_ GRANDE POINTE CHAPTER III. THE HANDSHAKING
There was news in Grande Pointe. The fair noon sky above, with its peaceful flocks of clouds; the solemn, wet forest round about; the harvested fields; the dishevelled, fragrant fallows; the reclining, ruminating cattle; the little chapel of St. Vincent de Paul in the midst, open for mass once a fortnight, for a sermon in French four times a year,--these were not more tranquil in the face of the fact that a schoolmaster had come to Grande Pointe to _stay_ than outwardly appeared the peaceful-minded villagers. Yet as the tidings floated among the people, touching and drifting on like thistle-down, they were stirred within, and came by ones, by twos, slow-stepping, diffidently smiling, to shake hands with the young great man. They wiped their own before offering them--the men on their strong thighs, the women on their aprons. Children came, whose courage would carry them no nearer than the galerie's end or front edge, where they lurked and hovered, or gazed through the balustrade, or leaned against a galerie post and rubbed one brown bare foot upon another and crowded each other's shoulders without assignable cause, or lopped down upon the grass and gazed from a distance.
Little conversation was offered. The curiosity was as unobtrusive as the diffidence was without fear; and when a villager's soft, low speech was heard, it was generally in answer to inquiries necessary for one to make who was about to assume the high office of educator. Moreover, the schoolmaster revealed, with all gentleness, his preference for the English tongue, and to this many could only give ear. Only two or three times did the conversation rise to a pitch that kindled even the ready ardor of the young man of letters. Once, after a prolonged silence, the host, having gazed long upon his guest, said, without preface:--
"Tough jawb you got," and waved a hand toward the hovering children.
"Sir," replied the young scholar, "is it not the better to do whilse it is the mo' tough? The mo' toughness, the mo' honor." He rose suddenly, brushed back the dry, brown locks of his fine hair, and extending both hands, with his limp straw hat dangling in one, said: "Sir, I will ask you; is not the schoolmaster the true patriot? Shall his honor be less than that of the soldier? Yet I ask not honor; for me, I am not fit; yet, after my poor capacities"--He resumed his seat.
An awesome quiet followed. Then some one spoke to him, too low to be heard. He bent forward to hear the words repeated, and 'Mian said for the timorous speaker:--
"Aw, dass nut'n; he jis only say, 'Is M'sieu' Walleece big-in to gryne?'"
Few tarried long, though one man--he whom the schoolmaster had found sitting on the roadside with Maximian--staid all day; and even among the villagers themselves there was almost no loquacity. Maximian, it is true, as the afternoon wore along, and it seemed plain that the reception was a great and spontaneous success, spoke with growing frequency and heartiness; and, when the guest sat down alone at a table within, where _la vieille_--the wife--was placing half-a-dozen still sputtering fried eggs, a great wheaten loaf, a yellow gallon bowl of boiled milk, a pewter ladle, a bowie-knife, the blue tumbler, and a towel; and out on the galerie the callers were still coming: his simple neighbors pardoned the elation that led him to take a chair himself a little way off, sit on it sidewise, cross his legs gayly, and with a smile and wave of his good brown hand say:--
"_Servez-vous!_ He'p you'se'f! Eat much you like; till you swell up!"
Even he asked no questions. Only near the end of the day, when the barefoot children by gradual ventures had at length gathered close about and were softly pushing for place on his knees, and huddling under his arms, and he was talking French,--the only language most of them knew,--he answered the first personal inquiry put to him since arriving. "His name," he replied to the tiny, dark, big-eyed boy who spoke for his whispering fellows, "his name was Bonaventure--Bonaventure Deschamps."
As the great October sun began to dip his crimson wheel behind the low black line of swamp, and the chapel cross stood out against a band of yellow light that spanned the west, he walked out to see the village, a little girl on either hand and little boys round about. The children talked apace. Only the girl whose hand he held in his right was mute. She was taller than the rest; yet it was she to whom the little big-eyed boy pointed when he said, vain of his ability to tell it in English:--
"I don't got but eight year' old, me. I'm gran' for my age; but she, she not gran' for her age--Sidonie; no; she not gran' at all for _her_ age."
They told the story of the chapel: how some years before, in the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at the parish seat a few miles away on the Mississippi, a nun had by the Pope's leave cast off the veil; how she had come to Grande Pointe and taken charge of her widowed brother's children; and how he had died, and she had found means, the children knew not how, to build this chapel. And now she was buried under it, they said. It seemed, from what they left unsaid as well as what they said, that the simple influence of her presence had kindled a desire for education in Grande Pointe not known before.
"Dass my _tante_--my hant. She _was_ my hant befo' she die'," said the little man of eight years, hopping along the turf in front of the rest. He dropped into a walk that looked rapid, facing round and moving backward. "She learn me English, my _tante_. And she try to learn Sidonie; but Sidonie, Sidonie fine that too strong to learn, that English, Sidonie." He hopped again, talking as he hopped, and holding the lifted foot in his hand. He could do that and speak English at the same time, so talented was Toutou.
Thus the sun went down. And at Maximian's stile again Bonaventure Deschamps took the children's cheeks into his slender fingers and kissed them, one by one, beginning at the least, and so up, slowly, toward Sidonie Le Blanc. With very earnest tenderness it was done, some grave word of inspiration going before each caress; but when at last he said, "To-morrow, dear chil'run, the school-bell shall ring in Gran' Point'!" and turned to finish with Sidonie--she was gone. _