Rosin the Beau

Fortunately Ham only heard the first part of this sentence; he responded heartily, begging the marquis to call at any hour. Then, being at the end of his talk, he shook hands once more with ponderous good will, and passed on, he and the oxen rolling along with equal steps.

Ste. Valerie was silent until Ham was out of earshot; then he broke out.

"Holy Blue! what a prodigy! You suffer this to burst upon me, Jacques, without notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of – what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft, – a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, Jacques, that I am called le grand Yvon!" He was silent for a moment, then broke out again. "But the mind. D'Arthenay! the brain; how is it with that? Thought, – a lightning flash! is it not lost, wandering through a head large like that of an ox?"

I cannot remember in what words I answered him, Melody. I know I was troubled how to make it clear to him, and he so different from the other. I seemed to stand midway between the two, and to understand both. Half of me seemed to spring up in joy at the voice of the young foreigner; his lightness, his quickness, the very way he moved his hands, seemed a part of my own nature that I had not learned to use, and now saw reflected in another. I am not sure if I make myself clear, my child; it was a singular feeling. But when I would spring forward with him, and toss my head and wave my hands as he did, – as my mother Marie did, – there was something held me back; it was the other nature in me, slow and silent, and – no! not cold, but loath to show its warmth, if I may put it so. My father in me kept me silent many a time when I might have spoken foolishness. And it was this half, my father's half, that loved Ham Belfort, and saw the solid sweetness of nature that made that huge body a temple of good will, so to speak. He had the kind of goodness that gives peace and rest to those who lean against it. His mill was one of the places – but we shall come to that by and by!

Walking on as we talked, we soon came to the village, and I begged my new friend to come in and see my father and my home. We entered. My father was standing by the fire, facing the door, with one hand on the tall mantel-shelf. He was in one of his waking dreams, and I was struck deeply, Melody, by the beauty, and, if I may use the word about a plain man, the majesty of his looks. My companion was struck, too, for he stopped short, and murmured something under his breath; I heard the word "Noblesse," and thought it not amiss. My father's eyes (they were extraordinarily bright and blue) were wide open, and looked through us and beyond us, yet saw nothing, or nothing that other eyes could see; the tender look was in them that meant the thought of my mother. But Abby came quietly round from the corner where she sat sewing, and laid her hand on his arm, and spoke clearly, yet not sharply, telling him to look and see, Jakey had brought a gentleman to see him. Then the vision passed, and my father looked and saw us, and came forward with a stately, beautiful way that he could use, and bade the stranger welcome. Ste. Valerie bowed low, as he might to a prince. Hearing that he was a Frenchman, my father seemed pleased. "My dear wife was a Frenchwoman!" he said. "She was a musician, sir; I wish you could have heard her play."

"He was himself also of French descent," Ste. Valerie reminded him, with another bow; and told of the ruined tower, and the old friendship between the two houses. But my father cared nothing for descent.

"Long ago, sir!" he said. "Long ago! I have nothing to do with the dead of two hundred years back. I am a plain farmer; my son has learned the trade of shoemaking, though he also has some skill with the fiddle, I am told. Nothing compared to his mother, but still some skill."

Ste. Valerie looked from one of us to the other. "A farmer, – a shoemaker!" he said, slowly. "Strange country, this! And while your vieille noblesse make shoes and till the soil, who are these, monsieur, who live in some of the palaces that I have seen in your cities? In many, truly, persons of real nobility also, gentlemen, whether hunting of race or of Nature's own. But these others? I have seen them; large persons, both male and female, red as beef, their grossness illuminated with diamonds of royalty, their dwelling a magazine from the Rue de la Paix. These things are shocking to a European, M. D'Arthenay!" My father looked at him with something like reproof in his quiet gaze.

"I have never been in cities," he said. "I consider that a farmer's life may be used as well as another for the glory of God."

