_ CARANCRO CHAPTER III. ATHANASIUS
War it was. The horsemen grew scarce on the wide prairies of Opelousas. Far away in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, on bloody fields, many an Acadian volunteer and many a poor conscript fought and fell for a cause that was really none of theirs, simple, non-slaveholding peasants; and many died in camp and hospital--often of wounds, often of fevers, often of mere longing for home. Bonaventure and Zosephine learned this much of war: that it was a state of affairs in which dear faces went away, and strange ones came back with tidings that brought bitter wailings from mothers and wives, and made _les vieux_--the old fathers--sit very silent. Three times over that was the way of it in Sosthene's house.
It was also a condition of things that somehow changed boys into men very young. A great distance away, but still in sight south-westward across the prairie, a dot of dark green showed where dwelt a sister and brother-in-law of Sosthene's _vieille_,--wife. There was not the same domestic excellence there as at Sosthene's; yet the dooryard was very populous with fowls; within the house was always heard the hard thump, thump, of the loom, or the loud moan of the spinning-wheel; and the children were many. The eldest was Athanase. Though but fifteen he was already stalwart, and showed that intelligent sympathy in the family cares that makes such offspring the mother's comfort and the father's hope. At that age he had done but one thing to diminish that comfort or that hope. One would have supposed an ambitious chap like him would have spent his first earnings, as other ambitious ones did, for a saddle; but 'Thanase Beausoleil had bought a fiddle.
He had hardly got it before he knew how to play it. Yet, to the father's most welcome surprise, he remained just as bold a rider and as skilful a thrower of the _arriatte_ as ever. He came into great demand for the Saturday-night balls. When the courier with a red kerchief on a wand came galloping round, the day before, from _ile_ to _ile_,--for these descendants of a maritime race call their homestead groves islands,--to tell where the ball was to be, he would assert, if there was even a hope of it, that 'Thanase was to be the fiddler.
In this way 'Thanase and his pretty little _jarmaine_--first cousin--Zosephine, now in her fourteenth year, grew to be well acquainted. For at thirteen, of course, she began to move in society, which meant to join in the contra-dance. 'Thanase did not dance with her, or with any one. She wondered why he did not; but many other girls had similar thoughts about themselves. He only played, his playing growing better and better, finer and finer, every time he was heard anew. As to the few other cavaliers, very willing were they to have it so. The music could not be too good, and if 'Thanase was already perceptibly a rival when hoisted up in a chair on top of a table, fiddle and bow in hand, "twisting," to borrow their own phrase--"twisting the ears of that little red beast and rubbing his abdomen with a stick," it was just as well not to urge him to come down into the lists upon the dancing-floor. But they found one night, at length, that the music could be too good--when 'Thanase struck up something that was not a dance, and lads and damsels crowded around standing and listening and asking ever for more, and the ball turned out a failure because the concert was such a success.
The memory of that night was of course still vivid next day, Sunday, and Zosephine's memory was as good as any one's. I wish you might have seen her in those days of the early bud. The time had returned when Sosthene could once more get all his household--so had marriages decimated it--into one vehicle, a thing he had not been able to do for almost these twenty years. Zosephine and Bonaventure sat on a back seat contrived for them in the family caleche. In front were the broad-brimmed Campeachy hat of Sosthene and the meek, limp sunbonnet of _la vieille_. About the small figure of the daughter there was always something distinguishing, even if you rode up from behind, that told of youth, of mettle, of self-regard; a neatness of fit in the dress, a firm erectness in the little slim back, a faint proudness of neck, a glimpse of ribbon at the throat, another at the waist; a something of assertion in the slight crispness of her homespun sunbonnet, and a ravishing glint of two sparks inside it as you got one glance within--no more. And as you rode on, if you were a young blade, you would be--as the soldier lads used to say--all curled up; but if you were an old mustache, you would smile inwardly and say to yourself, "She will have her way; she will make all winds blow in her chosen direction; she will please herself; she will be her own good luck and her own commander-in-chief, and, withal, nobody's misery or humiliation, unless you count the swain after swain that will sigh in vain." As for Bonaventure, sitting beside her, you could just see his bare feet limply pendulous under his wide palm-leaf hat. And yet he was a very real personage.
"Bonaventure," said Zosephine,--this was as they were returning from church, the wide rawhide straps of their huge wooden two-wheeled vehicle creaking as a new saddle would if a new saddle were as big as a house,--"Bonaventure, I wish you could learn how to dance. I am tired trying to teach you." (This and most of the unbroken English of this story stands for Acadian French.)
Bonaventure looked meek for a moment, and then resentful as he said:
"'Thanase does not dance."
"'Thanase! Bah! What has 'Thanase to do with it? Who was even thinking of 'Thanase? Was he there last night? Ah yes! I just remember now he was. But even he could dance if he chose; while you--you can't learn! You vex me. 'Thanase! What do you always bring him up for? I wish you would have the kindness just not to remind me of him! Why does not some one tell him how he looks, hoisted up with his feet in our faces, scratching his fiddle? Now, the fiddle, Bonaventure--the fiddle would just suit you. Ah, if you could play!" But the boy's quick anger so flashed from his blue eyes that she checked herself and with contemplative serenity added:
"Pity nobody else can play so well as that tiresome fellow. It was positively silly, the way some girls stood listening to him last night. I'd be ashamed, or, rather, too proud, to flatter such a high-headed care-for-nobody. I wish he wasn't my cousin!"
Bonaventure, still incensed, remarked with quiet intensity that he knew why she wished 'Thanase was not a cousin.
"It's no such a thing!" exclaimed Zosephine so forcibly that Madame Sosthene's sunbonnet turned around, and a murmur of admonition came from it. But the maiden was smiling and saying blithely to Bonaventure:
"Oh, you--you can't even guess well." She was about to say more, but suddenly hushed. Behind them a galloping horse drew near, softly pattering along the turfy road. As he came abreast, he dropped into a quiet trot.
The rider was a boyish yet manly figure in a new suit of gray home-made linsey, the pantaloons thrust into the tops of his sturdy russet boots, and the jacket ending underneath a broad leather belt that carried a heavy revolver in its holster at one hip. A Campeachy hat shaded his face and shoulders, and a pair of Mexican spurs tinkled their little steel bells against their huge five-spiked rowels on his heels. He scarcely sat in the saddle-tree--from hat to spurs you might have drawn a perpendicular line. It would have taken in shoulders, thighs, and all.
"Adjieu," said the young centaur; and Sosthene replied from the creaking caleche, "Adjieu, 'Thanase," while the rider bestowed his rustic smile upon the group. Madame Sosthene's eyes met his, and her lips moved in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little daughter were in her lap. Bonaventure's gaze was hostile. A word or two passed between uncle and nephew, including a remark and admission that the cattle-thieves were getting worse than ever; and with a touch of the spur, the young horseman galloped on.
It seems enough to admit that Zosephine's further remarks were silly without reporting them in full.
"Look at his back! What airs! If I had looked up I should have laughed in his face!" etc. "Well," she concluded, after much such chirruping, "there's one comfort--he doesn't care a cent for me. If I should die to-morrow, he would forget to come to the funeral. And you think I wouldn't be glad? Well, you're mistaken, as usual. I hate him, and I just know he hates me! Everybody hates me!"
The eyes of her worshipper turned upon her. But she only turned her own away across the great plain to the vast arching sky, and patted the caleche with a little foot that ached for deliverance from its Sunday shoe. Then her glance returned, and all the rest of the way home she was as sweet as the last dip of cane-juice from the boiling battery. _