What do they see? Some traveller afoot? Can it be that Bonaventure is in sight? That is not even the direction from which Bonaventure, when he comes, will appear. No, speck though it is, the object they are looking at is far larger than a man afoot, or any horse, or horse and calèche. It is a house. It is on wheels, and is drawn by many yoke of oxen. From what the curé is saying we gather that Sosthène has bought this very small dwelling from a neighbor, and is moving it to land of his own. Two great beams have been drawn under the sills at each end, the running gear of two heavy ox-wagons is made to bear up the four ends of these beams, all is lashed firmly into place, the oxen are slowly pulling, the long whips are cracking, the house is answering the gentle traction, and, already several miles away from its first site, it will to-morrow settle down upon new foundations, a homely type of one whose wreath will soon be a-making, and who will soon after come to be the little house’s mistress.
But what have we done—let time slip backward? A little; not much; for just then, as the ex-governor said, “And where is Bonaventure by this time?” Bonaventure had been only an hour or two in the negro-cabin where fever had dragged him down.
Since then the house had not only settled safely upon its new foundations, but Sosthène, in the good, thorough way that was his own, had carried renovation to a point that made the cottage to all intents and purposes a new house. And the curé had looked upon it again, much nearer by; for before a bride dared enter a house so nearly new, it had been deemed necessary for him to come and, before a temporary altar within the dwelling, to say mass in the time of full moon. But not yet was the house really a dwelling; it, and all Carancro, were waiting for the wedding. Make haste, Bonaventure!
He had left the Teche behind him on the east. And now a day breaks whose sunset finds him beyond the Vermilion River. He cannot go aside to the ex-governor’s, over yonder on the right. He is making haste. This day his journey will end. His heart is light; he has thought out the whole matter now; he makes no doubt any longer that the story told him is true. And he knows now just what to do: this very sunset he will reach his goal; he goes to fill ’Thanase’s voided place; to lay his own filial service at the feet of the widowed mother; to be a brother in the lost brother’s place; and Zoséphine?—why, she shall be her daughter, the same as though ’Thanase, not he, had won her. And thus, too, Zoséphine shall have her own sweet preference—that preference which she had so often whispered to him—for a scholar rather than a soldier. Such is the plan, and Conscience has given her consent.
The sun soars far overhead. It, too, makes haste. But the wasted, flushed, hungry-eyed traveller is putting the miles behind him. He questions none to-day that pass him or whom he overtakes; only bows, wipes his warm brow, and presses on across the prairie. Straight before him, though still far away, a small, white, wooden steeple rises from out a tuft of trees. It is la chapelle!
The distance gets less and less. See! the afternoon sunlight strikes the roofs of a few unpainted cottages that have begun to show themselves at right and left of the chapel. And now he sees the green window-shutters of such as are not without them, and their copperas or indigo-dyed curtains blowing in and out. Nearer; nearer; here is a house, and yonder another, newly built. Carancro is reached.
He enters a turfy, cattle-haunted lane between rose-hedges. In a garden on one side, and presently in another over the way, children whom he remembers—but grown like weeds since he saw them last—are at play; but when they stop and gaze at him, it is without a sign of recognition. Now he walks down the village street. How empty it seems! was it really always so? Still, yonder is a man he knows—and yonder a woman—but they disappear without seeing him.
How familiar every thing is! There are the two shops abreast of the chapel, Marx’s on this side, Lichtenstein’s on that, their dingy false fronts covered with their same old huge rain-faded words of promise. Yonder, too, behind the blacksmith’s shop, is the little schoolhouse, dirty, half-ruined, and closed—that is, wide-open and empty—it may be for lack of a teacher, or funds, or even of scholars.
“It shall not be so,” said the traveller to himself, “when she and I”—
His steps grow slow. Yet here, not twenty paces before him, is the home of the curé. Ah! that is just the trouble. Shall he go here first? May he not push on and out once more upon the prairie and make himself known first of all to her? Stopping here first, will not the curé say tarry till to-morrow? His steps grow slower still.