Read Ebook: Of the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books From: Essays and Treaties on Moral Political and various Philosophical Subjects by Kant Immanuel

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"Have I the pleasure of addressing an Acadien?" asked Vesper.

"I have the honor to be one," said the stout gentleman, and his face flushed like that of a girl.

Vesper gave him a quick glance. This was the first Acadien that he had ever seen, and he was about as far removed from the typical Acadien that he had pictured to himself as a man could be. This man was a gentleman. He had expected to find the Acadiens, after all the trials they had gone through in their dispossession of property and wanderings by sea and land, degenerated into a despoiled and poverty-stricken remnant of peasantry. Curiously gratified by the discovery that here was one who had not gone under in the stress of war and persecution, he remarked that his companion was probably well-informed on the subject of the expulsion of his countrymen from this province.

"The expulsion,--ah!" said the gentleman, in a repressed voice. Then, unable to proceed, he made a helpless gesture and turned his face towards the window.

The younger man thought that there were tears in his eyes, and forbore to speak.

"One mentions it so calmly nowadays," said the Acadien, presently, looking at him. "There is no passion, no resentment, yet it is a living flame in the breast of every true Acadien, and this is the reason,--it is a tragedy that is yet championed. It is commonly believed that the deportation of the Acadiens was a necessity brought about by their stubbornness."

"That is the view I have always taken of it," said Vesper, mildly. "I have never looked into the subject exhaustively, but my conclusion from desultory reading has been that the Acadiens were an obstinate set of people who dictated terms to the English, which, as a conquered race, they should not have done, and they got transported for it."

"Then let me beg you, my dear sir, to search into the matter. If you happen to visit the Sleeping Water Inn, ask for Agapit Le Noir. He is an enthusiast on the subject, and will inform you; and if at any time you find yourself in our beautiful city of Halifax, may I not beg the pleasure of a call? I shall be happy to lay before you some historical records of our race," and he offered Vesper a card on which was engraved, Dr. Bernardin Arseneau, Barrington Street, Halifax.

Vesper took the card, thanked him, and said, "Shall I find any of the descendants of the settlers of Grand Pr? among the Acadiens on this Bay?"

"Many, many of them. When the French first came to Nova Scotia, they naturally selected the richest portions of the province. At the expulsion these farms were seized. When, through incredible hardships, they came struggling back to this country that they so much loved, they could not believe that their lands would not be restored to them. Many of them trudged on foot to fertile Grand Pr?, to Port Royal, and other places. They looked in amazement at the settlers who had taken their homes. You know who they were?"

"No, I do not," said Vesper.

"They were your own countrymen, my dear sir, if, as I rightly judge, you come from the United States. They came to this country, and found waiting for them the fertile fields whose owners had been seized, imprisoned, tortured, and carried to foreign countries, some years before. Such is the justice of the world. For their portion the returned Acadiens received this strip of forest on the Bay Saint-Mary. You will see what they have made of it," and, with a smile at once friendly and sad, the stout gentleman left the train and descended to a little station at which they had just pulled up.

THE SLEEPING WATER INN.

"Montrez-moi votre menu et je vous montrerai mon coeur."

A few minutes later, the train had again entered the forest, and Vesper, who had a passion for trees and ranked them with human beings in his affections, allowed the mystery and charm of these foreigners to steal over him. In dignified silence and reserve the tall pines seemed to draw back from the rude contact of the passing train. The more assertive firs and spruces stood still, while the slender hackmatacks, most beautiful of all the trees of the wood, writhed and shook with fright, nervously tossing their tremulous arms and tasselled heads, and breathing long odoriferous sighs that floated after, but did not at all touch the sympathies of the roaring monster from the outer world who so often desecrated their solitude.

Vesper's delicate nostrils dilated as the spicy odors saluted them, and he thought, with tenderness, of the home trees that he loved, the elms of the Common and those of the square where he had been born. How many times he had encircled them with admiring footsteps, noting the individual characteristics of each tree, and giving to each one a separate place in his heart. Just for an instant he regretted that for to-night he could not lie down in their shadow. Then he turned irritably to the salesman, who was stretching and shaking out his legs, and performing other calisthenic exploits as accompaniments of waking.