Then, with a wave of his hand, he seemed to put all this away from him, and with a livelier air asked the stranger to take supper with us. Abby had been laying the cloth quietly while we were talking, and my father would have asked her to sit down with us, but she slipped away while his face was turned in the other direction, and though he looked once or twice, he soon forgot. Poor Abby! I had seen her looking at him as he talked, and was struck by her intent expression, as if she would not lose a word he might say. It seemed natural, though, that he should be her first thought; he had always been, since my mother died.

So presently we three sat about the little table, that was gay with flowers and pretty dishes. I saw Ste. Valerie's wondering glances; was it thus, he seemed to ask, that a farmer lived, who had no woman to care for him? My father saw, too, and was pleased as I had rarely seen him. He did not smile, but his face seemed to fill with light.

"My wife, sir," he said, "loved to see things bright and adorned. I try – my son and I try – to keep the table as she would like it. I formerly thought these matters sinful, but I have been brought to a clearer vision, – through affliction." (Strange human nature, Melody, my child! he was moved to say these words to a stranger, which he could not have said to me, his son!) "She had the French taste and lightness, my wife Mary. I should have been proud to have you see her, sir; the Lord was mindful of His own, and took her away from a world of sin and suffering."

The light died out; his eyes wandered for a moment, and then set, in a way I knew; and I began to talk fast of the first thing that came into my mind.

CHAPTER VI

I COULD write a whole book about the summer that followed this spring day, when I first met Yvon de Ste. Valerie. Yes, and the book would be so long that no mortal man would have time to read it; but I must hurry on with my story; for truth to tell, my eyes are beginning to be not quite what they have been, – they'll serve my time, I hope, but my writing was always small and crabbed, – and I must say what I have to say, shorter than I have begun, I perceive. After the first week, then, which he spent with Father L'Homme-Dieu, Yvon came over to our village and boarded with Abby Rock. The Father was pleased to have him come; he knew it would be a great thing for me, and he thought it would not hurt the young gentleman to live for a time with plain folks. But if he thought Yvon would look down on our village people, or hold himself better than they, he was mistaken. In a week the young Frenchman was the son and brother of the whole village. Our people were dear, good people, Melody; but I sometimes thought them a little dull; that was after my mother's death. I suppose I had enough of another nature in me to be troubled by this, but not enough to know how to help it; later I learned a little more; but indeed, I should justly say that my lessons were begun by Yvon de Ste. Valerie. It was from him I learned, my dear, that nothing in this world of God's is dull or common, unless we bring dull hearts and dim eyes to look at it. It is the vision, the vision, that makes the life; that vision which you, my child, with your sightless eyes, have more clearly than almost any one I have known.

He was delighted with everything. He wanted to know about everything. He declared that he should write a book, when he returned to France, all about our village, which he called Paradise. It is a pretty place, or was as I remember it. He must see how bread was made, how wool was spun, how rugs were braided. Many's the time I have found him sitting in some kitchen, winding the great balls of rags neatly cut and stitched together, listening like a child while the woman told him of how many rugs she had made, and how many quilts she had pieced; and she more pleased than he, and thinking him one wonder and herself another.

He was in love with all the girls; so he said, and they had nothing to say against it. But yet there was no girl could carry a sore heart, for he treated them all alike. In this I have thought that he showed a sense and kindness beyond his years or his seeming giddiness; for some of them might well enough have had their heads turned by a gentleman, and one so handsome, and with a tongue that liked better to say "Angel!" to a woman than anything more suited to the average of the sex. But no girl in the village could think herself for a moment the favoured maiden; for if one had the loveliest eyes in the world, the next had a cheek of roses and velvet, and the third walked like a goddess, and the fourth charmed his soul out of his body every time she opened her lips. And so it went on, till all understood it for play, and the pleasantest play they ever saw. But he vowed from the first that he would marry Abby Rock, and no other living woman. Abby always said yes, she would marry him the first Sunday that came in the middle of the week; and then she would try to make him eat more, though he took quite as much as was good for him, not being used to our hearty ways, especially in the mornings. Abby was as pleased with him as a child with a kitten, and it was pretty to see them together.

