CHAPTER I.
VESPER L. NIMMO.
"Hast committed a crime, and think'st thou to escape? Alas, my father!"--_Old Play._
"Evil deeds do not die," and the handsome young man stretched out in aneasy chair by the fire raised his curly black head and gazed into thefarthest corner of the comfortably furnished room as if challenging adenial of this statement.
No one contradicted him, for he was alone, and with a slightly satiricalsmile he went on. "One fellow sows the seeds, and another has to reapthem--no, you don't reap seeds, you reap what springs up. Deadly plants,we will say, nightshades and that sort of thing; and the surprised andinoffensive descendants of sinful sires have to drop their ordinaryoccupations and seize reaping-hooks to clean out these things that shootup in their paths. Here am I, for example, a comparatively harmlessproduct of the nineteenth century, confronted with a upas-tree plantedby my great-grandfather of the eighteenth,--just one hundred and fortyyears ago. It was certainly very heedless in the old boy," and he smiledagain and stared indolently at the leaping flames in the grate.
The fire was of wood,--sections of young trees cut small and laidcrosswise,--and from their slender stems escaping gases choked andsputtered angrily.
"I am burning miniature trees," drawled the young man; "by the way, theyseem to be assisting in my soliloquy. Perhaps they know this littlesecret," and with sudden animation he put out his hand and rang the bellbeside him.
A colored boy appeared. "Henry," said the young man, "where did you getthis wood?"
"I got it out of a schooner, sir, down on one of the wharves."
"What port did the schooner hail from?"
"From Novy Scoshy, sir."
"Were the crew Acadiens?"
"What, sir?"
"Were there any French sailors on her?"
"Yes, sir, I guess so. I heard 'em jabbering some queer kind of talk."
"Listen to the wood in that fire,--what does it say to you?"
Henry grinned broadly. "It sounds like as if it was laughing at me,sir."
"You think so? That will do."
The boy closed the door softly and went away, and the young manmurmured, "Just what I thought. They do know. Now, Acadien treelets,gasping your last to throw a gleam of brightness into my lazy life, tellme, is anything worth while? If there had been a curse laid on yourancestors in the forest, would you devote your last five minutes tolifting it?"
The angry gasping and sobbing in the fire had died away. Two of thetopmost billets of wood rolled gently over and emitted a soft muttering.
"You would, eh?" said the young man, with a sweet, subtle smile. "Youwould spend your last breath for the good of your race. You have leftsome saplings behind you in the forest. You hope that they will behappy, and should I, a human being, be less disinterested than you?"
"Vesper," said a sudden voice, from the doorway, "are you talking toyourself?"
The young man deliberately turned his head. The better to observe theaction of the sticks of wood, and to catch their last dying murmurs, hehad leaned forward, and sat with his hands on his knees. Now he got up,drew a chair to the fire for his mother, then sank back into his own.
"I do not like to hear you talking to yourself," she went on, in aquerulous, birdlike voice, "it seems like the habit of an old man or acrazy person."
"One likes sometimes to have a little confidential conversation, mymother."
"You always were secretive and unlike other people," she said, in acutematernal satisfaction and appreciation. "Of all the boys on the hillthere was none as clever as you in keeping his own counsel."
"So you think, but remember that I happened to be your son," he said,protestingly.
"Others have remarked it. Even your teachers said they could never makeyou out," and her caressing glance swept tenderly over his dark curlyhead, his pallid face, and slender figure.
His satirical yet affectionate eyes met hers, then he looked at thefire. "Mother, it is getting hot in Boston."
"Hot, Vesper?" and she stretched out one little white hand towards thefireplace.
"This is an exceptional day. The wind is easterly and raw, and it israining. Remember what perfect weather we have had. It is the first ofJune; it ought to be getting warm."
"I do not wish to leave Boston until the last of the month," said thelittle lady, decidedly, "unless,--unless," and she wistfully surveyedhim, "it is better for your health to go away."
"Suppose, before we go to the White Mountains, I take a trial trip bymyself, just to see if I can get on without coddling?"
"I could not think of allowing you to go away alone," she said, with ashake of her white head. "It would seriously endanger your health."
"I should like to go," he said, shortly. "I am better now."
He had made up his mind to leave her, and, after a brief struggle withherself, during which she clasped her hands painfully on her lap, thelittle lady yielded with a good grace. "Where do you wish to go?"
"I have not decided. Do you know anything about Nova Scotia?"
"I know where it is, on the map," she said, doubtfully. "I once had ahousemaid from there. She was a very good girl."
"Perhaps I will take a run over there."
"I have never been to Nova Scotia," she said, gently.
"If it is anything of a place, I will take you some other time. I don'tknow anything about the hotels now."
"But you, Vesper," she said, anxiously, "you will suffer more than Iwould."
"Then I shall not stay."
"How long will you be gone?"