"Haven't we come to Great Scott yet?" he asked, getting up, and sauntering to Vesper's window.

Vesper consulted his folder. Among the French names he could discover nothing like this, unless it was Grosses Coques, so called, his guide-book told him, because the Acadiens had discovered enormous clams there.

"How would you like to talk French?" asked Vesper, quietly.

The little man laughed shrewdly, and not unkindly. "Every man to his liking. I guess it's best not to fight too much."

"I get off here," said Vesper, gathering up his papers.

"Happy you,--you won't have to wait for all of Evangeline's heifers to step off the track between here and Halifax."

Vesper nodded to him, and, swinging himself from the car, went to find the conductor.

There was ample time to get that gentlemanly official's consent to have his wheel and trunk put off at this station, instead of at Grand Pr?, and ample time for Vesper to give a long look at the names in the line of cars, which were, successively, Basil the Blacksmith, Benedict the Father, Ren? the Notary, and Gabriel the Lover, before the locomotive snuffed its nostrils and, panting and heaving, started off to trail its romantic appendages through the country of Evangeline.

When the train had disappeared, Vesper looked about him. He was no longer in the heart of the forest. An open country and scattering houses appeared in the distance, and here he could distinctly feel a mischievous breeze from the Bay that playfully ruffled his hair, and tossed back the violets at his feet every time that they bent over to look at their own sweet faces in the black, mirror-like pool of water set in a mossy bed beside them.

He had many times seen the fellows of this white-haired, smooth-faced old man, in the Southern States in the shape of cardinal-birds. Those resplendent creatures in the male sex are usually clothed in gay red jackets. This male's plumage was also red, but, unlike the cardinal-birds, it had a trimming of pearl buttons and white lace. The bird's high and conical crest was expressed in the man by a pointed red cap. The bird is nondescript as to the legs,--so also was the man; and the loud and musical note of the Southern songster was reproduced in the fife-like tones of the Acadien, when he presently spoke.

He was an official, and carried in his hand a locked bag containing her Majesty's mail for her Acadien subjects of the Bay. Vesper had seen the mail-carriers along the route, tossing their bags to the passing train, and receiving others in return, but none as gorgeous as this one, and he was wondering why the gentle-faced septuagenarian made himself so peculiar, when he was addressed in a sweet, high voice.

"Sir," said the bird-man, in French,--for was he not Emmanuel Victor De la Rive, lineal descendant of a French marquis who had married a queen's maid of honor, and had subsequently bequeathed his bones and his large family of children to his adored Acadie?--"Sir, is it possible that you are a guest for the inn?"

"It is possible," said Vesper, gravely.

"Alas!" said the old man, turning to the dark-eyed woman, who had left her cradle and spinning-wheel, "is it not always so? When Rose ? Charlitte does not send, there are arrivals. When she does, there are not. She will be in despair. Sir, shall I have the honor of taking you over in my road-cart?"

"I have a wheel," said Vesper, pointing to the bicycle, leaning disconsolately against his trunk.

The black-eyed woman immediately put out her hand for his checks.

"Then may I have the honor of showing you the way?" said Monsieur De la Rive, bowing before Vesper as if he were a divinity. "There are sides of the road which it is well to avoid."

"I shall be most happy to avail myself of your offer."

"I will send the trunk over," said the station woman. "There is a constant going that way."

Vesper thanked her, and left the station in the wake of the cardinal-bird, who sat perched on his narrow seat as easily as if it were a branch of a tree, turning his crested head at frequent intervals to look anxiously at the mail-bag which, for reasons best known to himself, he carried slung to a nail in the back of his cart.

At frequent intervals, too, he piped shrill and sweet remarks to Vesper. "Courage; the road will soon improve. It is the ox-teams that cut it up. They load schooners in the Bay. Here at last is a good spot. Monsieur can mount now. Beware of the sharp stones. All the bones of the earth stick up in places. Does monsieur intend to stay long in Sleeping Water? Was it monsieur that Rose ? Charlitte expected when she drove through the pouring rain to the station, two days since? What did he say in the letter that he sent yesterday in explanation of his change of plans? Did monsieur come from Halifax, or Boston? Did he know Mrs. de la Rive, laundress, of Cambridge Street? Had he samples of candy or tobacco in that big box of his? How much did he charge a pound for his best peppermints?"