"Light of my life!" Yvon would cry. "You are exquisite this morning! Your eyes are like stars on the sea. Come, then, angelic Rock, Rocher des Anges, and waltz with your Ste. Valerie!" And he would take Abby by the waist, and try to waltz with her, till she reached for the broomstick. I have told you, Melody, that Abby was the homeliest woman the Lord ever made. Not that I ever noticed it, for the kindness in her face was so bright I never saw anything but that; but strangers would speak of it, and Yvon himself, before he heard her speak, made a little face, I remember, that only I could see, and whispered, had I brought him to lodge with Medusa? Medusa, indeed! I think Abby's smile would soften any stone that had ever had a human heart beating in it, instead of the other way.

But the place in the village that Yvon loved best was Ham Belfort's grist-mill; and when he comes to my mind, in these days, when sadder visions are softened and partly dim to me, it is mostly there that I seem to see my friend.

It was, as I have said, one of the pleasantest places in the world. To begin with, the colour and softness of it all! The window-glass was powdered white, and the light came through white and dim, and lay about in long powdery shafts, and these were white, too, instead of yellow. So was the very dust white; or rather, it was good oatmeal and wheat flour that lay thick and crumbling on the rafters above, and the wheels and pulleys and other gear. As for Ham, the first time Yvon saw him in the mill, he cried out "Mont Blanc!" and would not call him anything else for some time. For Ham was whiter than all the rest, in his working-dress, cap and jacket and breeches, white to begin with, and powdered soft and furry, like his face and eyebrows, with the flying meal. Down-stairs there was plenty of noise; oats and corn and wheat pouring into the hoppers, and the great stones going round and round, and wheels creaking and buzzing, and belts droning overhead. Yvon could not talk at all here, and I not too much; only Ham's great voice and his father's (old Mr. Belfort was Ham over again, gray under the powder, instead of pink and brown) could roar on quietly, if I may so express it, rising high above the rattle and clack of the machinery, and yet peaceful as the stream outside that turned the great wheels and set the whole thing flying. So, as he could not live long without talking, Yvon loved best the loft above, where the corn was stored, both in bags and unground, and where the big blowers were, and the old green fire-engine, and many other curious things. I had known them all my life, but they were strange to him, and he never tired, any more than if he had been a boy of ten. Sometimes I wondered if he could be twenty-two, as he said; sometimes when he would swing himself on to the slide, where the bags of meal and flour were loaded on to the wagons. Well, Melody, it was a thing to charm a boy's heart; it makes mine beat a little quicker to think of it, even now; perhaps I was not much wiser than my friend, after all. This was a slide some three feet wide, and say seven or eight feet long, sloping just enough to make it pleasant, and polished till it shone, from the bags that rubbed along it day after day, loading the wagons as they backed up under it. Nothing would do but we must slide down this, as if, I say, we were children of ten years old, coming down astride of the meal-sacks, and sending a plump of flour into the air as we struck the wagon. Father Belfort thought Yvon was touched in the brain; but he was all the more gentle on this account. Boys were not allowed on the slide, unless it were a holiday, or some boy had had a hard time with sickness or what not; it was a treat rarely given, and the more prized for that. But Yvon and I might slide as much as we pleased. "Keep him cheerful, Jakey!" the dear old man would say. "Let him kibobble all he's a mind to! I had a brother once was looney, and we kep' him happy all his life long, jest lettin' him stay a child, as the Lord intended. Six foot eight he stood, and weighed four hundred pounds."

And when the boy was tired of playing we would sit down together, and call to Ham to come up and talk; for even better than sliding, Yvon loved to hear his cousin talk. You can take the picture into your mind, Melody, my dear. The light dim and white, as I have told you, and very soft, falling upon rows and rows of full sacks, ranged like soldiers; the great white miller sitting with his back against one of these, and his legs reaching anywhere, – one would not limit the distance; and running all about him, without fear, or often indeed marking him in any way, a multitude of little birds, sparrows they were, who spent most of their life here among the meal-sacks. Sometimes they hopped on his shoulder, or ran over his head, but they never minded his talking, and he sat still, not liking to disturb them. It was a pretty sight of extremes in bulk, and in nature too; for while Ham was afraid to move, for fear of troubling them, they would bustle up to him and cock their heads, and look him in the eye as if they said, "Come on, and show me which is the biggest!"