"I do not know,--mother, your expression is that of a concerned henwhose chicken is about to have its first run. I have been away from youbefore."
"Not since you have been ill so much," and she sighed, heavily. "Vesper,I wish you had a wife to go with you."
"Really,--another woman to run after me with pill-boxes andmedicine-bottles. No, thank you."
Her face cleared. She did not wish him to get married, and he knew it.Slightly moving his dark head back and forth against the cushions of hischair, he averted his eyes from the widow's garments that she wore. Henever looked at them without feeling a shock of sympathy for her,although her loss in parting from a kind and tender husband had not beenequal to his in losing a father who had been an almost perfect being tohim. His mother still had him,--the son who was the light of her fraillittle life,--and he had her, and he loved her with a kind, indulgent,filial affection, and with sympathy for her many frailties; but, whenhis heart cried out for his departed father, he quietly absented himselffrom her. And that father--that good, honorable, level-headed man--hadended his life by committing suicide. He had never understood it. It wasa most bitter and stinging mystery to him even now, and he glanced atthe box of dusty, faded letters on the floor beside him.
"Vesper," said Mrs. Nimmo, "do you find anything interesting among thoseletters of your father?"
"Not my father's. There is not one of his among them. Indeed, I think henever could have opened this box. Did you ever know of his doing so?"
"I cannot tell. They have been up in the attic ever since I was married.He examined some of the boxes, then he asked you to do it. He was alwaysbusy, too busy. He worked himself to death," and a tear fell on herblack dress.
"I wish now that I had done as he requested," said the young man,gravely. "There are some questions that I should have asked him. Do youremember ever hearing him say anything about the death of mygreat-grandfather?"
She reflected a minute. "It seems to me that I have. He was the first ofyour father's family to come to this country. There is a faintrecollection in my mind of having heard that he--well, he died in somesudden way," and she stopped in confusion.
"It comes back to me now," said Vesper. "Was he not the old man who gotout of bed, when his nurse was in the next room, and put a pistol to hishead?"
"I daresay," said his mother, slowly. "Of course it was temporaryins
anity."
"Of course."
"Why do you ask?" she went on, curiously. "Do you find his name amongthe old documents?"
Vesper understood her better than to make too great a mystery of a thingthat he wished to conceal. "Yes, there is a letter from him."
"I should like to read it," she said, fussily fumbling at her waist forher spectacle-case.
Vesper indifferently turned his head towards her. "It is very long."
Her enthusiasm died away, and she sank back in her rocking-chair.
"My great-grandfather shot himself, and my grandfather was lost at sea,"pursued the young man, dreamily.
"Yes," she said, reluctantly; then she added, "my people all die inbed."
"His ship caught on fire."
She shuddered. "Yes; no one escaped."
"All burnt up, probably; and if they took to their boats they must havedied of starvation, for they were never heard of."
They were both silent, and the same thought was in their minds. Was thisvery cool and calm young man, sitting staring into the fire, to end hisdays in the violent manner peculiar to the rugged members of hisfather's family, or was he to die according to the sober and methodicalrule of the peaceful members of his mother's house?
Out of the depths of a quick maternal agony she exclaimed, "You are morelike me than your father."
Her son gave her an assenting and affectionate glance, though he knewthat she knew he was not at all like her. He even began to fancy, in acurious introspective fashion, whether he should have cared at all forthis little white-haired lady if he had happened to have had anotherwoman for a mother. The thought amused him, then he felt rebuked, and,leaning over, he took one of the white hands on her lap and kissed itgently.
"We should really investigate our family histories in this country morethan we do," he said. "I wish that I had questioned my father about hisancestors. I know almost nothing of them. Mother," he went on,presently, "have you ever heard of the expulsion of the Acadiens?" andbending over the sticks of wood neatly laid beside him, he picked up oneand gazed at a little excrescence in the bark which bore someresemblance to a human face.
"Oh, yes," she replied, with gentle rebuke, "do you not remember that Iused to know Mr. Longfellow?"
Vesper slowly, and almost caressingly, submitted the stick of wood tothe leaping embrace of the flames that rose up to catch it. "What isyour opinion of his poem 'Evangeline?'"
"It was a pretty thing,--very pretty and very sad. I remember cryingover it when it came out."
"You never heard that our family had any connection with the expulsion?"
"No, Vesper, we are not French."
"No, we certainly are not," and he relapsed into silence.
"I think I will run over to Nova Scotia, next week," he said, when shepresently got up to leave the room. "Will you let Henry find out aboutsteamers and trains?"
"Yes, if you think you must go," she said, wistfully. "I daresay thesteamer would be easier for you."
"The steamer then let it be."
"And if you must go I will have to look over your clothes. It will becool there, like Maine, I fancy. You must take warm things," and sheglided from the room.
"I wish you would not bother about them," he said; "they are all right."But she did not hear him.
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