_ CARANCRO CHAPTER VI. MISSING
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 Sosthene 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."
Sosthene and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, smiled, and swore two simultaneous oaths of admiration. Zosephine softly pinched her mother, and whispered something. Madame Sosthene addressed the home-comer aloud:
"Did 'Thanase send no other message except that mere 'How-d'ye all do?'"
"No."
Zosephine 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 Sosthene saw two things at once: that the guess was a good one, and that Zosephine 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 cure, 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 cure to himself. Zosephine had hardly yet learned to read without stammering, when Bonaventure was already devouring the few French works of the cure'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 cure 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 cure to himself as he sat at solitaire under his orange-tree one afternoon.
The boy passed out of sight, and the cure'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 cure 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 cure answered with a warm smile, saying:
"My boy, God is a very practical God--no, you need not write it; just listen a moment. Yes; and so when He gave us natures like His, He gave men not wives only, but brethren and sisters and companions and strangers, in order that benevolence, yes, and even self-sacrifice,--mistakenly so called,--might have no lack of direction and occupation; and then bound the whole human family together by putting every one's happiness into some other one's hands. I see you do not understand: never mind; it will come to you little by little. It was a long time coming to me. Let us go in to supper."
The good man had little hope of such words taking hold. At school next day there was Zosephine with her soft electric glances to make the boy forget all; and at the Saturday-night balls there she was again.
"Bonaventure," her manner plainly said, "did you ever see any thing else in this wide world so tiresome as these boys about here? Stay with me; it keeps them away." She never put such thoughts into words. With an Acadian girl such a thing was impossible But girls do not need words. She drew as potently, and to all appearances as impassively, as a loadstone. All others than Bonaventure she repelled. If now and then she toyed with a heart, it was but to see her image in it once or twice and toss it aside. All got one treatment in the main. Any one of them might gallop by her father's veranda seven times a day, but not once in all the seven would she be seen at the window glancing up at the weather or down at her flowers; nor on the veranda hanging up fresh hanks of yarn; nor at the well with the drinking-pail, getting fresh water, as she might so easily have been, had she so chosen. Yonder was Sosthene hoeing leisurely in the little garden, and possibly the sunbonnet of _la vieille_ half seen and half hidden among her lima-beans; but for the rest there was only the house, silent at best, or, worse, sending out through its half-open door the long, scornful No-o-o! of the maiden's unseen spinning-wheel. No matter the fame or grace of the rider. All in vain, my lad: pirouette as you will; sit your gallantest; let your hat blow off, and turn back, and at full speed lean down from the saddle, and snatch it airily from the ground, and turn again and gallop away; all is in vain. For by her estimate either you are living in fear of the conscript officer; or, if you are in the service, and here only transiently on leave of absence, your stay seems long, and it is rumored your leave has expired; or, worse, you cannot read; or, worst, your age, for all your manly airs, is so near Zosephine's as to give your attentions strong savor of presumption. But let any fortune bring Bonaventure in any guise--sorriest horseman of all, youngest, slenderest, and stranger to all the ways that youth loves--and at once she is visible; nay, more, accessible; and he, welcome. So accessible she, so welcome he, that more than once she has to waft aside her mother's criticisms by pleading Bonaventure's foster-brotherhood and her one or two superior years.
"Poor 'Thanase!" said the youths and maidens.
* * * * *
And now the war came to an end. Bonaventure was glad. 'Thanase was expected home, but--let him come. If the absent soldier knew what the young folks at the balls knew, he would not make haste in his return. And he did not, as it seemed. Day after day, in group after group, without shouting and without banners, with wounds and scars and tattered garments, some on horses, but many more on foot, the loved ones--the spared ones, remnants of this command and that command and 'Thanase's command--came home. But day by day brought no 'Thanase.
Bonaventure began to wish for him anxiously. He wanted him back so that this load might be lifted. Thus the bitter would pass out of the sweet; the haunting fear of evil tidings from the absent rival would haunt no more. Life would be what it was to other lads, and Zosephine one day fall to his share by a better title than he could ever make with 'Thanase in exile. Come, 'Thanase, come, come!
More weeks passed. The youth's returned comrades were all back at their ploughs again and among their herds. 'Thanase would be along by and by, they said; he could not come with them, for he had not been paroled with them; he had been missing--taken prisoner, no doubt--in the very last fight. But presently they who had been prisoners were home also, and still 'Thanase had not come. And then, instead of 'Thanase coming, Chaouache died.
A terror took up its home in the heart of Bonaventure. Every thing he looked upon, every creature that looked upon him, seemed to offer an unuttered accusation. Least of all could he bear the glance of Zosephine. He did not have to bear it. She kept at home now closely. She had learned to read, and Sosthene and his _vieille_ had pronounced her education completed.
In one direction only could the eyes of Bonaventure go, and meet nothing that accused him: that was into the face of the cure. And lest accusation should spring up there, he had omitted his confession for weeks. He was still child enough not to see that the priest was watching him narrowly and tenderly.
One night, away in the small hours, the cure was aroused by the presence of some one in his room.
"Who is that?" He rose from his pillow.
"It is I, father," said a low voice, and against the darkness of an inner door he saw dimly the small, long nightdress of the boy he loved.
"What gets you up, Bonaventure? Come here. What troubles you?"
"I cannot sleep," murmured the lad, noiselessly moving near. The priest stroked the lad's brow.
"Have you not been asleep at all?"
"Yes."
"But you have had bad dreams that woke you?"
"Only one."
"And what was that?"
There was a silence.
"Did you dream about--'Thanase, for example?"
"Yes."
The priest reached out and took the boy's small, slender hands in his. They were moist and cold.
"And did you dream"--
"I dreamed he was dead. I dream it every night."
"But, my child, that does not make it so. Would you like to get into bed here with me? No?--or to go back now to your own bed? No? What, then?"
"I do not want to go back to bed any more. I want to go and find 'Thanase."
"Why, my child, you are not thoroughly awake, are you?"
"Yes, I want to go and find 'Thanase. I have been thinking to-night of all you have told me--of all you said that day in the garden,--and--I want to go and find 'Thanase."
"My boy," said the priest, drawing the lad with gentle force to his bosom, "my little old man, does this mean that you have come to the end of all self-service?--that self is never going to be spelt with a capital S any more? Will it be that way if I let you go?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, my son--God only knows whether I am wise or foolish, but--you may go."
The boy smiled for the first time in weeks, then climbed half upon the bed, buried his face in the priest's bosom, and sobbed as though his heart had broken.
"It has broken," said the cure to himself as he clasped him tightly. "It has broken--thank God!" _