There you see him, my dear; and opposite to him you might see a great mound or heap of corn that shone yellow as gold. "Le Mont d'Or," Yvon called it; and nothing would do but he must sit on this, lifted high above us, yet sliding down every now and then, and climbing up again, with the yellow grains slipping away under him, smooth and bright as pebbles on the shore. And for myself, I was now here and now there, as I found it more comfortable, being at home in every part of the friendly place.

How we talked! Ham was mostly a silent fellow; but he grew to love the lad so that the strings of his tongue were loosened as they had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed), – his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, I suppose, than in the rest of his life put together. Bits of his talk, homely and yet wise, come back to me across the sixty years. One day, I remember, we talked of life, as young men love to talk. We said nothing that had not been said by young men since Abel's time, I do suppose, but it was all new to us; and indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed to make them their own in a manner. Yvon maintained that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. Sorrow and suffering, he cried, were a blot on the scheme, a mistake, a concession to the devil; if all would but spread their wings and fly away from it, houp! it would no longer exist. "Et voilà!"

We laughed, but shook our heads. Ham meditated awhile, and then began in his strong, quiet voice, a little husky, which I always supposed was from his swallowing so much raw meal and flour.

"That's one way of lookin' at it, Eavan; I expect that's your French view, likely; looks different, you see, to folks livin' where there's cold, and sim'lar things, as butterflies couldn't find not to say comfortable. Way I look at it, it always seemed to me that grain come as near it as anything, go to compare things. Livin' in a grist-mill, I presume, I git into a grainy way of lookin' at the world. Now, take wheat! It comes up pooty enough, don't it, in the fields? Show me a field o' wheat, and I'll show you as handsome a thing as is made this side of Jordan. Wal, that might be a little child, we'll say; if there's a thing handsomer than a field o' wheat, it's a little child. But bimeby comes reapin' and all, and then the trouble begins. First, it's all in the rough, ain't it, chaff and all, mixed together; and has to go through the thresher? Well, maybe that's the lickin's a boy's father gives him. He don't like 'em, – I can feel Father Belfort's lickin's yet, – but they git red of a sight o' chaff, nonsense, airs, and what not, for him. Then it comes here to the grist-mill. Well, I may be gittin' a little mixed, boys, but you can foller if you try, I expect. Say that's startin' out in life, leavin' home, or bindin' to a trade, or whatever. Well, it goes into the duster, and there it gets more chaff blowed off'n it. And from the duster it goes into the hopper, and down in betwixt the stones; and them stones grind, grind, grind, till you'd think the life was ground clear'n out of it. But 'tain't so; contrary! That's affliction; the upper and nether millstone – Scriptur! Maybe sickness, maybe losin' your folks, maybe business troubles, – whichever comes is the wust, and more than any mortal man ever had to bear before. Well, now, see! That stuff goes in there, grain; it comes out wheat flour! Then you take and wet it down and put your 'east in, – that's thought, I expect, or brains, – or might be a woman, – and you bake it in the oven, – call that – well, 'git-up-and-git' is all I can think of, but I should aim for a better word, talkin' to a foreigner."

"Purpose," I suggested.

"That's it! purpose! bake it in that oven, and you have a loaf of wheat bread, riz bread; and that's the best eatin' that's ben invented yet. That's food for the hungry, – which raw wheat ain't, except it's cattle. But now you hear me, boys! To git wheat bread, riz bread, you've got to have wheat to begin with. You've got to have good stuff to start with. You can't make good riz bread out o' field corn. But take good stuff and grind it in the Lord's mill, and you've got the best this world can give. That's my philos'phy!"

He nodded his head to the last words, which fell slowly and weightily; and as he did so, the sparrow that had been perched on his head ran down his nose and fluttered in his face, seeming to ask how he dared make such a disturbance. "I beg your pardon, I'm sure!" said Ham. "I'd no notion I was interferin' with you. Why didn't you hit one of your size?"