Vesper, fully occupied with keeping his wheel out of the ruts in the road, and in maintaining a safe distance from the cart, which pressed him sore if he went ahead and waited for him if he dallied behind, answered "yes" and "no" at random, until at length he had involved himself in such a maze of contradictions that Monsieur de la Rive felt himself forced to pull up his brown pony and remonstrate.

"But it is impossible, monsieur, that you should have seen Mrs. de la Rive, who has been dying for weeks, dancing at the wedding of the daughter of her step-uncle, the baker, and yet you say 'yes' when I remark that she was not there."

The stop and the remonstrance were so birdlike and so quick, that Vesper, taken aback, fell off his wheel and broke his cyclometer.

He picked himself out of the dust, swearing under his breath, and Monsieur de la Rive, being a gentleman, and seeing that this quiet young stranger was disinclined for conversation, suddenly whipped up his pony and sped madly on ahead, the tails of his red coat streaming out behind him, the tip of his pointed cap fluttering and nodding over his thick white locks of hair.

After the lapse of a few minutes, Vesper had recovered his composure, and was looking calmly about him. The road was better now, and they were nearing the Bay, that lay shimmering and shining like a great sea-serpent coiled between purple hills. He did not know what Grand Pr? was like, and was therefore unaware of the extent of the Acadiens' loss in being driven from it; but this was by no means a barren country. On either side of him were fairly prosperous farms, each one with a light painted wooden house, around which clustered usually a group of children, presided over by a mother, who, as the mail-driver dashed by, would appear in the doorway, thrusting forth her matronly face, often partly shrouded by a black handkerchief.

He noticed, with regret, that the forest had all been swept away. The Acadiens, in their zeal for farming, had wielded their axes so successfully that scarcely a tree had been left between the station and the Bay. Here and there stood a lonely guardian angel, in the shape of a solitary pine, hovering over some Acadien roof-tree, and turning a melancholy face towards its brothers of the forest,--rugged giants primeval, now prostrate and forlorn, and being trailed slowly along towards the waiting schooners in the Bay.

The most of these fallen giants were loaded on rough carts drawn by pairs of sleek and well-kept oxen who were yoked by the horns. The carts were covered with mud from the bad roads of the forest, and muddy also were the boots of the stalwart Acadien drivers, who walked beside the oxen, whip in hand, and turned frankly curious faces towards the stranger who flashed by their slow-moving teams on his shining wheel.

The road was now better, and Vesper quickly attained to the top of the last hill between the station and the Bay.

Ah! now the fields did not appear bare, the houses naked, the whole country wind-swept and cold, for the wide, regal, magnificent Bay lay spread out before him. It was no longer a thread of light, a sea-serpent shining in the distance, but a great, broad, beautiful basin, on whose placid bosom all the Acadien, New England, and Nova Scotian fleets might float with never a jostle between any of their ships.

A fire of admiration kindled in his calm eyes, and he allowed himself to glide rapidly down the hill towards this brilliant blue sweep of water, along whose nearer shores stretched, as far as his gaze could reach, the curious dotted line of the French village.

The country had become flat, as flat as Holland, and the fields rolled down into the water in the softest, most exquisite shades of green, according to the different kinds of grass or grain flourishing along the shores. The houses were placed among the fields, some close together, some far apart, all, however, but a stone's throw from the water's edge, as if the Acadiens, fearful of another expulsion, held themselves always in readiness to step into the procession of boats and schooners moored almost in their dooryards.

At the point where Vesper found himself threatened with precipitation into the Bay, they struck the village line. Here, at the corner, was the general shop and post-office of Sleeping Water. The cardinal-bird fluttered his mail-bag in among the loafers at the door, saw the shopkeeper catch it, then, swelling out his vermilion breast with importance, he nimbly took the corner with one wheel in the air and pulled up before the largest, whitest house on the street, and flourished a flaming wing in the direction of a swinging sign,--"The Sleeping Water Inn."

Vesper, biting his lip to restrain a smile, rounded the corner after him, and leisurely stepped from his wheel in front of the house.

Vesper pulled the bell, and, as no one answered his summons, he sauntered through the open door into the hall.

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