_ CARANCRO CHAPTER II. BONAVENTURE AND ZOSEPHINE
They did not live _a la chapelle_; that is, in the village of six or eight houses clustered about the small wooden spire and cross of the mission chapel. Sosthene's small ground-story cottage, with garret stairs outside in front on the veranda and its five-acre farm behind, was not even on a highway nor on the edge of any rich _bas fond_,--creek-bottom. It was _au large_,--far out across the smooth, unscarred turf of the immense prairie, conveniently near one of the clear circular ponds--_maraises_--which one sees of every size and in every direction on the seemingly level land. Here it sat, as still as a picture, within its hollow square of China-trees, which every third year yielded their limbs for fuel; as easy to overlook the first time--as easy to see the next time--as a bird sitting on her eggs. Only the practised eye could read aright the infrequent obscure signs of previous travel that showed the way to it,--sometimes no more than the occasional soilure of the short turf by a few wheels or hoofs where the route led into or across the _coolees_--rivulets--that from _marais_ to _marais_ slipped southward toward the great marshes of the distant, unseen Gulf.
When I say the parent of one of these two children and guardian of the other was a man of note, I mean, for one thing, his house was painted. That he was the owner of thousands of cattle, one need not mention, for so were others who were quite inconspicuous, living in unpainted houses, rarely seeing milk, never tasting butter; men who at call of their baptismal names would come forth from these houses barefooted and bareheaded in any weather, and, while their numerous progeny grouped themselves in the doorway one behind another in inverse order of age and stature, would either point out your lost way, or, quite as readily as Sosthene, ask you in beneath a roof where the coffee-pot never went dry or grew cold by day. Nor would it distinguish him from them to say he had many horses or was always well mounted. It was a land of horsemen. One met them incessantly; men in broad hats and dull homespun, with thin, soft, untrimmed brown beards, astride of small but handsome animals, in Mexican saddles, the girths and bridles of plaited hair, sometimes a _pialle_ or _arriatte_--lasso, lariat--of plaited rawhide coiled at the saddle-bow. "Adieu, Onesime"--always adieu at meeting, the same as at parting. "Adieu, Francois; adieu, Christophe; adieu, Lazare;" and they with their gentle, brown-eyed, wild-animal gaze, "Adjieu."
What did make Sosthene notable was the quiet thing we call thrift, made graceful by certain rudiments of taste. To say Sosthene, means Madame Sosthene as well; and this is how it was that Zosephine Gradnego and Bonaventure Deschamps, though they went not to school, nevertheless had "advantages." For instance, the clean, hard-scrubbed cypress floors beneath their pattering feet; the neat round parti-colored mats at the doors that served them for towns and villages; the strips of home-woven carpet that stood for roads--this one to Mermentau, that one to Cote Gelee, a third _a la chapelle_; the walls of unpainted pine; the beaded joists under the ceiling; the home-made furniture, bedsteads and wardrobes of stained woods, and hickory chairs with rawhide seats, hair uppermost; the white fringed counterpanes on the high featherbeds; especially, in the principal room, the house's one mantelpiece, of wood showily stained in three colors and surmounted by a pair of gorgeous vases, beneath which the two children used to stand and feast their eyes, worth fifty cents if they were worth one,--these were as books to them indoors; and out in the tiny garden, where they played wild horse and wild cow, and lay in ambush for butterflies, they came under the spell of marigolds, prince's-feathers, lady-slippers, immortelles, portulaca, jonquil, lavender, althaea, love-apples, sage, violets, amaryllis, and that grass ribbon they call _jarretiere de la vierge_,--the virgin's garter.
Time passed; the children grew. The children older than they in the same house became less and less like children, and began to disappear from the family board and roof by a mysterious process called marrying, which greatly mystified Zosephine, but equally pleased her by the festive and jocund character of the occasions, times when there was a ravishing abundance of fried rice-cakes and _boulettes_--beef-balls.
To Bonaventure these affairs brought less mystery and less unalloyed pleasure. He understood them better. Some boys are born lovers. From the time they can reach out from the nurse's arms, they must be billing and cooing and choosing a mate. Such was ardent little Bonaventure; and none of the Gradnego weddings ever got quite through its ceremony without his big blue eyes being found full of tears--tears of mingled anger and desolation--because by some unpardonable oversight he and Zosephine were still left unmarried. So that the pretty damsel would have to take him aside, and kiss him as they clasped, and promise him, "Next time--next time, without fail!"
Nevertheless, he always reaped two proud delights from these events. For one, Sosthene always took him upon his lap and introduced him as his little Creole. And the other, the ex-governor came to these demonstrations--the great governor! who lifted him to his knee and told him of those wonderful things called cities, full of people that could read and write; and about steamboats and steam-cars.
At length one day, when weddings had now pretty well thinned out the ranks of Sosthene's family, the ex-governor made his appearance though no marriage was impending. Bonaventure, sitting on his knee, asked why he had come, and the ex-governor told him there was war.
"Do you not want to make haste and grow up and be a dragoon?"
The child was silent, and Sosthene laughed a little as he said privately in English, which tongue his exceptional thrift had put him in possession of:
"Aw, naw!"--he shook his head amusedly--"he dawn't like hoss. Go to put him on hoss, he kick like a frog. Yass; squeal wuss'n a pig. But still, sem time, you know, he ain't no coward; git mad in minute; fight like little ole ram. Dawn't ondstand dat little fellah; he love flower' like he was a gal."
"He ought to go to school," said the ex-governor. And Sosthene, half to himself, responded in a hopeless tone:
"Yass." Neither Sosthene nor any of his children had ever done that. _