CHAPTER VII

IT was in the grist-mill loft, too, that Yvon brought forward his great plan, what he called the project of his life, – that of taking me back to France with him. I remember how I laughed when he spoke of it; it seemed as easy for me to fly to the moon as to cross the ocean, a thing which none of my father's people had done since the first settlers came. My mother, to be sure, had come from France, but that was a different matter; nor had her talk of the sea made me feel any longing for it. But Yvon had set his heart on it; and his gay talk flowed round and over my objections, as your brook runs over stones. I must go; I should go! I should see my tower, the castle of my fathers. It was out of repair, he could not deny that; but what! a noble château might still be made of it. Once restored, I would bring my father over to end his days with me, under the roof that alone could properly shelter a person of such nobility. He had won my father's heart, too, Melody, as he won all hearts; they understood each other in some fine, far-off way, that was beyond me. I sometimes felt a little pang that was not, I am glad to believe, jealousy, only a wish that I might be more like Yvon, more like my mother's people, since it was that so charmed my poor father.

I asked Yvon how I was to live, how my father and I should support ourselves in our restored castle, and whose money would pay for the restoration. He threw this aside, and said that money was base, and he refused to consider it. It had nothing to do with the feelings, less than nothing with true nobility. Should I then take my cobbler's bench, I asked him, and make shoes for him and his neighbours, while my father tilled the ground? But then, for the first and almost the last time, I saw my friend angry; he became like a naughty, sulky child, and would hardly speak to me for the rest of the day.

But he clung to his idea, none the less; and, to my great surprise, my father took it up after awhile. He thought well, he told me, of Yvon's plan; Yvon had talked it over with him. He, himself, was much stronger than he had been (this was true, Melody, or nothing would have induced me to leave him even for a week; Yvon had been like a cordial to him, and he had not had one of his seizures for weeks); and I could perfectly leave him under Abby's care. I had not been strong myself, a voyage might be a good thing for me; and no doubt, after seeing with my own eyes the matters this young lad talked of, I would be glad enough to come home and settle to my trade, and would have much to think over as I sat at my bench. It might be that a man was better for seeing something of the world; he had never felt that the Lord intended him to travel, having brought to his own door all that the world held of what was best (he paused here, and said "Mary!" two or three times under his breath, a way he had when anything moved him), but it was not so with me, nor likely to be, and it might be a good thing for me to go. He had money laid by that would be mine, and I could take a portion of that, and have my holiday.

These are not his very words, Melody, but the sense of them. I was strangely surprised; and being young and eager, the thought came upon me for the first time that this thing was really possible; and with the thought came the longing, and a sense which I had only felt dimly before, and never let speak plain to me, as it were. I suppose every young man feels the desire to go somewhere else than the place where he has always abided. The world may be small and wretched, as some tell him, or great and golden, according to the speech of others; he believes neither one nor the other, he must see it with his own eyes. So this grew upon me, and I brooded over it, till my life was full of voices calling, and hands pointing across the sea, to the place which is Somewhere Else. I talked with Father L'Homme-Dieu, and he bade me go, and gave me his blessing; he had no doubt it was my pleasure, and might be my duty, in the way of making all that might be made of my life. I talked with Abby; she grew pale, and had but one word, "Your father!" Something in her tone spoke loud to my heart, and there came into my mind a thought that I spoke out without waiting for it to cool.

"Won't you marry my father, Abby?"

Abby's hands fell in her lap, and she turned so white that I was frightened; still, I went on. "You love him better than any one else, except me." (She put her hand on her heart, I remember, Melody, and kept it there while I talked; she made no other sign.)

"And you can care for him ten times better than I could, you know that, Abby, dear; and – and – I know Mère-Marie would be pleased."

I looked in her face, and, young and thoughtless as I was, I saw that there which made me turn away and look out of the window. She did not speak at once; but presently said in her own voice, or only a little changed, "Don't speak like that, Jakey dear! You know I'll care for your father all I can, without that;" and so put me quietly aside, and talked about Yvon, and how good Father L'Homme-Dieu had been to me.

