial affection, and with sympathy for her many frailties; but, when his heart cried out for his departed father, he quietly absented himself from her. And that father—that good, honorable, level-headed man—had ended his life by committing suicide. He had never understood it. It was a most bitter and stinging mystery to him even now, and he glanced at the box of dusty, faded letters on the floor beside him.

"Vesper," said Mrs. Nimmo, "do you find anything interesting among those letters of your father?"

"Not my father's. There is not one of his among them. Indeed, I think he never could have opened this box. Did you ever know of his doing so?"

"I cannot tell. They have been up in the attic ever since I was married. He examined some of the boxes, then he asked you to do it. He was always busy, too busy. He worked himself to death," and a tear fell on her black dress.

"I wish now that I had done as he requested," said the young man, gravely. "There are some questions that I should have asked him. Do you remember ever hearing him say anything about the death of my great-grandfather?"

She reflected a minute. "It seems to me that I have. He was the first of your father's family to come to this country. There is a faint recollection in my mind of having heard that he—well, he died in some sudden way," and she stopped in confusion.

"It comes back to me now," said Vesper. "Was he not the old man who got out of bed, when his nurse was in the next room, and put a pistol to his head?"

"I daresay," said his mother, slowly. "Of course it was temporary insanity."

"Of course."

"Why do you ask?" she went on, curiously. "Do you find his name among the old documents?"

Vesper understood her better than to make too great a mystery of a thing that he wished to conceal. "Yes, there is a letter from him."

"I should like to read it," she said, fussily fumbling at her waist for her spectacle-case.

Vesper indifferently turned his head towards her. "It is very long."

Her enthusiasm died away, and she sank back in her rocking-chair.

"My great-grandfather shot himself, and my grandfather was lost at sea," pursued the young man, dreamily.

"Yes," she said, reluctantly; then she added, "my people all die in bed."

"His ship caught on fire."

She shuddered. "Yes; no one escaped."

"All burnt up, probably; and if they took to their boats they must have died of starvation, for they were never heard of."

They were both silent, and the same thought was in their minds. Was this very cool and calm young man, sitting staring into the fire, to end his days in the violent manner peculiar to the rugged members of his father's family, or was he to die according to the sober and methodical rule of the peaceful members of his mother's house?

Out of the depths of a quick maternal agony she exclaimed, "You are more like me than your father."

Her son gave her an assenting and affectionate glance, though he knew that she knew he was not at all like her. He even began to fancy, in a curious introspective fashion, whether he should have cared at all for this little white-haired lady if he had happened to have had another woman for a mother. The thought amused him, then he felt rebuked, and, leaning over, he took one of the white hands on her lap and kissed it gently.

"We should really investigate our family histories in this country more than we do," he said. "I wish that I had questioned my father about his ancestors. I know almost nothing of them. Mother," he went on, presently, "have you ever heard of the expulsion of the Acadiens?" and bending over the sticks of wood neatly laid beside him, he picked up one and gazed at a little excrescence in the bark which bore some resemblance to a human face.

"Oh, yes," she replied, with gentle rebuke, "do you not remember that I used to know Mr. Longfellow?"

Vesper slowly, and almost caressingly, submitted the stick of wood to the leaping embrace of the flames that rose up to catch it. "What is your opinion of his poem 'Evangeline?'"

"It was a pretty thing,—very pretty and very sad. I remember crying over it when it came out."

"You never heard that our family had any connection with the expulsion?"

"No, Vesper, we are not French."

"No, we certainly are not," and he relapsed into silence.

"I think I will run over to Nova Scotia, next week," he said, when she presently got up to leave the room. "Will you let Henry find out about steamers and trains?"

"Yes, if you think you must go," she said, wistfully. "I daresay the steamer would be easier for you."

"The steamer then let it be."

"And if you must go I will have to look over your clothes. It will be cool there, like Maine, I fancy. You must take warm things," and she glided from the room.

"I wish you would not bother about them," he said; "they are all right." But she did not hear him.