But I, being a lad that liked my own way when it did not seem a wrong one (and not only then, perhaps, my dear; not only then!), could not let my idea go so easily. It seemed to me a fine thing, and one that would bring happiness to one, at least; and I questioned whether the other would mind it much, being used to Abby all his life, and a manner of cousin to her, and she my mother's first friend when she came to the village, and her best friend always. I was very young, Melody, and I spoke to my father about it; that same day it was, while my mind was still warm. If I had waited over night, I might have seen more clear.

"Father," said I; we were sitting in the kitchen after supper; it was a summer evening, soft and fair, but a little fire burned low on the hearth, and he sat near it, having grown chilly this last year.

"Father, would you think it possible to change your condition?"

He turned his eyes on me, with an asking look.

"Would you think it possible to marry Abby Rock?" I asked; and felt my heart sink, somehow, even with saying the words. My father hardly seemed to understand at first; he repeated, "Marry Abby Rock!" as if he saw no sense in the words; then it came to him, and I saw a great fire of anger grow in his eyes, till they were like flame in the dusk.

"I am a married man!" he said, slowly. "Are you a child, or lost to decency, that you speak of this to a married man?"

He paused, but I found nothing to say. He went on, his voice, that was even when he began, dropping deeper, and sinking as I never heard it.

"The Lord in His providence saw fit to take away my wife, your mother, before sickness, or age, or sorrow could strike her. I was left, to suffer some small part of what my sins merit, in the land of my sojourn. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. But because my wife Mary, – my wife Mary" (he lingered over the words, loving them so), "is a glorified spirit in another world, and I am a prisoner here, is she any less my wife, and I her faithful husband? You are my son, and hers, – hers, Jakey; but if you ever say such words to me again, one house will not hold us both." He turned his head away, and I heard him murmuring under his breath, "Mary! Mary!" as I have said his way was; and I was silent and ashamed, fearing to speak lest I make matters worse; and so presently I slipped out and left him; and my fine plan came to naught, save to make two sad hearts sadder than they were.

But it was to be! Looking back, Melody, after fifty years, I am confident that it was the will of God, and was to be. In three weeks from that night, I was in France.

I pass over the wonder of the voyage; the sorrowful parting, too, that came before it, though I left all well, and my father to all appearances fully himself. I pass over these, straight to the night when Yvon and I arrived at his home in the south of France. We had been travelling several days since landing, and had stopped for two days in Paris. My head was still dizzy with the wonder and the brightness of it all. There was something homelike, too, in it. The very first people I met seemed to speak of my mother to me, as they flung out their hands and laughed and waved, so different from our ways at home. I was to see more of this, and to feel the two parts in me striving against each other; but it is early to speak of that.

The evening was warm and bright, as we came near Château Claire; that was the name of my friend's home. A carriage had met us at the station, and as we drove along through a pretty country (though nothing to New England, I must always think), Yvon was deep in talk with the driver, who was an old servant, and full of news. I listened but little, being eager to see all my eyes could take in. Vines swung along the sides of the road, in a way that I always found extremely graceful, and wished we might have our grapes so at home. I was marvelling at the straw-roofed houses and the plots of land about them no bigger than Abby Rock's best table-cloth, when suddenly Yvon bade pull up, and struck me on the shoulder. "D'Arthenay, tenez foi!" he cried in my ear; and pointed across the road. I turned, and saw in the dusk a stone tower, square and bold, covered with ivy, the heavy growth of years. It was all dim in the twilight, but I marked the arched door, with carving on the stone work above it, and the great round window that stared like a blind eye. I felt a tugging at my heart, Melody; the place stood so lonely and forlorn, yet with a stateliness that seemed noble. I could not but think of my father, and that he stood now like his own tower, that he would never see.

"Shall we alight now?" asked Yvon. "Or will you rather come by daylight, Jacques, to see the place in beauty of sunshine?"

I chose the latter, knowing that his family would be looking for him; and no one waited for me in La Tour D'Arthenay, as it was called in the country. Soon we were driving under a great gateway, and into a courtyard, and I saw the long front of a great stone house, with a light shining here and there.